Do you ever feel like you’re talking about vanilla ice cream in a rainbow sherbet world? Do you wonder why your phone isn’t ringing off the hook when you’ve paid a consultant for expensive SEO tactics?
The answers to these questions could be simpler than you think: you have at least one Marketing Mismatch, and that’s exactly what our VP of Sales & Marketing, Margaret Johnson, brought to light in our most recent web event. Watch the video below to dive in with Margaret, investigate the problematic Marketing Mismatches, and learn the simple fixes to start curing each of them today.
As you’ll hear, the first place to really dive-in and critique your marketing strategy is by taking a good look at your website. For most marketers, the website is, after all, the first place leads come to engage with you, right?
So… What Does Your Website Say?
How much does your website talk about your company? Is it over 50%? 60%? 75%?! Does it talk about the products and services you offer, or the experience and credentials of your team? If you’re trying to engage the people who come to your site by talking about yourself, it’s not going to work.
What people want to know is what you can do for them – how your products and/or services will change their lives. While most websites are written in a third-person remote voice, you will stand out by being more conversational, more approachable, and more… dare I say, human. Change the voice of your website to create an emotional connection that will draw people in and make them want to continue communicating with you.
What About Your Calls-to-Action (CTAs)?
Do you have a “subscribe to our blog†button on the right sidebar of your site? How about a “sign up for our newsletter� Let me ask you a better question, how are they working out for you? Look at the number of leads you’re getting from these CTAs. Now subtract the spam. I’m guessing the number of real leads that come from these CTAs is around half of a percent of your website visitors – and maybe way less than even that scary number.
Think of how often you see those calls-to-action on websites you visit. Do you ever click on them? Most people don’t, for many reasons. They don’t want to get tackled by salespeople certainly tops the list, but the biggest reason people don’t click on those “subscribe†buttons is that there is no immediate apparent value to doing so.
That’s right, creating value is the most important thing you can do – and it needs to be valuable to your audience, not to you. Create content that will guide your leads, instead of something that will fill their inbox with irrelevant emails, and they will be enticed to exchange their email address to read what you have to say. Remember that the whole purpose of creating these CTAs is to turn attracted visitors into new leads for your business.
And How About Those Lead Capture Forms?
Those forms, those gates on your content, what we call Lead Capture Forms, should match the level of value you are providing. Really, please don’t even think about putting ten required fields in a lead capture form for a white paper download. First of all, this creates a huge barrier to conversion, and, secondly, more than 90% of the people who fill it out will fill it out with fake information – which, in some ways, can be worse than no lead at all. For a paper, consider only asking for a first name and email address. Forget about asking for their address, city, state, zip code, and job title. What are you going to do with that information anyways? A CTA download doesn’t necessarily mean someone is sales-ready, it just means they are interested in the information you have, and want to learn more. By the way, a lead capture form is NEVER intended to be a method for sales qualifying. It’s just a data collection form.
Be happy that people are downloading your content, and, once you have their email addresses, start nurturing them through their journey (and through your process). Let them come back for more information, so you can start to engage with them, and, as their interest level increases (as demonstrated by their behavior in response to your content), you can offer increasingly pinpointed content – and at the same time, ask for more information on your lead capture form.
Watch the replay to learn even more about mismatches – including the incredibly important email mismatch. Your marketing strategy holds many opportunities for mismatches, and likewise, many opportunities for synergy with your audience.
Listen to what your prospects are saying and have a strategy in place to follow-up with the people who want to convert. Overall, be very conscious of potential mismatches, and fix them before they torpedo your results.
