Buzzkill: No Marketing = Slow Growth

Your services rock, your techs are awesome, and your customers like you. But, your client base isn’t growing at the rate that you’d like. Yes, you have loyal customers and avid supporters, referring  you to their friends at every opportunity, but your network is limited. Referrals make great leads, but by complementing them with marketing campaigns, you’ll quickly see a significant improvement in your growth rate.

Ask yourself: Have I tapped out my existing network? Don’t hide your sweet skills in a cave; go get the word out, and extend your network of possibilities!

Here at ConnectWise, we wanted to deliver helpful business advice to our partners, so we started this blog you’re reading now. We farmed out topics to industry experts, and committed to publishing two blogs per week. The result was compelling: our website traffic increased 15% month-over-month.

You don’t necessarily have to start a blog. There are many forums through which to create buzz, and a business management platform can help you collect and retarget new contacts you gather via marketing efforts.

But before you send the first email or write your first blog, you need a solid messaging strategy, and processes in place to nurture leads.

The Solution:

1.       Think.

Before you market anything, concisely describe your offering, and why your audience should care. Do it using terminology familiar to your audience. For instance, just because you know what ‘managed services’ is doesn’t mean your audience does. Spell it out.

2.       Plan.

Where does your target audience look for information? Can you lure them in to your website with thought-leadership content? Decide which avenues you want to market though.

3.       Write.

Less is more. Try to memorably sum up your value proposition in 10 words or less. It should answer what pain points you’re relieving, how, and with what.

4.       Track.

With any marketing you do, it’s needs to be trackable, so you can determine if it’s a good investment. The truest measure of a successful marketing campaign is ROI.

5.       Reap.

The end goal of your marketing campaigns should be to gain sales leads. To do that, you must collect contact information. This is achieved by providing something compelling enough to get prospects to complete a form. Completed forms should automatically push into your CRM system, so you can easily retarget those prospects later.

6.       Qualify.

Now that you have all this new contact information, how do you determine which are qualified leads that should be handed off to Sales? If you establish metrics to rate suspects’ interest levels based on actions performed—downloading an eBook, visiting a website, completing a form, opening an email—your system can automatically identify qualified leads, and push them over to Sales for follow-up.

What’s your biggest marketing pain point?