One challenge of inbound marketing is that buying lead lists is a thing of the past. There is a lot more nuance to going out and looking for those leads, which means building from scratch a completely opt-in database. If you want to quickly scale your database for prospects, that might help, but it takes a lot of time. Check out some different strategies to use that won’t create huge challenges for your business.
Get Those Prospects
When growing your database with content, it must bring value to the customer. If you think about what drives a customer to make a purchase, they are going to look for certain things before they decide if what they want is what you offer. Here are some easy ways to reel in those prospects with some attractive features:
- Get premium content that is relevant. Think about e-books, industry profiles, reports, and guides that attract customers to your business.
- Be intentional about creating blog content that is valuable and establishes you in the industry. If you have a niche, make sure to write about it. Draw on your strengths to build a presence people care about.
- Stand out with different social media platforms. Think about adding in videos, infographics, and multimedia to your blog for more value.
List Building
When a targeted buyer is identified, you now need to grow your prospect database. Subscriptions are often a way to bring in people who are interested in your business with the right content. Two of the best methods to start with include:
- Asking people through promotions, discounts, and free stuff to opt in to marketing communications. Prospects provide email addresses and other info from the front page or in the blog which lead them to sign up.
- Require people to go through a premium ‘gate’ to enter into fun items of value like customer case studies, e-books, and content they can only access behind the ‘gate.’ Gating content requires people to provide information to get the premium stuff they desire while gathering information about them.
Set Yourself Up for Success
Getting started is one of the hardest things to do with opt-in marketing. Once you get the ball rolling, you are often able to move forward quickly with closing sales leads. Some of these practices will help minimize opt-outs from potential customers and optimize the opt-ins:
- Think short form. When asking for info from customers, keep it simple. Only ask the first and last name and email address. Less is always better
- Profile customers (carefully). Automation programs let marketers advance their knowledge of a prospect as time goes by. When a prospect fills out the form, they will be asked about first and last name, and email address, to opt into marketing.
- Build on that profile by asking them next time for additional information like company name and phone number. Every time they visit, re-convert on the website and ask new questions. This lets marketers expand knowledge of the prospect without asking too many questions.
Close the Deal
Relevant content needs to bring value to the customer and quickly close the deal on the back end. Once you build a solid foundation of content, merchandise the content through social media, blogging, and your website to capture different angles. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that customers come to your website looking to make a purchase or deal. When browsing, it is helpful to give them the first step to that final decision, which is to capture their information and target them for the sale. Utilize tools like form creation, profiling, and subscription through premium content to build that opt-in list and create space to take marketing communications to the next level.
Read more relevant blog post: Why Companies Need to Invest Creative Time in These 3 Types of Content