As part of a marketing team/department of a business your role is to get the business noticed by prospects and current customers, to improve business awareness and generate leads. How many marketing departments have this conversation with the sales team “How were you able to get all these quality leads in for me?”
Start at the beginning
The best place to start is to have a meeting with the marketing and sales department to identify what a qualified lead looks like, and the information the sales team needs to approach the lead. Once you know this information, you can then start the process of qualifying leads to make the sales team sing the marketing departments praises. To do this you can offer educational content to the visitors of your website to download in exchange for their contact information. Once you have the lead in your CRM you can then start to qualify and pass the lead to the sales team.
Getting the right information is key
As prospects consume information on your website from e-books, guides and free downloads you need to be asking different questions to gain valuable information and intelligence. By collecting information from your leads it will enable the sales team to find out which is a strong or hot lead and which leads are weak or cold. Below are fields that you should consider when prospects are getting information from your website:- First Name
- Last Name
- Company Name
- Email Address
- Job Title
- Phone Number
All of the fields here are very important in finding out more information about the prospect, which the sales team can use. The most important field on the form is the email address field. By gathering this data it enables you to send marketing directly to the clients to nurture them through the buyers journey, this can include blog articles, e-books and newsletters. For more information on the buyers journey read this article https://www.jdrgroup.co.uk/blog/how-to-understand-your-customer-more-in-order-to-increase-website-conversions
More fields to consider to give the sales team even more power when speaking to prospects:
- Postcode
- Number of Employees
- Biggest Challenge in Business
With this information it gives the sales team the power to approach the prospect with enough fire-power to close the lead. If the prospect has also downloaded lots of information and content from your website, the sales team already know the pain points that prospect has, before the phone call or meeting. Not only that but by knowing the information that the prospect has downloaded is a great conversation starter for any sales professional.
Keeping Leads Warm
Lead nurturing is a process that enables you as a business to keep leads warm for the sales team. When a prospect fills in a form on a landing page a series of automated emails can be triggered by an action from a lead. The emails should be spread out over a 2 or 3 week period of time. The emails should reference the last action the lead took on your website and offer additional resources they can consume. Ideally this content is placed on a landing page where you ask for additional contact information. Examples of content you could include are blog posts, infographics, e-books, case studies, and demo/consultation requests.
The idea behind lead nurturing is to pull a lead through the marketing funnel so that they become qualified. As marketers, we should anticipate the questions our persona's will ask and then deliver that content to them. When creating a lead nurturing campaign, always consider the stage of the funnel the lead is in. For example, if a lead downloads a case study, your lead nurturing campaign will not start with a free e-book. The lead is closer to being qualified than that. However, if a lead downloads a basic, Awareness-stage guide, you can start by offering other free content that becomes more and more serious over time. The latter example will be a much longer campaign than the first example. The goal is to tailor the campaign to the need of the persona, warm them up with enticing offers, qualify them with lead intelligence, and then pass them on to sales.
To find out more about lead nurturing please read this blog article: https://www.jdrgroup.co.uk/blog/content-marketing-vs-inbound-marketing-whats-the-difference
Making sure the sales team have enough quality leads is a top priority of any business marketing department. Are you taking these steps to ensure your sales team have enough leads?
Article by Dale Bonser
