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Lead Liaison

Lead Strategy Creation 101

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Lead Strategy Creation 101

Lead Strategy

Lead strategy is, in part, about segmentation – ensuring that the proper messages are sent to your audience in a way that will make them convert. Many businesses find it hard to start identifying sales funnels and developing a lead strategy – in part because the term “conversion” or “conversion point” doesn’t make any sense.

A conversion is what happens when your customer buys, becomes a lead or otherwise engages with you in a way that meets your advertising goals. The term ‘conversion’ refers to the fact that the customer has converted to your brand messaging – meaning they find use for your products and find you trustworthy enough to leave their information or buy.

Identifying Your Conversion Point

For many businesses, there is no email collection form, phone number or other conversion point on the site – product sales will be the only way your business converts users. Having multiple conversion points gives you the opportunity to stay in touch with your audience and ensure future conversions. For instance, if you’re only selling products and never capturing a customer’s email, you may be missing out on valuable data that will lead to a conversion later. Your first step in creating a lead strategy is to identify your conversion points, and establish multiple points for conversion if you don’t have them already.

Lead Strategy: Identifying CPA

Your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) reflects how many marketing dollars you must spend to get a sale. Obviously you want your CPA to decrease over time so that your marketing dollars result in a profit. You’d be surprised how many businesses haven’t identified a CPA. When creating a lead strategy, it’s important to take into account how much money you’re spending and your overall return. Lead strategy often requires investment, so it’s critical to know where your money is going.

Creating a Lead Strategy

Now it’s time to build funnels. Ask yourself these questions: How do clients find your site? What actions do they take when they get there? What does your buying process look like? Use these questions to imagine actual sales funnels that relate to your business offerings and selling points. Factor in whether or not your different sales points require different messaging to sell your clients faster – for instance, should clients who previously purchased products from you receive the same marketing messaging as new clients? These questions are important to answer.

Finally, get some help when it comes to lead strategy. Marketing automation might be the best bang for your buck – talk to us at Lead Liaison today to find out how marketing automation could change your marketing messaging and increase sales!

Lead Liaison

Mobile Marketing Automation: Is Your Business Ready?

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Mobile Marketing Automation

Mobile Marketing Automation

Mobile marketing automation is happening – though mobile marketing and marketing automation are not new concepts, businesses who pay attention to their mobile marketing are finding the information they gather more useful and profitable than ever.

If you’re thinking about doing mobile marketing for your business, the first question is, how mobile is your audience? If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, if you’re not working on being found in places like Google Local or doing any form of local marketing and if you have no plans to consider a mobile-friendly site in the future, you might consider skipping mobile marketing.

Is Mobile Marketing Right For You?

Not all businesses really need to do mobile marketing – but many who would find qualified mobile traffic are avoiding mobile. Likewise, the vast majority of businesses haven’t discovered how amazing marketing automation could be for their businesses. Considering a mobile marketing plan for your business could put you ahead of the curve.

Putting the Data Together

A marketing automation dashboard gives your company access to marketing funnels that are individualized and that work for your particular business. Your dashboard not only streamlines your funnel – it helps you better manage team workflow, marketing tasks and to more easily interpret your data stream.

Mobile marketing data may be vastly different from your regular data – for instance, mobile users may tend to look at your site at a specific time of day that laptop or desktop users don’t. Without the proper analytics, this type of information is hard to come by.  Many companies aren’t even using the free, most basic analytics out there. The only way to truly determine whether or not your marketing services are working to bring in new leads and re-engage existing clients is to consistently and carefully analyze your data.

With mobile use consistently on the rise, mobile marketing will play a key role in the success and productivity of future businesses. Many businesses don’t want to go into mobile marketing because they fear the cost – but there are many responsive website builders out there that will convert your website at low cost. For many businesses we work with, responsive web technology for mobile marketing has been worth looking into.

How Will I Know if I’m Ready?

Talk to us at Lead Liaison and let us take a look at your site, your offering and your mobile-readiness. Mobile marketing might actually benefit your business more than you know.

Lead Liaison

3 Ingredients to Content Marketing

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3 Ingredients to Content MarketingWe know that customers today are armed with more knowledge than ever before. Instead of your sales team being the lead communicator of your product’s details, buyers are getting their expertise via the internet. This means that by the time you reach them, many have already made up their mind and are primed to purchase. How do you reach them before they’ve made up their minds? As we’ve heard over and over again: content, content, content. Read more about how content creates success here. Creative content leads to inbound marketing, meaning higher close rate. Let us provide you with 3 ingredients to content marketing.

Creating innovative marketing content will allow you to influence the buyer tremendously—you want to be the one that furnishes their knowledge, especially if it’s about your product. By establishing a reputation as a knowledgeable resource you become an authority in the marketplace. Here’s a step-by-step process that will help you organize your content marketing and increase your revenue because of it:

  1. Publish to your blog appropriate content. What do your potential buyers want to know? Which topics are getting retweeted? Is there a big change in the industry that needs to be reported? When creating content, it’s also important to write in a way that’s enjoyable to read. Read more about a few ways to let your audience decide your content.
  2. Use your landing pages to better understand your readership. Analyzing the bounce rate will inform you of the modifications needed to improve the performance of your landing pages. You can also use transactional landing pages to directly interact with potential buyers. Then, you can import the stats from the landing pages into your CRM for better lead management.
  3. Optimize the visibility of the content and convert into marketing automation. Use the appropriate key words and gather results from your social media sharing to determine what your readers are looking for. This is a process that will be repeated and improved constantly. Learn more about optimizing your website conversions here.

Last but certainly not least, structure your content conveniently. You want potential customers to be able to find the information they are looking for. Optimize your user’s experience on your blog by organizing by topic and creating hashtags. If you are able to influence the user with the information on your site, your chances of closing are that much greater.

Lead Liaison

Introducing the Lead Liaison App Cloud

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Lead Liaison App Cloud

Allen, TX (PRWEB) March 10, 2014 – Imagine a marketplace that contains a host of marketing automation modules and apps that could be used to customize your marketing automation software. Need video marketing? It’s there! Want to download Lead Liaison Streamer, a desktop app for real-time website visitor tracking? No problem!

The new Lead Liaison App Cloud™ is an easy-to-use portal that allows access to 3rd party apps as well as Lead Liaison apps (features and functionality), both paid and free. If you’ve used Apple’s App Store, you’ll have no issue navigating the intuitive interface that includes application screenshots/videos and an area for users to leave reviews and feedback.

This innovation is one of many that sets Lead Liaison ahead of the rest when it comes to automated marketing. The Lead Liaison App Cloud™ proves the flexibility and the modularity of their platform. With the Lead Liaison App Cloud™, companies have the freedom to customize their own instance of Lead Liaison. Users can get right down to the business they’re concerned about immediately, and skip the stuff that can wait. It’s also a smooth experience since most applications are deeply integrated into Lead Liaison.

The Lead Liaison App Cloud™, to be released April 2014, makes Lead Liaison the most configurable marketing automation solution in the industry.

Applications included in the initial launch are:

  • Lead Liaison Streamer™
  • Lead Liaison Send & Track™
  • Social Append
  • Content Creation
  • Video Marketing
  • Media Tracking & Hosting

Lead Liaison is a software company that provides cloud-based marketing and sales automation solutions. The company markets to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, and focuses on creating the broadest and most user-friendly Revenue Generation Software™ platform. It’s innovative and robust software combines lead capture, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing, content creation, video marketing, media hosting/tracking, social media engagement and ROI reporting into a single platform.

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For More Information:

Jamie Silzo
VP, Corporate Communications
jsilzo(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.895.3237 (888 89 LEADS)

Lead Liaison

Steps to Simplify your Lead Nurturing

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Steps to Simplify NurturingLooking for a way to simplify your lead nurturing and better manage your leads? Effective lead nurturing starts in one place: organization. Ensure that your sales team knows the method behind the madness of the lead lists upon lead lists. Here is a simplified overview of what to keep in mind.

1. Segment, segment, segment. It cannot be stressed enough that organizing your streams of prospects into nurture tracks that fit them individually enhances their experience with your company, therefore increasing close rate. Understand what their interest level is and when they might consider buying. Don’t send the wrong targeted content campaign– that’s just asking them to unsubscribe. Still need to be convinced about the importance of high quality content? Read Why Smart Consumers Insist on High Quality Lead Nurturing Content.

2. Add a personal touch. Make sure they have a name and maybe even a face to go with the emails and the voice. Letting them know they have their own point of contact helps them feel more comfortable working with your company. Along the same lines, give new leads a warm welcome, roll out the royal treatment to let them know you’re in it for the long haul with their company. This can also be done with older leads, as a sort of recycling process to revamp their interest.

3. Keep the communication relevant and two way. Include feedback surveys in your campaign that invite them to share their thoughts. Be sure to target industry news to them specifically. Include exclusive offers to let them know you are interested in a long term relationship with them and are invested in the success of their business. Here are some ideas on including offers in nurturing to get you started.

4. Last but not least, keep marketing and sales teams in the same loop. What could be worse than sending an impersonal email to someone a sales rep has almost closed? Understanding the prospect’s journey is a crucial part of building the relationship.

Lead Liaison

Rely on Year Round Marketing for CPAs

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Marketing Automation for CPAs

Marketing for CPAs. Consider it.

Marketing for CPAs isn’t always something small business leaders have time to think about. If you’re a CPA working right now, you’re probably buried in tax season type stuff. Onboarding a new marketing program – particularly a marketing automation program – might not be one of the topmost things in your mind at this particular moment. Should it be?

Marketing needs to happen year round – whether you’re at your busiest or could use a break from the influx of new clients, we find that CPAs often neglect marketing activities when tax season rolls around. Even seasonally hired help does little to tamp the wave of clients coming in.

Good marketing for CPAs shouldn’t be about just getting that one-time tax client, but should involve getting a client on a more permanent basis whose finances you can manage throughout the year. Using marketing automation to onboard new clients and prove yourself a thought leader in your industry can provide more resources for getting new clients than you ever thought possible.

Becoming a Thought Leader?

So, what exactly is a thought leader? If you’re a thought leader, you’re providing a valuable wealth of informational resources to clients – becoming the “go to person” clients look to when they have a question about their finances.

You can establish your credibility in your field through applied marketing automation. Working with professionals who can help you determine what kind of content your audience is looking for, how you can release it on a schedule that won’t create another full-time job for you and how you can use tracking to gauge its reception is an important route to maximized marketing for CPAs.

Your Competition Isn’t Doing This

CPAs who get the best and highest volume of clients are already doing some of this – they’re out there creating and releasing great content – but many are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars a month to marketing agencies rather than using marketing automation and its built-in resources to succeed.

Marketing automation is one of the best-kept secrets out there when it comes to marketing for CPAs. Some of our out-of-the-box solutions are customized for folks in the financial planning field – we’d love the opportunity to show you how marketing automation, thought leadership and robust marketing for CPAs can revitalize your business. This way, you won’t have to look at tax season as your payout period- you can work with clients who rely on your leadership and expertise all year long.

Contact us at Lead Liaison for a free marketing automation demo today!

Lead Liaison

Is Contextual Keyword Research In?

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Contextual Keyword Research Although Google’s algorithm changed quite dramatically over the past few years, proper keyword research is necessary to creating great content. Although the days of keyword stuffing meta-tags on your webpages are over, keyword research is still quite important-it allows you to direct your content in a certain way as well as give search engines some clues about what your website has to offer.

We’ve discussed the importance of context before. Creating context in your writing helps Google determine what your pages are about and how close to the top of search engine rankings your site should be. Context is everything-but without the proper keywords in place, you still can’t build context. Your content needs to be easily followed, interesting to your audience and well curated-and to do this you’re going to need some signal words that give both your audience and search engines an idea of a centralized theme.

Keyword Research with Google

Until fairly recently, just about anyone could use Google’s keyword research tool in order to come up with a lengthy, relevant keyword list based on industry and page content. In the past few months, Google’s keyword tool has changed. The change now essentially forces you to look at keywords the same way Google’s Adwords program does. Keywords are now grouped together in tighter clusters with a more centralized theme.

This further signals Google’s commitment to creating context-based results for its users. Your content can’t just be about individual keywords, but must involve these themes. When you’re creating content for your audience, ask yourself this: is there more than one keyword that would explain the theme surrounding your content? If you could sum up 4 to 5 different keywords, for instance, to explain your blog content, what would those keywords be? Considering context when creating content is absolutely critical to ensuring better placement in search engines.

Translating Your Data to Adwords

If your company uses Google Adwords, you can also translate the information and statistics you get from your blog readers over to your ad groups. Do certain readers respond better to content you created using a certain cluster of keywords? What copy insights users to take action when they read your article or blog? If you can answer these questions – and you can using Lead Liaison’s digital marketing analytics – you can determine ad copy that may work better for you in your Google Adwords ad groups.

Lead Liaison’s writers create content using only the latest known technology in keyword research and contextual search science. Chat with us today about your site and let us come up with a strategy that will work for you!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation for Small Businesses : Why Automate?

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Marketing Automation for Small Businesses Marketing automation for small business is no joke – growth in the marketing automation industry is already up 50% per year based on 2012 and 2013 results, and some experts indicate that growth will increase another 10% by the end of 2014.

What does this mean for your small business? It means that marketing automation is clearly something business owners are finding effective – so if the price is right and a customized package can suit your individual needs, why not jump on board?  We’ve compiled a list of reasons why marketing automation for your small business is worth taking on. And here we go…

You’ll Save Money

For many companies, revenue seems to disappear at the speed of light. Small-business owners often don’t have enough time in their busy days to take a step back and look at how their current sales and marketing processes are benefiting their companies. The result is a messy lead flow, lost revenue and outdated systems governing the way your business operates.

The streamlined processes that good marketing automation puts in place for you can actually save you money and time. Your employees will have a better idea of how to sell, track and engage leads that are currently in your funnel, and you’ll have a better idea how these leads and automation steps are helping you meet your bottom line from month to month.

Marketing Automation: We Do it For You

The right marketing automation resource won’t just give you the tools you need and walk away. At Lead Liaison, we strive to create a process for our clients that truly works. Creating a process is all about putting tools in place that match the needs of each individual business, as well as providing training on those tools.

The right way to set up marketing for a small business is not just to put systems together and walk away, but to place the appropriate tools in a way that meet the company’s individual marketing needs. Only a qualified marketing automation specialist can help you understand what those needs are, and how to implement them in the best way for your business. The bottom line? With the right company, you don’t have to worry – the initial steps are done for you.

You’ll Save More than You Spend

When all this is done correctly, you’ll save more money than you spend. A streamlined sales funnel allows for better conversions – which allow for more income. Once this process is 100% refined, the service pays for itself. That break even point makes life easier for clients and their employees, and is the key reason why marketing automation services continue to grow year over year.

Let us assess your business and recommend a solution via a consult today!

Lead Liaison

Don’t Have Time for Marketing Automation?

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Making Time for Marketing Automation

We understand you don’t have time for marketing automation…but hear us out.

Take the first step

True marketing automation is a process, not an event.  It’s an exercise in continual improvement.

There are aspects of marketing automation that take zero time; and marketing automation will save your organization time as a whole. 

Outsource marketing automation if necessary 

Marketing automation programs show a strong ROI.  In most cases, it will be easy for your company to justify the expense of a strong partner who has the expertise and bandwidth to get you up and running quickly and effectively.

Recognize that every day you delay is a day of lost benefit 

If marketing automation didn’t make sense, you would not have even made it to the time concern.   If you had a printer that was ready to print money; would you say that you wanted to wait until next week?

Contact us to help you understand the loss of revenue that your company is experiencing each day you do not have a marketing automation program working for you.

The later you start, the harder it will be

Another factor in delaying your program is that your competitors aren’t waiting.  Much like firms that were early to adopt an SEO strategy, you will have a large competitive advantage if you adopt a strong MA strategy ahead of your competitors.

It’s harder to win a race when your competitors have a lead.   Get out early, and run as fast as you can in order to maximize the value of marketing automation on your company’s bottom line.

Conclusion

Companies that are concerned about the time necessary to implement a marketing automation program need to think outside of the traditional marketing box.  Doing so will help them maximize profitability, and compete with their most aggressive competitors.

 

Lead Liaison

How To Do Inbound Marketing

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How to Do Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing – Half the Battle

We’ve encountered a handful of companies over the past few months that have told us they need to make investments in SEO and “inbound marketing” before adopting our technology. When we hear that – we believe there’s a misunderstanding. We feel entitled to help companies understand how to do inbound marketing the right way. Inbound marketing is great, but it’s only half of the solution. Lead Liaison provides a very strong solution for companies looking to strengthen inbound marketing. And inbound marketing is not complete without the other end, what you do with those visitors once they get to your site. Not doing anything is like throwing a party and when people come to the door and ring your door bell you don’t let them in.

We help companies with their inbound marketing efforts in two ways. First, we drive more traffic to a companies website. Second, we make sure the company has deep visibility into their visitors behavior once they get to your site (visitor tracking on steroids) and convert those visitors once they get there – perhaps the most important thing. In other words, we make sure companies get the most out of their investment to drive traffic to their site. Here’s a summary of each area:

Drive More Traffic to Your Site:

  1. Our software will help you become content kings (or queens). A necessary activity for search engines and any inbound strategy. Your company can complement their marketing content strategy by outsourcing blog posts, Tweets, Facebook Posts, white papers and more and automatically publish the content.
  2. We can help you build beautiful looking landing pages in minutes, casting a bigger web.
  3. Easily engage in social media by posting to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts on behalf of all your employees.

Better Visibility and Conversion Rates – The Other End of Inbound Marketing

  1. Unlike basic visitor tracking solutions that track page visits, we’ll track a much more comprehensive set of behaviors such as document downloads, video watches, emails clicked, pages viewed, forms submitted, etc. What’s awesome is that this entire profile will be stored in Salesforce.com. Your sales team will have more insight to close the deal.
  2. We’ll convert more visitors with web forms, gates in front of content/video, email, and 1-to-1 emails.
  3. We’ll automatically nurture your prospects
  4. We’ll automatically qualify them and when they’re hot – we’ll alert sales
One prospect we spoke to said they sent out weekly newsletters to their prospects using a separate system. That’s great, but they’re doing this to drive inbound traffic, right? With their current solution, they’re using a separate email system that’s not connected to the rest of their sales and marketing tools. We offered them a professional-grade email marketing engine that’s built into our platform. Right now, they’ve got to dig through results to find opens and click throughs. When one of their prospects clicks a link in an email we’re going to show them that information on a visitor report, alert sales, and save that information along with all the prospects other behavior into Salesforce.com – in a single view.
We hope you enjoyed our tips on how to do inbound marketing the right way.
We can help your inbound marketing efforts. Give us a shot.