Everyone talks about how the fortune is in the follow-up. Before, I thought this saying was good enough. However, with the overload of information and advertising, it isn’t just follow up that’s going to get you the sale. You have to customize the follow-up and speak directly to the pain-point or intent of your potential buyer.

How do you do this? Well, it’s done through segmentation.

What is segmentation? It’s the process of separating people into buckets or categories and then creating a custom message for those individual buckets.

Granted, the ideal customization would be at the individual level and that is the end goal, but if at the very minimum you could separate your prospects into buckets by intent or pain point that would increase your conversion rate tremendously.

See it isn’t always about getting more leads into the sales funnel. What makes things work at a high level is refining the funnel to allow yourself to convert a greater number of the prospects that end up in the funnel.

It’s always less expensive to generate sales from those you already have in your pipeline than to constantly be trying to pump fresh blood into your pipeline.

Granted there is a limit in some cases of what you can get out of your pipeline but at the end of it all, working them with intent-based marketing will multiply that limit substantially.

How do you get started with this? Well, you start with your message. Your message on the front end should make people aware of who you are talking to and who will and won’t benefit from what it is you’re selling.

Too many people are scared to push people away with their messaging in fear that their sales will suffer. The truth is the more people you push away the more qualified prospects you’ll attract. So maybe your volume of prospects flowing into your funnel reduces but at the same time the number of sales you make from that traffic will increase.

Less is better in this case, if less have gone through enough indoctrination that weeds out those who are not the ideal client for your product or service.

Start with your headline, call out exactly who you are trying to talk to and why they should talk to you. You should have a headline that allows people to self identify with a problem that you, your product or service can solve for them. Once you’ve got your headline down, once you’ve grabbed their attention, the harder thing is to keep their attention. Remember our attention spans are just under 9 seconds in today's world.

How do you keep their attention? Go deep about what it is their pain is, go deep about what it was that made them sign up or stop and read originally.

Make sure your ad copy isn’t completely different than your headline. You want to stay congruent and expand on your headline. Don’t push for the sale right away.

Think of your copy like this; it should make people want to shake their head yes or agree with it in some way subconsciously.

When you can get an agreement you can get a sale.

If your content or copy is not causing agreement then your message is off and even though your headlines stopped them, your copy lost them.

Once you’ve refined your copy and you’ve kept their attention, then you want them to take action. This action should further segment them and tell you more about what their pain is.

The way you do this is through having them pick an option. People like to buy and not be sold. Having the power to pick an option that closest reflects them and what they are going through is powerful and causes deeper engagement than just having a one size fits all solution. Now that they’ve taken action and told you their pain or their struggle, make sure that your emails and content after that action speak specifically to the pain or struggles they just told you they are having.

No one wants to feel like you asked a question for your benefit only. When you ask segmentation questions and then they are still getting generalist messaging; that makes a buyer feel like you don’t know them, that you are just wanting stuff from them without giving anything back.

Believe it or not, these are the psychological mind games going on in your prospect's mind. Ignoring them won’t make them go away or cause you to be more successful.

The next thing you want to make sure of is that you give them a win. Before selling anything, give them some kind of win, some kind of "aha" moment that makes them say to themselves, "this person gets me, this is what I’ve been looking for." Whatever it is they tell themselves doesn’t matter exactly, all it has to do is make them feel like they’ve benefited from taking the time to read your ad and consume your content.

This process can happen in seconds or over days. It all depends on you and your method of selling but there is no exception, it must happen. If people don’t feel like you’ve given them anything, then they are less likely to give you anything.

I’ve said this time and time again but it is the most valuable business advice you can remember. People remember how you make them feel not what you say.

Strive for every message and experience you create for your prospects and customers to generate a feeling of, "Yes! This person gets me."

This is a big picture view of finding the fortune in the follow-up and if you would like some help going deeper with this and ensuring your message is crafted correctly, my team and I would be happy to help. Just click here and schedule a no-cost initial consultation.