All articles, commentary, etc. that does not fit under Best Practices, Press Releases, Testimonials, or Documentation goes here.

Lead Liaison

Want More Out of Your Visitor Tracking Software?

/0 Comments/in /by

Go Beyond Visitor Tracking

Visitor tracking is an amazing technology that exposes the 98% of website visitors that don’t submit a form. What most businesses don’t know is that they can get more from their visitor tracking software. Instead of tracking just pages viewed, Lead Liaison builds a complete digital profile of your prospects, partners and customers. Sales will have better intelligence/insight and marketing will have more ways to segment and target their audience. That’s not all – while we’re building a prospect’s digital DNA we provide key sales tools like a hot lead dashboard and help sales and marketing work better together through sophisticated nurturing. We’ll also automatically score and grade your prospects to help qualify leads. When your leads are hot, we’ll alert your sales team with text messages and/or email alerts. Want more out of your visitor tracking software?

We’ll cut to the chase and not write some fancy article here, instead, here’s a bullet list of additional value Lead Liaison can offer:

More Sales Intelligence by:

  • tracking all web form submissions (and build them in Lead Liaison with a visual designer)
  • tracking document downloads
  • tracking landing page visits (and build them in Lead Liaison with a visual designer)
  • tracking video watches/plays/conversions
  • tracking social media clicks
  • tracking email click-throughs and all engagement
  • tracking one-to-one emails sent by sales reps

More Sales Awareness by:

  • turning a traditional “flat” database into a prioritized database with a hot lead dashboard
  • qualifying all visitors based on their online activity
  • identifying ideal buyers by grading them
  • sending real-time alerts via text and/or email when key buy signals occur

More Marketing tools to Help you Grow by:

  • Nurturing customers, prospects and partners
  • Attracting more visitors to your site through social media and landing pages
  • Converting more prospects to identified people
  • Measuring return on marketing campaigns
  • Distributing leads using multiple methods (round robin, direct, by performance)
  • Creating surveys and rich looking email campaigns
  • Segmenting your database using any demographic or behavioral criteria

You’ve got to learn more!

Learn More
Lead Liaison

SEO Strategies Require an End-to-End Solution

/0 Comments/in /by

We Need an SEO Strategy FirstMarketing Automation Excuse: We Need an SEO Strategy First

The purpose of SEO is to generate quality leads from otherwise unidentified sources.

A good SEO strategy is going to deliver X number of visitors to your website.  You paid for 100% of those visitors, yet industry statistics show that on average, only 2% of those visitors are likely to identify themselves.    This is even more unnerving when you consider the increasing costs of SEO, and diminishing returns which market pressures are placing on the SEO industry.

With SEO & MA working in tandem, you are likely to be able to identify 10-100% of your SEO generated visitors depending on your technology and approach.  Using SEO by itself is like buying a Boat & Fishing License (SEO), but not bring a net (Marketing Automation).  Marketers that recommend SEO without MA are doing just that!

It gets more dramatic

While there are many solutions for visitor tracking and reporting, not all solutions are the same.  In fact, some companies stop at generic analytics!

Here is the problem: Visitor reporting does not help you distinguish serious prospects from college kids researching your company for an upcoming paper.

A quality program will not only track but will score a prospective individual’s demonstrated actions/interests.   SEO does not track quality.  Quality Marketing Automation programs like Lead Liaison will!

In conclusion

There is a strong synergy created when companies use a quality SEO strategy in conjunction with a program like Lead Liaison’s Marketing Automation platform.  Any progressive marketing strategy that involves SEO must also include Marketing Automation at the outset in order to justify the value of the potential value of an SEO investment.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation is Too Expensive!

/0 Comments/in /by

Marketing Automation is Too ExpensiveOccasionally we’ll come across prospects that say “marketing automation is too expensive”. Obviously, that’s a subjective opinion as no two companies are the same and every company’s situation is different. It’s true that marketing automation software is value-based depending on the set of services used. The first mistake is looking at marketing automation as an example. Instead, look at it as an investment. Here are some highlights to help you look past the “expense” and consider the investment.

Analyze your current marketing spend and free up some money

  • Marketing automation will help you measure the return on your current marketing efforts. For example, Lead Liaison will help your company understand which lead sources, marketing campaigns and marketing programs produce the most leads, customers and ultimately revenue. If you’re not doing that now you’re probably wasting money on marketing that produces little results. Stop measuring activity and start measuring results.
  • If you’ve still got trepidation, assess your current marketing efforts and cut out the programs that aren’t helping you save money or make money.
  • Consider dropping a trade show or marketing campaign with a 3rd party. Usually this savings is enough to swap out in exchange for the investment in marketing automation.

Our technology will make you money

  • Discover new opportunities. 98% of your website traffic is currently hidden. Think about your average sales price. How many new deals would we need to help you find until the investment pays for itself?
  • Prospects will make bigger purchases. It’s a fact that nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases. That’s hard to argue since nurturing helps build relationships, trust and keeps your company top of mind with your prospects.
  • Prospects will buy faster. Nurtured leads buy 23% faster. Sales people are continually faced with the question, “what can you do for me now”. None of them would complain about shortening the sales cycle.

Our technology will save you money

  • Sales reps will be more efficient. Sales people will save precious time digging through data and mining a flat database with Buy Signal alerts, key indicators pushed out to reps, and a hot lead dashboard that will help sales know where to focus their time.
  • Morale will be higher. When sales is closing more deals, fed fresh new opportunities, gaining precious insight into buyer behavior their morale will be higher. Sales will have a better appreciation for marketing too. With spirits at an all time high and sales and marketing alignment in place your company will be clicking on all cylinders. When the excitement level is high your team will be more productive.
  • Marketing will be way more efficient. We still find companies using spreadsheets to track their data or dig through marketing messages for opens and click throughs. We’ll help marketing automate and simplify their tasks, such as nurturing, qualification, content creation, social media engagement and more. Higher efficiency equals reduced costs.

Look at a simple ROI

  • Let’s simplify this. You spend a lot of money on your company’s website, your sales force and your marketing team. We can turn your website into a sales person for you. We’ll generate new deals for you and help feed them to sales. Sales will be more productive and you’ll get more for your money.

Have us work with you on a detailed ROI

  • Not convinced yet? No worries. Please allow us to work on a detailed ROI for you and prove to you that this is an investment you can’t afford to pass up.

Yes, let’s talk about the ROI for my company

Click me
Lead Liaison

Alternatives to LeadLander®

/0 Comments/in , /by

Are you looking for alternatives to LeadLander®? We can help. LeadLander® has been an excellent choice for many businesses over the past few years; however, companies are usually left wanting more. Alternatives to LeadLander®, such as Lead Liaison, exist to deliver companies the solutions they need to start with visitor tracking and scale upward as their business grows.

Companies that begin with Visitor Tracking, such as LeadLander®, typically end up buying a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), such as Marketo, Eloqua, or Lead Liaison’s Lead Management Automation (LMA), or replace their Visitor Tracking solution as a whole with a Marketing Automation Platform. Although, most Marketing Automation Platforms do not offer the ability to get started with visitor tracking only. Marketing Automation Platforms include a very rudimentary version of visitor tracking but expect their prospects to dive “all in” and buy the entire platform (upwards of $35,000) instead of being able to dip their toes in the water. Note, Lead Liaison’s LMA is an exceptional to this rule and costs a fraction of other MAPs.

Lead Liaison has worked with a number of companies seeking alternatives to LeadLander® to help them get started with what we would call, a LeadLander®+ package, that includes desktop tools and real-time sales alerts – typically for less money than what they’d spend with LeadLander®.

We describe our lead tracking solutions much different from other lead tracking vendors out there, such as LeadLander® or Lead Forensics®. These types of solutions will help you set your fishing pole with some bait while you wade in the river. On the other hand, Lead Liaison will help you cast a wide net deep into the ocean. There’s limited opportunity with basic tracking services.

When clients need more we deliver a full suite of sales and marketing automation tools ranging from lead distribution, lead nurturing, lead qualification, analytics and more. We’re proud to offer the industry’s most flexible packaging and business model.

Come on board and see what it’s all about.

Disclaimers:

  • (1) Lead Liaison is not affiliated in any way with LeadLander®, does not provide LeadLander®’s services, and does not own the LeadLander® Service Mark. Lead Liaison provides its own unique visitor tracking solution as shown here.
  • (2) For comparative purposes in this blog post, LeadLander® is referred to as Visitor Tracking instead of a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) as LeadLander®’s Visitor Tracking does not offer features provided in Lead Liaison’s MAP, known as LMA. 
  • (3) Any pricing mentioned in this blog post is merely for comparison of Visitor Tracking vs. MAPs. 
  • Reference our Blog Disclaimer.
Lead Liaison

Social Media Planning and the Super Bowl

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Social media planning could be the key to truly getting your brand out there and making a post viral – especially during a big game or event like the Super Bowl. Did you tune in last weekend? If so, you might have been there for the big Bowl, for the halftime show or even just for the commercials. Super Bowl organizers know how to do it right – they throw in a little something for everyone to pile on as many extra viewers as possible.

Social media is no different – now it’s standard to live tweet big events like Bowl games, so of course big brands are getting on board. JC Penney’s ‘mitten’ tweets are now famous –

JCPenney Super Bowl Ad

People seriously thought someone in JCPenney’s social media department was partying a little too hard during the big bowl game and might not have a job come Monday. Then this happened:

JCPenney Super Bowl Ad

At the time of this writing, the last JCPenney mittens tweet received 3718 retweets and 1985 favorites. Not bad!

Careful Social Media Planning

Utilizing social networks to broadcast messages like these is a great idea. On Superbowl Sunday, your audience is going to be in front of the TV, but will also have laptops and smartphones out live tweeting and Facebooking about the event. This means that your brand should definitely be at the party – but with conscious content that’s relevant to the event at hand.

Sure, you can sell your services – but events like these are a time to figure out how you can present them in a way that’s fun and relates to the Super Bowl. You also don’t have to be stuck in front of your computer during the big event – you can use Lead Liaison and other tools to create great content and schedule it before you leave the house. This will allow you to ensure the right social media is posted and gets out there during the big game.

Answering Back

Even if you’re busy during major events, ensure you spend some time the next day responding to Tweets and Facebook questions about your posts. Being there for your audience is a big part of not only being recognized as an interactive brand – tweeting back can increase the visibility of your posts and your marketing message.

You can automate everything. Good social media planning allows you to take the time you need to enjoy your Sunday while your marketing is still doing its work. The Lead Liaison team would love to help engage your social media planning into something that ends up in tremendous results. Let’s talk today!

Lead Liaison

New Flexible and Powerful Marketing Resource: The Social Append Feature

/0 Comments/in , /by

Allen, TX (PRWEB) February 14, 2014 – Lead Liaison is proud to announce a new feature in the system that allows users to gather relevant information via social networking sites and ultimately reach a more targeted market directly. With the Social Append feature, Lead Liaison allows for a much greater opportunity for marketers to leverage data in the CRM: connecting social media. Lead Liaison’s new feature supports over 110 social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Klout, to name a few.

This new feature allows marketers to add social media links to the prospects’ profile records in the system. Adding this information brings all the data associated with the social networks into Lead Liaison and allows marketers to set up an automation directed to a particular audience. For example Social Append will gather the number of Twitter followers, and then from there the marketer can choose to send a tweet out to any followers that have 50+ followers. This allows the marketer to have a much more segmented database and allows for greater lead closure and higher conversions. From Twitter alone, the Social Append feature can gather five new pieces of data to save to the database: number of followers, URL, username, biography, and ID. Data from the social networks associated with each profile allows for the marketer to filter criteria for the targeted group.

With the addition of the Social Append feature, the profile record of each prospect contains very detailed information, from the basics of their business title, location, and gender, to much more specific and targeted details such as other websites they are involved with, organizations they are part of, and Klout topics of interest. This feature also gives Lead Liaison access to all of the photos associated with this prospect’s social accounts. The data gathered from this new feature has endless possibilities for the driven marketer. Sales teams will also benefit by having a richer set of information on their prospects. They’ll have more intelligence and a deeper understanding of who they’re selling to.

***

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.

For More Information:

Allison Noblitt
VP, Corporate Communications
anoblitt(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.895.3237 (888 89 LEADS)

Lead Liaison

Curating News Content via Automated Article Marketing

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Article MarketingThere’s something to be said for the way we process news and how that factors in to overall article marketing strategy. In the not-too-distant past, article marketing was all about stuffing articles with keywords and submitting them to as many article directories you could find. These days, article marketing necessitates a unique approach that includes curating useful content and reaching out to top-ranking websites to create connections. Doing it any other way could result in some serious Google penalties for your website – as well as the isolation of your loyal audience.

Using News to Curate Content

Many companies feel they have blogs that are newsworthy. Using news content for your article marketing isn’t really as easy as creating a great story and putting it on your social media accounts. There are several steps to ensuring your curated content is out there and visible by your target audience.

For starters, you might want to consider attempting to get your articles featured on Google News. This isn’t as easy as directly submitting them to Google.  First, you will want to focus on having a regular readership and comments/feedback on the articles you use for article marketing.

Second, the articles actually need to be newsworthy. Don’t just use press releases- create news stories that focus on current events in your industry. It’s also important to consider creating a Google news sitemap. Follow the instructions you see in the link and set up your sitemap. Make sure to update it each time you have a news story worth reading!

Automated Content

Many small business folks are looking to do their article marketing via automated content. This ensures that each time content is created, it will go out on your blog and anywhere else you tell it in a timely fashion. Creating a news site for your article marketing necessitates your content going out on a schedule that you can stick to. Automated content can help you ensure you’re getting content out to readers when they expect to see it. If you’re creating a news site, Google isn’t going to take you very seriously if you don’t have timely, updated content.

Lead Liaison recently rolled out our new automated content management feature and we’d love to have you check it out!  Automated marketing platforms are becoming the go-to for busy business folks who don’t have the time to curate and share newsworthy content. If you’re doing article marketing for your business, please take a look at our automated content services and let us know what you think!

Lead Liaison

Complexity and Commitment: Keys to Marketing Automation

/0 Comments/in , /by

Freemium Marketing AutomationThe past week has been an interesting one in the world of marketing automation – particularly in terms of freemium marketing automation services making substantial changes in order to survive. We’ve been a captive audience to these changes here at Lead Liaison – it’s interesting to see what works for other marketing automation companies and what doesn’t.

David M. Raab wrote a great article on his Customer Experience Matrix blog about recent changes in the industry. It’s worth taking a look at to get an idea of this week’s mergers – in particular, SalesFUSION acquiring Loopfuse and CallidusCloud’s acquisition of LeadRocket. Raab hypothesizes – likely quite accurately – that the buyout of these two services may have something to do with the ‘freemium’ payment model the companies used to market their services.

Marketing Automation and Freemium Payment

Raab guesses quite accurately,

“My take is that freemium doesn’t fit well with marketing automation because marketing automation takes a lot of work to use effectively. Compare this with email and Web site hosting, where freemium has worked well: casual users can be quite successful with those products.”

A commenter observes that the ‘freemium’ model doesn’t tend to work with products that involve complexity. Marketing automation products are definitely complex – for many users, installing a marketing automation platform ensures that a new way of working on basic tasks needs to be adopted. This new way requires adoption at all levels of the business, training and a fully integrative customer support experience that just isn’t casual.

For Us, It’s About Commitment

Taking things a step further, we believe marketing automation is about commitment, not just complexity. Marketing automation systems are definitely complex. Dealing with that level of complexity and changes to a company’s workflow process requires a level of commitment businesses should be ready for. We truly believe that Lead Liaison’s marketing automation process can save a business a lot of hassle and can even lead to generating more revenue – but that does require some understanding of how the process will work for clients from start to finish.

We can communicate the need for that level of commitment from the beginning, but customers need to be on board all the way through. For us, freemium wouldn’t work as we need to be actively involved and available in our clients’ marketing dashboards – giving tutorials, being available for assistance and showing our clients better ways to use the platform. Commitment is key to dealing with the complexity of marketing automation – but that complexity is worth it, solving many challenges our clients face over time.

We’d love to talk to you about how we can take the pain out of the complexity involved in marketing automation – let us give you a consult today!

Lead Liaison

What Does Context Have to Do with Content Marketing?

/0 Comments/in , /by

What Does Context Have to Do with Content Marketing?After Google’s latest algorithm change, context is the new king of content marketing. This means that regardless of how much keyword-optimized content, how many words you have on your page or how great your content is, you may not rank the way you’d like to if you aren’t answering the questions users pose with search queries related to your site.

We’ve talked extensively about Google’s Hummingbird update. This and other changes by Google ensure that context is the most important criteria in a user’s search. Users aren’t just looking for info about a certain topic, they’re looking for information that specifically answers whatever questions they’re trying to pose.

Context and Content Marketing

This is where you come in. These days ensuring you’re giving users the right context can be about over explaining things. In the pre-Hummingbird days, one of the most important things you could do in developing site pages is keep the user on your site for as long as possible, not overwhelming them with content and giving them the right navigation to “fall down the rabbit hole” in your site – exploring page after page to browse content in several areas. Post-hummingbird page strategy isn’t that different. You still want users to get happily lost in the wealth of information you’re giving them – but you want the pages they land on to answer the specific questions they’re looking for answers to.

For instance, “What kinds of flowers should I plant in spring” should bring up an intro page on a site with a wealth of information about different kinds of spring flowers and individual pages on how to best plant them – not just an article about “The 10 Best Spring Flowers to Plant.” This may not happen just yet, but keep in mind Google is crafting search to lean toward content, so the more information you can provide that answers user questions, the better.

How Do I Change My Site?

Less is not more – don’t worry about rewriting existing pages on your site. If anything, add more content to those pages or link to content that ensures users will get their questions answered. And most importantly, if your content marketing isn’t truly answering any questions, start by thinking about what your users want to see from you. If you don’t know the questions it’ll be hard to come by the answers.

Lead Liaison has a truly unique content marketing platform unlike any other marketing automation dashboard out there. Our writers can craft content marketing focused around the general questions your site visitors want answered. Let us show you how!