Attract, Convert, Close, Delight. Those are the pillars of Inbound Marketing but for many businesses, the challenges of slow sales and disinterested buyers are a direct result of skipping steps. Even for businesses with shorter sales cycles like Plumbing, or Landscaping services, for example, these steps all work toward a common goal...winning the business. Here are some common issues to consider as you move your customers through each stage.
Attract
What are you doing to attract new customers to your content? For many businesses, the answer is sending out emails to massive lists and posting on social media in the same way that everyone else is. This leads to an unengaged audience that gets no value from any of the content that they see because it isn't relevant to them. In order to change the attraction phase, consider who it is that you're targeting and why they would want to buy your product or use your service. From there, build your emails, social posts, and keyword lists with the things that matter to them. What you'll find is better engagement from the customers you want with far less effort on your behalf.
Convert
Well, you got them to your website, they opened that email and clicked on your social post. That's a great start, but now that they're engaged, you need to convert them. Forms, CTA's and Landing pages that are designed with the sole purpose of taking a new prospect to the next stage of the buying process is how you'll get it done. Many CRM's such as HubSpot have landing page templates, pre-built forms, and calls to action in order to make this process as easy as possible.
Close
Now comes the most important step of all, closing the business. With the aid of automated workflows and emails, once agreements are signed, your CRM can tie together every portion of the client record. This makes helps ensure that forecasts are updated and your new customer is receiving the most up to date information by email. You also have the advantage of using custom or pre-built workflows that ensure the right documents are in place and tasks are set to kick off the engagement in a timely manner. Many times though, this step is completed haphazardly leading to delays and misplaced assets that are crucial to the deal.
Delight
Happy customers lead to more happy customers, but how do you make sure that your newest customer stays happy? Using surveys and smart content can give you a clear picture of what they like and where you can improve your processes or services. Smart content gives them a more personalized experience in emails, web pages and forms when they need additional products or services. Further, monitoring and responding to your reviews on social outlets and Google can bring your current and past customers value as partner.
If you're looking to incorporate more structure into your sales process, or if you've missed out on new business because of it, we can help.
Take a look at this resource, and contact us anytime you're ready to get started.
