What do you want them to do next?

We are now at the end of the Kipling’s Men Series. The blogs so far have considered ‘who’ you want to target, ‘when’ is the best time to reach them and asked ‘why’ they should listen to you? In our crazy busy world, we have also explored ‘how’ best to engage prospects and ‘where’ you want them to take them. This final blog focuses on ‘what’, in terms of, what do you want them to do next?

Today most marketers are spending so much more time, effort, and money on the creation of interesting and engaging content. Campaigns are regularly delivered through a variety of media, using a range of marketing tactics, and with the ultimate goal to generate more sales leads.

Marketing today plays a growing role in prospecting

Over the past 20 years I have seen marketing’s involvement in the sales and the buying cycle grow massively. Marketing today needs to create a wealth of content to draw prospects in and supporting the sales cycle by educating, informing, and engaging them to a point where they convert into a sales-ready lead.

Yet with this in mind, one of the biggest points of failure can be the ‘Call To Action’! What do you want them to do? All too often there may be too many calls to action that confuse the audience, it may not be powerful enough or simply get lost in the design or forgotten until the last minute.  A simple question to ask as you build a campaign is ‘what do you want people to think, feel and do as a result of any touch point?

What is the next step?

Do you want them to read the blog then download and read a white paper, or sign up for a newsletter, or even follow a link to a product, service or solution that overcomes a challenge and fulfil a need?. Your call to action needs to be clear and bold for it to be effective. It also needs to be specific so that they know what to expect. You need to highlight the benefit that they will gain by clicking through, signing up and engaging with you. Use compelling stories and examples where possible.

Ensuring you have the right messaging is critically important, but the call to action is that critical point, often a millisecond decision as to whether or not they continue the journey with you, or you lose them. You need to consider your call to actions carefully and weigh up what would appeal to you and how might you react?

Today, ‘free consultation’ can often be read as we are going to sell to you. ‘Sign up for our free newsletter’ is perhaps a sure-fire way of receiving lots of marketing material, which is fine if it is focused and purposeful. A good example of a call to action might be signing up for a series of blogs or pieces that would educate the audience in regard to something new.

One thing is for sure with so much competition and so many messages competing for our time creating the right messaging is critical to attract and engage with prospects today.

Defining, testing, and refining messaging to generate sales leads is one of the ways that Incognate help our clients. Rachel Eyres Client Director and Market Unit Leader at Expleo said “The Incognate team are quick to understand the messaging and draw up a contact plan, and ultimately very successful in generating qualified leads with decision makers.”

Our campaigns are tightly focused with clear messaging and strong call to actions that deliver quantifiable results. As an example, for SQS with one set of messaging directed at 28 target accounts over the course of four months we generated over a dozen qualified leads resulting in several proposal and three new business wins totalling £240K

A final word from Jo Bance, Global Marketing Director, SQS Group Ltd

“To target senior decision makers across multiple markets we recognised the need to create new, more compelling and focused messaging. Incognate’s Messaging Framework and the workshops they ran enabled us to draw out the right messages from key people in our business. It allowed us to really explore our prospects needs, issues and how to create stronger positioning to get our message heard. Incognate’s Messaging Framework really helps to get to the heart of the message that helps to gain more traction and attention.”

If you need to generate more sales leads call us today to discover how we can help you or test us out with an Account Acceleration Pilot