Is Your Business Facing Ups And Downs?

It’s very common for a business to undergo ups and downs. There are phases when business makes lots of money and times no money at all.

The reason for it is pretty obvious, there is no predictable revenue system built in the business.   Most of the business owners believe that customers will keep coming as it has been a trend. The moment there is lull they start implementing which is referred as “Instant Gratification Method”.   The instant reaction is to execute campaigns or activities like email campaigns, speaking to old customers or acquaintances which will generate leads and some will convert into sales and again they will fall into old habits. On other hand successful businesses have this mentality that if we invest 10k per month in marketing it will generate 25 leads and 10 sales. Based on this model they plan the revenue numbers and calibrate the marketing efforts accordingly.

Now the obvious question is how do you build such systems?

Below are the steps you can start implementing to build such system

1. Define your Ideal Customer.
2. Define the Medium to Reach the Customer.
3. Identify the Buying Stage of Your Customer:  There are typically four stages of buying phases. 
   • First is indifferent stage– At this stage the customer is oblivious to your product or service.
   • Second is Curiosity Stage: At this stage customers are curious to know more about or the product or services you have to offer.
   • Third is Sitting on Fence Stage: At this stage customer has taken proposal from three to four vendors.
   • Fourth is Sold on The Offer Stage: At this stage customer is willing to buy the product or service from you.  The idea is move the customer from first stage to fourth stage as soon as possible.
4. Build Lead Magnets for Different Stages:It could be building landing pages or identifying referral partners or channels which will bring such leads to the business. Let’s say you are an Interior Designer. You want to target home-owners who have just moved in and looking for interior designer. (They are right now in curiosity stage).  In this scenario you can build a landing page whereby you can capture the home owners contact details.  In exchange for his contact details you give him a free report which says “7 Things You Need to Know before You Engage an Interior Designer”. Once they are into your system, you can follow-up or nurture based on their buying stage.
5. Measuring the Effort: You should clearly know which source is giving you the no. of leads and at what cost. This will help you to ascertain customer acquisition cost and which lead sources are working best.