This is the third in an eight-step series about lifecycle marketing. Previously, we looked at how to attract traffic to your website and the various tools you can use to generate valuable sales leads. 

Now that you have the attention of your potential customers, it’s time to nurture them towards a sale.

It’s all about following up on potential leads. Since everyone is different, there are as many possible ways to follow up a lead as there are customers. There are no limits to your creativity here. That’s why it’s so important to not only generate leads, but to generate quality leads. The more you know about a potential customer, the more you can tailor your follow-up efforts to their situation.

This is the first of an 8 part series on Lifestyle Marketing. 

With a little patience and technical know-how, it’s fairly easy to build a website. The Internet is full of handy guides on it. If you don’t have the time to learn, the Internet is also full of people and companies eager to do the work for you. But now that you’ve gone to the trouble of building your site, is it doing what it needs to do to bring traffic in, or it is just sitting there in a sea of similar sites?

You need a reason for people to come to your site. 

Marketing expert Andrew Davis believes he has a way to do just that. By creating valuable content on your site, you establish a brand and you can use that brand to sell your products.  He cites Sesame Street and Disney as examples. By creating memorable stories and engaging characters such as Mickey Mouse and Elmo, both companies were able to leverage their content to sell millions of dollars in products. 

Twenty percent of your customers produce 80 percent of your sales. Named the Pareto Principle after Vilfredo Pareto, this concept is a simple yet powerful idea that can save you time, money and dramatically grow your business if used properly. Pareto, an Italian economist, noticed in 1906 that 80 percent of the land was owned by 20 percent of the population.

The interesting thing about this principle, or the ’80-20 rule’, is that it occurs with astonishing frequency in other situations. Twenty percent of your time will yield 80 percent of your results. Twenty percent of your products will create 80 percent of your revenue. The list goes on and on.

From a marketing standpoint, the applications are obvious. If 20 percent of the advertising efforts produce 80 percent of the results, then your marketing needs to focus on that 20 percent. If 20 percent of your webpages generate 80 percent of your traffic, then you need to highlight those pages to make them easier to find.

When it comes to customers, how do you zero in on your best customers, and more importantly, how do you find more like them? Using the ’80-20’rule allows you to develop more targeted marketing and more effective follow-ups so you can nurture sales. 

Getting online customers to your website is one of the most important ingredients for growing your business, and when it comes to search engines, Google has the vast majority of the market share.  If customers don’t know about you or can’t find a convenient way to reach you through the Web, selling your product or service becomes that much harder. 

Google+ (Google Plus) is one of the fastest growing social networking sites available in today’s market.  While it pales in comparison to the vastness of Facebook, Google+ is tightly tied to the Google search engine.  Google+ has ‘+1’ votes, similar to Facebook’s Likes.  Those votes let Google know that what you’re sharing is being read. Google+ profiles and pages can have a significant impact on search rankings.

Google+ separates itself from other social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter by offering increased SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  Posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately, resulting in a greater likelihood of your page appearing at the top of Google search results when a potential customer begins researching a product or service. 

With the sheer variety of resources available online are many ways to get the word out about your product or service. Your official website, though a critical part of your online marketing strategy, is just one of many. Social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, have become an increasing part of modern life. Smart entrepreneurs adapt. 

According to Facebook internal estimates, the number of pages for small and medium sized businesses is close to 25 million. And there are over 750 million Facebook users daily.

With such a large environment, businesses have found that their sites and posts tend to get lost in the newsfeeds that users see. Since Facebook is a forum for people to share bits of their daily lives, the decorum tends to be a bit more informal. The professional appearance that companies use on official websites doesn’t always translate well into Facebook. 

Many experts on social media recommend a more personal approach for a Facebook page. Rather than telling potential followers about what a great company you started, tell them the hardships you went through trying to found it, and why you did. Instead of posting about your company’s great relationship with the community, post a story about a community event you or one of your employees participated in. Celebrating company moments can help potential customers feel like they’re dealing with real people, not a company logo. 

Manage Your Leads. Grow Sales. Save Time. Get Organized.

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In an increasingly busy and chaotic world, stability has become a precious commodity. How do you find stability in a market that can change in the blink of an eye where the skills you learn are obsolete as soon as you’ve mastered them?

Pam Slim, award-winning author, business coach and creator of the blog Escape from Cubicle Nation believes she has some of the answers.  

Your body of work extends far beyond your resume, she says. You are everything you do in life. For an individual, your body of work is everything you create, contribute, affect or impact. It is the story of your life and everyone you’ve interacted with along the way. For a company, it is everything they have contributed during their history, whether it is their products, services, idea or values.

What's your business plan?

In 1845, a British expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin boldly set out in search of the Northwest Passage, a fabled sea route around the top of North America. The expedition was plagued by logistical problems from the very start.

The crew had little experience with the arctic. Other than Franklin, few among the officers were arctic veterans. Disregarding the advice of the native Inuit, crewmen were outfitted in uniforms far better suited to winters in Southern England. 

In May, the expedition set sail from England never to return. Studies over the years have concluded that hypothermia, starvation and lead poisoning, along with inadequate clothing and supplies, lead to its demise.

While few of us have our hearts set on being arctic explorers, the fate of the Franklin Expedition serves of a poignant example of the importance of proper planning. It has been said that if you don’t know how to get there, it doesn’t matter what road you take.

This is the second of an 8-Step series on Lifecycle Marketing

In the first part, we looked at how you can drive traffic to your site. Now that you have their attention, it’s the perfect time to gain some valuable information on potential new customers and draw them a little closer to your circle. At first it might seem tacky to ask for information when delivering up a piece of content, but it really isn’t when you do it right.

Instead of thinking of it like demanding a price for your content, think of it as an opportunity for a potential customer to learn more about you and gain greater access to the content they liked. For example, if they liked your cake recipe, why not have them sign up for your baking company’s newsletter where they can receive several more recipes every month? Since they already have a positive attitude towards your product, you can nurture them towards a sale.

You’ve worked hard to make your business successful. You know you have quality products and services and competitive prices. You know you have customers out there that want what you have to offer. The problem sometimes is finding them . The Internet is a big place, and you’re just one firefly in the night. 

Lifecycle Marketing might be just what you’re looking for. It’s a simple process with a simple goal:  bringing customers in, ‘wowing’them and then letting positive word of mouth some advertising for you. Any customer is good, a happy customer is even better. But the best customer is the one who's telling his friends how great you are.

In our 8 part series on Lifecycle marketing, we’ll be looking at what it takes to attract customers. We’ll examine some of the new ways businesses are attracting leads, and the steps you can take to follow up on them. Later on, we’ll talk about ways to make your site more user-friendly by adding E-commerce tools and an effective lead management strategy, enabling you to convert site visitors into sales.  

In an age of faceless internet transactions and computerized phone menus, is looking your customer in the eye before offering an old fashioned handshake a dying art? Some customers would argue it’s no longer needed, while others wish for the days when an old school touch was not only offered but expected.

Your customers come in both varieties, so how do you keep them coming back? 

At a minimum you’ll need a quality product that meets their needs at an affordable price, but that is just the beginning. 

Despite the demands of modern life, many old school touches are still quite effective. Your customers want to feel valued, they want to be catered to and they want doing business with you to be quick and convenient.

As with fine food, presentation is critical. It doesn’t matter how delicious the meal is if the food is haphazardly slopped onto the plate and slapped down in front of them. Presentation counts, even if your company motto is ‘down home cookin’ or ‘just like Mom used to make’. You’re not Mom, after all. You’re an entrepreneur trying to attract their business. 

“You have to be where your customers are.”

That phrase used to mean making sure you had a store in high traffic areas such as malls, or placing your billboard strategically close to a major highway.  It meant advertising during popular TV shows and in high profile magazines.  In the 21st century, your website is your store, your TV advertisement, your billboard and your magazine ad all rolled into one.  Being where your customers are now often means being online (but don’t discount offline strategies too).  Increasingly, they’re wherever their Smartphone or tablet is.

StatCounter, a Dublin-based web analytics company, reported that in December of 2013, the amount of worldwide Internet traffic from mobile users topped 20 percent for the first time.  As the capacities of mobile devices continue to expand, that number will likely increase. 

As online usage habits change, many companies are lagging behind in making their sites mobile friendly, much to the annoyance of Smartphone and tablet users.

Your new product is about to launch. You’ve done the research. You know the market. You know your customers. You’re ready to begin the online marketing campaign to drive customers in. Where exactly do you start?

Greg Head, Chief Marketing Officer of Infusionsoft recommends you start first with a positioning statement. This document is a detailed description of your potential market as well as an engaging picture of how you want potential customers to perceive your new brand. It’s an internal tool, rather than a set of promotional materials. It’s a roadmap for your marketing efforts, helping you keep your focus once the chaos of a marketing campaign starts.

The basic template for a positioning statement looks like this:

• For (target customers), (company) is the leading (category) that provides (unique benefit). Unlike (competitors), (company) does (unique differentiator).

It’s important to remember that the positioning statement isn’t a tagline, it’s a strategy. All marketing efforts must be aligned around that strategy.

“Infusionsoft is the leading sales and marketing software for true small businesses, designed to help them get organized, grow sales, and save time.”

Forget old-school, dried up advertising methods!

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and former television producer, believes he has a better way for you to spend your advertising or marketing budget.

His idea is quite simple: create great content and engage your audience. Then use that content to leverage sales. Content brands build relationships. Relationships build trust. Trust drives revenue. It’s an approach Sesame Street and Walt Disney have used for years to drive millions in product sales, and Andrew believes it can work for small businesses too.

He has a five-step approach that’s already producing some great results for small online businesses.

In a competitive market, sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference between merely satisfying a customer’s needs and thrilling them so much that they’re bragging to their friends about your products. In other words, you want them to say: “Wow!”

According to Scott Martineau, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Infusionsoft and author of Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a Small Business without Growing Crazy, there are four steps to wowing your customers.

• Step 1 - Create a culture of Wow! Customer service starts at ground zero. You need to talk about it from day one. You need to emphasize and teach it to your employees at every opportunity, and when you’re evaluating new employees, you should look for people who love to serve. Wherever possible add incentives for employees to go above and beyond. In a crowded field of competing companies, people will remember the small, personal touches far more than they will another advertising campaign.