A business thrives when customers are loyal to their products and services. No matter how good your solutions are, if you can’t gather clients, your business is bound to fail. Always remember that your clients are the backbone of your business. This is why you need to figure out certain steps you need to take to generate actionable leads and metrics.
Even if you are well-funded by investors, failing to meet the ideal ROI will affect your overall development and growth. This is where effective marketing comes in. Marketing helps you gain potential customers who are likely to avail your products and services.
If you’re new to entrepreneurship, here’s how you can grow your business’ number of potential customers.
Make Use Of Marketing Tools
Before you start planning your strategies, make yourself aware of the various marketing tools you can use for effective marketing. These tools are meant to engage with potential customers to give them an idea of how your products can help them.
Now, it’s important to remember that these tools should be used with care. They are not meant to spam your leads list or hound them with sales talk. Rather, these tools should be used to build customer relationships.
One example is the sales funnel, which you can create to gather leads. If done correctly, your business will be able to reach a wider audience, who can turn to actual paying customers. Here are some other tools that you can take advantage of:
Telemarketing: Power Dialing Systems
If your business relies heavily on telemarketing efforts, you should try using a power dialer system to help your telemarketers become more efficient and productive. A power dialer is a telemarketing tool that automatically connects your agents with a customer. It’s an innovative piece of tech that aims to take out some steps involved in telemarketing, such as manually looking for contacts or dialing the next contact number.
Lead Nurturing: Newsletter Platforms
People find it easier to connect with brands that are community-centered. This is why it’s essential to build a platform that lets you build a relationship with your customers. Send newsletters that don’t just share your content, but also aim to inform, humor, and educate them. Providing them content that matters will leave better impressions on the people who receive them.
There are tons of newsletter platforms you can use that can do the trick. Or better yet, learn about drip email campaigns to build better funnels that lead to sales.
Use Mass Text Messaging Tools
A lot of companies ignore the power of SMS. It’s true that this era is controlled by alternative media such as social media, but keep in mind that people who are always moving cling to their mobile phones wherever they go. This is why you should take some time to figure out if your potential customers are worth sending text messages to.
If your leads list has mobile numbers you can contact, empower your marketing efforts with mass text messaging tools. The best way to use this particular tool is by quickly informing your leads list with incoming or ongoing promos, discounts, or sales through SMS. Make sure to use it wisely, because you don’t want your brand’s number blocked if you spam your leads list.
Identify Your Target Market
The most important thing you need to do before building a marketing strategy is to identify the customers you want to target. Marketing strategies are only effective when they focus on specific individuals.
For example, if you’re launching a course for the basics of digital marketing, it would be best not to target a Director of Digital Marketing or Executives. Instead, target those who are still new to digital marketing like interns, assistants, or junior employees.
There are a few ways you can fortify your targeting strategies:
- Identifying the demographics
- Identifying different customer interests and needs
- Identifying their offline and online behaviors
- Identifying what visually attracts them to take action
Taking the time to get to know your customers will result in better targeting and marketing outcomes. However, keep in mind that your ideal customer will evolve with your brand. Customer interests and needs will change as time passes, as more innovations will come into play, like technology that can disrupt your business. This is why you need to monitor how your customer evolves through time.
List Down Marketing Goals
Once you’ve identified the people your campaigns will target, it’s time to list down your brand’s marketing goals. Listing these down will help you focus on the results you want to achieve.
Ask yourself what your marketing efforts should boil down to – is it to raise brand awareness or is it to convert people into customers? Being able to identify what it is you want to accomplish will give you a better idea on which steps you need to take in order to attract potential customers.
Along with setting goals are metrics that will help you see whether or not your marketing strategies are effective. There are two types in every campaign:
1. Vanity Metrics
Vanity metrics are there to make your brand or company look good. These usually involve numbers that make people who see or encounter your brand and content trust your services, but not necessarily avail them.
In social media marketing, vanity metrics are the number of people who like or follow your company page. These are individuals you can’t really engage with and will therefore have a bit of difficulty turning them into paying customers. Although they can see every post you publish, you have no actual data to ensure that they are potential customers.
2. Actionable Metrics
Actionable metrics, on the other hand, involve data you can use to inform your next steps. Focusing on these metrics usually results into generating leads into conversions.
In the case of social media, actionable metrics are people who contact you to inquire about your services or people who directly interact with your brand via the comments section. It will depend on how you react after these engagements whether they become paying customers. If you’re going to focus on metrics to enhance potential customers, look for ways to generate greater actionable insights.
Plan Your Marketing Calendar
Marketing relies on strategic approaches that ensure you’re constantly one step ahead in the game. For your efforts to be successful, not only do you need clear goals, but forecasts of both the best and worst case scenarios as well. If everything doesn’t go as planned, you need to have a backup plan that can help turn the situation around.
If you know what to aim for, lay out your plans and campaigns in a calendar. Mark the dates you plan to launch products, hold events, or send out a newsletter. This helps you prepare the materials you need to write, create or publish beforehand. For example, if you’re launching a new product, list down all the steps in the marketing funnel that will lead to the success of the launch.
Another thing to remember when planning a marketing calendar are the holidays that customers celebrate. If you’re an international business, make sure to keep track of local holidays so you can build marketing campaigns around the dates. For example, if Christmas is coming up, you might want to host a giveaway or sale to let your customers know that you value the holidays as much as they do.
Engage, Engage, Engage
Marketing efforts will only be effective if you consistently engage with your audience. You don’t have to directly interact with them one-by-one, rather, always keep them updated with events, news, and free resources. Your potential customers are more likely to remember your brand when they repeatedly see your posts, services, products, or promotions.
You will also leave a better impression if you are able to engage with them directly when they pose a question, inquiry, or suggestion. Engagement is key to generating sales, this is why you should find ways to engage with your customers.
Making potential customers feel important can help convince them to trust your brand and try your products or services. When you engage with them, make sure to focus on their problems and their needs. Don’t engage to sell, engage to help.
What’s Next?
Always make it a point to monitor how your customers respond towards your campaigns. Are they more likely to engage because of visual or written posts? Find out what makes your target market tick so you can push for more of the same materials that can help you gather more customers.
Effective marketing can gather potential customers to flock to your brand. After finding the right leads that you can turn into paying customers, nurture them by continuous engagement using the marketing tools mentioned above.
Additionally, don’t forget that your customers’ needs come before the sales of your products. When a customer is happy with the services you provide, they are more likely to vouch their loyalty. And when customers are loyal, they tend to share your products to their network.
If you’re new to entrepreneurship, try not to focus on pleasing every person on your leads list. Instead, build customer relationships one by one or by small groups. This will ensure an increase in your business’s potential customers.
