Bring them along the buyer’s journey. Nurture their value.

Every considered purchase requires multiple touch points with multiple messages, in a sequence that can stretch out over a sales cycle to test your marketing patience. The higher the ticket, the more complex the sale.

The more complex the sale, the more vital it is to nurture the human beings in the pipeline. Vague insights into a “persona” won’t cut it. If it seems daunting to drill down to the unique needs of Prospect A or Prospect B, rest assured that marketing automation does a lot of the work, feeding wanted information in a timely fashion, analyzing interest, needs and insight. We call it automated for a reason.

As we’ve seen, step one is to identify them, something marketing automation can do for you. Let’s look at step two, where measurable tactics kick in.

Clear and actionable metrics help you load the pipeline. Hard numbers give you feedback to continually optimize campaigns. Knowing where sales begin (first point of contact) is every bit as useful as that immediate-cause last point of contact. Where does success come from? Let user behavior direct your budget into the high ROI tactics, and cut the ads or campaigns or emails or whatever that leads only to wheel-spinning. (You know, like cold calling.)

But at the starting point of the journey, they’re still suspects, not prospects. We need to learn more.

Dynamic forms begin to capture information that leads you to a more complete and precise understanding of the suspect-turned-prospect. There’s an art to this science, by the way: how can you best get your web visitors to actually provide useful information on forms?

Which makes us ready to discuss MA103: Sales comes from insight