By Melaina Merritt, Marketing & Research Manager, Reagan Outdoor
“There is no question that, when Sales and Marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement on important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower.” – Harvard Business Review
The pandemic has created many challenges for businesses. Advertising has been hit hard over the past few months, but there is light on the horizon. Some businesses have been thriving and some businesses need more customers and are looking to advertising to help them gain back what they have lost. In these challenging times, how can we as media professionals still find leads and nurture through the client hesitations to help them grow? Below are the sales process steps along with ideas to help your potential clients see you as a marketing resource, and not just someone trying to sell them something.
- Awareness stage: the lead isn’t ready to talk about you or what you are selling; they want information about their problem from an expert who is willing to help.
- Educate yourself first – start by learning everything you can about them and their business, who is the target audience, what has worked/hasn’t worked in the past, what ‘need’ do they have that you can fulfill? Become an expert in their business.
- Interest/Consideration stage: the lead still isn’t ready to be ‘sold’; they need more information about your product or solution, especially in comparison to your competitors.
- Offer value added – potential advertisers are more likely to move into the decision stage of the sales process if they receive an offer of value that they will get in exchange for spending time with you – an idea to help their business, demographic data on their customers, competitor information, articles/insights that will be helpful to them.
- Decision (Intent/Evaluation) stage: the lead has shown to be interested in your products/services and how you can help them, they are willing to meet to see a proposal or offering.
- Don’t be an order taker – the days of ‘cookie cutter’ sales programs are over. Advertisers need to see a return for every piece of media they purchase. Back up your strategy with research, ratings and your expertise of their business.
- Action (Purchase) stage: the lead is ready to move forward in advertising with you.
- Don’t let the lead go cold- follow up with a contract quickly and try to ask for the contract in person.
- Follow through with your promises once the contract is in – work with your team of marketing professionals to ensure you are providing the client with what you agreed upon.
At any point, a lead can move backward or forward in this process. Each step of this nurturing process will take every potential client a different amount of time. Clients are looking more to strategic marketing efforts – what products serve them best, where they need to be in the market, how it will work for them – & spending more time learning before deciding to purchase. We have to be involved in every aspect of the cycle. Clients need ROI for every dollar spent!
Illustration Source: RevenueArchitects.com
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