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The Revenue Generation Framework™ Step 6
How would you feel, if you were out on the town one fine evening, and you have been discussing where to eat with your partner. You have maybe seen an ad or read someone’s review and it just sounds really amazing. You then see the restaurant. The smells are absolutely fantastic, the outside is appealing, the seating looks inviting, the décor is luxurious. The maître d welcomes you with a warm smile. He takes your coats and guides you to your table. There are fresh flowers on the table. Soft music is playing. He hands you the menus and wishes you a lovely evening. And he leaves.
And. Nothing. Happens.
How would this make you feel?
The equivalent happens all the time when visitors click on your site, consumes material, or browses around. In my example above the couple had already decided to eat at that restaurant, but what if we were not that far. What if the maître d just stood there, welcoming you, but did nothing more. The people who find themselves to your site, did so because of a reason. Very few of us spend our working hours randomly surfing.
So all those numbers you can see in your reports, clicks, they are potential customers. They are not all ready to buy, many of these – probably most of them – aren’t even in a buying process. They were curious for some reason. But what about those who are in a buying process. Are you just going to leave them hanging, and hoping they come back and hit “buy”?
No self-respecting businessperson leaves this up to chance.
You have to nurture these leads. Remember the tracking step? Yes, if you have prepared yourself, you know who these visitors are. You know what they have already consumed. You know what they need to move to the next phase of the buying process.
If you go back to step 2, The Buying Process, you remember that all these different phases in a buying process serve a psychological purpose. You become aware of a problem, you compare change with no change, you look at your choices, and evaluate them, then you make a selection and commit.
If a customer is reading a reference case, they are most likely in phase 3. They are looking at evidence that you know what you are talking about. If they are looking at your webinar from 2 months back, where you were showing the risk of not doing anything about their challenges – they are probably in phase 2. If they are reading general articles surrounding the challenges THEY are facing, it would logically seem that they are in phase 1. And you should NOT have a call to action (CTA) which is “buy” or “talk to sales” at the end of it. That would be like you talking about whether you are hungry with your partner, and a restaurant owner is dragging a table with a linen cloth over to you.
But if you have a marketing automation system set up, that will feed (pun intended) with relevant information when they need it and when they are ready to consume it (second pun definitely intended!), you will help them along.
And once the customer finds themselves either moving from phase 2 to phase 3, or they have already satisfied themselves (ok, I just have to stop with the puns now!) with information you have provided, THEN it is the moment to have a clear CTA fed 😁to them: “Buy”, “sign-up” or “talk to sales”.
This is how you make it so that the customer is expecting your call, and many times wanting your call.
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