Every business wants more leads and prospects. But, there’s a crucial difference between prospects with potential interest and prospects with the best potential.
We tend to cast a wide net when targeting, leading to minimal results and wasted time. Marketing tactics of all kinds are more successful when directed towards those prospects with the highest likelihood to close, so take time now to create a list of your “dream targets.”
Give yourself a head start on identifying and evaluating your best customers with these common questions!
Who are they?
We all have the opportunity to define our ideal customer profile. You may define that profile by demographic traits, like annual revenue and employee count. Or, geography might play a big role in making a customer a good fit. Perhaps what you’re selling requires a really specific need, harder to determine, but easier to target. Think about WHY your best customers benefit from your product or service... and then categorize them as best you can.
Regardless of what characteristics define your dream customer, you can use these criteria to find and target your most optimal prospects.
Where can they be found?
Once you’ve identified your dream customers – whether there are 10 or 1000 – you now need to find them! Are they active on social media? If so, which platforms? What kind of content do they consume? Are they more likely to read or watch a video? Maybe they’re not online… what types of events do they attend? What industry publications do they read? Again, take a look at your existing customer base. If you’ve built your list of dream customers based on those characteristics, it’s likely they engage in similar ways. Once you know where to find these people, you’ll be one step closer to knowing how to target them effectively.
How will you market to them?
You’ve done the research. You’ve found your dream customers online and in real life. What’s next? It’s time to develop a strategy to grab their attention. Personalizing each prospect’s “marketing experience” is going to be the golden key.
Don’t settle on one approach. Whether you target them on social platforms, or with direct mail pieces, be sure to nurture them consistently and provide value. Don’t make every touch a sales pitch or they’ll go cold before you have a chance to make an impact. Be specific with who you target and stay relevant. With the rapid boom of modern technology and spread of social media, prospects know what they want and expect personalized engagement.
Because prospects are researching independently more than ever, they are often way out ahead of the sales team in their buying cycle. Capitalize on the opportunity to give them the content you want them to consume! Finally, just like the rest of your business, your ideal customer may evolve over time. Be sure to reevaluate your dream customer profile occasionally.
How will you keep track of everything?
With a comprehensive CRM solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can track your marketing activities and engage with your prospects on a personal level, anticipating their wishes and surprising them with your intimate knowledge of what they need and why. You can watch their behaviors online, see how they’re engaging with your brand, and harness that information to improve your approach.
You might like to sell your product or service to just about anyone, but marketing dollars only go so far. You’ll get more bites from the right prospects when you build your marketing campaigns on those that are most likely to benefit from you’re offering. At SYNACT, we know that this kind of planning is key to success in sales, so we use Microsoft Dynamics 365. D365 centralizes all interactions with customers and prospects, making it easier than ever to develop our dream prospects.
How will you do more with less this year?