Imagine this, a new prospect enters your funnel, and immediately gets hit with a gaudy, aggressive ‘salesy’ pop-up ad. Their first impression of your company is that it’s based on short-term sales, and they won’t get the care and attention they want as a new lead.
At best, you’ve only lost one sale. At worst, you’ve lost one sale and created a negative perception of your brand with someone who may influence future prospects!
Your marketing team knows the stages of sales funnel (AIDA - aka a marketing or conversion funnel) need different types of messaging:
Stage 1: Awareness. The potential customer has become aware of your product or service, and is taking a light browse at this stage, they want to see what you’re all about. No interest in sales at this stage.
Stage 2: Interest. Your customer has realised there might be value in your offering, however you need to cultivate that interests through multiple engagements with you where they see and understand the benefits.
Stage 3: Decision. Your customer understands the problem that you solve, the cost of the choice, and now decides on whether or not to buy or engage with the brand. They’re evaluating everything they’ve experienced with your brand to this point.
Stage 4: Action. Your customer now wants to increase their relationship with you and purchases or opens up communication with you.
Where invitational marketing comes into the sales funnel
Invitational marketing is a strategy that aims to create a positive and welcoming atmosphere for prospective customers who’re at stages 1 or 2 of the funnel, by inviting them to engage with a brand or product.
The focus of invitational marketing is on creating an enjoyable experience for the customer, rather than pushing a hard sell (aka persuasion marketing – we’ll cover this soon). The invitational approach to marketing is often used in industries where building relationships with customers is important, such as in luxury goods, hospitality, and service industries.
Invitational marketing can take many forms to help bring the lead through to stages 3 and 4 of the funnel instead of losing them at stage 1 or 2 by incorrectly using persuasion marketing. It uses activity such as personalised communications, hosting events (aka experiential marketing), offering exclusive experiences, or providing personalised service.
The goal is to create a welcoming and inclusive environment that encourages customers to engage with the brand, rather than feeling pressured to make a purchase. This approach is based on the idea that customers are more likely to make a purchase when they feel appreciated and valued, rather than when they are bombarded with aggressive sales tactics of pop-up ads, sales calls, or cold calls.
Why your marketing strategy needs to be invitational in the early stages
Potential customers don’t want to be scared off in the early stages when the relationship is growing, therefore using interesting content, influencers, video, written, and podcast is a good way to spread awareness of your brand and its values, without chasing your customers away.
This may seem like an obvious question when we ask, but many clients aren’t able to communicate what their brand’s personality is.
This is important because without being able to describe the space where your brand fits in, you’ll waste time in hunting around unnecessarily to find it when you could be reinforcing and defending it. Even if you can’t define the exact street, you should know the neighbourhood or city (see our article on how this metaphor works).