Will my campaign work? How’s your batting average?

TRYING to persuade prospective customers to take the leap of faith and make a first purchase is the hardest task for marketers.

You need to treat the business problem of first purchase differently from the second, third, high-ticket and more complex ones.

A dedicated campaign for first purchase is needed in most cases.

We know that marketing can solve these problems or business bottlenecks with campaigns.

But certain fundamental steps must be in place or the campaign cannot work. You must have:

1. Traffic source (s)
2. Offer (s)
3. Content (optional)
4. Community (optional)

The first two are the most important: you’ve got to have traffic and an offer.

An offer is what you want prospective customers to do to provide value to the business and then get value back from the business.

You could create an offer which is a piece of content – watch, read or listen to this.

Or it could be something we want them to opt in for – give some contact information, download a  report/cheat sheet, or buy a subscription/one-off purchase.

Then you have to have traffic – something that is never a problem finding online. Any amount can be purchased RIGHT NOW through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin or TikTok, for example.

Russ says this may sound obvious but so many people in business don’t have an offer that they know works and is selling to their traffic sources.

“There’s so many times I see people walking around saying that they have a business but I say, ‘So what’s your offer?’ and they don’t have an offer. They say, ‘Oh, I’m a podcaster’. I say, ‘OK. You’re a podcaster. That’s how you’re getting your traffic. You’re getting some attention. What’s your offer? What do you sell?’ And there’s no answer to that.”

So you must have traffic plus an offer and, very often, you also need content – maybe an article, demonstration of a product or customer story you’re going to show the prospective customer.

When the marketing team goes into a room to solve any business problem – let’s say lead generation – by the time they come out they must have answered these questions:

1. What’s the offer?
2. How are we going to get traffic to it?
3. Did we need any content to be produced?
4. Do we need to build some community here to assist this campaign – possibly through a Facebook group?

If we come out of the room with answers to what we are going to offer people and how we are going to get eyeballs on it, we can solve any problem that a business has when it comes to growth.

Let’s look at an actual campaign to give an idea of how the best marketers work.

Honest company is an e-commerce business.

The company CEO comes to you and says there’s a problem with first purchase.

You need to create a campaign specifically designed to drive prospective customers, who are aware of the products, to make their first purchase.

So what’s the offer: 25% off your first order offer.

Google Ads can be used to drive the traffic.

And all you need for this is some email copy and creative.

Here’s how this campaign functions in the wild.

If prospective customers go on to Google and type in “buy organic diapers”, they see that Google Ad – the traffic source.

 

They click on the ad and it takes them into what is called a squeeze page: in other words, prospective customers are being “squeezed” to give their contact details.

No other calls to action appear on this page.

No other links are on this page except perhaps one at the end to the privacy policy.

No other distractions are on this page.

Prospective customers are being persuaded to opt in to become a lead.

Some percentage of people who Google “buy diapers” are going to click on the ad. Some percentage of those will opt in. Some are going to leave the page.

Those who opt in will receive an email. This is where the content is needed for this campaign: an offer of 25% off your first order, expires tomorrow, use this code, click here.

Some percentage of people are going to activate into a first purchase.

As a marketer, you will measure all of those percentages to gauge the success of the campaign.

Campaigns don’t always work. The better your batting average is, the better the marketer you are.

Assuming that the campaign does work, you have solved a business problem, freed up a bottleneck and allowed for greater business growth.

 

Blog Post created from Russ Henneberry’s DMDU Connect LIVE 2020 Presentation.

If you would like to watch the full presentation, CLICK HERE and start your FREE 7 Day Trial.