People aren’t buying what you’re selling at the moment. Maybe it’s because of the COVID-19 pandemic, or maybe not. Many small businesses don’t have a steady stream of sales and that’s normal.
It can be disheartening to keep your marketing going when you know your audience isn’t ready to buy. If you’ve been tempting to stop marketing efforts when people aren’t buying, read on.
Thinking that your marketing isn’t working if it’s not leading to sales quickly couldn't be further from the truth. Stopping marketing your service/product is (almost) never a good idea.
This might be counterintuitive, but the time when people aren’t ready to buy is a great opportunity to get them into your marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is the process that most potential customers go through before they buy.
Before your potential customer gets to the SALE stage, you’ll see they need to go through 4 other stages (awareness, interest, evaluation and commitment).
Most of your marketing will take place in the top two stages (awareness and interest). At these stages people are simply not ready to buy. If they were, they would go straight to the sale stage.
In the awareness stage, you’re giving them information and a feel for your brand. This information isn’t always directly about your product. If you’re a physio, you could have short videos on how to improve your posture when working from home. Your videos aren’t selling anything. But they’re allowing your audience to get to know you and your brand. When you meet someone new, you’ll form an opinion of what they’re like. Potential buyers do exactly the same thing with a brand that’s new to them. It’s a great time to start building trust with your audience.
When you’ve picked their interest, they’ll start to get closer to you by taking actions like signing up to your newsletter or downloading an e-book for example. The more value you add to your audience’s life, the better they’ll feel towards you. Don’t always think of value as useful information. It can be entertainment and laughter too. It’s important that you spend some time figuring out what value looks like for your audience.
You see from the marketing funnel that if you don’t have “awareness” and “interest” then there is little chance you’re going to bring your audience to the sale stage.
So keep your marketing going, even when your potential clients aren’t ready to buy and get them into that marketing funnel.
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