How to Use Inbound Marketing to Source Leads when Options are Limited

This year, sales and marketing teams across the globe must begin to embrace change as the pandemic impacts their ability to source quality leads.  

There are widespread lockdowns across the globe which has forced companies to transfer their businesses virtually, so face-to face sales meetings are a thing of the past. Add to this the fact buyers are doing their own research before meeting sales reps, the traditional processes of, prospect, demo and close are out of date.

It’s time to stop chasing people who are not interested and time to embrace change so you can continue to source quality leads in this new climate. 

How can inbound marketing help you? 

The philosophy of inbound marketing is that sales, marketing and customer service teams align themselves to forge one to one relationship’s, starting with leads who have demonstrated some interest in connecting with you. You can cultivate meaningful relationships with inbound leads by collecting data on each prospect and producing content that aligns with their interests, goals or problems. After all, research from Sirius Decisions indicated that buyers have completed 70% of their journey before speaking to the sales team. That means you have to provide valuable insight only relevant to them to show a genuine interest to accomplish their goals. Whereas outbound strategies take the “spray and pray” approach, the inbound technique will help you understand your leads deeply, ensuring you can add value to their experience every step of the way. 

Why do you need Inbound?

The global pandemic has accelerated the need to change sales strategies. It’s a sensitive time where prospects don’t want to be bombarded with cold calls or emails, and according to Raconteur, 46% of buyers have an increased expectation for value-added insight. With Inbound marketing, the prospect is always at the heart of your strategies and creating buyer personas are core to finding leads that convert into customers and finally advocates.

This is where conducting analysis of your data becomes a vital tool to your inbound marketing efforts. Remain relevant to your prospects context by gathering useful information about their preferences and behaviours as they manoeuvre through the purchasing journey. Useful CRM tools like HubSpot, help segment your buyer personas and provides data dashboards to help you understand your lead and ultimately broaden the scope to finding new ones.

Here are the stages of the buyer’s journey, defined by HubSpot, and some ways to understand how to deliver the right content at the right time:

• Awareness Stage: The buyer is experiencing an issue, but they cannot yet define it.
  You could attract them to your website by publishing a blog that offers an insight or analysis to their problem.
• Consideration Stage: The buyer has defined their problem and is committed to solving it.
  Use this opportunity to gather information about them and engage them with content they have found resourceful in the past.
• Decision: The buyer now knows how they will solve their problems and will decide which vendor can fix it.
  Advise the buyer with tailored content that aligns your value propositions with their exact interests. Become their support system and your customers will turn into your most valuable promoters.

Effectively combining the inbound methodology and data analytics means you can give prospects the information they actually want. The world has changed and demonstrating genuine interest to the needs of your prospects and existing customers will help you source new leads.