What's the Correct Process for IT Marketing?

Having the correct process in place means having an agreed upon method of taking leads all the way from awareness to action. This includes the vital handover from marketing to sales.

If you find your IT company's marketing department working alone on an island, and the leads are not getting handed over to sales, you are likely doing something wrong.

Perhaps this is an indication that you need to rethink your online marketing strategy, or that you should seek outside assistance in the form of an agency, and allow the experts to take over.

These seven steps must be followed to ensure you successfully reach your goals:

1) Plan – Ask yourself the following questions:

A. What is the purpose of this marketing strategy?
B. What are some of the challenges that your organization has faced in the past?
C. What’s your ideal customer, and what is the best way to attract them?
D. Where do potential clients search when they are looking for a company like yours?
E. How much time and money should you be investing in marketing?

2) Create – Build and maintain a website that meets the following criteria:

A. Simple to navigate or operate
B. Professional and polished looking
C. Search engine optimization friendly
D. Easily viewable on mobile devices
E. Easy to update and repair when necessary

3) Distribute – The following activities will be sure to increase traffic to your organization’s website:

A. Blogging: Write blog articles that are directed towards your target audience. A well-written blog can easily double your website’s traffic.
B. Social Media: Develop a loyal following across all of your social media pages. Share your blog posts to these pages and engage your stakeholders in the conversation.
C. Search Engine Optimization: Identify the keywords for your company and created targeted content that includes those words. Build quality links to your website that will attract customers.

4) Capture – Create interesting offers and calls to action that appeal to potential customers

A. Build landing pages that describe what your offer is, and provide a form in which to collect information from these sources.
B. When the form has been completed, the user will gain access to your offer, be entered in your CRM system, and then receive an automatic email.

5) Analyze – Leads should be segmented into lists based on the form that the customer completed, or the way in which the lead came in. Understand where your leads are from so that you know whom to contact first.

6) Cultivate – Continue to develop lead nurturing campaigns that will further educate your leads and take them down the sales funnel. Using methods such as email marketing should be utilized to stay in touch with all of the contacts in your CRM.

7) Convert – In order to convert traffic into actual sales leads, it is important to understand which content to provide them with in the first place. This means that throughout each stage in the process you will want to tailor your content accordingly. This will naturally guide your leads from the information gathering stage to the point in which they become your customer.

Content should be organized in the following fashion:

A. Awareness – Blogs, Advertisements, Public Relations, Articles
B. Educational Offers – eBooks, White Papers, Videos
C. Validation Offers – Webinars, Podcasts, Seminars
D. Sales – Proposals, meetings, demos