Often, these struggles bring us back to a fundamental question: ‘Are you demonstrating relevant value to your prospect through all communication touch points as you develop the relationship with them?”
It’s important to remember that EVERY communication that the prospect receives from you gives
that prospect insight on:
that prospect insight on:
§ How much you truly value them
§ If you will honor promises made
§ What differentiates you from a competing brand
Connecting the customer relationship with where the rubber meets the road is the further “connection” to your company’s bottom line. Harris Interactive recently found that:
§ 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company with whom they have a bad experience (up 27% from four years ago).
§ 60% will PAY MORE for a good experience (even in a down economy)
§ 53% will recommend you based on an outstanding experience, and experience trumps price (50%) and the quality of product (41%) in driving word of mouth promotion.
The Impact of Marketing on the Lead Nurturing Process
It’s key to remember that the customer’s experience of your company and brand does not begin and end at the sales call, the web site visit, or trade show. Marketers can no longer think about their marketing efforts as individual “tactics.” Why? Because, it is the TOTAL set of communication experiences that your prospect has with your brand that drives your prospect’s impression of your company and has direct impact on your ultimate goal: converting the lead from prospect to customer.
Today, our challenge as marketers is to orchestrate and engineer our marketing messages to the customer and organize the timing and delivery of those messages in an effort to successfully encourage the action we want our prospects to take.
Often, an unplanned lead communication process contains gaps that the customer falls through on the process of becoming aware of your offering, becoming a customer, and ideally a brand advocate.
Strategy + Message + TIMING. A little bit of organization can go along way to increase the effectiveness of your communications strategy. A customer engagement strategy maps the communication tactics that are deployed along the relationship stages that the customer advances through on his way to becoming a buyer of your product or service.
So, how do you help drive your customers through the sales cycle and make your marketing efforts a stronger asset to the company (and to the sales organization)? Incorporate these six steps, and you will be on your way:
- Inventory your current lead management process and the communication tactics that are currently used in that process (create the chain).
- Organize your current process by the key stages that the prospect is at in his relationship with your company. (AIDA marketing models frequently works well.)
- Start to analyze this process from your customers POV (that’s “Point of View”).
- Complete a GAP analysis – where do things fall short?
- Identify points of “conversion.” What measurable actions will you ask your prospect take that will tell you that he is developing a closer relationship with you. (“Conversions” are today’s “Call to Action.”)
- Develop your communication strategy:
- Identify tactics
- Orchestrate timing
- Identify ownership within your team for tactics, timing, and delivery
- Implement, Analyze, and Act
Customer engagement mapping allows you to more effectively create and communicate value to the customer, position you as expert, and build trust and credibility more quickly. Thoughtful engineering of messages provided to your customer along the demand generation process will guide them to a closer relationship with you.
Where have you had success in pulling the customer through your lead communication cycle?
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