Convert more leads with a clearer picture of the customer’s need
Sometimes converting leads feels like your banging your head against a brick wall. Your marketers work tirelessly to generate new leads. The sales team diligently follows up to talk shop, answer questions, and make recommendations—virtually anything they can do to build a connection and close the deal. And every time, it seems, the customer goes with your competitor or puts off the purchasing decision entirely.
We all have stories like these, where the results made it seem like we weren’t trying. But when was the last time you sat down with a customer to learn more about their buying process, or determined who has the final say? More importantly, did you pass along anything you learned to your marketing creatives so they could work their “magic”?
A 2017 survey by B2B marketing specialist Kapost found that nearly 70 percent of marketers lack the visibility into key attributes of a customer, or their buying process. The result? An image of customers that lacks the nitty-gritty details—and which leads to fruitless engagements and prolonged sales cycles.
Get to Know Your Customer
To close the performance gap, align the efforts of your sales and marketing teams, set your collective sights on developing quality leads (rather than focusing on quantity), and commit to providing prospects what they need. Through it all, keep the following principles in mind:
- It’s your customer’s journey, not yours—That vision you have of your customer’s journey? Toss it. Instead, focus on creating content that answers questions and provides additional information. Look for the key inflection points in each prospect’s journey and leverage those to create impactful experiences.
- Anticipate and meet their full range of needs—We like to think of ourselves as rational individuals who are not easily susceptible to emotion, but let’s be honest—we’re not aliens. It’s our natural tendency to gravitate toward things—and companies—that make us feel good. With that in mind, focus on personalizing your campaigns and overall experience. Look for patterns in the performance of past campaigns, then adjust accordingly. For example, by combining the predictive analytics capabilities of Dynamics 365 with an integrated marketing solution such as Adobe Marketing Cloud, you can identify your prime leads, develop a better understanding of where they are at in the buying journey, and deliver content that’s specifically tailored to the questions they’ll be asking next.
- Fill the performance gaps in your sales and marketing machine—The default response to failure is to point fingers. Instead, look for common solutions that can help improve the customer experience, unify your sales and marketing efforts, and grow your business.
With a combined solution like the Adobe Marketing Cloud and Dynamics 365, you can establish common goals and create a single view of customers across every point of their journey, giving sales and marketing teams a clearer picture of what the customer is looking for—and how to engage them
[msce_cta layout=”image_left” align=”left” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Sales-marketing-gap_hero_small.png” linkurl=”https://info.microsoft.com/Five-Daunting-Sales-and-Marketing-Gaps.html?lcid=en-us” linkscreenreadertext=”Discover the five most common sales and marketing gaps and how to fix them in this e-book.” linktext=”Learn more” imageid=”10686″ ]Discover the five most common sales and marketing gaps and how to fix them. [/msce_cta]
