Your Marketing Automation Plan – Part 2

Nurture Prospects

Once you’ve attracted a prospect and gotten a lead, what do you do with it?  How many leads do you get that are never called or called once, you get voice mail and then forget about them?  These are called “holes in your bucket”.  There are several types of leads.  There is the NOW buyer.  This could be the person who has a broken washer and needs to replace it now.  This person is looking to get information quickly and they’re looking to make a decision NOW because they can’t live without their washer.  Most people would define this as a really hot lead.  This is the lead you want to be contacting immediately before your competitor gets a hold of them.

Then there is the lead that may be looking at all of the new types of washers out there.  Their current washer is still working but not doing the greatest job.  They are not ready to buy today but want to be educated on what is available now and what’s coming down the road.  This is the lead you want to stay in touch with on a regular basis as this prospect will at some point soon be looking to buy.  How do you do this?  By educating that prospect and keeping you at the top of their mind.  If you are the person that is educating them on what’s available in the market and if you’re developing a relationship and becoming the subject matter expert AND if you’re the person that is there keeping in touch with him, then you are the person they are most likely to buy from when they are ready to buy.  People like to deal with and buy from someone they have a relationship with.

There are several ways of keeping in touch but the best is to build a campaign and use a system that helps you to deliver your message at the right time and in the right medium when you need it to.  You see as a human it’s easy to forget to call people, especially once your lead funnel starts to grow and you have other important tasks in a day to attend to as well.  It’s almost impossible to do multiple touches to multiple people on a regular basis without a little help.

It’s time to automate!  Use the tools that can do it all for you.  A good lead management system and the tools to deliver each message (like email and voice broadcast) will help you.  For example, once your prospect has opted into either your webpage or your hotline for information, you can place them into a follow up campaign.  Day 1 may be a task to call them and find out exactly what they’re looking for.  Day 2 may be to send them some free information on the product/service they are interested in by mail.  Day 7 could be a task to remind you to follow up by phone with this prospect, to see what they thought of the information that was sent out to them.  Without a system in place to keep track of all of your leads and where they are in the sales cycle can be business suicide.

To learn more about lead management tools  CLICK HERE or to attend an ENCORE presentation of our webinar with Infusionsoft watch your emails for notice of date and time.