WHAT’S THE
BIG
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The Essential Guide to Attracting Customers Online
What’s The Big Idea? The Essential Guide to Attracting Customers Online In the following pages, we will discuss important concepts to drive customer acquisition, including:
BIG IDEA
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EN AU GA DI GE EN D CE
A Why your business needs a Big Idea (p. 1);
C Using content to build an engaged audience (p. 4);
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B The importance of an engaged audience (p. 3);
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D How relationships take audience members and convert them to sales prospects (p. 5); E Defining your Unique Selling Proposition (p. 7);
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F The importance of follow-up in your marketing (p. 8); and G How to use storytelling to convert leads into customers. (p. 10) We also will discuss practical techniques to help you attract customers online, including:
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1 The attributes of a customerattracting website (p. 12); 2 Why blogging is an effective customer-attraction tool (p. 14); 3 The right way to use social media to follow-up with your audience (p. 16);
If you like something you’ve read along the way, share your thoughts, insights or questions using the hashtag #bigideabook on Twitter or leave a note on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/fiorecommunications.
4 Automating your email follow-up to lead prospects to becoming customers (p. 18); and 5 How web analytics help you make better decisions to grow your business. (p. 20)
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THE CONCEPTS
C ENG D NEW CUSTOMERS AU AATTRACTING G E DIE WITH D A BIG IDEA NC E B E
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The foundation of online customer attraction starts with having a Big Idea: a thought, an ideal or a goal that addresses a fundamental need. Your Big Idea is really about seeing yourself as more than just what you sell. When someone asks what you do, your response should be related to your Big Idea – not just what your company does. It is the one thing they have to know about your business – your one-sentence “This is the reason my company exists” statement.
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FOLL MAR OW-UP KETyouINwent into Your Big Idea is above your products and services, it is the reason business. It is the reason people will find or listen to you in the first place, Geven
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when the details of your business change or evolve over time. It is your essence.
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Your Big Idea is the one thing that will drive people who have never heard of you to your website, motivate them to engage with you and then help you retain them as loyal customers.
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Don’t Think Small with Your Big Idea
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You need a Big Idea that is truly a Big Idea. Let’s talk about what one looks like. ■■ Your Big Idea isn’t that you work in financial services. Instead, you believe
people should be able to sleep well at night without worrying about money. ■■ Just a personal trainer? Nope. You proclaim that men and women of all ages
should feel good about the way they look and feel. ■■ An IT consultant is just a title. Your Big Idea is that technology can turn
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world-changing projects or innovative business ideas into a reality.
■■ Your association is more than a group of people who work in the same field.
You connect like-minded people who believe in the same Big Idea.
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What you’ll notice about each of these Big Ideas is that they:
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■■ Connect with people on an emotional level; ■■ Can be communicated without products or services; ■■ Point to possibilities;
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■■ Require assistance to attain; and
■■ Intrigue people and get them involved in conversations.
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WHERE DOES A BIG IDEA COME FROM? ■■ If you’re an established business, it comes from looking at your current
customers and identifying what they have in common. ■■ If you’re a startup, your Big Idea becomes apparent when you focus on your
ideal customer and what they need.
Zeroing In On Your Big Idea Ask yourself the following questions when defining and clarifying your Big Idea: ■■ Is my Big Idea more than an intellectual statement? Does it have an emotional
impact? ■■ Does my Big Idea stand on its own, separate from my products or services? ■■ Does my Big Idea point to an ideal or a possibility that people desire to reach? ■■ Is the goal of my Big Idea big enough that people need help to achieve it? ■■ Would people feel compelled to engage in conversations related to my Big
Idea?
Your goal: Answer yes to all the above questions. When you can answer “Yes” confidently, write your Big Idea down along with the above questions and give them to a trusted friend (the one who will be brutally honest with you) to review. Your Big Idea may not come to you immediately, and you will probably go through many revisions over time; that’s OK. As you move forward through this guide, keep thinking about your Big Idea, talk to people about what you do and get lots of feedback. Everything you consider related to customer attraction should be about your Big Idea, so it will be well worth the effort. We promise.
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WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA
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WHY AN ENGAGED AUDIENCE IS ESSENTIAL FOR CUSTOMER ATTRACTION After you have decided on your Big Idea, the next step is to start building, or growing, your audience. In terms of customer attraction, an audience is a group (or groups) of individuals who connect with your Big Idea, are interested in learning more about it and want to connect with others to discuss and share it.
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How an Audience Will Help You Attract Customers
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When someone identifies with a Big Idea, they’re bound to share it with others they think may also be interested. When you build an audience, you are connecting with individuals who have the power to spread your Big Idea without your intervention, which is why it’s so important to focus less on your products and services and more on the bigger picture. Focusing on your Big Idea first opens up your message to a larger group of people who may be interested in what you have to offer.
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YOU BECOME THE GO-TO EXPERT
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If you’re the one building the audience and leading the conversation, you will be perceived (and rightly so) as the expert. Not only will your audience expand in size, your influence in conversations, both online and offline, will grow. When you are the go-to expert in your field, you will be asked by individuals who have their own audiences to weigh in on important topics. Your influence may first be felt in your own community, but it can quickly expand into larger venues as the word spreads about your expertise. In addition, a perceived expert status connects you with other experts’ audiences that you can leverage for growing your audience.
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As you build your audience, you will get feedback on how you are communicating your Big Idea. There may be areas in which your audience will want more information or simple tips to implement. You will never run out of ideas to talk about when you build an audience through feedback.
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Even better, your audience will ask for products and services related to your Big Idea that you can then provide. An engaged audience will help you make better business decisions on new services or products or how to improve your current offerings.
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Content bridges the gap between your Big Idea and building your audience. It is the means through which you communicate your thought-leadership and expertise in your industry. The content needed to build an audience may take on many forms, including words, photographs, infographics, audio and video.
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Content is an essential tool for your business growth as it has the power to:
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■■ Inform;
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■■ Clarify; and
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■■ Entertain;
■■ Illustrate.
Content also works to help “sell” people on your Big Idea. Every piece of content you publish is an opportunity to connect with new individuals and expose them to your Big Idea.
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How to Approach Content Creation
Most people think too small when they look at the process of content creation. Often, the conversation starts like this: “We haven’t blogged in seven months. We need to get something up as soon as possible.”
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While that approach may drive short-term action, the reality is too often that a post will go up and then the blog (or other channel) will be ignored for even longer, or eventually become abandoned altogether.
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Here is how the conversation should start instead:
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WEBSITE VISITORS VS. AUDIENCE MEMBERS
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When done correctly, your web content will attract new online visitors, which is always important. But, even more important is cultivating a loyal following of readers and subscribers who are sold on your Big Idea and want to learn more from you.
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“What efforts have we made today to communicate our Big Idea and grow an audience full of high-value prospects?”
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA
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WHY YOU NEED RELATIONSHIPS TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS
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The Value of Online Relationship Building Here are some reasons why building relationships is so important: SOCIAL PROOF
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Relationships allow you to move from speaking to your audience to actually communicating with them. A Big Idea, an engaged audience and solid relationships will be your best assets to attract new customers.
Your current customers should be the first relationships you focus on to attract new customers. What are you doing to cultivate relationships with your customers and start conversations with them? What are you doing to help make them successful? If you focus on your customers first, they will help you tell the stories of your business through writing reviews and giving you testimonials. These reviews and testimonials are forms of social proof, and they influence buying decisions in a big way.
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CONTENT CREATION If you have a solid grasp of your Big Idea and you’re communicating it through content, building relationships will come naturally. You will be excited to talk about the Big Idea and get involved in conversations with your prospects and customers. Conversations lead to questions and insight from others that you can’t get if you’re speaking in a vacuum. This feedback serves as an abundant source of content and is perfect for future blog posts, podcast episodes, videos for YouTube or topics for webinars. Plus, if you are getting your ideas for content creation from the relationships you are building, you can guarantee that you will have people consuming your content and interacting with it. TRUST BUILDING Relationships with your audience help you cultivate a level of trust that would be difficult without genuine interaction. When members of your audience become prospects for your products or services, they may initially consider multiple vendors, but the relationship they have with you will often be the deciding factor. It’s natural that prospects want to do business with people they know, like and trust.
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MUTUAL BENEFIT Customer-attracting relationships are not limited to just prospects. Mutually beneficial relationships with other businesses can help you pool your resources for a common purpose. This will allow you to leverage strategic partnerships to reach new audiences. Also, relationships with thought-leaders in your industry can provide mutual benefits. A thought-leader is constantly in need of new content to share with their audience. If you can contribute to their blog or site to reach their readers, you will fulfill a need for them and potentially increase your audience as well.
Relationships and the Sales Process Your audience will be composed of non-buyers, prospects, high-quality leads and current customers. The content you share should be targeted based on the status of the relationship. Just as you would not discuss having children or your finances on a first date, your content should be shared in different ways depending on your audience’s level of engagement with you.
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YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION
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You’ve captured the attention of an audience through your compelling content – now what? It’s time to take the relationship to the next level. In the next section, we’ll discuss the importance of follow-up in your marketing and how to use storytelling to turn prospects into customers. But, first, you need to understand what makes your business uniquely equipped to meet the needs of your audience.
The Importance of Defining Your USP By their very nature, Big Ideas remind people of a fundamental need that you can help them fulfill.
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Your Unique Selling Proposition is what will help you bridge the gap between your audience’s unfulfilled needs and your products or services. It describes what is unique about you, your products or services that will help make your Big Idea a reality for your audience. Ask yourself the following questions to define your USP: 1. What makes me different from my competitors?
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2. Why have my current customers chosen to do business with me? 3. What are the common themes in the feedback I receive from customers? THE BIG IDEA AND USP CONNECTION ■■ A Big Idea communicated through content will help people find you online
and want to get more information from you. Your USP is what will convince those people to do business with you. ■■ A Big Idea without a USP means you’ll have an audience who takes the
information you share but may spend their money elsewhere. ■■ A USP without a Big Idea can make it difficult for people to find you, no
matter how great your products or services are.
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THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FOLLOW-UP AND E CUSTOMER ACQUISITION
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Prospects won’t always be ready to buy from you, even if you have built a relationship with them. Though they may be sincerely interested in doing business with you, your prospects may have other priorities at the time. The solution is follow-up, the process of reminding people you’re there and are ready to serve them when the time is right.
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How to Be Successful At Follow-Up RECOGNIZE DIFFERENT STAGES OF BUYING Your follow-up message and delivery method will be determined by where your prospects are in the buying process. For example, you may have prospects who are: ■■ Completely sold on you and your value but have price objections;
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■■ Aware they need your products but are checking out your competitors; or
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■■ Sold on your Big Idea but unsure if they even need what you have to offer.
Not only should your follow-up be designed to meet your prospects where they are, it should also have calls to action to move these prospects to different stages of the buying process. EDUCATE AND DEMONSTRATE VALUE
Successful follow-up means more than just sending emails to tell prospects to buy now. The purpose for all your communications should be to educate your leads and demonstrate your value at the same time. Content will be your biggest sales asset when following up with prospects. Your educational content should relate to your Big Idea, and when appropriate, demonstrate your USP and why you’re the best choice to fulfill the desires related to the Big Idea. INCREASE INFORMATION COLLECTED As your prospects become more interested in what you have to offer, you should increase the amount of information you collect on them before letting them download more content. For example, in the beginning, you may only ask for an email address. Though it allows you to follow up with prospects, an email address doesn’t tell you much about the individual behind the address.
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However, when you have more valuable information available to download, you could ask for a job title or a phone number. This information will help you tailor your communications more effectively to their needs. Plus, it will allow you to shift your conversations from email follow-up to phone calls or online meetings that may help you get to know your prospects better and close the sale. Follow-up strengthens relationships and increases your likability and trustworthiness, which will attract new customers. It allows you to tell your stories to an engaged audience on a regular basis, which is made even more effective because you have earned the right to communicate to them when they provide their contact information to you.
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STORYTELLING: A POWERFUL WAY TO DEMONSTRATE YOUR USP FOLLOW-UP F MARKETING
CS I T Informational web content related to your Big YIdea is helpful for turning website L A visitors into audience members. When audience N members become prospects, A storytelling will allow you to convert those B prospects into customers. E W G
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The success of the extreme workout program P90X is an example of storytelling used for turning audience members into customers. The long infomercials share multiple stories of individuals in relatable situations to the audience. At the same time, the infomercials also detail the philosophy of “muscle confusion” and how the program is unique compared to other workouts.
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How P90X Used Storytelling to Start a Revolution
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Storytelling is the art and practice of using story elements such as plot (what is happening) and characters (who it is happening to) to illustrate concepts related to your Big Idea.
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It is easy to get sucked into the struggle the people in the infomercial are having and then pull for them as they achieve dramatic results using the system. It makes us care about people we don’t even know.
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These stories also allow viewers to believe that they could achieve the same results as the individuals in the infomercials. It makes them say, “I can do that.”
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The brains behind the infomercials left no doubt in the audience’s mind that P90X had unique attributes that could help make the Big Idea that “Anyone can have a beach body,” a reality.
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As people started buying P90X and achieving results for themselves, they took to the Internet to share their stories on the P90X website, Amazon, blogs, YouTube and social media. These success stories encouraged people buying the DVDs to create their own success story, which was a huge part of making P90X one of the best-selling workout programs of all time. Storytelling, especially sharing true stories that show your USP in action, is much more effective than listing facts and figures to eliminate potential buyer objections.
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EN AU GA DI GE PUTTING THEORY EN D C INTO ACTION: CE THE TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES OF D ONLINE B CUSTOMER ATTRACTION In the previous sections, we discussed the foundations and theory of customer attraction, E YOUR USP
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focusing on the big picture instead of getting distracted by tools and techniques too early in the process. Too many businesses have started F blogs,
FO AR W STORYTELLING ETI -UP leads into sales but gave G up before achieving Ktheir NG LLO become active on social media or tried toMconvert desired results. Without a strong foundational
understanding 1 about what it takes to attract WEBSITE 5 WEB ANALYTICS customers online, it would be very easy for the same to happen to you. We want better for you. In Part II of this guide, we will discuss valuable tools and techniques to help you communicate your Big
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4 EMAIL Idea, grow your audience, build relationships and follow up successfully.
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To successfully attract new customers, you need a website that will serve as your online home – a central location to communicate your Big Idea and connect with your audiences.
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What a Customer-Attracting Website Looks Like
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EASY TO UPDATE Communicating your Big Idea is not something you do just once. Your message should regularly be refined to relate to the changing needs of your audiences. Using a framework such as Wordpress, which allows you to update your site’s pages as easily as a Word document, will give you (not a webmaster) the most control over your content. You can add articles, blog posts, pictures, buttons and videos with ease.
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CALLS TO ACTION If you need your site to be a consistent source of leads and customers, you must include strategically placed calls to action. The action should be simple – ask for their email address or other demographic information in exchange for more information related to your Big Idea. Your site will need multiple calls to action that appeal to visitors’ different stages in the buying process. Placing a button on your site for a free consultation isn’t going to be enough.
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EASY TO FIND ON GOOGLE
The way many websites are designed, they will be found only if people are searching for the name of the company. One of the main benefits of having a significant online presence is that you can format your site in a way that people will also find you using keywords relevant to your business. If you own a catering business in Memphis called BBQ Guys, it will be easy to find you by searching those words in Google. But if you want someone to find your business who doesn’t already know you, you want your site to pop up in searches for “Memphis ribs wedding catering,” “best bbq in Memphis” or “Memphis catering companies.” Formatting your site so it can be found through keyword searches is an important element of search engine optimization (SEO).
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Your Website’s Purpose Most people who visit your website aren’t going to buy right away. Considering most websites encourage visitors to make a phone call, you can see why they don’t attract the customers that businesses want. The best way to avoid wasted visits is by defining other beneficial actions that you would like your visitors to take. Instead of asking for a call they are not ready to make, use a button that will guide them to a simple form for a free guide or whitepaper. If the goal of your website is to help grow an audience and find ways to follow up with visitors, you will attract many more customers through patient relationship-building than prematurely asking them to buy something.
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Even with optimized data and content, websites aren’t reliable for drawing an audience by themselves, especially if they aren’t updated often. Just as a movie theater can’t show the same films forever and expect to be profitable, your website can’t use the same content for months and expect to be noticed. You need to update your content often to attract new and returning visitors to your site.
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The Many Benefits of Blogging Here are some reasons why blogging should be at the top of your list for updating your web content:
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INCREASED RETURN VISITS
If a visitor to your site doesn’t take the desired action the first time – even though they may be a good potential prospect – you want to give them a good reason to re-visit your site and become part of your audience. Having a blog with updated posts related to your Big Idea will increase the chances that visitors will return to learn more from you. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS One of the benefits of a blog is the ability to interact with comments. If you’re creating conversations around your Big Idea and telling compelling stories, you should receive comments on your blog. When you respond to these comments and engage your readers in conversation, you are developing valuable relationships. The more consistently you blog, the more opportunities you will get to have conversations related to your Big Idea and build relationships with your audience. BE FOUND ONLINE Search engines such as Google love blogs, especially blogs that are updated on a regular basis. When you blog often, you cast a wider net for Google users to find you. A website that was updated two years ago and has only 10 pages is viewed by Google as less relevant than a site that has 50, 100 or even 200+ blog posts and is updated once a week. Each blog post counts as a web page to be indexed by Google and opens up new possibilities for prospective customers to find you online.
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Curation: Blogging Made Easier You don’t always have to create original content to attract an audience to your blog. Through the process of content curation, you can search for blog posts and other content across the Internet and aggregate them in a blog post. Adding your commentary will provide even more value to the post. You can attract an audience through curation by becoming a recognized source for filtering the noise in your industry and providing relevant and timely information.
Guest Blogging for Leveraging Other Audiences The value of blogging is not limited to posting on your own site. Through strategic partnerships with thought-leaders and bloggers who share the same appreciation for your Big Idea, you can submit posts to other blogs. When you appear in front of their audiences and provide great content, you will reap the benefit of attracting more visitors to your blog, your website and your calls to action. If your follow-up process is in place, guest blogging can be an effective way to attract new customers.
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SOCIAL MEDIA: JOIN THE CONVERSATION TO ATTRACT NEW IL EMACUSTOMERS
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Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest are tools for building relationships with your audiences. They allow you to engage your audiences in discussions around your Big Idea and join conversations that are already happening.
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How to Do Social Media Right Staying committed to using social media can be difficult, and many companies give up after a relatively short time. Here are a few tips to keep you using social media and delivering your messages in a way that attracts new customers. KEEP YOUR BIG IDEA IN MIND Social media users will follow you only when they believe you have something unique to offer or you can fulfill a need. If you use social media primarily as a way to promote your company, you will fall short. If you build your social media following by sharing your Big Idea and getting people excited about it, you will be rewarded with a captive audience. FOCUS ON CONTENT Content is currency in social media. If you build a strong social media audience, the content you share can then be re-shared by your audience, increasing your reach and potential influence. Resist the temptation to post what’s easy and focus on creating compelling, original content. BE RELATABLE While having a corporate social media presence is important, you will have greater influence if there is a real person your audience can relate to. To connect with others and build trust, create an account just for yourself and interact with other people directly. Some social media users won’t interact with you if you’re hiding behind a logo unless you’re a large corporation or an established brand. TAILOR THE CONVERSATION The stories you tell and how you connect with your audiences will change depending on the social media site. Sites such as Facebook and Pinterest rely on images to get Likes and Repins, whereas Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn rely on sharing interesting links and getting involved in more in-depth conversations to build a following.
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Your Follow-Up Tool When your website is generating leads, you want to make it easy for these prospects to connect with you on social media. If your leads choose to follow you, follow them back and see what they’re talking about. Using this information when communicating with your leads will open up more opportunities to discuss your products and services and convert those leads into sales. Social media should also be used to follow up with potential strategic partners to get you exposed to new audiences. The more audiences you’re exposed to, the more insights you will have about your prospects and the better able you will be to tailor your content to attract new leads and customers.
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When members of your audience respond to your calls to action and provide you with an email address, a new phase of relationship building has begun.
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The content you share with your leads through email should strike a balance between being informative and encouraging them to do business with you by demonstrating your USP. Following the steps below will allow you to nurture your leads and demonstrate why they need your products or services: ■■ Educate your leads on a topic related to the content they downloaded
through a series of informational emails spread over the course of a few days. ■■ Create a case study, video series or webinar for your leads to download. You
can discuss your products and services at the end of the content. ■■ Follow up on the content you sent and repeat the offer.
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Educating your leads and making offers is a process you will repeat often when trying to convert leads into customers.
Using Email as a Relationship-Building Tool In addition to educating and making offers, email is your most powerful tool for long-term relationship nurturing. Incorporating an email newsletter that provides useful and relevant content will help you create consistent engagement with your leads (as well as current customers) who may not visit your website on a regular basis. Also, you can use your email marketing as a way to ask your leads questions and start conversations related to your Big Idea. This interaction is a goldmine for helping you build the “Know, Like and Trust” factor – a critical element of attracting new customers. SELECTING YOUR EMAIL MARKETING TOOLS With the right email marketing tools, you can automate much of the leadnurturing process and segment your leads into groups to better target your emails. Email marketing campaigns should always be run through a professional email marketing service. Collecting a large list of email addresses and sending out emails
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through your own computer using Outlook or Gmail will likely shut down all your email capabilities and could get you black-listed. Instead, choose an email marketing service that has white-listed servers that guarantees a high delivery rate and provides reliable analytics on important data such as open rates and click-throughs. Also, look for an email marketing service that allows you to set up both autoresponders as well as targeted one-time messages. Both of these features are important to creating effective email marketing campaigns.
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MEASURING YOUR CUSTOMER-ATTRACTION EFFECTIVENESS
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All this talk of Big Ideas, building an audience and maximizing the effectiveness of your website may sound great, but you should also want some assurance that it works – that it will give you a good return on your investment. The proof is in the numbers, more specifically, web analytics.
The Benefits of Web Analytics With the right web analytics, you will know: ■■ What content brings people to your site ■■ What pages on your site are viewed most ■■ Which buttons on your site lead to higher conversions ■■ Which social media sites lead to customers
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■■ Which blog posts generate the most leads
When you have this data available, it’s easier to answer bigger questions such as: “Am I effectively communicating my Big Idea?” and “Am I building relationships that are turning visitors into customers?”
Using Analytics to Improve Customer Attraction Web analytics can help you to make better-informed decisions when considering changes to your website and follow-up processes. While many businesses are aware when their current web marketing efforts are not attracting customers, they aren’t sure why. Here are some common situations and possible solutions based on information web analytics can provide:
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■■ If you are getting lots of visitors to your site but they’re not converting into
leads, you can add different calls to action. ■■ If you have leads and you’re sending emails that aren’t getting opened or
aren’t leading to sales, you can focus on making changes to your follow-up. ■■ If your website isn’t attracting enough traffic, you can focus on blogging and
adding more content to your site and optimizing it for search engines such as Google.
Analytics provide vital data about your customer-attraction efforts to help you identify the weak spots and make needed changes to reach new audiences and convert prospects into customers.
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WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA
NOW WHAT? Your journey doesn’t stop here. This guide laid the foundation for growing your business using the Internet and a Big Idea, but there’s so much more to learn about cultivating an audience, building relationships and implementing follow-up systems to generate leads and convert those leads into sales. We look forward to keeping in touch with you by following up with emails related to the topics discussed in this guide. The phrase [Big Idea] will appear in the subject line. In addition to sending you relevant information on growing your business through words and relationships, we’ll let you know about our products and services that help you achieve business growth without handling all the details yourself. But, most importantly, we want to know more about you and your Big Idea and be your trusted team for attracting new customers online. Here’s how to get in touch with us: ■■ Share ideas and insights on our Facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/fiorecommunications. ■■ Interact with the Big Idea community on Twitter by searching for and using
the hashtag #bigideabook; ■■ Follow Dave Fiore (@davefiore) and Jeff Machado (@jeff_machado) on
Twitter for content related to our Big Idea; and ■■ Send us an email to bigideabook@fiorecommunications.com if you have any
questions or would like to discuss how to put words and relationships to work for your business.
Oh, and by the way, here’s a Big Idea we’re pretty excited about:
THE FIORE COMMUNICATIONS BIG IDEA “Words and relationships fuel sustained business growth.” Believe that, we do.
A FIORE COMMUNCATIONS GUIDE
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WHAT’S THE
MAKE ATTRACTING NEW CUSTOMERS EASIER
BIG
We would love to talk to you about your current efforts to attract new customers. Sign up for our free in-depth website and marketing analysis for insights on your Big Idea, USP and what you can do to attract new customers, engage your audiences and strengthen your relationships.
IDEA
ssential Guide to Attracting Customers Online
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