Is the sales role still relevant? Not if your company doesn’t make the buyer’s long list!

Buying-Process

Remember when attending an exhibition or requesting brochures were the main ways of researching a new solution requirement?

Finding out which companies provided the type of solution you were looking for took a bit of effort on behalf of the buyer to identify potential suppliers and compare their various offerings. Not so these days! Within 30 minutes you can pretty much become an “expert” on anything you like.

With instant access to more information than you could possibly hope for, nowadays the buyer is better informed than ever and is likely to be at least 50% of the way through their procurement cycle with preconceived ideas on what they need, before a supplier is even aware of the opportunity!

Think of all the opportunities the buyer has for completing a review of the market: a simple Google search on a key phrase and you can check out a few websites, subscribe to newsletters, attend webinars, review blogging sites, check out LinkedIn profiles, join in on Twitter, download white papers, watch explainer animations – the possibilities for research are vast!

Having identified a list of potential suppliers and perhaps looked at videos on YouTube, or run an online demo, they might view community sites to find recommendations on supplier products, or searched Google with relevant phrases to look for complaints/issues or other bad customer experiences.

At this point the buyer will have identified potential suppliers. The key question is – Will your company make the short list?

The sales team can spend all their day, picking up the phone to identify prospects and sending emails to organisations that fit the profile for their solutions, but in reality, unless your company has a robust digital marketing strategy, opportunities will get to the tender stage without you even being aware of them.

Before all you sales professionals despair, there is an answer! By developing interesting and original content that adds value to the reader at each stage of the buying process, you can position your company as a thought leader and keep your propositions front of mind.

Not only can you attract prospects to your company and, but by managing your company’s online presence through a digital marketing platform, you can also track and measure your prospects level of engagement to influence their shortlist and develop a prioritised, steady stream of qualified sales-ready leads to follow up and close.

You can turn this situation to your advantage quickly and for minimal investment.

Alternatively, you can continue to leave a high cost sales team trawling the market in an attempt to catch a prospective buyer before it’s too late. And just hope you find them, before they find your competitors….

Find Out More

0

How to Implement a Low Risk, Low Cost Digital Marketing Strategy… With Immediate Results!

Implementing a Digital Marketing Strategy
The Internet has given today’s buyers unprecedented access to information. In fact a 2011 study by Forrester research concluded that “70% of the buy cycle is completed before sales engage”. While this may seem like a daunting statistic, there is good news for savvy B2B sales and marketing executives.

The same web technology that put power in the hands of the buyer can also be used to capture in-depth information about your website visitors—even before they reveal their identity through online forms or via an inbound enquiry.  Implementing a digital marketing solution provides you with visitor and lead intelligence information that can become your sales enablement secret weapon.

For many B2B organisations, this can seem a huge leap, especially when you have previously been successfully using ‘traditional’ outbound marketing and direct selling methods.  But as buyers become more online savvy, can you be sure that what worked in the past is going to work in the future?

An effective joined up marketing strategy integrates your outbound marketing tactics with inbound marketing methods to allow you to connect with your buyers earlier in the sales cycle, engage more prospects and accelerate your marketing ROI.   By implementing a solution that integrates the latest digital marketing tactics and outbound marketing efforts, you can leverage your existing internal best practice processes, more cost effectively.

Fundamentally a joined up marketing strategy follows this process:

  • Drive More Traffic to Your Website
  • See Who is Visiting Your Website
  • Convert Visitors into Sales Leads
  • Nurture Leads into Customers

Understandably, many companies are not ready to take the leap of faith to a “big bang” approach of process intensive (and expensive) marketing automation.  However, by following our low risk approach and implementing a digital marketing platform in phases, aligned with this closed loop marketing strategy, you can realise immediate business benefits.

Initially, we propose implementing a digital marketing platform supported by services that deliver more traffic to your website through organic searches.  By combining visitor intelligence to identify and profile your website visitors, you can boost your telemarketing or internal sales activity, prioritise lead generation efforts and engage with companies that have searched for your solutions to their business problems.

As process improvement opportunities are identified, more sophisticated marketing automation processes can be implemented gradually to fully support and add value to the lead nurturing process.

Contact Us Today
for a free 30 minute Online Demo that introduces our SEO Boost & Visitor Intelligence service, supported by a low cost introductory offer.


0