We explore this question all the time – for ourselves, for our clients – how do we ensure that the best opportunities and most qualified leads are continuing to be identified and move deeper into the sales pipeline?
Today’s successful marketers have worked to build up a list of the right decision makers at the right companies, developed content strategies and digital marketing channels, and used email automation tools to push out content that educates and positions their organizations as thought leaders. They’ve followed that up with additional social media efforts or event marketing that has resulted in a steady stream of inbound traffic. Each month, they can see who has opened their emails, clicked through the content, connected with them or followed them and maybe even attended a Webinar.
Now what?
This is the question we’ve continued to hear from even the most successful marketers: .“We’re using marketing automation, we’re pushing out content through multiple channels. We’re building a pipeline of inbound leads. We’re wondering, what happens now?”
There’s a disconnect on how inbound activity converts to more sales opportunities. Sales could follow-up. However the reality is this:
MarketLauncher has identified the missing link as the addition of human touch through Call to Action. By pointing personalized calling and email activity at those who are interacting with your content through multiple channels, we turn passive viewers into active leads. This focused approach has significant impact and creates more qualified first stage sales opportunities.
A client with a 10-year history with ML has served as a litmus test for best practice techniques as prospecting methods have continued to shift over time. This particular client targets high-level decision makers at mid-market companies with a consultative service offering and has increasingly found themselves in a competitive space with a lot of “noise.” Like many companies, they were finding that you have to continue to educate potential buyers and outreach must be repetitive, consistent and you must nurture leads over time.
Six months ago, we collaborated with this client to create a newly optimized campaign. We designed an outreach program to integrate with their existing inbound program. We pointed our outreach activity to engage with leads as they were expressing interest in content, creating specific call-to-action touch points to move passive viewers into an active lead stage.
As a result, we were able to book 18 appointments with the same volume of outreach that previously produced 10. And then, as a result of a higher percentage advancing into the Sales Funnel, the net result meant the number of qualified sales opportunities more than tripled.
ML’s Call to Action Campaigns are aimed at moving leads deeper into the sales pipeline by leveraging your existing marketing efforts and adding the “missing link.” An integrated business development strategy creates the touch points needed to move a lead from aware to engaged in the sales process. We are optimizing lead activity by creating a mechanism to move leads who have demonstrated interest further into the lead funnel, resulting in higher conversion rates.