“Buckets” is a helpful term that describes grouping your customers into categories that reflect common wants, needs, and purchase motivators.
Tag: #Business
How to Use a Clear Call to Action to Convert Customers
Have you ever wondered how lion tamers keep wild cats nearly three times their size at bay?
While methods have evolved over the years, traditionally lions were subdued by three tools: a whip, a stool, and a handful of tasty snacks. While the whip or snacks make sense, perhaps you wonder why a stool was used (instead of a sword or a flame, for example)?
How can a small piece of furniture intimidate the king of all cats?
The truth is, the lion is not afraid of the chair, he’s confused by the multiple points on its legs. Cats are single-minded creatures, and the bobbing points of the chair legs confuse the lion into a less focused state. When the lion loses its train of thought, it is distracted from the instinct to pounce on a weaker opponent.
Muddled Communication Can Paralyze Your Prospects
Ever try to rush your kids through breakfast and get stuck at the cereal cupboard?
As they browse a shelf of eight boxes, they slump and groan: “There’s nothing to eat!” What started as a hurry-up turns into a traffic jam. You vow that next time, you’ll only offer toast and Cheerios.
When we don’t give customers a simple, singular call to action, they may also fall into decision fatigue.
Does your website or your print materials overwhelm customers with possibilities?
Psychologist Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School, co-authored a study that showed significantly more conversions happened when shoppers had fewer options. In her example, shoppers had to choose from a display with six different flavors of jam versus a display with 24 different flavors of jam. How did they compare? The conversion rate for the six-flavor table was 30%, while the 24-flavor table was only 3%.
Analysis can lead to paralysis!
What about your method for calling prospects to action? Does your advertisement ask them to commit to a 30-day trial AND use a customer discount code DURING a selected 14-day window? Does your podcast ask people to share with a friend, AND subscribe, AND download previous episodes (all in one breath)?
Perhaps you need to take a step back and use these three evaluation tools:
1. Know Your Main Goal
When you ask people to do several tasks at once (like visiting your website and joining your e-mail list), you’ve probably overshadowed your main goal with several smaller goals.
Focus on one main goal for customer conversion, and use customer loyalty programs down the road to call customers to greater steps of engagement or loyalty.
2. Test Action Statements in Advance
If your communication is a mist in the office, it’s probably a fog on the streets. To determine which CTAs are crystal clear, run some A/B tests with sample customers and find out which ones are generating momentum.
3. Pack Some Punch
Start call to action statements with a strong command verb, like buy, shop, order, subscribe, or win. Use concise phrases that build enthusiasm.
Which of these CTA statements excites you more? “Consider many of our 200 exciting destination possibilities,” or “Plan your dream vacation today!”
Keep things sweet, simple, and customer-focused. Once they take the bait you can always present them with more!
Nurturing Leads from Every Angle
When it comes to successfully nurturing leads from your marketing efforts, we already know the importance of staying on top of email with potential clients.
Email is a great way to stay in touch with customers, reach out to them periodically to see if or when they’re ready to buy, and even just to send them up-to-date information about your company.
While email is undoubtedly a useful tool in the world of marketing, it isn’t the only way to successfully turn a lead into a sale.
Here are a few other tools you should keep handy as you work to nurture new leads.
A buyer’s journey includes all the research and decision-making steps they take as they prepare to buy a product.
Some customers are just starting out.
They’re looking for general information about their options and what factors they should be considering.
Other buyers have narrowed down their search to just a few options and are looking to be convinced why one is superior to another.
Still others are just about to make a purchase but just want to verify the product information.
Understanding the buyer persona and where people are in the buying process will allow you to create targeted ads, messages, and content for customers at every step of the journey, increasing the odds they’ll make a purchase.
Display Your Core Values Through Marketing
The core values that you have chosen to represent your business play a vital role in almost every decision you make.
Many people fail to realize that those core values must play a large role in your marketing as well.
Because marketing isn’t just about communicating what products you offer or services you provide.
It’s also about what type of business you represent.
Trust is the foundation to any customer/business relationship.
So by displaying your core values in your marketing, you can help nurture and strengthen that relationship.
Clarity
In a way, marketing is more about distilling all the elements of your business as opposed to focusing just on the newest product your touting.
Funnel your products, services, employees, etc. into a single message that enlightens the customer on who you are, what your trying to accomplish, and why.
A perfect example of this is Visa.
At the end of every commercial, a message appears that says “It’s everywhere you want to be.”
Now, that message isn’t boasting shiny cards or the perks and rewards you may receive after signing up.
Instead, a beautifully simple slogan that conveys their most important message:
By signing up for a Visa card, you will have access to a trusted financial resource in any location and at any time you could possibly need it.
Not only that, but you have a partner that you can depend on, day in and day out.
Visa’s message says everything that you need to know about what type of company Visa is AND what type of service they offer in six short words.
Don’t Forget Humility
Let’s say you’ve decided to choose honesty and integrity as your most important core values.
And let’s also consider that you’ve made a mistake as a business owner.
Perhaps you’ve released a new product and said it was capable of one thing, while it actually did another.
Perhaps you even claimed that it did that one particular thing really well, when in fact, it was hardly functional and by no means ready for public consumption.
Unfortunately, these are common mistakes made by business owners today.
But what separates the successful business owners from those that quickly disappear is what they do next.
If you’ve decided on honesty and integrity, then your path is clear.
You must own up to your mistake and acknowledge the problem as an opportunity to learn from.
Are You Diluting Your Marketing Message?
As you begin the process of designing your next marketing campaign, one very important factor that should always remain at the heart of it all is your message.
Ultimately, the best-looking print mailer or poster won’t mean anything to the consumer unless its has a clear and concise message.
So, here are some questions to ask yourself in order to determine whether or not you may be diluting the message in your marketing materials.
Question 1: Is the design visually overloading the reader?
Sure, graphics, interesting fonts, and more can all be great assets to get your message across to readers in an aesthetically pleasing way.
However, those elements should be
complimentary, not supplementary
How To Market To Us: The Millennials
Basically, any person who reached adulthood around year 2000 is considered a millennial.
Another less common title for this group would be Generation Y.
I’m a millennial and certainly proud to be one.
We’re now at the age where we’re making considerable changes in business and technology, but more specifically, marketing demographics.
Though millennials seem difficult to market to because of technology, there are now more opportunities and platforms to use than ever before.
Because of that, businesses are dramatically changing how they engage with their prospective and current customers, as many of them are millennials.
Yes, we are living in a world driven by mobile devices and social media outlets, but that makes marketing to millennials a more straightforward process than you might think.
You just have to go about it in the right way.
Relevancy is Key
With all the advances in technology, information is everywhere and millennials are eager sponges waiting to absorb the next bit of new information.
Understanding Generation Y and learning what they’re looking for is the key to staying relevant.
Sure, you can dive into social networking and use flashy gimmicks, but it will be useless unless you know what they’re after.
Do your research.
Find out what’s attracting them, what’s trending, or what’s up and coming and beat them at their own game!
The more you know about millennials, the easier it will be to share information that appeals to them and encourages them to engage with you.
Print is Thriving
Don’t let the countless types of technology fool you into believing that print is no longer relevant.
It is still a very powerful marketing tool that can attract the millennial generation.
In my opinion, millennials are very receptive to design and traditional mediums even while technology is so prevalent.
Print is unique, it’s impactful, and it’s difficult to ignore.
Use it to your advantage and consider including digital marketing in the mix.
The two CAN be combined with something like a QR code or a CTA that drives traffic to your social media platforms.
Personality Speaks Volumes
Millennials migrate towards businesses with personality.
Create a voice for your company that is fun and relatable.
Generation Y wants to feel as if they’re engaging with a person as opposed to a business.
That doesn’t mean you need to dumb it down!
Remember, these are the young entrepreneurs that are redefining economics and the workplace as we know it.
It’s a generation that is becoming more important every day.
Needless to say, if you haven’t made the necessary changes to market to them yet, I’d suggest you start.