How To Turn Prospects Into Customers

Since history’s first advertisement (we’ll leave the product to your imagination), marketers have spent almost their entire budget chasing new prospects. However, like the proverbial dog who chases cars, the chasers-of-prospects don’t necessarily know what to do with them once caught.

Yeas ago, when sales staffs were large and competition well-known, the answer was easy. Turn leads over to Sales and let them do their jobs. Then the 1980’s happened and American business began a three decade long march toward leaner operations leading to smaller or re-configured sales operations. The predictable result has been more concentration on the immediate gratification offered by low-hanging fruit. The prospects who could be closed quickly garnered all the attention. Those who didn’t buy fast became part of the past.

Today, lean sales departments have bumped into tight marketing budgets and the constant search for ROI has moved the prime target from prospects to customers. Advancements in technology have played a large role. It is only in the last five to six years that most marketers have been able to affordably approach prospects with the kind of personal attention approaching that offered by professional salespeople.

However, the real driving force has been the drive by savvy marketers to squeeze every ounce of benefit from their marketing expenditure. Old marketers were fond of echoing John Wanamaker’s famous quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Today’s marketers are not as ready to accept such a mammoth waste of money. As a result, marketing communications professionals are moving from a decades-long search for “breakthrough creative” and “positioning” to a return to the basic principles of salesmanship.

The return to salesmanship
It began when online communications allowed marketers to affordably move from the mass gathering of prospects to programs designed to build relationships with prospects. Suddenly kids in hoodies and skinny jeans were storming corporate boardrooms promising to unleash the power of social media. There were rumblings underfoot as business discovered those prospects that contacted them (inbound leads) were more likely to become customers than those gained through advertising and promotions (outbound leads). Soon they discovered the cost of converting more prospects to customers provided a more reliable ROI. A movement was afoot.

The four objectives of new marketing communications
In an overlooked quirk of progress, new marketing programs closely resemble old sales programs. There are four key objectives with defined communications tools for each:

Attain

You can’t convert prospects you don’t have, so finding new prospects and getting them into the top of the marketing funnel is still a key marketing objective. Traditional advertising tools remain important. However, new tools, such as SEO, social media and target-served web banners also play an important role.

Maintain

Once prospects are in the funnel, a key objective is to maintain contact until their need to buy matches your desire to sell. Here tools such as e-mail and newsletters help build your story while prospects consider their options. A good example is the e-Newsletter The Successful Contractor we used to maintain contact with over 25,000 prospects of a company providing business services for American contractors.

Engage

To progress through the marketing funnel, prospects need a reason to move. Since at this stage prospects are still not ready to make a large commitment, tools that service their informational needs tend to work best. Getting prospects to declare what they are really looking for will help you serve them with more meaningful communications.

Good magnet communications promise information that answers important problems they are facing. A good example is an e-Book we wrote for one of North America’s largest franchisors. Entitled: 10 Pitfalls Threatening Your Business, that gained response from eleven times more prospects than had ever reacted to any of their previous offers.

Since these information-based tools provide enlightenment in specific areas, they also serve to help prospects declare the things that are most important to them. A good example is a whitepaper on Business Valuations we created for a national organization of independent CPA’s. It allowed them to find prospects interested in transitioning their businesses.

Accelerate

Sometimes prospects just can’t make a decision, or you need to find out how serious they are. Acceleration tools, such as Special Offers, Solicitations of input, Premium Membership Offers and Pre-Qualification Offers are typical communications tools used in this regard. The objective is to provide a large enough carrot to appeal to prospects not necessarily ready to commit to the next step … but close.

Consider how these four new marketing communications objectives match the activities of a professional serviceperson.

• They find prospects (Attain).
• Then they maintain contact with prospects on a schedule matched to their interest (Maintain/Declare).
• Next is moving the prospect’s interest forward, building the story along the way (Magnet / Declare).
• They then accelerate the interest of prospects closest to taking the next step toward commitment (Accelerators).
• Finally they use their own sales abilities to turn well-nurtured prospects into customers.

Isn’t this what marketing communications was always supposed to be about? Today it is. Welcome to Conversion Marketing.

For more information on Conversion Marketing and how it could work for your company, contact Mark Spaner at marks@spaner.com, or call 330-452-5594 x203.