You need your reps in front of customers sooner, but the data shows that suppliers are being contacted less than ever during the buying process. With the help of digital, Marketing can engage Sales reps earlier in the conversation.
Here are a few hacks to make that happen:
1. Replace isolated tactics with conversion funnels.
Suppose you held a webinar to discuss your product, 150 people showed up, and you sent them a nice thank you afterward. What impact did you have? Rather little, according to industry data.
Most marketing tactics remain stuck in the Awareness/Interest model of thinking, which does not account for certain factors that would increase conversion and grow revenue. Firms stuck in this model miss out on key opportunities for building customer relationships and unlocking substantial growth.
Reaching your firm's sales potential requires developing a conversion funnel that outlines your customer's buying journey. That means integrating your techniques and tactics so that each stage builds upon the previous one. Digital techniques allow firms to manage and understand customer behaviors along the buying journey, providing insight into factors beyond those prioritized in the Awareness/Interest model. Your Marketing team should adopt a framework that accounts for and leverages digital to optimize your conversion funnel.
Consider the previous example of your firm hosting a webinar attended by 150 people. Each of these prospective customers can be targeted through a drip campaign of relevant emails. Soon after, they can be contacted by sales reps to discuss their current challenges. Using this information, sales reps can determine whether the customer qualifies for their product. If they do, reps can provide the customer with detailed product information. No longer divorced from one another, these tactics work synergistically to achieve your desired outcome: conversion.
Webinar → Drip Campaign → Sales Call → Qualification → Education Campaign → Conversion
Although you can’t build a single funnel for the entire buyer journey, you can target key steps to drive conversion.
2. Unleash rep-level social media engagement.
Five years ago, it was acceptable to ignore social media channels like LinkedIn. In today's world, you neglect them at your peril.
While sales conversations are still a top strategy for engaging customers, many of those relationships begin digitally. Social media is increasingly being used to nurture, influence, and sustain sales conversations. Still, many B2B reps fail to effectively leverage social media, leaving a gap for their competitors to fill.
To encourage social media engagement, marketing can provide reps with messaging and posting strategies and create template posts for reps to adapt to their target audience.
3. Commit to 100% digital or hybrid events.
While it's great to be back in-person following the pandemic, if you are only hosting events in-person, your firm has taken a step backward. After holding virtual events during lockdown, it no longer makes sense to rely exclusively on in-person events, which are limited in scope. Whether you commit 100% or adopt a hybrid model, now is the time to embrace digital.
And whatever approach you take, be sure to plug these events into your new and improved conversion funnel (see #1).
4. Develop insight into customer needs and pain points.
Using awareness-based product information is no longer valuable to your bottom line.
More than ever, it is essential to understand and speak to customer needs and issues. Your conversion funnels should reflect this mindset by opening with customer concerns and ending with your product as the solution.
If your customer is a strategic account, messaging should be tailored to the specific needs of the company.
5. Add customer journey mapping to your market plans.
The most significant gap in today’s marketing plans is the customer sales journey map.
While traditional marketing models such as the STP and the 4 Ps remain useful, mapping out the customer journey plays a vital role in market planning. Beyond CX efforts that map post-sale touch points, there is tremendous value in mapping the sales journey itself.
Defining your customer journey can increase sales growth by 50-100%. While journey mapping has existed for decades, today’s digital techniques supercharge its impact.
Without mapping your customer journey, you are creating a gap in your sales effectiveness that is only widening over time.
Marketing teams are key to providing sales reps with the information they need to engage customers earlier in the sales process. This can only be achieved by improving upon traditional marketing tools and approaches.