By Sookie Shuen

Valentine’s Day 2012. It’s not just about hearts and flowers for your personal life. Why not use this auspicious date to re-ignite your passion for your own marketing strategy? Make the most of the year’s most romantic day to reconsider your own marketing approach – and look forward to pulling in more prospects and customers. Here are just a few ways to get Cupid smiling on your marketing strategy once more:

Plan the perfect first date
Every first date is important, whether it’s with your potential spouse or your prospective customer. Make sure your prospects enjoy a perfect first date by attracting them with unique and interesting marketing content. Reach out to them by taking your content to where they are.

Love starts with trust
Every great relationship is based on trust. Build your prospect’s trust in you as an expert by sending them content that answers their burning questions. Listen to what their concerns are and provide solutions with content that matches their particular buying cycle.

Pull the perfect customer
Now your prospect trusts you, provide them with marketing content that shows just how great you are – and how you could help them. Then you’ll pull the perfect customer.

Focus on buying instead of selling
One important thing that the lead generation companies may not have mentioned is that focusing on your customers’ buying cycles instead of your own selling cycle is better for business. Why? Because you’re more likely to connect with your prospect’s current preoccupations. Work with where they are to nurture them more effectively towards becoming customers
Ten signs something is missing from your marketing strategy
Is your marketing strategy missing something crucial? It could be, if you’re finding that you’re not converting prospects into sales as effectively as you’d like. Or if you’re not maximising the sales potential of the Internet. That missing something could be costing you customers, sales and leads. Here are ten signs there’s something missing from your marketing strategy:

1. You’re failing to consistently attract new prospects and visitors to your website or to engage people in your social media networks.
2. You’re attracting website visitors – but not turning them into customers.
3. You’re losing people at the middle or the end of the sales funnel.
4. People don’t recognise you as an expert in your industry.
5. You aren’t creating unique content that gets you noticed on the internet.
6. You approach prospects with the full sales approach – and they fail to respond.
7. Your sales team is not up to date with your current marketing strategy.
8. Your marketing content is out of date, for example on your blog.
9. Prospects don’t seem to understand exactly what you’ve got to offer them.
10. You’re not clear which stage of the buying cycle each of your prospects is at.

Why your prospects love inbound marketing
Your prospects love inbound marketing. But they don’t know it yet. This is because inbound marketing gives both you and your customers a great deal more than a conventional marketing strategy.  Here are just some of the reasons that your customers – and your prospects – love inbound marketing:

• Your prospects want to be wooed: No-one likes the hard sell. Yet many companies still rely solely on telemarketing or other hard line approaches to win new business. Inbound marketing allows you to woo customers at their own pace and meet them exactly where they are in their buying cycle.

• Your prospects like to be treated as individuals: There’s nothing more personal than a marketing approach that allows you to view each individual prospect as they are visiting your website, live. Inbound marketing technology gives you the individual insight to approach your prospects in a more personal way and gain better results.

• Your prospects love interesting, relevant content:  Your prospects are busy people dealing with all kinds of business challenges every day. So they think it’s great when someone provides them with timely, relevant and interesting content that seems to answers their needs before they express them. It’s not that you’re psychic – you simply used inbound marketing technology to research what your prospects really want to know right now.

Find out how attract more customers for Valentine’s Day 2012 and well beyond – download our eGuide The Marketing Funnel of Love now.

Authors Bio:
Sookie Shuen is the community manager at Tomorrow People, a leading UK inbound marketing consultancy. She provides free advice and updates based on her experience of helping businesses evolve through a five step inbound marketing methodology. She manages all the online and digital community activities based around the Zoober Inbound Marketing philosophy. Read her Inbound Marketing blog.
Follow her on Twitter @sookieshuen

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