By Trent Dyrsmid, {grow} Community Member
Most people are really poor at follow up … and as a result, they don’t win nearly as much business as they could. For example, not so long ago, my friend Jermaine needed some work done to his house so he interviewed a few contractors. Of them, only one kept in touch over the next 9 months … and he got the job.
Why don’t most people keep in touch with their prospects that long? It’s too much work! Fortunately, this is an area where technology can do all the heavy lifting.
Thanks to technology, creating a personalized automated follow up system is actually very possible to do — though it is going to require that you use software to make it all happen.
Prior to implementing the software, there are some important steps to take, so let me walk you through them.
STEP 1: Make Two Lists
Regardless of what you sell, I am willing to bet that you get asked the same pre-sales questions over and over again. I’m also willing to bet that you ask your prospects plenty of questions of your own so that you can qualify them on their ability to purchase, as well as to determine what products or services are going to best meet their needs.
The first list you want to make is a list of every pre-sales question you can think of. The second list is a list of all the questions you would normally ask a prospect to determine if they are a good fit for you.
STEP 2: Create Content That Provides Answers to Pre-Sale Questions
Now that you have a list of the top pre-sales questions, you are going to need to create content (articles, blog posts, videos, reports, etc…) that provide answers to these questions. I suggest you create a blog post to answer every question on your list. If you do this, you will never run out of things to write about – and, rather than have to manually answer each question over and over, you are now going to have content that does this for you.
For answers that don’t require visual aids, articles and podcasts are an excellent choice. For answers that do need visual aids, video is the best choice. You can either do a screen share video, a white board video, or you can just stand in front of the camera and talk. For most people, the screen share and white board are going to be the easiest – and fastest to produce.
When making video, don’t worry if your videos aren’t Hollywood productions. So long as the information is high quality, you can get by with an average looking video.
STEP 3: Create Web Forms to Collect Information on Your Website
A web form is nothing more than a place on your website where a visitor can input their information and hit a submit button. Most email service providers make this relatively easy; however, for this to work really well, you are going to need to use marketing automation software that lets you dynamically deliver the content (you created) that is relevant to the answers provided on the web form.
In my case, I sell software and information products and my website is visited by people from a variety of industries. With diverse traffic like this, it’s critical for me to ensure that I get the right message to the right person at the right time – all without any manual labor.
To do this, I place a web form under each of four videos lessons that I give away for free (this is the top of my funnel). Then, in each video, I ask my visitor to provide me with more information about themselves by completing the form below the video.
The information that they provide goes directly into my database and then, thanks to the software that I use, I’m able to automatically route through my marketing funnel in a way that makes the most sense that each individual. In other words, I am able to deliver a very personalized experience – even though the entire thing is automated.
For example, if one person tells me they are a marketing consultant and they are struggling with client attraction, my system will ensure that they see content and offers that solve that specific problem. Whereas, if another person tells me that they are a small business owner and they are struggling with efficiency, they are going to see an entirely different campaign with content and offers that are relevant to their problem.
With every person, my goal is the same: to present the right content/offer to the right person, at the right time – all without my lifting a finger. Can you see how this might increase conversions?
It’s All About Tracking Their Behavior
Behavioral marketing is really about giving each person in your funnel the most personalized experience possible. To do this, I leverage technology like Infusionsoft that allows me to scale personal attention in a way that would be impossible to do manually. I track clicks, downloads, duration of videos watches, and countless other data points. Armed with this information, the experience for my user is much better, and my conversion rate is much higher.
While this may sound complex, it’s actually much more logical than technical. You don’t need to have any special technical skills to implement what I’m talking about … but, as I said before, you will need some specialized software to make it all work.
Have you tried anything like this? Please let me know if I can help you set up such a system.
About Trent Dyrsmid
Trent Dyrsmid is the founder of BrightIdeas.co and the host of the BrightIdeas podcast, where he has interviewed over 100 successful entrepreneurs. He is also the Founder of Groove Digital Marketing and Co-Owner of ConvertKit.com. Get more info from Trent on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Illustration courtesy BigStock.com
