Today’s sales leads are not at all like the ones only a few years back. They are constantly connected, tech-savvy and ego-centric. Because they know how to research, review and compare prices before making a purchase, they are in control of the buying process. They will remain in control for the foreseeable future, so your marketing tactics must adjust to their needs.
Personalized Communication
Buyers flock to huge outfits like Amazon, Zappos and Apple largely because of the targeted approach to customer relationships. Their CRM software is bulging with all sorts of data from things as ordinary as your purchase history to more personal data like what kind of books you like to read.
As a smaller business, this level of personalization seems impossible. SMB’s normally don’t have access to ‘big data’ for making marketing decisions. They don’t have a staff of data analysts to develop code for personalized email campaigns. But SMB’s can easily access a few tools for extracting evidence of buyer preferences.
Present Tense Marketing
Customers thrive in a digital world that can change their expectations in an instant. They are often turned off by marketing that is stale, general, uncoordinated or lacking in authenticity.
Use your CRM software to dig for to clear definitions:
1. Who is your customer and what matters to them?
2. What are the stages of your buyer’s sales funnel?
Once you have those two critical questions answered, you can move into email marketing that is laser focused to their personal characteristics and adapts the message as they move down the sales funnel toward the purchase. Each interaction with the sales lead leaves clues about what they are thinking. Use those clues to create triggered actions in your CRM software that is appropriate to the context of the sales lead at the time.
Real-Time Data Collection
From the customer’s perspective, they want companies that provide information that is useful to making a decision. They expect the experience with your company to be all about them. When you fail to recognize the customer’s preferences, it is pretty easy to move on to the next provider.
Create a deep and meaningful history of each sales lead. Beyond just contact information and purchase histories – ask each person who connects with the sales lead to record bits of data such as demographics, hobbies, what content engaged them enough to respond to an email.
Real-time browse and click behavior plus other interactions are valuable. Use the CRM dashboard to monitor as much as you can. But remember, that it is rather easy to overdo metric collection. Instead, set specific benchmarks you want to achieve and tie your dashboard metrics to those goals. Add new metrics to watch as you become accustomed to what you have learned.
Optimized Customer Experience
Stop offering blanket discounts or general promotions to those who have subscribed to your list. Consumers expect to be offered something unique and exclusive to them based on the activity they have with your company.
This new way of engaging with sales leads is an ongoing series of adjusting and improving. It simply could not be done before we had an online CRM with integrated email marketing tools.