The inbound marketing process is one that cannot be overlooked. Yes, it is a great feeling when sellers use some networking, reach out to a prospect, and end up sealing a deal once the prospect is ready to buy. But, what is even better is when prospects come to you. Not only does this eliminate the time and effort that it takes to reach out to people, but it also ensures that the person you are talking to is already interested in your product. This is why it is key to have a good inbound marketing process in place. If people are reaching out to you about your own product, you certainly do not want to miss out on the opportunity.

What is Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing covers a whole array of things. The process includes prospects who show interest in your product, then the follow-up that your company performs to engage them and push them through the sales funnel. These prospects can show interest in so many different ways, including downloading ebooks or white papers, watching video demos on your website, or even requesting a trial. Then, the follow-up includes automatically putting them in a custom cadence to make sure they are engaged while their interest is still hot.

A common example of this process is when someone downloads an ebook off a company website. They will fill out a form to gain access to the gated ebook, when then send the information to marketing and sales. Then, that information is taken and used to add the prospect to a sale cadence for people who have downloaded ebooks. Now, they have access to the ebook, and will receive follow-up touches from a seller, whether that is a phone call, email, or other.

Aligning Marketing and Sales with an Inbound Process

Marketing and sales are notorious for butting heads and blaming each other for a lack of closed deals. However, this should be a thing of the past. By aligning marketing and sales with an inbound process, they will be one step closer towards working together. Through marketing providing the material bringing prospects in and giving these prospects to sales through automated processes that put them into a cadence, they will now work hand-in-hand to get more deals closed.

How to Setup an Inbound Marketing Process with Salesvue

Now, you may be wondering how to set up this process. Within Salesvue, this is very easy. Here are a few things you can do with Salesvue:

Use a Website Form for Users to Get Content

First, you can use Formstack to help get information from potential customers, while also getting content sent back to them. If you have any gated content on your website, such as eBooks or video demos, it is a good idea to use Formstack alongside them. What Formstack allows you to do is request contact information from people wanting more content from your website. For example, if they want to download an eBook, they may have to fill out a form with their name, company, and email before they can read it.

Once this form is filled out with this information, it is put into Salesforce and a contact is created for them. This contact can then be added into any Salesvue Plans you want. So, if they wanted to download an eBook from your website, you could have them automatically added to a plan that sends emails with more information about the eBook topic, your company, or anything else you want them to see.

Use Marketing or Email Send to Attract Users

Another way to gain contact information from potential customers would be to include them on a marketing email cadence. Bringing the Formstack forms or content to them rather than relying on them to search for it is a good way to make sure your content reaches a big number of people. For example, rather than waiting to take the information of people that find the eBook on your website and download it from there, you can send a preview of it to them in an email and encourage them to download. 

Build a Follow-up Cadence to Qualify the Lead

Leads are only good if they are qualified. Wasting time on a bad lead that goes nowhere is the last thing your sellers want or can afford to do. To help qualify leads, you can build a cadence. Cadences, or Salesvue Plans, are a great way to check to see if leads coming in are worth going after. Yes, anyone that reaches out to you about your company should be checked on, hence automated email follow-ups. But, you will want to weed out which of those prospects are qualified leads.

This follow-up cadence should be built to include messaging and touch points that can help to accomplish this. Whether that means including phone calls so a seller can check to see their true intentions, or including messaging focused on deals, this plan can take many shapes.

Summary

Inbound marketing is an essential part of any business. Sellers do not have the time in their day to find every deal on their own. No seller in their right mind would turn away a potential deal that falls right into their lap, and this is how to get those. By leveraging Salesvue’s tools to help with inbound marketing, you can be sure to increase qualified leads and close more deals.
Looking to see more information about building a sales cadence? Read our How to Build a Sales Cadence post to find out more.

Category