Following is a video of my presentation at the Toronto Entrepreneurs Conference:

The Power of Marketing Automation – TECONF18.

In summary, business owners NEED to increase sales and to do this they NEED customers. However, many businesses usually struggle to find customers to buy their products or services as buyers today are more informed because of the host of information available on the internet. Many people usually start doing their research online whenever they want to buy any product and don’t call up suppliers to make inquiries.

Look at Amazon for instance. It is the leading in the world because they not only offer customers quality products but also provide them all the information they would need to make an informed purchase decision by providing buyers product descriptions, video reviews and even testimonials from other customers who have bought the products recently.

So now, business owners need to be smart and use other techniques to win over these type of informed ‘digital age’ customers.

There are five main parts to the buyer journey, as follows;

1. Learning and Discovery

In this initial stage, the customer is learning what product or service would be the right choice for him/her. They do their homework and research the available options online and then find out more information about the product features or benefits from various other websites.

2. Finalize on the product or service

In this stage, the customer finalizes specific products based on factors such as quality and make of the product or the price of it, i.e. they check whether the selected products are reasonably priced and does not exceed their budget.

3. Review Options

At this point, the customer does a final review of all the selected option that is available to try and find the best product/service to buy from all the shortlisted options.

4. Make a Decision

After the customer has finished reviewing their options, he/she can now make an informed decision on what product to purchase.

5. Stick around

Sometimes, a customer might even stick around for a longer time even after purchasing the product/service to see if the company or brand offers some value-added service. For online purchases, buyers usually wait for at least a transaction confirmation email or an even a thank you SMS or email. You want to be able to RETAIN the customer as it is a lot easier to sell to current customers than to new ones.

So what does this mean?

As a business owner, selling your product/service to “today’s customer” can be pretty challenging. To win customers, you will need to find a way to engage them right from the initial stages of the customer journey, till the final stage where they are making a final decision on what to purchase.

So if you want to improve sales and win more customers for your business, then you will need to understand how to interact with these new age shoppers right from the learning and discovery stage. This may be difficult at first but it is doable with the help of creative tools and technology that can evaluate your customer behaviors so you can serve them better.

Now we will discuss the different stages of the sales journey that every business owner needs to follow to get more customers and thus increase sales.

1. Attract Customers

The best way to grab a customers attention is to start marketing to them right from the start of their customer journey. On the internet, the best place to do this is on search engines like Google. When you use paid ads, search engines will automatically market your product to customers who search for similar products to buy online.

2. Capture Leads

Once an internet user clicks on the paid ad of your business on a search engine or social media platform, you can make it link back to your business websites’ landing page where the user can easily buy the product you were advertising.

3. Nurture Leads

When the user enters onto the landing page of your business website, it is your responsibility to nurture them into buying customers. One way you can do this is by designing your landing page to make it very easy for users to view a product and buy it with the click of a button.

4. Convert Prospects to Customers

Once the user is ready to buy, you can encourage them to make a purchase directly from your website through a secure payment gateway. It would be best if you could simplify this process for your customers and make it easy for them to make a repeat purchase as well. Automatically saving their address or their payment details is a great way to do this.

5. Delight Your Customers

Nowadays, businesses can use professional email marketing automation tools at their disposal which automatically sends customers personalized ‘Thank You for your purchase’ emails and messages directly to their email inboxes immediately after they have completed an online transaction.

Moreover, these tools can also be used to help upsell more products to these customers by sending them regular offers and promotions to the email that they had registered on the business website, with the option of unsubscribing at any point as well.

Many businesses are on the cusp of understanding the power that Marketing Automation platforms bring to the business, especially on how it can improve sales and customer relationships.

Contact Us for a complimentary consultation with our team at 2 Web Design and let us show you how you can generate leads, increase sales and retain customers for longer