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Inbound/Outbound Marketing

Align Your Product with the Correct Audience

Have you ever thought about your customers? Really thought about your customers. Who are they? What do they do? What do they want? And does every one of them fit the ideal customer profile for your products? No doubt, it’s a lot to think about. But when you step back to consider the ideal audience for each of your products, you’ll reap rewards. Why?

Because when you take the time—and it will take time—to define your target audience, you’ll ultimately save time and money. You’ll stop advertising or directing your content to people who will never be your customers. Instead, you’ll discover ways to boost current customer loyalty while drawing in qualified leads who are looking for exactly what you offer.

Think about aligning your product with the correct audience like a game of darts. You don’t throw all the darts at once, hoping to hit the bullseye. You strategically throw them one at a time to get the best score.

HOW TO DEFINE THE CORRECT AUDIENCE

The first step in defining your audience is categorizing your customers. That could be done by the industries you serve. Or maybe by customer job titles—an engineer will be looking for something different than an operations manager, for example.

Once you’ve categorized your customers, find answers to these questions:

1. Who are they? Consider job title, gender, and even age. A seasoned professional is likely to need different information than a career–starter engineer.

2. What are their pain points? For example, a procurement lead is likely looking for the best value for the price whereas a plant manager may be looking to boost efficiency.

3. What information do they need to make a buying decision?

4. How do they get that information?

It’s unlikely you’ll know the answers to these questions, and it’s best not to guess or make assumptions. You can get the answers from surveying or interviewing customers, evaluating the demographics of your social media followers, and reviewing your customer data of what customers are buying and requesting.

Analyzing data from Google Analytics and other tools also provides demographics and reveal your website’s most read content. If defining an audience seems overwhelming, partner with an inbound marketing agency.

HOME IN ON YOUR CUSTOMER

Once you’ve gathered all the answers needed to define your audiences, you’ll be able to develop what are called personas for each product or product line. Personas put a fictional name and face to a customer segment, including their motivations for buying, their pain points, where they get information, and so on.

Personas help put yourself in your customers’ shoes. They help you be more empathic to their pain points and deeply understand their needs. By keeping the personas top of mind, you’ll know exactly what to communicate to your ideal customer in each of your product categories, whether that be through inbound marketing services like blog writing or email marketing, or a sales pitch. 

A DataBox survey of marketers found that target audience research results were helpful when developing inbound digital marketing. More than 75% of respondents said audience research was important for content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine marketing.

CONSIDER YOUR COMPETITORS

Before you engage in inbound marketing services, it’s also important to peel the curtain back on your competitors. Take a look at how they position themselves on their website and in marketing collateral and advertising. Then consider how you are different. Do you customize your products to fit the need? Do you offer more services around product purchases?

When determining your differentiation in the market, be careful not to position yourself the same and say you’re better. It’s your word against theirs. Instead, find the golden nugget that sets you apart.

LET THE MARKETING BEGIN

Now that you know more about your customer, it’s time to develop inbound and outbound content that answers each of your customer segment pain points and questions. Avoid talking about your product’s features. Instead, consider their benefits, the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for your customers. Keep in mind that old business adage about selling the hole, not the drill. 

Defining your customers’ WIIFM for each of your products will also strengthen your sales team’s pitch—they’ll know exactly what they need to communicate about each product and why. That will make them feel more confident in what they are selling, and in turn, customers will feel more confident in what you can do for them. 

Plus, the sales team will be able to more easily respond to objections. And when qualified leads come to the door, sales can turn the leads’ interest in your product into a need.

HOW TO NURTURE QUALIFIED LEADS TO INCREASE SALES

Your product personas can do more than retain and upsell current customers. They also can help attract leads through services that inbound marketing agencies provide—content marketing like blog writing, social media marketing, website search engine optimization, email marketing, and search engine marketing like pay-per-click advertising.

Inbound marketing is effective in getting qualified leads. But we also know between 40% and 70% of qualified leads are not ready to buy. So, what do you do during the prospect’s decision–making phase? You do something 65% of marketers say they don’t do—you nurture your leads. By nurturing leads with digital marketing, you’ll turn them into quality customers who have higher order values and become more loyal.

Here’s the best recipe for lead nurturing:

1. Stay on message. Craft messaging for each stage of the buying cycle for each persona. The lower customers are in the sales funnel, the stronger your call to action should be. Be clear in messaging and remember WIIFM.

2. Use a multi–channel approach. Ask your inbound marketing agency for help writing keyword–rich blogs, informative emails, eye–catching social posts, and effective pay–per–click ads.

3. Reach out multiple times. It takes about 10 marketing touches between awareness and purchase. Don’t let the number intimidate you! Those touches may include an email drip campaign or one–on–ones with a salesperson.

4. Align marketing and sales. Both marketing and sales need to be accountable for nurturing a customer. Determine which will take up nurturing duties at each point in the sales funnel

Companies that do well with lead nurturing generate 50% more sales–ready leads at 33% less cost. Inbound marketing is important to lead nurturing because it builds awareness and trust, makes your company more memorable, and assists your sales team—all at a lower cost than other strategies.

Inbound marketing services from an inbound marketing firm like Imaginasium can get you started on the road to aligning your products with the right customer. With our expertise in content development that puts search engine optimization and keyword strategies at the forefront, your company will resonate with current and prospective customers.

Are you ready to find your ideal customers? Let’s get started!

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