By Jason Goldberg When it comes to leads, there is one word that’s more important than any other—repeat. We all know that repeat leads are the least expensive leads to get into the funnel, and they’re also the leads that we are most likely to close (followed by referral leads). But there’s another aspect of “repeat” that’s key to generating and closing leads: repeating what works.
At America’s Floor Source, we are regularly looking at Retail Lead Management (RLM) to see how our leads heard about us. We’ve learned that for certain price-driven events, mass media (specifically TV and radio) are a key part of our marketing mix. For other periods of the year, RLM shows us that paid and organic social, content marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and digital display advertising generate the most leads for us.
By looking at which pieces of digital marketing perform best for us, we continue to develop posts, write blogs and create ads that share common characteristics as previously successful tactics.
We’ve also learned that, sometimes, repeating and continuing to market the exact same content is the best thing to do. We have to remind ourselves that we’ll grow tired of a specific video, post or advertisement long before our audience will.
We also study the leads we win, as well as the leads we lose, to see what things should and shouldn’t be repeated—and that includes marketing mix, ad targeting, product offering, sales and estimating processes and more.
Once we get a lead into our funnel, they are automatically put into our email marketing machine (assuming they give us permission to do so), and become part of our custom audience on Facebook. At that point, in addition to receiving messages specific to their current or recent project, they also start receiving marketing messages created to position America’s Floor Source as the flooring experts who are here to help them select and install the perfect flooring for their next project.
Also, by creating engaging social content, our existing and past customers become advocates for our brand by liking and sharing our posts, which increases the number of people who see our messages. But ultimately, getting repeat (and referral) leads comes down to repeatedly satisfying customers, and then strategically leveraging each satisfied customer. In addition to just staying in touch with them via email, we ask our customers to take surveys and we encourage them to review us on Google, Facebook or Yelp. Our personal flooring advisors overtly ask satisfied customers to keep us in mind if they hear others talking about the need for flooring. It may sound simple but encouraging our satisfied customers to tell our story has been an important part of our growth.
No conversation about leads could be complete without discussing the management of leads. Generating leads that are not properly managed is akin to throwing money away. If you are going to invest in generating leads, you should have a system in place to manage those leads and turn those leads into customers. At America’s Floor Source, we developed and use RLM to work every lead through the entire process.
Jason Goldberg is the CEO of America’s Floor Source and Retail Lead Management. He is also the creator of TraLaMa, an initiative that aims to link retailers with qualified labor.
