When Your Widget Leads Don’t Pan Out
So you’re in the big business of fine widgets. Fine, pricey widgets! And you’ve spent a great deal of time and resources towards your comprehensive online marketing campaigns to make sure that your brand of widgets receives a steady source of traffic from the search engines. And because you did such a killer job, those leads are starting to come in at a steady pace. Congratulations! …but wait. A lot of them have fake phone numbers. Most of them don’t tell you close to exactly what kind of widget they want to buy. And most of them that you write to or call are unreceptive to your pitches. This is going downhill really fast, isn’t it?
Understanding The Widget Buyer
If this has happened to you, before you start panicking, stop, take a deep breath, and consider for a moment the art of persistence. Before I start explaining the benefits of constantly staying in touch with your high-dollar clientele, let’s quickly venture into their mindset for a little reality dose. So you’re looking for this really expensive widget that has all these awesome widget features like turbo charge, and extra strength, and so forth. You’re probably not 100% sure as to what model of widget you want to buy, and certainly not sure as to who you want to buy it from. I mean, that’s why you pulled up Google in the first place. To do some diligent research on your future purchase so that you don’t make a mistake.
Notice that in that paragraph I make no reference to wanting to make a hasty purchase? Probably the most important thing to consider when pitching your potential customers with your pricey wares is that when they contact you they are probably just looking around right now. Casing the joint. Not to rob you, but to find out if your site is for real. See how it compares to others. Taking their time. I realize that’s at odds with your priority, which is getting them to commit as quickly as possible. Well, unfortunately the large majority of sales that you’re probably missing out on are ones that you’re scaring away by being too aggressive and unhelpful. Aggressive in that you’re pushing for a sale right off the bat. Unhelpful in that you’re only sending aggressive marketing materials to your prospects. What you need, my friend, is a sermon on persistence.
How To Gain The Trust Of Your Widget Market
Staying in constant contact with your leads is the best strategy for large-ticket items, yet so many make the mistake of abandoning the leads that don’t yield immediate returns. Labeling them as “not serious.” Well, that’s true, they aren’t serious. Yet. And especially not about doing business with someone who’s only interested in selling them something right now. Here’s where your best marketing friend steps in; email drip marketing. With email drip marketing, you can stay in touch with your leads in a way that is friendly, helpful, and ultimately drives more potential clients your way instead of away from you as fast as possible.
Email Drip Marketing 101
Setting up the drip email marketing system doesn’t have to be difficult. There are three basic steps to it: establishing categories to fit your leads into, drafting relevant and helpful content for each category, and then implementing it using drip email software.
Step One: Settling On Demographic Categories For Your Leads
When setting up your categories, think of the different demographics that could be attracted to your products. Then think of the different widget lines you offer. Set up a group for each demographic and product line. For example, if you have three different main demographics that would be interested in your 2 highly profitable widget lines, then you’d need to set up 6 categories overall. You will use these categories for the next two stages.
Step Two: Drafting Great Original Content To Blast Out To Your Leads
The next step is to draft content that you can send out to these different categories of leads over the next several weeks, months, possibly even years. The strategy you employ will obviously vary depending on your widget industry, but the most important thing is to send your potential clients information that is valuable to them in a way other than just to help them make a purchasing decision. You want to come at them sideways, and then work in a subtle pitch at the end of each message. For example, if you’re in the market of high speed widgets, you could send an article about all the fun nearby places you can go cruising around in a high speed widget. Make the information very personal, use humor, include pictures, even links to audio and video files. At the very end, include a brief paragraph with a link to your site, or better yet, seamlessly include a link to your site in the copy itself without making any sales pitch. That’s just one way you can contact your category of leads though; use newsletters, a series of articles about the widget buying process, send out a page of helpful links about widgets (that include plenty of non-commercial sites, and of course yours). The possibilities are endless, but take the time to plot out a series of emails for each category of leads you have. Have at least a dozen of them to start, and also an introductory email. Once you’ve done that, then you’ll be ready to actually set up the campaign!
Step Three: Setting Up The Drip Marketing Campaign Itself
To set up the campaign, first you’ll need to choose a drip email solution provider from this list:
IContact
Constant Contact
Vertical Response
Bronto
Each one will have its own unique learning curve, features, perks, and potential drawbacks. I will give you the lowdown on these in a future post. Once you’ve settled on one, they all have the same concept: creating groups of contacts to blast out messages to over a period of time. You determine when and what gets sent out to each category of lead by setting up a group for each, and then scheduling those leads to receive the messages you drafted specifically for them. As for exactly how often to contact your leads, that will vary from industry to industry, but don’t let them go for a week without a new message from you. And don’t stop sending them email until they request to be removed from your list.
Getting The Right Leads For Your Drip System
Oh, and one final thing: definitely don’t just buy an email list from some guy in an alley and expect it to work. All drip email providers are vary aware of spammers, and the potential cost it could to do them if they get cracked down upon by the major ISPs for blasting out spam on your behalf. So if you start sending out spam, and send it to a bunch of people who aren’t looking for it, then you’ll surely be blacklisted from that drip provider. The way you get around that is by generating the leads yourself, and fortunately that’s not difficult to do with a little seo content, inbound linking, and a good ppc campaign with landing pages.
Conclusion
So that’s the way you turn your impatient energy into something productive that will yield you more conversions on those big ticket item leads you feel ‘stuck’ with. For a thorough consultation on your business and what the best drip marketing strategy would be for its specific need, please feel free to contact BigSERP.Com.