Most of us have had this drilled into our heads by now. During a crisis, communication is key.
Your employees are adapting to new work environments and worried about the future, and they need reassurance. Your existing customers need to know you have a plan to continue running your business and serve their changing needs.
And many businesses are innovating to serve new customer needs and solve emerging problems. We love that, and we want your leads to know about it. If you’re thinking “what leads?” it’s time to dig in.
There’s never been a more important time to have a sales funnel. Your offering is evolving right now and will evolve again when this crisis passes. You need to tell people about your solutions or you are wasting time developing them.
Today, let’s talk about three ways to develop your sales funnel:
- Content Marketing and Email Campaigns
- List Buying / Renting
- Targeted Engagement on Social Media
Content Marketing
Here’s an example of a traditional content marketing sales funnel:
- Create blog articles with valuable content customers will search the web for
- Drive those people to your website to read that blog
- On your website, promote high value content that sits behind a form so you can collect email addresses
- Use a CRM tool to automatically send valuable content and nurturing emails to those addresses. Build authority, trust, and familiarity so that yours is the first brand your audience thinks of when they are ready to buy.
This is a proven method used by most businesses. It’s a slow return on investment, but a powerful one. You want this in your toolkit, and if you need help making that happen–we can help. Contact Bruck Marketing for a free consultation.
List Buying / Renting
List buying skips the first 3 steps of the content marketing process and allows you to nurture a large new audience.
It’s risky. Emailing a large audience that has not invited you to do so can lead to a lot of spam blocking, which can damage your reputation with ISPs (internet service providers). If you’re going to do this, make sure you buy a very targeted and highly filtered list, and ask recipients to opt in to continue receiving emails.
Better still, rent a list. In this scenario, the vendor you “rent” from sends an email with your content. Typically (but not always) recipients are encouraged (but not required) to opt into your email list. Going this route allows you to borrow the authority of the vendor you rent from (people are more likely to open an email from them, than from you), and protects your domain authority because it doesn’t require you to email anyone who has not opted in to your list.
Plug these new contacts into your CRM tool and send nurturing emails. Keep an eye on this. If recipients never open these emails, clean them out. Stop emailing them or your ISP may penalize you by sending your emails to junk mail for every recipient.
Targeted Engagement on Social Media
This is our top recommendation for B2B businesses that need targeted leads fast. And it’s also a great long-term strategy.
Expand your network on LinkedIn. Why? Traditional email is still the most powerful tool in a B2B marketers toolkit. But email is where people go to work. When they are there, they are in work mode. Your solicited marketing email is often a welcomed instrument in that orchestra, because customers who have chosen to receive your email recognize you have a solution to a business problem they face.
However, unsolicited marketing emails, when someone is in work mode, are a distraction and an annoyance. This is undoubtedly familiar to you. You’re a worker. You’re on a deadline. You’re getting stuff done. You know work mode.
But you also know exploration mode. When you’re ready for a break from work, you switch into exploration mode and scan LinkedIn for a sense of connection and as a source for new ideas and solutions. If a connection on LinkedIn shows they understand a business problem you face, you’re in a much better position to receive their input. You’re in exploration mode.
Expand your network on LinkedIn and reach customers while they are in exploration mode. But how?
MarketingLeads Program
At Bruck Marketing, our MarketingLeads program uses a multistep approach to take optimal advantage of LinkedIn and your CRM, and build a set of targeted leads at scale.
We use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to reach a highly targeted audience and expand your network. And we leverage automation and shortcuts that significantly reduce your time investment without compromising personalization. If you’ve developed your brand, you probably have a handful of messages you’re repeating again and again (you should). Our program saves you time on the repetitive aspects of your communication, but still allows you to respond naturally and fluidly.
In LinkedIn, you will have an opportunity to share insights and innovations with thought leaders both in LinkedIn Messaging and in your feed. Every time you publish content on LinkedIn, you’re building authority, trust, and familiarity with this targeted set of connections so that yours is the first brand they think of when they are ready to buy.
On LinkedIn, you are an individual member of your organization, and that’s powerful. You might have, for instance, ten members of your organization building their networks by fifty connections each week–each (500 connections per week).
But you also have a powerful CRM tool at your disposal. And remember, email is still the most powerful marketing tool in a B2B toolkit. Our MarketingLeads program helps you centralize these new, targeted leads back to your business CRM so they can receive all the benefits of your content marketing sales funnel.
This is a safe, effective, and targeted way to build a sales funnel, and it provides you with powerful opportunities for A/B testing of messages, one-on-one engagement, and scalability.
Want help building your sales funnel? Contact Bruck Marketing today to discuss the best solution for your business needs.
