When it’s done right, there’s no more profitable investment a business can make than in its own marketing campaign strategy. That’s because marketing – and only marketing – can provide what sales reps need in order to meet their quota, and more importantly in the bigger picture, keep revenues and profits streaming into the organization: SALES QUALIFIED LEADS.
Indeed, one of the biggest waste of organizational money and time is when talented sales reps are obligated to try and convert leads that aren’t sales qualified. That’s like having a waiter try to take an order in a restaurant from a table full of folks that aren’t hungry. What’s more, if the leads in the pipeline aren’t even marketing qualified, then it’s the equivalent of trying to take an order from folks who aren’t hungry and won’t get hungry. They might as well be mannequins.
Unfortunately, this is the sad fate that befalls so many talented and hard working sales reps. They’re set up to fail rather than to succeed, because instead of engaging prospects who are in the middle or near the end of the buyer’s journey, they’re inundated with window shoppers and looky-loos. Sure, some of these people are nice and enjoyable to communicate with. But they aren’t legitimate prospects, and while they’re welcome in the pipeline, they should be accessing marketing collateral and content – not speaking with sales reps for hours.
And that brings us back to the vital importance of a winning marketing campaign strategy, and 5 steps on how it can fill your pipeline with glorious, sales qualified leads:
#1: Clearly Identify the Goals
A marketing campaign strategy needs an objective, and as such the right place to start isn’t at the beginning: it’s at the end, by clearly identifying what you want to achieve. As with all goal setting in professional and personal life, be realistic. Just like most people can’t quit smoking overnight or drop 50 pounds in time for their high school reunion next month (can’t the government just make these reunions illegal?), most businesses can’t increase SQLs by 100% by the next quarter, or increase the number of product demos by 2000 in the next 8 weeks. Be ambitious, but don’t be unrealistic.
#2: Identify the Resources
Do you have right technology and systems to drive your marketing content strategy? What about production capacity (for content, etc.), access to expertise, and so on? Chances are, you’ll have some of the resources you need in-house, and some will need to be added or outsourced. It’s important to know what you have vs. what you need, so you don’t undermine your strategy by not having enough fuel to keep it in the air.
#3: What’s Your Budget?
Before you go shopping for resources, technology and tools, you need to get the all clear from your CFO – or from yourself, if you’re the head honcho – on how much you need to spend to make your marketing content strategy work. Most businesses need to tap into the expertise of an outside marketing agency at this point, since they don’t know how much things should or could cost, or whether it makes more sense to allocate resources in one direction vs. another (i.e. towards blogging or SEO, etc.).
#4: Build Your Schedule
Next up, build your schedule and note any key milestones all the way. These are like small sign-posts on the schedule that represent key events, such as the beginning/end of a phase. They can also be checkpoints to evaluate performance, and so on.
#5: Implement, Monitor, Test and Optimize
Granted, there’s a lot of stuff in this step. But it’s simpler to look at it as an integrated whole, because sometimes businesses focus on one aspect – such as implementation – but neglect to monitor, test and optimize. While a marketing campaign strategy is written in pen rather than pencil, it’s never carved in stone. It will and should change as new information, insights and opportunities come to light.
Learn More
To learn more about crafting your winning marketing campaign strategy, contact the Leap Clixx team today. We know the do’s and don’ts, ins and outs, best practices and hidden pitfalls. Our expertise is your advantage, and delivering results and ROI is all that we’re about.
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Topics: Inbound Marketing
