How do we get clients, or customers, and make them raving fans?
We need to move them through the buyer journey.
First – what’s the buyer journey?
- Awareness
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
Then:
- Fulfillment
- Delight
- Referral
Now – how do we get people from one stage to the other?
Ask yourself the question. What do your potential clients need to know and believe and have decided about you to say YES to signing the contract?
This might be things like:
- They need to know you’re in their location
- They need to believe that you can help them
- They need to think you’re the best value
- They need to have decided to take action now
Once you’ve made this list. Think about your previous clients, or do some research in online forums and Facebook groups around what people’s biggest hurdles are getting to the point of believing those things.
Let me explain.
Your potential clients have problems or pain points or desires that need solving.
They also have concerns about making purchases. What are these things?
Their pain points are going to be the reason they’re looking to purchase. This is going to be specific to your offering. For example, they want to be happier, or fitter or save time or feel more beautiful or have a better love life … etc. etc.
The concerns they have when choosing where or who to purchase from might be around:
- Knowing who they can trust
- Being aware of average price points
- Wondering who will actually listen to their ideas and make them happen
- Not knowing if their problem can actually be solved
These are just examples. Think back, or do the research to figure out what they are for your industry / product or service.
Solving your potential clients’ problems, pain points, issues and concerns is what will move them along the buyer journey to have them buy your product and engage your service.
Doing this well will move them from
1. Awareness (they know who you are), to
2. Interest (they’re interested in knowing more about your products/service) to
3. Desire (they want your product/service) to
4. Action (they actually purchase your product/service).
Great right! But how do you really do this?
Answer? With your content.
Your Content
Here we’re talking about your blogs / social media posts / ads etc.
We need to use these things to answer the questions they know they have, as well as the questions they’re not even aware of yet. You as a business owner have seen the entire buyer journey in action, but they haven’t. You know the potential roadblocks or questions that may come up as you present your offerings. And you can avoid these entirely with the right mix of content.
All of your content should serve to answer the lists of questions, problems and concerns your potential clients have.
I’ll repeat that for those in the back.
ALL of your content should serve to answer the list of questions, problems and concerns your potential clients have.
When you’re planning your content, you should think about having a handful of content pillars.
Content pillars are topics that you and your brand are known for.
For example, mine could be:
- Digital marketing
- Wellbeing and performance
- Business mumma interviews
- Inspiration and motivation
- Business real talk
So let’s look at an example within my business.
For people to attend my conference, they’re going to have to know and believe a few things about me, and about the conference.
For example:
They need to know the conference is on. Great – I’ll promote this in my content (hello!) and my social media.
They need to believe that I know my stuff. Excellent. I can share marketing tips like this blog, and talk about the marketing agency I own to position myself as a digital marketing expert.
They’ll also need to believe the conference is going to help get them to the next level in their business, that it’s value for money, that they’ll have fun, that it’s not a pain to get to and from etc etc.
Knowing all of that, I need to talk about these things in my conference promotions, and in my general content in the lead up to selling tickets.
Also, the list is going to be much longer than the things I mentioned. Whenever we’re selling a product or service we’re competing for attention from hundreds of other things. Yes, other products and services, but also people’s families and businesses and coffee dates with friends and weekends away and on and on and on. You not only have to convince your audience that your ‘thing’ is great, you also have to convince them that it’s the best use of their money and/or their time at this current moment in time.
It’s a big task!
Once you’ve mapped out your content pillars, and then drilled down into what it is you have to communicate about you, your business and your products and services – it doesn’t end when they buy. You’re actually only about halfway through the buyer journey.
So let’s look at the second half.
After they take Action and buy.
After your clients or customers buy – you need to fulfill.
How you do this significantly affects the user experience. Obviously, you need to provide what you said you were going to provide.
The way in which you do this is super super super important. It should be the quickest, least disruptive, most convenient way for the customer. And it should keep them in the loop about what’s happening.
Look at your procedure for fulfillment in your business – document it, shorten it if possible or add elements in that make things easier for the client.
Great. Now you have this streamlined, you can think about how you take it to the next level.
This is Delight.
How can you add more value?
You can ask how they’re going with the product or service? You can ask if they need anything else. You can link them in with complementary services or offers. You can add little freebies in the packaging if you have a physical product. Be creative. It’s going to be very individual to you, your business and your clients needs but think it through and make a plan to implement something, or some things that will delight.
Lastly is Referral.
The business you get from referrals or word of mouth is going to be cheaper to obtain and convert better than any paid advertising or other marketing you do. But it only works well if you’ve done the last 2 steps brilliantly. That’s why its worth taking the time to analyse how you fulfil and delight, and not just do what you’ve always done just because that’s what you’ve always done.
Look with a birds eye view and get a friend to help and also take customer feedback into account. If you don’t have this – ask for it!
While you’re there, ask them for a testimonial that you can use on your website. Social proof is powerful.
Once you know that you can fulfil and delight your customers, you know that they’ll be happy to give you a referral. Why would they not? If you’ve blown their socks off they’ll do it without you even asking. But if you think there’s some resistance there, or that they need some incentive – then guess what you can do – give them an incentive!
In our agency, for our member based services we offer our partners a 20% ongoing commission. Its great for us because we get access to an audience that we may not have been able to get access to. We also automatically get some of the trust our partners have without having to prove ourselves. It’s great for the audience because our partners wouldn’t recommend us to anyone that wouldn’t benefit from our products or services. And it’s great for our partners because now they are delighting their audience – and they get a kickback for the time they spend as well. Win win win! It’s synergy at it’s finest and it’s how business should be.
OK. So, I know that was a lot of information.
Have another listen when you have time to sit down with a pen and paper. Really map it out and I promise you that you’ll get fantastic feedback if you do all of this well. Its well well well worth taking that time.
Speaking of time thank you for spending yours with me. I truly appreciate it and I can’t wait to hear how you use this to improve your business!
Have a great week mummas!
– Annelise