More leads coming in than your sales team can handle? It’s a good problem to have—but it’s still indeed a problem if your salespeople are stressed and opportunities are slipping through the cracks.
Between the shrinking labor force and surging demand, efficiency is more important than ever. Especially if you’re in a crunch and struggling to hire help, a few foundational marketing tactics can give your sales team the tools they need to convert prospects into customers, with less time and energy required for each sales call.
Website Enhancements
Your company website is the first place to look when you’re trying to take some weight off your team’s shoulders. Are your salespeople still using printouts to reference product specifications? Add those printed materials to your website so salespeople can send links instead. Bonus—you’ll also be adding SEO value to your website by building it out with more pages and content.
You can simplify client onboarding by syncing your online web forms with your company’s CRM or email program to eliminate one more step from each salesperson’s onboarding responsibilities. As customers submit a contact form through your website, their name, email, and other information can automatically be populated across your marketing channels. And if you sell products, don’t count out e-commerce. There are multiple web platforms that allow businesses to start and manage an online store relatively easily.
Digital Sales Collateral
While converting printouts to PDFs and web pages, it’s also a good time to think creatively about your sales collateral. Infographics can explain product features and benefits in new and visually engaging ways. A digital sales brochure can be a powerful piece when emailing key decision makers. Whatever your digital sales collateral may be, it will enable prospects to take in the information on their own time, bringing the sale that much closer to the finish line for a salesperson to seal the deal.
Email Marketing
Email is an extremely cost-effective marketing tactic to stay in front of prospects. We’re not talking about the emails your salespeople send all day, but an additional company email marketing plan. New products, materials, capabilities, testimonials, and case studies are just a few examples of email-ready (and worthy) content. With a program like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, you can view who opened a given email and where in the email they clicked to read more. Those prospects become direct sales leads for your team to follow up with, knowing they’ve already shown interest.
Social Media
Your company’s social media channels serve as an extension of your website and, in turn, your sales team. Fuel your social media feeds with useful information linking back to your website. Then, implement social media advertising and retargeting. Social media advertising continuously fills your sales funnel. Retargeting keeps your business top of mind by serving ads to a prospect all around the internet after they’ve visited your site. Meanwhile, your salespeople, prospects, and customers alike can share your social media posts with others in just a few clicks rather than sending an email or making a phone call.
Digital Advertising
When your sales team is stretched too thin, new lead generation often moves down the to-do list. Everyone is too busy fielding leads. But as we’ve learned, the tide can turn at any time and it’s important to always keep a strong pipeline of new business. Use digital advertising to keep the momentum going.
For example, if you’re a local business such as a restaurant wanting to promote your new menu offerings, consider launching a geo-targeted campaign that reaches audiences based on their location. If you’re a manufacturing business targeting engineers, a contextual targeting campaign lets us place display ads on relevant articles and websites where your audience may be reading. Digital advertising is scalable, adjustable, and trackable, giving you the flexibility and visibility needed to maximize ROI.
Ready to make your salespeople’s lives a little easier and their processes a lot more efficient? An outsourced marketing partner like Netwave can be the perfect pairing to work in tandem with your in-house sales team. Contact us to get started.
