If you are a business owner, sales or marketing professional you know the struggle of generating new sales when growing a company. We have all been in a place where we need to sign new clients to keep the business growing. This means delivering more leads into the sales funnel and convert them into long lasting customers.
Throughout your research on how to achieve growth you found Inbound Marketing. It seems to be a technique which is no longer guess work, but data driven. You share it with your team, hoping everyone understands how it helps get more traction. And then, a simple reply kills the drive: “We have always sold like this, it works, it is hard work but it works.”
So how do you convince them that it is not only about hard work, but efficient work? How do you bring the message that marketing and sales have changed and that you could achieve more using Inbound Marketing? As with every sales pitch (because this is a sales pitch to them) the best approach is to be prepared with hard facts, data and a simple plan everyone understands.
Build up context
Review your business goals and results
Write down the business goals your company needs to achieve, and use them to make your case. Your management or team work hard to achieve the traction the company needs and they will favor strategic, documented facts and solutions. Lead generation, client conversion and new sales channels are a priority for business growth.
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Use your sales targets and go back to calculate how sales is performing. The goal is to showcase the current situation and achieve agreement on it, not cast blame or point fingers.
You want to discuss about:
- What tools do you use in your sales efforts? How about marketing efforts?
- What are the business goals? Leads, customers, revenue?
- How much does it cost you to acquire a customer?
- What are your marketing and sales efforts currently focused on?
- Divide your customers based on how they were acquired: cold calling, networking, online marketing.
- How do you find top leads? What is the cost per lead?
- What is the cost of qualifying a lead?
- Do you reach your leads at the right time?
- What is the lead-to-conversion rate?
You want to have numbers ready on: leads generated monthly, leads to customer conversion, time spent on generating new leads, cost of qualifying leads, lead nurturing costs, customer aquisition cost.
Transition to Inbound Numbers
Once you presented the current situation, transition to Inbound Marketing data. The numbers are by now widely available, and can provide a good reference against your current situation. Considering your sales targets and challenges, select the best statistics to make your case. A good way forward is to start with general data and move into specifics. Below a few important stats to consider.
Inbound works for B2B
B2B companies see the same return on investment as B2C companies when it comes to Inbound Marketing. In their annual report, Hubspot shows that the ROI is similar regardless of the type product or service you offer.
A quarter of all B2B Fortune 500 companies are already using marketing automation, along with 76% of the world’s largest SaaS companies, according to Pardot.
Content brings visibility
Creating targeted content supports generating visibility. Blogging is important as it can add up significant traffic advantages. Traffic growth is important especially if content addresses potential customers. According to Hubspot, an average company will see a 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50. Remember though that adding more visitors to the website is irrelevant if they are not close to your target market.
Blogs DO generate leads
We know that blogs can generate a high number of leads, but convincing your senior management or team will not be easy. Use Hubspot data that shows B2B companies that blog only 1-2x/month generate 70% more leads than those who don’t blog. Furthermore, companies that increase blogging from 3-5x/month to 6-8x/month almost double their leads.
Your company might already have a blog, but so far no sales results have been achieved by using it. The question you usually receive here is “We have a blog now, how many leads did we generate so far?” There are a few major points you need to consider when answering this question:
- Do we blog regularly? Blogging works if it is maintained frequently and refreshed with relevant topics that address the questions the sales team encounters in the sales process.
- Do we blog about what customers need? Publishing blogs that are not targeted to the Buyer Personas will probably increase traffic, but yield no results.
- Is our blog designed for conversion? Do we use Call-To-Actions? Do you offer content for each step of the Buyer Journey? The blog itself needs to be designed and structured for lead generation. Blog posts are mainly used to generate awareness, and without content for Consideration and Decision stage, the website will not convert visitors into leads.
B2B Decision makers research vendors online
The business world is shifting online, and instead of calling vendors for quotes, decision makers take time to research the possibilities and opportunities available on the market. B2B buyers are 57% through their buying research before first contacting the seller. (Source: Corporate Executive Board).
When looking for a partner or supplier, companies research solutions that could match their needs before connecting with potential suppliers. In large organizations this might be delegated to interns, or juniors, however the decision maker will reach your website if you answer the right questions online and help the researcher do his job thoroughly.
66% of buyers agreed that the winning vendor provided higher-quality content and 63% said the winning vendor’s content was more conducive to building a business case for the purchase. (DemandGen Reports’ 2014 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey)
Increasing lead generation is not only blogging. It requires your team to leverage your website structure as well as social media for improved results. Hubspot identified that companies see a 55% increase in leads from increasing landing pages from 10 to 15 and Demand Gen Report shows that 72% of B2B buyers said they used social media to research the purchase decision in 2014
Marketing Automation supports lead nurturing
Even if you have a healthy lead generation program, you most likely reach to the decision makers at times when it is not convenient for them. They might not be yet at the decision point of a purchase, or they may have just signed with the competition for the next year. Gleanster Research shows that even with a good marketing strategy 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy.
How do you turn these leads into assets? Lead nurturing is the best solution, and marketing automation is a perfect solution. A good automation strategy can reduce the stress of the marketing and sales team to nurture leads, while increasing efficiency. The Annuitas Group unveiled that businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads.
Case studies
Once you set the context and proved the numbers are there, reinforce it with a case study. You can use the Hubspot case study page and filter for companies similar to yours. Providing a success story from your industry helps your team live the situation rather then see if from outside. Make it easy to relate and they will be more likely to support it. You can check case studies also on InfusionSoft, Act-On or Marketo.
Bring tangible benefits on the table
You presented all about lead generation and sales, so focus on small wins to get your team onboard. Results will convince even the most skeptical in your audience, so now focus on how the team can benefit NOW from adopting a marketing platform and using an Inbound Strategy.
Clear data for management
Senior management likes data and results. An Digital Marketing strategy and a marketing tool like Hubspot gives management clear information about the progress and results.
Educated and qualified sales leads
Lost time with unqualified leads is the main reason your sales team is not effective. You can easily spend all your time engaging with new leads without converting clients. This can happen due to many reasons: they are not ready to buy, cannot afford your service, need a separate feature set, require a different service but do not know it yet, etc. Inbound Marketing helps you qualify leads through offering specific value propositions that appeal to those who are able to become customers.
Insights for Sales people
Tracking emails and website activity will return valuable insights on your visitor and lead base. Using a combination of Sidekick for email tracking and Hubspot’s page view notifications you can build up a history of your visitors and understand their needs. Hubspot themselves are very efficient using this approach as they use it to know when you browse Decision Stage content and immediately call you. That is the perfect moment to make a sale.
Present a game plan
Last, present a simple game plan. If you need to convince your team, show them how to reach there step by step. Set a clear and realistic goal, and map out a plan to achieve it with minimum effort and investment.
Build personas & Map the Buyer Journey. Make sure you know who you address. Use people involved in sales and marketing to build up the persona and journey.
Optimize the website and signup for a marketing platform. You may not want to change the website again, but it will save time and money in the long run if you use a marketing platform. A SEO audit will also be needed to focus your website on your desired keywords and improve organic growth.
Commit to regular blogging of minimum 1x per week. This is really the minimum you can do if you want to achieve results within a 3 to 6 months time frame.
Create content for Consideration and Decision stage. Make sure you have a small Expert brief for example, for the consideration stage, and a case study for the decision phase. This will help you qualify prospects and have a complete digital buyer journey.
Use 1-2 social networks to engage with your audience.
Implement a basic subscriber to lead, lead to qualified lead email conversion program. Use a monthly automated newsletter to deliver updates to your email lists and showcase your Consideration and Decision offers.
When you achieve your goals, you have specific numbers to your business that showcase results and ROI. This will be better than any case study or statistics you can find to make the case for implementing a full Inbound approach for YOUR organization.
Commitment is key
Last but not least, remember it takes 3 to 6 months to produce results depending on your target market so commitment and patience is key.
We will shortly release a presentation that you can use as a launch pad for your internal Inboud Marketing sales pitch. Subscribe to our newsletter and we will let you know when it is available.
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