The inspiration for today’s article comes from a presentation last year on how to get sales online in a predictable way.
The usual way, every business has a certain system in which it does things.
Related to marketing – because this is the topic of today – in your strategy you will include certain events and occasions that are meant to trigger or stimulate the buying decision.
Trigger events are things that happen in your customers’ lives that cause them to seek solutions from your business for their problems and needs.
These are what you use to formulate marketing messages and the most compelling offer to customers.
Events can also be internal, arising from introspections for each individual, externalthat is, influenced by what is happening around and seasonal – events that we are most familiar with.
We go into detail about each type of event, and tell you how to generate them throughout today’s material.
So stay with me and learn more about how to optimize your marketing strategy so you can sell more, attract more customers and scale your business successfully.
Contents How to generate marketing triggers and micro-events
- Define your objectives and target audience for marketing events
- Create a calendar in which to integrate these events
- Use online & offline to generate buzz
- Collaborate with opinion leaders outside your usual sphere
- Evaluate the impact of events and readjust what worked
1. Define your objectives and target audience for marketing events
Continuing the idea from the introduction, let’s first look at what it means and how to recognise each type of trigger event.
#1. Internal events
- What takes customers too long, costs too much, or requires too much effort?
- What are they dreaming of? What are their secret desires?
- What makes them angry? What frustrates them? What keeps them up at night?
- What mistakes do they frequently make?
- What changes they are afraid of (e.g. 30th or 50th birthdays)
#2. External events
- What action is delegated to them by a person in authority? What must they do at the request of this authority? (at work, for example)
- What are some systems or tools that they commonly use that are likely to break down / go through a change?
- What events or meetings do you regularly attend?
- What difficulties, challenges or barriers are they likely to encounter? What do they complain about?
- What changes or negative social activities cause them fear?
#3. Seasonal events
- E.g., JUNE: June 1, Easter, Pentecost, Blood Donors’ Day, start of the big holiday, birthdays for Gemini, Cancer and Leo, etc.
Seasonal events are easiest to predict and use, because they usually happen on the same dates and at the same times each year.
Good, you now know what trigger events are and what categories they fall into.
Let’s see exactly how you generate them, in a planned way.
First and foremost, just like anything else in business, you sit down and start organizing.
You research the two basic issues that will further influence your plan: objectives and target audience.
What do you want to achieve by generating trigger events?
A certain volume of sales? Increase in average basket value? A higher percentage of products sold in a certain category? An increase in customer repeat business?
It’s vital to establish at the outset what you want to do, in the SMART way we discussed in the article SMART goals: how to set them to achieve a successful business.
To be as specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-bound as possible.
For which customers do you want to generate trigger events?
At the same time, think about what kind of customers you want to reach and trigger the buying decision. Depending on your answers, the way you communicate and promote yourself will vary, from segment to segment.
At this point you need customer avatars of your business and customer groupsfrom your platform.
You analyze them, and highlight the specific characteristics of each group/segment that help you generate an internal or external event.
You will use them to build “hooks” for attention in marketing, remarketing and sales messages.
2. Create a calendar in which to integrate these events
We always recommend making a marketing calendar for the whole year, from the beginning. This you can then adjust and detail every 3 months and again at the beginning of each month.
Once you do it, the next few years you just duplicate that document and adjust it for the current year.
Okay. Back to events, which can be a great framework for organizing your marketing calendar.
First, you integrate seasonal events, which you have the most predictability about.
Of course, seasonal events aren’t all water under the bridge either – you only use the ones that impact the lives and decisions of your type of clientele (which is why you set the audience in the first place).
For example, the big events of the year (Christmas, Easter, March 1-8, etc.) and those that affect them due to external stimuli; if they have children, surely the chances of them celebrating June 1 with specific purchases are higher than if they are students.
Then you go down the line of your audience characteristics and integrate internal and external events.
Correlate the information you have about your customers with potential needs they might have, taking into account trends, moments and their personal habits.
This is how you generate events in your customers’ lives in a controlled way, such as offers open to everyone, exclusive offers through a marketing channel, physical fairs or conferences, online webinars, etc. etc.
The more attention and interest you maintain around events you generate, the more your customers trust your business.
It will make it easier for them to be convinced to buy your products, use them and return.
Read if: Marketing Plan 2023 – 365-day calendar of posts, content and promotion ideas
3. Use online & offline to generate buzz
The great beauty of owning an online business is that you’re not limited to a single point of promotion. You have at your fingertips the whole suite of possible channels, techniques and tools to reach customers.
You just have to want to use them.
Create an omnichannel promotion strategy:
- Promote trigger events generated in a controlled way through all online methods free available to you: social media posts, company blog, website pop-ups, website banners, YouTube videos, SEO, in relevant Facebook groups, on WhatsApp, on DM on customer request, on Reddit, articles on Medium, content marketing, 1 to 1 messaging with loyal customers and brand ambassadors etc.
- Promote yourself in a paid way, according to the objectives of your strategy: Facebook Ads, Google Ads, remarketing, Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, Spotify Ads, TikTok Ads, affiliate marketing, email marketing (newsletters, communication sequences), SMS marketing, etc.
- Promote yourself intensively locally, wherever you can reach, alone or with your team: stickers, local press releases and advertorials, mentions in local groups, flyers, local partnerships, Google My Business update, events, expo and physical fairs etc.
Very importantly, create touch points with potential customers on the channels they are already on when you want to sell to them.
Regardless of the situation, if you have the resources and energy, for awareness you should always use free channels, where you can take action without necessarily investing money.
Read also: How to unlock the hidden potential of your business
4. Collaborate with thought leaders outside your usual sphere
It would be useful to create a referral system for your clients and invite them to become ambassadors.
In this way, you can gain access to extremely varied audiences, because all these people have characteristics, interests and habits that you can incorporate into your plan.
The referral system can also work without you, by invitations for friendsfor example, or through vouchers sent via an automated onboarding email sequence.
Or you can get personally involved through 1-on-1 conversations with your top customers, so you can involve them more in your marketing strategy, ask them for content to use as proof of trust, invite them to your events, and so on.
Your customers and your team can be the first ambassadors of your business, talking about your trigger events and the offers that respond to them, whenever appropriate.
You can also involve local influencers from different areas, opinion leaders with authority in your niche or a sub-niiche, and people you don’t normally work with.
Trigger events work when people are aware of them, either by themselves or from your marketing messages.
That’s why it’s so important not to leave this awareness to the customer, but to go ahead of them to get the sale.
5. Evaluate the impact of events and readjust what worked
- A change in career: a promotion, a layoff, etc.
- Birth of a child
- Wedding: either the marriage of the client or someone in his circle of acquaintances.
- A divorce
- The death of someone in my circle of acquaintances
- Failure of a necessary tool in everyday life: e.g., tap dripping continuously, AC breaks down in summer
- Celebration: presents are bought, resolution lists are made, preparations take place (e.g. spring cleaning).
- Recommendations from a friend
All of these trigger events exemplified above can be prioritized by predictability and impact.
For example, a promotion at work is important to your customer and will bring about changes in their life that will involve shopping (celebrating the occasion, new outfits, greater buying power, etc.), but you, as a business, cannot predict when this will happen.
In contrast, a webinar you organize that the customer has signed up for is an important event for them and predictable for you – you have control over when you make the offer so that it has the greatest impact and triggers the sale.
Well, because all marketing events won’t always work the same, it’s important to monitor and analyze your metrics.
See if you’ve achieved your goals and what type of messaging, channels and touchpoints worked best.
In the future you can adapt what you did initially, whenever you want to repeat the event.
Read also: How to use unosoft reports to plan your growth strategy
When marketing, online and offline, make sure you build your base well.
Heed today’s advice to build buying opportunities in a controlled and predictable way, using trigger events. Don’t make yourself do various marketing actions just for the sake of it or because everyone else around you is doing the same.
Plan smart and ensure more chances for success from the start.
Also, don’t forget to use the unosoft platform features to the fullest, especially as they help you on the marketing side of the site. You have advanced tools just a click away, such as hellobar, popups, CRM, blog in the platform and dozens of integrations to make your life easier.
And if you’re not selling with us yet, now’s the time to start. You get 15 days of free trials, and subscriptions are super affordablestarting at 7 euros per month.
Passionate about entrepreneurship and eCommerce, I started my online activity in 2000.
Together with my team I have helped over 3,000 companies grow their business on the unosoft platform.
