1. How to use information from Lifecycle Stages?
Our best advice regarding buyer lifecycle is to segment your contacts by the stage they’re in at the time they arrive to view your information or when they fill out your form. Buying life cycle is a reality; it accurately describes the stage the buyer is at during their purchase process. Most of the visitors that come to your site are not buying today; this is a reality that some don't understand or believe. Not every visitor is in the stage of "ready to buy now"; some are in the "education and evaluation" or "gathering more material to present to bosses for reports" stage instead.
Many people think too highly of their business (and sometimes, themselves) because they so deeply believe in (and are in love with) their story, company and business. But not everyone is interested in every aspect of your business, and it is your job to ask the right questions to determine their interest. Your communication techniques with various contacts or visitors should change accordingly and considerably because each visitor is unique and in a different buying phase. Everyone would like to believe all of their visitors are in the buyer’s stage of their lifecycle, but this is not reality.
Because of this, you must perform this one very important process: Create different types of emails matching different life cycles for your contacts. For example, ensure customers don’t receive emails intended for prospects or leads. Using lifecycle stages properly ensures that your communications are designed and created to fit the unique needs and concerns of all of your contacts; from the first touch contact to a loyal customer and beyond. Make the design and the request different; your contacts' Lifecycle are surely different, and your messaging must reflect this.
Here are a few stages to consider:
2. What is progressive profiling? Why is progressive profiling useful for marketers?
Progressive profiling and "smart forms" provide additional insight about your visitor by asking the right questions at the best time (which is on their time). It replaces questions in a form on a landing page that were already asked of the visitor. Present different/new questions in the order as they come back to the site for additional information. Recognize who they are and profile them with different questions. This will increase conversion rates by keeping forms short, and informs more about the visitors as they answer different/additional questions. You need to create different offers with deeper more useful information, so they come back and are intrigued to give more information to you; in return they will receive your additional, valuable information. It's called a value-exchange!
You will have better closing rates decreasing the form length making them shorter which is easier and more realistic for someone to complete. If you always Focus on the conversion rate of your landing pages; you will better optimize for user experience by evaluating and changing your forms and always looking for opportunities to shorten your forms.
Smart Forms are requalifying as they reconvert on different landing pages. With a smart form you change what is presented by hiding questions that a contact has already answered in a previous visit, you improve the usability of your form and increase its conversion rates.
You are able to reuse the same forms on multiple landing pages. Up until the new "smart form" design & progressive profiling process it was required to create multiple forms to nurture over time your contacts and slowly lead them down a sales cycle. Insight gave us ways to better target your contacts - Collecting information with progressive profiling enables you to enrich the information you provide your contacts or customize your communication to different databases.
Also, Progressive forms allow you to gather insights to better target your contacts. Collecting information through progressive profiling also enables you to enrich the information you have about your contacts and customize your communication to different segments of your database based on this information.
Smart forms decrease the length or time of your sales cycle. The forms focus on presenting different qualifying questions as your future customer’s returns to a variety of landing pages.
3. How to create an offer that generates leads (Give prospects a reason to give you their contact information) They are just Leads; people will give you their email if they want your information.
The first important item in the process of converting visitors into leads is what you are offering. Provide the prospect with valuable diamonds or tangible tasks they can accomplish to become better. If you dangle in front of your visitors eyes thoughtful ideas that work they will give up their contact information, and possibly answer some additional questions at a later time when they return.
We go through a discovery process with clients when we provide our Visibility Assessment.
If the offer is valuable enough to the visitors (emphasis on the VALUE); the visitor will happily give you their contact information in exchange for your offering. (Offer EBooks, training videos, Last seat in a Listen and Learn session that could make them money). Something valuable!
Remember to create offers that will be a "must have item" with value to the new visitor as well as the existing leads that are in the system from a targeted list or a list your purchased.
The nature of your offers may differ slightly; this depends on who you’re target audience is you are trying to convert (or reconvert).
What do you think? Is there anything that needs to be added to this list? Use the comments box below to add to this post.