Marketing Systems
We often think of marketing as a single campaign or project – a direct mail campaign, a search marketing campaign, an online advertising campaign.
We believe a better approach is to view your marketing campaign as part of a marketing system.
In our view, marketing campaigns are part of the sales process. Yes, marketing and sales are often separate departments, but the sales process (or buying process if you prefer) is shared by the two departments.
To make that process work most efficiently, we think it’s important (no, essential) to get those departments to work together and find the most effective way to cultivate your leads as they make their way through the sales process.
Sales is a multi-step process that starts with lead generation.
We use a variety of marketing campaign types to generate the initial response. Then once those leads come into the system, there are other steps to be taken to qualify, nurture and engage those leads before they become customers.
Traditionally, marketing would handle the lead generation component and would then send all leads over to sales. Today, thanks in part to technology, marketing stays involved saving only the best leads for sales.
Lead Generation Marketing System
The system starts with an initial campaign – direct mail, email, Google Adwords, online display ads, organic search, print ads, trade shows, etc. These campaigns should be tracked and compared for total leads and cost-per-lead to find the most effective lead generation method.
In addition, here are some additional tactics to improve performance and extend your outreach over time:
- A lead magnet to incentivize response
- A dedicated landing page to provide an automated online response option
- A download page to provide prospects with quick access to the promised offer.
- A sales page to give new leads an immediate introduction to your product or service.
- A drip email campaign to provide an automated series of introductory emails.
- Dedicated emails or email sequences to move the prospect to the next stage in the sales process.
- A retargeting campaign to continue advertising to past visitors of your website.
You don’t need all these elements, but they can certainly help to improve your overall performance.