Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

If only I had more leads, I could really grow this business!Every CEO and Business Owner

Every CEO I know says that good leads are a bottleneck. So, where are all the good prospects hiding?

All hidden prospects are not the same. In fact, there are three types of  evasive prospects, and your marketing approach needs to be different for each type.

Secretive Prospects

Secretive prospects are real buyers. They have a problem or pain and a budget to solve the problem. It’s just that they aren’t ready to engage with a salesperson. Not yet.

In 2012, the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) estimated that “57% of the B2B buying process is complete before a prospect is ready to talk with a salesperson.” Others have different estimates and each market is certainly different. Still, it’s safe to assume that at least 50% and as many as 70% of active buyers are secretive. They are collecting information, filtering providers, and making their initial choices.

Secretive prospects are not open to engaging with your sales team. If you try to call them, they’ll avoid you. They won’t return phone calls and they won’t respond to emails. They’re just not ready.

As a business owner or CEO, you probably don’t like this situation. You’d like to believe that secretive prospects do want to hear from you. If only your sales team would work harder. After all, you have a great product or service that would make the prospect’s world so much better. Why won’t they listen?

Like it or not, here’s the reality. Before the information explosion known as the Internet, you did have a lot more control. You had all the relevant knowledge, and buyers had to come to you. Now, buyers have all the information they want, and they can access it whenever they want—right from their smart phone.

It gets worse. If you don’t connect with secretive prospects early in their buying process, it’s often too late once they come out of the shadows. What can you do?

Inbound Out Marketing

Inbound Out Marketing is the best option to engage early with secretive prospects. It’s inbound marketing combined with targeted outreach.

Secretive prospects want to learn about you on their own terms. So, help them out. Create blog articles, helpful guides, infographics, videos—whatever it takes to help prospects understand their situation and realize you are one of the market leaders. Focus on the prospect’s problems and questions. It’s about them, not about you. They aren’t ready for you. Not yet.

Back in the day, good salespeople used to provide a lot of education in the early part of the sales process. Now, you have to rely on your website to teach prospects about your overall product category and possible solutions. Don’t make the mistake of focusing on your solution too soon. Help prospects learn about their options. They will buy from you unless your company is not a good fit, so don’t worry about telling them too much and losing them.

Targeted outreach is the secret we use to get significantly better results. If you know and can discover your ideal prospects, contact them directly. Find them on LinkedIn or through other social sites and lists.

It’s essential that you have a very clear picture of your ideal prospects. Once you know exactly “who” they are, it gets much easier to find their hiding places. That’s why we developed our Precise Prospect Profile toolkit.

Once you’ve identified some ideal prospects, offer helpful information. It’s too early to sell, so don’t. Instead offer to send your special report regarding “Common questions about _____ (Your product category).” Prospects do want helpful information, and they’ll appreciate you for it. They just don’t want sales information, yet.

Your objective is to be a helpful resource and to be positioned as a trusted option once the prospect is ready to buy.

Wannabe Prospects

Wannabe prospects do have a problem—a problem you could solve. They just don't have enough pain or budget.  Wannabe's are earlier in the buying process, but many of them will become buyers, so they are still important targets. Their pain will get worse and they'll allocate budget for their next cycle.

Inbound Out marketing continues to offer a great option. However, the content and information Wannabe's need is different.

Wannabe prospects are higher up (earlier) in the sales funnel. Give them more general content like:

• 5 trends this year in the _______ industry

• Top challenges faced by people in the ______ role

• How a top company solved the ______ problem.
  NOTE: This could be a case study involving your product, focus on the customer and their problem. Don’t make it all about your product.

This is great positioning for your sales team—you get to be the first company on their short list. They see you as helpful and have favorable feelings about your company. All your competitors will be fighting from behind.

Potential Prospects

Potential prospects are similar to your ideal prospects. They are in the right industry and the right jobs. You can expect some of them to become prospects at some point.

Perhaps they already have a solution that’s working or they are pleased with their current provider. Still, what’s working today may not be working next year. You want these prospects to know you.

The prospect’s company may be too small for your solution—at least for now. After they grow, they may be a fit.

You want to know these prospects and have them know you. When they do need you, you’ll already be positioned as an excellent choice. Even better, potential prospects fit your ideal prospect profile. That means they know others in the industry who are good prospects. Some of their friends may be secretive or wannabe prospects. You’ll get referrals from people who aren’t even customers yet. Potential prospects are influencers, so don’t ignore them.

Marketing to potential prospects is much like marketing to wannabe prospects. Create content for the broader industry. They’ll eat it up and love you for it.

Takeaways

• Buyers now control the buying process. Companies and salespeople have to give up the delusion that they have any control. Instead adjust to this new situation and work to serve buyers.
  

• Inbound Out Marketing is the best way to reach hidden prospects that are not ready or willing to engage with a salesperson.
  

• There are different kinds of hidden prospects—Secretive, Wannabe, and Potential prospects. All are reachable through Inbound Out Marketing. All that needs to change is the content of your materials to best serve each type of prospect and to deliver the information they want.

You spent plenty of money and everyone tells you that you have a great website. But, you’re not getting many leads. What’s wrong?

It sickens me to talk with business owners who just spent a lot of money redesigning their website. It looks great, but after a few months, they’re still wondering when the leads will show up.

You decided to jump into digital marketing because you thought it was the future, and wanted a Sales Robot that would work 24/7 and not run up an expense account bill. Cool.

Then, you thought, “The first thing I need is a killer website.” This sounds sensible, but it’s wrong—the first thing you need is a Digital Strategy.

Digital Strategy

If you think about it, every business has it’s own unique market. Sure, you share a category with your competitors, but you work a bit differently. You need a strategy that’s specific to your business and your customers. Don’t fall into the trap of copying tactics from a friend or competitor—They may be wrong for your business.

Key Strategy Questions

Your strategy must answer all these questions:

• Who is your ideal customer? When you can precisely describe your ideal prospects, you can build your website and all your marketing to appeal to them.
  

• What is your market’s buying process? What problems do your ideal prospects think they have? How do they think about their problems and where do they go for solutions? What steps occur in a typical sales process and when would a salesperson get involved?
  

• Do you have a remarkable product or service? How do you (or how can you) stand apart from the competition? How is your company positioned?
  

• What human and technology assets do you have that could support your digital marketing initiative? Where are you weak or missing key pieces?
  

• What are the best digital conduits for attracting your ideal prospects? Are they searching for solutions? What are the triggers that cause them to search?
  

• What information do your prospects want at each stage of the buying process? It’s a common mistake to offer first-time visitors an option that only actual buyers would be ready to accept.
  

• What’s your implementation plan to align all these elements to achieve your business goals?
  

• How will you measure results and make improvements?

With this deep understanding of your market, your website can become a productive sales robot—a robot that’s correctly programmed to grow your business.

Clarity

Even with a good digital strategy, I still see too many companies that don’t create enough clarity in their website.

• Muddy message. From your strategy, you know your prospect and what they want. Give it to them! And, invest in well-written, clear web text.
  

• Missing differentiation. Why should your ideal prospect buy from you? Don’t make them figure it out. Tell them!
  

• Too many product or service options. I know, you’ve got something for everyone. This may be true, but it kills your website.
  
  Have absolutely no more than three types of prospects and three product or service categories.
  
  At Inbound Team, our site is for Business Owners or Presidents who want more Leads to grow their business. That’s one prospect and one service.
  

• Beautiful but confusing. Beauty is always nice, but make sure everything is readable and it’s clear what visitors can do and should do next. Don’t let creative design get in the way of marketing effectiveness.
  

• Missing call-to-action. Make it easy. People are distracted. Give them a clear, compelling call-to-action. They’ll provide their name and email and you just got a lead!

Attraction

A great website is still not enough. You need visitors. Not just any visitors, but qualified visitors who might buy your products or services.

How can you ensure your website gets qualified visitors?

• Focus on your prospects. It’s not about you and your business. Keep your pages focused on your story and benefits for the prospect.
  

• Blog. For most businesses, there’s no better way to attract visitors than blogging. Write about your prospects and their problems. Add value. Show you care.
  

• Premium content. Create interesting special report PDFs, Infographic diagrams, or videos. The purpose is to add even more value and entice your visitor to give you their name and email.
  

• Social Publishing. In some markets, prospects actively gather on social websites. Meet them where they are. Publish your content. As long as it’s valuable, everyone will appreciate your contribution.
  

• Targeted Outreach. Don’t miss the opportunity to directly target and reach out to prospects. Send them your content or a link to your website. They’ll appreciate you and you can create some micro-rapport.

  A client we worked with sold computer support, but only to attorneys and other specialized professionals. Many visitors came to their website to learn the latest on Microsoft Exchange. Only, almost none of these visitors were qualified or would ever buy.
  
  Targeted Outreach is ideal for this situation. Connect directly with the prospects who will buy from you.

For clarity on your specific business situation, schedule a Free Lead Boost Review.  

Takeaways

• Don’t let a web designer sell you a beautiful website that won’t generate leads. Instead, start with a complete digital strategy. Then, build the website to fit your market.
  

• Ensure your site is so clear, a 5-year old could figure it out. Be direct, and show the visitor exactly what to do next.
  

• Get qualified visitors to your site. Use blogging and search engines like Google to attract visitors. Or, use Social Publishing and Targeted Outreach. 

Have you noticed?

Doing business online has changed drastically in the last several years. With the growth of social media, search engines, and the information available online, buyers have become much smarter about why and how they spend their money.

They don’t want to be sold to anymore.

Many businesses have relied on commercials, print ads, tradeshows, and cold calls. Unfortunately these methods get less and less effective every year.

People have the power to research everything about a product or service before they buy it. They don’t want to hear sales pitches anymore. This changes the lead generation landscape:

How do you get qualified leads if prospects aren’t receptive to traditional marketing?

The answer is Inbound Marketing -- a marketing methodology based on providing value to customers first before presenting your products and services. It’s the best way to attract qualified leads online, and you’re about to learn how to do it.

Are you ready? Then let’s get started.

Step 1. Get to Know Your Ideal Customer

To market effectively, you have to know the prospects you’re targeting. This means gaining intimate knowledge of your audience’s personality and professional ideals.

Here are a few things you want to nail down:

1. Their goals. What are they aiming for? What are they trying to achieve?

2. Their biggest challenges. What’s stopping them from reaching those goals? (And how can your products/services help them?)

3. Their strongest pain points. What do they complain about the most? Which issues would they love to have disappear?

4. Common objections to your products/services. What is stopping them from pulling out their wallets?

Discovering this information involves diligent research. There are two types of research that you want to conduct: passive research and active research.

Passive Research

To conduct passive research, you want to dive into online hubs where your target audience hangs out. This is where they discuss their wants, needs, desires, and challenges -- the exact information you’re looking for.

Find forums related to your ideal customers. Head over to Quora and other Q&A sites. Hop on Twitter and search for conversations your prospects are having. Join Google+ communities and Facebook/LinkedIn groups.

In each of those online hubs, read through the conversations that are going on. Then jot down these three pieces of information: their goals, challenges, and pain points.

This information is marketing gold that will make your prospecting much more effective.

Active Research

Active research involves communicating with your target audience directly. You ask them insightful, open ended questions to find out all four pieces of information (especially common objections to your products and services).

Here are some methods to try:

1. Send a survey to your email list.

2. Respond to comments on your blog and ask people questions.

3. Create a promotional deal for your products and services. Afterwards, contact the people who didn’t buy and ask them why they decided not to. (This will uncover common objections.)

4. Contact people directly on social media and ask them if they wouldn’t mind giving their opinion on your product, service, blog post, etc.

Strategies like these will uncover your audience’s strongest pain points AND help prospects create a stronger bond with your brand.

Using all of this knowledge, you can create buyer personas that will permeate all of your marketing materials and lead generation.

For an example of a buyer persona and a complete guide to create your Precise Prospect Profile, download our kit.

Step 2. Create Content That Attracts Prospects

Too many marketers create content without thinking about their ideal prospects. They come up with articles ideas, write those articles, and publish them without considering which people they’re trying to attract.

But you won’t make this mistake. Why? Because in Step 1, you just gathered all of the information you need. By creating content that solves the same problems your prospects are having, you will naturally attract these people to your business.

All of your content ideas should be based around the goals, challenges, pain points, and common objections you found in the previous step.

However, you also need to base your content around your own products and services. Here’s the catch: your content should solve the same types of problems your products and services solve.

This is how you attract qualified prospects who are predisposed to want and need what you offer. If you help them fix the same types of issues your products/services do, these prospects begin to trust your authority in the space.

They trust that if your free content can help them solve this problem, your paid products and services will solve an even bigger problem they’re having.

Now you know how to create the right content, but how do you get it in front of your ideal customers?

This involves cunning content distribution.

Step 3. Distribute Your Content and Make Your Business Visible

It’s not enough to create content that’s targeted to your prospects. Not even close.

They won’t visit your website unless you distribute it in channels where they hang out. I mean, how else would they find it?

Distributing content the right way makes you visible on the internet. It makes it easy for your ideal customers to find you.

Your qualified leads are searching for solutions to their problems RIGHT NOW. These are solutions that your content, products, and services can solve. The #1 issue: they just can’t find you.

Yet.

Here are four types of distribution you should take advantage of:

1. Social networks

2. Forums

3. Search engines

4. The Inbound-Out style of outreach

Social Networks

At the very least, you should share your content on each social account you have. This is the bare minimum to make yourself visible on the internet.

However, you should be doing much more than that. You should be reaching out to influential people in your space who have large followings and present your content to them. Odds are, if they like it, they will share it with their audience.

You should be reaching out to those same prospects you found on social networks in Step 1 and present your content as a great place to get more information.

You should head over to the Google+ communities and Facebook/LinkedIn groups and share your content with those people (because you’ve already qualified them to want and need it).

Social media marketing methods like these tap into the true viral power of social media and the benefits it can bring to your business.

Forums

Forums can be packed with your target audience. They exist to bring people with similar interests together to discuss those interests and help each other out.

They want to find and share amazing content with the community. Your content can elevate the community. All you have to do is share it there.

Here are three ways to do this:

1. Create a thread that introduces your content. Then, link to your content at the end if they want to read more.

2. Create a thread describing the main ideas of your content, and link to your content at the end if they want to learn more.

3. Link to your content in the signature, then become active on the forum by answering questions and helping people.

Your content acts as the lure, but you have to cast the rod for it to attract people to your website.

Search Engines

Search engine optimization -- the process of creating assets that search engines like and want to rank on the first of their results.

This process still eludes many people, but it’s some of the highest quality traffic you can get. Where else are people naturally turning to again and again to solve the problems they suffer from most?

Here is a general process you can follow:

1. Base each piece of content you create around a keyword with a high search volume.

2. Scour the internet for link building opportunities. “Links” pages and weekly roundups are two of the best backlink sources.

3. Reach out to the site owner and present your content as a nice addition to the page.

If your content is of high enough value (relative to the content already ranking for that keyword), and if you can build a solid amount of authoritative links, you give your content the best chance to rank on the first page.

Once it ranks, you get to reap the benefits of long-term, qualified traffic for as long as your content remains there.

The Inbound-Out Style of Content Distribution

Inbound-Out Marketing is a new marketing philosophy that involves active prospecting and outreach. It takes the best parts of sales and incorporates it into effective inbound marketing.

To distribute your content this way, you actively reach out to prospects. You establish micro-rapport by communicating with them directly, and you get in contact by phone and through personal emails.

Then, you present your content to them. This is where they can get more information if they need it, which will eventually expose them to your products and services.

Steps 1-3 will help you drive qualified traffic to your website because this process is based on helping people with the same types of issues that your products and services do.

However, these prospects might be qualified, but they’re not leads yet.

That’s where Step 4 comes in.

Step 4. Convert Qualified Traffic Into Qualified Leads

Your site must be optimized to capture the traffic that’s coming in. These people may have a need for your products and services, but they’re not convinced quite yet. They’re still wondering if you’re the one to choose.

To convince them, you need to be able to establish long-term communication. You need their contact information.

This involves incorporating 4 crucial elements into your website:

1. Lead magnets

2. Sign-up forms

3. Clear calls-to-action

4. Landing pages

Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are downloadable freebies that you give away in exchange for contact information. They typically come in the form of ebooks, but they can be checklists, free trials, mindmaps, spreadsheets -- anything that a prospect would find valuable.

These need to be sprinkled around your website to entice visitors to give up their contact information, join your sales funnel, and convert into leads.

But how do you facilitate this exchange?

You do it through sign-up forms.

Sign-up Forms

Sign-up forms are the gateways to your sales funnel. They facilitate the exchange between your lead magnet and a prospect’s contact information.

You need at least one of these for each lead magnet you give away.

Clear Calls-To-Action

A call-to-action lets a prospect know exactly what you want them to do and when you want them to do it.

“Sign Up Now For Immediate Access”

“Buy Now!”

“Download Instantly!”

These calls-to-action come at the end of each sign-up form. They let the prospect know that once their information is filled out, they must click this button in order to finalize it.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are the final piece of the conversion puzzle. They combine lead magnets, sign-up forms, and calls-to-action in one highly-optimized location.

These pages have one job: convert the traffic you’re generating into leads. Make sure your landing pages are easily accessible from every page of your website.

In Closing

Inbound Marketing is the best way to sell without selling. It leaves your prospect's lives uninterrupted by pushy sales pitches and ads. It allows them to slowly but surely build trust in your business.

By following this process, you become an asset to your prospects lives, rather than a burden. Not only that, but you attract high quality, qualified leads at the same time, which grow your business as well.

Takeaways

Follow this process to consistently generate qualified leads:

1. Do in-depth research on your ideal customer.

2. Create content that solves 1) the same problems your prospects are having and 2) the same types of problems your products/services solve.

3. Distribute your content in multiple channels and use various outreach methods.

4. Optimize your website to capture leads with lead magnets, sign-up forms, calls-to-action, and landing pages.

How do you search for answers when you have a problem you need to figure out? If you're like me, you type your question into Google to find the information you need.

Your buyers do the exact same thing! Over 70% of buyers turn to Google to search for answers when they realize they have a problem and are trying to find a solution. Google processes over 3.5 billion searches a day!

However, not all the content those searches return is good. Content that focuses on a product's features, isn’t easy to find, and doesn't provide the answers to the questions buyers have, will drive them to find their answers elsewhere.

But if that content addresses buyer's needs, provides solutions to their problems, and differentiates from the competition by showing why a product or service is the perfect solution to their issues, buyers will devour it and crave more.

Focusing on the needs of your buyers by having content that is both engaging and relevant is rewarded with their attention, and if buyers find your product or service to be a fit, their business.

But this kind of high quality content that is buyer-focused can be difficult to create. Below are 3 things you can do to create the kind of content your buyers will love!

#1  Know Your Buyers.

To create content that will attract and inform, you must understand who your buyers are, what they want, what they like, and what they dislike. To get information like this you need to spend time developing your buyer personas.

We have done a lot of the ground work for you with our Precise Prospect Profile Kit. It requires some work, but will be well worth the effort. The better you know your audience, the easier it is to create the kind of buyer-focused content you need to win their business.

#2  Know Your Buyers’ Most Pressing Issue, Pain, or Desire.

Understanding the predominant problem that has brought your previous buyers to your door -- especially your best and most profitable ones -- will help you create content that attracts more of those kinds of buyers.

Invite and analyze feedback from these buyers to ensure more content is published around the topics that are affecting them. The better your understanding of what is driving people to seek out products and services like yours, the better your content will be.

#3  Talk About Benefits Not Features

Your content needs to focus on benefits, not features. It will fail if you use it to talk about the features of your product.

A feature is something that is in a product and a benefit is something your customer gets from a product. When you focus on telling your buyers about the most important benefits they will get from using your product or service, they won’t be able to get enough of the information you produce.

So there we have it, three things you can do to ensure you are creating content your buyers will love.

Creating buyer focused content includes: Understanding who your buyers are, knowing their most pressing pain or desire, and talking about the benefits they will get from using your product or service. Do this and you will create content that is buyer-focused that is valuable and engaging, and has the greatest potential of turning those buyers into customers.

Takeaways:

• Develop your buyer personas to understand who your buyers really are.

• Address your buyer's pain points and desires with your content.

• Talk about the benefits your buyers will achieve by using your product or service.

Most business people know that buying behavior has changed. Buyers don’t answer their phones and don’t respond to advertising.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your marketing went out and found prospects for you? No searching Google, no worrying about the latest SEO rules, just more leads!

I’m going to show you how this result is possible, and I’ll show you exactly what to do!

Social Publishing

If … It’s a big if. If your prospects gather around social watering holes, social publishing is an excellent way to engage.

Later, I’ll show you an even better way to make your marketing reach out for prospects. Social publishing, though, can be an easy way to find buyers if they are already collected in groups.

People do gather in specific parts of the social landscape. LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, and online forums can all be excellent places to find prospects. All you have to do is:

• Find a relevant group.

• Join the group.

• Be helpful and collaborative. No Selling.

• Offer valuable content.

The big mistake is to join a group and start selling. “Hi, I’ve just joined the group. Wanna buy my stuff?” Big problem. Don’t do it. You’ll get thrown out of the group, or worse, tarnish your reputation.

Instead, focus on the people and relationships you can create. Look for ways to be helpful and offer value. Then, make your company’s marketing content available to people in the group. As long as it’s valuable and on-target, prospects will see you and your content as a contribution.

Targeted Outreach

People in online groups are usually curious, interested, and engaged. But many have no budget and are unqualified prospects.  No budget means no sale.

And what if your targets are busy people like CEOs? Are they hanging out on social sites waiting to hear from you, or do they have their heads down working on the business?

I told you there’s an even better way to make your marketing connect with prospects, and here it is—Targeted Outreach.

It used to be that it was hard to find your exact target prospect. That was before 1.5 billion people joined Facebook and 350 million business people joined LinkedIn. Now there is rich data available on the majority of prospects. You just have to know how to efficiently find your prospects and approach them.

Here’s the process we use:

1. Clarity - Know exactly what’s remarkable about your products and exactly which buyers will receive full value—this understanding is essential. If you don’t have this, you need to step back and nail your strategy. 

2. Precise Prospect Profile - This is our tool to know all about your ideal customer. It goes far beyond the personas that many inbound agencies recommend, and get’s to real insights about what separates actual buyers from the merely curious.

3. Targeted List Building From the Precise prospect Profile - You know your ideal customer. Start compiling lists of great prospects. Inputs can include LinkedIn, trade show lists, past customer lists, and purchased lists—any source is fair game. But, these are just names. Filter the names through the Precise Prospect Profile to ensure a focus on only the best prospects. 

   

4. Buyer-focused Content - If you already have buyer-focused marketing content, great. Otherwise, find the gaps and create appropriate new materials.

5. Content Outreach - Send personalized messages to your quality prospects and offer useful content. The objective is to see who responds—They are the likely buyers. 
   
   Use LinkedIn or Facebook messages, InMail, email, even phone calls—whatever works to reach your prospects. 

6. Micro-Rapport - Each interaction with a prospect adds rapport. When it’s time to buy, contacts already know and like your company. You just have to move in for the close.

Inbound Out Marketing

Inbound Out Marketing is Inbound Marketing + Targeted Outreach.

I still recommend that you blog, create useful content offers, have a high-conversion website, and structure your marketing around the prospect’s buying process. That’s traditional Inbound Marketing.

Now, though, you see how you can multiply your content by adding Outreach. Whether through Social Publishing or Targeted Outreach, you have a short cut. You don’t have to wait for prospects to search for your solutions. You can be on their short list before they even know they have a need. Now, that’s demand generation!

Takeaways

• Buyer behavior has changed and it's essential that you adapt.
  
  
• If your prospects are searching for you on Google or gathering on social sites, use Inbound Marketing to engage them.
  
  
• To get better and faster results from your digital marketing, add Targeted Outreach to directly engage your high-quality prospects.