The Enigma of “Irrelevant Leads”
Online Marketers and Online Business people will relate to this title closely. Almost all of us have received phone calls, emails or messages requesting information on our service/product that don’t match our offerings, value proposition (pricing included) or business vision. Right?
Try to relate with some of these situations:
a. “Nothing to do with our product, lost 25 min trying to explain our product to him only to find out he was seeking something completely different :(”
b. “Totally generic talk – he would/could not understand that I work on specialty products but kept harping on his general needs. Didn’t help him or me either…Had to cut the conversation short …”
c. “I receive at least 10 email inquiries everyday in my mailbox that has nothing to do with my business offerings. I have to respond to them politely indicating looking for other options but leads to loss of my/my team’s time and energy. I spend more energy writing to such emails rather than to genuine inquiries.”
In our online marketing business at ZoomYourTraffic.com, we have experienced lead enquiries like these in the past –
· “Develop my website in WordPress with SEO”
· “Need to generate business from website inside 60 days”
· “I have an annual budget of 50K. I need to generate business through my website.”
· “SEO my website for #1 Google Ranking”
· “Start Social Posting for my online business to build traffic and sales”
At a glance, these enquiries look absolutely relevant and objective driven.
With experience – we mark such requests as either “Irrelevant” or “Level 2 Exploration Needed” (Will explain this later in the article).
The question is what would you give, if we could address requirements and inquiries from prospective customers that:
A. Matched your product/service offering to the Tee – so that all you needed to explain/present your VALUE PROPOSITION to enable to a buying decision?
B. Don’t match the exact need but are ready to hear about SOLUTIONS TO UPGRADE/UPSCALE their systems with your offerings
C. Looking to EXPLORE opportunities for growth through my business without PRICING being the only decision factor
Life would be better right! Then, what stops it? What hampers businesses from receiving irrelevant calls/leads to targeted ones?
Three important aspects:
AUDIENCE DEFINITION
VALUE PROPOSITION
FOCUS or INTENT IDENTIFICATION
AUDIENCE DEFINITION
Most businesses start their online journey to “be seen by everyone”.
Be visible and business will follow – is the simple mantra. Fair enough.
This in itself is starting on the wrong foot.
If you build your visibility for the mass, the mass will come.
What follows is “irrelevance…”
People from all walks have different requirements, perspectives, value ideas and spending power.
e.g. If you are selling “cell phone back covers for feature phones” on your website – who would be your potential buyers?
Vis a vis .. if you are selling “iphone back covers” on your website – who would be your potential buyers?
Conceptually, the product is same, offering is similar and delivery ecosystem is the same. What is the difference?
THE AUDIENCE … the buyer !!
I can’t promote my feature phone website to an iPhone audience and vice versa.
The dynamics change. The thinking changes. The buying changes. The game changes ….
Getting your audience definition right, is therefore the key.
Invest time in profiling the right audience for your online business.
Reach out to the right people if you intend to avoid irrelevant questions, queries and hence leads.
It will save you a ton of time, effort and increase business bottom-line in the long term.
VALUE PROPOSITION
You have a super product (e.g. a cutting edge 3d printer) to sell.
Needless to say – it will have quality, durability and high price point.
All these are values – and yes – this needs to be visible to the customer/potential buyer.
Unless you show this VALUE to the customer – he will not “value” your effort of developing that product.
Why is iPhone an icon? – not because it’s the best smartphone ever but it has presented its value the best amongst its peers.
Why is Lamborghini everyone’s dream? – not because it has the best engine or performance – but because its value has been presented in such a way that every one yearns to own one (LOL … did you check its latest Huracan model priced at $320,000=00? … No wonder it’s called a DREAM car! but you want to own it right? VALUE PROPOSITION for you).
The idea here is to not sell dreams, but give your customers the true picture of what they stand to gain using your product.
Leave scope for their imagination when using your product. Do they feel stylish and uber cool OR feel embarrassed?
Why do some products feel just awesome for customers (e.g. personal items like Ray Ban shades, Nike shoes, Levis denims that makes a person feel special or aspire to have in his/her wardrobe). There are a ton of other labels selling these same items and probably are better on quality, durability and price point but the ASPIRATION value takes over the customer to long for specific brands.
So, create VALUEs (beyond the obvious) that people will want to own your product. Not just that – they will tell others to buy it too. Your customers become your marketing team.
Ultimate BRANDING is all about your VALUE PROPOSITION.
Do it the right way and you are well on your way to hit the right audience and growing sales.
INTENT IDENTIFICATION
All said and done, “WHY” remains the biggest question when a prospective buyer looks at your business proposition.
You could meet up with the right AUDIENCE, deliver the right VALUE PROPOSITION and the customer may fit both aspects perfectly, but does he/she have the INTENT to buy? Or just research and buy later? Or just surf around?
Establishing user intent is probably the biggest success or failure of business that make it big or implode.
E.g. A user logs onto your website with an intent to just browse about the products and not make any immediate purchase.
How would you establish this intent?
Place two buttons below the product namely “Tell me more” and “Buy Now”
If he clicks “Tell me more” – you have established his intent of browsing through the product information before buying.
On the subsequent page you can have calls to action like – “Connect For More Information” (to establish if he is really interested in knowing the product further? Since he will be sharing his details to do so) or “Buy Now” (to establish he is happy with the information and ready to make a purchase) or He doesn’t click anything and moves away from that page (to establish that either he is not interested to continue further – a look at Google Analytics data of your website will help establish this behavior)
Every action of the user is telling a story of his thought process.
Your goal is to join the dots and establish his intent of visiting your website.
If the dots are correctly joined … you will have indeed completed the customer journey !!!
ZoomYourTraffic Web Solutions
