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The Biggest Mistake Almost Every Marketer Makes

The 3 funnel Steps in the Customer Journey: 1.    Attract (Top): 5-10 contacts over 20 days to 6 months 2.    Engage (Middle): 5-10 contacts over 90 days 3.    Acquire (Bottom): 2-5 contacts to decide, or delay

If you want to seriously grow your  marketing you will need a tested, well thought out plan. This blog serves as the framework for your plan.

Simply work your way through Step 1 – Attract to Step 3 — Acquire, and fill in the information for your company.

When you complete this plan, you’ll have a guide showing you:

• Who your target audience will be, and 3 specific Personas to focus on;
• How you’ll reach them – what keywords and social channels work;
• How you’ll get them to purchase (and how long it takes);
• What you’ll do to make them customers and keep purchasing year after year.

Skipping any part of this 3-step marketing plan will seriously impact your ability to create customers. Maybe you’ll follow your boss’s whim, throwing money at AdWords with conversion to customer rates that don’t match your results, because the audience doesn’t know you and isn’t ready to buy right now!

Marketing is not rocket science, but it is a simple science:

1. Find an easily reachable audience; scientists online are easily reachable with content marketing.
2. Target them when they are ready to buy; offering products and services into life science companies can take 6 months to purchase, to several years if an academic institution is involved.
3. Multi-step marketing – from first contact to eventual purchase – relies on continual building of content to create leads, SEO power, social relevance, custom audiences, and customers.

The Plan begins and continues with content marketing; if you don’t do it, research who is doing it. Leverage content research to deeply understand your competition and learn how to differentiate yourself. But if you don’t create content, you won’t be found on search or social media or anywhere scientists look to before purchasing.

For the past 5 years, marketing has revealed the Customer Journey, from first contact to becoming a customer, takes 90 Days to over a year to close. That means that your target audience is not waiting to buy, or even requesting quotes and demos because they are interested now.

They are figuring things out, like efficient scientists. You are selling them early, which is not efficient. You need to gain their trust and guide them because only 1 out of 3 people in your funnel are even ready to purchase, or to move the purchase inside their organization to get approvals.

Here’s the way to do it, the scientific way, that begins with people.

Before You Begin, Know Your Audience

The 3 Prime Personas for your Company

Instead of treating your target audience as one person, and designing one message, break them down into 3 specific types of people – Personas  –  you are targeting.

Focus on 3 personas to begin; know their Title, role in the company, and where the company is located to personalize the lead process. By simply personalizing you have a powerful way to define your audience, and find the best way to reach them.

• The goal is to target 1-3 active players involved, and connect with a few people within the company.  Instead of sending one mass message, adapt the subject line, intro sentence, and last sentence into specific message triggers for that person’s role within the company via email and phone.

• The decision maker for medium to larger purchases varies, with smaller companies having a few people involved, to larger companies with managers, VPs, and CEO’s signing off, along with HR. Know your audience.

• Content marketing is the way to reach all decision makers, peers, and influencers. Within each company, often a single person makes the decision, with a small network of 3-5 people helping them.

Join as we simplify this process for companies large and small.

We want to target 4 Levels of leads:

1. Raw Leads, emails and first contacts without details.
2. Qualified Leads, reviewed and followed up for phone calls from Sales.
3. Actual Phone or in Person Meeting, and
4. Closes: each will be assigned a Value.

Initial Metrics to Measure Success

• Conversion to Raw Lead; what percentage of visitors convert to leads?
• Cost Per Raw Leads – value search traffic on AdWords Cost Per Click (CPC), even if you are only doing content marketing through organic search. This gives you a value to your traffic.
• Conversion rate – Raw Leads to Qualified. What percent are ready to purchase? What do you do with the rest who aren’t ready?
• Cost Per Qualified Leads – before the first call
• Cost Per Phone or in Person Meeting – do they show up?
• Scientist’s Journey; how long does it take to close? How can you accelerate?

Advertising Costs: CPC for remarketing ads with a 6-12 window for conversion