Lead magnets…..different medium….different possibilities

campaign, digital, lead generation, Marketing, Sales

Marketing is applied psychology. So you need to figure out the strengths of each medium and blend it with human psychology to help you get leads.

In my earlier posts I have written about different physical and electronic media for generating leads. Today we will limit to seeing how you can utilize electronic media.

One of the key things about Google (including YouTube) paid search and to some extent Facebook paid search is the fact that if you can master them, you can can have the equivalent of thousands of sales people working for you, whenever someone is searching for something similar to what you offer.

So while you might show up because of the PPC, how do you ensure that people click on your advertisement first and then leave their email id, so that you can keep marketing to them in the future.

This is where the challenge starts. With PPC, if you have some smart people, you can get your advertisement to show up at a reasonable cost. But there’s no point if they come to your site and leave without giving you their email address. Then your advertisement has been wasted.

One simple way which I have tested after listening to Joe Polish and Dean Jackson on thir Ilovemarketing.com podcast is offering relevant reports. Why this works is that human beings are gatherers/ collectors. So when you are offering something which the person can collect right now and consume whenever they want, they tend to give their email ids.

Right now I have seen that offering this lead magnet using this psychology has worked on getting about 10 email ids a week. I am now working on seeing how to scale it up to see if I can take it to a about a hundred a week….Will keep you posted.

I would suggest mean time if you’ll can also try and give me feedback, in the comments section below, on your success or failure with this.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

If you know how to sell apples …. can you also sell oranges

Customer Delight, Sales

I pride myself on the idea of being able to sell different things. I have sold things from industrial automation items to computers, to embedded devices which get into cars, all the way into selling different kinds of services.

The fundamental principle behind my confidence was the fact that if I know how to sell, then I can sell anything. Which brings us to the topic – when I am looking for someone for a specific role, to hire from outside, then why do I forget this principle. When I am looking for people to join our company from outside then I always ask for specific domain knowledge in selling. So my HR had this question, why do I discriminate.

When I am doing an internal transfer of resources, I don’t mind experimenting and letting people move from selling apples to selling oranges. That’s because, I know the capabilities of the person since they have worked in my team and I know that they will be able to adapt and learn about the new environment. Here there’s only one variable which I am addressing – the ability of the person to learn things about oranges and identifying people to sell oranges. I have had people whom I have moved from HR into Marketing because they had the drive to learn new things and explore.

When I am taking someone from outside, the person is completely unknown to me. Therefore I prefer to know, that in the domain that I want, that person has sold things. There are other variables about the new person which I don’t know. Like will the person be able to adjust to our culture, is she really in a position to deliver whatever she has written in the resume etc. Managing so many variables, including trying to give them new domain expertise is extremely time consuming. So to ensure that people become productive in the least amount of time, I would like to get people with domain expertise, when I am recruiting someone.

Coming back to where we started, if you know the psychology of selling, you can sell any product. You may take time to learn how the new product has to be positioned , what are the pain points that need to be identified etc. But once you know those, you can easily move from selling apples to selling oranges. The key aspect is knowing the psychology of helping a customer identify the problem, helping them solve the problem and delighting them.

There are other dynamics like selling cycles that you need to adapt to, but I have known people who were selling bicycle tyres to retailers get into successfully sell computers to corporates and some one selling sugar, get into selling computers.

So good sales people can sell what you give them to sell – apples or oranges.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market – by pain points

B2B, Marketing, segmentation, single target market

I have written about identifying different niches in the market based on the usage. Today’s post will be a little longer than the usual posts because I will showcase two clear applications with examples.

For example maybe your product or service can be targeted at the replacement market or it could be targeted at the OEM market. if you are a tyre manufacturer you can get specialised by cars, two wheelers, trucks, off road etc.Then you can device another niching strategy based on going to the OEMs who manufacture these products. These manufacturers would buy in bulk. Here you don’t need to advertise in the mass market. You need to be closely aligned with the OEM so that when they design new products, they consider your tyres. This is a B2B play.

On the other hand another strategy could be targeting the replacement market. Now you could have a B2C strategy where you are targeting individuals who need to replace their tyres in their old vehicles. To be able to get mind share you will need to advertise rigorously to ensure that you stay top of the mind when someone needs to replace their tyres. On the other hand you could target fleet owners who have to maintain a large fleet. These would be B2B buyers and the method of targeting them would be completely different.

Today I came across another way to look at the idea of a single target market. Its by identifying the pain and retooling the product slightly or retooling the packaging. A very common example of this is the concept of sachets for shampoos which got pioneered in India by the FMCG companies. About 20 years back there was a company in south India, which made shampoos, which did not have a brand as well known as the Uniilevers or the P&G. They recognised the fact that poor ladies in India wanted to wash their hair (typically long hair) but did not have the budget to buy a big bottle of shampoo. Other than the budget they did not have the place to keep the bottle after taking bath because they would take bath in public washrooms.

They came out with a plastic sachet of the shampoo at a cost of Rupee 1/- (about 2 cents at that time) with just enough shampoo for one wash for the ladies. This suddenly became a rage and the volumes of this company grew dramatically. Soon all the MNCs had to copy the idea and come out with equivalent sachets for their shampoos.

Now while the original plan was for the single target as ladies who could not afford the full bottle, another segment which had pain was travelling salesmen who could not carry a bottle of shampoo with them while they were on tours. A lot of the hotels they stayed in did not provide for shampoos. So this became another market that these companies started targeting.

So you could even see the resistance points to the consumption of your product and find the pain in the market to penetrate another segment.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

What would you like to read about

Uncategorized

Today I have a very small request – I have written about various topics. But they have all been what I thought about writing.

Is there something which you would like me to write about. Are there any marketing related challenges that you face that I could possibly help with.

Pls let me know in the comments section below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!