Webinar Q&A Part 2: How to Build an eMarketing Strategy to Drive Sales

Yesterday, I posted round 1 of the answers to questions submitted during the webinar. This is round 2. Unbelievably, I still have a few more, so stay tuned.

Q. Does marketing have the right to unplug a prospect from a nurture sequence or is that the responsibility of sales?

This depends on your lead management process. The responsibility for “unplugging” a lead from a nurture sequence could swing either way, depending upon how consistent the messaging and content sales uses is an extension of marketing content. If you’re telling/sharing a consistent story across the entirety of the buying process, they may not need to be removed at all, depending on where they are in the sequence when they convert to a sales opportunity.

For example, the prospect triggers a conversion by watching an online demo, indicating they are ready to talk to a salesperson now when your nurturing sequence is still focused on early stages. Once sales confirms, then it would be prudent to move the lead to a later point in the sequence to align with their stage in the buying process.

If sales is not aligned with marketing, then sales should remove the lead from the nurture stream once they agree to pursue it. The one thing you do not want to do is have a prospect receiving mixed messaging from marketing and sales. That can derail the purchase because the prospect will no longer believe your company is as competent as they desire.

Always think about what the impact is for the prospect for all messaging and communications they will receive from your company.

Q. How can I keep the familiar feel of customer relations without ever being in the same room?

The best way to do this is to share ideas that your customers will discuss amongst themselves even without you. Content written to help them think through issues, get more value from your products/solutions and address new industry trends will stimulate conversations as long as it’s written to match their perspectives. Keep your content closer to them by using second person point of view. As long as you remember it’s about them, not you, this will happen.

The other component that enables this is the interactive dialogue made possible via social media. If you don't know which of your customers is using social media, it's time to learn. Make sure they know you are out there and available, as well.

Q. How do you turn hits on your website to contact leads? Another person asked, Do you have suggestions for increasing click-through rate?

Compelling content with offers for them to get more of it.

For example, share a great article about a topic of interest. Along with it, showcase an offer for a series of articles on the X Things you need to know to do it, or X Factors to consider when… The X number indicates the number of articles they’ll receive – or perhaps the resource is a white paper. The point is that you have to prove to them your content is valuable first, then ask for the opt in with another offer that extends from the interest they’ve expressed. Help them connect the dots. No sales offers, no product pushing, etc.

Think carefully about how much information you really need for an opt in. Every field you add decreases a website visitor’s willingness to complete your form. Do you really need to know their street address, city, state, country and zip code right now? Do you need to know it badly enough to risk losing opt ins that could become leads?

Q. How to promote business through social media (ie Facebook, Twitter, etc)?

I’d suggest that the focus changes from “promoting business” to “attracting interest.” Social media is not about promoting business as much as it’s about sharing information people want to read, respond to and pass along to their networks—whether it’s yours or not. The more interesting they find what you share, the more attention they will pay.

The rule of thumb I’ve seen is to share 10 links/references to other people’s content to every one link/reference you share of your own. This means you need to cull a list of people to source your sharing. If your company writes one or two blog posts per week, hosts a monthly webinar and produces a quarterly white paper, then you’ll need to source a lot of content to remain active and become a valuable source of information.

Consider analysts, leading bloggers and non-competing companies that are using social media. Creating lists on Twitter can also be a way to gain recognition from those you include. Building a following is easier when you’re helping promote others who will then be more inclined to help you. Also, instead of simply re-tweeting or “liking” something on Facebook, start commenting. Comment on blogs, too. Share your thoughts on Linkedin discussion groups.

Q. What is the best way for a non technical person to get started on e message marketing?

I’m not sure what the descriptor “non-technical” person has to do with e message marketing. Unless you’re asking specifically about using the technology. If so, there are many eMarketing tools and platforms available that are built specifically with business users in mind. Your host for this webinar is one of them – Swiftpage. Figure out what you want to do and then search for the toolset that enables you to achieve that outcome.

Q. What is the role of market research in prospecting without violating integrity?

Common sense. Seriously, if you’re doing something that violates integrity you should know and stop…now. For example, just because you can track the behavior of your prospects doesn’t give you the right to openly stalk them. Be careful which information you know about them that you choose to share. Anything that would give you an “ick” factor if someone did so to you is a good indicator you’re out of line. And, make sure you have their permission to communicate with them. As Seth Godin reminds us, permission is a high-value asset. Do everything you can to respect it. (my words, his idea)

Q. What are the best strategies to use for content for asking for sales as opposed to educating the client about what you do or sell?

I think I’d recommend looking at this as not asking for the sale, but showing evidence of why your company is the best choice for helping them to solve the problem. This means evidence content such as, analyst reports that rate your company highly, customer stories, ROI tools and information about how to justify the spend, time to ROI, etc.

Q. What types of things in an e-newsletter gets the best response?  Articles?  News?  Offers? 

The answer depends on a couple of things. Is this an eNewsletter for prospects or customers?
What do you mean by response? Click throughs?

Articles: These are the best, in my experience. Equally valuable are customer spotlights – especially interviews. Get beyond the typical customer description, problem and here’s the list of products we sold them. For articles, focus on being helpful based on whether or not they’ve solved the problem. Hint: your customers solved it. So tell them what’s next. Your prospects are still working on that first problem. This is one reason why content cannot be designed to serve all audiences.

News: This typically means that companies want to share their latest press releases or Kudos. Occasionally, this is okay. But if your newsletter relies on this kind of chest thumping each month, I’d encourage you to remove it. News, from your prospects and customers’ perspectives is about industry trends that affect them, problems they need to address, government regulations that may affect their businesses, etc.

Offers: For customers, perhaps. For prospects, no. Here’s why.
Customers who are already using your products may have uncovered a need for additional services or add-on functionality. They already spend money with you. If you can make a “value” case beyond buy more from us, then offers to customers can be highly successful in creating up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Instead of a sales offer, I’d pitch an online demo or in person executive briefing seminar which could lead to a sales conversation.

For prospects, if you begin pushing offers, you’ve assigned their consideration back to price. Companies can’t win in price-bound discussions because there is always a competitor who will sell for less. The whole point of content marketing is to prove value so well that price is not the consideration carrying the heaviest weight in the decision. Sell based on value-added expertise, not price. Unless you’re pushing a transaction sale based on volume. If your selling a more complex offering, show prospects what you bring to the table that they won’t get if they buy from anyone else.

If you'd like to watch the archive of the webinar, How to Build an eMarketing Strategy to Drive Sales, you can find it here as well as download the presentation.

Comments

[Daniella Santos]

This post explains clearly what and how e-marketing strategy works. This will help a lot of course not only businesses but also the customers. This kind of strategy will be effective to businesses who sees the need to increase their sales. It will help them present their products to customers, especially now that almost everyone uses the internet in research. Great post.

[Matt]

Ardath,

Really great set of Q&As. I'm curious on your recommendations to comment and share via social media. Is that something the "Corporate" twitter/FB/LI account should do (via 1+ persons managing it), or should individuals within the corporation use their own accounts to tie into the corporate social media framework? I see potential problems/objections with folks using their own accounts (FB and Twitter specifically), but having one monolithic corporate account talking doesn't seem very personal to me.

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Matt,

Great question. It depends.

Let's take Twitter. If a company establishes a Twitter account, they may need multiple people to keep it going - at the rate of communication via Twitter. In this case, they can list contributors in their bio and each person would follow their tweets with ^aa (initials designating who posted - so in my case that would stand for Ardath Albee.

Linked In is dictated more by individual profiles than group mentality. Sure, you can have a company page, pull through your blog, but for group participation, it will need to be individuals with profiles.

There is consideration out there about individuals building their own "personal" brands vs. company brand by using individual accounts, but it truly can be more effective since it's easier to talk with people than with companies.

The best scenario here is to encourage many people to do so on behalf of the company. This way, if one moves on, your company doesn't lose their social participation and presence. To manage this, you need to make sure they understand the company's story and speak to it consistently.

From what I've seen on Facebook - a company "fan" page is the best way to participate. This can be supplemented with individuals pages, but can truly be done well in a group fashion. Same with a blog - just byline your authors.

Just a few thoughts. Hope they help.

[sinosells]

Thank you for your discussion, I found the perfect answer, thank you very much..