Why digital marketing agencies need an Instant Inbound Sales solution

Digital marketing agencies can generate sales in a number of ways. Outbound campaigns, through referrals and partners, and inbound.

Inbound marketing is an almost universal service offering, that marketing agencies sell. Whichever way it’s packaged up and sold. Inbound is usually a combination of a range of services, such as SEO, Content, PR, Social, Advertising, and other methods and strategies. Inbound marketing creates awareness of the brand and makes prospects curious to find out more about the brand’s products and services.

However, not every agency has the capacity to invest in this themselves. Usually, because they’re so busy doing work for clients. It’s true that some marketing agencies appear to be rubbish at marketing because they’ve got too many clients to look after, and so marketing compared to sales, falls down the priority list.

So for those that can afford the time/money to invest in the inbound sales process, it’s a massive advantage to have a conversion solution at the right point in the pipeline.

What an inbound sales funnel should include for a digital marketing agency

For marketing agencies, inbound lead generation funnels should include everything they would encourage clients to buy. One reason for this, is it’s helpful to show clients that it works. Giving potential clients confidence in the agency.

On the other hand, it’s even more useful when an inbound funnel actually works, because this means it will generate sales leads.

Providing budgets and team workloads allow, an inbound funnel should include a full range of marketing activities. Everything is measured, of course. Data is tracked from the first click to the first contact.

An inbound funnel needs to pull prospects in from search engines and social networks to the consideration and decision-making stage. Whether you do this completely organically or use adverts too, depends on a range of factors. If you are putting money into adverts, it’s especially useful to have a way of qualifying leads as soon as possible.

You need to qualify sales leads

No matter where or how sales leads come from, every company needs to qualify them. It’s essential that a sales team knows if a lead is serious if they’ve got a budget and who makes the decision.

When leads come in through an inbound funnel, money and time have already been invested trying to capture their attention.

Now you need to know whether they are genuinely interested, or just browsing. Tire kicking. You don’t need to waste time on tire kickers. Also, it might mean you need to adjust aspects of the funnel if the wrong leads or coming through.

Hence the benefit of putting an Instant Inbound Sales solution early into the funnel, as a way of qualifying leads.

How Instant Inbound Sales solutions work

CrankWheel is an example of an Instant Inbound Sales solution.

CrankWheel is a screen-sharing software for digital marketing agencies, that works on any platform or device and is used to share screen by digital agency sales teams. Sales prospects don’t need to download anything to use it, making it nice and easy for them. It simply works and is friction-free for sales teams too.

With CrankWheel’s instant demo feature, digital agency salespeople can accept inbound requests from sales leads and contact them straight away. No need to schedule something in a calendar if someone wants to talk straight away.

Also, this gives prospects the ability to instant schedule a call in the diary, if they want a call, but don’t have time straight away. In that sense, it’s helpful both ways, because not every prospect is free for a call at the time they are looking into marketing services.

How digital agencies use Instant Inbound Sales solutions

Once you’ve got prospects who are interested, make it ridiculously easy for them to speak to one of the team.

Put “Give us a call” (or wording meaning the same thing) buttons on your website, on high-converting and inbound landing pages. If you use lead magnets, such as eBooks, put them on those pages, and in the emails after someone has downloaded an eBook.

Include similar calls-to-action within any drip sales email campaigns. Give prospects multiple ways to either call when they want, receive a call instantly or schedule a call. The approaches should take them to your Instant Inbound Sales solution, such as CrankWheel.

Once you’ve got them on a call, this is a chance to briefly demo the strengths of the agency. It’s also a chance to qualify them as a sales lead, which is why the instant approach is so important. You need a clear top-level overview of the following:

• What problems are they trying to solve?
• Do they need them solved in a timely fashion (is there some urgency)?
• Do they understand either what they need or the services you offer?
• Do they have a budget?
• Who gets to make a decision on this?

When you are clear on the above, then using the prospect’s answers, you should have a clear idea as to whether they’re a viable sales lead, or not. Either way, this is a valuable exercise with every prospect and will help you take viable leads forward and weed out those that aren’t.

Key Takeaways:

• Establishing an inbound marketing funnel is a powerful lead generation strategy for marketing agencies. It also shows you use the same strategies and methods you sell to clients.
• Once an inbound funnel is generating leads, you need a way of qualifying them early on: are they genuinely interested, do they understand what they need and what you are offering, do they have a budget, and who makes the decision?
• An Instant Inbound Sales solution, such as CrankWheel, gives sales teams a quick and easy way to qualify each and every sales lead. The viable ones are likely to need and want a second meeting, to potentially see a proposal and case studies. This is when leads move further up the chain to an agency founder, co-founder, or VP/Head of Sales.

CrankWheel: Cut your sales cycle in half with instant screen-sharing. Go from two or more sales calls to one: Become a one call close sales team.