Raise your hand if you’ve ever joined a gym with all the right intentions of losing weight and getting in shape only to not be able to find the time to stick with it for as long as it takes to get the results you want. Inbound marketing is a bit like that. When you hit the gym, don’t you kind of wish you could get into a time machine and whisk yourself back about six months so right now you were in the shape you would have been if you had started then? Yeah, I get that feeling with inbound marketing, too.
Inbound is a Workout
Just like working out, there are plenty of reasons why inbound marketing is a good thing to do. The inbound theory makes sense if done properly. Developing organic search ranking for your website results in highly qualified prospects that are already looking for what you have to offer.
The problem is it takes a pretty challenging effort to develop a conversion style website that utilizes SEO enriched content, a blog with 2 to 3 posts per week, a daily social media posting campaign across multiple platforms and an automated emailing system integrated into a CRM (Client Relationship Manager) data base system. Whew! Just describing inbound marketing is challenging.
When Inbound Ain’t Enough
In most cases, there usually aren’t too many people sitting around the office who have the extra time to make all of that happen. Maybe you even have the bucks to hire the people to do all this. Then, inbound experts say, about 3 or 4 months after you launch everything, you will begin to see some traction and get some leads, but that’s after the 60 to 90 days it takes to set everything up for launch. So by my math, we’re talking six months before we should expect those qualified leads to start trickling into the pipeline. Six months is a lot of time for the old pipeline to be running dry.
What if you just can’t wait that long?
There is a way to get those quality leads a lot quicker. You can hire a lead generation and telemarketing company that specializes in serving business-to-business companies.
Are you in the 25% or the 75%?
Often in the B2B world, providing an ongoing feed of qualified high quality leads is even more essential to the sales effort because the market can be more vertical and contain fewer prospects to begin with. However, you would be surprised how many businesses have no formal lead generation process in place at all. Based on the “Lead Generation Benchmark Report” from Marketing Sherpa, “75% of those surveyed had either no guidelines or an informal lead generation process.”
Things a good lead generation and telemarketing company will assist you with:
- Developing a prospect persona or profile based on your best existing customers
- Determining what characteristics are common and look for new prospects with similar traits
- Providing enough information about each prospect for you to make informed decisions.
- Help you create a professional opening message that engages your best prospects
Things you should have in place to maximize your investment in lead generation:
- Have a formal in-house procedure for handling leads
- Respond promptly to new leads with an engaging next step
- Track your progress and redirect efforts when necessary based on reliable data
We’ve all heard it said over and over, “It’s a numbers game.” Managing those numbers is what a good lead generation and telemarketing company will help you do. Now don’t you wish they could help you lose those extra pounds, too?
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