Make your website your company's first sales tool
We often think of sales teams prospecting the hard way: the sales rep knocking on doors, the telemarketer bumping into secretarial roadblocks. Today, digital technology offers new ways of doing things and reinvents prospecting methods.
Switch to inbound marketing
Marketing has evolved
Over-solicited commercial canvassing has wearied recipients. Over-solicited, they have implemented strategies to protect themselves. As a result, traditional prospecting approaches, such as phoning, are achieving far fewer results than they did five years ago. It's time to change the way we do things, and the new uses of digital technology make this possible. It's time for inbound marketing.
Inbound reverses the trend
How do you get prospects to come to you? That's the principle behind inbound marketing. It can be based on a variety of media:
- your website,
- your blog,
- your newsletters,
- your social networks,
- your content: white papers, case studies, success stories...
These are all ways of "turning up the heat" on your prospects. This is known as lead nurturing.
The sinews of war: content
Identifying your contact
It's all about providing your prospects with quality content. In this way, you legitimize your expertise while keeping in touch. This is a content marketing strategy. The aim is to better target your content. You need to understand your audience's issues, so you can send them a message that speaks to them:
- a customer case close to their own,
- an issue specific to their sector,
- a news item that they too are facing...
Listen carefully
Prospects evolve. If he's not "ripe" today for the product you're offering, he may be in a month, three months, a year... How can you tell? By listening. And to do this, your content provides strong indications:
- Which of your blog posts has the prospect read?
- How often has he visited your site?
- What links did they click on?
- When did they download your white paper?
These are just some of the signals you can use to gauge the degree of maturity of your prospect within your conversion tunnel. Lead management solutions like Plezi provide this analysis. This information can then be passed on to your sales team, enabling them to take actions that are better adapted to the expectations detected.
Create your standard scenarios
What remains to be decided is the marketing " pressure " you wish to exert. How often should you distribute content? And how should it be organized? It's important to create your own scenarios. These are pathways distinguished by different variables. Let's say the person has visited the site once, you can plan to offer them a newsletter subscription. Once the newsletter has been sent, if it has been opened and read, you can plan to send a contact e-mail. By systematizing these steps, you'll save time and be able to handle a greater number of leads in a more personalized way. This is marketing automation.
How do you go about it? How it works
Real-time lead scoring
How do you make sure you don't make any mistakes: duplicates or inappropriate mailings? Marketing automation platforms take care of this for you. They update in real time. Plezi, for example, updates continuously.
Has the user returned to the site? Visited other pages? Published a new blog post? Downloaded a white paper? ... The online application integrates all this information as it comes in. A scoring logic is applied: depending on certain signals, actions are triggered.
The application even goes so far as to individualize newsletters: by selecting articles that have not been read, or those that better correspond to the recipient's profile or interests.
It's all in the approach
It's not about having the tool, it's about knowing how to use it. That's why the editor's added value lies in the support he provides. Many solutions are limited to toolboxes, when the interest and spirit of the approach must be at the heart of the process. Plezi is more in line with this logic. Combined with a fluid user interface, the solution eases the operational side of the process, allowing us to concentrate on the content proposition. Managing the inbound marketing chain from A to Z, it helps you to develop and structure your content efficiently.
Content strategy will be your best ally. Instead of chasing cold prospects, opt for inbound marketing and warm up your contacts with qualified content. Your website, blog, newsletters and social networks can all be used to enrich the quality of your conversion tunnel.
Article translated from French