Business Growth Blog

One fall day I jumped on my bike (bicycle that is) to take a nice 15 mile ride in Northern Michigan. As I was enjoying the fall colors, I turned on my tunes to Octane on Sirius radio. The DJ was interviewing Flyleaf about their new album, Between the Stars.

As I was listening to the interview, a thought popped into my head: these songs are content, with a goal of driving a following and increasing sales.

That's the same exact thing any company needs to do: Create content that drives followers and sales.

This is a true story about how a company’s website design almost cost them a deal with a Fortune 500 company. (Names and company have been changed to protect privacy.)

Sam, a salesperson (whom we’ll call Seller Sam), had a meeting with Bill, a contact from a Fortune 500 company (whom we’ll call Buyer Bill). The meeting was going great - until Buyer Bill went to Seller Sam’s company website.

For most companies, changing their marketing strategies takes a significant investment in time and money. It’s a culture change.

With 61% of global Internet users researching products online, it seems like it would make sense to invest in developing a strong online presence (awesome website, blogging, social media, email marketing, downloadable content offers, etc.).

But is it really necessary for every company to go down that path? Perhaps not. Here are 4 reasons to NOT do inbound marketing:

Most salespeople know they need to use a CRM (a Customer Relationship Management system, or sales database), but they dread it. It can easily seem like a bunch of time consuming data entry – and if it’s not set up right, it is. HubSpot recently did a survey, and found that on average, reps spend 1 hour and 32 minutes per day doing data entry. Yuck!

On the flip side, reps do need some way to manage all of their prospects, leads, and opportunities. And sales managers need ways to efficiently track forecasting and sales. If you think CRM is a pain, try doing it without a CRM!

Most modern marketers will tell you that you need to invest in inbound marketing activities (blogging, email marketing, and social media) to get new customers. It will drive website traffic and leads, and your company will grow by leaps and bounds.

That is true, but what they might not tell you is that it takes time for that method alone to start generating high quality leads (and it will never generate them if you miss the mark on the kind of content you're creating). What are you supposed to do in the meantime?

We know that traditional marketing activities, like cold calling and direct mail, aren't very effective for the amount of effort you have to put in. That leaves most companies in a conundrum. They walk a fine line between traditional and modern marketing and feel frustration that nothing seems to be working.

I recently introduced you to my ideal monthly inbound marketing plan. If you want to get the fastest results with the maximum amount of help and support, it's definitely the way to go – hands down. If you do that plan, you'll have qualified sales leads, shorter sales cycles, and increased revenue in no time.

However, there is an issue with that plan that I'd like to address – it can be too much of an investment in time and money for a small company.

I was recently contacted by a company that needed some help fixing a problem they were having with their marketing. When I looked at their analytics, I was quite shocked. This is what I saw:

*Disclaimer:Ascend Business Growth was not involved in these results!

My contact (we’ll call her Sally) said that things were going pretty smoothly, but about a year-and-a-half ago they decided to take it up a notch. They hired a company to help them with their marketing strategies, including blogging and social media.

Sally was expecting things to increase at a faster rate, but unfortunately the scale tilted the wrong way. What the heck happened?

The main way to generate leads online is to put forms on your website. It goes beyond the "contact" form. Anytime you have a valuable content offer to share with your target audience, you can ask for information in order to download it.

The data you collect on the forms can be used to guide prospects through the buyer journey. You can use it to properly qualify leads to either send them to the appropriate sales rep or put them back in the bucket for more lead nurturing.

If you collect the right information about your prospects in the right way, you can use it to create targeted messaging that will keep the sales momentum going. However, I frequently see mistakes on website forms that make the data collected very difficult or impossible to use.

Salespeople are on the front lines interacting with prospects and customers all day long. They should be driving what content marketing creates for lead generation. I recently did and generated about 70 sales leads in one month. Here’s an example of how I did that:

Content Idea Generated Through Sales

One of my customers recently asked me if I had a blog template or some resources to help him start writing articles. I do have a solid process for that of course, but it wasn’t a resource I made available online. I have a ton of articles on my website about blogging as well, but none of them are the actual “process.”

The only way to sell is to communicate your message effectively to the right people.

Obviously, you wouldn't communicate with a toddler the same way you would with a teenager. In sales, you wouldn't (or shouldn't!) communicate the same message to all the various decision makers either.

For example, imagine you're selling technology to the HR department. The HR Director, CIO, and CEO may all be involved in the decision, and each one of those people has different agendas and priorities.