Many startups and small businesses spend thousands of dollars to market themselves using external avenues like social media, ad platforms, email marketing and search engine optimization.
According to SiriusDecisions vice president, Marisa Kopec, up to 80 percent of the content made available by marketing agencies isn’t viewed or downloaded. The problem isn’t always the content. It’s a lack of knowledge about how individuals make purchase decisions.
For instance, that means you’ll need to learn what led to them to seek out your products or services in the first place. Similarly, prospects often share information that can help you remove barriers to purchase.
As Josh Kaufman explains, “Selling anything is largely the process of identifying and eliminating Barriers to Purchase: anything that prevents your prospect from buying what you offer.” There are five standard objections in every sales process:
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Loss Aversion: It costs too much. Makes spending feel like a loss.
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It won’t work.
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It won’t work for me.
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I can wait.
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It’s too difficult.
Here’s how to remove these obstacles and increase sales in the process.
1. Understand the client journey
Understanding the client’s journey is an important factor in marketing. Your client may have a limited view of your business for several reasons. There are times when prospects simply don’t understand the full range of services you offer and how they can benefit.
It’s important to understand the problems and limitations that clients face. Everyone utilizes their own unique emotional value system when they choose how to spend their money. Successful marketing must address those emotional factors.
2. Sell benefits and value, not products
Focus on the benefits and value; how you can alleviate their specific issues. When you sell value, begin with the goal a client wants to achieve. Then tie it to a specific benefit associated with a feature.
For example, when a client books a therapeutic massage, pain relief is the patient’s goal. The benefit is less pain and easier movement, and the “feature” is therapeutic massage. This is a very important distinction.
3. Create and distribute personalized content
Invest in content marketing and empower your team to use that content to grow your business. Businesses that provide content specific to client needs and make it readily available effectively create a powerful referral engine.
Beware of being too technical when you share personalized content online and offline. Prospective customers want information that’s easy to understand and can be quickly assimilated.
Ensure all team members have quick and easy access to content. For example, if you run a brick-and-mortar business, your employees should have customizable marketing collateral readily available to give to potential clients.
4. Measure, monitor and improve
Use analytics to understand which strategies produce results. Web analytics tools allow you to see which content is viewed and/or downloaded often, providing a better understanding of the content that resonates with potential clients.
This article has been edited.
Nitin Chhoda manages a skincare and nutrition line ‘Total Activation’ – products that work in synergy. Learn more at totalactivation.com.
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