Apr 19, 2013
No Comments
*Image courtesy of – hunter-ed.com
What You Aiming At?
One of the most common mistakes in marketing is the lack of definition of the conversion target or goal you want from the audience you have chosen. Articulating the goal and leading the target audience to it, greatly influences the effectiveness of any marketing effort.
However, depending on the disposition of the target prospects and where THEY are in their buying process, your goal or target should change to adapt to where they find themselves in that buying process.
Correctly dispositioning your target prospects into segments will quickly enable you to RE-DEFINE your funnel, calls to action and improve conversions that you didn’t know COULD happen because you were not speaking to each of the dispositions of your audience.
Dispositioning Your Funnel
As you think through your sales opportunities or the leads that you are CURRENTLY getting, think about the disposition with which they come into your funnel. How many of them are ready to purchase right now? How many are ready to see a proposal right now? How many of them are worth the time it takes to work through your discovery or initial evaluation or qualification process?
The idea with this exercise is to define HOW and with what disposition your prospects approach you or your company.
An example of this could be:
- Tire Kickers
- Researchers
- Buyers
- Desperation Shoppers
By thinking of your current leads and their dispositions, you will be able to start this process easily. The goal here is to realize the disposition segments of the audience that you are ignoring or avoiding because you are not speaking to them and you are not leading them to an action that makes sense for them.
As an example, it could be that you want them to request a consultation. The question you need to think about is “does everyone who visits my website or sees my marketing material want a consultation? Are they ready for that?”.
Your Current Model (Likely)
To the left, you can see the single target where you have great definition of exactly who are you speaking to and what you want them to do.
As you look at this model, the target represents the fact that we have only identified ONE disposition segment of your potential target prospect. Doesn’t that sound pathetic?
What you should do is identify your target prospect and then segment them into dispositions so that you provide messaging and pathways for them to begin engaging with you no matter where they are in the sales process.
Your New Model
To the right, you can see the difference between the previous model and this one developed. There are multiple targets and multiple sizes of targets. Each target represents a segment or disposition of your target prospect. By creating multiple segments and multiple calls to action and pathways for each target, they receive and better and faster experience through your website or marketing material and covert more leads. Those leads will be higher in the sales funnel or earlier in the sales process but they will nonetheless by LEADS and there will be many more of them than you have right now.
Parable for Dispositioning
Jill wants a new AC unit in her home but she is in the research phase of her pursuit. The current unit is NOT broken and she isn’t sure what brand and better yet what service provider she would feel comfortable with. As Jill searches online Jill finds that ABC Heating and Air is the #1 provider in Smallville California. She searches for more information about the brands they carry and the details of the products that they offer. Jill finds a lot of information about the company and the owner but not much about the specs of the unit that she might be in the market for. Jill doesn’t call the company because she really isn’t sure it will be worth her time at this point. She needs more information and she isn’t getting it so she keeps searching the web.
The next website Jill stumbles on is a simple websites with no pretense but includes content and a downloadable guide that explains in clear detail the process by which one should go about deciding which AC unit to buy. Not only is the content on the website very helpful and the guide exactly what Jill needed to navigate this important decision, it is also equipped with product specification sheets for download in PDF that Jill can print. Jill begins to feel confident that maybe this company will “get her” and be able to lead her down the path to her decision.
The moral of the story – Ask yourself, how many leads am I leaving on the table because I do not cater to or offer information to those in the research phase of making the purchase of my product/service?
Untapped Potential
Ask yourself, how many leads am I NOT garnering because I do not have an offer for each disposition in the funnel?
You cannot measure this by what you have now because you likely don’t have a call to action for those individuals right now and therefore, you can’t evaluate what you are not generating nor measuring. In this case, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Lets say you are getting 50 leads per month with your current lead generation funnel and you augmented the current funnel with another call to action that appealed to a different disposition segment of your funnel. Now, lets say that 30 days after redefining your funnel you were generating 100 leads. At that point, you would be the perfect guy to ask, “how many leads is it possible to generate from your site every month” and the answer is likely “I don’t know – the potential is unknown at this point – it is untapped.”
Re-Define Your Funnel
What is the traditional end game of marketing? To create leads. Traditionally, once a qualified lead is created the job is in the hands of your sales process and team.
Instead of marketing your products/services, you should consider marketing to the person you want to attract by offering information to help them facilitate their decision in buying what you offer. A free information ‘widget’ (report, cd, dvd, checklist, sample, etc.) specifically created to be irresistible only to that person, is often the purest form of lead generation and will put many more people in your sales funnel.
Use the mock example of:
- Tire Kickers
- Researchers
- Buyers
- Desperation Shoppers
After you consider the dispositions of YOUR prospects, then define and optimize your funnel with the right data and metrics and are on your way to converting a greater amount of leads, inside of a more robust sales funnel with a smarter marketing process.
Use Robust Reporting
The only way to experience RESULTS with this system and accomplish the task of segmenting the funnel by disposition and creating new calls to action is to MEASURE and TRACK the visits, clicks, calls goals and actions.
All of these measuring activities are available in Innovation Simple’s Robust Reports program which is free to all managed campaigns. Many Innovation Simple services now include Robust Reports for free even without a managed campaign. Call and talk to our strategy team in Salt Lake for more information at – 801-590-4243.