Introduction
Sales teams want sales, but deals don’t magically appear. Nor do appointments. Therefore every part of the selling process needs to be connected and must not operate in isolation. This makes Marketing Transformation and the Customer Journey an essential element of your business.
Customer Journey
Clearly guide your customers to your preferred outcome, i.e. don’t leave it up to them as they’ll go 'off-piste.' Start by teaching marketers how to sell and teach sales how to market, making sure they both know what the plan of action is and for all of them to contribute.
Get everyone to write content and come up with ideas. They may not be too hot on editing but leave that for someone with experience. The objective is to create a ‘hopper’ full of content that can be systematically and consistently released, which demonstrates your presence and commitment to provide a great service.
Agree in advance a six-month marketing strategy, including a budget projection, but don’t go head-on into this without first reviewing the following:
- Interview existing customers
- Find out why they bought from you
- Find out what they currently like and dislike about your service
- Ask what content they like to read
Don't forget 'Perfect preparation prevents poor performance!'
Database Segmentation
As the saying goes “crap in, crap out”. Make sure your database is up to scratch, cleaned up and that it’s been merged and purged of all the poor and incomplete data. Once you are ready to start output, make sure that the following points will match and resonate with your target markets:
- Landing Pages
- Emails
- Images
- Links
Copywriting & Tone of Voice
Take some time to consider how you want to appear to prospective businesses online. It is rare that a CEO will write everything, therefore mix up the tones of voice. Keep in mind, however that your staff are not talking to a long-lost aunt! How do you want to come across to people and what elements of empathy will you use? Also consider where your copy will be read:
- Online website
- Direct Mail & Letters
- Social media
Personalisation
We all like others to call us by our names, but in some cases, it can be too familiar. Applied sensitively, it is important to consider the following:
- First and last names
- Images that correlate to the person, business or product
- Use of empathy
Persona Identification
It is a complete waste of time spending hours and hard-earned cash preparing a campaign if you’re not going to narrow down the focus and target specific people and/or personas. Here are a few points to consider:
- Who are you selling to? Male/Female?
- Authority/Position
- CEO
- Director
- Manager
- Executive Assistant
- Industry problems
- Industry successes
- Company specific data
Create a content strategy
Write for the personas you want to sell to, using the resources of your existing sales and marketing departments:
- White Papers
- Articles
- Books
- Video
- Infographics
- Curated Content
- Guest writers
Distribution Platforms
Define where you intend to promote your content and how frequently you are able to 1) create a sustainable campaign and 2) post up new content:
- LinkedIn – Newsfeed or Pulse and Employee Newsfeed
- Facebook - Company Page and Employee Newsfeed
- Twitter – Company Page and Employee Newsfeed
- Medium – Content Site
- Expose Content via:
- Paid Exposure – Vertical Market Websites
- Reciprocal Exposure – Collaboration Approach
Define Current Baseline
Chart your current performance so you are able to measure the success of your new approach. Then plan to scale up:
- Review existing customer journey – would you buy from your company?
- What are the sequences of emails and communications – are they generic?
- What collateral do you promote – would you buy from you, based upon what you're sending out?
That’s Digital Marketing Transformation – Sorted!
Once you’ve planned everything and are ready to go, your marketing strategy and customer experience should look something like this…
The author and founder of salesXchange, Nigel Maine is a B2B marketing and sales expert with a proven track record in scaling up growth for Technology, SaaS, and Professional Services organisations. With 30 years hands-on experience and unique approach, Nigel has developed an effective strategy that dramatically increases exposure and profitability for B2B organizations.
