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I don’t know how to convert leads through marketing

Posted on 17th November 2015 by The Marketing People

Sales and Marketing should work in harmony. With marketing creating your leads, and sales closing them. However, in smaller companies, sales and marketing can be the same function. Meaning you have to carefully consider and create your marketing, and close the sale too.

So what can you do within your marketing to convert leads earlier? We have 7 points that will help you get more out of your marketing, driving more leads to convert.

Understand the buyer

Understand the buyer journey and that not every lead is the same. If you know generally what your buyer journey is, you know when to go for the sale, and when to leave it for another week.

Not every lead is the same. Some will come in red hot, others will take a long time to even become warm. But if you understand where on the journey they are, you can prioritise and personalise your own actions towards them.

Gain pleasure, avoid pain

It is said as humans we are driven by two things, to gain pleasure and avoid pain. So when trying to appeal to your target audience, bear this in mind. What will drive people to listen to you, or even contact you themselves, is if you offer something that will give you great pleasure and happiness, or that will let them avoid pain or negativity.

For example, Amazon, the huge retail giant that they are, are still always looking to improve the customer experience. One pain their customers were experiencing was not being home for their deliveries. Or worrying it may not be left in a safe place. Amazon introduced ‘amazon lockers’ in convenient locations. So people could grab their delivery in their lunch break or on their way home. Customers who may not have bought that extra purchase as they couldn’t guarantee the delivery day, now have a safe, and easy alternative. Taking away those second thoughts of whether they should buy.

Or Pantene released an app to combat the ‘bad hair day’. By analysing the weather reports, they were able to advise which products and styles people should go for. By suggesting the products people should use, and allowing them to see what is available in the Pantene range. They increase their brand awareness, as well as gain extra sales from those suffering a bad hair day!

Make people feel significant

People like to feel like they matter. When you make a purchase you like to feel like the company is thankful for your custom. When you make a big purchase, you like to feel like the effort and energy in the build up has been appreciated. And let’s face it, if a company can make you feel like you are the only person in the world that they appreciate buying their product. And make a big deal about you, you are more likely to go back to them.

It comes down to basic customer service, and making people feel appreciated. It has been found that 60% of consumers will pay more for a better experience. 89% of consumers will begin doing business with a competitor if they receive poor customer service.

This can start off with the basics. Be polite and don’t ignore people. It is all too easy in the fast paced world of social media to ignore posts, but it also quite rude, and effects that customer’s experience. If there are excited about their experience, join in!

For example, Sainsburys made the headlines for their name change of Tiger Bread to Giraffe Bread, all due to a 3 year olds letter. Spotting the similarities between the Giraffes pattern and the pattern on the bread, Lily Robinson (with a little help from her parents) wrote to Sainsburys. Here, Sainsburys could of ignored this letter, put it to one side, as they have no need to change the name. They have other things to be getting on with. But by changing the name and responding to Lily, they proved they care about the opinions of all their customers. Even the little ones, and they value their opinion. By showing that appreciation, Lily’s mom praised the company online, and the story went viral. Which goes to show even the smallest acts of responding to customers, can come back to you in a big way.

Take the time to explain but simplify your solution

Most company’s make 1 of 2 mistakes when talking about their products and services.

They either don’t explain any of what they do, and expect people to understand. Jargon and all, which leaves prospects baffled.

Or they over explain, with a lot of tedious, unnecessary information. Leaving prospects over saturated with information, and looking for the nearest exit.

You need to ensure that your lead knows what you do. But cut the waffle! Keep your solution simple. As the saying goes, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it. So if you cannot explain if simply, how do you then expect your prospect to understand it?

Qualify people up front

By qualifying leads at the very beginning of the process you save yourself a lot of time. We have all been there. Where someone has shown a vague interest in your product, and you follow up for months with calls and emails, hoping they will become a sale. But this takes time, effort, and may ultimately annoy your prospect in to not responding.

If you know they are not going to convert just yet, but they probably will in the future, focus on marketing to them. If you are not actively pursuing them, you give them chance to soak up your marketing. To learn more about your company and its products. So when the time comes that they require the product or service you sell, they will come to you.

Lead generation systems

Lead generation systems are systems that track the visitors to your website. This has it’s pros and its cons, but it’s something that you may want to consider.

The Pros being that you have companies who have actually visited your website, straight to your inbox, a pre-made list for the day. Dependent on the system, you may already have your contact information already provided for you. So no time needed to put together a prospect list.

The Cons? You do not know who in that company has looked at your website, and you may never know. Someone may have just taken a look at your blogs on their break, and so are not actually qualified to progress to a sale.

You can find a number of lead generation systems online, but a few examples are Lead Forensics, OnMonitoring and wow analytics.

Automation

Email automation can take a lot of marketing time off your hands. Whilst still leading prospects further through the buying cycle.

Email automation works with emails that are triggered by a click, a visit to a certain page or a time limit. For example, you have probably experienced when you buy something online, a few days after your purchase, you receive a thank you email, perhaps with a discount off your next purchase. This is a great use of automation, by making the customer feel valued and enticing them to come back and shop again. You can use this for your company but catered to your own services and products.

So there are a few ways you can use email automation. Here on some examples on using it for money off deals, to thank people for visiting, to get them to share their experience or feedback, to get them to buy their saved basket, and to buy a product again.

The Money Off Deal

A money off deal is great for a number of reasons. Your customers feel valued and appreciated, and you can prompt customers to spend with you again quite quickly.

Here, Achica use automation to send a seasonally relevant promotion, which is clear, easy to remember, and gives you two options of browsing or shopping. Customers feel valued, and you increase your sales with their next order.

Saving your basket

After being bought to the nation’s attention by a Barclaycard advert, companies can send money off emails to customers who have filled their basket, but left the site, to prompt them to come back and complete the sale. Though money off isn’t always needed, sometimes just the knowledge that they have saved your basket and you can return to it when you wish is all you need, as Homebase do above.

Thank You

These is a great one for continuing a great experience. If someone has used your service, and the moment has now passed, remind them of the great time they had with a thank you email. By leaving a couple of days before sending this, it gives time for the customer to return to normality, before you remind them of the great times they had, and leave a link where they can book or buy again.

A great example of this would be Dominos Pizza. Not that I eat a lot of pizza (cough) but I receive a fair few of these. A day after eating my lovely pizza, I always receive a thank you email, that thanks me for purchasing, hopes that I enjoyed the order, and I am prompted to order again. If you are still full from last nights pizza (as I usually am) they also give you the opportunity to win free pizza for a year by completing their feedback survey. The button’s right there, so why not just fill it in? And if you can’t even summon the energy to type, they’ve included their blog too, so you can go and have a read instead.

Harry Potter World reintroduce the excitement back to the customer, and offer plenty of opportunities to keep on interacting, such as sharing their photos, writing on trip advisor, and even the chance to win a prize.

Share your experience

Sometimes you don’t necessarily want another sale straight away. You know the customer has spent money with you, and it may be a while before they spend money again. But by asking for their feedback or opinion on your product or service, you are still showing them appreciation of their service and gaining good data for yourselves.

New Look haven’t done their best here. From a very plain email to a very messy link, it doesn’t really entice customers to fill out the form. If you are sending an email, make the effort, as this devalues the customer rather than hyping them up.

F&F does a better job of getting feedback, offering the chance to review every item you bought, with the pictures to remind you and subtly leave the links back to their shopping pages at the top of the email, to encourage customers to shop again.

Buy it again

If you offer a product or service that needs to be renewed frequently, you may benefit from the buy it again email, prompting customers to buy products they have already brought. This really would have to be for relevant for products, as you do run the risk of annoying customers by asking them to spend and spend, without really thanking them for their custom.

Amazon do a great job of this here, by offering a prompt rather than a direct sell. However they do link directly back to the products, making it a very easy journey for users.

The best example we’ve seen

With Photojojo, the communication is good, gives the customer all the information they need. They make them feel good about it, and they’ve made it look good as well. Rosie also received a free plastic dinosaur with the order too, which we feel is great customer service as well as automation at it’s best.

You must remember though, automation is not a substitute for actual contact, it is just a useful tool that can provide help. Ensure you keep a good balance of the actual and the automated to keep your customers happy.

So there you have it, seven things that will hopefully ensure your marketing efforts converts to sales.

If you are struggling with your marketing, or just need some extra advice on how to get the best for your company, then why not give us a call today on 01543 495752.

10 email marketing tips to help you improve your email campaigns

Posted on 20th January 2014 by The Marketing People

10 email marketing tips to help you improve your campaign

Email marketing can be a bit of a minefield. So we’ve put together 10 quick tips for creating and sending an email to help you generate leads and sales.

Make subject lines interesting and short

Think of your subject line as a news headline. It needs to be short and interesting to pull people in.

Keep keywords and the real interest part as close to the start of the subject line as possible. In case some people’s devices don’t show the entire subject line.

Don’t use these words…

There are some words that set off spam filters which mean your emails may end up in the spam folder.

There are some words we immediately associate with spam such as ‘free samples’ or ‘be your own boss’.

You may have to use some words which are considered ‘spammy’ such as ‘free’. But use your own discretion and where possible switch a spammy word for a less spammy word.

Click here for a list of 100 words you shouldn’t use in emails.

Make it mobile friendly

As more and more people buy smartphones and tablets the number of people opening their email on mobile devices increases.

A study by Litmus found that in 48% of emails were opened on a smartphone or tablet.

The percentage of mobile opens will vary between each sector and business. But the point is that you shouldn’t be ignoring those mobile users.

If your email can’t be viewed properly on a phone or tablet, the chances are the recipient will just delete your email.

Split test subject lines

It’s important to test two or three subject lines when running an email campaign. So you can begin to figure out what works, and what doesn’t work, with your audience.

You can use results from split tests to make sure subject lines you create in the future appeal to your audience.

Include an unsubscribe link

You need to include an unsubscribe link in your email somewhere to allow people to opt-out of receiving your emails.

Proofread it!

After you’ve finished writing your email, give yourself a short break from it. Go back to it and imagine you’re reading it for the first time. You’ll probably notice a few errors you didn’t spot earlier.

Get someone else to proofread it

It really pays to get a fresh pair of eyes to look over your copy. As they’re more likely to pick up errors because you know the copy. So you probably aren’t looking at it in great detail.

Check your links

As well as checking your copy you need to check the links work and go to the right place.

Make it count!

Make sure your email means something to recipients and that it encourages them to do something which appeals to them.

Always ask yourself ‘so what?’. Okay, so it’s a nice email about an offer we’re running but what does this mean to my customers or prospects?

If you do this your marketing messages will appeal to your recipients and mean something to them.

Monitor it

You don’t just get to sit back after your email has been sent. Keep monitoring it and look at open rates, click through rates, whether anyone converted from the email and keep an eye on replies.

Looking at your data can help you improve future email campaigns.

We hope our 10 quick email tips have been useful and will help you create emails which bring real benefit to your business.

If your business is based in the Burntwood, Lichfield or Staffordshire are and needs help creating email marketing campaigns that generate leads or sales get in touch to find out how we can help.

Proof that Great Email Marketing Messages Generate Leads.

Posted on 14th June 2013 by The Marketing People

Following on from the renaming and repositioning of SSC Learning to edo earlier this year. They couldn’t wait to get out there and start telling people about how edo could benefit businesses and help learners.

Once we had completed the rebrand. Designed and developed their website and updated all of their social media to include their new name and branding. We began working with edo to do their marketing, beginning with their email marketing.

In the past they had tried email marketing, including their own internal emails. But had never really seen any benefit from it.

The Challenge

After many years of providing solutions and training in the care sector. edo have a really good understanding how people working in that sector felt about apprenticeships. And their concerns about taking out a loan to fund their qualifications.

This meant that marketing messages need to be targeted and relevant to the decision makers. To inform and reassure them that funding doesn’t have to be as scary and confusing as it sounds.

The Answer

We worked closely with edo, utilising our combined knowledge of the care sector to develop messages which showed the decision makers empathy and understanding. And provided them with a real solution and links to pages on their website which contained more information.

After developing the key messages and calls to action, we designed and built three different versions of the email. A plain text version, a HTML version and an online version. All of which were mobile optimised, meaning that any type of client or prospect would be able to view the email. Before sending the email we also ran it through the spam checker on our email marketing software to ensure it would get through spam filters and into recipients inboxes.

So What?

Just 20 minutes after the email was sent, edo received an inbound call from a prospect. Who had read the email and visited the website, and following a conversation they are now a confirmed edo client.

The good news doesn’t stop there. That phone call was the very first inbound lead edo have ever had, as both edo and SSC Learning. So the edo team couldn’t be happier.

Next?

After seeing the results they received from their first email marketing campaign, they are chomping at the bit to get on with some more. As a result we are going to work with them to create email invites for their launch party. And run email marketing campaigns about qualification funding and how edo are able to help recruitment companies.

Here at The Marketing People it’s really important to us that our work benefits our clients. That it provides them with good opportunities to sell their products or services, so we’re never happier than we are when we find out that our work has helped a business gain a sale or a new customer.

Contact Us

If you’re a business based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or the West Midlands and are looking for marketing that really works, get in touch to find out how we can benefit your business. Call us on 01543 387 047 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com

If you’re a business owner looking to develop your workforce’s skills or you’re looking to further your education, whether you’re a jobseeker or in employment, visit edo’s website to see if they might be able to help you.

Email Marketing: Five Best Practice Tips for Subject Lines.

Posted on 30th May 2013 by The Marketing People

You know what it’s like yourself, you have an inbox full of emails and you have no intention of reading them all; you just scroll down looking at subject lines waiting for one to catch your eye. So what can you do to encourage people to open your email?

Subject Length

First off, most email clients are only able to display somewhere between 30 and 50 characters and mobile devices will show even less, about 20 to 30 characters. This means ideally you don’t want your subject line to be longer than 50 characters and if the majority of your opens come from mobile devices, it needs to be even shorter.

If the majority of your emails don’t come from mobile devices, then try and ensure your main keywords are within the first 30 characters so that your subject line interests anyone who does use a mobile device.

Create Urgency

It’s really important to try and create urgency and to make your recipients stop and want to open the email right away instead of telling themselves they’ll read it later and completely forgetting about.

For example if you are emailing your customers to tell them that there’s an offer ending soon make sure you get that urgency across by using the words ‘ends soon’, ‘ends today’, ‘ends tomorrow’ etc.

Another thing to bear in mind that using ‘Re:’ and ‘Fwd:’ at the beginning of your subject line to try and trick your recipients into believe a friend has forwarded the email onto them may well annoy them and leave them feeling tricked of scammed.

Clear Subject Lines

Be honest with your customers and make it obvious and clear what the email is about. If your subject line says one thing and your email is really about something else, they may feel tricked and won’t bother reading the rest of your email.

Make sure your subject line also contains keywords which will mean something to your customers. You should have a good idea of what kinds of keywords your customers use, but if not check your websites Google Analytics which will be able to show you what people are searching for to reach your website.

Words and things to avoid

There’s a lot of debate over whether a certain word or phrase in the subject line will get you caught in a spam filter, it’s more likely that your email will be marked as spam due to a number of things rather than mentioning a spammy word in your subject line.

However as best practice avoid the obvious spammy words such as; act now, extra cash, no obligation, money back guarantee, limited time, click now etc. If you do use a word which is associated with spam and you do get through spam filters, the recipient may well think your email is spam because the words ‘limited time’ to them sets alarm bells ringing.

As well as avoiding obvious spammy words;

Don’t write your entire subject line in caps
Avoid exclamation marks
Avoid using different fonts
Don’t put unnecessary g a p s between characters or use numbers and special characters in the place of letters

Test, test and test again

When coming up with a subject line write a list of all the possible subject lines and keep revising subject lines which sound good until they sound great.

A good way to improve your subject lines is to look at what emails you’ve opened recently because the subject line interested you; what was it that caught your attention and made you open the email? Also put yourself in the customer’s shoes; is this subject line something they would open?

Once you’ve got a list of a few great subject lines select three of the best and use these as a split test for your email campaign.

After you’ve done a few campaigns and looked at the results of your split tests, you’ll begin to get a good idea of what your customers like and what interests them the most and equally as important, what doesn’t interest them or get them opening your email.

Contact us

If you’re a business based in Burntwood, Cannock, Lichfield, Staffordshire or the West Midlands and need help creating opportunities to sell your products or services though email marketing, get in touch with us to find out how we can benefit your business.

You can get in touch with us by calling us on 01543 387 047 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com

Why Customer Reviews Are Important & How To Get Them.

Posted on 9th April 2013 by The Marketing People

Customer reviews are important, think about the last few products you brought; did you review them online first? For many people, reading product reviews has become an integral part of the buying process.

Why are product reviews so important?

Whether you have a website or an ecommerce website, having reviews or testimonials on your website can help to make your business more credible, trustworthy and will hopefully convince people to buy from you instead of your competitors.

The Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey carried out during 2011 found that 70% of people trust opinions posted online. Online reviews were the second most trusted form of advertising, with ‘recommendations from people I know’ beating it to first place, this shows just how important consumers consider reviews to be.

As well as showing people that your products and services are great it will also help your SEO. People will generally use the kind of keywords and keyterms in their reviews that your target audience will be searching for when trying to find your products.

How do I get customer reviews?

Emails

Amazon has a brilliant model for gaining product reviews. If you’ve ever ordered from Amazon you’ll have noticed that a few days after you receive your product you receive an email asking you to review the product. This ensures that the majority of products sold through Amazon have reviews.

If you have an ecommerce website this can be replicated by setting up automated emails to go out to customers a few days after you estimate their order should have arrived.

Leaflets with orders

When you send your orders out, you should always include details of how to get in touch with customer service if the customer is unhappy. Along with your customer service information, encourage happy customers to leave you a review and make sure you tell them how to do it.

If you sent out leaflets or flyers with your orders showing customers what other products you sell or alerting them to offers, make sure you include a call to action to review their product on there as well.

Social Media

Many consumers take to social media, Twitter especially, to vent their frustrations or sing a business or products praise.

Monitoring social media using tools, such as Social Mention, Twitter Advanced Search and Google Alerts can help you get a good idea of how people are feeling about your brand.

This works well for your business in two ways. The first is that you can address any unhappy customers and try to sort their issue out; this also shows your business is proactive in ensuring your customers are happy.

The second is that if you see anyone singing your praises, you can thank them and ask them if they’d like to share their thoughts on your website and send them a link to a review page.

Customer Service & Suggestion Cards

If you offer a service which requires your customers to visit your shop, office or business, you could ask customers to leave their thoughts and any suggestions on a card.

These can then be typed out and posted on your website. It’s important to make sure you type them out instead of scanning them, as a scan won’t benefit your websites SEO.

What if I get a bad review?

If you get a bad review, do what you can to contact the customer and rectify the problem but whatever you do don’t delete it, unless it’s offensive of course.

People will be suspicious if they see pages and pages of five star positive reviews. The odd average or poor review shows consumers that you’re being truthful and posting all reviews and not just deleting the poor ones, which will make your business look honest.

What do I do with customer reviews?

If you have an ecommerce website ideally you want reviews for each product or service.

If you haven’t got an actual product for sale on your website, showcase your testimonials and reviews on a ‘testimonials’ or ‘reviews’ page.

You may also want to do this if you’re an ecommerce website and a customer emails you or provides you with a general review about your business as a whole. For example, one of our clients, Gardening Delights, has individual reviews on each product but they also have a Testimonial page for general feedback.

Don’t think you need reviews as you’re a small business? Here’s a post on how they help you grow as a business.

If you’re a small business based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock or the West Midlands and need help with any aspect of your marketing, print or web design get in touch with us to find out how we can offer your business real benefit.

You can call us on 01543 387 047 or fill in the contact form on our website.

Email Marketing Campaigns That Deliver – Browns Distribution

Posted on 8th February 2013 by The Marketing People

Email marketing is a simple and easy way to reach your customers. Better yet it allows you to easily segment your customers and send each group an email targeted to them.

After working with Staffordshire based Browns Distribution at the end of last year to rejuvenate their brochure for the New Year ahead. They engaged our email marketing services to help them introduce their brand to prospects.

The aim of the email campaign was to introduce prospects to the brand. To ensure that existing clients were aware of their full range of services and ultimately, to generate leads and sales over a series of three emails. The email campaign is also being supported by a direct mail flier, which also lists their services.

To ensure their email was successful and beneficial to their customers and prospects. We worked with the team at Browns Distribution to create a list of key messages which needed to be included in the email.

After working out the key messages and calls to action, we were able to create a visual. Then build an email which was inline with Browns Distribution’s branding and would get through contacts spam filters.

Before sending the email we also asked Browns Distribution to update key areas of their website. So that the website would support the email campaign and encourage any visitors from the email to download their brochure.

Our Email Marketing Works

The email successfully generated leads for Browns Distribution. One of which was a prospect they had been trying to get in touch with for the past 12 months and had been refused through the normal sales channel.

Using the stats, open rates and click throughs from the reporting system. The Browns Distribution Business Development Team were also able target effective follow ups.

If you want an email marketing campaign which works and delivers against your goals, get in touch with The Marketing People to find out more. Call us on 01543 387 047 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com