SIDEBAR: 6 Ways to Overcome “Virtual” Stagnancy

Read Kicking Your Electrical Distributorship Out of “Stagnancy” Mode, Part I

If your company isn’t at least trying to grow at a rate of 1-3% every week—and if it’s content to simply maintain its current status—then your business is definitely stagnant. And if it’s not upping the ante regularly on its web and e-commerce efforts, then it’s also “virtually” stagnant in an era where no distributorship can afford to rest on its laurels. “Having a growth mindset is key if you want to grow at least 50% a year,” says Christopher Bourgeois, a marketing and e-commerce expert and current head of marketing at Curexe.

Bourgeois says companies that want to get out of virtual stagnancy mode and kick-start a more offensive growth strategy should:

1. Take a look at your lead channels and what’s driving your sales online. Maybe reaching out personally on LinkedIn doesn’t have as high of an ROI as targeted LinkedIn ads or just networking at conferences. “Your marketing team needs to provide better leads and to do that they should focus as much time as possible on what’s working now,” he advises, “and less time on activities that don’t drive sales.”
2. Use data to your advantage. Whatever the best channel or medium is for your business, make sure you have multichannel attribution set up to be able to “see” all the data. Then, use that data to focus more attention on what’s actually generating your sales on the web.
3. Disperse lead efforts across multiple channels. Getting too comfortable with what works and no variation in your strategy will leave you complacent and reliant on one method to generate your sales. “Having your lead efforts dispersed across a couple of select platforms that have a positive return on investment (ROI),” Bourgeois says, “won’t leave you defenseless if all of the sudden one of those platforms stops working for you.”
4. Get your sales team involved in the effort. Have a unique value proposition to offer your customers, and then deliver that message via email and on all of your social channels. “Once someone gives you their information to market,” says Bourgeois, “it’s your sales team’s responsibility to nurture the lead.”
5. Decide what messaging and offerings are best for your customer. “An old marketing adage says you need to have seven points of contact for the customer to take the action to buy,” Bourgeois says, noting that in the B2B space, helping your customers do their job better is a great niche to fill. “Make that outreach and then commit to guiding more customers through the sales cycle.”
6. Redistribute content across channels to gain a bigger reach. Taking a single piece of content and spending the time to make it high quality has its dividends. “Once you have the content written,” Bourgeois says, “you can repurpose it very easily for multiple platforms.” This not only gives your brand an omnichannel marketing presence, but it also exposes your leads to your brand more times, he concludes, and is a great practice if your company is experiencing stagnant growth.”