Latest from the Intellegentia Blog

Remember when marketing was a matter of contacting enough people, no matter how intrusively, or whether they were in your target audience, hoping that eventually some leads would come rolling in? Unfortunately for some marketers, the modern buyer is a lot more intelligent, and these once common practice marketing techniques will no longer cut it.

The buyer is constantly changing. Their journey and behaviour is influenced by advances in technology, cultural trends and rising demand for and availability of products and services. As a result, the way we do marketing has had to adapt as well.

There are many good reasons to consider a marketing approach that incorporates inbound marketing and inbound sales, not least because the inbound methodology neatly aligns your online presence with your buyer's journey to find a solution to meet their needs.

If aligning your organisation to the buyers' journey and driving more cost effective growth is not compelling enough, then you should also consider that if you are not "doing" inbound, it's almost certain your competitors will be, if they have not done so already. Here's why...

Lead Nurturing is a fundamental must-have for successful inbound marketing. Statistics show that only 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to Sales. (MarketingSherpa)

In the sales and marketing world, there are few issues that get more attention than at what point a lead becomes 'sales ready' and therefore be passed on to sales and when a lead should stay with marketing and be nurtured.

Gleanster Research estimates that 50% of leads who are qualified to buy are not ready to purchase immediately. If you call these leads up to try and hurry them along the buying process you will most likely lose them.  So what to do with those that are not ready to purchase immediately?  

Lead nurturing is all about understanding the nuances of your leads’ needs and providing them with relevant content at the right time. Getting these details right and being more scientific with your lead nurturing will help you to align your sales and marketing teams, make your sales teams happier as they receive better quality leads and improve ROI from your marketing efforts.

Take a look at some common lead nurturing mistakes to avoid:

How well do you know your customers? What are their greatest business challenges? What drives them? What challenges do they face on a daily basis?

If you do not know the answers to these questions, it is time you did some research.

The buyer personas you use as the foundation of your marketing efforts – i.e. the fictionalised representations of your ideal customers – should answer all of these questions, and you should know your customer inside out before they have even initiated contact with you.

Here is my roundup of HubSpot's 5 best summer updates to date. Discover more about:

• Live Chat - Hubspot Messages
• Video marketing - Wistia and Shakr integration with HubSpot
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator integrated with HubSpot
• How to unbounce contacts
• HubSpot reporting