Did you know that it takes between seven and eight contacts before a customer is ready to buy? Most small businesses have stopped following up with a customer after two to three contacts. Stopping your follow-up process too soon is a huge waste of effort. Did you leave money on the table?
Losing customers? More than half of customers say they leave one business for another because of the company’s indifference. Every new customer needs to know we love them and want them as a customer.
Following up with customers can be time-consuming and a lot to keep track of. Lifecycle marketing is a framework to help you organize your efforts and get rid of the waste. Marketing automation can create your system and set it to run automatically.
Three-part Lifecycle Marketing Framework
- System of Attracting
- System of Selling
- System of Wowing
Attracting
- Identify your target market –Who your customers are now? What is their profile? Get really clear about who exactly you are targeting.
- Find your target market – Identify areas where you can improve your marketing or advertising to your targeted buyers. With your customer profile in mind, think about where they spend time. Are you optimizing your efforts on social media? Are you partnering with the publications your target buyer reads?
- Create a lead magnet – Make something very valuable to your target market and give it to them in exchange for their information (usually name and email address). This moves the customer into your selling phase, instead of the customer just leaving your website and missing your opportunity.
Selling to those not ready to buy
Just because the customer isn’t ready to buy today doesn’t mean they will never be ready to buy. Creating a marketing automation system continues the relationship long term- while taking up minimal brain space for you! Create an automatic follow-up email, follow with a call, maybe another email. If the customer is not yet ready to buy, we will channel those into a more long-term touch point marketing automation solution, such as adding them to the email newsletter list.
WOWing your customers
Once they become a customer we need to step into the WOW phase. We want to make darn sure they understand we appreciate their business. Set up a new customer follow-up process and lay the love on thick. Examples:
- Send a welcome package
- Send them a direct mail info packet
- Establish ongoing follow-up systems to make sure they are still happy with the product
- Get referrals
What would it be like to completely eliminate the waste of effort? What would it be worth to your company?
For a limited time, Rivergate Marketing is offering free marketing assessment to help companies prioritize their marketing needs.