The LeadG2 Podcast
The LeadG2 Podcast is dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week host Dani Buckley (VP/GM at LeadG2) discusses proven sales enablement strategies and real-life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries.
The LeadG2 Podcast
How Inbound Marketing & Sales Enablement Helps Sellers Help Themselves with Deb Williams
In this episode, we’re exploring how a solid inbound marketing and sales enablement initiative can help salespeople better figure out the areas they are looking to target.
We ask questions like: How do you align an inbound marketing initiative with your overall business goals? What role does content play in an inbound marketing strategy? And how do you measure the success of your inbound marketing campaigns?
Joining Dani to help break it all down is Deb Williams, General Manager at Federated Media.
Deb brings up some great points, like:
- Why a great inbound marketing and sales enablement strategy can help salespeople better articulate what they’re trying to sell.
- Why it’s important to view your company’s website as a resource manual that’s there to help solve your ideal customer’s problems.
- And finally, why it’s essential to have buy-in from your salespeople when adopting a new inbound marketing and sales enablement initiative.
Welcome to the LeadG2 podcast, the show dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, host Dani Buckley discusses proven B2B marketing and sales strategies and real life examples for experts and thought leaders from across industries. In this episode, we're exploring how solid inbound marketing and sales enablement initiative can help salespeople better figure out the areas they're looking to target. We ask questions like how do you align an inbound marketing initiative with your overall business goals, what role does content play in an inbound marketing strategy and how do you measure the success of your inbound marketing campaigns? Joining Dani to help break it all down is Deb Williams, journal Manager at Federated Media. Deb brings up some great points like why a great inbound marketing and sales enablement strategy can help salespeople better articulate what they're trying to sell, why it's important to be your company's website as a resource manual that's there to help solve your ideal customer's problems. And, finally, why it's essential to have buy-in from your salespeople when adopting a new inbound marketing and sales enablement initiative.
Dani Buckley:Welcome, Deb. I am so excited to have you here. We've worked together for quite a few years and I think that you're going to bring some really unique insights that our listeners are going to love, so thanks for joining today.
Deb Williams:I'm glad to be here, very glad to be here. I'd love to talk about all of our great success with this program.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, good, good, and things that we've learned along the way, which is a lot, yeah. So to start, let's just get everyone on the same page. Tell us just about your experience using inbound marketing as a strategy for Legion and business development. What's your role and background with all of this?
Deb Williams:Yeah, so, interestingly enough, we started this at the worst time possible. It was the beginning of 2020.
Dani Buckley:So we did oh my gosh January, and then, yes, we did.
Deb Williams:Oh my gosh. So that was an adventure in and of itself, but interestingly enough, it kind of afforded us some additional time, I think, to work on things. But I think at the time our brains were just Swiss cheese right. We were just all over the place trying to figure out things and despite that, it was we had. Actually, my role is as the leader of this, and we didn't have anybody in-house in our company that was going to be doing all of the work.
Deb Williams:Our partnership with Leagy2 was they were doing all of the basic work, guiding us through it, meaning you're creating all the content, you're pretty much bringing us through the system with a hook, basically like here we go. This is how this journey goes, and we had been writing content on our website for a couple of years. We had a blog, a new blog go up every single week. We just didn't have a strategy with it. I mean, it was just laying there. I mean, we're always telling our clients that content is king, distribution is queen. And we were writing the content, but we didn't have any distribution or any strategy behind it and it became obvious that we needed to do something in order to make sure that we were maximizing the information that we were placing on our website. We know it's important to have quality information or quality content on your website to position your company or your individual salespeople as knowledgeable, and we have the resources to help businesses meet their needs. So we just need to take the next step, and that's where our partnership really started.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because I think a lot of the businesses we talk to are in a similar boat. Right, they're doing some element of this, they get it, they're blogging, they're creating some content or they're doing these things, but it's like okay, how do we actually make this a lead generation machine?
Intro:Right.
Dani Buckley:You started the touch on this, but if there's anything else to add, what were some of the needs that you were looking to solve that brought you to using inbound marketing? How are you finding new prospects before this, and what were the needs and problems you had? Well, the old-fashioned way.
Deb Williams:We used to be the phone book, but the sellers were just figuring out what particular business area they would like to target and then they would go after those leads. The challenge was that, especially with our company, we're no longer just selling radio. We have all of these other things that go with the radio, that make it work better, that show ROI. We're very innovative. It's a challenge to keep your sellers trained on all of these new things. I mean you train them, but then are they trained enough to be able to relay that information appropriately and accurately to a client or a prospect? That's where this content comes in. Is we're arming our? We had a hole there. It's like our sellers. We do train them, but they have to be able to be articulate about what they're talking about. This content is designed to do that. It's designed to show our innovation and help our reps help themselves with their clients and prospects to understand more about the capabilities that we have as a company Got it. That helps explain it.
Dani Buckley:It does. Yeah, absolutely, we know. So you're a media company. One of the things that I've been doing this for 11 years now with Leagee 2, and it's something I'm really passionate about is helping media companies in particular, because that's my background is working in selling radio. A big piece of this that still a lot of media companies don't have is a B2B website Our advertisers can find. You can learn about all these different things you're talking about, not just the radio station websites, where they can find free resources. They can be educated as business leaders and owners and marketers. You guys did have a website when we first started working together and I know we've really built on that over the years. Just tell us a little bit about the strategy, why you were bought into this idea, why it was important to you, because I remember us talking a lot about it before 2020 even.
Deb Williams:Yeah, the website is particularly funny. I think a lot of corporate media companies they would focus on. This website is for us to show how great we are, and ours did. That showed how great we are. Oh, and then we had this section where all of our job postings were there and we might have a timeline of our company and all those kind of things. And those things are still there. But when a business owner comes to your website, they're not looking to see how great of a company you are, they're looking to see if you can solve their problems. That's why we're there.
Deb Williams:Our individual radio station websites. Those are there for the listeners to know, to see how great they are and to be able to stream the radio station and to see what events are coming up and to get more personal information, maybe about the on-air talent, those types of things. Those are the showpieces of the radio stations. A corporate site needs to be. What are the pain points that you're going to solve for me? And even the Advertise With Us pages on our radio station websites. They were all about oh, here's a sales rep and here's your information. It's like how's that going to solve my problem?
Deb Williams:So a lot of the information that is on our corporate site is. We try to carry over that same ideology into the radio station sites for the Advertise With Us page. So if a business owner ends up on a specific radio station site, they're going to see similar information which is basically how can we solve your business challenges? And it will link back to our corporate site where there's more elaborate information. So really, where the website was concerned, it was a total shifting of the mind on what that site is meant to be. It's not a showpiece for ownership, it's a resource. It's a resource manual for business owners and marketers. That's its purpose.
Dani Buckley:Love it. I'm upset at better myself and I love that you referenced the Advertise With Us link or whatever that looks like on station sites, because that is one of the first things that we want to update, because it's like if someone's not ready to talk to a salesperson or in some cases I've seen even like it's the general manager's contact information, which is like, why would you know? But If someone's not ready to talk to sales, there's nothing else for them to do. It's like either talk to a salesperson or I don't know, and so by having these websites, it's like we can capture and interact and engage with people, no matter where they're at. If they're just researching, they just want information and instead of going and finding it from another agency potentially, or like another type of competitor down the street. So, yeah, it's a big, big initiative to understand that this is part of like being that consultative partner that is really helpful to your community.
Deb Williams:Right, and that is exactly it it's. You know, because of our longstanding partnership with your company the head of your company Center for Sales Strategy we're always positioning ourselves as knowledgeable and customer focus first and foremost, and that's exactly what this website is designed to do. It's to give answers to questions that business owners have and actually be a resource for our sellers to use to help them in their sales process, so that they don't have to feel like they have to be 100% knowledgeable about every single thing that we offer, because it is a lot. I mean, just selling a radio station is a lot of. There's a lot that goes with that, but then you throw in all the innovation that we offer and you know, especially a new seller, you know their head could be spinning, so you've got to make that website able. You know where it's ability to answer questions, no matter who's looking at the website.
Dani Buckley:Yes, yes, love that. So folks really love to hear about, like you know, specifics and especially from I mean, every business I talk to that's a prospect for us wants to know, well, what have others done, what has worked. So, do you are there any like specific tactics or even like campaigns that maybe stand out to you that just were particularly successful for federated media?
Deb Williams:Yeah, In the history since we started this, the most successful campaign has been about combining radio and digital marketing together. That is by far been our most successful and I think it's just because it's a common question that business owners are asking today, like how do I marry these two? You know the new versus the old and do they marry, or should I be putting all my efforts into this new digital? You know craze and you know we of course take the approach and it needs to be both, and they work so well together. So that campaign, we're happy, went very well and more recently we had a campaign, oh, and we continue to add to that campaign and those pieces tend to do very well, those individual blogs.
Deb Williams:But most recently more recently I should say we did a campaign on influencer marketing. It's quite the buzz these days. Yeah, you know that's been a very I guess not surprised, but surprisingly, but just I've been happy with the results of that so far. I see a lot of, you know, lead intelligence, where there's a lot of our clients and prospects that are looking at those blogs and really, you know they're interested in them. So hopefully that's leading our sellers to talk to their clients about you know how to access our talent with influencer marketing.
Deb Williams:I mean that's the point right.
Dani Buckley:When you touched on this when you were first answering the question, and I wanna just like, like really blast it because I think it's so important which is answering the questions that your prospects have. You're like that's the question, right, about radio and digital or about influencer marketing, and that it's really sometimes that simple of like, what are the questions that your prospects have? What are the questions advertisers have? Let's answer those. And so I think you've done a great job of that. And that kind of leads me to my next question, which is just around content. So is there any type? You did just give two good examples and real examples, but is there any type of other like content that you're seeing, not even just like titles, but just like types of content?
Deb Williams:We love webinars. We love them, we love them, we love them. We wish we could do more of them. I'm sure there's companies out there that can push that kind of content out there very quickly. We just, for whatever reason, have not been able to get as many of those out the door as I would have liked.
Dani Buckley:They're a lot of work.
Deb Williams:Yeah, they are a lot of work and we have two plans for the beginning of the year. I'm optimistic about both of them. One of them is on influencer marketing and so, but webinars are awesome and if I would say to anybody that's looking at doing this, they should have a strategy for getting more webinars out the door and getting that type of content pushed out there more. We are very blessed in that we have a lot of resources at our company, a lot of individuals with a particular set of skill sets, to use a phrase from Liam Neeson. I can't wait to say that. Anyway, they have these great skills, but we don't always tap into them and we're half the time yeah.
Deb Williams:Yeah, it's like so, anyway, that's the webinars have been.
Intro:I've been most excited about.
Deb Williams:They seem to be the thing that the sellers get most excited about and are more willing to participate in regards to inviting their clients to watch the webinar. So you know, that's they've been great, yeah, great.
Dani Buckley:And I think important just for context for the listeners here is we worked with you all for a couple of years, very like hands-on, doing a lot of implementation and execution and things like that, and the goal of our partnership was for you to transition to doing a lot of this internally.
Dani Buckley:And so, while we're still in a consultative role relationship with you all, I just wanna like applaud you all that you've done a great job of that transition and I know it's not always easy because there is like other priorities and what comes up. But I see you all as a success story in that way, because we have a lot of different clients some that want us to work with us forever, like we're just we are their marketing department and they don't want that to change. And then some, which are just as important to us, that want to transition and want us to set you up for success. So I just think that's important to note that you all have really effectively been doing that and I know there's like a learning curve to that and kind of figuring out your groove and prioritization. But you have done a really great job this last year of, I think, taking a lot of that in-house.
Deb Williams:Yeah, we did, and we hired somebody who didn't have an extensive background in everything and she's learned a lot very quickly. I think the only thing that really didn't go maybe as planned was the production of enough content, meaning blog content over the course of the year, and I think we've remedied that. As of now, we've got a system in place where we're going to be utilizing again, tapping into that talent that we have in-house and making sure that we're producing blog content on a weekly basis, and we know that that's a key part of it, and that would be the one thing that there was growing pains in hiring somebody to do. Yeah, total growing pains, and but nothing got broke, nothing was ruined as a result of it, and we still had growth and we had even more sellers embrace the tools that we're offering them, and there's great stuff that happens, even when you feel like maybe you could have done it better.
Dani Buckley:Well, speaking of great stuff that can happen, let's talk about ROI and results, because that mattered, right? We wouldn't keep doing this if we weren't seeing results. So tell us a little bit about what you've seen and how do you know in malmarketing is working? What are the different things that you're looking at as a leader at the company?
Deb Williams:I mean, I can just see for just the amount, because I get every alert, every form, fill on the side. I get every single one and if I go back to, let's say, june of 2020, by the time we got through all of that and everything was kind of rolling to now, it's like so many things come in all the time and that tells me and some of them are just like somebody from Brazil found our website and we answered a question for them and they subscribe with a blog and that's great.
Deb Williams:But that means our website's being found when people are searching and I'm like we can't control where they find us. But it's more of the quality stuff that's coming in. And speaking back into those Advertise With Us pages, one of the best things we did from the get go was, instead of on those Advertise With Us pages that exist on our station sites, they used to just have like here's the email address for the sales manager reach out. Now we have forms on those, the hotspot forms. So we're, right from the get go, capturing that person's information. They're a prospect. It's the old money phone that we used to talk about in radio. The money phone rang. Somebody called in and said I want to advertise in your station. That's what those form fills are. But we have that data captured and now we can track what they're doing and look at what are their blogs and other things that they're interested in. So those things have increased but there's just so much more activity going on and that's been the biggest thing. We could talk about it later.
Deb Williams:I think we have another CRM HubSpot is a CRM and we have another CRM and our other CRM talks to our billing and traffic system. So HubSpot itself while we do ask that the sellers record any revenue for any leads that come in, they only do it that first time. If they make a first time buy and then they buy again six months later, they don't go back into HubSpot and record that revenue. But we know that they're still buying and so, while the numbers don't always speak the full story, we know that we have continued relationships with people that have come in through the platform and we're developing those relationships and we know that they're reading our content and that's important. That's the more important part. It's kind of like we know it's working. We just can't tell you the exact number. You know it's just that's nature of it and it you know when you have another CRM that you know the sellers use. That's that's what we deal with.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, it's a tricky piece to that finding the right and in every organization is different and what that tech stack looks like and how that closing the loop can be. So I know that's a a you know a challenge. But, like you said, there's these other KPIs that are pointing to like a good, how many new customers, how many new leads, like how many of those leads are actually qualified, like that kind of stuff. So I know that all helps.
Deb Williams:It's interesting we we had a conversation recently we're friends with another family on broadcast group that does your program and we great professional relationship with them. We talked to each other a lot, just you know, idea share or whatever and At a conference that we were both in attending a few months ago we asked them you know this, that same question like how do you know it's working? And kind of the same answer we just know it's working.
Dani Buckley:Yep, so just to kind of um, we're kind of getting to that time and so I want to kind of start to wrap us up, and I think that one of the questions that I think everyone loves to hear is what advice would you give to other businesses but I would say even particular media companies because that's what you are that are looking to start something like this, or maybe they have it a little bit but they haven't really grown it? What, what are it's kind of closing advice you would give them?
Deb Williams:I would, you know, for media companies in particular, I Would make sure that the sellers understand that this is an optional, that you're, that we, as a company, are investing in this resource for them, exclusively for them, and they don't get to pick and choose whether or not they use it. Going back to when I first started this conversation, we started this in 2020. We were supposed to have a rollout with the sellers, you know, and of course, that didn't happen. Yeah, and and for all the right reasons. Right, you know, we had a zoom call with all of them, but that again, everybody's brains were Swiss cheese at that moment, and I think you know, just, it was hard for it to sink in and everybody was just trying to stay alive, right, just, as far as you know, I got to keep my billing up and all those types of things, so Timing wasn't on our favor there. But you know, we have to get, you have to get that buy-in. It has to come down from the top of a company of like this is what we're doing. We're all on board.
Deb Williams:This is an investment in you and I Mean that would be my biggest piece of advice. You know, we've come a long way in, you know, in four years, three and a half, four years, in regards to our sales teams and them using the content, we still have ways to go, you know. You know, that's just a fact and I, I would, you know, make sure that any media company that would, or it, urge any media company To make sure that that is a priority when you sign on with this program. Yeah, you've got to get your stuff, I'm bored. I think that that will right there, will Push your, put the results on a short, on a shorter leash, then yeah, then if not, yeah, great, I love that.
Dani Buckley:Thank you so much, deb, for your time for joining me today. It was such a pleasure having you here, glad to do it, yeah and for anyone who wants to connect with Deb will include her contact information in the show notes and you check out their website and things like that. So thank you for tuning in. We look forward to seeing you all on the next episode. Until then, happy selling. Thanks for listening to the leechy to podcast.
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