I work with national brands and help them establish their digital strategy each and every year. The results I have obtained have always been in relation to three basic elements that I think everyone should know. If you apply them right and optimize how you use these methods, you’ll likely find yourself on a better path to success.
Often, creativity may lead us in different directions and we may lose the core of what a digital marketing strategy (or all of your marketing strategy) should aim to accomplish: creating qualified leads for your sales team.
It’s important to clarify that your marketing and sales team should be working together, hand in hand. Sales teams must understand and analyze the sales numbers to help identify how to define a qualified lead. And they must make sure they help the marketing team by clearly establishing the best types of leads. The worst thing that can happen is to have a marketing team that says the sales team can’t close and a sales team that says the marketing team can’t generate good leads. Those are excuses, not solutions.
Here are the three basic elements to accelerating your digital marketing efforts to provide your sales team with good leads.
1. Define who you are talking to
Basic, right? It’s surprising, though, how this first step is often put aside. Defining who you are talking to is more than just knowing that you are looking for customers. You want to establish a profile for the types of clients you wish to have. In this profile, you must ensure you determine the following:
- Name (fake name, for ulterior referral) that represents the customer profile
- Description of the person’s day
- Description of the person’s job
- Description of the person’s personal and professional objectives
- Which types of media this person interfaces with (social media, television, radio, etc.)
One of the most important parts of this process is defining what this person is doing on all of the media channels they’re interfacing with. For example, when on Facebook, are they looking for entertainment, work or connections? You must establish a profile for every type of client you wish to connect with and turn into a lead. You will most certainly have more than one profile to establish based on demographics or client behaviors.
Knowing who your clientele is will allow you to talk to the right people with the right message. You will be qualifying the leads through your content and then passing the right leads to your sales team.
2. Determine what pains your customer base has
Once you know who your clients are, you must establish what causes irritation in their lives. I’m talking about elements that make your clients’ lives difficult in any aspect. There are different ways you can determine how your client base acts and which elements cause pain points. It can be through data collection with your accounting system, customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Personally, I prefer the data-based decisions. Surveys and focus groups tend to be a little biased, but they are better than basing your conclusions on nothing. Once defined, list all of your clients’ pain points.
When you know what delivers pain to your aimed clients, establish where your brand can be a “pain reliever” for them. If you know what your clients’ pains are, target them in relation to their interactions with different channels. For example, I have a client that offers fully prepared meals. They knew they were answering to a pain — the lack of inspiration for meals. Someone who is looking for inspiration could search online for ideas on recipe websites. We offered catered ads with a message that answered the, “What’s for supper?” question.
3. Determine what gains your customer base is looking for
Your products or services may also be gain creators. This is an important element that you need to think about so you can communicate it to the right type of client, at the right time, with the right message.
As with pain points, you must establish how this solution can be positioned on different media channels. Determine what intent your users have. Are they looking for inspiration? Are they looking to buy? Are they looking for information? Answer those question on the right platforms.
I work in Québec, where realtors are an option when selling a house. Before looking for a realtor, some people question if they should use one. Answering the, “Do I need a realtor?” question is a good opportunity for realtors. Answers that touch gains (access to many media outlets, access to a market of buyers) make sure the potential client knows why they should do business with you and answers their need for information.
Positioning your brand as a gains creator or pain reliever is not necessarily appropriate for all of your aimed clientele. It is a client profile decision that must be thoughtfully determined. Segmentation of your message will be necessary so that potential clients will consume the right message in regards to their profile, goals and intent. Furthermore, two potential clients might need the same information, but at different moments in their customer journey, so we must make sure we can guide them to the right message at the right time.
With any type of content that you push online (ads, social media posts, websites content, etc.) you must make sure that you send the right message to the right person. The best way to do so is to really know the people you are talking to and establish how you can clearly help them throughout their day-to-day life. This will ensure that when you create a digital marketing strategy you will be effective in engaging with people who are really interested in your brand and can convert to becoming a long-term client for your business.