Multi-Touch Marketing 101

The global economy works off of value and capital exchange.

You provide value. The person receiving that value gives you capital in exchange.

The important thing to remember is that the capital is not always monetary (aka government issued currency). Sometimes it is attention.

One of the biggest shifts taking place in the current market is the move away from “transactional marketing” and toward “relationship-based marketing.” In truth, this shift has been in process for quite some time – but it has been accelerated recently (to some extent) by the constrictions in the economy.

Transactional marketing can be loosely defined as marketing efforts that prioritize the immediate sale over customer retention and building a long-term relationship with the buyer.

Relationship-based marketing is the process of building a connection with the customer over a longer time period by effective use of multi-touch marketing.

With prospects slowing down their buying decisions, and taking longer amounts of time to absorb and consume your content before they become high ticket buyers, it’s more critical than ever to have a plan to properly follow up with and nurture new leads over time until they are ready to have a sales conversation with you.

Today, we’ll be diving into what that means for your marketing, and effective ways to get started!

“If you have a short ‘Days to Close’ number, you have lethal front-end marketing. If you have a long ‘Days to Close’ number, you have a lethal ECOSYSTEM.” – Taylor Welch, CEO of Wealthy Consultant

To kick things off, let’s talk about measuring “Days to Close.”

Days to Close is a measurement of the time elapsed between the first touch (the first time a prospect interacted with your front end marketing and became a “lead”) and when they became a client in one of your higher ticket programs.

Right now, we teach clients that a healthy average Days to Close is somewhere between 100 and 300 days (depending on marketing efforts and industry standards).

Too far below 100 days and you’re not effectively working your pipeline (stacked future deals that may not be ready to close now – but can be nurtured into the buying pocket over time).

Too far above 300 days and you’re not getting enough “hot-and-ready” opportunity from your front end marketing. Meaning you probably want to re-evaluate your messaging or targeting.

A floor of 100 days leaves you nearly 3 and a half months of nurture in order to get someone ready to talk to you about enrolling.

Where do you begin and what does that process look like?

Of course, measuring your “Days to Close” begins with the moment of conversion on the front end – the moment when a stranger becomes a lead. So how you follow up in those initial first few days helps set the tone for what is to come later.

Let’s use a video sales letter (VSL) funnel as an example. In the image above you can see an example of a follow-up sequence for this type of funnel.

The basic structure of a VSL funnel is as follows:

• Capture lead in exchange for watching the training video (VSL)
• At end of training video, make a pitch to take an action (the example above uses scheduling a call)
• If they don’t take the prescribed action, you use a dedicated follow-up sequence to try and push them back toward the action for several days (we recommend at least 7)

From your traffic sources (be they paid or organic) the user ends up on a landing page where they are asked to provide their information in exchange for watching a valuable training from you (your VSL).

As soon as they put in their lead information and hit “submit,” a welcome email (plus text and optional voicemail drop) are automatically sent to them. This is a great chance to get them used to receiving emails from you and set the tone for the type of relationship this will be.

For the first couple of days, the emails and communications should be centered around pushing them back toward your video training (encouraging consumption).

After those initial couple of days, you begin pushing them to supporting pages that contain case studies and stories (beware – if you are using case studies, you need to have permission and proper disclaimers on the page… otherwise, you risk running afoul of the Federal Trade Commission), along with links to book calls (or whatever ultimate action you are encouraging with your funnel).

If a prospect makes it all the way through your initial follow-up sequence but still hasn’t taken the prescribed action, you then move them into your “house list” to receive regular email broadcasts. This is “Phase 2” of multi-touch marketing.

Our philosophy of multi-touch marketing by way of our broadcast list is simple:

• Develop a cadence – We email our full house list 3-4 times a week. Anything beyond that is usually segmented.
• Soft pitch (NOT hard) – We rarely hard pitch the list (meaning, send an email where the entire content is focused on them purchasing a specific product or taking a specific action) unless we are running a direct promo – and even then it’s rare. Instead, our approach is to educate the list FIRST with good content… then “soft pitch” throughout. This usually looks like optional outbound links sprinkled throughout the email and never made the central focus.
• Track the basics – We aim for an average 40% open rate on all broadcast emails and a 1%+ click/engagement rate. This gives us a good indication on whether the list is truly engaged and active or just “tire kickers.”
• Maintain list cleanliness – We use filters to parse out folks who haven’t engaged in certain lengths of time, or who haven’t opened and engaged with an email in the last X number of sends. This is important, as low open and engagement rates will hurt your inbox placement.

If you stick to these rules and make sure that you’re giving VALUE first… then giving people opportunities to buy or engage if they WANT to, you will create a ton of good will that is also capable of paying you!

One of our leaders shared this in our private client Circle community (for Chamber members only).