3 things your marketing and sales teams need for a successful new year
1. More Events, More Tradeshows
Your B2B comrades have spoken, and the word is spreading quickly: Trade shows were most commonly cited for generating the most and the best leads in 2014.
As you sift through your overly congested inbox filled with articles, sales pitches, and company emails; it really shouldn’t be surprising that in-person events have become so powerful. Yes, events are expensive and your CPL (cost per lead) will be significantly higher than leads from your website. However, if it is the marketer’s goal to fill your sales team’s pipeline with high quality, in-market leads, then shouldn’t trade shows be a top priority? The answer to that question is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no, but if you have the budget and (more importantly) the willpower to commit to a few more events in 2015, do it.
2. LinkedIn Reigns Supreme
Marketers are beginning to realize that unlike on Facebook and Twitter, B2B promotion on LinkedIn can be incredibly effective. In fact, according to a study done by the Content Marketing Institute, 91% of B2B marketers are distributing content via LinkedIn (more than any other platform).
Your company might have one or a few people in charge of posting and maintaining company social media pages, but in order to get the attention of the largest number of potential prospects, take advantage of your employees’ total network reach. That can mean a few things for your marketing team:
- Recruit your employees (primarily customer facing reps) to post marketing collateral, company information, and industry news from their LinkedIn accounts.
- Get permission and post on behalf of your employees on their Linkedin accounts. This can be done through many marketing CRMs such as Hubspot and Marketo, or social media enablement tools like Oktopost.
3. Reporting Is Crucial
If you’ve committed to an inbound marketing program, then congratulations because you’re on your way to generating more leads.
Unfortunately, if you have no way of knowing what content people are downloading the most (or the least), how will you be able to determine where your time is best spent moving forward? By learning how to use the reporting tools on your CRM, you can create, produce, and measure the effectiveness of content marketing like never before.
Take your reporting a step further by creating a new campaign for every single piece of content you push out. By doing this, you’ll not only be able to measure the popularity of each post, but more importantly, you’ll be able to determine which pieces of content are relevant to prospects at each stage in the lead funnel.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Welcome To 2015: Now Get To Work
More Sales & Marketing articles from Business 2 Community:
- 5 Ways UX Design Improves Inbound Marketing
- Top 5 Marketing Predictions for 2015
- Why SEO Is All About Having Good Content
- How to Find Great Content? The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation
- How To Deal With Angry, Frustrated Or Complaining Customers On Social Media (And Not Let It Affect Your Brand)
