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

Lead Liaison

5 Keys to Maximizing Demand Generation

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Maximizing Demand GenerationDemand generation requires discipline, patience, and focus. The process of building awareness, creating interest, and provoking action requires a deeper strategy than simply building a marketing campaign. Here are a five key considerations to maximizing demand generation:

Website as hub

Design marketing, sales, fulfillment, and customer service through the prime portal for the company – your website. This can increase efficiency when interacting with your markets and lead to greater demand for your solutions. The site can be used to aggregate contact data from marketing inquiries, product orders, shipments, and feedback forms. By enhancing visitor experience and maximizing the functionality of your site, it becomes the lead touchpoint and will convert customers to advocates.

Your website can be used as a demand generation vehicle in itself through design elements that align with a lead’s decision-making process, build engagement, and progressively reduce objections. In order to be effective at demand generation, it’s also important to ensure that the site appeals to market participants at different points in the buying cycle.

Deploy multiple tools

Effective demand generation requires a basket of tools. Start with an integrated marketing approach that deploys multimedia communication tools to cultivate relationships. Channels such as blogs or Twitter feeds provide effective exchange mechanisms where suspects, prospects, and customers can connect with your company and provide meaningful information that can be used for future marketing campaigns.

There is no shortage of options for database mining, touch point tracking, and contact management. Tools that manage the distribution of information and track lead activity provide more robust market interaction and granular analytics. And with marketing automation tools such as our Lead Management Automation™ platform, companies are able to cultivate lead relationships and measure campaign effectiveness.

Know thy audience

The first step is to analyze your markets. Not just demographics, but psychographics and buying triggers. It’s important to develop a persona or profile for your market(s) that provides marketing and sales with an audience they both can connect with. Marketing campaigns should be persona-centric, letting the audience figure out why they want your solutions.

Turn your marketing strategy from ego-centric to customer-centric. Ask questions, get others to praise your solutions, and make buyers feel good about choosing your solutions. Successful marketers understand who their buyers are by learning about what they do, what they care about, and how they see themselves. Above all, learn how to talk with your market(s) and not at them.

Remember the long term

In a perfect world your B2B sales cycle would be complete within 30 days. Maybe two weeks. But that’s just not the way most purchases happen. With lead times of six months, a year, or even 24 months, demand generation is a long-term proposition. Keep in mind, it can take up to ten impressions just to register in a suspect’s consciousness!

Integrate marketing, sales, and customer experience

Future demand is generated through reputation management. The reputation you earn is formed through the entire process a customer experiences, from first contact to solution delivery to satisfaction follow-up surveys. It is important to blend your marketing strategy, sales execution, fulfillment process, and customer feedback together.

Throughout the lead nurturing process a strategy of integrating marketing and sales touch points is essential to generating demand. Messaging is more effective when combined with a marketing inquiry follow-up call from a sales agent. As a lead moves through the marketing pipeline it often becomes necessary to execute sales calls in order to elevate a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead.

Once a purchase is made, customer satisfaction feedback through forms and phone surveys help to deliver the expectation that the relationship doesn’t end with a sale. And though a sales conversion has taken place, demand generation is still necessary to maintain a long-term customer relationship.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Automation Tips for 2013

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B2B Marketing Automation Tips for 2013B2B marketing automation tips for 2013. Marketing Automation has streamlined the business-to-business marketing process, allowing lead generation, lead scoring, and lead nurturing to be systematically manageable using efficient software solutions. The following are several strategic tips to help gain the most qualified leads using the marketing automation machine.

Develop a Complete Profile for a Typical Buyer

The first and most important tip for using B2B marketing automation software is to establish a detailed and accurate profile of a typical buyer. Every buyer will be different, but there will be similar demographic qualities and behaviors that they will all exhibit. Lead scoring is a vital component of marketing automation and it works best when leads are ranked based on proven characteristics.

Start by assessing current B2B buyers to determine their job title, experience, budget, and the type of business they represent. Give each attribute a score based on relevancy. The next step is determining the normal online activity that signifies a buyer is interested in a product or service. Look at what links they click on and what material they download prior to purchasing. Gather all of the qualities to create a complete profile that can be compared against potential leads to determine their likelihood of conversion.

Ask the Sales Team for Input on Lead Scoring Criteria

Once a profile has been established, bring it to the sales team for their input. The sales team works directly with potential and existing clientele. They know what information and guidance buyers need to become customers. The sales team has a greater insight into leads, which they can share with marketing to create a comprehensive profile that will produce high-quality leads. Remember the philosophy that two heads are better than one. It might be worthwhile to include sales at the beginning of the process rather than the end.

Segment Leads based on Similar Scoring

B2B marketing automation is designed to gather an endless supply of leads based on online activity. The amount of leads marketing automation generates cannot be effectively nurtured and directed on an individual basis. By segmenting leads based on similar scoring attributes, marketers can develop customized approaches that will target large groups.

Develop Lead Nurturing Campaigns directed at each Lead Segment

Now that leads have been divided into segments, the final tip is to create compelling and informative nurturing campaigns geared towards each segment group. Lead nurturing campaigns need to speak directly to the B2B buyer. It should answer all of the lead’s questions and concerns while guiding them towards making a purchase.

The world of B2B marketing has changed drastically with the introduction of automated software. B2B marketing can now be managed using an efficient and systematic program for gathering, scoring, nurturing, and converting leads. In 2013, the focus will be improving this process using a complete buyer profile that includes input from the sales team, segmenting leads into defined groups, and developing personalized campaigns based on what each segment needs to know. B2B marketing automation can be a powerful tool if it is fully utilized.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Analytics: Metrics to Focus On (Part 2)

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B2B Marketing Analytics Blog and SEOAs we mentioned in Metrics to Focus On (Part 1), effective B2B management requires you to focus on your b2b marketing analytics. Available analytics tools within lead generation and marketing automation platform provide impressive granularity that allows you to modify and improve your strategies. Here are key metrics to analyze for your blog and SEO practices.

Blog

Referral sources

Who is sending traffic your way? Sure, it’s great to get attention from third-party referrers but it can be even more beneficial when you understand who they are. What is their business? Who is their audience? The quality of your referral sources can directly affect readership and, consequently, revenue generation. Take the time to know your referral sources – it can lead to higher revenues.

Subscribers

A blog can be an effective inbound marketing asset when used as a lead nurturing tool. The sign of a productive lead nurturing tool is the number of followers who engage repeatedly with your brand. What is your number of subscriptions, sign up rate, and number of times a subscriber visits? Analyze the composition of your audience to determine targeted marketing opportunities.

Engagement

Automated marketing developers like our talented Lead Liaison team are finding ways to get deeper inside your market. Mining comment streams for data is a fairly new analytics tool that allows you to understand the tone, depth, and frequency of conversations via social sites, review sites, and others.
You can select keywords and phrases relevant to your business to analyze how the market is reacting to your blog posts.

SEO

Keyword performance

The keywords used in your site and marketing assets can make a significant impact on the effectiveness of your online presence. How productive are they? There are a number of tools available to analyze page ranking on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. according to the keywords and phrases you embed. Bear in mind that your keywords shouldn’t remain static; therefore, updating keywords to match traffic trends based on keyword performance analytics can be useful to managing your business.

Search rankings

How visible is your domain? Are your videos, articles, and other marketing assets reaching the first page? If your web pages are not being indexed effectively it can kill your conversion rates. Search engine optimization rules change regularly so analyze how well your marketing assets are currently being ranked. There are tools that deploy spider technology to analyze each page of your online presence for rank across multiple engines.

Inbound links

If you deploy multiple inbound assets such as social media, press releases, or product reviews, you’re probably using trackable links that connect your audience with landing pages or your website. Analyze the performance of these links as part of a marketing effectiveness evaluation. Tools like Google Analytics allow you to review which links are productive across search engines, referral sites, and other traffic generators.

The next post in this series will discuss the metrics you should analyze from your social media and content marketing practices.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Analytics: Metrics to Focus On (Part 1)

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B2B Marketing AnalyticsB2B marketing analtyics and metrics to focus on, Part 1. Effective B2B lead management demands consistent analysis. There is no shortage of b2b marketing analytics reporting programs available, thereby there is no excuse to avoid reviewing your lead generation practices. A monthly or quarterly review can provide you with vital information which helps to determine marketing ROI. The first place to start is your website – the hub of your online marketing practices. There are seven key areas related to website traffic that should be included in your analysis.

Unique visitors

Analyze new exposures to your website. Unique views can shed light on the effectiveness of new marketing campaigns as well as your site’s position within organic search rankings. Cookies provide a mechanism which allows you to identify new and returning visitors. And a tracking application like our desktop client Streamer™ captures and displays unique IP addresses so you can view who is on your site and how long they are visiting.

Returning visitors

Users who return to your site may indicate greater interest in your solutions. It is important to analyze what pages a returning visitor is viewing and the duration of the return visit. This should tell you a bit about the purpose for the follow up visit. New page view metrics by returning visitors provide a good opportunity for a qualifying sales engagement.

Popular pages

Which pages are being viewed most often? If your product pages are getting the most hits, chances are there is interest from genuine prospects. Compare each page within your site’s architecture to determine if your visitors are onsite to learn about the company or to investigate your solutions.

Traffic source

Knowing how your visitors are finding you reveals specific strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns. Is your content marketing strategy effective in driving site traffic or is your search engine marketing strategy the key to bringing visitors? The source of your site traffic is an important identifier for two reasons: 1) it reveals what led a prospect to your site and 2) it helps determine the ROI of paid campaigns.

Referring websites

Google Analytics and other traffic analyzers reveal what sites your prospects are visiting prior to finding you. Not only does this reveal the research patterns of your prospects but what sites may make valuable marketing partners. Keep in mind that the more popular a referring site is, the higher ranking your site will receive.

Bounce rates

How long are your pages being viewed? Which pages are getting bounced more often or faster than others? The length of time a visitor remains on a page tells you a lot about the value of that page. If the bounce rate for a specific page is high analyze the page to determine if the content on the page is providing value to your visitors.

CTA performance

Analyze your landing page response rates. Are marketing assets driving traffic to your landing pages? Just as important: are your landing pages generating an adequate response rate from calls-to-action? Marketing experts indicate a 1-3% conversion rate is average response rate, a 3-5% rate is decent, and over 5% means you’re doing something right.

Our the next post in this series we will discuss the metrics you should analyze from your blogs and SEO practices.

Lead Liaison

Key Factors that Must Be Considered in B2B Lead Scoring

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Key Factors that Must Be Considered in B2B Lead ScoringLead scoring can be an incredibly valuable tool that can produce more qualified sales-ready leads provided that you start with the right criteria. Start by combining both the marketing and sales department’s knowledge of existing customers and develop a profile that represents a typical buyer’s demographics and behavior.

When creating effective and informative B2B lead scoring criteria, be sure to consider the following key factors:

1) Ask strategic questions to determine demographic characteristics that will identify if they are a decision maker.

  • What is your job title?
  • How many years of experience do you have in the industry?
  • How many years of experience do you have with the company?

 2) Identify demographic indicators that will determine whether a company has the ability to make the purchase. Create questions that will answer the following questions.

  • Do they have the budget for that particular product or service?
  • Do they have a need for that particular product or service?
  • Have they ever purchased a similar product or service?

 3) Look for behavioral indicators that will show a lead’s current engagement level.

  • Has there been an increase in the frequency of visits?
  • Did they registering for a newsletter or sign up for a mailing list?
  • Has there been an increase in the amount of time they spend per visit?

 4) Record behavioral factors that demonstrate they have an interest in a specific product or service.

  • Did they download a specific article or tutorial related to a product?
  • Did they watch a demo video on a certain product or service?
  • Did they sign up for a free trial for a particular product or service?

 5) Watch for the key behavioral indicators that demonstrate that they are ready to make a purchase.

  • Visiting a company’s contact page is a great sign that they are close to making a decision in your favor.
  • A return visit after downloading relevant material is another sign that someone is ready to make a purchase.
  • Anytime a person or business willing offers their contact information, especially a cell phone number, is an obvious sign that they are ready for the sales department.

Once a complete list of all characteristics and triggers has been created, they will need to be ranked based on how closely that attribute signifies a sales-ready lead. For example, visiting a contact page should be weighted heavier than if their budget matches your price. Indicators that display a higher engagement level will be ranked higher, since it shows sincere interest in a product or service.

These key factors are essential for creating a B2B lead scoring model that will effectively rank and prioritize leads. Double check these against the list you have created to ensure that you are asking all the right questions, so you have all the right answers.

Lead Liaison

10 Ways to Improve Email Marketing ROI

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Improve Email Marketing ROIEmail marketing can certainly boost your sales effectiveness. However, email campaigns can drag down your marketing ROI if the execution is flawed. Here are ten ways to improve email marketing ROI.

Clean Lists

Though B2B email list buying is not always the best way to go,  if you do purchase lists make sure the lists are “clean”. Studies have shown that on average over 20% of list records are not delivered. And ISP mail servers can prevent your domain from future messaging if your emails are repeatedly sent to invalid addresses. Random address checks can help determine if your lists are worth the money paid.

Chase Ambulances

With the digital footprints that can be seen today, there is plenty of data that can be used to target email recipients. For example, if a company recently leased new space and your business sells office furniture, a friendly email campaign saying “congratulations!” and offering discounted items can prompt a conversion.

Deploy Videos

Video marketing has skyrocketed for a reason. A 2012 study by Experian Marketing Services revealed that embedded video increased conversion rates by 21% for companies surveyed. In addition, CTR rates improved 7% to 13% by simply including “video” in the subject line for video messages.

Use Analytics

From video analytics to CTR, the data available through reporting programs is staggering. You can examine response rates, engagement duration, and message timing. Marketing automation programs, such as our Lead Management Automation™ platform, provide analytics that can be used to improve messaging, targeting, and timing.

 Go Mobile

Email messages should be designed to be easily viewed via mobile devices if you hope to compete. Email is often the preferred choice of marketers over SMS and IM (though each has their place in a robust marketing strategy) because it is less costly and easier to analyze. Plus, email can be sent to multiple recipients at a lower cost than text messages.

Combine Email and SMM

Email marketing provides a great partner channel with social media marketing. Through email integration with social media ROI from both channels can be improved. Email subscribers can easily share content, offers, and other information. Using Facebook or Twitter to provide email opt-in opportunities can be effective as well.

Make Landing Pages Convert

If your email recipients are routed to ineffective landing pages, your ROI drops. Even with solid CTR numbers, if your landing page cannot convert, the email was wasted. Align landing page copy with the email message but also provide more “meat”. A landing page visit should not simply rehash the email; provide an additional offer or include additional reasons to buy. Above all, make sure the landing page offers something substantial in exchange for the click-through.

Target Behavior

Frequent buyers should receive emails that encourage brand loyalty and repeat purchases. Email can also provide a feedback mechanism that allows customers to easily respond to customer satisfaction surveys. Take the time to analyze activities that have resulted from previous campaigns and implement messages that trigger similar behavior in subsequent campaigns.

Get Them Back to the Cart

Email can be used to target customers who abandoned ecommerce shopping carts during a site visit. An email message with a time-sensitive discount can be an effective way of resuscitating a pending purchase.

Avoid Being a Spammer

According to the February 2013 Symantec Intelligence Report, spam, phishing, and malware events have all decreased; however, spam still accounts for just over 64% of all email sent. Do everything possible to send “clean” emails so your company is not targeted as a spammer.

Lead Liaison

How to Use Marketing Automation to its Fullest

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Using Marketing AutomationLearn how to use marketing automation to its fullest. Marketing automation is designed to turn website visitors into leads and then into life-long customers. It is a strategic process of generating leads and subsequently guiding them through the buying journey until they are ready to make a purchase. Marketing automation streamlines the entire lead management process by eliminating time-consuming and expensive manual labor from the process. Let’s discuss  how to use marketing automation to its fullest.

Generates Leads

Marketing automation systematically tracks every visitor on a website. Automation software starts the process at the moment of initial engagement by capturing the location and visiting patterns of every user on any given website. It deciphers the country the user lives in, the number of pages they visited, and even how long they spent on each specific page.

Creates Profiles on Leads

Marketing automation software then uses online registrations and forms to extract additional information on each lead. Additional demographics can be easily obtained using free offers for valuable information or services in exchange for a visitor filling in contact information like their email address.

Divides Leads into Segments

Once a profile has been started for each lead, they can be divided into lead segments or groups based on similar characteristics and interests. It is too difficult to provide a truly personalized approach to every visitor on a website, since most successful websites have hundreds or even thousands of visitors each day. Breaking them down into segments is a more realistic approach.

Nurture Leads with Relevant Campaigns

Now that leads have been divided into categories based on an initial profile, they can be targeted using strategic and compelling lead nurturing campaigns. Lead nurturing content needs to be informative and relevant, while guiding the lead in the right direction. It must provide value to the reader to keep them interested.

Scoring each Lead

Throughout the nurturing process, marketing automation software will score each lead based on predetermined criteria. Marketers first create a profile for a typical lead based on the behavioral and demographic characteristics of their existing consumers. Each aspect of the profile is ranked based on the strength of the indicator. This lead scoring profile is then used to evaluate where the lead is at in their buying process and how likely they are to make a purchase.

Marketing Automation Builds Stronger Relationships

Every component of the marketing automation process is focused on learning more about each lead, so content can be customized to benefit their needs. The more emphasis that is put on nurturing leads in a useful and relevant manner will result in stronger relationships. As long as the same quality of service continues after a lead has committed to a purchase, this will create a greater loyalty between the consumer and the business.

Marketing automation software is focused on managing the lead’s lifecycle from initial engagement, through to lead nurturing and lead qualification, to the moment the lead is handed off to the sales team for conversion. It is a complete process for tracking and directing leads using an automated, yet personalized approached.

Lead Liaison

Landing Page Improvements, Bounce Rate and ROI

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Landing Page ImprovementsKISSmetrics has a great article and infographic discussing the particulars of bounce rates by industry. Average industry bounce rates are at about 40.5%, while lead gen websites can expect a 30-50% bounce rate. Service and retail sites rank in at about 10-40%, while one page sites exist simply to gather info or as a cart tend to have a higher bounce rate – 70-90%.

What Is Bounce Rate?

If it sounds like we’re speaking Greek, it’s time to get in the know about your bounce rates. A bounce rate refers to the number of viewers who visit your site, then leave without looking at any further pages or taking any further action on your website. Bounce rate is one of the top ways you can assess landing page improvements. Once you make these improvements, you can bring in a wealth of new web leads. You can find your bounce rate by taking a look at any analytics tracking platform (might we suggest Lead Liaison’s stellar lead management software for this?).

Knowing your bounce rate is important because the higher the bounce rate, the more you’ll be able to get an idea of the necessary landing page improvements. Modifying landing pages is a good way to ensure your customers:

  • Know what you have to offer
  • Understand the value proposition of your services
  • Can get in touch with you multiple ways if needed
  • Will leave valuable information you can use to get the customer into your funnel

If your landing pages aren’t doing any of these things, you’ll see your bounce rates increase. Landing page improvements can keep people looking through your site for more information about your company, which better increases the chance they’ll engage.

Landing Page Improvements

Landing page tracking will show you what areas of your page need improvements. Some areas you might need to focus on:

  • Header. The top of your site should feature your logo and contact information. If users land on your page and aren’t sure what to do, they’ll bounce. Try to develop a common look and feel to your landing pages which provides visitors with “familiar territory”.  Consistency is good thing with your landing pages. Use Lead Liaison’s landing page builder to easily create templates, just like you would with a PowerPoint slide.
  • About your company. You’d be surprised how many companies leave this out – even on their homepage! Immediately tell your users who you are and why you’re the best at what you do.
  • Offer. Landing page improvements should focus around what you’re offering and what you’re looking to get from your customer. For instance, if you’re offering an eBook in exchange for an email address, make sure the sign up form is above the fold of your page.
  • Structure. Users are used to seeing crisp-looking professional pages that are well-put together. A graphic or video that highlights your service followed by more about your company and the offering should all be showcased above the fold of the page. Most users read from left to right- just like a book – so it’s good to give users a visual or text representation of who you are followed by a call to action (e.g. fill out our form, watch our video, etc.). If you’re interested in placing a video on your landing page then Lead Liaison’s landing page builder can help you drag/drop YouTube videos or other flash content directly on your page.

If you see your bounce rates are higher than industry standard for certain pages – particularly your landing pages – make the recommended landing page improvements and watch to see if your bounce rate decreases over time.

Landing page improvement tracking is best measured through landing page ROI. If you’re not sure your landing pages are getting you the best possible ROI, Lead Liaison can help! Our suite of solutions can help you assess whether your landing pages are performing as needed. Bounce rate assessment is an important part of that info. We’d love to hook you up with effective landing page ROI solutions today!

Lead Liaison

Using Lead Scoring to Build a Bridge between Marketing and Sales

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Lead Scoring Bridges Sales and MarketingEvery company’s marketing and sales teams should share the same critical objective. Fortunately, lead scoring bridges sales and marketing teams. After all, both teams main purpose is to bring in new business and generate revenue. Despite having the same goal, they use drastically different strategies and methods of achieving it. The marketing department is usually focused on bringing in an abundance of potential leads through either large advertising campaigns or efficient marketing automation software programs. The sales department, on the other hand is striving to secure high-quality leads through real-time customer engagement and personalized communication.

Combine Marketing & Sales for Lead Scoring and Build a Bridge between Marketing and Sales

Lead scoring can take lead generation to the next level by making it a collaborative effort that combines the knowledge and experience of both the marketing and sales departments. Most marketing professionals have spent their time creating numerous broad stroke lead generation techniques that are strategically used to appeal to a multitude of potential customers at once. When they put together a list of possible lead scoring criteria, it is usually based on the characteristics of the leads who respond to their “open-call” for new customers. Some of these leads have a high chance of conversion while others may have no interest in ever making a purchase.

Salespeople converse directly with potential customers, as well as existing customers. They know how to make a connection and which techniques to use to turn an undecided lead into a loyal customer. A company’s sales department can use its front-line experience and expertise to validate marketing’s lead scoring assumptions. They knew what their customers are looking for and how to reach out to them. The sales team can fine-tune the list of criteria created by the marketing department and assign higher ratings for lead behaviour or demographics that demonstrate the actions or attributes of past sales.

Sales & Marketing are Meant to be Together

A combined effort builds a foundation for an effective lead scoring system and keeps both sales and marketing working together on the same team with the same goal. Lead scoring is not the only aspect of generating new business that works better when you tap into both your sales and marketing departments.

Marketers need to understand the strategies and tools the sales team is using, so they can help them accomplish their goals. The sales team has more direct contact with qualified leads and customers, which gives them a better insight into the type of content that marketing should be sending to potential leads. Sales can also advise marketing what triggers to look for in a lead, so they can more easily recognize leads that are ready-for-sales.

The marketing department can provide sales with an abundance of leads, as well as a profile on each lead, to assist with conversion. Marketing can also use lead scoring to eliminate leads that are not likely to ever convert. The more each department understands and assists the other, the better the end results. Start with lead scoring to build a bridge between marketing and sales and a powerful revenue generating force will grow from their union.