Best practices for lead generation, marketing automation and revenue generation topics.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation and Choosing Smaller Development

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Marketing Automation and Choosing Smaller DevelopmentIt’s no secret that company owners and decision makers are excited about marketing automation – but will the excitement lead to bigger software companies watering down the concept or removing user friendliness from the equation?

Marketing automation is a fantastic solution, especially for small businesses that don’t have the money or the team to take charge of the marketing workflow process. With the ability to trigger marketing collateral that goes out automatically and sample the returning data in just a few clicks, marketing automation platforms give companies a solid way to track users, gather data and make marketing decisions they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

However, big companies are starting to get in on the game – and with major software companies developing their own marketing automation dashboards, how will the end user benefit?

Marketing Automation Dashboards and User Friendliness

If you’ve ever dealt with a major brand workflow or supply chain software, you’ll know user-friendliness isn’t the name of the game. Big software doesn’t care as much about the end user as they do retention of contracts. If they can provide a be-all end-all solution to small businesses, there’s no need to make products more user-friendly – and that happens for several reasons.

The first is cost. If business makers realize they don’t have to diversify software products by sticking with one company, this results in a big contract win for larger software providers.  Second, larger companies can charge more for training and additional management when they focus on the big picture rather than the smaller, end-user picture.

Shifting Their Thinking

Smaller businesses can’t necessarily afford larger software packages – so diversifying software that meets different marketing roles can be key to giving end users a good experience as well as ensuring software needs are met. This includes the choice of a marketing automation platform that is user friendly, cost efficient and ultimately provides value to the business.

Smaller businesses that diversity their software packages rather than hiring one big company to do everything are an example to larger businesses that diversifying can be key to shorter contracts, saved money and a better user experience. That’s why it’s a good idea to work with marketing automation companies with a smaller client base and a larger market opportunity. The training, ease of use and bugs are all taken care of while you don’t pay tens of thousands of dollars a month for the marketing automation services you need.

To find out more about how choosing a smaller company for your marketing automation needs can benefit your business, chat with a Lead Liaison rep today!

Lead Liaison

What’s the Impact of Google Caching Email Images?

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What's the impact of Google Caching Email Images?Google has changed their posture on caching images in emails. This event is actually good news for our customers for the following three reasons:

  1. The tiny image we insert into each email campaign is a unique image per recipient. Email Opens will still be counted; however, only repeat email opens will not be counted since the image is cached and no response will be sent back to our servers. This is good news since many people scroll through their email inbox and tab over emails. Less Opens per email will provide less noise.
  2. Google announced that images will load by default, instead of being turned off by default. This is good news since more unique opens will be reported; whereas before, the recipient would have to click the link to download images. The recipient could read an email without an open being reported. Now, a unique open will always be reported.
  3. The value of Lead Liaison just went up! Instead of companies using Email Opens as a key stat, they’ll start to look at what really matters, the click throughs. Fortunately, Lead Liaison does an excellent job at tracking what links are clicked in an email and capturing the recipients subsequent behavior as they navigate your site. That’s what you really care about. If they went to your site and poked around or not.
Lead Liaison’s leading edge marketing automation software includes next generation email marketing capabilities that diminish the impact of Google’s changes to image loading.  If you’re interested in learning more about how Lead Liaison can profile a potential buyer’s activity by tracking link click throughs, social post clicks, webpage visits, page views, forms submitted, landing pages, videos watched and more then contact us for a personalized demonstration.
Lead Liaison

Content Marketing Don’t-Do’s for 2014

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Content Marketing Don’t-Do’s for 2014The New Year is almost upon us, and content marketing isn’t a concept that will leave us anytime soon. Even seasoned marketers and business professionals have bad content habits. Since 2014 is just around the corner, there’s no better time (aside from say, right now) to re-engage your audience and leave some bad content habits behind. Hey, this goes for us, too! We could all use a big dose of efficiency for the New Year.

With this in mind, we’ve created a list of content don’t-do’s for 2014. Let’s get started.

When Content Marketing, let your audience determine your direction. 

If your social media accounts and blogs are new, you may not really have an idea of what your audience responds well to. If you’re using marketing automation services like Lead Liaison to keep track of content marketing, it’s time to take a look at the data.

Discover from Facebook Insights which of your posts gets the most interaction and the most clicks back over to your website. Take a look at what blogs inspire comments. Figure out which emails have the highest open rate and click through numbers. Don’t give up on letting the data show you what your audience is responding to.

Create Content That Works 

It’s difficult to create content when you know no one’s responding. Take a look at content that doesn’t have high engagement and see if you can effectively stay away from those topics.

Actually Write the Stuff

If you don’t have time to do content marketing, it’s time to stop lying to yourself about getting it done. Writing blogs, emails and social media status updates don’t necessarily have to be your forte. In case you haven’t noticed yet, Lead Liaison has a great content marketing solution that can help you get content up and running.

Spellcheck

Is it a pain? It is. But these days, most of us have Word or some similar software. Rather than writing directly into your Facebook posts, your automation dashboard, or your blog, use Microsoft Word and then paste your spellchecked copy over. It seems simple, but you’d be amazed at the amount of folks who still don’t do this.

Write What You Enjoy

Copywriting of any sort becomes a tedious task if you hate it. If you can tolerate it, write about the parts of your business and industry that you actually enjoy. If not, maybe it’s time to bring in some help! Talk to the friendly Lead Liaison team about our reliable content marketing solutions today.

Lead Liaison

Sales Funnel Management vs. the Holidays

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Sales Funnel Management vs. the HolidaysThere’s something about the holidays that tends to throw sales funnel management off a little bit. Because traffic typically slows during the holiday, the accumulation of sales data often goes unmanaged well into the new year. Employees are off doing their own thing with their families, and oftentimes the vacation isn’t enough to make full alertness and appreciation for work a possibility when they return to their desks in January.

If your business is going well for you – or even if it’s not – you may already have a workflow in place for collecting and interpreting data. Businesses who experience a slow time of year in January are often in a good position to modify their tracking and workflow for better sales funnel management. However, what do you do if the holidays slow your team down so significantly that your holiday data is never truly looked at?

Segment, Segment, Segment

One of the biggest issues most businesses have with sales funnel management during the holidays is the time factor. Particularly if your business tends to be rather slow during the holidays, traffic and page use can be glossed over in a way that robs you of valuable sales funnel management data. This data can give you insight into how you should change your website or your product offerings for success during the new year.

If this is happening, segment the data. Ask your team to prepare two special meetings  – one that focuses entirely on holiday data (and not just MoM ‘month over month’ for December data!) to get an idea of how the “holiday mind” can result in different usage of your website over time.

Streamlining Sales Funnel Management

Many businesses don’t factor in the differences between how “holiday-minded” users view their sites and how this type of traffic varies over the rest of the year. Again, rather than thinking in a MoM data collection space, it’s important to compare traffic during the weeks leading up to the holidays with traffic for the rest of the year.

You may find that the data is telling you to significantly change up your workflow, monitoring and conversion optimization processes before the holiday hits. Paying attention to your data at the granular level –whether site visits, page usage or form fill-outs – can help you design a work flow process that better accommodates time off and work flow for the holiday season.

Marketing automation can do all this for you – there’s no need to dig up holiday data when it’s presented to you cleanly in an easy-to-use dashboard. Talk to the Lead Liaison experts today about how we can help with your holiday sales funnel management!

Lead Liaison

Why Social Media Content Should Include Text

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Why Social Media Content Should Include TextSocial media content is what drives engagement for your brand. Whether you’re posting just a few times a week or interacting daily with your customers, it’s important to create and maintain a social media presence over time.

Part of creating a social media content strategy is knowing what your customers want to see. For many businesses, the only way to truly find this out is to test various forms of content over time. Many people respond better to images, some to news stories, some to blogs from your own site. And of course, there are infographics.

The Power of the Infographic

Infographics are awesome, but splitting up your content into different types will really determine how your audience wishes to engage with you. You can never really be sure what will go over best. It’s a good idea not to make the assumption that every person in your audience is a visual person and enjoys seeing their social media content in picture form. Images don’t appeal to everyone – in part because they don’t always load quickly on certain connections.

Facebook is Not Instagram

Instagram is a great way to share image content. You can even use that content to showcase your products or services. As long as you’re interacting with other Instagram users, they’ll follow you and you’ll have an opportunity to put what you’re selling right in front of them. It can truly be a powerful platform.

Because Facebook is capable of hosting various types of multimedia content, why not set up your company Instagram to send images straight to your Facebook? That way you can save your Facebook postings for social media content relevant to information from your site, news posts, blogs or other text-ready updates.

Social Media Content is Necessary

If you’re posting a few times a week, you may not have enough content out there to drive engagement. This is particularly the case if you’re only posting images and not sharing multiple forms of content. It’s a good rule of thumb to mix up your content and test it using all the capabilities Instagram has to offer.

Some folks stick to images because they simply don’t have the wordsmithing abilities to create blogs and content for their site, much less social media content updates. We can help! Lead Liaison offers social media content services right within your dashboard. Simply send out your request and our writers will take care of your needs within a specific timeframe – whether you’re looking for social media content updates, blogs or other pieces of writing. Let’s talk about your content needs today!

Lead Liaison

SEO is Dead, Content Lives

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SEO is Dead, Content LivesSEO is Dead, Content LivesIt’s possible you’ve heard the headlines throughout 2013: “Is SEO Dead?” Search engine marketing experts are still working to figure out how Google’s algorithm changes this year affect websites on the whole. Out of all the research that’s been done and the rankings that were tallied, the truth is emerging: content is king and SEO is dead.

It’s Time To Beef Up Your Content

The “Is SEO Dead” question has little to do with whether or not people will still use search engines to find what they need. They absolutely will. It’s evident that with sites tanking, more and more small businesses will rely on PPC to get their websites and products out there to users. Traditional SEO isn’t dead – but the “tricks” advertisers have used over the years to game the search engines aren’t going to apply anymore. Old-fashioned, keyword optimized onsite content is going to be the only true way to rank up through the search engines and make your site indexable.

The more content and the more relevance to your audience, the better. It’s not just about putting as much content out there as possible – it’s about making sure your content is engaging and your audience wants to see it. The more eyes on your content, the more comments and the more general engagement from social media, the more you will find yourself ranking.

Is SEO Dead?

As long as it’s possible to be on the search engines, and as long as people are typing in their chosen keywords, SEO isn’t dead. It’s very much alive and kicking – and not just because our advertising partners are still doing well for their clients, but because people are still using Google – and because it’s still possible to get your site to the top of the search engines.

If you’re not creating good content for your site right now, there’s no better time. Websites who have been upset or penalized by Hummingbird are trying to rebuild their sites to catch up with the latest updates, so you have just as much of a window to create content as they do. Don’t wait – get started creating keyword-rich content that your audience will love today and watch your website excel.

If you’re looking for content resources to help SEO your website, we have what you need! Our Lead Liaison dashboard provides an opt-in content resource that allows you to receive the postings you need. Our writers are a trusted, proven resource for clients who can provide content that comes right in through your Lead Liaison marketing automation dashboard. Talk to us about our content resources today!

Lead Liaison

Do You Have Time for Your Social Media Marketing?

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Do you have time for social media marketing?Your social media marketing commitment has to be one you can handle. There’s really no alternative – regardless of whether you’re hiring someone to do your social media or making time weekly to do it yourself, keeping an eye on your social media and how it affects your overall marketing campaigns is critical to success.

Hiring

Some people alleviate their social media management issues by hiring a team to take care of their Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media marketing pages. This is always a great idea if you can afford it- but what about supervision? How will you know your social media marketing team has your best interests in mind and is posting engaging content that’s relevant to your business?

Ask any team you’re considering working with if they have a strategic way of targeting your audience. You should also ask how and when they plan on reporting back to you. If you or someone on you team isn’t monitoring an advertising team you outsource to, you won’t have any control over what’s posted about you.

Making Time for Social Media Marketing

Time constraint is a huge factor in how social media marketing is handled. You can schedule time weekly to check out engagement, use a social media aggregator and make any necessary updates to your profiles. However, many folks are going a step beyond that. Some small business owners vow to check into social media daily and answer questions, but simply don’t have the time to do it.

If you’re doing your own social media marketing, methodology is important. Have a set schedule that includes what tasks need to be done for the week along with a time frame. If you can’t make time to do these tasks week after week, or someone on your team isn’t doing them efficiently, it’s time to look at other options like outsourcing.

Tracking Social Media

Engagement is about more than getting people to notice you, come to your website and buy from you.  It’s about building trust between you and your customers. Analytics and tracking allow you to see how effective your social media marketing campaigns truly are. If you’re not checking metrics such as brand mentions, clicks to your website from social media or new followers, you could be missing a good opportunity to leverage more interaction for your brand.

Most analytics tracking systems don’t give you the data you need to single out and nurture individual customers who come from your social media marketing efforts. Lead Liaison can! Talk to us today about upping your social media game and tracking customers from entrance to exit.

Lead Liaison

How to Maximize Marketing Automation ROI with High Quality Content

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How to Maximize Marketing Automation ROI with High Quality ContentHigh quality content is an essential element of modern marketing and one of the strongest factors in maximizing marketing automation ROI. Content is one of the primary ways that marketers generate, engage, and nurture leads. It is used to build brands, establish authority, attract new social media followers, and retain existing customers. All of these benefits can contribute to your marketing automation return on investment when they are effectively executed.

Here are a few tips on how to maximize your marketing automation ROI with high quality content:

Create Valuable Content

Every piece of content should provide prospective leads with real value. High-quality content will educate the reader and give them a reason to turn to your business whenever they require additional information. Basically it should be a subtle pitch that demonstrates your expertise while offering beneficial guidance. To consistently provide readers with significant value, the content must always be focused first on the concerns and needs of your typical consumers. Selling a product or service should also be the secondary focus.

Create Personalized Content

Marketing automation software generates detailed lead profiles based on a prospect’s online behavior and demographic characteristics. Utilizing the information in your lead profiles to personalize content will maximize ROI by creating a more meaningful connection with the prospect. It shows that someone is paying attention to their concerns, which will inspire loyalty and ultimately produce greater marketing automation ROI.

Create Newsworthy Content

Each article and email that is sent using marketing automation software must provide some unique and newsworthy insight. People that trust you with access to their email inbox do not want to read the same information over and over again. High-quality content that will maximize marketing automation ROI will offer original and worthwhile information that the reader doesn’t already know about your industry, product, or services.

Create Diverse Campaigns

Content includes more than just text. Every image and video can help to establish and strengthen a brand. Visual representations are more eye-catching and usually have a higher success rate than written copy on its own. You can add images to your emails and articles to grab a lead’s attention or create infographics and videos that use imagery to inform potential prospects. For additional information on creating effective video campaigns, please read How to make video marketing work for you.

Create Registration Forms

The content with the highest value should be hidden behind registration forms to obtain additional demographic information from potential leads. This will make it easier to further develop lead profiles and create more customize content. Content that is guarded by a registration form should offer a few trade secrets or particularly useful information that can’t be accessed elsewhere on your site. Individuals that fill out a registration form to access certain information will have higher expectations from the content they receive.
High quality content is a simple and proven method for maximizing marketing automation ROI. Make sure all of your content is valuable, personalized, newsworthy, and diverse. If it is particularly beneficial content, place it behind a brief registration form. All of these tips will help increase the return on your investment.

Lead Liaison

8 Tips for Marketing Automation Management – Part 2

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Tips for Marketing Automation ManagementYesterday we posted part 1 of Marketing Automation Management. Here’s part 2 with the final four tips. 

1)      Use Lead Profiles to Create Content

It is necessary to consider the characteristics of potential leads when you are creating new content or evaluating your current content. Understanding and making different types of content available can help you further profile prospects while creating a meaningful connection. Determine what content is getting the best response and how it relates to the lead profiles that have already been established.

2)       Minimize Alternate Links on Landing Pages

Landing pages are designed to generate a specific response from your target prospects. Using landing pages that include a standard menu and multiple links, or one that mimics your main website will distract potential leads from the ultimate purpose. Make sure to minimize links to only the bare essentials.

3)       Create Campaigns from Start to Finish

Since every piece of content should be designed to trigger a specific reaction. You will need to ensure that each subsequent piece will build towards the purpose of the campaign. It is beneficial to map out the objective for the entire campaign before you actually create a single piece of content.

4)       Redevelop, Revise, and Reuse

Once a process, program or resource has been developed, don’t forget to reuse it in future campaigns. Redeveloping quality content and proven concepts is an essential part of marketing automation management. Incorporating these elements into new campaigns is an effective way to leverage your content and keep leads engaged. Marketing automation management is a massive undertaking and it should be managed by a professional who understands how to effectively utilize the software, as well as these eight tips. If you need help getting the most from your marketing automation software, please ask the experts at Lead Liaison for assistance.

Lead Liaison

8 Tips for Marketing Automation Management – Part 1

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8 Tips for Marketing Automation ManagementMarketing automation management requires a fundamental understanding of marketing automation technology and a commitment to implementing and improving strategies as needed. Although the marketing automation software streamlines and automates most of the processes, it will still require a human touch to get the most from it.

Here are the top 8 tips for marketing automation management:

1)      Utilize the Complete Marketing Platform

Marketing automation software is not an email campaign tool. It’s a comprehensive marketing platform that can enhance processes for qualifying prospects, managing communications, and following up on inquiries. When implementing marketing automation software, focus first on developing the processes for your business and then use the software to further simplify the process. It will only work well if you start with complete processes.

2)      Use Campaigns to Define Segments

A beneficial approach to defining database segments is to begin at the top of the sales funnel and then develop campaigns to define and segment similar groups. Every new campaign is an opportunity to further segment your database until you have an inclusive profile that fulfills all of the qualification criteria. A market profiling campaign will lay the ground work for obtaining potential contacts, if you don’t currently have a strong database.

3)      Develop Lead Scoring System

Marketing automation management involves constantly reviewing user activity, especially when you first start out. This can become challenging, as the size of your database and number of campaigns increase. That is why it is necessary to develop a lead scoring system and segmentation process designed to prioritize leads. Lead scoring rates the various types of content you send out, by giving each one a value based on likelihood of conversion. Potential leads are then scored based on what content they choose to view.

4)      Utilize Progressive Profiling

Requesting information from prospects that can be obtained without their assistance is counterproductive to marketing automation management and a waste of a lead’s time. Progressive profiling and prepopulated forms allow you quickly profile prospects. By eliminating repetition, this will also streamline and enhance the user experience.