Your buyers have changed, here's how you can attract them.

written by Anastasia RamsayFeb 13, 2018 9:00:00 AM

You may have noticed that the traditional methods of gaining your customers attention (and business!) are failing to pull in the results they used to. To combat this, HubSpot developed the Inbound Methodology, focused on delivering value to your customers to attract them, and pull them through the buyers journey. This pairs nicely with our own belief in providing value up-front, so naturally we have whole-heartedly adopted this ideology into our online presence!


 

buyers-journey.pngHubspot Inbound Methology

 

The world wide web has bought many advantages to businesses, one of those being the ability to get your message out there and in front of potential customers.  

However, as we have touched on before, consumers are now searching for the answers to their pain points online, and since this is where their attention is, those who are meeting their consumers there are ultimately winning their business.  

For those of you just starting to grow your business online, you may be put off by the number of businesses vying for your customers attention, so we want to give you our top tips to cutting through the 'noise' and being heard by your buyers. 

In our last post discussing online growthwe showed you the foundational steps of unlocking your buyer persona(s) and value proposition(s). In this post we build on this, and and show you how to draw them in. 

 

1. Provide value upfront. 

An alternative way to look at this, is to focus on helping your buyers solve a problem, or by providing a solution to their pain points. The key to doing this effectively is not to insert a 'catch', or a product pitch at the end. This is not about selling your products or services, it's about providing value through content using mediums that are attractive to your target customer.

So how do you know what problems and pains your buyers are having? You listen, and watch. For those who are still unsure, here are three tactics we use to uncover these:

     a) Ask your sales team/account managers the common issues or pains prospective customers (or clients)               have

     b) Ask customers (you have a close relationship with) their problems and pain points

     c) No doubt there will be online groups on various platforms where your buyers hang out and ask                          questions. Find them and make notes on common questions or themes you can answer. 

We are also inspired by common questions/themes we are being asked, by both clients and peers, and address these via the appropriate medium. For our buyers, we communicate with them through both our blog posts and Lancom TV

By becoming a thought leader, and/or trusted advisor to your reader (by your willingness to educate), you will become top of mind when they are in the market for your offering, or when a colleague is asking for recommendations.  

 

2. Give them the next step to engage. 

Though we don't recommend including a sales pitch when providing your solutions, it's important to include a natural next step for your audience to engage with you further at the end. Be it by downloading more (valuable) content on the topic, or starting a conversation with you.  

After providing solutions for a while we found common themes in the topic's we were addressing. In response, we have penned numerous eBooks and guides to give further help, and thus even more value. 

As you can probably guess, we them give these away – for free, at the end of relevant articles.  

Apart from providing more value, these subsequent steps move your buyers further down the buyers journey, with you. 

 

3. Use data to provide a seamless experience. 

Assuming you have the appropriate software in place, the beauty of using digital channels is the ability to track and gather information. We love HubSpot, however there are many more great applications on offer, such as Marketo. The metrics you gather using these tools allows you to guage your most popular (or unpopular) content, which in turn will help you to focus your efforts on what your buyers find most relevant.

It also gives you the insights you need to provide your buyer with a seamless online-offline experience. 

When your buyer is ready to talk, you can expect to have a plethora of information attached to their contact details, such as what pages they've looked at, the pieces of content they have downloaded etc. All of this information gives you clues as to what they are looking for, and gives you the opportunity to provide them with a tailored, seamless conversation from online to offline.  

 

...Now it's your turn to put it into action! 

If you would like to learn more of our tips on how you can increase your online presence, we have put together everything we have learnt on our journey into an ebook which you can download here.  

 New Call-to-action

 

Picture of Anastasia Ramsay

About Anastasia Ramsay

Anastasia has graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Commerce/Bachelor of Science Conjoint, before starting her career at Lancom. A big believer of customer-driven initiatives, Anna has joined our team to enhance our Digital Marketing capabilities. She loves rising to a challenge, learning and is driven by self-improvement.