The Importance of Incorporating Digital Marketing into Your Business Strategy

BeaconCFO Plus is a professional CFO service firm that has generated new clients through introductions by a variety of contacts in the personal and business networks of its CFOs.  These contacts were established over time through the firm’s collective efforts in connecting through traditional business development processes.  While we have been successful following this approach, changes in the marketplace led us to conclude the dynamics of business development required more than our traditional methods.

We decided to create a digital marketing program that would work 24/7 in collaboration with our website.  An inbound marketing program would allow us to attract prospective customers or referral sources to our website, which would be revised to provide the right balance of content and education, enhancing our ability to better qualify leads to develop a business relationship. We engaged a professional digital marketing firm to create our program given the specialized nature of the project.

Steps to Create the Program

1. Set the Digital Foundation

We started the process by identifying keywords our potential prospects would be searching for when looking for the services our firm provided. These would be incorporated into our website and all related content to increase our chances of appearing at the top of search results, commonly known as search engine optimization.  The next step was to identify the personas who were either referral sources or client prospects.  Considerable time was spent here as it was critical to understand who we were trying to attract so we could tailor content to their specific needs and behaviors which would ultimately attract them to our site.  Included in this process was identifying their demographics, background, objectives and pain points.  A marketing message was crafted to address perceived areas of need to increase the probability they would engage on our website.

2. Attract Your Personas

Once we identified the targets of our inbound program, we created a variety of content to attract them to our site.  This included blogs, industry articles, infographics, case studies and how-to guides, all geared to address their needs.  In addition, we identified additional channels through social media to reach our desired personas and became more engaged in those channels to develop a reputation as a thought leader and subject matter expert.

3. Convert Personas Through the Sales Pipeline

Using the content on our website, we developed strategies to create multiple opportunities for a visitor to provide their contact information, which would be cataloged in a CRM system for further contact.  The primary tool was a CTA (call-to-action), which was used as a vehicle to provide something of value to the visitor in exchange for basic contact information. The conversion process started with identifying leads obtained from outside parties researching a topic, providing content that raised their awareness, which would result in a lead engaging with us directly to meet. By the end of the process, the lead was ready for direct contact to engage with the sales team.

The digital marketing program has become a valuable tool in our overall marketing efforts. Content is refreshed based on the feedback received and analytics performed.  The partnership we formed with our digital marketing provider has clearly enhanced our presence in the marketplace.