Since the start of your business, advertising has been “the necessary evil” to gain new customers and keep your business profitable. Print advertising in books, magazines, billboards, direct mail, and brochures all play a major role in bringing customers to your business. The popularity of the internet has created new opportunities to market your business as well as marketing saturation.
The early internet adapters tried every form of marketing the internet has to offer. They used websites, lead capture, emails, banner ads, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, and so on. Now, with mobile traffic and social traffic gaining more popularity, the different ways to market your business as evolved to a level of “words I can’t describe”!
However, we’ve learned and perfected an extremely powerful way to organize all of your advertising and get the most out of the lead that takes action. What have we learned and perfected?
We’ve learned that if you place all of the adverting above—print, online, and mobile—into a sales funnel, you end up simplifying your advertising process, building a relationship with your customer base, and having your customers buying from you on complete auto pilot at their most qualified moment. What we perfected is the process called nurturing leads.
Nurturing Leads Through the Sales Process
In the sales process, there’s a buyer’s process. Connecting with the buyer through their process will pay dividends when the actual sale takes place. When buyers feel an emotional connection, it builds the relationship, which builds trust. Companies who understand and apply this see their revenues double, triple, and quadruple, and at the same time, their customers become happier, compliant, and easier to sell to.
Let’s examine three ways to stay connected with your customers and nurture them into sales.
Two Powerful Ways to Nurture Your Leads
Emails: This method of communication is still the most effective way to stay in contact with your customers, educate them, and connect with them. However, sending emails to every customer who has expressed interest in your business is a daunting task. So automate the process.
Companies on the first page of Google email marketing autoresponders make the task of connecting with your customer easy. You can set up email marketing campaigns and schedule emails customized to the buyer in their buying process—powerful in relationship building.
Remarketing Ads: Ever visit a website, leave that website, and see their advertising on other websites? This isn’t done by accident; it’s by remarketing in a pay per click campaign.
Google and Bing Ads have campaign platforms to help capture your leads when they’re on your website and follow them to other websites or webpages within their network. It’s a sophisticated way stay in front your potential client. Visit Google Adwords or Bing Ads for more information.
Everyone has a sales process when making decisions on what to buy. Some purchasing decisions require little thought—impulse decisions such as buying a pack of gum. Other decisions are more complex and time consuming, such as buying a car or a house.
Nurturing leads through a sales process applies to larger ticket sales items with a long sales process. Traditionally, sales representatives have completed the nurturing. However, leaving this complex task to sales representatives to perform opens the door for mistakes and is less customized to the buyer.
Hiring an advertising agency to manage the task of nurturing your leads through the sales process will produce more leads ready to buy, your sales reps spending their time selling and more revenue for your company.
—Dan Woods is a Digital PR Coordinator at Stream Companies, a full-service Philadelphia-area advertising agency.{{cta(‘b86debdb-a1cb-412f-8ca2-530f36f66bd3’)}}