The need to establish an effective lead follow-up campaign for online customers is more important today than it has ever been in the past. As more and more consumers move to the internet, the less effective traditional follow-up methods become.
The customer has changed the way smart businesses engage in the sales process, and brick and mortar businesses would be well served to take this as a wake-up call.
A Case Study In Internet Leads Follow-Up
We often use the term “lead” to describe the sales opportunities that occur when a consumer makes contact with an organization. Traditionally, these prospective customers (leads) are assigned to somebody in the sales force with the intent of the sales person establishing contact and trying to work towards making a sale.
Most traditional methods include a phone call, a personal visit, a letter and/or sending some kind of company marketing piece. The problems with these methods is that they are either too invasive (the consumer loves the anonymity of the internet) if the customer is not ready to buy, or far too slow (in the case of mail and brochures) if the customer has reached the buying stage. The purpose of an email follow-up campaign is to use a less invasive method to ensure that the customer is contacted as fast and as often as possible.
I am working to improve the conversion of my online real estate traffic. My Tallahassee Real Estate Website generates thousands of visitors each day, and it generates a lot of “leads” for people looking to buy or sell a home, but I think I can improve my conversion rates by establishing a much more in-depth follow-up campaign.
How To Build A Better Lead Follow-Up Campaign
The first step in creating a better lead follow-up campaign is to visualize the benefits for the consumer. Why would a consumer want to do business with your company (buy a product, engage a service, etc.)?
The next step is to determine what most of your online consumers are seeking and to determine the typical sequence of actions that these consumers take during the normal process of buying. When you combine these two steps, you can then create a strategic plan of action to help the customer through these steps while also demonstrating the value of your company to them at the same time. Here’s my example:
Home Buying For Smart People
I know that many visitors to my real estate website are looking to buy a home in Tallahassee. They use the free resources that I offer and I want to let them know that they should be working with my real estate agents to get the best buy on their Tallahassee home.
I have taken my 20+ years of experience in buying and selling real estate and produced a 20-step e-course that I titled “Home Buying For Smart People.”
My process includes all the steps necessary to position the homebuyer to get the best deal when they purchase a home. You would be amazed at the general lack of training in the real estate brokerage industry, and having a great real estate company walking you through the process can save you a ton of money for reasons not readily apparent to most home buyers. A lot of money is spent buying a home, and not all of it is in the sales price!
When my website visitors choose to get a free enrollment into Home Buying For Smart People, they receive an immediate email letting them know what to expect. Then, every 3 days or so, they are emailed a short message with a link back to my company website, to a page that will provide them the information that smart home buyers need to know before they make a purchase.
For a program like this to work and to help me stay in touch with thousands of people, I use the Aweber email marketing application. Reliability and functionality (as well as its low cost) make this the best solution out of the many that I have tried.
The Home Buying For Smart People course is designed to deliver important information that I know homebuyer’s want, and it is done at a pace in which in can be digested within the normal time frame most of my web visitor’s have established. By measuring everything that we are doing on our real estate website, we have a great understanding on what and when these customers want to buy.
Our new lead follow-up campaign will help us capture more business through our company website. It was designed based upon the needs and expectations of our internet customers, and we have provided brilliant content that cannot be found elsewhere on the internet. This combination makes for a better service plan and happier customers who can help us spread the word!
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