When we hear “lead generation,” our minds default to “content” and “sales funnels.” But have you thought about how your product could be attracting more leads (or may be losing them)? Small business owners tend to overlook their product in regards to lead generation and marketing. In this post, I’ll discuss some ways that you can leverage your product to attract more leads and convert them into buyers faster.
Crappy products don’t sell
Bad marketing may be able to sell good products, but good marketing can’t sell bad products. If anything, good marketing will actually make a bad product fail faster. Have you taken a candid look at your product? Have you solicited feedback from customers or prospects who haven’t purchased? These two initiatives are the best way to get an unpolarized view of where your product stands in the market.
At the end of the day, you can’t sell a crappy product. Don’t take this data personally; use it to improve your product. The biggest mistake we see small business owners (and larger companies, for that matter) make when it comes to their product is believing they have all the answers and know what their customers want. Customer feedback on how to improve your product or service is pure gold. Treat it as such and give your customer what they are looking for in a product.
Is your product priced correctly?
Even if you have a great product but it’s priced incorrectly, people won’t buy it. Is your product priced accordingly, relative to the value it delivers? The pervasiveness of the problem your product is solving for will determine customers’ propensity to pay. If you’re solving a smaller problem, your product should have a smaller price tag. If you’re solving a larger problem, your product should also have a larger price tag. Pricing accordingly will ensure you’re attracting the right leads, not those who can’t afford your product.
he magnitude of your customer’s problem isn’t the only pricing factor you have to consider. Is your product priced correctly relative to competitors in the market? If you price too low comparatively, prospects will view your product as too cheap and therefore of lower quality. If you price too high and don’t have the value to back it up, your product can be viewed as too expensive. Both cases will lose you leads.
Pricing your product within the optimal price point (what the market and your customers can bear and are willing to pay for) is critical to attracting the right leads.
Make your product get more leads for you
There are things you can do inside of your product to get more leads. Offering a free trial is a great way to attract leads and allow them to self-qualify whether they are interested in moving down the funnel. If you’re unable to offer a free trial, offering free content about your product (like an ebook, webinar or videos) is a great way to showcase your product and get leads excited. These are also great pieces to feature on your marketing website to get leads to opt-in for more information.
Another area small businesses overlook is getting customer testimonials for their product. Third party testimonials are more valuable than sales presentations or email campaigns. Testimonials build trust because they are (hopefully) unbiased recommendations, not sales pitches. They bolster your reputation in the marketplace and show that others are getting results from your product. Sprinkle them throughout your marketing materials. You’ll be amazed at how many more leads you will get.
The only thing better than testimonials is having those customers who gave you the testimonial actually sell your product. Consider building a referral or affiliate system into your product. This is easy for digital products (Infusionsoft can even power this) and helps take some of the selling load off your shoulders. Referral or affiliate programs let others market and sell your products to their audience. In exchange, those partners receive a commission on the sale. These partners can be other businesses, bloggers or even existing customers. Programs like Infusionsoft automate the tracking and assignment of unique links and commission tracking.
A holistic product strategy yields more leads
Thinking big when it comes to your products will get you a bigger audience of interested leads. Instead of having one product for one audience, how can you split your product or add new offerings to create a progression or something for everybody? For example, if you’re a business consultant specializing in marketing, perhaps you can create and sell a series of ebooks for those who aren’t ready to purchase your larger consulting package.
Or, you can add on specialized consulting offerings (e.g. a marketing overhaul, an accounting audit, etc.) after your introductory consulting package. This creates more (and differentiated) products that will attract more leads. It also creates a natural progression for upselling leads after they convert, improving your customer lifetime value.
If adding products is too much for you right now, consider reskinning your product and marketing it to different niches If you’re the above business consultant, instead of marketing yourself as a general business consultant, create separate landing pages and marketing campaigns targeted to specific audiences or needs. Create a landing page or ebook for people needing accounting help. Create a separate landing page and ebook for people needing marketing help. Though this is really one product (consulting), reskinning it and marketing it to a specific niche with a more specialized message will resonate better than a general message and get you more leads.
Remember, the ultimate goal of any product is to take a lead from window shopper to customer. In order to achieve this, your product needs to solve a need, be competitive in market and priced right. Those are table stakes. After that, have your product get more leads for you via referral programs and showcasing customer success. Finally, make sure you’re creating your product offerings in a way that targets multiple audiences and moves them through a progression. All of this together will yield more leads, a great customer experience and more revenue for you.