How to Generate More Business Opportunities with Inbound Marketing

By adopting an Inbound Marketing strategy, we’re creating the conditions to generate more business opportunities. We’ve therefore prepared some key points so you can start building a relationship of trust and connection with your audience right away, using a relevant and helpful approach.

Understanding the Business

Understanding your business means having three clearly defined elements, which form the foundation for generating more business opportunities:

1. What we do and where we’re headed

Clarify for yourself and your team what you do best and focus on the skills in which you excel, while also conveying this message in your communications to your buyer personas.

Set business goals and objectives (such as revenue, number of leads, new customers), and establish and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs). Map out the path leads take—the marketing and sales funnel—from the customer attraction phase to closing deals, and identify the appropriate content for each stage of the buying cycle. Depending on your business, determine how long this cycle should take. A week? A month? Three months?

2. Where We Stand

To stay continuously up to date—and demonstrate this to our audience and customers—we need to stay on top of developments. In other words, we need to stay informed about the latest news and trends in our industry (are there any events we should attend, or are there studies or reports on our industry with information useful to our business?), and monitor our competitors’ positioning—what they’re communicating and how.

3. Understanding Customers

Knowing and understanding the people with whom we intend to build a business relationship is essential for communicating effectively and conveying our message. If you haven’t done this yet, you’re missing out. Define your buyer personas— now!

Blog & Content

A blog where you share knowledge and information relevant to your audience is essential for driving organic traffic—being found by visitors through search engines (without spending money on ads).

To do this, publish high-quality content consistently and regularly—content that addresses your customers’ challenges, needs, and motivations. Communicate a unique perspective and approach that sets you apart from your competitors.

Offer premium content (i.e., high-value content such as webinars, white papers, eBooks, and case studies), and encourage conversions with Calls-to-Action (CTAs) to generate leads and become a positive and relevant influence.

Prove your value with customer testimonials

Social proof is crucial for gaining the trust of leads. Share positive reviews from professionals who already use your services or products. Sharing these reviews is a way to build credibility with leads and demonstrate the value of what you have to offer. Third-party recommendations are key to influencing purchasing decisions.

Nurture Your Leads

Nurturing means winning over and building a long-term relationship with the lead. Lead nurturing aims to earn the lead’s trust to drive a purchasing decision. Seduce them with useful and relevant content, timed just right to build rapport and influence, and close the deal at the right moment. That’s when the sales team steps in to finalize the sale.

Invest in a CRM That Helps You Sell

Using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software boosts your sales team’s productivity. It allows you to manage relationships with potential customers more efficiently and increases your chances of closing new deals. It enables sales managers or salespeople to track leads throughout the buying cycle and make the salesperson’s work more efficient. Using this tool can increase revenue per salesperson by 41%.

Analyze all actions and adjust as needed

Every business is unique. In other words, there are no one-size-fits-all formulas for success. Therefore, understanding what works and what doesn’t requires the ability to analyze results and make the necessary adjustments. Whether it’s email marketing campaigns, blog posts, changes to your website’s copy or design, or A/B tests, track your actions and results using a marketing automation and analytics tool to understand what you’re doing well and what needs improvement.

The journey from a lead to a sales opportunity usually begins with the first interaction with your website. Therefore, it’s important that, starting from this initial phase, you’re working to generate more and better leads—ones that are more likely to turn into quality sales opportunities.

In this video, a recording of the webinar “How to Turn Your Website into a Lead-Generating Machine,” you’ll find some tips and suggestions to help you prepare for this initial contact with users: