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

Lead Liaison

Why Marketing Automation for Small Business?

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Why Marketing Automation for Small BusinessWhy choose marketing automation for small business? If you’re a micro-sized business (< $5M in revenue) or a small business (< $20M in revenue) then there’s less than one percent (1%) chance you’re using marketing automation technology to help grow your small business. Interestingly, when comparing penetration rates of marketing automation (reference our write-up on the “Marketing Automation Market”) for micro and small-sized businesses to penetration rates of mid-size and large businesses, micro and small-sized businesses have the lowest adoption rates. Adoption rates should be much higher than mid-size and large businesses.

Small businesses stand to gain a lot from marketing automation technology. Two fundamental needs are commonplace in almost every small business:

Two fundamental needs of a small business…
• Rapid growth
• Large presence

First, small businesses need to grow rapidly to satisfy investors. When there’s growth, especially fast growth, there’s interest from additional investors in injecting capital into your company’s business. In the venture capital (VC) world, entrepreneurs win when multiple VCs want to invest – VCs end up competing against each other, fighting for their (unfair) share of your business.

Second, small businesses need to appear large, as a formidable competitor in their space and as a viable company customers are willing to invest in. Very few potential buyers will find interest in a company that appears small and unstable with limited resources. Appearing larger improves the chances of your business “winning the deal”.

Fortunately, marketing automation help small businesses grow and appear larger. In particular, marketing automation technology introduces a great deal of personalized automation thereby reducing the need to have dedicated resources managing mundane, yet critical, tasks. Lead Liaison goes many steps ahead of traditional marketing automation packages with our revenue generation software that automates emails, lead qualification (lead scoring, buy signals, lead activity), lead distribution, lead nurturing, lead capture and more. Our software provides a cost-effective framework for small businesses to help structure their lead management process.

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Lead Liaison

Marketing Campaign Messaging

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Marketing Campaign MessagingMarketing campaign messaging is important, but it’s more important to think about who you’re messaging to. When building a campaign, it doesn’t make sense to make a one-size fits all message. Sales and marketing people need to tailor messaging around the recipient. Similar to giving a presentation, before you present you’ve got to know your audience. You must know who you’re presenting to. Are they engineers or marketers, technical or business savvy? If you don’t know the exact title or role of your recipients then try categorizing them into organization levels. We suggest using three levels; C-level, Director/VP-level and everyone else (rank and file). Here are some tips on how to focus your marketing campaign messaging around these organizational levels:

C-level

Focus campaign messaging on outcome and results.

Director and VP-level

Focus campaign messaging on process and improvement results.

Rank and File

Focus campaign messaging on features and benefits.

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Lead Liaison

How to do Database Profiling

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How to do Database ProfilingHave you ever wondered how to build a database profile? If you haven’t, it’s time you start thinking about it. Database profiling creates individual, sub-segmented databases to target marketing efforts and personalize messaging. Dust off the cobwebs and consider tapping into your most prized resource, your database, vs. buying lists and using common “spray-and-prey” marketing approaches.

While driving cross country the other day, I saw a big semi truck with the words “Our most valuable asset sits here” plastered across the side of the truck. There was an arrow following the statement. The arrow pointed to the truck driver! The trucking company clearly feels their drivers are a key asset to their company. It got me thinking, what would a business say their most valuable asset is? Rightfully so, some might say their employees; however, companies would be remiss not to mention their database as one of their most valuable assets.

Databases take time to build and contain a host of crucial information on partners, competitors, prospects and customers making them a rich repository for any marketing savvy professional. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t able to unlock the true potential of their assets without a database profiling solution. Sophisticated technology is necessary to build rich database profiles, which effectively partitions a database into smaller, more targeted sub databases. Database profiling solutions allow businesses to do two things, segment and score their database. Let’s cover lead scoring and database segmentation in more detail.

Database Profiling using Lead Scoring

Lead scoring allows marketers to prioritize their database by assigning points to each record based on custom criteria. For example, marketers can run scoring programs across the database to give 10 points to people in a target industry. Similarly, assign 10 more points to people who work for companies generating more than $100M in revenue. These scores are examples of demographic lead scoring. Behavioral lead scoring takes into account contacts interaction with marketing. For example, if someone filled out a web form or clicked through an email campaign. The end result is a prioritized and qualified database, something very handy for a sales team.

Database Profiling using Segmentation

Database segmenting is the process of creating individual lists or groups based on select criteria. For example, marketing can create a list of contacts in a certain industry that have interacted with your company in the past 6 months. With a segmented database, marketers can send personalized communications to prospects that are more relevant and topical. Segmented databases are easier to nurture using lead nurturing technology and result in higher lead to opportunity conversion.

Make sure your lead scoring and database segmentation solutions are dynamic, not just static. In other words, make sure the tools you use can build a database profile that applies to your existing database as well as future contacts added to your database. Case in point, when a new contact is added to your database that fits specific segmentation criteria, the contact should be automatically added to your list. Likewise, once a lead scoring program is setup and defined future contacts should be scored based on your criteria.

Database profiling is easy when you have the right tools to segment and score your database. Fortunately, Lead Liaison delivers solutions to help you statically and dynamically profile your database. Don’t forget to market and re-market with relevant material. Start getting the most out of your shiny new asset today! Maybe the “most-valuable-asset” arrow might get pointed at you!

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s database profiling solutions please contact us.

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Lead Liaison

What is Lead Scoring?

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What is Lead ScoringWhat is lead scoring? Lead scoring is the process of using technology to automatically qualify leads for sales. Many organizations are flooded with inquiries and/or have a large database of contacts collected over time. Lead scoring helps businesses filter through inquiries and contacts and start prioritizing leads for sales.

What is lead scoring similar too?

When building a lead scoring model, make sure you look at scoring like dating or getting married. Your score should take into account criteria from both parties, not just one. Is the prospect a good fit for your business? Equally important, is the prospect interested in buying? Categorize your scoring into different ‘buckets’. Develop criteria for what you consider a good lead such as industry relevance, company size, and target buyer/role. Then, come up with a set of criteria that your team feels is indicative of prospects intent to purchase. For example, if a prospect visits your pricing page, visits 5 or more pages or makes multiple website visits within a certain period of time – all examples of online behavior that technology can automatically detect.

What is lead scoring without..?

Opposite lead scoring

For every positive lead score consider using a negative lead score. For example, visiting a web page on pricing might be a good sign; however, visiting a page with job postings might be a bad sign and deserve a negative score for that specific action. In summary, make sure your lead scoring solution allows scores to be incremented and decremented.

Limits

Make sure your lead scoring solution doesn’t have limits, such as capping at 100. Having a cap limits differentiation of one lead against another, making it more difficult for sales to figure out whose hot and who’s not.

The ability to score your existing database

Make sure your lead scoring solution allows you to statically score your existing contacts. For example, run a set of scoring rules across your CRM leads and/or contacts based on criteria. Being able to score your database as well as future inquiries makes sure your scoring program is consistent across past and future leads.

The end result of a solid lead scoring program is a hyper-efficient lead management process that produces higher quality leads for sales and allows marketing to make revenue contributions. Marketers get a stake in the sales process and get to work closer with their sales force, creating a more cohesive organization.

What do you feel is important in a lead scoring model? What is lead scoring to you?

Contact Lead Liaison to learn more about how your business can benefit from lead scoring with Lead Liaison’s proprietary technology that uses a three-prong approach to lead qualification.

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Lead Liaison

Automatically Track Web Form Submissions

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Automatically Track Web Form SubmissionsWhen businesses automatically track web form submissions they get crucial insight into prospects interests. Three types of web form tracking are possible; we’ll cover each type in the details to follow. Regardless of type, we recommended web form submissions are tracked and matched with a prospects profile to provide sales with valuable insight on key buying behavior.

Automatic Web Form Tracking

Requires no configuration and converts unknown leads (no name and/or email) to known leads (name and/or email) by automatically identifying a website visitors name, email and company after a web form submission. Automatic Web Form Tracking integrates with company’s existing web forms but has limited operational advantage as this method only captures specific form fields.

Hosted Web Form Tracking

For a more flexible approach, marketers use hosted web form tracking to automatically track web form submissions. Using this method, marketers visually build web forms by dragging/dropping fields into place. Web forms are embedded into landing pages, which can also be built using a visual interface. Marketers spin up new, targeted web forms in less than five minutes to easily support specific campaigns.

Existing Form Web Form Tracking

Marketers that have a host of existing web forms on their site can redirect web form submissions to our servers. Lead Liaison’s engine captures lead information enabling marketers to augment a form submission with operational activities. Example operational activities are: automatically responding to leads from the lead owner, adding people to lead nurturing campaigns or automatically qualifying a lead.

All three levels of automatic web form tracking synchronize results with CRMs, such as Salesforce.com. Synchronization records a web form submission event along with the type of form submitted and can optionally automatically create a new lead along with key company profile information (revenue, description, industry, etc.) in the CRM. Additionally, historical information such as email opens, email click-through, website visits and more are attach to a leads activity history resulting in sales-ready leads.

Contact Lead Liaison to learn more about how your business can automatically track web form submissions.

What advantages or disadvantages do you see by automatically distributing leads to sales?

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Lead Liaison

Automatically Distribute Leads to Sales

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Automatically Distribute Leads to SalesMany businesses are able to generate leads and inquiries but have no way to automatically distribute leads to sales in a systematic manner. Companies make huge investments to generate leads from the internet, which warrants responses at internet-like speeds. An interesting article from Harvard Business Review highlighted the benefit of responding to leads quickly in a study of 2,241 U.S. firms. According to the report:

– James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran, and David Elkington / Harvard Business Review

The article suggests three root causes of slow lead follow up:

Three Root Causes of Slow Lead Follow Up

1. Retrieving leads from CRM systems’ databases at one time throughout the day vs. continuously, in real-time, without a way to automatically distribute leads to sales
2. sales teams are focused on generating their own leads rather than reacting quickly to customer’s online behavior and inquiries, and
3. rules for distributing leads among based on geography and “fairness.”

Lead Liaison’s software platform solves the aforementioned issues with a simple solution that can automatically distribute leads to sales. Here’s a short summary of how we help our clients quickly respond to high priority leads:

Use Technology and Alerts to Automatically Distribute Leads to Sales

• Qualify leads using various lead qualification metrics including common buy signals, lead score and a measure of the prospect’s total activity.
• Distribute leads in real-time based on sophisticated lead distribution rules based on region, company name, number of employees and annual revenue. Distribute leads in round-robin or directly to a sales person and add leads to a “hopper” (a queue) if no rules match.
• Send real-time email and text message alerts to sales to urge response.
• In depth lead tracking and lead capture solutions to build complete profiles of visitor’s online behavior, a key indicator of a prospect’s interests.

What advantages or disadvantages do you see by automatically distributing leads to sales?

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Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation in CRM

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Marketing Automation in CRMAdding marketing automation in CRM will help your sales team be more efficient. In today’s information age, it’s not about how much information you receive, rather, it’s about how you receive the information. Most CRMs cobble together leads and contacts into a few buckets, offering no way to separate hot leads from cold leads. Without a systematic way to prioritize leads, opportunities get lost in the shuffle, important opportunities get buried in the database and important leads are masked as yet another database record. Businesses finally have a way of differentiating their leads and optimizing sales people’s time with marketing automation in CRM.

Lead Qualification in Your CRM

Most solutions offer a host of additional marketing automation features in CRM. Adding leads/contacts to a lead nurturing campaign, sending an email campaign and customized dashboards are a few examples. One key area of integration is lead qualification. With marketing automation in CRM, vital lead qualification criteria is extracted from the marketing automation system and injected into the CRM to streamline access to high priority leads.

Various industry methods exist to prioritize leads. Lead scoring, buy signals and total activity are just a few examples. When CRM records are enriched with lead qualification criteria sales people can easily plan their day by running prebuilt dashboards and reports to expose highly qualified leads. The best part about these processes is the automation. It’s a set-it-and-forget-it model. With marketing automation in CRM, data is bi-directionally shared between both systems in real-time (usually every 5 minutes). Changes to data in one system are automatically updated in the other. With both systems in harmony, sales people only need to access marketing automation data in their CRM – simplifying the number of tools required to do their job.

Adding marketing automation in CRM is near effortless. Most CRMs, such as Salesforce.com, offer some type of marketplace for apps. For example, Salesforce.com’s marketplace is AppExchange. Installing Lead Liaison’s marketing automation in Salesforce.com can be done in less than 10 minutes. Configuration usually takes an additional 15-30 minutes.

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Marketing on a Small Budget

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Marketing on a Small Budget

Are you a small business owner who needs marketing on a small budget? If so, you’re not alone. New businesses are popping up every day. The number of businesses in the US alone is pushing 25 million, many of which are B2B businesses. How do you generate more business in such a competitive environment? Here’s the good news, marketing on a small budget is possible by doing four basic things:

1. Purchase and setup a CRM system
2. Create a systematic approach to content creation
3. Start blogging, with references to your content (or a blog post as your content)
4. Procure Revenue Generation Software to automatically filter hot leads and maximize your first three investments

I remember when we first started Lead Liaison. It was embarrassing to monitor Google Analytics and only see three to four website visitors per day. No one could find us. Since being found we’ve increased our web traffic by seven fold, up 775%! We did it with a $0 marketing budget. To get found, you’ve got to get on the internet. The easiest thing to do is to create a blog system that automatically optimizes your pages for SEO. Create SEO-enabled content by optimizing your page around certain phrase or keywords and watch your traffic sky rocket. In fact, we’re writing this page with “marketing on a small budget” as our keyword. There’s no better way to market on a small budget than to create blog posts, for free!

Continue feeding your blog posts with valuable content. Check out our post, 101 Business to Business Lead Generation Ideas and Tips to get some content ideas. Here’s a quick tip, use an existing whitepaper, “section it off” and blog about each section. Also, use 3rd party content and blog about that – blogs don’t have to be ideas of your own or unique content. Just avoid copying/pasting content. Search engine spiders are smart.

Finally, get the most out of marketing on a small budget by purchasing Revenue Generation Software to rev up your marketing engine. Revenue Generation Software provides CRM integration, email marketing, lead distribution, lead generation, lead management, lead nurturing, lead qualification, marketing automation, sales prospecting and sales force automation in a single package. Most systems can be purchased for the price of a trade show. If you’re struggling to budget for Revenue Generation Software drop a trade show or pull back on direct mail and consider the ROI of Revenue Generation Software. Your team will see a significant boost in operational efficiency, more leads, more qualified leads and adopt a systematic approach to your sales and marketing process – which small businesses usually struggle with.

Let us know if you’d like to learn more about marketing on a small budget, creating a blog that’s automatically configured for SEO and what Revenue Generation Software can do for your business.

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Lead Liaison

Pass Only the Best Leads to Sales

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Pass Only the Best Leads to SalesIf you’re a sales person then you’re likely one of the highest paid people in your company – no shame to that. However, if you’re in management then you know sales people are one of the highest costs in your company. Unfortunately, high costs are magnified especially when sales doesn’t produce results. One way to increase return on investment (ROI) in your sales people is to pass only the best leads to sales.

We queried fifteen top sales people across five different industries and asked them one question, “If marketing could pass only the best leads to sales, what would you like to see?” We compiled the top six replies and mapped them to Lead Liaison’s technology.  to help you better understand how we can improve your sales and marketing processes by passing only the best leads to sales.

What Makes the Best LeadsHow Technology Delivers
Highly qualified contactsLead scoring technology to numerically assign custom scores to leads as they engage with your company. Each event carries a score, or weight, defined by your company.  The higher the score the more qualified the lead will be.
Recently expressed interestBy using lead tracking to track the very first time a lead interfaces with your website even before they submit a web form or click a link in an email. Using a date/time stamp on the lead we’re able to determine how recent their engagement was.
Expresses behavior characteristic of someone ready to buyBuy signal technology that automatically looks for the most common buy signal patterns and alerts sales via text or email messages.
If the individual has the right roleBuy syncing titles with CRMs to map a lead’s online behavior with their profile and qualify them further using lead scoring.
Highly active leads who touch many marketing assetsTotal activities, a measurement of inbound and outbound activity.
Someone ready to buy in the short termLead nurturing to add leads not ready to buy into a nurturing process that builds relationships with the lead until they’re ready to buy.

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Lead Liaison

Automatically Identify Buy Signals for Sales

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Automatically Identify Buy Signals for SalesIt’s almost always the case that sales could use more help from marketing to qualify leads. Marketing is glad to help; however, they’re up to their eye balls in work. Cranking out new content, preparing for the next big trade show, managing the company’s CRM, fine tuning the website and answering to other members of the leadership team to name a few. Wouldn’t it be nice if marketing could automatically identify buy signals for sales?

Now they can! With no effort…it’s all done automatically, behind the scenes using technology. Historically, vendors have struggled getting their marketing automation solutions adopted by B2B businesses. A typical system introduces way too much complexity and an overwhelming number of features; marketers need a simple solution. Case in point, it’s important to make it easy to automatically identify buy signals for sales. Some businesses don’t want to spend countless hours configuring “lead scoring” rules and setting up business logic. Here’s the good news – now they can do it out-of-the-box, with zero configuration.

Lead Liaison allows marketers to turn on/off the most common buy signals. For example, here’s a short list of what can be enabled/disabled to automatically identify buy signals for sales:

  • Clicking through multiple emails in a certain number of months
  • Multiple website visits in a certain number of weeks
  • Web form submissions
  • Total activity (a measure of how active and interested a lead is)
  • Website visitor viewing more than a certain number of web pages
  • Website visitor viewing a specific web page
  • Viewing a landing page

Even better, buy signals can be layered on top of one another. For example, a select number of buy signals could be enabled requiring all buy signal conditions are met before sales is contacted.

Quick lead follow up is also vital. Its imperative the sales person receives buy signal alerts from marketing via a text message (SMS) or an email to reduce delay in lead response time. More importantly, sales should be able to choose how they’re notifying and if they’re notified.

At Lead Liaison, we’re getting rid of the complexity in traditional marketing automation and helping marketing automatically identify buy signals for sales. Feel free to contact us to learn more about how we can help you solve your sales and marketing problems!

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