The Two Inbound Strategies That Clearly Show How Marketing Delivers Sales Leads

Done correctly, inbound marketing is a strong driver of lead generation. But we all know what isn’t measured doesn’t matter so it’s critical that B2B marketers clarify how their team’s work makes an impact on the company’s bottom line. Staying focused on the tactics that drive sales benefits the entire organization’s growth and, in turn, illustrates marketing’s role in that growth.

Here are two key activities that can help marketers connect their inbound efforts to lead gen outcomes: 

#1: Deploy Marketing Automation. One of the most powerful aspects of marketing automation is its ability to connect inbound efforts with lead generation results.  Proactively measuring marketing automation allows you to control how and when you reach prospects so you’re delivering the right information to them at a time when they’re most receptive (i.e., you’ll know not to have a sales person reach out until a prospect has reached a certain threshold of engagement). On the reactive side, you can work with closed sales data to understand how revenue generation might have started with or been influenced by inbound efforts. By uncovering that a recent six-figure deal came from a prospect that downloaded content throughout the funnel will clearly show that marketing is partly responsible for that win.   

#2: Have a Singular CTA. Too often the action we want a prospect to take isn’t given its fair share of strategic thinking during the marketing process. And without driving prospects to an action, there is little way to connect inbound marketing to lead generation. The most important rule for CTA clarity is the less the better. Unless there’s a valid business reason to include more than one action for a prospect to take, keep inbound CTA to a minimum. The more you can encourage prospects to take the one, most important action the easier it will be to connect inbound marketing to lead generation. 

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