I am officially retiring acSellerant’s tagline – “Relevant and useful information builds trust. Trust sells.” When I first came up with that slogan, I was on a mission to convince B2B companies that:
- traditional, interruptive advertising was no longer effective, and
- traditional presales activities (educating prospects about your solutions) had been replaced by Google.
Largely due to the efforts of others, like Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett; and to the overwhelming evidence in the market place, my prospects now understand #1 and 2 above. So what’s next?
The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum
We all agree that to engage prospects we need to produce and publish relevant, useful, interesting and valuable content. You can’t just put it out there anymore, though. There’s too much competition for peoples’ attention.
We need to connect the content to our prospects. That means we have to deliver it to the online places where they hang out. That might be at industry-related websites like MSPmentor, or on special interest groups within Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Once you’ve set your content at the feet of the people it was developed for, if you’ve made the content compelling enough, your prospects connect with you. You’ve piqued their interest and they want to learn more… or they want to voice their opinion. They will comment on a blog post, in your online discussion, or they’ll email you.
Conversation ensues. When a dialogue is created between you and your prospects, ideas are exchanged. This is the time to listen carefully. It’s a golden opportunity to find out exactly what prospects want. Let them tell you. If they feel they’ve been heard, trust is built.
Once they understand that you truly have their best interest at heart, the conversation will move from online to phone, and then face to face, as the topics move from features and benefits, to pricing, and to terms and conditions. The prospect converts into a customer. You close a profitable deal without selling anything.
Tags: b2b, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, LinkedIn, MSP, return on influence, trusted advisor
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Hi Bob -
Great article, and I agree that we have to think beyond Content, to include Conversation. People don’t buy from Content, they buy from People — and they like to feel that they know them. Social Media is great for that, since you can reveal your passion, and that’s what reaches out to people on the other end of the net, sitting in front of their flat screens and laptops. I think that it is good to stitch the process right into a CRM — market leaders like well-known SalesForce.com, and lesser known BatchBook (integrates social media well) facilitate this with web forms you embed in your sites.
And, one final important component in the cycle, which is implied by Conversions – Visitor Behavior Optimization. When you’re optimizing, it’s not the “site” you optimize, but how your visitors think about your products and services.
- Scott
WebFadds.com – *Optimize *Connect *Convert
Scott,
I’m having trouble understanding that last bit. Could you explain Visitor Behavior Optimization a bit more?
Thanks,
Bob