Marketers can’t escape the call of the online marketing gurus – inbound marketing, outbound marketing, working the funnel, demand generation, social media b2b marketing, and so on. With the New Year upon us, there’s inevitably an itch to get moving, especially when you consider the possibility you might be missing out on an important new opportunity.
Sure there are best practices out there, and neat new technologies, but the question that really matters is often more fundamental – are your internal systems and processes ready to assess your current and future investments in new leads? Here are a few things to consider:
- Is my marketing team expected to qualify new leads before handing them off to sales?
- Conversely, can my marketing team filter out bad leads, so the sales team doesn’t waste time?
- If I invest in a new lead-generation program, do I have enough financial and performance data on my current methods to accurately compare the new with the existing?
- Can I identify where in our marketing and sales process we will place leads from a new marketing investment?
- Can I make the case for not only investing in a new lead-generation program, but also doing whatever additional nurturing and qualification work to find the sales-ready leads?
- Can I make the case for investing in the upfront content, messaging, and positioning that will resonate with the audience most likely to become prospects? And can I factor that cost in among the others to determine true cost per lead, cost per prospect, and cost per sale?
It’s easy, with all the many glitzy new online techniques out there to lose sight of the fundamentals. As part of your New Year’s resolution to more effectively utilize online marketing opportunities, resolve to get your internal systems into shape, as part of an all-inclusive online marketing plan.
