Lately, it seems as if we, as marketers, have gotten lazy. We’ve stopped thinking beyond the easy, Marketing 101 prospecting that we learned when we started our profession, and happily hide behind numbers that don’t mean all that much.
- Impressions;
- Social proof;
- Social shares;
- Reach;
- Awareness.
All good numbers, and useful if that’s the goal of your marketing endeavors.
But something that’s primarily missing from these numbers is the main reason we got into marketing in the first place – customers.
Sure, having a lot of reach can help you get in front of those prospects you want to turn into customers. And yes, without potential customers being aware of your brand, the prospecting factor diminishes immediately.
But we’re so much better than that – or we should be.
We have the most insane amount of data available to us that it’s almost criminal not to be utilizing that to market smarter. Today’s social web users are freely sharing their Likes, preferences, buying signals and, more importantly, who impacts them to make the decisions that matter – so why are we not using this data more?
- Build your archetypal persona based on transactional and archival data, and combine with today’s wealth of information;
- Identify where they live online. More importantly, identify who they live online with, based on their current needs and situations;
- Use weighted keywords – placing more emphasis on the words that matter to your brand and that of your customer;
- Filter the conversations around these topics and build secondary and tertiary filters around the people in your prospect’s immediate circle for these topics;
- Drop your prospects into a CRM platform like Nimble, to connect the dots when it comes to the buying cycle and life events that impact their decisions;
- Monitor, react, be pro-active, offer solutions;
- Rinse and repeat.
Okay, so that’s a simple overview for brevity – but as simple as it is, it’s a strong foundation for truly understanding what it takes to move your desired customers from prospects to leads to acquisition.
It takes legwork, but the results are worth it. Unless you prefer to wallow in the lazy marketing pool, of course….
The above post is my contribution to Craig McBreen’s new eBook, You Don’t Need Fans, You Need Customers. It’s chock full of advice on finding the clients you covet from the likes of Gini Dietrich, Ann Handley, Chris Ducker, Shelly Kramer, Francisco Rosales and more. Best of all, it’s free! My sincere thanks to Craig for the invite – make sure you grab your copy here.
