Month: February 2021

Need vs Nuture

Imagine a perfect sales cycle where you could design a sales strategy furnished with known entities and completely transparent customer behaviour patterns. For example, suppose every last one of your many loyal customers made a healthy, guaranteed minimum annual spend with you every March. In that case, you could happily run your business at a predictable profit as a result. You could readily update your audience with new product information, solidifying their trust and loyalty. But even in this seemingly blissful scenario, what happens when you want to scale your business? You’ve already tapped into your organic audience; how do you then grow beyond that loyal base? There will be people who need your product who are happily buying from a competitor. There will be others who might be the perfect client, they have a clear need for what you provide, but they are new to the market and need education and convincing on even investing in the first place. 

So even in a comfortingly predictable scenario, there are limitations. The reality, of course, is starkly different but the point remains the same. Your future client base comprises prospects at various points in their journey with varying awareness levels of your products and services. Equally, your lead sources will vary from those who googled you with a specific need and proactively contacted you on your website, to others who you actively targeted as part of a campaign and followed up with a call or an email. You have no idea who will account for more of your revenue in three years. 

A successful Demand Generation strategy encompasses the whole journey from serving those with a need for your services to closing customers who are convinced and ready to buy. 

Prospects who find you: 

Even people who actively seek out what you provide need to a clear rationale to buy from you. That means your content and digital strategy needs to deliver a premium user experience, engage and educate your audience and convince them to request more information. Even at this stage, if your audience doesn’t feel like you are invested in their challenges and can’t see any direct benefit from browsing your website, then you are likely missing out on conversions. 68% of B2B customers prefer to research independently online but 90% of those searching haven’t made their minds up about a brand before starting their search. This gives rise to a valuable opportunity, gather insights and serve the content your audience wants to see, show them why they should buy from you. 

Prospects with a defined need for your services: 

Perhaps they’re not ready to buy just yet and need to be nurtured. You need to earn trust and build confidence in your services and approach and vitally, stay in regular contact with valuable content. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot are hugely beneficial in managing this process, giving you a clear view of your prospect database and the level of engagement within prospect accounts. Research shows that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales and lack of proper lead nurturing techniques could be to blame. 

Prospects who are happy with their current service with another provider: 

Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the provider that responds first, which is a compelling statistic for two reasons: firstly, it demonstrates just how responsive you need to be to win out over the competition. Secondly, it highlights that perhaps your competitor was merely responsive and you could offer a more personal service, far better product/service features or you’re culturally more aligned. There’s only one way to find out, actively target and nurture prospects consistently. If they’re happy with their current provision, respond with engaging and timely content that shows you understand their challenges and their industry. This way, when their contract is up for renewal, or you check-in with a call, they’ll have far greater brand recognition, which is the perfect platform for building rapport. 

If you would like more insight and guidance on putting together a demand generation strategy that actively nurtures prospects through your funnel, get in touch today on 0345 241 3038. 

The argument for marketing and sales alignment has been well-documented in recent years. The growing popularity of account-based marketing and sales enablement is testament to a shift in perception across the industry. And there’s a wealth of research to back it up, in fact by aligning sales and marketing, your business could generate 208% more revenue and enjoy 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates.

By working together and understanding each other’s roles, metrics and goals, marketing can attract and nurture better quality leads; glean insight from their sales colleagues and in turn, deliver better quality and targeted materials to help get deals over the line. Equally, sales can commit to following up marketing qualified leads and feeding back information of where that prospect may be in the sales cycle so they can target them with appropriate content. The result is a well-oiled machine that nurtures long-term relationships and results in higher conversions.

And while it seems like a no-brainer, in theory, organisations struggle to make it work for many reasons. In under-resourced teams, dedicating time to sales and marketing alignment feels like an arduous and time-consuming activity that will take time to mature and deliver results, so it continually gets de-prioritised in favour of the next big campaign. When you outsource to a single provider, you instantly access an experienced team dedicated to delivering against your marketing and sales goals and who are skilled at developing a delivery plan that meets your specific needs.

Other businesses don’t have a system supporting shared visibility of campaigns and customer journeys, making collaboration difficult and again, time-consuming. Sometimes it’s merely an imbalance in teams. There may be only one or two dedicated marketers in a sales first organisation. They might lack a content marketing specialism or require further training or experience to support sales confidently. An outsourced partner has already nailed this; they’ve already built a high-performing and aligned team and follow established processes, and have complete visibility of shared systems.

And then, of course, some organisations don’t have any sales and marketing resource at all. If they’ve already outsourced, joining the two functions means close-management of third parties and contractors, which comes with an administrative burden and challenges around contrasting systems and processes. By outsourcing to one expert partner, you can avoid the headaches of managing multiple suppliers. You can make your budgets work harder and have the benefit of working with a team where both sales and marketing are on the same page and know the full details of your campaign.

Supporting the entire journey, with complete visibility throughout

When you outsource sales and marketing to a single provider, you get a joined-up approach proven to succeed. Experienced marketers and campaign managers will use demand generation or account based marketing strategies to drive awareness in your desired markets, nurturing leads through a consistent campaign of engaging content across paid social, email marketing and relevant blog content. These leads will then be handled by expert sales representatives skilled in building rapport, communicating your brand and your offering professionally and reassuringly. The big difference is that all of this activity is overseen by marketing and sales experts who have deep expertise in delivering complex, multifaceted projects, sharing metrics, a CRM and everybody agrees on what constitutes a qualified lead.

How we make it work

Here at Air Marketing, we have the in-house skills, technology and processes to deliver value at every point in the customer journey. We’ve grown from a telemarketing agency into a comprehensive outsourced sales and marketing solution. We offer everything from demand generation and marketing support to complete end to end sales campaigns, SDR as a service and lead generation.

If you would like to know more about how we can deliver aligned sales and marketing initiatives for your business, get in touch: call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.