Best Practice Sample Marketing Strategy

 

Check out How to Get Started with Marketing for more detail on all available Marketing features.

Below is some helpful information on how features within LOU can help you create workflows and processes designed to make your first contact with a potential Customer into a sale. These are recommendations and a sample scenario designed to get you thinking about your own strategy and how you can leverage LOU to work best for you. One of the best features of LOU is its flexibility to allow you to create workflows and strategies that work best for your unique business.

 

1 Document Stages

Document Stages are not part of the Marketing suite of features, but they are an incredibly useful feature for organizing your documents and moving through the sales lifecycle. They can be used hand-in-hand with Marketing features to take your business to the next level.

You can use Document Stages to quickly identify where the Estimate or Order is in the sales process. These are customizable lists that allow you to create the Stages that are right for your business and sales process. There are separate lists for Estimates, Sales Orders, and Work Orders because each document type has a different purpose. Of course, because the lists are customizable, you can make the lists identical if that’s what makes sense to you and your business.

Since Stages are created by you, they are not automatic. LOU can’t determine when to set a Stage or change it because those rules are different for every company on LOU. Instead, you will change these stages as part of your workflow.

Document Stages can be used independent of the Marketing features. These are just another tool allowing you to organize your business.

 

2 Opportunities

Think of Opportunities as sales leads. You can create Opportunities that allow you to track where your Customers are hearing about you and becoming interested.

Opportunities work with:

• Opportunity Lifecycle Stages: allow you to create a process that takes an opportunity through to a Sale. LOU preconfigures three stages for you. These stages are Estimate, Negotiation, and Commit. You can add additional stages or change these stages to best fit your process.
• Opportunity Interests: These are the reasons your Customers come to your business. These will usually coincide with your SKU Categories as they represent the types of goods and services you sell. LOU can’t preconfigure these as they are unique to every business! Opportunity Interests are one of the most important Marketing features and should be set up first.
• Marketing Efforts: These are all the ways you attract Customers to your business. These may represent things like Ads, trade shows, referrals, billboards, and more. The ol’ “how did you hear about us?” question is answered with a Marketing Effort.

Opportunities are an organizational tool that can help you determine where to focus your sales and marketing efforts. They can also help you determine what goods and services seem to be the most sought after.

 

3 Drip Campaigns

Drip Campaigns are a common marketing tool intended to keep your business on the minds of your current and potential Customers. They’re communication strategies that allow you to “drip” out information over time rather than flooding them with information all at once.

Drip Campaigns will use:

• Opportunity Interests
• Personnel Tasks
• Drip Campaign Task Types
• Drip Campaign Enrollments.

 

How the heck does all this work together?

Great, LOU. I’ve spent some time thinking about my sales and marketing strategy for my company and I’ve come up with a process that works best for my business. Using that framework, I went into LOU and configured Document Stages, Opportunity Interests, Opportunity Lifecycle Stages, Effort Tracking Channels (Marketing Efforts), Drip Campaign Task Types, and Drip Campaigns. But what in the world am I supposed to do with all that now?!

 

I’m glad you asked! Let’s walk through an entire opportunity from first contact to sale!

 

Peggy called because she recently bought a house with an old hot tub in the backyard. She mentioned she wanted to replace it and her realtor recommended she call us.

 

Initial Contact

1. Create a new Customer record for Peggy
2. On the Customer Profile, click the Opportunities tile and click Create.
3. Select the Hot Tub/Spa Primary Opportunity Interest
4. Select Referral for How did you hear about us?
5. Select Initial Interest Contact as the Opportunity Lifecycle Stage
6. If you have an idea of how much this potential opportunity is worth, you can enter that amount in Opportunity Amount.
7. Select the Department associated with this Opportunity.
8. Enter some Opportunity Notes. We’ll say “Peggy just bought a new home. Existing hot tub needs to be disposed and replaced. Not sure about integrity of existing concrete pad. Interested in estimate for removal of old hot tub and installation of new hot tub. Interested in Sundance Spa Claremont 980.”
9. Enroll in Hot Tubs/Spas Drip Campaign.
10. Let Peggy know you’ll have someone call her back.

After this initial call, several things are in motion:

• We’ve got a new Customer
• That Customer has been added to our Pending Opportunities, where we can follow up
• She has also been added to a Drip Campaign so that we will keep in touch.
  • This particular Drip Campaign will have a Sales Personnel contact her by phone today. In a few days, LOU will notify the Sales Personnel to reach out by email and follow up with Peggy. Another couple weeks after that, LOU will notify the Sales Personnel to make an additional follow up – this time by phone.
  • The Drip Campaign can be removed if there is forward movement on the Opportunity before it completes.

 

Second Contact

Later the same day as the initial call, a Sales Personnel looks at their Personnel Tasks and sees a task to call Peggy. They make the call and have a nice conversation with Peggy.

1. On the Customer Profile, the Sales Personnel clicks the Estimates tile.
2. While chatting with Peggy, they create an Estimate.
   1. Set Document Stage to Pending Site Evaluation
   2. Internal Notes: Site Evaluation required. Old Hot Tub removal and replacement.
   3. SKUs added: Labor for removal, Chem Starter Kit, Spa Kit
   4. Under the Marketing tile, click on Search for Pending Drip Campaigns and unenroll Peggy. Since we’re moving forward with an Estimate, we don’t need to keep her enrolled.
3. Click Message to Email the Estimate to Peggy for her review.

 

Post Site Visit

The site evaluation was performed and the results and options were discussed with Peggy. We fine-tuned the Estimate with some of the additions and changes discussed through the site evaluation process.

1. Update the Document Stage on the Estimate to Waiting on Customer
2. Let Peggy know you’ll touch base with her in a few days, if she hasn’t contacted you before then.
3. Message the updated Estimate to Peggy for her review and consideration.
4. Update the Opportunity
   1. Click Update on the Marketing box at the bottom of the Estimate
   2. Click Opportunity Profile
   3. Click Drip Campaign
   4. Add Delivered Estimate Drip Campaign

Now that the site eval was performed and the Estimate was sent to Peggy for her consideration, she’s enrolled in a Drip Campaign that will have the Sales Personnel reach out to her after a few days to check in. Just in case we don’t hear from her before then.

 

Win the Estimate

Peggy has decided to move forward with the project!

1. On the Estimate Profile, go down to the Marketing box and click Update.
2. Click Opportunity Profile
3. Click Win
4. Select the Reason for winning the Opportunity.
5. Return to the Estimate Profile.
6. Click Win on the Outcome box.
7. Select our Reason for winning the Estimate.
8. Outcome Notes can be included.
9. Select the Document Type.
   1. Document Types, different from stages, help organize your Documents. You may have the same types for all your documents or you may have set them up specific to each Document.
   2. We’re choosing Work Order – Spa as our new Document Type.
10. Click Promote to Work Order
    1. We have the option of promoting to a Sales or Work Order. We chose Work Order because this is a spa removal and install, so it’s going to require some Scheduled Tasks and effort beyond delivery by our Service Personnel.
11. On the new Work Order profile, we’re going to update the Document Stage by finding the Profile box and clicking Update.
12. Select Needs Scheduling
13. Collect a Deposit from Peggy. We ask for 20% upon commitment.
14. Message Peggy the Work Order for her records.

 

Complete the Work Order

The rest of the process will be a project workflow. We’ll reach out to Peggy to get things scheduled, we’ll create POs for any SKUs we don’t have in stock and we’ll make sure she’s on the PO’s waitlist. The Service Department will go out and remove the old hot tub, install the new hot tub, and once all the work is finished and everything has been delivered/installed, we’ll Invoice the Order and collect final payment from Peggy.