Turning a prospect into a customer is more than a one-step process. We suggest that you think of your marketing as involving three steps: capture, qualify, and cultivate.
You must first capture your customer. This can be, for example, through advertising, SEO, or a Facebook relationship.
Secondly, you want to qualify your prospect. Not every person who knocks on your door is going to be a good fit for what you offer, especially if you offer a service rather than a product.
Thirdly, you must cultivate the person, and this means an interaction between you and him, to get him more and more emotionally and cognitively involved with you and your product.
Capture
The two giants of pay-per-click advertising today of course, are Google and Facebook. Google has been king in online advertising for years, and it is based on the search giant’s two-thirds’ dominance of the search market. Facebook, on the other hand, offers to target audiences through interest groups that are revealed by how people identify themselves and how they interact on Facebook.
Qualify
Whether you gather Facebook “likes,” or email addresses for your newsletter, you must realize that not every person will be a good match for your product. First of all, you have to target your audience properly by using the proper demographics and interests.
Secondly, your ad and landing page must consistent with each other in imagery and wording, and clearly explain what your product is about.
Cultivate
Your groups may be fans of your Facebook page or newsletter signups. Your job is to communicate with fans with both posts and paid ads. Your newsletter list, on the other hand, will be those who have a more genuine interest in your product.
Beyond that there are various gimmicks and gifts to get people more involved, and bring them to the buying level that you want. Are you offering whitepapers, cheat sheets and other freebies to win them over? Do you have a compelling newsletter that really offers solutions to their problems, without begging for their business? Are you answering their questions through your posts, newsletters, and individually?
