Remember Your First Slap?
It’s not easy to forget the times you’ve been slapped in the face. More than the mere throbbing of your delicate cheek, the shock of having been mistreated in such a crude way is haunting, to say the least. In some cases, the simple fact of remembering the instance goes so far as to provoke a bit of righteous indignation in you.
If you’ve been in the habit of directly sending your product pitch to potential leads, let’s just say those very same leads may still be applying a pack of frozen peas to their face, and understandably so. It’s an unpolished marketing method that some people find downright offensive. All this to say: Please, do not blast your leads with a pitch without first warming them up.
How Rude!
In many spheres, effective marketing boils down to establishing a solid relationship. Developing relationships, in turn, hinges on a certain level of trust between business and client, which is a process that demands an investment of time. Just as flashing your personal goods isn’t standard protocol on a first date, neither is immediately exposing your deepest, darkest marketing goal to your lead.
For starters, get to know your potential leads’ backgrounds to the best of your ability and use that knowledge to your advantage. Determining what type of people are actually opting-in after learning about your product is a top-notch maneuver to weed out uninterested leads in cases of cold calls and emails. Here are a few ways to figure out who you’re dealing with.
Get to Know Your Current Customers
The conspicuous first step to determining what kind of people enjoy your product or services are your current clients. Duh! Ask or even interview customers about their thought process behind why they chose you. Try out friendly surveys or questionnaires. You can even make a full-scale case study that would provide them with personalized customer service and you with critical information. Looks like a win-win on both fronts.
Take Advantage of Web Analytics
On top of all the other data your web analytics provides you with, feel free to use them to learn about your buyers. Frame your website investigation with fundamental questions: Where do your visitors come from? What search words did they use to find you? What sections of the site did they look at and for how long? What information and type of content seems to interest them the most?
Use Online Alert Services
There is a goldmine of online information available to you through internet services, like Zapier, Mention, Talkwalker Alerts, IFTTT, Meltwater News (PR), and Bloomberg Professional (financial). (Not to mention what ChatGPT and other AIs are starting to do.)
Through such services, you can learn about prospective buyers’ interests as soon as they are reported online. They essentially enable you to identify key patterns and trends while locating likely customers. Now what steps do you take after acquiring the juicy deets?
Try Warming Them Up First
Yes, flirting is a good thing. Not only because it’s a fun way to display your creative prowess, but more importantly because it gets leads (who are real people, by the way) to listen to you as you explain potentially technical offers. Plus, how often is getting people to like you a bad thing?
Warming someone up is simply another way of getting their attention. There are various ways to warm up a lead, but whatever your choice, easing a possible lead into your product depends on the type of clientele you’re seeking. A clever quip or striking anecdote could entice the high-minded crowd. A neat offer, on the other hand, is something almost anyone can enjoy. It can be a promotion, a rare gift, a discount, or even a subscriber-based competition. It’s important to create a spicy deal that caters to your particular audience based on your research.
Take your time while you’re at it. A video funnel, for example, could be broken up into a series of short clips that are at once connected within the collection itself as well as tied into your actual product. Video funneling is a sort of mental prepping of leads that is intended to increase the likelihood of an eventual opt-in.
Desensitization
Average social media, email, and general internet users come across so many advertisements and news blasts that they have nearly become desensitized to the existence of ads. Pop-ups are so routinely closed that ignoring them has now surpassed the stage of actively closing an annoying page and evolved into an instinctive reaction. Practically speaking, people are ready to instantly delete ads and email pitches without a second thought.
Buttering up the overcooked, steak-like hearts of today’s leads is a decisive approach to garnering their attention. Try investing time into developing a solid warm-up geared specifically to your type of lead. People are almost always looking for something to pique their interest and blowing on the flame is a sure way to build up that fire.