When we begin interviewing new prospects, one of the first questions we want to answer is “what are your goals?” Not only does this help us determine if inbound marketing will work for a particular business, it helps us to determine which specific tactics and strategies will have the greatest impact.
The most common response that growth-driven inbound marketing agencies get is that clients want to hire more salespeople and grow their business. In order to do this, though, they need the right infrastructure in place. Without an effective lead nurturing system – and without an efficient sales process – businesses can’t create a stable and predictable pipeline that can be scaled at will.
So how can you create a stable pipeline through your business with inbound marketing? Here are a few tips to get you moving in the right direction.
Most business that come to us have a general understanding of who their audience is, but fail to truly recognize who these people are, what pain points they are experiencing, and what the best solution to their problem is.
We get it.
Businesses want to focus on their core competencies and not be bothered with things such as buyer personas and content strategies – this is a job for marketers like us. But you need to REALLY understand your audience and what their motivations are because there is a good chance that your buyers are not who you think they are (cue ominous music).
It’s important to get into the weeds here and really narrow down your efforts to ensure you are not wasting valuable time and energy – not to mention dollars – marketing to the wrong audience.
As soon as a contact enters your system, it’s important to establish the relationship right then and there. At the very least, you should be sending welcome emails to new contacts within a few hours of receiving their info. This is one of many actions taken by top inbound marketing agencies that set up winning lead nurturing campaigns to facilitate growth.
Simply by acknowledging the fact that a prospect is interested in your business – and by directing them to useful content on your site – you will see a noticeable increase in engagement.
But don’t stop with a simple welcome email. Automated workflows make it incredibly easy to keep in touch with your contacts and stay top-of-mind with virtually zero effort once you have built out the system. You can even set up specific workflows that target individual buyer personas at specific points of the buying process to keep them moving through the sales funnel at all times.
If you aren’t currently utilizing sales sequences and deal stages for your business, this going to be a game changer for you.
A sales sequence is similar to a workflow in that it allows you to save massive amounts of time by automating follow up emails to your prospects and ensuring that no potential customers slip through the cracks. These don’t have to be standard, boilerplate emails either. You can simply choose a template and fill it in with personal details and messaging to maintain that human touch.
Deal stages can be used to help you predict revenue by tracking the progress of deals that your sales team is working to understand how close (and how likely) they are to closing. Deal stages can be customized however you like, but some common examples will include the following:
You can create as many or as few deal stages as you need. It just depends on how complex your sales process is.
Everybody wants to grow. Whether or not you are able to achieve this growth will depend on how efficiently your business operates and how easily you can scale your marketing and sales efforts.
Inbound marketing and sales enablement provide businesses with a way to create a stable and predictable pipeline that allows for controlled growth.
If you found value in these tips, we invite you to download our FREE guide on Inbound Marketing; a more comprehensive look into how this marketing service can be a game changer when it comes to hitting your sales goals. Give the guide a read, and call us so we can learn more about your business, sales cycle, and see if the strategy aligns!
