Business Growth Blog

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.

Salespeople are swamped. They usually have all kinds of required quotas so management can track their progress -- phone calls, meetings, presentations, proposals, etc. The response I hear from salespeople is that they seriously do not have time to learn and use social media for sales.

However, top sellers do use LinkedIn -- and very successfully. According to a survey of over 3000 salespeople done by Jill Konrath, top sellers spend over six hours on LinkedIn per week.

That same six hours could potentially be 50-100 phone calls if you’re dialing for dollars. But on the flip side, it can easily take 50 phone calls to secure one appointment. (On a side note -- what’s your phone call to appointment ratio? Check out the comments Fresh Sales Strategies LinkedIn group question I started to hear what other salespeople have to say.)

So here’s the main question: Where should you be spending your time for maximum impact? Hitting the phones or networking on LinkedIn?

These 2 sales prospecting tools can be very powerful in helping you secure meetings and close deals. Personally, I think they’re game-changing.