Inbound Marketing Blog

One of the first things we learn as little kids is to always say "thank you" -- and, of course, not to put our mouths on the water fountain, but that's a topic for another day.  If someone does you a favor, if you're given a gift, saying thank you is just good manners 101.  What I learned during my first days at IMPACT, however, is that it's also inbound marketing 101. 

Have you ever felt uncomfortable getting on the phone and talking with someone? How about setting the tone as the first point of contact for the sales process, and running connect calls with potential leads? When first joining the IMPACT Sales team, the connect call was always a huge hurdle I felt I would never be able to get over. I was comfortable speaking with people in person, but it did not resonate over the telephone. I stumbled through conversations, had noisy backgrounds, started calls completely unprepared and, needless to say, the calls were ineffective and  my confidence level just kept plummeting. I needed to find a repeatable call structure that I could use to truly qualify prospects and set our team up for good conversations.  

Lead nurturing is one of the most important processes in inbound marketing. And like almost any inbound tactic, there are plenty of creative ways to do it. Unfortunately, far too many inbound marketers think that lead nurturing and drip marketing are interchangeable terms. While they are closely related, this misperception is far from the truth.

Generating sales leads is tough. Really tough. So tough in fact that a lot of inbound marketers can completely neglect the half of the job that comes after lead generation—lead nurturing. If you’re reading this, then odds are you’re already one of the smart marketers who knows how important lead nurturing is, and how effective automated emails and drip marketing are for moving prospects through your sales funnel. (According to Capterra, 89% of marketers say that email is their primary channel for lead generation.) But that doesn’t mean you don’t need a little inspiration to help hone or refine your drip campaign to operate at its best.

One of the biggest challenges many organizations have is that revenue is rarely impacted despite an increase in traffic, contacts, and bottom of the funnel inquiries.  This week, Bob and Nick took to Facebook Live to discuss how marketing and sales can better convert inbound leads into sales opportunities, optimize your content to rank 0, the importance of your homepage and LinkedIn Company page descriptions, and IMPACT Live. Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Lead nurturing is like trying to date the perfect catch.  He or she isn't going to commit to based just on a first impression alone. They're in demand. They want to weight their options and they'll need more convincing before going with you. So, why do so many businesses go in for the final sale right off the bat?

Did you know that 25% of your email list will die off each year? Holy depreciation. What's important to note is that even if your subscribers have gone inactive but remain subscribed, they could be seriously hurting your email engagement rates (even putting you in danger of being flagged as SPAM.)

In late 2016, LinkedIn announced that Sponsored InMail is now available to all advertisers. This ad format allows you to send personalized messages to a targeted audience within LinkedIn’s platform. So, B2B marketers, perk up -- this one’s for you. While traditional email marketing is still one of the most effective inbound strategies, it has become a saturated market where your message can get quickly lost in user inboxes.