In this video, Linda Kleist discusses the seven strategies for online lead generation and marketing.
Why do you think so many business owners see marketing as a necessary evil, like having to buy insurance or needing a root canal?
Truthfully, while I love the creative side of marketing, it can give me a headache, too. But what if we can see marketing as a path to creating a connection with our favorite future customers?
Successful Online ABM (Account Based Marketing) Lead Generation Needs to Connect Marketing and Sales
Many companies have yet to transition to a successful ABM online lead-generation marketing plan. As companies make the shift, they are finding that quality content is needed.
Content for online lead generation is prolific. So how do you create original content that will strengthen customer loyalty and attract new customers?
Creating new and improved bridges of communication within your company will open the door to content that will set your brand apart from the pack. New tools like automated marketing software that can nurture these leads are more effective when the marketing and sales teams work together.
Even the big guys can get it wrong.
When I was recently in an auto dealership’s showroom, shopping for a car, my eye caught a stunning brochure, and I picked it up.
The saleswoman said, “That brochure is useless.”
“But it’s beautiful,” I countered.
“The cars in my showroom are beautiful. That brochure is a waste,” she replied with exasperation. “It doesn’t help me help my customers at all!”
She went on to show me how the information in the multi-page brochure was not helpful. She was emphatic: the expensive sales collateral I had in my hands, designed and produced by a nationally recognized creative agency, was not helpful. Marketing people were disconnected from the sales team.
Case Study: B2B Online Lead Generator
CHALLENGE: A Detroit-based industrial company with extensive experience and industry know-how was not generating leads online, and it did not have a lead generator on its website. A lead generator (also known as an opt-in) will help you begin to build relationships with prospects through your automated marketing software. An ideal opt-in is an irresistible download that your ideal customers would want and be willing to hand over their email addresses to get.
SOLUTION: We met with the marketing director to develop the plan and discovered that the salespeople contacted the marketing department only to find out what kind of hats, shirts, and stickers they wanted. That was about to change!
The last thing we want to do as creatives and marketers is to produce marketing material that the sales team can’t use. They need online lead generation and marketing to help people make buying decisions.
Organizational Silos
Many companies are still stuck in the old siloed structure where marketing does their thing, sales do theirs, and they rarely talk to one another. Sales and marketing are parts of the same process. They always have been, but even more with people doing research online.
The biggest marketing fail you can make is not working with the sales team, so we worked to break down the silos between marketing and sales.
Here are seven things we did with them and that you can do with your clients as well.
7 Strategies for Online Lead Generation
1. Meet with the sales manager to align their goals with the brand and marketing strategy.
Make sure the sales manager knows that your goal is to target accounts and bring in qualified leads. To accomplish this, you’ll need her to relate her experience and share her knowledge. When she sees that you truly want to support the sales team, collaboration for valuable content is certain to follow.
- What services or products are they focusing on?
- What do they project for the year?
- What are the objections that they hear?
- How do they overcome those objections?
- How can you work together to build content that supports the sales objectives and strengthens the brand?
2. Develop a profile for the ideal account and learn their sales process. This is vital for optimal ABM and online lead generation.
Guiding prospects in online lead generation will require that you be well acquainted with the sales process and what they will experience when contacted by a sales rep.
- What do they need to qualify leads?
- Is their initial goal to set up a meeting or demo?
- What are the steps they take to close a sale: proposals or free trials?
- Customer loyalty and cross-selling are both supported by marketing
3. Build bridges of communication with the sales team.
Good sales teams know their customers and prospects and the problems they face on multiple levels. So interview them!
- What do they use to overcome objections? This info can be used throughout the marketing program to chisel away those objections.
- Hear the success stories. These can become case studies, testimonials, and intel for marketing campaigns.
4. Create original content together.
When the marketing department spends time with sales (and customer service), it can generate excellent ideas for original content that will attract your ideal customers.
- Valuable downloads
- Webinars
- Events
- Surveys
- Videos
- The list goes on
This case study is an online lead generation success story.
Here’s an example of how well this can work.
With the marketing director, we met with several technicians to talk with them about the kinds of things that customers would want. They had excellent ideas, including a maintenance checklist for the specific types of motors they sell and repair. We went to work and, together with the sales team and repair technicians, we went through 5 drafts to get it right.
We saw walls coming down and bridges being built.
And while we were working on this, we were building a bridge for ongoing communication between marketing and sales. They would mention things that their customers should know to improve their production. We were taking notes! These conversations were full of content-rich information that we could package up as a service to their customers.
When a company can help its customers with great online content, they are also building a library of profitable online lead-generation tools. This is the good stuff from which marketing can get an impressive amount of mileage!
Just like these technicians, most salespeople care about their customers and it gives them a lot of satisfaction to share their knowledge to improve their customers’ experience.
When it was completed, printable for old-school types and electronically for the paperless crowd, we published it.
How did it work?
It was better than expected. Both marketing and sales were overwhelmed by the quality of the leads coming in. They were attracting existing customers and prospects, including companies working with our client’s competitors.
Through knowledge gained in their automated marketing software, they could pass along these leads to the sales team. What a great way for the sales team to make an introduction!
This leads us to a critically important part of building a bridge:
5. Send the sales team quality and timely info about leads.
Make sure your online lead generation and marketing automation software includes a quality CRM for the sales team or works well with it.
- The lead’s interest
- The lead’s contact information
- Relevant and timely updates on qualified lead activity
Your marketing automation software can be immensely valuable in getting this info at the right time so that sales can hop on it at the moment a customer’s interest is high.
6. Confirm that leads have been successfully handed to sales and are being followed up.
Don’t miss this link! Your marketing and lead generation efforts will fall short if the leads you’ve worked hard to get are not being successfully— and quickly— handed over to sales.
It happens. Marketing gets the message out, attracts leads, and then there is a disconnect with the sales department, either through a technical glitch or by someone dropping the ball.
We recently talked with our Google Ads partner who told us that a client had been paying for expensive ads with an 800 number, and they went two months without forwarding the calls to the sales department.
Online lead generation will produce weak ROI if the sales team is not ready to connect with those leads.
Throughout your sales cycle, automated marketing continues to inform and guide prospects with email and targeted ads that offer relevant information. As this content helps inform their decision-making process, the sales team can be ready to pick up the conversation as interest grows.
7. Invest in marketing automation and CRM that can grow.
It’s the marketer’s and salesperson’s lead generation and marketing engine! We set up regular meetings with both teams to give and get feedback about content and process, measure, and modify. You need to see what’s working so you can determine what is most successful, magnify that, and tweak or discard the lame ducks.
Building a bridge between marketing and sales is a win-win.
For sales, we’ve found that it’s exciting for salespeople to see their ideas come to life in attractive and creative marketing content that prospects and customers want.
For marketing, creatives find it rewarding to produce instrumental material that contributes to the company’s success.
Marketing needs to connect with your sales CRM! Before you buy into an expensive and way-more-than-you’ll-use CRM like Salesforce, check out your options. Many automation platforms include a CRM for sales.
How well does your marketing software talk to the sales team’s CRM? If you’re ready for a robust marketing automation solution and CRM, you’ll want our comparison guide here.
As SharpSpring Certified partners, we believe you deserve a marketing and sales CRM that can take your company to the next level without the high fees, long-term contracts, and nickel-and-dime pricing of other providers. With SharpSpring, more of your marketing dollars can go toward winning sales, not high subscription fees.
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Schedule a Demo here! and let’s talk about transforming your business brand and connecting with your ideal customers through marketing automation.
Smart Marketing: It’s brand-building marketing automation that shakes hands with sales.
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