Inbound - The Blog: The Secrets Behind Click To Close

Inbound Marketing And The Prospect Experience Hold The Secret To Higher Close Rates And Shorter Sales Cycles

Want to close more new customers? Want to close them more quickly? Want to beat your competition more consistently without having to discount or compete on price? Inbound marketing holds the secret to creating a “click-to-close” experience for your prospects that makes your company the obvious choice.

Achieving the goals outlined above has less to do about the tactics you’re working on and more about the experience you create for your prospects while they’re interacting with your marketing and participating in your sales process. In the end, if you provide them with a highly educational, guided and thoughtful experience, our research shows you’ll get the business.

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This Tried-And-True Middle-Of-The-Funnel Tactic Almost Always Produces

With so many newfangled marketing tactics getting a lot of press, sometimes we have to make sure not to throw out the older but high-performing marketing tactics in favor of the new shiny objects.

Yes, podcasts, radio shows and interviews are hot right now, but webinars remain a high-performing tactic that engages your prospects, moves them through the funnel and produces highly qualified sales leads.

But because consumers have changed their buying behaviors, we should make a few upgrades to our content marketing and webinar program to take advantage of those changes and make sure we optimize the time and energy put into executing a webinar. If you expect your webinar program to produce sales opportunities, then consider these six upgrades as mandatory and not optional.

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Marketing Strategy Isn’t Only A Secret To Inbound Marketing Success; It’s The Secret To ALL Marketing Success, Including Demand Generation

If you notice, our blog isn’t filled with tips and techniques on how to use video, upgrade landing pages, design an infographic or get better at email.

To be honest with you, those articles are a dime a dozen on every single agency blog and most of the marketing technology blogs. Instead, we’ve focused on enlightening our subscribers with information to improve long-term performance of your marketing and sales initiatives.

To be even more transparent, the tactical stuff is a lot less interesting to us than the strategic stuff. You can Google “how to improve landing page performance” and get a large collection of articles on forms, headlines, copy, images, page design, etc. But Google “how to get more leads” and the articles are few and far between. Worse, the advice almost never focuses on what’s missing nine times out of 10 — the marketing strategy.

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Dragons, White Walkers, Kings, Queens And Swords All Come Together To Help You Conquer Your Revenue Goals

Whether you’re a fan of “Game of Thrones” or not, no one can challenge the popularity of the show. The same is true with marketing. Today, you need the perfect combination of demand generation, inbound marketing and sales enablement to exceed your revenue goals.

Given the complexity of today’s marketing and sales tactics, it’s impossible to attempt to execute lead generation and revenue growth without a revenue strategy that includes both messaging and tactical configuration. Think about this like trying to take over the Westeros without a game plan.

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Julie Golden Takes The Reins At HubSpot’s Largest Diamond Partner

Press Release: Conshohocken, PA – July 17, 2017

On Friday, Square 2 Marketing, one of the largest and most successful revenue generation consulting firms with specialties in inbound marketing and demand generation, announced that Julie Golden, who had been serving as chief operating officer, will be taking the lead at the agency as its new president. Mike Lieberman, who had been the president, will be moving into the CEO role.

Mike said, “There are very few people I’ve met in the agency community who understand how to serve the clients better than Julie. She also excels at delivery and ensuring that our clients receive the business results they expect – and more. This blend makes her the perfect person to lead our company.”

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ABM Takes Awareness Right To Your Prospect’s Front Door

The challenge with straight demand generation is that it involves a lot of awareness building. You’re trying to tell your story to people who should be interested, but who – for whatever reason – might not be at the time. The message delivery is one to many. You’re telling your story to a big group of people.

Account-based marketing takes that same approach but narrows the delivery. Now the message delivery is one to one; you’re telling your story to one person at a time. This is one reason ABM is so appealing to marketers and so appropriate for sales. It carries a single personalized message with highly contextual content to a top-tiered, highly targeted group.

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Optimizing Your Website To Generate High Quality Leads Requires Monthly Care And Feeding

Regardless of your approach to marketing – inbound marketing or demand generation – your website has one mission: to generate leads. It should create high quality leads that turn into sales opportunities, and ultimately into new customers and revenue.

The best way to do this is to constantly optimize your website based on its own performance data and your company’s goals. Here are 21 website optimization techniques to drive leads and revenue growth. We’ve bundled the techniques into some functional areas for your reading pleasure. Let’s get started.

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To Generate Leads, Match Your Content Marketing Efforts Perfectly With Your Prospect’s Content Needs

A lot of marketers out there think content marketing is enough to drive leads. They might be right – for the sake of this article, let’s assume they are. It's an important step that they’ve embraced content as an important aspect of helping prospects feel safe during their buyer journey, and that they’re using content to get prospects to select them.

Now let’s focus on what kind of content is needed, in what type of company, to drive high quality leads and then convert those leads into new customers. If you’re creating the wrong content and delivering it at the wrong time, to the wrong person – you might be driving your prospects right into the open arms of your competition. 

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Not Getting Enough Sales-Ready Leads? Check Your Story, Messaging And Differentiation First

If you’ve just wrapped up reviewing your second quarter and were disappointed with the amount of sales-qualified leads, sales opportunities or customers coming directly from marketing efforts, then look no further than your marketing strategy.

A lot of marketers and CEOs might look at the mechanics of the program first, but nine times out of 10 your landing pages, website or blog are not to blame. Instead, your results are disappointing because you’re not telling a compelling, engaging, emotional and disruptive enough story in all of your marketing.

This is sometimes difficult for businesspeople to see. Your perspective on your own company’s messaging isn’t objective. Your website is not for you; it’s for your prospects. Here’s a quick checklist to see if your messaging and stories might be missing the mark and limiting the amount of inbound marketing leads generated for your sales team.

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Stories Are An Important Part Of Sales; Here’s A Story That Might Change How You Think About Sales

If you’ve ever been whitewater rafting with your family, you know what goes into planning a successful trip like the one I’m going to describe. You need a trusted guide to make your trip safe, fun and an experience to remember.

You might start your buyer journey by asking a few friends and family members if they know anyone who does trips like this. They might have a name or two, but before long it’s likely you’ll find yourself on Google doing a search for “whitewater rafting trips for families.”

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