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Build Your Marketing Strategy on Solid Ground

Updated: Dec 31, 2024




Ask any teacher, any coach, or any architect and they will affirm that there are certain fundamentals that cannot, and should not, be ignored if you want a solid foundation upon which to build. There is often a proclivity for many business people and marketing groups to search for the silver bullet that in and of itself will be that home run that will bypass all the rules of consistency and structure, and create the magic and the fireworks that overcome the natural progression of things. Once in a blue moon, when the moon and the stars line up perfectly, lightning is caught in a bottle, but like all anomalies, it is super risky business to count on winning the lottery. Most success at all levels is a result of solid planning and a proper sales culture, not a miracle occurrence. Moral of the story? FUNDAMENTALS ARE NEVER OBSOLETE.

Building a marketing strategy is best done like building anything; it starts with a strong foundation. There are simple, empirical building blocks that all retailers need to have covered.  Addressing the two most essential audiences is what this article is all about.  

Since fundamentals are never obsolete, cover your two most important sales audiences first! I want to illuminate the most critical groups of buyers for any business in any SIC to dominate: web visitors and the new market share. Why shine a light on these consumer audiences and call them the priorities? One reason is because they buy at a much more rapid pace than any of the other segments do. Let’s examine the evidence behind my statement…

Website visitors have already invested the time and thought energy to take an action and check you out. Are they all blue chip prospects simply because they visited your website? No, yet they have indeed jumped through an important qualifying hoop by “taking an action.” By visiting your site, they are raising their hand and committing themselves to a level of interest in what you sell. Will they take a second action and further qualify themselves by doing so? The only way to know is to provide a “consent based” offer and give them the chance. The second qualifying action does indeed put them in an audience that can be considered “warm” as opposed to a “cold” lead. 

In the world of lead generation, sales psychology should be applied and considered when crafting a potential journey for the prospect through the sales funnel. Quid pro quo is the key. Give to get. Buyer’s guides, lists, and savings opportunities, plus inspiring product information need to be offered in exchange for contact information. Asking a visitor to  “Answer These Simple Questions” on a survey style form rarely has an acceptable conversion rate. Yes, if some prospects/visitors are extremely serious about buying they may fill out a form, but making the type of sales volume needed to maximize your marketing efforts also includes starting relationships that may NOT buy this week. It may be next week, or next month or next year. The strategy of dominating sales of any chronological flavor in any market includes efficiently harvesting sales opportunities that possess differing gestation periods. Buyers don’t all “pull the trigger” right away. Both long and short term sales are needed for a healthy sales department so not only is it important to pick the low hanging fruit but it is equally important to nurture and educate buyers to the benefits and value of larger fine pianos and as we all know you have to work with some prospects over time to sell some of the larger instruments.

Web designers most generally do a good job of building good looking digital brochure type sites with some capture elements but they don’t specialize in lead generation so many times the forms they provide are questionnaires helpful to consumers pretty far down the sales highway but rarely efficient at harvesting enough volume to allow a page to be considered “optimized for conversion.” Lead generation and content need to be compatible. If you give everything you have to give without using “consent marketing” to fill your pipeline you are operating under the “build it and they will come” theory. Giving web visitors all they could possibly need in the form of information about your goods and services without encouraging engagement flies in the face of what I’ve been preaching for decades – “The Company With the Most Friends Wins!” Data without context does not help consumers make good decisions. You must sell your expertise and the value of your advice to distance yourself from the “commodity” mindset that folks will go online, read about your goods or services and buy because you have given them enough information. Information without discernment and context is not knowledge. The vast majority of luxury market buyers want to make an intelligent buying decision. Facts and figures are linear things without passion or wisdom. You may as well be selling toilet paper if you’re not willing to worry about, invest in, and babysit the customer experience. Without that commitment, the one to the customer experience, I suggest you do just that, find the toilet paper you would be most excited to sell and sell that. That’s not exactly the customer experience I would care to specialize in… not that it isn’t essential, but luxury items are NOT as Webster’s Dictionary defines a commodity, a mass-produced unspecialized product. 

We agree that savings is a motivational factor. You hopefully agree that price and value are not one and the same thing. Our solution to website visitors which tend to “come and go” as they please is a program called Bridge Widgets. On the surface it sounds simple. Build a button that leads to a list that is made available by the prospects offering up their contact information to get a look. Yet, after watching “do it your-selfers” miss the mark when trying to duplicate it, it is obvious that they don’t understand the sales psychology behind the way the list needs to be built. Simply making things available for the public to peruse is not a strategy, it’s a digital catalog incapable of starting relationships online with. And oh, by the way, starting relationships online is the heart and soul of consent based marketing and the purpose of lead generation. To cover this fundamental cornerstone properly, harvesting online visitor leads and making sure your website is optimized for conversion, you must give the prospects something of special value. Something inspirational enough for them to want to make the swap… seeing that something of value in exchange for relinquishing their personal contact info and the expression of their desire. Having a percentage of your web visitors turn into leads turned over to a “servant hearted” sales staff is the best of both worlds. The marriage of the proper follow up culture and an efficient harvesting tool is a fundamentally solid combination you can build on. 

Relative to the percentage of visitors to a website who do and don’t turn into leads; it is a qualifying act and a numbers game as all sales strategies are. I recently had the GM of a company in a major market try to dismiss the strategy of harvesting leads via a form needed to be filled out to get something in return. He stated strongly that the minute he is asked to share any personal information he runs the other direction. He said he just wasn’t sure that the strategy was solid because it’s not something that he would do – make a swap for something of value by identifying himself to which I replied,” It doesn’t matter what you would do.” A little harsh if you’re trying to sell something to someone? No, it’s the unvarnished truth. Lead generation is a fair and equitable exchange by companies willing to share something of value with people willing to raise their hands and identify themselves. Yes, it is true that if you are as fortunate and hard working as we are and achieve an average conversion rate of 10%, as good as it is compared to the 2-3% national average, it still means that 90% of the people who visit a site or landing page are NOT willing to cough up their info to see something. Well, that is it right there! We don’t do it for the ones like the GM who won’t, we do it for the ones who will! In this way I was simply telling the truth, it doesn’t matter what he would do. We do it to serve opportunities to sales professionals by putting them in contact with people who are willing to qualify themselves to the degree that they will let you know who they are and how to get a hold of them. That is fundamentally solid, friendly, Godly, well intended servant hearted “consent based” marketing. No one has to. That is why we can use the word “consent.” You can’t make someone raise their hand and say they want to talk to you but there is nothing wrong with giving them a good reason why they should and then making a friend when they do, is there?

Another reason your website visitors should be turned into workable leads is that when you grow an audience of leads from your website you have a GREAT audience from whence to harvest positive reviews and positive reviews weigh heavily into SEO. Google loves to serve up companies with good reviews first and a good web converter will address that in a no maintenance, automated fashion and grow your volume of visitors because you rank higher.  

In summary, Zig Ziglar years ago said, “Make it easy to buy.” That is what your website should do and I submit that disseminating a bunch of information without encouraging a prospect to engage a specialist to help them put it in context is irresponsible. They need guidance to make the best possible decision based upon their needs and what the specialist knows will fulfill them.  Information without offering help is going down the road toward devaluing whatever it is you are trying to sell.   

Next let’s talk about new market share. New market share for any company simply means more business than they had before, but the new market share to which I refer is the consumers who are new to the market. Either because they just moved into the market or because they have moved around or up in the market. Their personal circumstances, therefore their needs, have changed. The current research and statistics are impressive but the common sense employed when going after new homeowners is as old as “The Welcome Wagon.” Back in the day (I’ve always wanted to find the right time to use that old phrase LOL), the Welcome Wagon lady would make an appointment to meet the lady of the household and come by with a basket of goodies from local merchants and service providers to give folks just finding their way around an area new to them.  

The reasons why new homeowners are a great target are numerous and obvious:

They have a list of things to accomplish and buy to make their new house their home and a piano is often on their list.

If they are a piano buyer, they have a history of buying a piano within the first 24 months of moving in.

If they recently qualified for a mortgage they are most often solid financially.

Since they have a list of needs, they are more sensitive to offers and incentives… they most often try to save a little on everything they need.

They are easier to engage with because of the time of their life they are in and you can congratulate and compliment them on having a new home. 

Even if they have a piano, they now have a new floor and plan and are more likely to be a trade- in candidate so they can get the piano of their dreams.

They buy more BIG pianos.

Those who are moving in rarely have a favorite piano person/resource yet.

I’m sure there are more good reasons but those listed above just about cover most of the major motivational reasons we have seen this segment buy more and larger pianos than most. For years at weekend events when consumers attend as many as 20% state that they are buying because they recently moved. Having an integrated new homeowners program, such as our New Neighbors program, which mails the top of the market and also finds them online and lets them know that there is a buying opportunity that they may want to learn about, just plain makes sense and should be a foundational digital marketing staple. 

These two things: your web site visitors and the new piano interest (market share) in your market are segments you must dominate and build upon to head towards having a powerful and successful digital marketing portfolio. You can add other applications but start by knowing you have these fundamental areas covered and prioritized. Building anything is best done with a solid vision of where you want to go and a solid foundation upon which to build your strategy. If you believe, as we do, that times change, tools change and consumers change but that fundamentals are never obsolete, then start today to make sure these two buying segments are well served and communicated with. Why build a house on shifting sand?

No, don’t stop looking for that home run, that silver bullet you can ride into the next level of the sales stratosphere, but understand the reality that in searching for those GREAT ideas, the natural progression is that they end up giving you a lot of small refinements that lead to you improving the sales and strength of your company but it never really happens overnight. It is a cultural environment you should seek to install that will value and learn to make friends with as many online interest people as you can. Starting with people already checking out your website and that are new to the market is the most pragmatic place to begin. Start there, make sure you make them feel special because they have taken the initiative to visit your site or that they have achieved a life changing experience by moving into a new home. Make friends with these people, then you can tackle those who have interest but need more nurturing and close at a slower rate with some experience and confidence in your back pocket. Remember, “The Company With the Most Friends Wins!”

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

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