Things never go quite as you expected and unforeseen circumstances turn up in business, just as in life. A widespread slowdown, difficult periods to get through… How do you continue to get new prospects when trade shows and events are cancelled. the sales teams keep getting knock-backs and people aren’t easy to get hold of by phone? We asked Deepki, a Plezi client and flagship of new tech, for their advice.
During the unexpected: review your process
Exceptional circumstances can hit a company suddenly, and it is during those moments that preparation can pay off.
In recent weeks, activity slowed down and prospecting has become complicated. Companies that relied on word of mouth or recommendations, have been doing well so far – and are now looking for new ways to attract business opportunities to them.
If some have chosen to put their marketing and prospecting on hold (at the risk of paying for it in the future), many have used this moment to take stock and thoroughly review their customers’ purchasing journeys and their internal process.
And while reviewing these things is a good idea, the fact remains that you still want to have a steady stream of new prospects. To meet this challenge when trade shows are cancelled and prospects difficult to reach, however, there’s only one answer: digital!
We noticed also that some companies were more affected than others during the crisis, despite the difficult circumstances, in attracting leads. Deepki, a tech specialist that supports the environmental renovation of public and private buildings, has made inbound marketing its secret weapon during this complex period.
Rely on digital and inbound
Our main advice would be (and Deepi are a good example) don’t put all your eggs in one basket!
By mixing your acquisition channels, you’ll be able to switch from one to the other depending on the context. Digital and inbound have been, for example, in recent times, real lead generators for many companies.
Deepki, whose DNA is resolutely digital and are convinced of the effectiveness of inbound, understood early on that mixing a face-to-face and inbound approach was the key to their stability. Despite working in an industry unused to digitalization (big players in real estate) and a long sales cycle with many different points of contact, for them, inbound was a must.
And it’s true! Inbound means you can easily:
- attract traffic to your site thanks to a good content strategy and boost natural referencing on certain keywords;
- qualify incoming traffic to quickly identify business opportunities not to be missed;
- identify leads outside of their usual routes (events, prospecting and meetings);
- feed prospects with quality content and continue to nurture them –a slow period can become a moment to reassess.
Inbound has enabled Deepki to turn its site and blog into a real lead generation tool. Deprived of their two most important acquisition channels, events and cold calling, it is inbound that keeps them going and despite the current difficulties, they’ve managed to keep the link between their customers and new prospects.
Depki’s results:
Depki’s results:What results did Deepki get then? While it is still too early to garner the results from the current crisis, their activity has not dippêd during it, thanks to their inbound strategy. Their number of leads generated by inbound has doubled and means they can hit their targets … while refining their strategy.
We spoke to Clemence Michele, the Marketing Manager of Deepki who gave us unprecedented feedback. She gave us her best advice and detailed the plan they put in place to overcome the difficult period we all faced. To discover her advice in full, you can download her advice.
Inbound can be your secret weapon during difficult moments; a machine to produce leads, and, if it is well managed, it will continue to run when things are not always on good shape. Even if you don’t have a lot of content, you’re just beginning with a new marketing team, in the midst of a site redesign: there is no bad time to trust in Inbound Marketing and look to the long term.
