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

Lead Liaison

Using Marketing Automation for Transparent Campaigns

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Using Marketing Automation for Transparent CampaignsMarketing automation can positively affect a company’s bottom line by creating much-needed links between investment and ROI. For CEOs, it’s more important than ever to get confirmation that marketing efforts are paying off for the company. Without the proper web tracking methodology and assets in place that calculate return on investment, marketers and their CEOs are left without a clue as to whether or not marketing budgets are really worth it. Make sure to use marketing automation for transparent campaigns.

MarketingWeek magazine recently took on the issue of how much CEOs truly trust their marketers – a dubious question that undoubtedly causes stress for both CEOs and marketing teams. You can read the article (and the very relevant and insightful comments) at  http://www.marketingweek.co.uk.

To summarize, the article suggests that 70% of CEOs surveyed earlier this summer in a project by Fournaise Marketing Group expressed a complete lack of trust in their marketing team’s ability to generate a positive ROI through their efforts. This begs the question – do these surveyed CEOs have a point, and is their dissatisfaction indicative of industry-wide views of marketers?

How Marketing Automation Makes the Difference

Accountability is the determining factor in whether a relationship between company executives and marketers is transparent enough to survive. Without some sort of measure of accountability, CEOs have no idea what their marketing teams are doing and whether the money spent results in any kind of return over the long term.

Tracking metrics is what defines that level of accountability. With solid numbers in place, even CEOs who micro-manage advertising campaigns won’t be able to deny the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their ideas. With marketing automation, a solid set of tools that track advertising campaigns across platforms provides metrics that can’t be ignored. When CEOs and marketing teams have access to these metrics and use them to make marketing decisions, transparency is a sure thing.

Developing the Right Relationships

One of the more interesting comments on the MarketingWeek article states that if CEOs want to see the true impact marketing has on their bottom line, they should turn their marketing efforts off for a while and see what happens. We can all likely imagine that scenario and predict the outcome.

Varying factors contribute to the trust CEOs have for their marketing departments, but transparency will always be one of those key factors. Using marketing automation tools like Lead Liaison to provide transparency in cross-platform marketing efforts can make more difference than you think. Not only does the right marketing automation company save money – it can repair a spotty relationship between departments.

Visit Lead Liaison today to find out how transparent your marketing efforts can be!

Lead Liaison

Digital Tools That Marketers Need To Dominate the Digital Era

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Digital Tools That Marketers Need To Dominate the Digital EraThis guest blog has been provided by Jasmine Sandler.

Why You Need Digital Tools

The Internet provides myriad opportunities for marketers to sell their products and services. But successful digital marketing requires sophisticated tools that work in tandem, creating ongoing efficiencies and insights.

Digital tools are pieces of software that do two things: They automate and manage a marketing process, and they measure the effectiveness of the initiative. For example, they can manage your CRM by taking information submitted by a prospect via a web form, segmenting the lead and relaying it so that a salesperson can easily use the information to nurture the sales process.

Types of Digital Tools

There are three levels of digital marketing tools:

1. Simple Tools

Examples include Google Alerts, Social Mention and Alexa. Each provides simple information. The first two track the mentions your product gets online; the latter shows the traffic ranking of your website and that of your competition.

2. Advanced Tools That Let You Take Action

Google Adwords drives leads. Lead Liaison automates the sales process. Hootsuite and Viral Heat help to manage social media programs.

3. Developer Tools

These tools help your web developer to create applications that enable you to deliver your brand across multiple platforms. Mobile apps, for example, can drive productivity for both salespeople and customers and help speed order processing. Google Webmaster is a tool that can help your SEO

How to Manage & Measure a Digital Marketing Program

All of these tools, or others like them, are needed to manage a digital marketing program. If you need an audit on your digital marketing strategy, an audit of your social media program or social media training for your team, I’m here to help. Contact me at Jasmine Sandler.com.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Metrics to Focus On

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While marketing automation can improve marketing and sales performance, companies are sometimes unsure of which metrics to focus on. Marketing automation platforms typically provide analytics that can be used as key performance indicators. In most cases, the marketing automation metrics that are often used as KPIs are similar to traditional metrics. Marketing Automation Metrics

Marketing Source Pipeline

Marketing source pipeline refers to how effectively each channel is at lead generation. Marketing automation analytics reveal where leads are being generated. Within a multi-channel marketing program there may be several lead generation campaigns: email, SEM, social, etc. deployed at one time. Using MA, marketing execs should evaluate which sources are pulling leads into their sales pipelines. Evaluate each source’s contribution within a program at leads’ point-of-entry into the pipeline.

Marketing Influenced Pipeline

Sometimes called “channel effectiveness”, the marketing influenced pipeline is a measurement of how effectively MA practices are escalating messages and advancing leads through the sales pipeline. It is important to understand how effectively automated marketing campaigns are performing at lead management. Which messages are engaging and advancing leads? Whether the metric being analyzed relates to day-parting effectiveness or channel performance, executives should understand how effectively marketing is at funnel progression. Evaluate the performance of lead nurturing practices by measuring marketing-qualified leads (MQL), sales-accepted leads (SAL), and sales-qualified leads (SQL).

Investment-to-Pipeline

How effectively is digital marketing spend turning prospects into leads? Companies may have different definitions for a new lead, MQL, SAL, or SQL but execs should be focused on how well marketing dollars are filling the pipeline. Lead abandonment rates can be used to evaluate where leads are dropping off. And it can be beneficial to examine the dollars spent to achieve each status within the sales pipeline.

Investment-to-Revenue

This is the big one that most marketing execs are graded on in both traditional marketing practices and marketing automation practices. Often called the “win rate”,  this metric reveals how well marketing spend is driving sales. It can be tricky to evaluate profit within an MA platform but execs should definitely be focused on where marketing dollars are producing revenue. While cost-per-lead and close rate are frequently used as KPIs, as MA analytics evolve further, marketing execs will be able to sharpen their focus on evaluating the practices that are directly influenced by marketing automation.

Lead Liaison

8 Marketing Tips for Generating More Leads and More Revenue

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8 Marketing Tips for Generating More Leads and More Revenue

Has your business reached its full potential?

How many potential leads are you missing out on daily?

How much revenue could be generated from those leads?

The internet has created a competitive, yet highly lucrative marketplace for those that know how to use it to its full potential. Smart entrepreneurs are taking advantage of automated marketing techniques that are designed to efficiently generate more leads and more revenue by engaging, profiling, and nurturing potential consumers.

Here are 8 valuable marketing tips for generating more leads and more revenue:

1.       Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It should come as no surprise that the first marketing tip is to improve your websites ranking using a comprehensive SEO strategy.  It is estimated that over 70% of people begin their buying process online and the majority of those people will only visit websites that appear on the first page of the search results. You can generate more leads and revenue through SEO by establishing authority, creating content that provides value to the reader, and using appropriate keywords in your articles and on your webpages.

2.       Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Another aspect of SEO is social media marketing. There are billions of potential leads logging into social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter daily. You will be able to generate more leads by creating engaging and exciting social profiles on these networking sites that are linked back to your website. You can then generate more revenue by reaching out to these new contacts and converting them into sales.

3.       Automated Lead Generation

It almost goes without saying that automated lead generation software is the easiest and fastest way to generate more leads. It is estimated that 95% of the people who click on a website will leave unnoticed, if the website does not have an effective system for capturing them. Automated lead generation software ensures that every visitor will be added to the company’s lead database.

4.       Website Visitor Tracking

The next valuable marketing tip is to use website visitor tracking with your automated lead generation software. This will allow you to monitor their online behavior, including which pages they click on and how long they stay on each page.

5.       Lead Profiling

The next marketing tip is to use the information that has been gathered through website visitor tracking to develop a comprehensive lead profile. It is also beneficial to include online registries and access barriers on your website to extract additional demographic information on each potential lead.

6.       Lead Qualification

After gathering information on every lead that has come across your site, the next marketing tip is to compare that profile to existing clientele to determine their likelihood for conversion. Each characteristic should be given a value based on relevancy, so leads can be scored based on how close they match up to a typical consumer. This technique has been proven to generate more revenue since every lead is immediately passed onto the sales department once they are determined to be a qualified lead.

7.       Lead Nurturing

Another benefit of lead profiling is using that information to personalize content based on different lead segments. Marketers can create helpful articles directed at groups of leads that have similar needs. For example, if your website promotes nutritional supplements and you have a group of people who have clicked on an article about strategies for long-distance runners, you could create an article about how nutritional supplements can help support long-distance runners and then send it to that specific lead segment.

8.       Complete Marketing Automation Program

Fortunately, most of these marketing tips can be accomplished using one comprehensive formula. Marketing automation software provides lead generation and website visitor tracking, as well as lead profiling, qualification, and nurturing. It follows leads through their buying process and helps to guide them in the right direction. You need SEO and SMM to direct companies onto your site, but it takes marketing automation to transform those leads into more revenue.

Lead Liaison

How to Capture and Hold onto Qualified Leads

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How to Capture and Hold onto Qualified LeadsQualified leads are passing through your website daily. The trick is being able to capture and convert these leads into sales before they move onto the next site. Marketing automation programs begin with lead generation software that will automatically capture every potential lead that crosses paths with your site. It will hold onto qualified leads as they search online and help direct them towards relevant products or services that your company is able to offer them.

Website Visitor Tracking

Each lead that the software captures is monitored and tracked as they move along your site. Website visitor tracking will tell you which pages and articles they read, how long they spent on each page, and whether or not they are a repeat visitor. This information will make it easier to determine what they are interested in and how far along they are in their buying process.

Customized Lead Nurturing

Marketers can use the information extracted by the website visitor tracking software to cater content specifically towards their unique needs and interest. This will help you hold onto more qualified leads, since consumers who are seriously interested in a product or service will appreciate helpful and personalized emails and newsletter rather than the usual pushy sales pitches and irrelevant promotional pieces.

Lead Profile & Ranking

Marketing automation software will capture more qualified leads because it take the information gathered through website visitor tracking to generate a lead profile based on each lead’s behavioral and demographic characteristics. The software will assign a value to each attribute based on relevancy and then rank the lead based on how closely they match up to a typical consumer. This ranking system will show which leads are qualified and worth contacting directly.

Automatic Notifications to Sales Professionals

The best part of using marketing automation software to capture more qualified leads is that your sales team will be immediately notified about any qualified leads. The appropriate sales personnel will receive a text or an email instantly when the software identifies a lead that has a high potential for conversion.

If you are interested in learning more about capturing and holding onto qualified leads, please read Technically Marketing’s informative article, Driving More Qualified Leads to Sales Using Marketing Automation Techniques. I can admit that my opinion is slightly biased, since I am a marketing automation expert. On the other hand, the author at Technically Marketing who wrote this article has an appreciation for marketing automation based solely on research and professional experience.

Lead Liaison

Email Marketing and Website Traffic Information: The Big Picture

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Email Marketing and Website Traffic InformationEmail marketing is an integral part of your overall marketing strategy, and the website traffic information you can glean from email reporting gives you an idea as to your email campaign’s effectiveness. However, when your email marketing platform doesn’t integrate with your other campaigns – like Adwords, Analytics, social media or your overall website visits – you may be missing data that can give you a better strategy.

Email Marketing and Website Traffic Information

A good email marketing campaign will undoubtedly bring some traffic to your website. If your current email marketing efforts don’t incorporate a linking strategy that sends visitors back to special pages on your website, it may be time to consider a change. Good linking practices can help you get your email reader even further down your sales funnel – and that’s the point of your email marketing in general.

Once you’re getting visitors back to your website via your email marketing campaigns – or if you’re getting visitors already – it’s time to take a look at how website traffic information from your email marketing efforts reflects on your overall marketing visits. Oh wait – you’re having a difficult time doing that with your current website traffic information tracking? Like many other businesses, you may not have an accurate idea of how your email marketing efforts, your Adwords or other PPC efforts or your general marketing strategy affect your campaigns on the whole.

Marketing Automation: A Holistic Perspective

The history of your email marketing may be unclear when you look at it through tools like Google Analytics. Folks who sign up for your email list may end up exploring certain areas of your website more than users who came through other methods. You may also find that the same specific email users are clicking on your email links again and again. When it comes to website traffic information, Google Analytics and other web tracking suites aren’t going to give you the kind of specific information about your visitors that you’ll get from marketing automation services. A good marketing automation dashboard will show you not just numbers – as in, xx amount of visitors have clicked over to your website from a certain email campaign – you’ll be able to see who these clicks are, assess their specific path through your website and more.

This isn’t just a fancy tool you’ll use to watch a certain visitor – its intelligence data, the kind that can change your email marketing strategy to give your users a better experience. Better experiences become greater sales and can even shorten your overall funnel or the efforts you put into doing your marketing.

When it comes to website traffic information, Lead Liaison’s suite of tools competes with other major marketing automation tools at only a portion of the price. Learn more by visiting leadliaison.com.

Lead Liaison

The Challenges and Benefits of Automated Lead Generation

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The Challenges and Benefits of Automated Lead GenerationMore and more companies are taking advantage of automated lead generation programs since marketing automation software has now proven its worth with countless industry leaders. Savvy businesses that have implemented a comprehensive marketing automation strategy are experiencing up to a 200% increase in their conversion rate.

Unfortunately, not everyone who uses automated lead generation software will reap the same benefits. Worthwhile lead generation has been a constant struggle for traditional marketers who don’t know how to use the software to its full capabilities, as discussed in Business News Daily’s article from April 23, 2013; Lead Generation B2B Challenges. Businesses that are not aware of how to extract useful information, accurately rank leads, and effectively nurture each lead will struggle to see all the benefits of lead generation.

Lead Generation Challenges

One of the greatest challenges with lead generation is that most marketing automation software systems are underutilized. Companies that don’t utilize a lead’s behavioral and demographic characteristics for lead scoring and customized lead nurturing will not see the results they would expect. Automated lead generation needs to be combined with a full-scale marketing automation program to ensure that every lead is understood and pointed in the right direction.

Benefits of Lead Generation

The benefits of lead generation are pretty obvious; having more leads means a higher potential for sales. However, it is the benefits of automated lead generation combined with a complete marketing automation program that will truly give you a worthwhile return on your investment.

When it is accompanied by a marketing automation program, lead generation is run using automated software that guarantees no lead will be missed. Every person who crosses paths with your website will be captured, profiled, and scored. The software tracks which pages each lead visits, how long they stay on each page, as well as any demographic details that they voluntarily offer through newsletter registries or pop-up questionnaires. Creating pop-up barriers that request leads sign up before they are provided with more valuable content is one of the best practices for fully utilizing lead generation and marketing automation software.

Gain Greater Insight into Leads

Automated lead generation is focused on gathering relevant information on each lead. This will make it easier to identify qualified leads, plus it will provide crucial profiling details that can be used to create more customized lead nurturing content.

The real benefits of lead generation are only realized if the lead is converted into a customer. Automated lead generation combined with marketing automation will offer marketers and sales professionals valuable insight into each lead, so they can use a more personalized approach and increase their chances of conversion.

Although there will be some challenges when it comes to achieving the greatest benefits from automated lead generation, it is still a valuable tool even when it is not used to its full capacity. Using marketing automation software for lead generation will ensure that every lead on your site is identified. When it the program is used to its full intent, it will also gather valuable details on each lead to support lead scoring, lead profiling, and lead nurturing efforts.

Lead Liaison

How to Optimize Your Social Media Campaign

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How to Optimize Your Social Media CampaignB2B marketers are scrambling to deploy social media campaigns in order to establish a foothold in this burgeoning channel. In fact, according to a recent Forrester Research study, 85% of business decision-makers believe having at least one social media channel is important when making tech purchase decisions. Here are 12 ways to make your SM campaign effective and optimize your social media campaign:

Be consistent. B2B marketers must post regularly and connect with their audiences frequently in order to be effective through SM channels.

Use images within your content. Whenever possible embed an image in your SM posts. Use images that are relevant to your business such as product images, users, employees, etc. Visual media is typically shared more often than copy.

Join LinkedIn discussion groups. Professionals join LinkedIn Groups to learn, share, and discuss – this is a great spot to provide insight, answers, or even the occasional joke (in good taste!)

Become a Quora user. Show your interest in being helpful by providing answers to questions about your industry, etc. There will be opportunities to improve an existing answer or posting your own.

Use social bookmarking sites to share information. Reddit, Digg, Delicious, and other social bookmarking sites allow b-to-b marketers to provide resources for prospects. Become a respected knowledge authority by sharing content from a variety of sources.

Respond to any and all comments. Be diligent in providing responses or comments to those who have engaged with your posts. Readers want to feel as if you are connected to them.

Use your prospect’s language. Put some effort in learning common phrases, terms, etc. that are used by your prospects. Avoid using language that, although familiar to you, may be confusing to your audience.

Embed AddThis widgets on your site, blog, etc. Make it easy to share your web pages, blog posts, and other digital assets by inserting a SM widget on every page.

Automate your posting activity. Deploy social media automation platforms, such as HootSuite, that allow marketers to automate delivery and manage multiple SM profiles. Automating SM deployment provides lean organizations with a cost effective way to deploy social messaging using fewer resources.

Share content from multiple networks. It’s easy to connect your social posts across multiple platforms. Cross-network sharing is a good way to catch prospects that may miss your original post.

Share video. Watching product demonstration videos is an effective way to learn about a company’s solutions. If possible, create and share videos that depict how to use your solutions, how to troubleshoot issues, and other helpful information.

Use analytics. Find out which messages are generating responses, which posts are being viewed, and what messaging should be dropped. Adapt social messaging to meet your market’s demands by maintaining an agile marketing strategy through the use of SM analytics.

At the end of the day, a B2B social media campaign is only as effective as its messaging. When deploying SM, break out your processes using a 70/30 rule: 70% of the time should be devoted to message creation and 30% should be devoted to message delivery.

Lead Liaison

How to convert more B2B leads into customers? Marketing Automation!

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How to convert more B2B leads into customers? Marketing Automation!As the post title implies, our answer to the eternal sales question “how do we convert more leads into customers?” is to deploy marketing automation. Is that the only answer? No. But with the amount of data available today, marketing automation will do more to improve your B2B lead conversion rates than social media, PPC, or stale drip campaigns.

It’s quickly becoming apparent that marketing automation can play a significant role in improving your lead conversion ratio. From first touch (initial point of contact) to pass through (migration to CRM), lead conversion for companies in most industries is improving thanks to MA. The first step towards higher B2B close rates is to manage your leads effectively before they are sent to your sales team.

To begin, you should know your customers well. Who are they? What do they like? What do they do? Why do they buy? Much of this information is now available digitally, the key is to leverage the information you collect into effective lead management.

Lead Generation

An often overlooked concept about lead generation is that it should be approached holistically not unilaterally. When you need to convert more B2B leads into customers look to strengthen lead generation efforts. Lead gen starts with first touch, escalates through lead tracking, and winds up with capture. If you’re not focusing on developing good content for your touch points, tracking your website visitors using business intelligence integration, and capturing contact information through digital assets, you’re not effectively generating leads – and you can’t convert leads you don’t have. Make sure your lead gen scope is broader than list buys and PPC campaigns.

Lead Nurturing

Many think lead nurturing equals email drip campaigns. Though partly true, lead nurturing is so much more. Lead conversion through the nurturing process requires that you develop the relationship through escalating engagements. Simply sending the occasional “hi-how-are-you?” note won’t be sufficient to move your leads through the marketing pipeline. Build a campaign that offers more at advanced buying cycle stages: a webinar invite, a product demo. Remember, nurture means “to grow”.

Lead Scoring

There’s nothing worse for a sales agent than to receive a lead that turns out to be a graduate student completing his thesis. MA platforms provide lead scoring and grading capabilities that should allow you to sharpen the sales team’s focus towards the most suitable, marketing-qualified leads. Establish specific criteria that can be scored or graded. Most leading systems grade explicit lead attributes (industry, company size) and score implicit behaviors (webpage visit, webinar registration). Once a scoring matrix has been created, determine a scoring threshold that automatically migrates the lead to your CRM.

Lead Distribution

Lead distribution must be optimized to channel leads appropriately to your sales force. Which sales agents are available to respond quickly? Which agents have high close rates? Which agents know the lead’s industry best? Automated systems distribute leads using parameters that can maximize your sales team’s efficiency. Some MA platforms allow you to assign lead ownership according to predefined criteria, such as geography or seniority. Leads distributed effectively will shorten your average sales cycle and improve sales close rates.

Keep in mind that marketing automation is a tool that will improve sales conversions and help convert more B2B leads into customers. Though MA platforms have improved sales outcomes, much of the success that comes from lead management is dependent on the content you provide. If you don’t have strong creative minds to develop messaging in-house, consider outsourcing.

Lead Liaison

How to Grow Your Business Faster with Website Visitor Tracking

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How to Grow Your Business Faster with Website Visitor TrackingThanks to the global reach of the internet, online competition is fierce. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, there are countless companies across the world trying to secure the same leads as you. Businesses today must take advantage of new technology, like website visitor tracking, to ensure they are not missing out on any potential opportunities.

Faster Lead Generation

Many industry leaders have already discovered how they can use website visitor tracking and marketing automation software to grow their businesses faster. It is a simple and effective method for automatically capturing every lead that comes in contact with your website. It is estimated that 95% of the visitors on your site will end up leaving your site unnoticed, if you don’t use some form of website visitor tracking software.

Lead Profiling and Scoring

Bringing in more leads will most likely help to grow your business faster, but these results will be significantly amplified if marketers and sales professionals have a better understanding of each leads’ wants and needs. Website visitor tracking monitors a lead’s online behavior and then analyzes their unique buying process. When this program is accompanied with online registries, it can also provide valuable insight into a lead’s demographic characteristics. This will create a comprehensive lead profile.

Marketers can compare each new lead’s profile with existing clientele to determine their likelihood of conversion. This is referred to as lead scoring or ranking. Leads that demonstrate a significant potential for conversion can be passed immediately on to the sales department while those who are still undecided can remain in the marketing automation engine for further lead nurturing.

Lead Nurturing and Conversion  

The lead profile that is generated by website visitor tracking software should provide a clear picture of what the lead is interested in and the questions they have about their buying decision. This will make it easier to grow your business by creating helpful and personalized lead nurturing content designed to answer every lead’s questions and concerns.

Generate, Profile, Score, Nurture, & Convert

Website visitor tracking allows you to grow your business faster by ensuring that no lead is missed, that every lead is profiled and ranked, and that content is customized to give leads the answers they need. It is the most effective marketing method for lead generation and the easiest way to gain greater insight into what it will take to convert a lead into a customer.