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Summary: It's difficult to sell complex products or services using traditional advertising methods. You can use "two-step" marketing to both educate your target audience and establish yourself as a trusted advisor. Result: more sales.
It's getting more difficult and expensive to sell products and services, (especially complex ones) using traditional advertising approaches.
That's because it's hard to provide enough information and build enough trust in the space of one ad or letter to motivate prospects to take action on your proposition.
Even if you're only asking prospects to visit your showroom or contact you for a free consultation, it's getting harder and harder to get results, because people are wary of being subjected to a sales pitch.
But what if you could find a way to have interested prospects come to YOU, rather than the other way around? To do that, you need to break down your sales process into baby-steps:
Rather then ask prospects to buy or visit you immediately, you want them to put up their hand as people who have needs that you can fulfil. You can do this by running small ads that offer prospects free information connected with your product or service. For example:
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The information you provide shouldn't be a sales pitch. Its purpose is to:
- Educate prospects about your product or service and common problems to avoid
- Help prospects make an informed purchase decision
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field
- Position yourself as a "trusted advisor" who can assist with making the right purchase decision.
- Follow up leads in a systematic fashion with phone calls mailings. Now you've moved beyond simple prospecting to actually nurturing prospects through your sales process.
Why multi-step marketing works
1. You get MANY more leads, because it's so much easier to call for a free report than to visit a shop or showroom.
2. You get a much higher conversion rate of leads to sales, because you've broken the sales process down into smaller chunks, and supplied the prospect with enough information at each stage to make it easy for them to proceed further. You've converted a high hurdle into a series of smaller steps.
Multi-step selling involves more preparatory work than standard one-step advertising, but when you consider that it can become your entire lead-nurturing process, it's worth the effort.
About the Author:
William Swayne is a copywriter and small business marketing consultant based in Brisbane, Australia. He can be contacted at http://www.Marketing-Results.com.au |
