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Book the right meetings faster with one-click scheduling
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Engage website visitors with automated Journeys and live chat
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Qualify, route, and schedule prospects directly from your web form
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Route records in Salesforce based on a Trigger
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Route and schedule prospects from bizdev to sales to implementation
Your marketing funnel has changed. And the future... is dark. See how Chili Piper said good-bye to MQLs — while continuing to drive pipeline.
Your marketing funnel has changed. And the future... is dark. See how Chili Piper said good-bye to MQLs — while continuing to drive pipeline.
People aren’t buying products the way they used to.
And it’s largely because people aren’t connecting the way they used to.
Back in the olden days of the early 2010s, professionals maybe connected with their peers once per year at in-person events.
Now, people have access to their peers pretty much instantly.
Need advice about what type of scheduling software to purchase?
All you have to do is post something on LinkedIn. Ping your Slack community. Ask your Facebook group. Post on a marketing subreddit.
It’s never been easier to get unbiased (and basically immediate) advice from a large community of your peers.
For marketers… it means everything we thought we knew about the marketing funnel is wrong.
According to the ancient marketing philosophers, buyers begin their journey at the awareness stage.
As they consume more content, they move further down the funnel, until they reach the “intent” stage and become a Marketing Qualified Lead. At this point, marketing hands the lead off to sales and pats themselves on the back for a job well done.
This method was all well and good when sales relied on marketing to curate lists of potential buyers.
Now, a quick subscription to contact databases like ZoomInfo gives them access to more contact information than they could have ever imagined.
A few weeks ago, one of our Chili Champions reached out to me, asking if a certain company had engaged with Chili Piper.
I checked. They had: Closed Lost.
Our champion said she’d talk to the VP of Sales and would make him buy Chili Piper.
I thought, “That’s a pretty big claim, but OK.”
A week later, that VP of Sales schedules a demo. And then signs the contract within a week.
What?? 🤯🤯
But this is happening all the time.
Maybe it's because people don’t really trust brands anymore, but they definitely trust their friends, families, and peers. According to Nielson, 92% of consumers say they trust word-of-mouth or recommendations above all other forms of advertising.
People aren’t going through your marketing funnel in a neat and orderly fashion — they’re hearing about you from all over the place.
But just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean you can’t optimize for it.
Here are our favorite tips for marketing teams who are ready to leave everything they know behind and embrace the age of dark social:
In the age of dark social, marketing teams should focus on evoking curiosity and building demand.
That means you shouldn’t focus on:
Instead, you should focus on things like…
Basically, anything that gets people so curious about you they decide to type your name into Google and see what you’re all about.
And, eventually, schedule a demo.
If marketing teams are judged based on how many MQLs they deliver to sales, guess what?
They’re going to focus on delivering MQLs to sales.
Instead, marketing goals should be tied to an actual revenue number.
At Chili Piper, we measure marketing goals based on:
Because if marketing isn’t tied to actual revenue generated, they’re chasing the wrong number.
70% of the buyer’s journey happens before a prospect reaches out to sales.
That means there should be enough information on your website for buyers to educate themselves on your product.
By the time they talk to sales, they should already have a pretty good idea of what your product does. They’re just talking to sales to see how it fits their specific use case and if your company has solved similar challenges for others like them
When they finally raise their hand to talk to sales, they already know what your product does — but what will it do for them?
Many B2B marketing teams make the mistake of ignoring social media because they can’t attribute any leads coming from social.
But that’s what dark social is all about: People are talking about you in places you can’t hear them.
And using social media to show the world what kind of company you are, in a fun way, is key.
At Chili Piper, we’re super involved in communities.
Special shout out to *deep breath in*
Sales Assembly, MarketingOps.com, RevGenius, M2, JB Sales, Marketing Millennials, Wizard of Ops, Women in Sales, and Modern Sales Pros …phew.
Here are a few tips we have:
I set up Slack keywords for “Chili Piper” and “Scheduling”.
That way, every time one of those keywords is mentioned, I’ll get pinged. Now, I can type something up myself, but we’ve found something more effective.
I can tag a Chili Champion within the community for them to share their thoughts on a relevant thread. Your customers are your best sales reps and are much more credible than if I shared my (biased) opinion on Chili Piper.
Which leads me to my second tip…
Which of your product champions are already part of the community?
Start a conversation with them and see if they’d be willing to go to bat for you whenever your product comes up.
At Chili Piper, we don’t partner with communities that we don’t vibe with.
When we partner with communities, we want to help them as much as they help us.
Of course, we’ll participate in their events, webinars, AMAs, and other community-building activities
But we’ll also encourage them to get involved in all the things happening at Chili Piper — so we can use our network to help them build their membership!
If you’re still gating content and sending contact lists to sales… it might be time for a change.
Everything that we used to call “lead nurturing” is now happening in the dark.
And it’s safe to say that most people aren’t ready to talk to sales until they’ve raised their hand and said, “OK, I want to talk to sales.”
The next step in that process is making it ridiculously easy to talk to sales as soon as they do raise their hand.
If you want prospects to be able to schedule time with sales, immediately after submitting your demo form, check out Chili Piper 🌶️.
You’ll probably double your inbound conversion rate.
People aren’t buying products the way they used to.
And it’s largely because people aren’t connecting the way they used to.
Back in the olden days of the early 2010s, professionals maybe connected with their peers once per year at in-person events.
Now, people have access to their peers pretty much instantly.
Need advice about what type of scheduling software to purchase?
All you have to do is post something on LinkedIn. Ping your Slack community. Ask your Facebook group. Post on a marketing subreddit.
It’s never been easier to get unbiased (and basically immediate) advice from a large community of your peers.
For marketers… it means everything we thought we knew about the marketing funnel is wrong.
According to the ancient marketing philosophers, buyers begin their journey at the awareness stage.
As they consume more content, they move further down the funnel, until they reach the “intent” stage and become a Marketing Qualified Lead. At this point, marketing hands the lead off to sales and pats themselves on the back for a job well done.
This method was all well and good when sales relied on marketing to curate lists of potential buyers.
Now, a quick subscription to contact databases like ZoomInfo gives them access to more contact information than they could have ever imagined.
A few weeks ago, one of our Chili Champions reached out to me, asking if a certain company had engaged with Chili Piper.
I checked. They had: Closed Lost.
Our champion said she’d talk to the VP of Sales and would make him buy Chili Piper.
I thought, “That’s a pretty big claim, but OK.”
A week later, that VP of Sales schedules a demo. And then signs the contract within a week.
What?? 🤯🤯
But this is happening all the time.
Maybe it's because people don’t really trust brands anymore, but they definitely trust their friends, families, and peers. According to Nielson, 92% of consumers say they trust word-of-mouth or recommendations above all other forms of advertising.
People aren’t going through your marketing funnel in a neat and orderly fashion — they’re hearing about you from all over the place.
But just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean you can’t optimize for it.
Here are our favorite tips for marketing teams who are ready to leave everything they know behind and embrace the age of dark social:
In the age of dark social, marketing teams should focus on evoking curiosity and building demand.
That means you shouldn’t focus on:
Instead, you should focus on things like…
Basically, anything that gets people so curious about you they decide to type your name into Google and see what you’re all about.
And, eventually, schedule a demo.
If marketing teams are judged based on how many MQLs they deliver to sales, guess what?
They’re going to focus on delivering MQLs to sales.
Instead, marketing goals should be tied to an actual revenue number.
At Chili Piper, we measure marketing goals based on:
Because if marketing isn’t tied to actual revenue generated, they’re chasing the wrong number.
70% of the buyer’s journey happens before a prospect reaches out to sales.
That means there should be enough information on your website for buyers to educate themselves on your product.
By the time they talk to sales, they should already have a pretty good idea of what your product does. They’re just talking to sales to see how it fits their specific use case and if your company has solved similar challenges for others like them
When they finally raise their hand to talk to sales, they already know what your product does — but what will it do for them?
Many B2B marketing teams make the mistake of ignoring social media because they can’t attribute any leads coming from social.
But that’s what dark social is all about: People are talking about you in places you can’t hear them.
And using social media to show the world what kind of company you are, in a fun way, is key.
At Chili Piper, we’re super involved in communities.
Special shout out to *deep breath in*
Sales Assembly, MarketingOps.com, RevGenius, M2, JB Sales, Marketing Millennials, Wizard of Ops, Women in Sales, and Modern Sales Pros …phew.
Here are a few tips we have:
I set up Slack keywords for “Chili Piper” and “Scheduling”.
That way, every time one of those keywords is mentioned, I’ll get pinged. Now, I can type something up myself, but we’ve found something more effective.
I can tag a Chili Champion within the community for them to share their thoughts on a relevant thread. Your customers are your best sales reps and are much more credible than if I shared my (biased) opinion on Chili Piper.
Which leads me to my second tip…
Which of your product champions are already part of the community?
Start a conversation with them and see if they’d be willing to go to bat for you whenever your product comes up.
At Chili Piper, we don’t partner with communities that we don’t vibe with.
When we partner with communities, we want to help them as much as they help us.
Of course, we’ll participate in their events, webinars, AMAs, and other community-building activities
But we’ll also encourage them to get involved in all the things happening at Chili Piper — so we can use our network to help them build their membership!
If you’re still gating content and sending contact lists to sales… it might be time for a change.
Everything that we used to call “lead nurturing” is now happening in the dark.
And it’s safe to say that most people aren’t ready to talk to sales until they’ve raised their hand and said, “OK, I want to talk to sales.”
The next step in that process is making it ridiculously easy to talk to sales as soon as they do raise their hand.
If you want prospects to be able to schedule time with sales, immediately after submitting your demo form, check out Chili Piper 🌶️.
You’ll probably double your inbound conversion rate.
Arthur Castillo currently heads Dark Social & Enangelism at Chili Piper, where he recently transitioned as one of the top performing Account Executives. He brings a unique view to marketing with his 7+ years in sales and is on a mission to blur the lines between sales and marketing. Based in Toronto, Canada, in his spare time you can catch him watching NFL or soccer, playing fantasy football, and looking to improve his chess game! Connect with Arthur on LinkedIn.
Double your inbound conversion rate with Chili Piper.
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