If you want to make an incredible difference to your business this year, follow this 3-part series which looks at Life Cycle Marketing (“LCM”) and some real life examples on how to implement it into your business.
Whether you have been in business for a while or you are just starting out, LCM is a proven method to grow your business and ensure its future success.
Firstly, what is LCM?
LCM is comprised of 3 elements:
- Attract – initial meeting as they are getting to know you and your business.
- Sell – when they like, trust and know you enough to buy.
- WOW – when they buy again and again from you and tell their network about you and the products and services you provide.
Most small business owners do 1 or 2 well but fail to do all 3. There are a few reasons this happens:
- Lack of knowledge – they don’t know how to implement this.
- Lack of time – they know they need to do it but just can’t find the time.
- Lack of focus – servicing their clients to even think about doing this or know it exists.
When was the last time you felt the WOW factor?
When was the last time you experienced that “WOW” feeling when you engaged with a business? Was it consistent the next time you bought from the same business?
That is the ultimate question: Can they replicate the experience every time for every customer, so that the customer ALWAYS comes away from the buying experience delighted?
Imagine how successful your business would be if you could craft your ideal customer service experience and then replicate it every time for every single customer… So much so that each customer felt like they were your only customer.
How can you make that happen? Let’s look at Step 1 in LCM – Attract.
Step 1 – Attract
- While this is an intensive subject on its own, a good place to start is with a few more popular actions you can take:
1) Work your offline interactions
Unless you live and work in one of our planet’s remote locations and have no physical interaction with people, you are probably missing out on working your offline interactions. If you think you don’t have any offline interactions, think again. What about networking functions, Friday night drinks, business breakfasts, long lunches or random introductions at the coffee cart? Anywhere you run into people in your daily life, you should consider an opportunity to expand your network.
Instead of mindlessly collecting a business card or adding a contact into your phone and then forgetting about it, why not use a form to capture this person’s details (with their permission of course) and put them into a Welcome/Nice to Meet you process?
Most contacts need to be nurtured by you before they will feel comfortable doing business with you, so naturally, your first step should be to get people into your network as quickly and smoothly as possible.
What information do you need to capture?
Name: both first and last – this makes it easier to sound human rather like a computer generated when you are sending them a message.
Contact Details: email, phone, mobile and address. The first 3 are essential the address you can always enter later if necessary.
Title: if your customers are more likely to be individuals this gives you future options for segmenting your data by gender if your products and services are gender specific.
Company Details: Name, Position, Website, industry are all details you should collect if your business is B2B rather than individuals.
Source: where did the contact come from? This is always good to know.
Misc: How you met the contact and anything else that you think will help you give your new contact an amazing introduction to your business.
2) A Personal Welcome Message
As human beings, one of the things we crave is to feel like we belong and that we are welcome. How do you feel when you go your local corner store and the owner greats you by name and smiles when you walk through the door? Yep, definitely a case of the “warm and fuzzies”!
But how you feel when you enter the store and the owner isn’t there and the part-time assistant doesn’t look up from their smartphone to acknowledge your presence. It’s a completely different type of experience.
OK, so how do you do that with your business, when you don’t have a physical shop front?
Simple, use technology!
The quickest method is to send a text message. You can even choose how quickly you send it to them once they have entered your ‘Welcome Process’.
It is preferable if the message isn’t a War and Peace novel, but just a few friendly words to make them feel welcome and special. For example you many try something like this:
“Hi Jan, it’s Todd here, I own ACME Pet Accessories. Welcome to our family! Check out our website for all lots of great Pet Accessories. Cheers, Todd”
This is so simple but yet so effective! Not to mention it goes a long way to show you know how to use the latest tech.
3) A Simple “How are you?” email a few days later.
Most people don’t even think about doing this so it’s a great opportunity for you. It sets you apart from other businesses especially your competition. If you find it a challenge to write an email like this, here is some example text to start you off:
“Subject: How are you?
Hi Sam,
I’m Paula and I help our customers find the perfect accessories for their adored furry family members. I just wanted to reach out and welcome you to the ACME Pets Accessories family. I hope you are enjoying browsing our website. Find anything you like? If you have any questions, just let me know!
Cheers
Paula
BTW, Are you on Facebook? This is me:
*insert your link here*”
This type of email can be easily set up with your email autoresponders.
4) Invite them to Subscribe
Invite them to subscribe to all your social media channels. If they accept your invitation they will see you popping up all over the internet, which is a great impression to make.
Ever wondered how the big guys do it? Re-targeting!
This is a form of online marketing where people who click on your links or visit your website start seeing your banner ads wherever they go on the net – including Facebook. If done right it ensures you have that enviable position at the top of their mind, because your ads appear somewhere on every Social Media channel. So when they need what you are selling they are going to think of you first. Magic!
So how can you implement this into your business?
- Add follow and share links to your emails and personal signatures.
- Link directly to your posts/tweets/pins in your email.
- Put the links in multiple places and change up the layout.
- Track people who click on your links and use these lists for very specific marketing campaigns.
It is really quite easy when you think about it. You just need to Do It!
If you need more information or help to implement these Attract steps into your business contact us here and we will be happy to have a chat.
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