When it comes to promoting your business and increasing the number of leads into your sales funnel, marketing automation is key to a successful campaign. Being able to master the identification, qualification, and outreach of leads and effectively turn them into paying customers is one of the most sought-after capabilities for any company.
Companies like Eloqua, Pardot, and Marketo shifted from a simple email marketing tool to a lead-scoring system that could track when people engaged with your site or digital assets, and then immediately connect with them so you could move them through the sales funnel.
A Shift in the Buyer’s Journey
As marketing automation hit its peak about six years ago, customers caught onto the fact that they would get an immediate follow up or engagement if they did their research on first-party sites (e.g. manufacturers, retail stores, B2B distributors), and they didn’t necessarily want a sales call just because they downloaded one white paper. With this shift, customers have been moving off these sites and onto third-party platforms to do their research.
By doing their research on platforms like Business Insider or Forbes, consumers have reduced marketers’ ability to analyze their actions and follow up with them, as marketing automation systems only have the ability to analyze actions taken on platforms they control. That makes it harder to not only qualify customers for a future engagement but to determine if they have the intent to buy.
For example, if your company sells services to a law firm and the marketing team hands off a lead with high intent to the sales department, but that lead is a dentist office, they aren’t the right Fit. Flip that around, if a driven sales associate finds a lead that they believe would be the perfect fit, but that company may not plan to purchase a service like yours for 12 months. That lack of Intent could result in wasted time or effort on an ill-intentioned lead.
Image: How to prioritize Fit and Intent scores
How Do Fit and Intent Impact Me?
By understanding a customer’s Fit and Intent, the marketing team can hand over qualified leads to the sales department that are not only ready to purchase, their goals and needs align with what you can provide.
Reaching a customer who fits into your desired demographic and is also searching for your product or service means they’re more likely to spend more. It also means you’ve saved money and energy on evangelizing your product — the customer did it for you by engaging with your content themselves.
Finally, having a client that has the right fit and intent creates a shorter sales cycle. This means that you can quickly move people through the funnel, make selling easier, and focus the efforts of your sales team on the next relationship.
If you would like to learn more about how EverString uses Fit and Intent to engage with the best accounts, watch this short video.
Interested in seeing EverString in action? Request a customized demo.
