If your buyer is not educated, then they will feel unready to engage the sales conversation with your team. Filling this gap with strategic marketing automation lead flows in Loopfuse that help the buyer to ask the right questions sets up a qualified lead for your sales team.
If you sell a sophisticated product or service, expect that much of the focus of your marketing automation campaigns will revolve around education. If you provide this value to potential buyers, then your expertise becomes established in their mind.
Here are some approaches we have used to in our marketing automation consulting to help our clients funnel their prospects through the buying process which will help you design your own processes:
- Focus on the problem. Use a sequence of autoresponse emails to articulate the specific problem your customers seek to solve. The scenarios can vary. You can segment each lead flow by problem definition to allow your landing page visitor to opt into a personalized experience with the problem they face. Speaking about features and benefits is marketing talk. Start with the problem and how your offering makes a difference and helps people every day.
- Ensure the copy is conversational. If you merely provide an encyclopedia of answers, people can turn to Wikipedia or other sterile sources of information. Use plain language in your copy and connect as a human being. Assume your buyers know very little about how your industry or market works. Provide the rudiments and help them gain expertise in a sequential diet of information that makes sense to any person new to the industry.
- Provide branched lead flows. When your email campaigns reach a logical point, provide other calls to action for further lead flow opportunities that get further than preliminary education. This could be an e-course or videos that go further into the education process.
- Score your leads for their opt-ins. As your leads opt into further lead flows, ascribe scoring that helps to qualify their lead status for your sales team. If there is deep interest in the education process, then create a triggered task for your salesperson to make contact. The sequence of Lead activities should reveal a high level of engagement and interest which makes sense for sales engagement.
- Break up the content. Our attention is sparse. Instead of a thirty minute video, make 5 smaller videos. Condense white paper content to multiple pieces or email template communications. Create anticipation for the next Lead Flow sequence and integrate them together into a cohesive experience. This creates fresh engagement for your buyers and keeps their attention and engagement. Furthermore, your marketing automation rules can be further engineered to funnel the buyer for each interaction.
If your buyer feels educated, they feel empowered. Furthermore, if you are the one providing the education, then you will have permission to engage in dialogue.
Help them know the right questions to ask and frame the sales discussion from the education process.
Using your Loopfuse system to design multiple educational Lead Flows will create the growing pipeline for lead qualification for your sales team. You will notice a difference in the sales conversation with higher levels of trust and readiness to buy.
What are some areas that you could provide marketing automation for education?