Almost Everyone Sucks at Follow-up...

The most important part of any campaign is the follow-up process for those who have shown themselves to be qualified prospects by completing your optin form and stating that they “qualify.”???Your next steps are to nurture a lead with continued contact, education, and proof about the value of your service until they take the next step with you.

This can be an automated process with email, text, voice mail, retargeting and direct mail however, I typically recommend immediate phone follow-up (preferably while they are still looking at your web page) because it is the most effective way to move them to an appointment.?

For the campaigns that I design (repeating myself here) we end up with the following steps:

1.?????Immediate text to whoever on my team is designated to do outbound phone follow-up;

2.?????Immediate text to the prospect encouraging them to call directly whoever on my staff is designated to field those calls.

3.?????Immediate text that includes a “Contact Record” aka VCard that includes our complete contact information with instructions to add to their contact list.??This is essential since it includes any and all phone numbers??that we may use for outbound calls as well as items such as our email address (with some platforms that’s going to help “whitelist your contacts including calls, texts, and emails.)

4.?????Immediate outbound “ringless” voice mail that will leave a message on their voicemail (again, designed to initiate an in-bound call.)

5.?????Immediate outbound email.

All of this follow-up is “Sequential Auto-Responder” which is automatically scheduled sequential email, text, and voice mail.

Depending upon their level of qualification:

6.?????Automatically scheduled “Sequential Auto Responder Direct Mail” – for instance a color postcard per week for 12 or more weeks;

7.?????Automatically fulfilled personalized cover letter with copy of free book.

8.?????Automatically fulfilled “gift” such as cookies, chocolates, or popcorn with a personal note suggesting they call.

9.?????Automatically fulfilled “Shock-and-Awe” box.

Remember, the end goal of the follow-up campaign is to get the person to agree to a meeting. Even if it is just a short meeting to get to know each other and build up a relationship, the meeting is a gateway to a prospect becoming a client. You have to build a relationship of trust before someone will ever invest with you. This is a long-term process. Facebook and LinkedIn advertising will not provide you with million-dollar investors overnight. That kind of turnaround just is not possible. What these ad campaigns are designed to do is get you the list of names you need to follow up, set up meetings, build relationships, and then have your million-dollar clients invest with you. You can’t have the final step of the process without the first.

The basic lead generation process is the same whether it’s social media “organic” posts, calls to action on your blog, pay per click ads on google or, paid ads on LinkedIn or Facebook