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Increasingly, your marketing efforts must be in solid sync with your sales team to be effective. It’s essential to have sales understand the content you’re producing, both at the top of the sales funnel (to introduce yourself) and in the mid-funnel (to warm up leads).   At some point, however, both marketing and sales will have to agree on what prospects are ready for direct outreach from sales, or are in need of more nurturing. They do this by a points-based or letter-grade process known as lead scoring .   If you’re not dealing in great numbers of prospects, you can score your leads simply by indication of interest. As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, mid funnel prospects have already shown some interest in you, perhaps via website visits or downloaded content. If so, you can reach out directly to see if they’d like to know more about you and your company.   But to do this at any kind of volume, industry segmentation, or prospect title, it’s best to use technology — your CRM, …

As you identify prospects who may be interested in doing business with you —folks you can characterize as being in the middle of the sales funnel — the time is ripe to enhance two of your most potent marketing tools, email and social media. The point is to encourage further engagement, interaction, and ultimately a state where you’ve got warm/hot leads ready to hand off to sales.   Let’s think first about increasing your email list-building. Why email, you might say? Simple. Fifty-nine percent of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI, according to marketing automation company HubSpot, and 93 percent use email as a major channel for content distribution.   At the top of the sales funnel you were giving away lots of general content for free, to get people acquainted with you. Now, knowing who downloaded content — a key indicator of interest — you can ask them to register with their email addresses to access other smart content, such as deep-dive case studies, expert guides, …

At the top of the sales funnel, blogs and social posts work well to introduce prospects to you and your company. Now, in the middle of the sales funnel, when folks are evaluating their print needs and considering whether you’re the right company for them, you need to develop more engaging, encouraging content.   But here you’re faced with a dilemma.   You are now required to have two pretty different sets of content — one set to introduce yourself, and an entirely different set of content designed to encourage further engagement and consideration. And these two sets of content — which must be distributed concurrently to keep things going — can span a wide range, from general blogs and posts on the one hand, to deep-dive case studies, expert guides, white papers, email blasts, and even webcasts and live Facebook interactions.   You might soon lose control of knowing what’s effective content, why, and for whom it’s intended.   Don’t worry. An automated approach to content organization …

Content marketing is your friend. Your blogs, social posts, and other forms of information help illustrate your knowledge of the printing business, while offering tips and best practices to inform your potential customers.   The top of the sales funnel is the time to introduce yourself to prospects by offering resources, answers, and insights. But those folks who’ve responded positively to your initial content — perhaps they’ve commented on a blog, visited your website, or downloaded a piece of content — can now be considered “mid-funnel” prospects. They’re evaluating their print options, and doing additional research on whether you’re the right company for them.   Your own content should reflect this new reality, to increase their engagement with you and your company, and lead them further toward becoming a paying customer.    Why are the mid-funnel considerations of prospects so important, and why customize your content marketing outreach accordingly? Because it works!   According …