Trusting common sense will usually be the right course of action.
Paul Hunt is a marketing consultant
For those of you have followed my witterings over the last year (thank you Robyn Hall for giving me the opportunity to use this forum), you’ll know that I like to keep things simple.
Marketing isn’t particularly difficult, despite many trying to make it so and trusting common sense will usually be the right course of action. I am constantly astounded by the analysis paralysis that can affect the smallest of decisions in some businesses, when it would make better sense to undertake a small and controlled test and see what happens.
Another area I am continually looking at for businesses is ‘filling the hopper’, which means driving leads into a business which will ultimately lead to a new broker or customer submitting a case, a licence being bought etc.
However, despite trying to get the hopper full can be a time consuming and often expensive exercise, if a little more thought was given to what happens when that first contact is made by the broker/customer then less needs to come into the top to get the same end results.
Common sense eh?
However, this is where it can get a little complicated, as if you’ve filled the hopper with the wrong types of leads or those of a poor quality, then nothing will rectify this issue when they call.
Whether you are selling directly to consumers or to a B2B audience, they expect you to treat them as though they are the most important people in the world at that moment they make contact.
Working in estate agency, I have seen far too often instances where branches deal with telephone calls immediately but deprioritise emails, no surprise that their end conversion rate for email leads is lower than phone leads. Therefore, they encourage their marketing to get more phone leads because of this, not realising that their process ensures this is the root cause not the medium of where the lead comes from.
For B2B businesses, because the volume of customers is lower, then identifying between regular and new customers is fundamental (I’ve seen businesses use different VGN phone numbers to help identify this), as different processes can be applied. I am guilty of over using the word ‘process’, but unless you give it some thought and your team know what to do, how can you be confident that things will improve?
Often new customers need handholding, but the fact that they’ve made contact with you is a massive step and it is now up to you to deliver. Think about how you do this and put a plan in action – we all deserve to be treated well and if we are, there is usually a return visit.
