Some thoughts from our President and CEO, Jory Lamb.
As an Entrepreneur, when you are growing your company, you hit many tipping points where you have to make critical decisions. One of those is knowing when to augment your sales activities and really commit to marketing strategies.
In 2009, we had a team of telemarketers and several sales rep struggling to deliver their numbers. It was a tough time for the industry and the economy as a whole. Try as they might, they could not get the critical mass of initial appointments necessary to get the sales results desired. Everyone was slugging it out. And they were starting to get discouraged.
So, we decided to employ technology to help them. We moved away from outbound calling to inbound marketing and signed up with several social media tools to aid us in our marketing analysis and lead generation – and results greatly improved.
What exactly did we do?
First we hired a marketing manager to oversee lead generation, awareness and current customer engagement.
First lesson. We had several marketing persons in the past. I learned quickly that the most important skill in a good marketing manager is project management. They don't have to be a writer, a designer or the most creative person on the team. That can all be hired out. What they really need to be good at is hitting timelines and targets.
Next, we grabbed good tools to manage our inbound marketing efforts. We landed on Hubspot and SAP CRM. Our marketing manager spent a lot of time training and gaining expertise with those tools.
Second lesson. You need a plan. We started with a detailed plan tied to budget and results. Then, we built out a marketing plan and budget with a blocking chart, built and bought lists, and began executing from our plan. Our goal was to reach 225 companies we hadn't engaged with before. In analyzing our conversion ratios (how many interests turn into sales) we felt confident we could hit our number.
In that first year of inbound marketing, we had over 300 companies we had never engaged with before, show interest by downloading, white papers, reports, or taking in a webinar. We gained more clients than we had planned for, and had a strong list heading into the next year. Since that time, on three separate occasions, we've had to tell them to stop marketing to allow our sales team time to catch up.
Final lesson. Marketing is iterative. Sometimes things that worked yesterday might not work today or tomorrow, especially in this digital age where inboxes are getting overloaded with messages. Although you have to be consistent - our guiding principle has always been to offer value and not be salesy – you have to be flexible. From that year and into today, we have been tweaking the content, the tools, and the tactics. The net effect has been a CAGR of 26% since then.
By harnessing the power of technology, we have been able to create a lead generation machine to help drive organic growth.
Hope this helps you and good luck.
