Shelley Tilbrook
- Oct 14, 2020
- 4 min read

The Power of Permission-Based Marketing & Conversational Marketing

How to efficiently attract your dream clients and increase your conversion rate without cold calling or placing expensive ads?

Marketing online has changed dramatically over the past ten years. In the early days of digital marketing, it was about site takeovers, MREC ads and pay-per-eyeballs metrics to monetise your assets online. It didn't take long to realise this was expensive and ineffective and out-of-reach for those on a small budget.

Then advertising on social media became mainstream, but users found it obtrusive with advertisers slow to adapt to the 'social medium'. Some businesses struggle to monetise their social media followers, but with the right strategy, that is possible.

Fast forward to now and the formula and methods for effective marketing online are clear, and here's what we leant over the past ten years to produce consistently good results and a pipeline of leads and new customers.

1. The Mere Exposure Effect

The Mere Exposure Effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely based on the fact that they are familiar to them. Previously 5 - 7 exposures were considered effective for consumers to develop this, however, now experts believe the repeated exposure required is closer to 24. So in marketing terms, your brand or product needs to be in front of your ideal customer 24 times before they are familiar and have a favourable attitude towards it.

People to business with those they know, like and trust, so let them get to know you first

What You Need to Do:

Serving up ads to your ideal target audience first up is going to be ineffective in converting sales from cold leads and burn your cash. Instead serve them informative, educational, useful or entertaining content first to allow them to become familiar with your brand.
Use social media tools to retarget the prospects who have shown interest in your content, either by watching, commenting or sharing your previous content.
Continue serving these warm leads with value content to lift their exposure level before you send them a relevant offer. The cost of retargeting becomes significantly lower with each retarget series. We recommend a 5-step funnel of content to nurture the prospects before sharing your irresistible offer.

2. Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing is one of the buzz words right now for a very good reason. It works!

Your audience are able to connect with you and you are able to tailor a response to suit their needs. This can be one-to-one or automated via chatbots. The average sales page conversion rate is 2 - 4%. However, 64% of consumers expect real-time interaction with a business. Conversational marketing lets you serve the right content to each customer.

The statistics are clear:

reduce your website bounce rate by 2 - 3 times;
can generate up to 70% more qualified leads;
increase conversion by up to 300%; and
increase returning visitors by up to 37% after connecting via chat.

Conversational marketing is most effective when:

search terms aren't enough to differentiate your customers;
your customer needs vary greatly for a product or service;
the sales process is complex;
your clients seek quotes and there are different pricing ranges;
when your customer want a quick answer to a simple question; and
when one landing page can't be all things to all people.

What You Need to Do:

Install a chat function on your website. You can set this up with some automated dialogue, or if you traffic is low, you can set alerts to manage in the early days to trial what works.
Create a private, visible Facebook Group to allow your warm leads to have conversations. The future of Facebook is private as people are more comfortable to comment in a private group of like-minded individuals. Focus on growing your group not your page. Facebook serves all of the people in your group your content, while they only serve 1.5-15% of your content to those who follow your page. The rest you need to pay to reach.
Set up keyword alerts based on the services you provide on your private Facebook group so you can start conversations with people in need of your services. You can see how I do this in my Facebook Group - Fruitful Entrepreneurs.

3. Permission-Based Marketing

Permission-Based Marketing is exactly what you think it is. It is asking permission to your audience to service them an offer before you send it. Simply put, you are asking them to raise their hand if they want your content or offer. The reason this is so effective, is it switches the conversation from a sales one to that of helping others.

For example, "Who wants to know how to double their monthly sales. I have a 10-step checklist to show you how I did it in my business. Who wants it?"

This could a free offer to build trust with a new audience or it could be paid low-ticket offer to an audience who is familiar with you already.

What You Need To Do:

Set up a private, visible Facebook Group to allow your ideal customers to have private conversations. Or you can also use this method in Facebook lives getting them to respond in the live chat or live webinars.
Ask questions like "Who wants to know...?", "If I could tell you how to...would you be interested?" "Put you hand up if..." And wait for the positive responses.
When you get a response send them a private message with the details or link to the item. Doing this privately is great for increasing your engagement but also showing your high-level customer service.

Now you might think these methods are very high touch, so I suggest you consider the following:

How much time and money it is costing you to gain a new client currently?
What is the likely introductory sale value for a new customer?
What is the lifetime value of a customer?

When you have a high-ticket items to up-sell your customers and you achieve a long and high life-time value (ie repeat business), this method is a winner.