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Lead Liaison

20 Ways you can Use Visitor Tracking to “Spice Up” Sales and Marketing

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20 Ways you can Use Visitor Tracking to “Spice Up” Sales and MarketingYou just bought a shiny new car, or website visitor tracking, which might be around the price of that new car (if you’re buying a Tata). Now that you’ve got some power under the hood, how can you use that power to infuse excitement into your organization and energize your sales and marketing efforts?

Here are some ways you can use visitor tracking to introduce exciting new opportunities across your organization. Note, some scenarios may not be possible based on vendor limitations.

  1. As a sales tool to excite your sales force, increasing employee satisfaction and decreasing turnover.
  2. To create unique filters for each sales person based on territory, so they see only activity relevant to them.
  3. To get more out of email marketing. Integrate your email campaigns (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc.) with visitor tracking to get a long-tail view of what happens after recipients click through.
  4. To find new leads. Identify companies you would have never known about. It won’t close the deal for you, but it will point you in the right direction.
  5. For sales efficiency. Sales people will know who to follow up with and when.
  6. For marketing ROI. Use it to measure results of your retargeting or PPC efforts.
  7. To build rich profiles that identify prospective buyer’s interests. For example, connecting anonymous visit activity to a web form submission where the person is identified.
  8. To know how to tailor a follow up discussion based on a person’s digital pattern across your website.
  9. To identify which partners or ads are referring the most visitors to your website.
  10. To identify which pages people commonly enter into or exit from.
  11. To track which documents are performing the best (most downloads, by who, etc.)
  12. To track which videos are performing the best (most views, by who, etc.)
  13. To help convert website visitors by gating videos and documents.
  14. To track 1:1 sales emails.
  15. To identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities for existing customers.
  16. To find key people who work at a company that visited your website.
  17. To share leads with your colleagues.
  18. To distribute leads to your colleagues.
  19. To import leads directly into your CRM.
  20. To enrich lead profiles with social information.

For more insight into visitor tracking check out the other posts in this series:

  1. Why Visitor Tracking Technology Exists
  2. What is Website Visitor Tracking?
  3. How Visitor Tracking Works
  4. Benefits of Website Visitor Tracking
  5. What Questions Should you Ask your Visitor Tracking Provider when Evaluating a Solution?
Lead Liaison

What You Need to Know Before Implementing Marketing Automation

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What You Need to Know Before Implementing Marketing AutomationSo, you’re thinking of giving marketing automation a try. There are certainly many excellent reasons to do so. Marketing automation can help to make your workload much more efficient while also delivering a positive return on investment. On the flip side, marketing automation can also increase your workload and be a drain on your budget, if it is not handled properly. The difference lies in how well you plan the implementation of marketing automation.

Develop a Plan for Implementation

The most important step you can take before adding marketing automation to your current projects is to ensure you have a plan for implementing it. While this might sound simple enough, this is a step that is too frequently ignored. Far too often, business owners get carried away with all of the many benefits that marketing automation can provide. That may be true, but in order to take advantage of those many benefits you must make sure you have a high-level plan in place.

Begin by ensuring expectations are established. In the past, marketing and sales were often completely different functions. Today, the line between marketing and sales has become blurred thanks to marketing automation. More and more, tasks that were previously handled by sales is now being moved to marketing. This also means that marketing and sales divisions must understand and agree on how their responsibilities will be handled. Try using a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to align sales and marketing.

Start Off Small

Additionally, it is important to make sure you start small. There can be a lot of excitement surrounding the implementation of marketing automation. It can be tempting to want to go big and take advantage of everything marketing automation provides at once. Even so, trying to implement all of the features provided by marketing automation as soon as you get started will usually only result in failure. It is much better to start slow and small by choosing one specific audience and working to build your first marketing project around that audience. Testing is a common practice in the world of marketing and it maintains its importance in marketing automation. The information you glean from your first trial run with marketing automation can prove to be invaluable to the success of later campaigns.

Remember that organization is the key to succeeding with marketing automation. If your operation is already inefficient, marketing automation is not going to change that.

Know What You’re Going to Do with Leads

It is also imperative to ensure you have a system in place for handling the leads that will inevitable result from your marketing automation efforts. This is the ideal time for Marketing and Sales to work together to determine priorities and goals. If your company already has an effective sales team in place, they probably already know how to handle new leads. If not, this may be an area you need to address.

While the prospect of implementing marketing automation might be overwhelming, the right help can make all the difference. Find out more about how you can effectively implement marketing automation today.

Lead Liaison

What Questions Should you Ask your Visitor Tracking Provider when Evaluating a Solution?

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What Questions Should you Ask your Visitor Tracking Provider when Evaluating a Solution?It’s always hard to interview vendors when you’re not really certain what questions to ask them. In this case, suppose you have a goal to acquire a website visitor tracking solution that helps identify businesses and people that visit your website. Below is a list of questions you can ask any visitor tracking provider to make sure you know what you’re getting. These questions will help probe for key differentiators and features that might help you make a better decision. What questions should you ask your visitor tracking provider? Here you go…

  1. Do you share data that we collect with our competitors or other companies?
  2. How do you identify people?
  3. What tools do you provide to find people at a visiting company if the person is anonymous?
  4. Can you show me what type of profiles you build over time on visitors?
  5. How can users create and share website traffic filters?
  6. Is your visitor tracking real-time or static?
  7. How do you integrate with 3rd party email marketing programs like Mailchimp?
  8. What are all the things you track?
  9. Should I be concerned about our privacy policy?
  10. What is your pricing and what variables are in your pricing?
  11. What type of support do you provide?
  12. How do you track web form submissions?
  13. How do I know the original lead source of a visitor and not the source of the visit itself?
  14. Do you have any integrations with email clients like Outlook or Google Mail?
  15. What makes you different from other providers?
  16. Do you use cookies for tracking?
  17. How is all of this data useful to our company as we collect information over time?

For more insight into visitor tracking check out the other posts in this series:

  1. Why Visitor Tracking Technology Exists
  2. What is Website Visitor Tracking?
  3. How Visitor Tracking Works
  4. Benefits of Website Visitor Tracking
  5. 20 Ways you can Use Visitor Tracking to “Spice Up” Sales and Marketing
Lead Liaison

Tips for Succeeding with Marketing Automation

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Tips for Succeeding with Marketing AutomationThe benefits provided by marketing automation can be truly phenomenal. Allowing you to create successful marketing campaigns and then automate the process, marketing automation provides virtually unlimited capabilities. Among the most important factors involved in determining exactly how successful marketing automation can be for your business is the set-up process. These tips for succeeding with marketing automation will help you ensure the best possible outcome when implementing marketing automation.

Pay Attention to Your Customer Relationship Management

Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is of vital importance for the success of your marketing automation campaign. When your marketing automation software synchs with your CRM, it is imperative that your list be as clean as possible, otherwise you are likely to end up with duplicate lists that you will need to untangle. Take the time to delete any duplicate records and ensure all account names are correct. This may mean merging, deleting, and purging, but it will be time well spent in terms of ensuring optimal success for your marketing automation program.

Are All Email Addresses Correct?

Imagine uploading contacts only to discover you have a high bounce rate due to wrong email addresses. This could be a very real possibility, if you do not run your email addresses through an email verification service. AccuWebHosting.com provides a good article here on email validation services, comparing multiple providers. Here’s another good resource from the Marketing Tech Blog on email validation. There is no need to run the risk of experiencing deliverability issues and potentially having your IP blacklisted, which could happen if you fail to clean up your database and verify emails prior to importing. Take the time to ensure your email addresses are correct before you get started.

Work with Your Sales Team So They Know What to Expect

Marketing automation may provide many benefits, but it also dramatically changes the processes you already have in place. This includes processes utilized by your sales team, so it is important to work with your team to let them know what to expect and answer any questions they may have about marketing automation. For instance, marketing automation could change the way in which leads are assigned to your team. You also need to work with your team to ensure there is a process in place for handling leads as they arrive. Make sure you conduct ample research and work one-on-one with your sales team prior to rolling out your marketing automation campaign. Here’s a good reference for achieving sales and marketing alignment.

Be Committed to Ongoing Education

Do not make the mistake of underestimating how much time it may take to learn everything you need to make the most of marketing automation. This may mean making a commitment to continually educating yourself about marketing automation integration, best practices, usage, etc. Although this does mean committing to additional time on top of a schedule that is likely already packed, it is well worth it.

Marketing automation can be incredibly powerful for your business, but you must learn how to make the most of it. Following the tips above can help you get off to a great start. Find out more about how you can operate a successful marketing automationcampaign.

Lead Liaison

Mistakes to Avoid with Marketing Automation

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Mistakes to Avoid with Marketing AutomationWhen handled properly, marketing automation can turn around even the most ineffective marketing programs. Unfortunately, as is the case with anything else related to marketing, it can be easy to make mistakes with marketing automation. The power of marketing automation cannot be denied, but it is only as good as the effort you put into it. If you have noticed that you are not getting everything from marketing automation that you would like, you may be making one of the following mistakes. Here are some helpful tips on mistakes to avoid with marketing automation.

No Strategy in Place

One of the most common mistakes made by many companies when implementing marketing automation is not having a documented strategy in place. This is rather akin to trying to hit a target in the dark. The goal of your strategy should be to link the goals of your company with the activities and techniques you will be using. With a solid strategy in place, you will be able to ensure you are headed in the right direction. Start by creating a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing.

Not Using the Full Potential of Marketing Automation

Failing to harness the full power of marketing automation tools is another common mistake. Marketing automation has an incredible amount to offer, including the potential for lead scoring, search engine optimization, landing pages, reporting, and more. Unfortunately, many brands make the mistake of using their marketing automation tools solely for email marketing. While marketing automation tools can help you make the most of your email database, it is important to recognize that you can do much more with them.

Not Generating Enough Quality Content

Content always has been a vital part of all online marketing efforts. That does not change with marketing automation. Despite the many benefits offered by marketing automation, if you are not producing enough high-quality, targeted content, your marketing efforts are likely to suffer.

Tracking the Wrong Metrics

Are you sure you are tracking the right metrics? Today, we have the opportunity to take advantage of a dizzying array of data, particularly from marketing automation tools. The problem is that it can be easy to become overwhelmed by all of that data. Eventually, you may fall into the trap of tracking the wrong metrics and even overemphasizing certain metrics, such as social shares and traffic when you should be focusing on customer conversion rates. In order to ensure you are leveraging the full power of your marketing automation tool, it is important to identify the metrics that matter the most for meeting your company’s goals.

Thinking You Can Put It on Autopilot

Marketing automation can provide your company with a great number of benefits while also making your marketing campaigns easier to manage. With that said, you cannot put marketing automation on autopilot and simply forget about it while hoping for the best. You must continue to make the most of everything that marketing automation gives you.

Find out more about how you can make the most of marketing automation and avoid some of the most common mistakes.

Lead Liaison

How Marketing Automation Levels the Playing Field for Startups – Marketing Automation for Startups

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How Marketing Automation Levels the Playing Field for StartupsAll companies can be vulnerable, but startups can be particularly vulnerable as they experience the pains of the growth stage. In the past, there were relatively few ways to level the playing field, giving startups the ability to compete with the big boys in business. Technology; however, has changed all of that and is now making it possible to minimize growth pains while providing even startups with the ability to compete with much larger companies. Introducing marketing automation for startups.

Marketing automation, in particular, is proving to be incredibly beneficial for startups. By giving startups the ability to operate much in the same manner as established businesses, marketing automation provides the opportunity to target audiences with accurate messaging with only a minimal amount of effort. When handled correctly, marketing automation provides entrepreneurs with the chance to make the sales process far more consistent and ultimately more successful.

Avoiding Potential Downfalls in Marketing Automation

If there is a potential downside to marketing automation it is that too many entrepreneurs look at it as a get rich quick strategy that doesn’t require any work at all. While marketing automation can help to level the playing field, it is important to separate fact from fiction.

First, it is important to understand that marketing automation is not some type of magic ATM that will deliver qualified sales leads without any effort. Marketing automation can be effective, but it will only automate what you tell it to do. If you have not already taken the time to target your audience or completed your content mapping strategies, there is not much that marketing automation can do for your business.

Another common misconception when it comes to marketing automation is that it will generate results overnight. Marketing automation works by compiling information based on lead scores, buyer behavior, and sales feedback. This is not a process that takes place overnight. Meaning, you cannot expect rapid results. Marketing automation should be viewed as a long-term investment.

It is also important to understand that while marketing automation is effective in terms of process management and lead nurturing, it does not actually generate leads on its own. Basically, it warms up the leads you give it.

Marketing Automation Strategy Tips

In order to make the most of everything offered by marketing automation, including the ability to compete with larger companies with more resources, you must make certain you have a plan in place. Furthermore, this plan should be scalable and capable of growing with your business as it matures. When planning your strategy for marketing automation, keep these tips in mind:

  • Always think ahead and ensure everything is scalable.
  • Ensure you have enough resources to avoid becoming bogged down.
  • Commit to a documented process strategy.
  • Create a long-term strategy calendar.

Strongly consider marketing automation for startups if your buisness is in this category. Developing a plan for how your startup can benefit from it can help you leverage the power of marketing automation regardless of the size of your business. Find out more about how your startup can benefit from marketing automation.

Lead Liaison

Bridging the Gap Between Content and ROI with Marketing Automation

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Bridging the Gap Between Content and ROI with Marketing AutomationIt’s well known in the world of marketing that content provides the fuel necessary for successful marketing. That is no less true with marketing automation. Ultimately, you cannot expect a positive ROI, if you do not have a solid content strategy. Even the best marketing automation program in the world cannot resolve a lack of quality content. Determine ROI with marketing automation.

Despite the importance of content, many businesses continue to struggle with implementing quality content for their marketing automation needs, with their ROIs suffering as a result. Below, we go through several critical steps you can take to bridge the gap between your content and your return on investment.

1. Analyze your Content Plans

Quality content does not develop on its own and it does not happen by accident. In order to feed your marketing automation program quality content, you must first stop and analyze your content plans as well as what it is that your target audience actually wants to see. Of particular importance in terms of marketing automation, is mapping the customer journey and ensuring that your content plan aligns with that journey.

2. Think More in the Long Term than the Short Term

Far too often, many marketers focus more on the short term than the long term when it comes to their content development goals. In order to ensure you are making the most of content within the context of marketing automation, you need to pay attention to any gaps that might exist in the various stages of the buyer journey and ensure you create highly targeted content to address those gaps. This means you must stop thinking in the short term and think in the long term.

3. Develop a Content Development Calendar

Do you create content as it is needed or do you have content on reserve based on your objectives? The problem that many business owners encounter is that they create content only when they need it. In order to succeed with your marketing automation strategy, you need to have a solid plan in place. Creating a 12-month content plan can help you to do that.

4. Evaluate, Evaluate, Evaluate

Marketing automation can help to automate many of the processes related to your marketing campaign, but it cannot do everything for you. The same is also true for your content plan. You must take the time to analyze how you are utilizing your marketing automation system and how well your content is working for you. Make a commitment to evaluating your current systems at least once per quarter.

5. Make Improvements

Analyzing only works if you take the information from your evaluations and put it to work for you. After evaluating the data generated by your marketing automation system, determine what is working, what is not working and make changes to generate necessary improvements to boost your ROI.

Want a copy of our Marketing Content Map (MCM) document? Contact us with a brief note requesting the MCM and we’ll send it to you.

Marketing automation can drive a higher ROI. By implementing the steps listed above, you can bridge the gap between your content and your ROI. Learn more about how you can benefit from marketing automation today.

Lead Liaison

How to Build a Strong Business Case for Switching to Marketing Automation

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How to Build a Strong Business Case for Switching to Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is one of the most important new practices a business needs to pursue to be competitive in the digital world, as any savvy marketing professional is already aware. However, even if an organization knows there might be a better marketing and sales process out there, it can be difficult to get an entrenched sales or marketing team to change the way they do things. Here are a few ways that you can build a strong business case for switching to marketing automation that you can pitch to your team.

Focus on the Specific Marketing Challenges your Business is Faces

When trying to figure out in what different ways your business will benefit from the implementation of marketing automation tools, first examine your current marketing and sales systems to see what their biggest weaknesses are. Download our sales and marketing alignment template to do an internal assessment of your company’s sales and marketing processes. Examine the current methods of lead generation, lead nurturing and lead scoring and see what is developing the strongest and weakest results. Look at how marketing automation can revitalize weaker processes – for example, by turning a lackluster lead nurturing program into a multi-tiered system that is intensifies as a lead demonstrates more interest in your services – and clearly communicates benefits.

Illustrate the Broader Benefits of Marketing Automation

After taking some time to examine specific areas in which marketing automation provides noticeable improvements, think about ways that marketing automation can bring broader positive benefits to your business as a whole. Marketing automation can help bring immediate improvements to things like internal communications, instantly streamlining the way that sales and marketers share information. A successful marketing automation program can also yield significant improvements to the overall organization of your business, and can help you improve structurally. Finally, marketing automation yields higher lead generation and decreases conversion time, making it simply a profitable sales and marketing tool for almost any business to take advantage of.

Use Specific Tools to Encourage the Adoption of Marketing Automation

There is a large amount of very convincing data available about the effectiveness that is at the tip of your fingers. Case studies are a wonderful way to illustrate how other similar sized companies went about implementing marketing automation, and gives direct examples of the benefits they enjoyed afterward. Have a full picture of statistics on how your current marketing tools are performing, and how they might improve with the implementation of marketing automation. And, finally, do your research. Be prepared for any questions that might come your way. If you are already getting pushback on marketing automation, you should have some idea of why it is being opposed – understand that viewpoint, and be prepared to counter it.

If you stick to these basic strategies, you should be able to develop a strong business case for switching to marketing automation. Learn more about marketing automation and how your business can benefit from it Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog.

Lead Liaison

Create Stronger Copy by Appealing to Customers Instincts

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Create Stronger Copy by Appealing to Customers InstinctsWhile everyone knows that with quick-fire mediums such as email or Internet, you need to write catchy headlines and content to engage customers quickly. However, once you’ve got them engaged, it is important to ensure content keeps their attention. However, considering all customers are, after all, human beings, there are a couple of psychological triggers you can take advantage of to start appealing to customers instincts and make sure they pay attention to what you’re trying to communicate.

Need to Belong

As social animals, we naturally gravitate towards and instinctually want to trust large groups. Take advantage of this instinct by making your services or products a part of a group that becomes desirable due to its mere existence. Copy that emphasizes a large number of users you already have implies in itself a level of quality that a lead will naturally want to trust. Strong, positive writing surrounding statements like this will emphasize the inherent value of your services.

Hate the Enemy

Another simple psychological element, uniform across humanity, that can be repurposed to write engaging copy, is our instinctual desire to vilify the enemy, whatever that enemy may be. If your product provides an alternative or a solution to something that people don’t like, then focus on that thing and how your product will eliminate a company’s pain. For example, if your product can eliminate something universally disliked, like long meetings or waiting in line, bring that experience up in your copy. You can get a lot of attention by briefly mentioning something universally reviled. Being reminded of the problem helps remind customers of how badly they want a solution.

Good Story Sells

While the Internet relies on quick information and must take into account short attention spans, a good story still holds a lot of power when communicating value to consumers. A compelling narrative engages customers and will help make your product or service seem distinct. In addition to being a great way to keep your customers attention, it can also have a real impact on how your product or service is valued to individuals. A product with a good story connected to it can actually inflate the perceived value of the object, and can help you sell deals or special offers.

Instant Gratification

Finally, never underestimate the simple power of a quick and easy, instant promise of instant gratification. Human beings are always attracted to the option that will get them what they want right away, and copy that emphasizes your company’s ability to deliver this can be highly effective. Copy that uses words that reinforce this, such as “now”, “fast” or “immediately” help accentuate the promise contained in the copy quickly.

By the subtle integration of these psychological triggers, you can start creating stronger copy by appealing to your customer’s instincts right away. To learn more about how to create effective copy, visit Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog online.

Lead Liaison

Using Marketing Automation to Collect Meaningful Customer Feedback

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Using Marketing Automation to Collect Meaningful Customer FeedbackIt isn’t a secret that in order to run successful marketing campaigns and effective websites, you must collect some degree of customer feedback in order to move forward. However, not everyone realizes customer feedback is not equal. Customer feedback that is incomplete or simply not informative enough can give leave your content to stagnate, or worse, misguide your entire marketing strategy. Use these techniques to ensure marketing and sales departments collect meaningful customer feedback so you know what you need to do differently to maximize sales.

Is the Feedback Going to be Useful?

The absolute last thing you want in the process of collecting user feedback is to interrupt a user’s experience. Make sure any and all feedback requests are placed in an appropriate spot with appropriate content. It can be a delicate thing to balance – you want the opportunity to collect feedback, but a feedback “agent” should never distract from an email or website’s core objective. One suggestion is to use surveys, built in to lead nurturing programs, to automate the process of collecting input from prospects and/or customers.

Frame Questions Well to Receive Good Feedback

You have to make sure that you are asking the right questions in order to get the information that will build good data. Asking open-ended questions such as “Did you like this page?” will, more often than not, net you open-ended answers that may not even really give you much to work with at all. Try to ask direct questions that result in direct answers, so everything contained in a customer’s feedback is useful.

Perform A/B Testing to Find the Best Format for Feedback

You may think that feedback itself is testing, and thus doesn’t need to be rigorously A/B tested; however, nothing could be further from the truth. The way in which you ask for customer feedback can have a much bigger impact than you might expect, and the ability to compare how answers vary in response to differently presented or worded questions can be surprising. In addition, the ability to compare those different sets of answers side by side can be invaluable, and help lead you to conclusions that you would not have been able to find with either set on its own. Even if you find a feedback pattern that suits your practices, running A/B testing on smaller, specialized demographics can also help sharpen your overall process.

Obviously, all of these processes take time, so be sure to pursue a feedback strategy that fits the overall resources available for your department. You want all the feedback you collect to be helpful, and not simply data mining that your marketing department will never have time to look at.

Using these strategies, you should be able to use your marketing automation software to collect meaningful customer feedback, and your marketing department can begin modifying their practices accordingly. To learn more about collecting strong customer feedback, visit Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog online.