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

Lead Liaison

Building Awareness: Your First Step Towards Demand Generation Part 2

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Building Awareness: Your First Step Towards Demand Generation Part 2In our last post titled Building Awareness: Your First Step Towards Demand Generation we talked about using search engine optimization, viral marketing, social media marketing and email to help build awareness and generate demand. We’ll add a few more items to the list in part 2 of this post.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Using web publishers to create awareness accomplishes two objectives: 1) it gets your message in front of prospects through a third party (who has likely earned the trust of your market), and 2) it allows you to measure results and pay only for responses to your message. Be sure to advertise with publishers whose content is relevant to your business; simply buying ad space on popular websites and search engines doesn’t always produce good results. Narrow your focus to include publishers who reach your target audience.

Outbound marketing is a more direct approach to creating awareness. Using outbound techniques may run the risk of alienating prospects; however, results are measurable and often leads are qualified sooner than when using inbound marketing methods.

Telemarketing

Using call centers, automated messaging or staffing telemarketers can be effective in creating awareness; however, telemarketing effectiveness is often based primarily on timing (where a prospect lies in the sales cycle). Many of today’s B2B marketing professionals consider telemarketing a costly option that does not produce comparable results to inbound marketing, but it does have its place in certain industries. This technique provides a way to instantly respond to questions, so it can be a good way to introduce a complex product.

Outsourced Lead Generation

There are several ways to create awareness through companies like Lead Liaison. We use web forms, landing pages, email campaigns and website tracking to build lead lists. These lists include targeted prospects that may or may not be aware of your company or products but they have a need that requires a solution. Often this strategy is comparable to SEO because the leads that are captured have shown an active interest in what your company provides.

This concludes our series on  Building Awareness: Your First Step Towards Demand Generation. Are you interested in using Lead Liaison to help build awareness and drive demand? Contact us ASAP if that interests you.

Lead Liaison

Building Awareness: Your First Step Towards Demand Generation Part 1

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Building Awareness: Your First Step Towards Demand GenerationIn order to create demand, you must first create awareness. There are two primary ways to go about this – inbound or outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing uses online content to draw visitors to you by providing something of value not attached to a specific offer. It is an indirect method of creating awareness; prospects respond because of their interest in material relevant to your business, not because they are actively interested in your company or its products.

Search Engine Optimization

In order to attract prospects that are actively seeking information that is relevant to your business –  “kicking the tires” if you will – optimizing your company website and other web presences is essential. According to a 2012 report by the Kitterman Marketing Group, approximately 92% of B2B buyers use online resources to evaluate purchases. Using relevant keywords and phrases within your online content helps boost your presence in search engine rankings.

Viral Marketing

Although there is no formula for creating online content that is so interesting that its popularity explodes on the net, using remarkable video clips, images or other creatives can be effective in building awareness. The goal is to reach individuals with high social networking potential that will send your creative to other influencers until its exposure reaches a mass audience. Once there, your message can be used in other marketing activities.

Social Media Marketing

Leveraging the influence of social media is almost necessary in today’s marketplace. The strength of SMM lies in its ability to use influencers to share your content. Your creatives should be interesting, timely and relevant in order to gain traction among social media users. Getting the attention of industry leaders in your markets is important to using social media effectively.

Email

Creating awareness by contact through email messages can be tricky yet productive. It’s critical to gain approval from your prospects; this can often be accomplished by offering valuable information through other channels in exchange for an email address. Once you’ve gained that approval, an email drip campaign can be effective in nurturing leads towards a sales engagement.

Lead Liaison

Key Considerations For a Successful Email Drip Campaign

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Key Considerations For a Successful Email Drip CampaignWhat are the key considerations you should make when implementing a successful email drip campaign? Email drip campaigns can really boost your lead nurturing program. But it’s not as easy simply blasting a sales letter to your database of leads. Here are some ideas for creating a winning email drip campaign.

Gain permission to maintain contact

I put this as the top priority of any lead nurturing program. It is especially important for email drip campaigns because you can quickly earn a bad online reputation if prospects throw you into the spam folder. Make sure to repeatedly ask for permission to contact prospects. Providing an opt-out feature is essential; it reduces negative impact and minimizes wasted effort for the rest of the drip campaign.

Decide time frame

Lead nurturing requires time to be effective but managing your response rate should be done using a defined period, such as 30 days or 3 months. Buying cycles vary for different products and services, different industries, and among different companies. It’s important to plan the duration of each campaign, because it will be easier to determine how many contacts should be made within the time frame.

Set a schedule

Within the time frame will be scheduled releases, drip releases should be set at intervals no more frequently than 4-7 business days. Staging email drips too frequently may result in a spam designation; too rare and you risk losing your prospect to a competitor. Timing is important to lead nurturing success; therefore it’s a good idea to invest time into setting a proper schedule for your markets.

Determine content for each message

A successful campaign isn’t built on repeating previous messages, with the hope that your prospect will eventually open the email after feeling a sense of familiarity with the sender or subject line. Each contact should be part of a progression that builds interest. The level of engagement through content should increase each time a response to a “drip” is made.

Decide who should write

A winning email drip campaign is not about trotting out hackneyed marketing phrases. The keys to an effective lead nurturing process are fresh messaging, response generation, and timely contacts. Your content provider impacts messaging and response, and not all marketers or salespeople write good copy. If there are no good options internally, consider hiring a professional copywriter.  Email, like most channels, is overstuffed with messages that are often tuned out, so – when choosing a content provider – make sure she understands your market’s buying behavior and knows how to build a relationship.

Build a landing page

For each lead nurturing attempt there should be links embedded that direct interested parties to a landing page. Lead nurturing builds towards deeper engagement, so if a prospect clicks a link within an email, there is a prime opportunity to increase engagement. Prospects should land on a page that requires them to fill out a form for more information. And the landing page should contain new details that support the information in the email message in order to move your prospect deeper into the sales funnel.

Review responses rates to each message

During the drip campaign, monitor the results of each release.  Using Lead Liaison’s Send and Track tool, for example, you can easily see who opened the message, when it was opened, and what, if any, actions were taken.  It’s important to review the effectiveness of your lead nurturing both during and following the email campaign.

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Data Strategies for B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns in 2013 Part 2

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Data Strategies for B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns in 2013 Part 2Yesterday we posted Part 1 of Data Strategies for B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns in 2013. Today, we’ll continue sharing our thoughts on how companies can improve their B2B lead nurturing strategies for 2013 with Part 2 of  Data Strategies for B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns in 2013.

Expand

Although your business has needs in one particular niche, you may find marketing to be too far outside your comfort zone and pass those responsibilities onto somebody else.  If you’re already established as an aggressive search marketing professional, perhaps you find data management issues to be well outside your personal boundaries – or cares.  If you’ve set yourself into marketing standards which historically work, perhaps you should expand and cross-implement various stratagems to test marketability, viability and usability.  Since marketing revolves around catering to specific niche markets, you’ll need to encompass all possible avenues within that niche such as adopting automation tactics, find new and easier ways to nurture collected data through content management systems, or even make new strides towards the future of viral marketing via mobile platforms.

Expanding your capacity can only offer improvements; treat setbacks as learning experiences instead of flawed skill.  If you’re a freelance marketing pro paying homage to only single clients, having the ability to expand channels will increase your own marketability and retain clientele who need digitally astute marketing pros to assist in keeping tabs on data integration and lead scoring.

Look Closely At Display Ads…Again

When the mobile web began growing, the playing field for mobile display ads once again leveled.  If you aren’t targeting your PPC ads to mobile channels, you’re missing out on what will pan out to be immeasurable amounts of traffic in 2013, the year when video marketing meets mobile browser and slams head first into the golden opportunity for display ads to once again prove useful.   The costs should begin tailing off once more companies come onboard with mobile display advertising and in-video marketing.  If you’ve decided to use social media marketing campaigns solely, you’ll miss out on those accessing websites via mobile or tablet-based devices.

Video Efforts Are Mandatory

Of all your marketing efforts planned for 2013, it’s definitely suggested you work on video integration of any and all marketing campaigns while tracking the analytics behind those who watch your videos.  Since pictorial evidence is becoming nearly mandatory to build business-B2B customer trust, you’ll definitely find exponential benefit in implementing emails, SMM and SEM using viral videos such as tutorials, testimonials or even something quirky going on around the office.  The B2B customer leads you’ll receive could come in the form of commentary, emailing, etc.  Making these videos available across mobile and internet-based platforms will more than amicably pull weight for your business while also allowing other marketing angles to naturally run their course.

Always Plan Towards Future

The marketing trends you’ll follow today will more than likely be moot next year, and we’ve seen this on many different platforms such as FFA linking and other unethical marketing practices which used to work.  Today’s sociological composition requires the businesses of our internet schema actually make concerted efforts in building relationships not links to their landing pages; keep this in mind.

Google has gotten smarter, our future is looking technologically brighter and marketing efforts need to be adjusted to match the growing expanse of internet marketing.  Digitally speaking, having your mind on today but your plans prepared for tomorrow will keep you ahead of the digital marketing learning curve.

 

Lead Liaison

Data Strategies for B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns in 2013 Part 1

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Data Strategies for B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns in 2013 Part 1Data strategies for B2B lead nurturing campaigns, Part 1.

Businesses have enjoyed immeasurable success in digitally targeted marketing campaigns up through 2012, especially with social media giants Pinterest and Facebook offering exciting platforms for targeting audiences, and YouTube innovating In-Video marketing campaigns to draw attention to niche video watchers.  Investments in mobile applications have grown well over 140% since 2011 while over 60 hours of video being uploaded every minute is a major contributing factor in how $1.8 billion in revenues have been generated since the same time period.   With staggering figures being reported, it comes as an even bigger surprise the inefficiencies which accompany growing branding efforts throughout marketing campaigns around the world.  As B2B spending trends head upward, tracking needs to grow equivocally, which it’s not.   As we sneak our way towards 2013, incremental strategic changes need to be implemented into what we’ll dub as B2B lead nurturing strategies for 2013, highlighted below.

Putting Data Out There

Your business, inherently, wants to place viable bits of useful data across the internet, whether locally or globally, so the word about your initiatives is clearly searchable.  You’ll use PPC advertisements, social media marketing advertisements, email marketing, video marketing and perhaps a slew of other data bits out there.  One problem, however, is tracking all of this data from each source as it flows inward and outward.  To upgrade your current methodology of segmenting data, perhaps find some method to put data across the wire with an excellent way of collecting feedback, tracking the results of polls and nurturing the data collected simply by integrating better means of putting that data across the wire.  Tracking numerous information sources can be painstaking, time consuming and even financially wasteful; attempt to make 2013 the year which you put information across the world in an easier, more streamlined method.

Finding That Singular Data Source

An extension of above stated need, aggressive marketers will want easier methods of storing and retrieving data, preferably within one location.  This is done with a 4000 pound, highly potent yet rarely tested marketing automation plan which can seamlessly integrate numerous inbound data reception points into one place.  While many companies have vied for this automatic marketing tool for decades, it’s finally taking off, and only the patience and well-planned business strategists are guiding business along for the ride.  By specifying tasks, outcomes and placement of data collected from piloted campaigns, you’ll have that singular place where all data can collaborate with your analytics tools to better pitch your marketing plans in appropriate places.  The three main areas which comprise of marketing automation include (but aren’t limited to):

  • Workflow automation, which simplifies the marketing schema altogether;
  • Marketing automation, which simply moves B2B customer leads from one campaign to another;
  • Intelligence, which is advanced behavioral study to interpret specific actions, habits and purchase demographics to allow measurements for future marketing campaigns to be taken more accurately.

Heading into the next year, it may benefit your business to simplify your data sourcing methods and vie for marketing automation processes to streamline data sets.  It also gives your marketing interpretations an easier path for leveraging campaigns throughout all digital points of entrance and exit.

In order to effectively prepare marketing automation tasks, you must prepare to deliver a message to specific groups across numerous platforms in which B2B customer leads collected can be segmented into where the response came from.

Lead Liaison

5 Tips to Revitalize Your Lead Nurturing Campaign, Part 2

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5 Tips to Revitalize Your Lead Nurturing Campaign Part 2In our last post we shared Part 1 of our 5 Tips to Revitalize Your Lead Nurturing Campaign series. We talked about monitoring your list and testing inactive subscribers. Today, we’ll finish up the series with the final 3 tips.

Use Clear and Informative Subject Lines & Sender Info

Your ability to attract interest is severely limited by the inbox clutter that often fills a contact’s email program. The time it takes to generate an open is just under two seconds, so use the space you have to get a response wisely.

Avoid being cute or mysterious with the subject line. Simply writing “You are going to love this…” will typically not get the response you want. It IS important to catch a prospect’s eye, but not by writing phrases that will get quickly dumped into the spam folder. Make sure the sender information contains your company’s name, not a personal email address; most B2B prospects will recognize if a message is coming from a familiar source, so don’t try to fool them with a vague department like “Sales” or yourname@hotmail.com.

Segment Your Database

Dividing your database into segments is an effective way to deliver the most relevant messages to the appropriate prospects. Leads may open a message or respond to an offer for different reasons, so avoid repeating the same offer to the entire database. Organize contact information by defined categories, such as demographics, past purchase behavior, age or other similar commonalities. Then create varying messages for each segment. (This doesn’t mean you have to promote different products; simply create a unique offer or marketing copy that targets specific segments.)

Automated email drip programs allow you to leverage the strength of email marketing by delivering multiple versions of the same offer at the same time. Once a round has been sent, analyze the results. Review each email blast for unique open rates then follow up with another message specifically for each market segment.

Test, Test, Test

Fine-tuning each campaign is a critical step in improving the results of your lead nurturing campaign. Avoid creating different messages simply for the sake of diversity. Analyze as many variables as possible. For example, messages may appear differently through different devices or browsers. Before a message is sent view it through alternate hardware, such PDAs, cellphones or tablets.

Review results each time a message is sent, not just for general response rates, but for details that provide a deeper level of understanding. Should the landing page capture a high percentage of respondents or fewer, more qualified prospects? Hone your messages and delivery channels to yield the results you need.

Lead Liaison

5 Tips to Revitalize Your Lead Nurturing Campaigns, Part 1

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5 Tips to Revitalize your Lead Nurturing Campaign If you’re doing lead nurturing, you’ll want to consider 5 tips to revitalize your lead nurturing campaigns. Today, we’ll give you a couple tips and in our next post we’ll follow up with the final 3 tips. As with most marketing activities, lead nurturing can go stale if your campaign is not well managed. Even when using marketing automation software, creating an effective lead nurturing campaign is not a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ proposition; it’s important to review results and make changes when necessary. This includes frequent updating, list refinement, and message tweaking. In fact, there are multiple areas that should be examined if response rates fall off.

Monitor Your List

Is your list “clean”? Your database should have properly formatted, current email addresses. Checking for invalid addresses is important, even if you purchased a list from a reputable email list broker. Most email list companies will claim to deliver up-to-date, verified contact information, but often a list will contain anywhere from a few to a substantial percentage of unclean recipients.

A clean list helps ensure that messages are delivered to intended recipients, and if your campaign involves frequent email blasts, then the list should be reviewed regularly. Blacklists (third-party monitoring services used by ISPs) decide whether an email should be allowed, filtered or blocked; therefore, it’s imperative to regularly review delivery reports to see who is blocking your messages and designate that record as inactive.

Test Inactive Subscribers

Just because a contact has not opened a message for a while doesn’t mean you should avoid him altogether. You can achieve results by reconnecting with inactive subscribers. The key is using tools that generate reports about recipient activity. Once you are able to monitor who opens your messages and what they do after viewing a message, then you can segment your markets into active and inactive subscribers.

After a contact has remained inactive for a specific period, try sending a new message. Look for unique opens, not multiple opens from the same recipient; this will reveal a contact’s interest in your message. Using email distribution software – such as our Send and Track tool – can reveal unique opens. Once you have generated unique opens, follow up with an offer that has not been seen by that segment.

Lead Liaison

Turn Inbound Marketing Into Lead Nurturing

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Turn Inbound Marketing Into Lead NurturingInbound marketing is essential to the lead nurturing process. World class organizations know how to turn inbound marketing into lead nurturing. Channels such as PPC, SEO and SMM provide ways to get exposure, but it’s what you do with the leads that come as a result of inbound marketing that makes the difference between creating sales and wasting time. Prospects are directed to your website because of a desire to respond to your marketing message; they are already interested, so now is the time to convert them to qualified leads in order to move them through to sales engagement. Here is the process to turn inbound marketing interest into sales-ready leads.

Attract

First, get your leads’ attention by being where they are. Learn the most relevant search terms related to your company or product, and include them in your site’s meta data and online content. Look for underused phrases and terms that have little competition to attract niche segments. Find out what your customers’ interests are and deploy creatives through channels that address those interests. Often, you’ll find more success by segmenting your markets and delivering targeted messages through specific channels, rather than relying on channels that attract a broad audience.

Engage

The next step is to build interest by providing free information. Use thought leadership vehicles – such as a company blog or a how-to video – to establish a relationship of trust. Podcasts, videos, newsletters, blogs or white papers all provide a way to increase your lead’s interest in learning more. At this stage, the objective should be to collect minimal contact information like an email address in order to establish an informal connection. Most prospects will not provide much information without first getting something valuable in return, so make sure the content you provide is worthy of their commitment.

Convert

Build the relationship to a point of being able to gather contact information through the use of forms. This converts a marketing lead into a sales lead by establishing the prospect’s identity and giving you permission to contact her in the future. Be careful not to request detailed information too early in the sales cycle; often it’s more effective to build trust first, then elevate the engagement. Providing premium content such as detailed industry research, for example, can allow you to establish a formal connection with your prospects, and provide a gateway to your lead nurturing process.

Nurture

Once a sales lead has given permission to continue a relationship, maintain a connection through email drip campaigns, outbound calls, direct mailers or other channels. At this point the relationship has been established but your prospect is not sales-ready. Be sure to continue providing value to each prospect, but also use the nurturing stage to learn more about him. Find out more about his budget, authority, needs, and timing (BANT). Once you’ve nurtured the lead to the point of imminent purchase, move him into your CRM for a sales call. It can take weeks, months, even years to take an inbound marketing response to a sales-ready prospect, but it is important to recognize the process and maintain a consistent approach. Some techniques can – and should be – tweaked along the way, but following this framework can generate demand for years to come. Interested in understanding how Lead Liaison can help you turn inbound marketing into lead nurturing? Give us a howdy today!

Lead Liaison

How Lead Nurturing Can Build Trust with Potential Prospects

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How Lead Nurturing Can Build Trust with Potential ProspectsLead nurturing is the process of building strong relationships with qualified prospects regardless of when they will be ready to purchase. It is a strategy of supplying free, useful information with the goal being to earn their business and their trust for whenever they are ready to buy. It is an opportunity to get to know the lead first, understand their needs, and then make a real connection. It’s important to understand how lead nurturing can build trust with potential prospects.

It is NOT an Opportunity for a Sales Pitch

The real purpose of lead nurturing is to establish a mutually beneficial relationship, where the lead will eventual rely on the information provided and in return grant the company their business when the need arises. It should not be used to coerce a prospect to buy through obvious sales gimmicks or calls to action.

Effective lead nurturing starts with branding the business as an expert in their field. The fastest way to build a solid reputation is by providing quality content at no charge with no obligation to make a purchase. Trust is created if content is relevant, useful and directly related to a lead’s specific needs.

What they Need to Know, Not What they Need to Buy

The more a company can personalize the content to the reader the easier it will be to build a trusting relationship. Communication should have the appearance of a one-on-one conversation rather than a mass emailing from a company eager to promote their services. It should come across as a sincere offering of advice or guidance that provides a real solution to a leads specific concern.

Lead nurturing information should also qualify the need for purchase through clever content that guides the lead to a pre-determined conclusion. The content should suggest that a purchase is beneficial without actually requesting their business. Focus on how the lead will have an improved experience or how they will save money or make money by utilizing the product or service.

Lead nurturing requires a delicate balance of understanding each lead and nurturing them in the right direction without overpowering or offending them. It is not a race to the finish line approach; rather, each lead will convert on their time schedule. The end result should be a sense of trust and loyalty that benefits both parties for years to follow. Once a prospect truly trusts in a company through effective lead nurturing, they will be customer for life…or at least as long as the trust is still there.

Lead Liaison

Best Practices For B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives Part 2

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Best Practices for B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives Part 2Yesterday we posted Part 1 of our Best Practices For B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives series. Today’s post is a continuation with Part 2 of Best Practices For B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives. In this post we’ll discuss lead nurturing initiatives around keeping the door open and avoiding over-campaigning.

Open Doors Before Closing Sales

Perhaps your drip campaigns introduced one particular facet of your company due to higher price value.  In order to correctly nurture your leads, you’ll need to widely open doors which provide insider views of what other products or services are offered by your company.  Not every gathered lead will find fruition in your first offered product or service; make sure all potential possibilities are ‘dripped’ through campaigns before making your pitch to purchase one particular product or another.  B2B leads should never be closed on their first point of contact, either, since both businesses have equal mindsets and know how to pitch each other whereas customers simply need features, benefits and it’s a done deal.

Avoid Overly Serious Campaigning

While your imminent goal is complete product pragmatism, offering somewhat enlightening or playful candor in your sales emails or landing pages will brighten the mood of whatever business representative will make the initial point of contact with your company.  B2B leads hinge on common knowledge that two people will pitch each other unless the lead has needs so severe they’re willing to cut to the immediate chase.  Although rare in form, these leads close quickly, return often and will even bring other businesses under their arms; therefore, it helps to break the ice with some spirited conversation.

In Conclusion

To avoid cantankerous lead nurturing mistakes, make sure you spend the bulk of your effort speaking directly to businesses through landing page creative that clearly outline what you’re offering, how it will benefit the business and how they can reach out to you.  Make every lead received count, slowly dripping campaigns to them which speak fact, not dollar sign.  Finally, keep in mind you’re not trading nuclear warheads or something excessively clandestine; liven otherwise stagnant conversation while keeping your lead completely cared for in all respects of the marketing process.