How well is your marketing synchronized with the sales team? Some companies keep marketing and sales separate departments, while others merge them. But the real opportunity comes from making them work together smoothly.
However, everyday tasks and hectic work schedules often distract from collaboration.
If that sounds familiar, think about using multitouch engagement—a better, cheaper approach to lead generation.
When potential customers see and interact with your brand multiple times, they become more likely to become interested in what you're offering. And when the sales and marketing teams work together, they help build trust and maintain ongoing conversations until the leads are ready to make a deal.
The benefits of the multitouch approach include the following:
- Wider reach at the initial stages of the funnel
- Improved engagement along the way
- Increased conversion rates
Here are three way that I, as a marketer, put this approach into practice.
Break the ice with your content
Your potential business leads are regular people who like to feel understood and appreciated. Sales managers salespeople talk to them every day, and they can tell you what topics prospects can connect with and how they view their businesses.
Refer to and recommend potential leads' products or services in your content. One can easily ignore "yet another sales mail," but ignoring praise is harder. Invite them as experts to take part in your media (podcasts keep trending as a B2B channel) or give them a shoutout.
Don't be afraid to share your audience's attention with potential clients because it is a win-win game if done right.
Sales' role: listing relevant themes and challenges of leads, highlighting the strengths of their product or business, or new and interesting features or cases worth mentioning.
Marketing's role: creating useful and complimentary content focused on target companies or managers.
Use case: I wanted to sell consulting services to a few software companies, so I thought of our regular posts on LinkedIn. In a post, I listed six companies as the best solutions for a specific need. As a result, three representatives from those companies saw the post and left comments, and our sales manager used that as a starting point to talk to them. We started a trial project with one of those companies within 30 days of the post.
Rethink the goals of paid ads
Awareness campaigns help recall your company and look familiar to your leads when the sales enter the game. They can be effective even if you have a small budget or a strong online presence. Here's how you can do it: Start a campaign with relevant messages focused on making potential customers aware of your brand before they start thinking about purchasing. You can use your existing contacts list to find similar audiences and target people who have visited your website or specific app pages.
Sales' role: Assemble quality data (e.g., email list) or specific targeting criteria (e.g., job titles and industries) for expanding targeting.
Marketing's role: Match the right content and platform; estimate budgets to cover efforts to reach additional audiences.
Use case: During a seasonal direct-to-consumer awareness campaign, I added the contact base of sales potential leads to the targeting on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. We promoted user-generated content to prove that people like the brand. As a result, our sales representatives gained a 23% increase in email responses during and shortly after the warm-up campaign. That was a significant improvement over the usual seasonal response rate.
Expand your vision of events
Major events should be prepared months in advance, and their impact should continue for months after they end. Beyond in-person networking, there are several actions you can take to engage with people multiple times.
Here are the key steps: Include potential partners in your online audience, and increase your visibility at important events using online methods; even those who are unable to attend the event in person can experience much of what's happening through livestreaming and interactive content.
The combination of in-person and virtual elements creates new opportunities for communication.
Sales' role: Form a list of potential leads to be invited offline and virtually, and handle the event organization on-site.
Marketing's role: Produce engaging invitations and activities for offline and online participants that match the brand personality, and launch pre- and post-event communication.
Use case: My company actively participates in the RecBuzz Conference. We enhance the impact of our brand representatives' talks through a few key methods:
- For example, we might have an engaging and educational activity at the booth that includes registration with a QR code, helping us gather potential customers for further action through automation.
- We might also send out invitations to potential customers who could not attend the event in person, inviting them to join an interactive livestream. That expands our reach beyond the event attendees.
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Your company needs to start an internal discussion about how and where you can connect with potential leads. By using a multitouch approach that combines the efforts of your sales and marketing teams, you can achieve synergy that uniquely boosts your business.
More Resources on Multitouch Lead Gen
Lead-Generation Case Study: How Multiple Touches Can Lead to Profit Multiples
Maximizing Lead-Generation Marketing ROI, Part 3: Measuring Effectiveness
