Pinpoint where your sales opportunities stall – and quick start your lead-gen efforts

Some companies, amidst uncertainty and restrictions brought on by COVID-19, re-directed marketing dollars and efforts, put campaigns on hold, and halted their lead gen effort. Others used the opportunity to clean up their CRM contacts, polish their LinkedIn profiles, engage with prospects and influencers – and offer help.

According to the 2020 Marketing & Sales Best Practices for Print Service Providers report, by KL Kimerer and Associates, 62% of PSPs experiencing declining revenue DO NOT support sales with lead generation campaigns.

As we wander through the pandemic and slowly return to work, business leaders and owners around the world are wondering: “what comes next?”

The features and benefits that your customers cared about a few months ago may no longer matter, and they probably aren’t looking to “buy now”. They may, however, be inclined to book a demo, fill out a customer satisfaction survey, or schedule a consultation. Sharing customer success stories, how-to guides, industry research, and virtual tours – as well as being available, helpful, and real – is the approach companies must now take. Understanding the behaviours of your current (and future) buying audience – and feeding them information that helps them make independent decisions about new solutions, trends and technologies – is the new normal.

Follow these 3 steps to test and target new markets, products and services – and quick-start your lead gen efforts.

1 – Pinpoint how you help

Older millennials, now approaching 40, remember a pre-internet world, whereas older Gen Z’s, who are in their early 20s and hitting the workforce, never knew life without the internet. With an innate ability to tune out marketing completely, this generation’s business buyers make their decisions by starting their research online and in groups. They rarely deal with a salesperson until the later phases of their buying journey.

When business re-opens, it will be more important than ever that prospects understand how you help them within the first 5 seconds of visiting your website.

What you’re selling is not nearly as important as why it matters to the people who buy from you – especially now. Go to your website and look at your value proposition, calls to action and key messages. COVID-19 is a global human health crisis. Nothing good will come from the idea of profiting from it. Showcase how your solution helps people through this time, but choose your words wisely or you’ll come across as trying to make a quick buck. Knowing who you help – and how you help them – becomes more critical than ever.

2 – Target who you help

A well-defined sales and marketing process reduces chaos and establishes scalable, repeatable activities for growth. When you can pinpoint what’s motivating your buyer, you can develop – and sell – solutions that help them achieve their goals. In order to do that, you need data that comes from a variety of sources, including your website, your CRM, and wherever conversations are taking place.

Over 61% of respondents indicated they do not have a lead gen follow-up process in place.

Your CRM (customer relationship management) is home to your customer’s sales journey – before, during and after the sale. CRMs house a treasure trove of customer data to fuel lead-gen efforts. Having insights to customer and prospect relationships aligned to sales funnels and pipelines makes it possible for marketers to plan, execute, and monitor their email marketing campaigns and get insights into the metrics to help improve the performance of future campaigns.

Nearly half of PSP respondents are not able to determine where in the sales process most opportunities stall or fail to move forward.

To generate new leads, marketers across all industries are capturing, distilling and presenting customer data – then automating how leads are generated, scored, nurtured and converted – from suspect to prospect to customer. They are then segmenting that data to fuel highly targeted quick-start campaigns.

3 – Engage with your audience – quickly

Studies have shown that campaigns that used a combination of print, email, social media and mobile applications had an average response rate of 9.5%, compared to 7.9% in campaigns that used email only. By running a quick-start campaign, featuring a highly optimized landing page, you can test targeted marketing campaigns, offers and content across vertical market segments, geographies and personas.

Pinpoint how you help. Target and engage who you help. Use quick-start campaigns to test, measure and learn – and fast-track your lead gen efforts.

The 2020 Marketing & Sales Best Practices report for Print Service Providers, by Karen Kimerer & Associates, provides a collection of marketing and sales best practices to yield growth and results now and moving forward, including:

☑ How top performing PSPs attract new customers
☑ Top 3 sales rep mistakes
☑ Effectiveness of Training
☑ Competitive differentiators

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Portions of this article were published with permission in Graphic Arts Magazine.
Image credit: Joanne Gore Communications