Today’s customers live online. If you want to fill your lead funnel, you must use digital media sales.
What is the first thing you do when you need hardware, software, or a value-added service? You look for it on the web. Because of this, online marketing has become the dominant strategy for most organizations, especially those selling technology. The digital marketing game has become a blend of strategic digital outreach, search engine optimization, social media, lead capture, and email conversion. No single component of any digital media sales campaign can succeed on its own. To build online sales, you need to strike a balance between all of the digital channels available to build awareness, capture contact information, and nurture leads until they are ready to buy.
Measure Digital Media Sales Success
With so many digital media sales channels available, how do you determine which are most effective for your product or service offering? Like with many things in life, you have to try new things until you find what works, and you have to keep experimenting. One of the frustrating things about digital media is that what worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow, so refining your campaigns is key.
The good news is digital media is measurable. Whether you are using a banner ad, buying Google AdWords, or just tracking your own web traffic, you can examine the results of each campaign to find out what resonates and what doesn’t.
There are various metrics you can use to gauge success. For example, you may be launching a new product campaign that includes multiple elements, such as Google AdWords, social media outreach, a banner ad on the website of your favorite professional journal, and an email campaign to both an appended email list and your own email list. You can gauge response rates from each of these campaign elements. You also can understand how they work together. For example, is the banner ad driving more web traffic? Does the number of web hits increase when you send a new email blast? Where are those leads coming from? The web leaves traces between click points so you can often look at changes in response rates and track them to a specific action or event.
You can’t manage a digital campaign if you don’t measure it. Remember, digital marketing programs are in constant flux and you need to continually refine your tactics to get ongoing results.
Find Your Own Drumbeat
Like with any kind of marketing program, you need to develop a regular cadence in your outreach. For example, establish a schedule for email outreach so your contacts come to expect your message at the same time each week or month. Make sure you feed your social media channels on a scheduled basis. If you are using blog posts for content marketing, be sure to post one or two blogs each week without fail. Create a regimen that keeps your digital media program up to date and current.
You may have to experiment to find the rhythm that suits your target market. For example, you need to make decisions about variables such as the best frequency for an email campaign. Once you make those decisions, be consistent. You can’t expect an influx of leads if you only reach out to your target market when you have a new product. Most sales are opportunistic and you have to reach the right person with the right message at the moment they are ready to buy. The only way to increase your chances of converting a digital prospect is to maintain the drumbeat to remind them of who you are and what you offer until they are ready to buy.
In addition to a cadence for your digital media program, you also need to create your own sales cadence. Develop your own prospecting program that moves leads through the pipeline. Set a schedule to add new emails to your prospecting list. Create a checklist of activities such as sending every new lead a LinkedIn invitation. Schedule a welcome/introductory email and then set a time to follow up with a “haven’t heard from you” email. Find a sales cadence that helps you nudge prospects through the sales process.
Test, Retest, and Adapt Accordingly
In addition to developing your own cadence for marketing outreach, continue to take the pulse of the market. Digital media sales strategies change and your tactics have to change with them.
Some of those adjustments will be dependent on changes in technology. Twitter, for example, recently started experimenting with 240-character tweets—double the size of their established 120-character messages. What impact does that have on your Twitter campaign? Search algorithms also are continually changing. Google recently introduced a new search algorithm to address concerns over fake news, among other issues, and that will affect your SEO strategy.
Your best defense against a changing digital media landscape is to stay informed and be flexible. Continue to refine your digital media tactics and don’t be afraid to experiment, measure the results, and then experiment some more.
Good digital media sales programs must be continually nurtured and fine-tuned to yield optimal results. Most sales and marketing departments are overworked as it is, so they may not have the time or resources to focus on digital media sales, which is why more companies are outsourcing. Dedicated digital media experts can keep track of the changing online marketing landscape. They can help you design and refine a digital media and ad sales program that will continue to add prospects and drive sales. You’ll find that hiring digital media sales experts will more than pay for itself in new business.
