Match your Communications to your Prospect’s Lifecycle

If you think about how you buy or procure goods or services, it’s generally some variation of this process:

  1.  You become aware of a need. Something that could be done better, or perhaps you don’t want to do it yourself anymore, or you’ve run out of stock, and so on
  2.  You look around for alternative solutions. You might talk with a seller, compare prices, quality, benefits/ features and decide if you trust them.  (Trust is especially important for professional services).
  3. Pick a preferred option and purchase, or not.
  4. Use the product or service and based on this experience you might re-purchase.

Okay, this is marketing 101, but how well do you actually marry your business’ marketing and sales process to these buying steps?

You’ll often hear experts point out it takes as many as seven (or whatever) touch points before someone decides to buy, but it’s more complex than that.  Your prospect is going through this process.  So from the start, your job is to:

  • raise awareness of the issue you solve. The bigger picture benefits of  your product or service (top of the sales funnel)
  • In the middle you’re building trust and providing more detailed information about features as well as benefits of your solution.
  • At the end, you’re trying to help the buyer make a decision. (Asking for the sale, adding a time limited offer or restriction and so on)

In other words, different messages and tactics depending where your buyer is at.  This is being strategic. Some prospects will move through the steps quickly if they feel an urgent need, some will seem to procrastinate if they don’t.

You may not know what stage people or organizations are at, but you can frame content to address these different needs.  And don’t mix up the messages.   For example, if you’re creating social media content to give helpful advice, don’t always throw in a call to action, let that come in a later post.  Or as Gary Vanerchuck says with his boxing analogy ‘jab, jab, hook’.

In terms of what this means for videos,  I’ve recently updated Clips That Sell’s website so it suggests different types of videos for these different stages.  But of course these principles apply to all media, not just video.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting tips to Facebook and Linkedin for each stage of the buying cycle every few days. 

Clips That Sell is an Accredited Video Producer

Oh yes,  I’m now an Accredited Professional Video Producer.  This means I’ve completed a thorough quality assurance process with the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers (but it is for video production, not photography).  It gives clients and extra level of assurance and proven competence.

[As a 2023 update]: The Australian Institute of Professional Photographers has now closed and this accreditation no longer exists