Why Should I Sign Up for Your Newsletter?

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Congratulations, you got me to come to your site. I don’t recall how I got there. It might have been via a link you posted on a social media platform, or maybe because your blog post answered the question that I typed into Google search.

However it happened, you deserve a pat on the back. You succeeded in driving traffic to your website, which is the hardest and most highly prized objective that everyone is shooting (praying?) for.

So now I’m on your site reading your blog post. I liked it. It was well written and taught me something new. Now I’m ready to move on, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. But wait, you hit me with a “Sign up for our newsletter” box (or something like that).

Now you’ve got me thinking. Do I want to give you my email address and start a relationship that will add more clutter to my inbox? If you’re someone I’ve heard of before and you’ve built up a reputation for expertise in your field, then I might do it. If you’re not but I really liked your blog, I might bookmark it — but you’re not getting my email. Why should I, when I can just come back and read when I feel like it?

In order to get my email address (and first name?) you need to give me a good reason other than getting your updates or newsletter. You need to offer me something that I value enough to be willing to trade my info for. That can be an ebook, whitepaper, special report — it really doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as it is something that I consider valuable.

Without an offer you’re letting most of your visitors slip away … forever. That’s potential revenue lost. Painful.

Why should you care so much about getting email addresses?

1. You can nurture them into potential sales with an automated email workflow.

2. You can personally reach out to them to try and make a sale.

3. By using a service like FullContant you can get an incredible amount of information about the person behind the email such as their social media profile, the websites they are associated with and their interests. You can then connect with them in different ways to build a relationship which could eventually lead to a sale.

If you already have you’re “sign up for updates” box in place, you don’t need to get rid of it. Some people do actually sign up. But you should definitely add at least one offer that you can present to your visitors in exchange for their email addresses. You can then add those emails to your lead list and automated email workflow — or simply reach out to them directly — to move them through your sales funnel and hopefully to a completed sale.

If you’re interested in learning how we at Onrush do just that, download our free ebook The Digital Marketing Blueprint.

Why Digital Marketing is Vital to a Successful B2B Sales Process

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When you think of traditional business to business (B2B) selling, you probably think of salespeople making cold calls to dig up leads and convince them to try their product or service. While tradition sales prospecting techniques still have their place in the sales process, the latest research points in a different direction.

Research shows that up to 60-90% of decision-making in B2B is made before the decision-maker approaches the supplier:

“A CEB (Corporate Executive Board) study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that those customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision – researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on – before even having a conversation with a supplier.”

“SiriusDecisions reports that 70% of the buying process in a complex sale is already complete before prospects are willing to engage with a live salesperson”

“Two-thirds to 90% of the buying cycle is completed before a B2B buyer ever speaks with a sales rep.” – Forrester

“Business buyers spend just 21% of buying cycle in conversations with salespeople, instead spending 23% of the time in conversations with peers and colleagues and 56% of the buying cycle searching for and engaging with content” – IDG Connect

At the extreme, a buyer will get 90% of the way towards making a final decision on whether to purchase your product or service before speaking with a sales rep.

That’s great news for companies with effective digital marketing strategies. The more informative content you can give the potential buyer, the better your chance of making the sale before you even speak with him or her.

But you need great content, and you need your potential buyer to be able to find it. To do that you need your digital marketing to include:

1. Creating the right content that will inform and engage.

2. SEO – Optimizing that content for search engines to find.

3. Sharing that content on relevant social media platforms.

There’s still a role for a great salesperson who can build relationships and close deals. But the process of generating those leads has changed. Consumers want as much information as they can get to base their decisions on. And there’s plenty of information out there in the digital sphere for them to use.

To be successful, B2B companies need effective digital marketing strategies to create superior content and get it in front of their potential customers.