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 several points of contact, but it begins with awareness and ideally ends with a purchase.
As a start-up entrepreneur, your most important job is to attract customers.
The journey begins with awareness
It stands to reason that any potential customer first needs to get to know your product.
Before you can start doing outbound marketing, you need to find 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 characteristics. Demographics are one, as are personal interests, also known as psychographics. Anything that helps you refine your target profile 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 basic 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 does not fit 100% into it. It is having a starting point to focus your efforts. Marketing is not free and if you try to promote to everyone, you have failed even before you start.
Consciousness creates clues
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 don’t respond well to forced marketing. If they can skip an ad, they will. If they receive 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 potential customer.
Once you have leads, you know they are ready to buy or will be soon. Then you can get started with outbound marketing knowing that the information you provide will be considered valuable.
Potential customers become opportunities
Now that you have leads, what are the real opportunities?
The answer to that question depends on what you are trying to market. Generally speaking, an opportunity is a clue to the will, the means, and the authority to make a purchase.
When customers get to this part of the journey, they are ready to become your customers. Only when they are presented as real opportunities do you want to use direct sales tactics.
If you try to sell too early in the trip, you will most likely encounter resistance. To avoid wasting resources on sales that aren’t going anywhere, save them for real opportunities.
As a startup, you will likely focus primarily on inside sales. This means that most of your sales will be done remotely – over the phone, via VoIP, and by messaging, these are the most likely sales channels in the early stages.
The last part of the trip
The last part is to take an opportunity and turn it into a sale.
This is primarily the responsibility of the sales team. All marketing has been done. You have discovered who your customers are. He has let them know his offer. They show willingness and ability to buy. All that remains is to close the deal.
At this point, there will be a few minor concerns to resolve with your client. Things like price, terms of sale, and specifics of the product are among them.
What happens after the trip ends?
If you make a successful sale, don’t stop there. A customer once can become a regular customer. Continue monitoring at appropriate intervals. They have been through this entire journey with you and there is a chance that they will want to do business with you again.