When inbound marketing weakens your business
The inbound marketing is installed gently in our heads. For almost two years now that I have been working on the Blog Amerisleep, I see a growing enthusiasm for the subject matter.
For marketing professionals, inbound is no longer a fashion phenomenon. It is a real opportunity. All marketers are convinced that more and more leads and business opportunities will be gained through the effective use of inbound marketing. But the strategy that is not well thought out and hastily deployed can indeed cause enough damage to your activity.
1 - TOO MANY LEADS:
Yes, it may seems crazy to say that. But it is a phenomenon that I have already observed. It may happen that the mechanics put in place are sometimes poorly regulated and eventually generate too many leads with respect to the processing capacity of the commercial service in place. In the end, we find ourselves with stacks of leads stagnating at the top of the funnel of conversion. No one to help them advance in this long and winding tunnel conversion. No one even to remove them and so release them from these dusty piles. This unfortunate phenomenon can be seen mainly in two cases:
The company uses all the levers coming from the inbound but has not deployed real qualification processes.
The company set up a system of scoring the leads but the assignment of scores found risky.
The report is final. The salespeople finally lose momentum on calls that do not succeed. They can not help but question your marketing efforts and will not process the next leads you will deliver them. Of course, before this critical stage, we must find ways to generate fewer leads and better leads.
2 - THE BAD LEADS:
Are you in a B2B context? If you want to make your salespeople definitely crazy, deliver their leads half of which turn out to be individuals, students or competitors. Make this mistake several times and you lose their respect forever. You will not be able to resent them for returning to their long lists of cold calls. You absolutely have to find ways to check each of the leads you pass on to your sales teams. Of course you are going to reduce the number of leads passed on and maybe even you are not going to reach your goal of volume of leads for the quarter. Assume and do better for the next quarter! Yes but how do you do better? Begin by reviewing your editorial strategy. Chances are high that the published content does not address the right target. Nothing more terrible than a bad choice of editorial strategy: you will commit resources for content that will not affect the right people.
3 - THE BLACK HOLE BETWEEN COMMERCIAL AND MARKETING:
Let's imagine the ideal situation: you generate leads and your qualification process works perfectly. Yet sales do not increase.
Of course, the first reflex is to go and have a look at what happens between the marketing department and the sales department. And very often, this is a timing problem. We realize that the gap of time between the moment the lead is qualified and the one where the lead is called is far too important. Every second of inaction that elapses after qualifying a lead reduces the chances of winning the opportunity. If you realize that the leads you offer are being processed too late, Do not hesitate to measure treatment times. This is a good way to make management and your staff aware of the need to do something quickly. COMMERCIALS ARE YOUR BEST FRIENDS The effectiveness of your marketing efforts can be assessed by two key indicators: the number of qualified leads and the volume of business won. You understand the importance of fully integrating your sales teams with the project. You will need them primarily to turn leads into customers but also to have valuable information gathered from these leads and customers. More than ever as part of an inbound strategy, It will be important for marketers and salespeople to work together.
For larger companies, they can use a more powerful Inbound Marketing with automated processes . Thanks to their complete control of the acquisition of prospects and a cleverly orchestrated scoring, they have the possibility to provide their sales teams with first-class information to start an effective prospecting, which generates increased sales.
You can start with the basics with a blog and a proactive presence on social networks, to take advantage of the first spin-offs in terms of traffic and lead acquisition. Once these prospects are transformed into a customer, you can reinvest the profit gained in automation marketing techniques to further accelerate financial returns.
Inbound Marketing is a flexible method that fits all sizes of business. There is so much content produced today on the Internet and shared on social networks, we are subjected to so much reading solicitations or commitment, it's really important to be on your target perfectly, so they can connect with you and engage with your brand
