Demand Generation for Sales Lead Management

by | Mar 27, 2013

what is demand generationPutting leads at the front end of your sales pipe and hoping for the best is not going to work for B2B sales in 2013. Every B2B company needs to have a well-thought out and clearly defined process for generating demand that includes content marketing and sales lead management.

Before we dive into what a company needs to do in order to generate demand, we need to ensure that there is a clear understanding of the differences between demand and lead generation. If you were to do a quick web search for the two terms you might get back a few dozen definitions. Let’s take a look at the real differences between the two disciplines.

Lead Generation vs. Demand Generation

For Gabriel Sales, lead generation is about putting targets into your sales funnel at the very front end. A lead is getting an individual from a company that is interested in learning more into your sale funnel. Demand generation is the process of moving that lead through the sales and marketing process, educating the buyer so they are interested and ready to speak to sales.

Demand Generation & Sales Lead Management

B2B demand generation’s job is therefore to drive and close business. In order to close business, successful B2B demand generation requires sales content that educates, verifies and finally convinces the customer to transact. That content must be integrated with insights about your customer buying cycle, so that relevant and valuable content reaches your prospect at the right times. These insights could include knowledge on whether your ideal customer prefers short YouTube videos or long whitepapers. This is what successful sales lead management is; knowing your lead well enough to give them the right information in the right form at the right time.

If you add the sales content and customer insights to the right technology to track digital consumption, your well-designed demand generation strategy will give your team the ability to:

  • Source marketing qualified leads
  • Take leads from marketing qualified to sales qualified and then engage
  • Nurture leads not ready to buy (until they are)
  • Supply the closer with content required to take to proposal and close

B2B demand generation involves your reps and marketers having the right conversations and sharing the right information in the right channel at the right time in the customers buying cycle.

If you would like help with any part of this strategy, Gabriel Sales has the experience and expertise to help you jumpstart this process and reach your business goals. We can help you take the content you create to support your reps and repurpose it across digital platforms and social media, so your customers can find you and you sales reps have third-party verification ground cover. At Gabriel Sales, we can help you create a B2B demand generation engine with a seamless sales process that integrates sales reps, leverages digital content and improves sales results with the right sales technologies stack.

For more information on demand generation for sales lead management, please contact us.

B2B Sales – What is Blog Marketing?

by | Mar 23, 2013

pencil and paper blogIn the past few years, digital marketing has become the centerpiece of many B2B sales strategies.  As a sales and marketing outsourcing company for B2B sales, we have found digital marketing to be quite effective for building brand awareness and generating leads.  One of the best ways to leverage digital marketing is with the use of a company blog.

Blogs in the B2B sales world can be used as a platform for publicizing information about new products or services, promotions, etc.  Informative or educational blogs can also be used to position yourself as an industry expert.  If you can demonstrate expertise to your readers, your product or service starts to look much more appealing.

Blogs are also a great way to add a human quality to your business’s digital presence.  In addition to information about new products or industry trends, you can use a blog to profile different employees or discuss a particular instance when your business solved a problem it was facing.  This will help give your company a human aspect that is often lost online.

The key to achieving success in terms of B2B digital marketing with a blog is to make sure it remains active.  This obviously takes more time, but constantly posting new and different information on your blog is well worth the effort.  If you are able to consistently give your readers something of value, they will continue to come back and hopefully they will eventually reach out to you in some way.

While blogs are not necessarily considered social media, some of them can be thought of as online communities.  There are many blogs that function as authorities in specific industries, which are often read by buyer’s who are looking for quality information in regards to making a purchase.  If you are able to convince the blogging authority to endorse you in some way, you will likely attract a lot of leads.

It may be difficult to convince someone to advertise your product or service for you, but it is possible.  Gaining the support of influential bloggers can be done by enticing him or her to write a review about you in exchange for a free product or service.  However even if you cannot achieve this, any positive mention of your company is a good thing.

If you still need convincing that blogging can be an effective marketing tool for B2B sales, or would like help creating a corporate blog of your own, please feel free to contact us.

B2B Sales – What is Audio, Video & Interactive Marketing?

by | Mar 18, 2013

B2B VideoOne of the best things about the internet today is its ability to support a variety of mediums for the spread of information.  The internet is not only filled with plain text, but also has film and sound.  Presenting your message in an auditory or visual format can help your B2B online marketing efforts reach more people in a more entertaining way through Interactive Marketing.

One way you can present your message using sound is with the use of a podcast.  A podcast is a short audio broadcast that you can stream or download (from your website or a third-party provider), comparable to an online radio show.  You can use podcasts to spread the word about your company and its products and/or services.

Video marketing is pretty self-explanatory; you present your message through an online video.  Despite how it may appear, YouTube is not just for videos with cuddly kittens.  Your B2B company can sign up for a YouTube channel, and you can use it to keep your viewers updated on industry-related trends or present a how-to or demo video about one of your products or services.  Many B2B companies have yet to catch on to the value of video marketing, so this is one place where you may be able to gain advantage over your competition.

Another way B2B companies can use audio and video in their digital interactive marketing strategy is a webinar.  A webinar is what it sounds like, a seminar that takes place on the web.  For B2B companies, webinars can be used a sales conference or online meeting, which can be effective for building brand awareness, educating new prospects and improving demand generation.

For more information on leveraging audio, video and interactive marketing as a B2B online interactive marketing strategy for sales, please reach out to us at Gabriel Sales.  You can find our contact information here.