Creating a successful customer experience is a lot like being in a relationship.
Your interactions throughout the relationship will determine your long-term success. Being aware of every step of your customer’s journey is essential in an effective marketing framework.
From the moment your customer discovers your brand, they are on a journey. The journey has multiple touchpoints, but it begins with awareness and ideally ends with a purchase.
As a startup entrepreneur, your most important task is to attract customers.
The journey begins with awareness
That is why any potential customer must first get to know your product.
Before you can start outbound marketing, you need to figure out who your target customer is. Each product has a segment. If you don’t know what that segment is, you can’t design a marketing plan.
To find your target market, you can use a number of features. Demographics is one, as are personal interests, also known as psychographics. Anything that helps you pin down the profile of your target is helpful at this stage.
The danger is that you end up with too many features and the target market becomes too small. Instead, focus on no more than two main markers (age, gender, etc.) and a few secondary markers (eg, pet owners or not).
When creating your customer profile, the goal is not to exclude everyone who doesn’t 100% fit the bill. It is having a starting point to focus your efforts. Marketing is not free and if you try to market to the whole world, you have failed even before you start.
Awareness creates leads
So now you know what the potential customer is like, but not who they are.
Creating a profile allows you to design and start targeting marketing in the right areas. Now it’s up to you to find the right mix of inbound and outbound marketing to convert leads into leads.
Today, Inbound Marketing is the most effective option. People do not respond well to forced marketing. If they can skip an ad, they will. If they receive a spam email, they will delete it.
It’s much more effective to use content strategies so your customers know how to find you. When this type of content generates a response, congratulations, your target has just become a lead.
Once you have leads, you know they are ready to buy or soon to be. Then you can get started with outbound marketing knowing that the information you give them will be seen as valuable.
Leads become opportunities
Now that you have leads, what are real opportunities?
The answer to that question depends on what you are trying to market. Generally speaking, an opportunity is a potential customer with the will, means, and authority to make a purchase.
When customers reach this part of the journey, they are ready to become your customers. Only when they present themselves as real opportunities will you want to use direct sales tactics.
If you try to sell too early in the ride, you will most likely meet resistance. To avoid wasting resources on sales that go nowhere, save them for real opportunities.
As a start-up, you’ll probably be primarily into inside sales. This means that the majority of your sales will be done remotely: phone, VoIP, and messaging are the most likely sales channels in the early stages.
The last part of the trip
The last part is taking an opportunity and turning it into a sale.
This is primarily the responsibility of the sales team. All the marketing has been done. You have discovered who your customers are. You have made them aware of your offer. They show willingness and purchasing power. All that remains is to close the deal.
At this point, there will be some minor concerns to resolve with your client. Some of them are the price, the conditions of sale and the specific characteristics of the product.
What happens after the trip ends?
If you make a successful sale, don’t stop there. A one time customer can become a repeat customer. Continue to follow up at the appropriate intervals. They have been through this entire journey with you and there is a chance that they want to do business with you again.
