Not every business has immediate sales. With no product or service with an immediate download or delivery, they rely on long sales cycles of their salespeople reaching out, establishing relationships, having multiple meetings, and going back and forth on proposals and contracts before anyone signs. In our enVisioning Success podcast episode, Consistency in Communication: The Key to Effective Sales Messaging, co-hosts Julia and Laura go over sales tips, and in this companion blog, we’ll be looking at the marketing needed for long sales cycles, from bringing in leads to getting them over the finish line.

Top of the Funnel: Advertising, Social Media, and SEO

As we’ve talked about before with customer journeys, the first goal of any marketing is making customers aware of your company—as a brand and a solution to their problems. The solution is to appear in high-trafficked areas, either passively through good search engine optimization (SEO) for your website and outreach on social media or actively through the use of paid advertising (such as Google Ads for search or social media advertising). The goal here is to know your ideal clients and then target them in the places they will be with the right marketing so they will explore your services and talk to sales.

Expertise with Blogs, Testimonials, and Reviews

Once a potential customer is aware of your brand, how do you make them take the plunge into reaching out, knowing the length of the sales cycle ahead? With these high-effort sales cycles, customers are more likely to do research ahead of time, meaning you need to be there with the right information.

• Expert Knowledge: Showing knowledge via blogs, whitepapers, and other in-depth articles on your website or third-party new outlets/journals allows you to show off expertise to potential customers while providing SEO for your company
• Getting Testimonials: Have your current customers write or record testimonials providing concrete examples of your services at work, including businesses you’ve helped, how you helped them, and trackable results.
• Review Management: Many customers will check your online reputation before requesting a quote. A key part of reputation management is reviewing the reviews of your business, responding properly, and including requests for reviews in your sales cycle.

Drip Marketing with Automated Emails

Of course, once you’ve hooked potential clients via contact, quote, or sales outreach, how do you keep them engaged during the long sales cycle? To offload some of the work from your sales team, it’s time to be proactive with email marketing. Regular newsletters and automated emails (including drip campaigns) can keep you on a lead’s radar and may encourage them to follow up with your sales team instead of the other way around.

About the enVisioning Success Podcast

This article is based on topics discussed in enVisioning Success, our weekly podcast hosted by Vision CEO Laura DiBenedetto and COO Julia Becker Collins. In it, they discuss all things business and marketing, from lead generation to leadership. Find us on PodBean to download from your platform of choice, or subscribe to our mailing list to get new episodes and other news delivered directly to your inbox.

These are only a few ways your marketing team can support your sales team and improve the long sales cycle of your business. If you’re suffering from a marketing-sales disconnect, it might be time to work with the experts. Vision Advertising has been helping businesses for years with blogs, testimonials, websites, social media, email marketing, and more. From diving into the analytics behind customer journeys to getting customer feedback to improve your sales process, contact us today to learn how to make the change to marketing that fits your business.