Why optimize?

Changed times...powerful buyers...a different sales cycle

Let’s start with a key question here.  Why should B2C sellers look to optimize their product/service offering or marketing and sales strategies? Answer...today’s buyer is more demanding and powerful than before and if you don’t offer them what they are specifically looking for, they have no trouble finding someone else who does.

How the sales cycle has changed?
Companies are not getting the chance they really need to make an impact during the sales process, since buyers have complete control over the sales cycle thanks to the internet and social media. The typical buyer makes up his mind before even meeting the salesperson. Social media, internet reviews and online shopping stores are the prime reasons for this. In the new sales cycle, it is not just about price, quality or product/service--now it is all about prospect experience...making the prospects happy and building a personal relationship with them. Customer delight is the key to closing sales in this new sales cycle.

How to build a personal relationship
The key is to reach out to prospects with relevant messaging. You need to optimize your sales and marketing content and your product/service offering to suit your prospects/customers. By providing prospects with relevant content and product offerings, you are hinting strongly that you know them and value their preferences. Isn’t that the start to building a great relationship?

What does this demand of you? 
Access to key customer and prospect data.

Thanks to the Big Data revolution, you don’t have to make guesses about what your prospect prefers. You can have it all laid out in front of you. All you need to do is connect with them through relevant whitepapers, e-books, follow-up e-mails, sale coupons or individualized pricing discounts based on smart prospect data analysis. Optimization based on prospect data offers you the golden opportunity to build a strong personal relationship with your prospects that is based on mutual trust.

How to optimize? Optimization is as easy as 1…2…3

#1: Track your audience
Tracking your audience involves following their activities across all touch points. Examples of prospect activities include email opens, content download, social media tags, website visits, form fills etc. One key concept to have in mind when tracking prospect activities is, you should be tracking prospect activity across all channels—that includes third party/partner touch-points, physical store locations, mobile interaction and call centers. Make sure you have an integrated view of data from all these sources related to every single prospect/customer.


#2: Segment your audience and analyze the results
Step #2 involves understanding all the data that you have captured, then converting all that data into knowledge and recognizing all the underlying patterns. You should then be using that information to segment your prospects. This step will help you understand what your prospect/customer really wants and deliver it to them at the right stage. Lead segmentation is also a great way to understand your lead’s position in the sales cycle, which, in turn, allows you to channel your resources and energy in the most productive manner onto the leads that are most likely to close.

#3: Act!
The next step is to act upon your analysis and segmentation. Acting upon your analysis involves strategizing for each prospect segment and adapting your messaging, offering and marketing/sales strategies to suit that segment. Tracking and intelligent data segmentation can help cement your relationship with existing clients by helping you design relevant personalized customer loyalty and cross-selling or upselling programs.

B2C optimization is all about tapping the right data that helps you recognize who your key prospects/customers are, studying their behavior and gaining an understanding of what they really want, based on your knowledge of that data.