Marketers recognize that content is king in the field of marketing and many marketers make the mistake of thinking they need to produce the maximum volume of content with their available resources. Seventy percent of content marketers are creating more content than they did a year ago, but that doesn’t mean a larger engagement level. It is not about the volume, but about how well the content is produced and how interesting it is for your audience.
While 87% marketers use social media for content marketing, fewer marketers understand its potential for helping you create engaging content. Instead of content creation being fueled by the whims and opinions of your content team, it should be driven by real insights into what your social media audience is interested in.
An argument in favor of quantity would be that for your content to perform well online, you need to produce it on a large scale consistently. The more frequent your content creation is, the more you keep your audience engaged. The frequency of content creation can also help with your search engine rankings.
But, churning out mediocre content has its own downside. Low quality content will be less appealing to your audience and it will start eroding your credibility. So as long as you create content regularly, it is always worthwhile to give prominence to quality and sacrifice quantity. This will increase trust in your brand and attract audiences towards it, eventually increasing conversions.
Below are a number of factors to consider:
1) Number of leads you’re pursuing.
This is about quality over quantity. Sellers who carry large lead lists often struggle to adequately advance their leads because they are unable to focus on the best ones and unable to spend time nurturing the best leads.
Marketers with smaller lists take the time to research the prospect company, to network in an effort to find an “in” to the lead, and to think strategically about how to position value. By contrast, those with extensive leads lists over-rely on “smile and dial” tactics where each call is generic and sometimes even robotic.
This is also true for marketers who work in a tightly defined category of business or small geographic area vs. those who call on seemingly unlimited varieties of prospects. Marketers who expect to be remembered consider their own brand – and their company’s brand – when they make contact. They exhibit a professionalism and respect for their prospects. Unfortunately, this is not always the case with marketers who can quickly move on to the next… and the next… and the next prospect.
2) Number of product features you describe to the buyer.
Fueled by adrenaline and exuberance, marketers often succumb to the temptation to pile on in their presentations. This approach bores potential leads and causes prospects to feel like the pitch is more important than they are.
No matter how incredible the features of your product are, there is no one that wants to hear all of them. The strongest presentations are the ones that narrowly focus on one or two features that are highly relevant and compelling to the unique, individual prospect.
Focusing on just a few features requires more work than the downloading-as-many-as-possible-as-fast-as-possible approach used by many marketers. The reason for this is that a person who selects and presents just a few relevant and compelling features must still know all the features. On top of that, that person who is selective doesn’t choose randomly. Instead, this person gets to know about the prospect before presenting features. The ones presented are the ones that are most meaningful to the prospect and knowing what’s meaningful requires insights and time for needs assessment. That is time well-invested in terms of the return it will yield.
3) How much stuff you send or leave with the buyer.
When a marketer knows what is most meaningful to a buyer, there’s no need to leave behind a mountain of brochures and flyers about additional options. E-mails to that buyer shouldn’t be packed with links and testimonials about additional services or unrelated products.
When this happens, it begins to un-sell the prospect or to leave a bad aftertaste about the experience. Maybe you’ve been in a situation like this where the person continues selling beyond the point where you would have made a purchase. The seller had a strong start, offering a solution that was closely related to your needs… But then the seller over-reached. Or maybe you’ve been the person who later regretted a purchase as the seller continued pitching and e-mailing irrelevant offers after you’d purchased.
Knowing your leads and understanding their needs will help you to avoid becoming a nuisance.
4) Number of options you include in a proposal.
Your proposals should not necessarily have an A, B and C option. That formula is appropriate when you don’t know the needs or the budget well enough to truly tailor the best solution. Otherwise, the more you know the more pinpointed and on-target your solution should be for this particular lead.
You may also wish to consider keeping options in your “back pocket.” Rather than laying them all out at once, offer the one that truly meets the their needs. Then respond with your backups only if there are new needs or new budget considerations that emerge. As you add to or take away from the original proposal, be sure they will know which needs are or are not being met with every change.
This simplifies the process, demonstrates your genuine interest in and understanding of the potential lead, and keeps value at the forefront of your discussion. When you start by offering every possible option in every possible combination it is impossible to highlight value that is relevant, unique and compelling.
5) How you respond to objections.
Take a deep breath. Before you respond to an objection, sort out your thoughts and slow down. Defensiveness is not an appropriate response. Information dumping won’t help either.
Start by considering exactly what the lead has said. It may be much smaller than what you heard – in fact, objections are often throwaway statements that a person makes because it’s what they are supposed to do in a transaction.
Next, make sure you are dealing with the real and only objection. Do this before you respond to the objection so you aren’t wasting time or “hot air” on a throwaway or smokescreen objection. When you’ve gotten to the real objection, respond only with information that is relevant. Two criteria make it relevant: It is directly related to the objection and/or it re-position what the person values back at the forefront.
6) How many unknowns there are in a negotiation.
Knowledge is power. More knowledge about the other party is better. Fewer unknowns is what you need going into the negotiation. What do you need to know? For starters, before the negotiation begins, you should know:
- What does the other party value about your products and services?
- What is the other party’s best alternative if they can’t strike a deal with you?
- What is the priority for the other party at this time?
- What matters most to you and your company in this negotiation?
- What is your best alternative if you can’t strike this deal?
- What are you willing to do without in order to get this deal?
- How urgent is this deal and what is the deadline for moving forward?
7) Closing a sale.
Stop talking. Once you’ve established value and asked for the sale, stop talking. Be comfortable with the silence as the person is contemplating what you’ve offered. Don’t backpedal. Don’t change the offer. Don’t offer to give them time to think it over. Don’t say anything!
Leads get confused when marketers don’t stop talking. Their confusion causes them to say “no.” Their feedback after the “no” or “not now” is that they began to feel like the marketer was desperate and lacked confidence. This eroded the lead’s confidence to the point that they no longer felt good about a purchase they were this close to making.
If you’ve done the work to offer a solution that meets other people’s needs, invalidated their objections by bringing the conversation back to value, and asked for the sale, you are done. Give the person a chance to buy instead of relapsing into sales mode.
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Source:
oktopost.com
blog.peoplefirstps.com
