When you operate out of a physical store or office, you’re physically there to welcome clients and customers, to sell, and to nurture your relationships.
When you work virtually, it’s easy to become detached from the personal touches, which can in turn have a negative impact on your business relationships, productivity, and sales.
In this article, you’ll discover 7 marketing tips specifically for your virtual business that will help you get inside the minds of your customers, improve your processes, and increase your bottom line.
Virtual Marketing Tip #1 – There Are Humans Behind Your Numbers
One of the “dangers” of working in a virtual environment is that we tend to forget that every “visitor” to our website, or “statistic” in our business dashboard isn’t just a number. Each and every single one of them is a real human with their own secrets, wounds, and hopes.
When you operate with this in mind, it leads you to want to better understand every person who visits your site. You remember to communicate to them as individuals. And when you talk to them as people, they respond like people.
When I’m driving on the road, or flying in a plane, I like to look at all the people around me. They’re all going somewhere in their life for different reasons. They each live in their own little world, where they view their journey and destination as the most important thing that is happening in that moment. Because for them, it is.
By setting up marketing processes and communication that shows people you understand their unique world and perspective, you can greatly increase your sales.
Virtual Marketing Tip # 2 – Get Customers To Come To You
Marketing and sales isn’t about getting your website online, designing your brand, or even getting your name out. It’s about getting customers. It’s as simple, and complicated, as that. Unlike having a job, the name of the game in the virtual business world isn’t about showing up for work and getting a paycheck. It’s about doing what it takes to get customers.
My good friend Dean Jackson likes to draw the distinction. He says direct response marketing, which is marketing that asks customers to respond, is not about getting your name out there. It’s about getting their name in here. In other words, you get them to come to you by joining your interest list, contacting you on social media or your website, and requesting something from you in exchange for their contact information.
Peter Drucker said that business is really about 2 things:
- Marketing
- Innovation
Marketing is getting your customers to find you and give you money in exchange for your products and services. Innovation is creating the products and services that they want and figuring out how to distribute them to those people.
Virtual Marketing Tip # 3 — Figure Out What Drives Your Customers
You must discover what causes your Prospective Customer to take action. The best way to do this is live and in-person. There are certain triggers that cause people to respond in certain ways, including to make the choice to buy from you. Just like in the animal kingdom, you usually will find that survival, sex, and social status fuel most of the decision making and behavior of a person.
In business, we need to remember this – there’s more going on than meets the eye, and it almost all goes back to basic drives and motives. Using these deep drivers, you realize there is one appeal that will work better to sell your product or service than another appeal.
Your job is to find it.
Virtual Marketing Tip # 4 — Set Up Your Sales Conversion Process
After you’ve talked to customers live on the telephone, on video chat, or in person, move the (now automated) conversation to a live chat box on your website. Once you’ve mastered that, move to email. Put everything you’ve learned into templates, and have those templates address all their objections, and fears, and explain the benefits of your product.
One of the great things about working virtually is that you can continually collect vital distinctions that occur during your sales conversations, and then later incorporate them into an automated process.
Virtual Marketing Tip #5 – Automate Your Sales Process
Once you’ve discovered and refined the sales process, only then should you “automate” it. It makes sense; once you’ve figured out how to do it yourself “manually,” only then can you create a machine to duplicate yourself.
At that point, you can think about using things like autoresponders, which is a sequence of email communications that someone can get after they come to your website.
Virtual Marketing Tip #6 – Keep It Personal
Ultimately, your objective is to script out and automate the “relationship building” process with your customers, from the first “hello” all the way to the point where they trust you enough to buy your product.
Imagine going to the door of one of your customers. Once you’ve scripted out how a real interaction would go, automate it. The first time you “meet,” they’ll need to know who you are, some things about you to build trust and credibility, and that your product can solve their problem and get them the results they’re looking for. They’ll have specific objections you’ll want to address as well.
As you’re doing this, always talk to your prospect one-to-one, realizing that each is an individual human with individual human needs. Write in a casual, upbeat, friendly, and trusting tone.
The more personalized your communication is, the better this typically works.
Virtual Marketing Tip # 7 – Create & Increase Your “Stick”
Give your customers instant access to SOMETHING as soon as they purchase, and engage them – to increase “stick.” Stick means they keep your product and don’t ask for a refund. Many people buy something thinking they’ll return it if they don’t like it. Often, the difference between a person returning or not is the simple question of whether or not you can get them to actually use your product.
Let’s look at an example… Imagine you’re selling adventure travel online. When someone purchases your travel package, email them right away and say, “I made a video for you that gives you tips to help you get the most out of your upcoming adventure…”
Make it fun and engaging. Get them doing stuff. It can make a huge difference in your stick rate, and your re-purchase rate. If they never “get into” your product in the first place, how will they ever know it’s good and that they should come back and buy even more stuff from you?
Those are my 7 Virtual Marketing Tips to help you bring the personal touch back into the virtual world so you can up your digital game, gain more customers, and keep them coming back for more.
To learn more marketing tips, and the specific actions you can start taking now, sign up for our webinar, Marketing Step by Step.
Click Here To Reserve Your Spot
You’re going to learn:
- How to attract customers and persuade them to buy ethically so you feel good about what you’re doing and proud of what you’re selling.
- The 12 key marketing mindsets that automatically reset your thinking to create world class marketing.
- How to pinpoint the exact emotional hot button motivator that is driving your customer to take action.
- How to use this emotional motivator in every part of your marketing from beginning to end and increase the sales of every marketing campaign you run. (In other words, you learn how to align all of your marketing around your hot button motivator.)
- How to construct a customer avatar so you can speak directly to your prospect of customer in a way that is uniquely persuasive and motivating. (You’ve probably heard the term, ‘Customer avatar’. I’m the one that came up with that term. I originally taught it in my first ‘Altitude Training Program’. It’s come a long way since. You learn the entire methodology here inside of Marketing Step By Step…)
- How to use education to build trust and rapport with your customers and teach them why they need to buy. (You’ll notice in this article, what I’ve done is I’ve educated you. I’ve taught you how to do it, and this is one of the most persuasive things you can do.)
- How to create a winning name for your business, your product or your service that’s impossible to forget. (We’re well-known for creating very memorable names for our products and our businesses, and I’ll show you the systems that I use to do that.)
- And much more…
Click Here To Reserve Your Spot