The From Line
Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email
Many businesses engage in lead sharing with little thought about what they are really doing and how sharing customer and prospect information can actually destroy the relationships they have built or trying to build. Let’s take a brief look at some important considerations in designing a lead sharing program to maintain quality customer relationships.
Relationships Not Profit Should Be Your Business's Goal
Obviously, the primary goal of any business is profit, but the only way to get there is a strong focus on building and maintaining customer relationships. People buy from those they can trust and from those who can give them the best product or service to meet an individual need. People are tired of being sold. They now want to buy and their terms. If your company is sharing customer or prospect data, even though your privacy and user policies permit such activity, your business is most likely betraying your customers' or prospects' trust.
If Your Privacy Policy Says You Can Share Customer And Prospect Data - Change It!
Search engines seem to like “Privacy Statements” in business websites. What does yours say about sharing visitor’s information? Take a quick look at Google’s Privacy Policy. Google clearly states that it will not use personal information outside of Google, except with a person’s consent. If you intend to share information voluntarily given to you on your business website, you had better make it crystal clear to the visitor how you intend to use that information. If your privacy policy states that you can share pesonal data be prepared for the backlash when you do share. Some savvy consumer will source you as a breach of trust despite your policies and out you as a participant of bad practices to others. If you intend to participate in a legitimate lead sharing program, make sure it's explicit, opt-in and transparent to your end users. Opt-In should always be one to one, not one to many.
Opt-Out = Game Over!
Once prospects or customers have informed you they made the decision to opt-out of your marketing, you cannot sell or transfer their data to third parties. Doing so can open your business up to major legal heaches and public relations nightmares. In other words, despite using good or bad lead sharing practices, an opt-out should signal a true end of any value to the relationship.
Lead sharing has been around for a very long time, even before the Internet. Lawyers, financial planners, banks and the like have always referred customers to other professions. Today, lead sharing is much more than just exchanging email lists to allow you to start sending mass emails to potential customers. Genuine lead sharing is finding a partner to help look for opportunities to combine the talents and expertise of both businesses in a way that can best benefit the customer. This way both businesses will get exposure and a real service will be delivered to the general public.
RegReady is a transparent, fair and balanced customer acquisition community helping you develop true opt-in marketing lists and sales leads. We are advocates of quality customer relationships developed through permission-based marketing and education. We help you find prospects motivated to ask for more information. Contact us today to see how it works.
8202 Hits
Content marketing in its simplest terms is the creation and distribution of relevant and valuable content to attract and engage a defined target audience. If your business has an established website or blog and you send email messages to prospects, you already have a content marketing strategy, but how well is it meeting your goals of attracting new customers? Let’s take a look at some key factors that can help your business establish a content marketing strategy that actually works.
Content Marketing Must Be Defined By Business Goals
Before any business can establish an effective marketing strategy, it must first understand its overall objectives and missions. For example, is your business objective to attract new customers or build awareness of your brand? By understanding your own needs before trying to focus on the needs of your readers, you will be able to take advantage of the right marketing platforms and be able to develop relevant and valuable content your readers will want to receive. Obviously, the ultimate goal of any business is to make a profit, but unfortunately, many businesses totally ignore the word “quality”. If your current content marketing strategy involves forcing your message on consumers, you are headed in the wrong direction. A well-developed and tested permission-based marketing system will accomplish your intended goals and build the credibility you need.
Content Marketing Demands Great Content
Remember, the key definition of successful content marketing is delivering “relevant” and “valuable” content. We all receive unwanted emails everyday filled with nothing but garbage trying to sell us “stuff”. Effective relevant content will set your business apart from the other guys. To design an effective content marketing strategy, you must stop, think, and behave differently. It is great content that the major search engines want to rank well in search results. Great content is what generates word-of-mouth exposure on social networks. Great content can achieve the same results of traditional advertising – getting people to know and trust the brand of your business.
Prospects Don’t Want To Be Sold – They Want To Buy
Customers and prospective customers seem to be no longer interested in the world of marketing. Many people record their favorite shows or movies so they can just skip over all the commercials. People go online with the hopes of finding meaningful information that they can use to make an informed decision, without being bombarded with buttons and banners that are totally irrelevant. By delivering consistent, valuable information to potential buyers, they will ultimately reward you with their loyalty and their business.
Delivering your message to those who have requested it, by means of an established permission-based marketing system, will allow you to execute sales messages that are needed, even requested, by your potential and existing customers.
2825 Hits
In order to get a higher percentage of website visitors to take action to become an actual lead or customer, businesses must realize that today’s online marketing has evolved into much more that just a convenient way to shop. For marketing strategies to work, businesses must clearly understand that conversion optimization involves seeing everything from the customer’s point of view.
Stop Selling Features – Start Selling Solutions To Problems
Most customers prefer to solve their own problems, therefore areas of websites dedicated to helping people are the ones visited most often. Self-help content can include video tutorials, FAQs, or comprehensive information downloads. If your marketing strategies include social media, if is very important to ensure prompt responses to visitors’ inquiries or comments. Your main goal should be to establish trust and this can often be more challenging for smaller brands, especially online businesses.
Does Your Website Include Unique Product Information?
To stand out from the competition, your business website must have a unique voice. To make your products or services more unique, you may want to give your descriptions a personal touch. You must be totally honest and transparent in describing your product or service from your own unique perspective. Don’t get too caught up in the facts, because people buy on emotion. People want to know exactly how your business is different from the others.
Is Your Website Consistent In Its Formatting?
To help you better understand just how effective your web presence is, put yourself in the shoes of your visitors. How easily can you perform the same tasks you’re asking your customers to complete? Most people like to find information for themselves. A website without consistency can ruin the on-site experience for visitors. A site that produces a bad experience for potential customers is also bad for sales. Oftentimes, your homepage will look a little different that the other internal pages, but consistency must be carried from one page to the next. The primary navigation of your website should not change. Visitors must be able to immediately figure out where and how to get the information they need.
You Must Follow Up And Follow Through
If leads are simply falling through the cracks, you’re just throwing away profits. Prospect follow up can include auto-responders, follow-up emails, or other forms of effective follow up. Customers must realize that your business will care just as much after the sale as it did before. An effective post-sale marketing strategy will let them know that you really do care because you’re proving it. You will not only retain satisfied customers, but customer goodwill is a fantastic repeat business generator and an excellent source of referral business.
No matter what you’re selling, you must stop seeing people who visit your business website as just “traffic”. You must completely understand that these visitors are actually real human beings. As these visitors engage at different levels, each word they read and each piece of media they view will form a mental image of your business. This image will determine whether they buy from you or a competitor.
RegReady is a transparent, fair and balanced customer acquisition community helping you develop true opt-in marketing lists and sales leads. We are advocates of quality customer relationships developed through permission-based marketing and education. We help you find prospects motivated to ask for more information. Contact us today to see how it works.
6365 Hits
There were days in Internet marketing where “acquisition” simply meant getting a lot of traffic to a website. It seemed as though businesses weren’t really concerned about what happened when the traffic arrived, they just wanted to get website visitors. Today, mass marketing has been replaced by target marketing and online businesses are beginning to realize that acquisition marketing is driven by the customer’s experience.
Target Customers Must Become Aware Of Your Product or Service
Obviously, the first hurdle in establishing an effective customer acquisition strategy is making the consumer aware of your product or service. It is no longer enough to rely solely on a well-designed business website to attract a target audience. With the growing popularity of social media, online businesses have a better opportunity to promote their brand and establish trust and confidence in their company. Content optimization, link building, social media, and strategic partnerships all can yield effective results for years to come. Designing permission-based e-mail and direct mail marketing campaigns ensures your message is delivered to those who asked to receive it.
Target Customers Must Learn How Your Products Are Unique
Marketing strategies must focus on how your product or service can best meet the needs of the consumer. The entire process must be easy for the consumer and you must understand their mindset, needs and concerns. With this understanding, you can offer extra information or product assurance through customer testimonials. Another unique quality of your business could be that you are totally honest and transparent in all dealings with consumers.
Target Customers Must Be Convinced To Buy
The acquisition of new customers depends on how well your business can build comprehensive relationships with the general public. Whether it is through advertising, promotions or some other motivation, persuasion is what eventually convinces a prospective customer to buy.
Looking out for your customers’ interests makes acquisition marketing a long-term process. Satisfied customers will buy from you more than once and they will produce more sales through referrals. Customer acquisition techniques must change as technology changes. To remain in competition and maintain a high acquisition rate, you must always explore new methods to entertain customers.
RegReady is a transparent, fair and balanced customer acquisition community helping you develop true opt-in marketing lists and sales leads. We are advocates of quality customer relationships developed through permission-based marketing and education. We help you find prospects motivated to ask for more information. Contact us today to see how it works.
6641 Hits
Tracking conversion optimization results is just part of online marketing, but most marketers make it more difficult than it needs to be.
Data is an important asset to every marketer. Data tells us when we are succeeding and when we are not. But most marketers get lost in the data and forget that those numbers represent real people.
Marketers get lost in their data when they relying heavily on search engines for traffic. When traffic comes from lead generation instead of search engine results, data is more meaningful. In turn, meaningful data can be used to further increase conversion rates.
Let's take a look at three popular conversion techniques and see how marketers are failing to use them to their fullest potential by relying solely on search engine results.
A/B Tests - Marketers live and die by A/B tests. A valid A/B tells the marketer what changes will produce positive results. Unfortunately, most marketers perform these tests when they are receiving traffic from only search engine results. A/B tests conducted on search engine traffic predict what will work for most visitors researching the topic. Tests on lead generated traffic predicts what will work for those visitors looking to buy.
Simplified Landing Pages - Short and simple landing pages perform better than more complicated landing pages. But all landing pages work better when traffic is lead generated. Most random web searchers that land on landing pages aren't really that close to buying yet. That is why most landing pages are longer and filled with ad copy. Lead generated traffic makes the landing page's job easier. All the landing page should do is tell them how to buy, not try to convince them that they should.
Promotional Content - Every landing page is a sales pages but customers don't want to be sold. The more promotional a landing page is, the better chance it has to convert a random web searcher into a paying customer. But it also increases the chances of turning off a ready-to-buy lead generated visitor.
Crunching data in order to figure out what works is part of online marketing. But data obtained from lead generated traffic will produce better results than that from random web searchers.
3215 Hits