The Strange but Oddly Appealing Journey Toward Inbound Marketing Nirvana

5 milestones to a state of perfect happiness; an ideal or idyllic place.

When I was a kid there every once in a while there was a special, yet rare day in June when my birthday fell on the same day as the last day of school.
 
I mean really, how cool is that?
 
It happened infrequently because in Buffalo, where I grew up, you never really know when the last day of school was because of these things called “snow days”. Those were extra days tacked onto the designated last day of school to account for all of the days that school was cancelled because of snow. Buffalo ... snow ... you get it, right?
 
But when birthday and last day coincided it was like nirvana – a perfect state of happiness. I even remember a perfect day made better when I got a five speed, shift-in-the-middle-banana-bike that was a totally unexpected present. A few years later my younger brother decided to pound about 30 nails into the tires of that bike for some transgression or another that I’ve forgotten about, but I assure you, he is still alive and well. 

The Nirvana of Marketing

So what does this have to do with marketing? It’s about the perfect state:
 
Nirvana in inbound marketing is the perfect state where marketing and sales/business development work hand in hand to grow a firm’s top line.
 
I believe that most firms just aren’t there yet. Marketing does its thing focused on branding, business development does its thing focused on networking, but if and when marketing and business development can get on the same page, the synergy can produce fantastic results. 

The Journey Toward Inbound Marketing Nirvana

Growing the top line for an accounting, consulting or other professional services firm happens faster and with a greater ROI when marketing and business development teams work toward common, measure goals. Each team plays a role in this journey, and when success – nirvana – is achieved, each team shares in the accomplishment.
 
Today’s marketing technology like HubSpot is full of features and capabilities for making the marketing/sales bond as strong as it can possible be. In addition to the right technology, your journey toward nirvana can be built along a path that includes these milestones:
 
(1)  Joint development of a campaign – consider starting your path with an agreement to develop and execute a marketing/sales campaign with specific objectives around a specific issue or problem.
 
(2)  Gated content – you need to generate offers to get prospects into the sales funnel and the best way to do this is with content tucked behind a form.
 
(3)  An accessible CRM – marketing and business development should have access to a CRM that showcases both marketing touch points and sales touch points. I strongly suggest that you check out HubSpot’s capabilities to this end, especially the Sidekick for Business tool, or contact us so we can show you these powerful fractures and capabilities.
 
(4)  A monitored sales funnel workflow – part of the management of a campaign needs to be built around automating the lead nurturing process. Not everyone who submits a form for an offer will be sales ready, so your team must be prepared to offer the right content at the right time in the prospect’s sales journey, and then the right contact at the right team when that prospect becomes a sales qualified lead
 
(5)  Measurement and refinement – the journey toward nirvana also needs to include analytics that provide insights for changing tactics or approaches to the campaign. In fact, in setting the campaign up, key performance indicators should be part of the discussion, and whatever analytics package you use should be organized or configured to deliver real time data on those KPIs.
 
Changing the Perfect Day Nirvana
Now, my perfect June day of nirvana happens when birthday and Father’s Day happen on the same day. Frankly, the only thing I don’t like is when my family tells me that the left sleeve of the new shirt they got me is for Father’s Day and the right sleeve is for my birthday. I guess that’s frugal, but I do take comfort in the fact that it’s frugality tempered by love.
 
But nirvana aside, if you happen to see my brother, tell him he still owes me for a couple of new bike tires.