What worries us all in the business world - besides the Coronavirus - is how to bring more business opportunities to our company, and how to turn these prospects into customers. It's as simple as that.
At mbudo, we are judge and jury. We work on strategies that generate leads for our clients and we also follow the same recruitment strategy for ourselves. In this article, I am going to define my 5 fundamental steps for successfully generating online business opportunities.
1. Identify the Target Audience
Easy, right? Our target audience is who we want to sell to, who our buyers are. We need to consider the kinds of companies, departments, positions, and job titles. Be careful - keep in mind that you should focus not only on the decision makers but also on the "influencers" in the buying process. In Inbound Marketing, we call these people our Buyer Personas.
2. Message and Content
Once we know who we are talking to, we have to think about what to say. Here we have to do a "match up" between our products and/or services and each of our Buyer Personas. We also have to identify where they are at in the Buyer's Journey. We will talk about the Buyer's Journey, also called the Customer Journey, below.
3. Buyer's Journey
Simply put, this is the journey that our prospective customer takes from the moment they learn about us until they finally make a purchase. Obviously, we cannot talk the same way to those leads who don't yet know us as to those who are about to buy from us. You have to know how to take them through the famous Marketing funnel until they are convinced that you are their perfect option.
4. Channels
At this point, we know the buyer, the message, and the stage of the Customer Journey. Now, we only have to decide which channels we will use to reach our audience. Twitter, LinkedIn, email marketing, WhatsApp, webinars, etc. Each channel, persona, and stage of the Buyer's Journey has its own appropriate content formats, and we must adapt our strategy around these differing formats. Videos, Infographics, Ebooks, Podcasts...you can go as far as your imagination takes you.
5. Design, Implement, and Measure
Although we have already seen everything we must do, we must first design the strategy we will follow to generate these online business opportunities, implement our strategy by distributing tactical actions over time, and measure results. We need enough time to plan and put everything into action, while also leaving time to react and pivot when necessary.
Medium-term strategies can be combined with direct response strategies that work in a matter of weeks. This is actually the ideal combination for the online environment. What else do we need? A good Marketing Automation tool and a team that is, above all, experts in generating business online.
David Romero
David has more than 20 years of experience directing Marketing teams in national and multinational companies. He has over 10 years of experience implementing Inbound Marketing strategies with a commercial focus for B2B companies. His motto is: always be learning.