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Lead Liaison

Why Your Sales Pipeline Needs Marketing Automation

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Why Your Sales Pipeline Needs Marketing AutomationHave you thought about why your sales pipeline needs marketing automation? We came across an old post the other day that got us talking about marketing automation and the sales lead pipeline. One of Lead Liaison Revenue Performance Specialists commented that B2B lead management has been completely changed because of marketing automation. How, you ask?

1. Redefines Early Pipeline Stages

In the past, a B2B sales pipeline has typically included four primary stages: Inquiry, Lead, Opportunity, and Customer. Thanks to marketing automation sales managers can have a more well-defined view of activity leading up to a sales close. There are four newly recognized phases in today’s sales lead pipeline:  Prospecting, Awareness, Qualification, and Nurturing. These new stages have become recognized as important contributors to the sales cycle.

2. Provides Lead Scoring

B2B marketing automation provides measurements that score leads as they become more familiar with your solutions and company. The commonly quoted industry standard of 80% of first contact B2B leads are not ready to buy means that leads require deeper connections through consistent, progressively-staged messaging. During the lead nurturing process leads can be digitally scored  for sales-readiness within an MA system, which allows salespeople to focus on the hottest leads.

3. Gives Sales Agents Better Information

Sales agents have a greater understanding of sales prospects before they make contact because of the data collected through marketing automation. For example, activities such as webinar attendance and infographic views can be captured in a MA system and reveal how informed a lead is about your products. A savvy sales agent can incorporate that information into her sales approach with that lead. Often B2B prospects must be educated about business solutions. Moving leads through a sales pipeline using a marketing automation system also provides a focused product education process. Automated messaging helps lessen the educational responsibility for your salespeople.

4. Gets Marketers More Involved in the Game

In the past, marketers have had little accountability when it came to moving a prospect to a customer. With marketing automation, marketers now have more “skin in the game” when it comes to moving leads through the sales pipeline. The newly-added sales pipeline stages we mentioned earlier are, for the most part, marketing-related. Prospecting, creating awareness, and lead nurturing rely on digital messaging, social media and search engine strategies, and other marketing-related activities. And now management can see how effective digital marketing campaigns are at bringing in qualified leads through the use of an automated marketing system.

5. Provides Consistent Message Scheduling

Marketing automation uses staged release mechanisms to contact leads on a regular basis. Marketing campaigns used to rely on a lot of leg work to distribute messages; with MA that is no longer the case. From emails to blog posts to articles to press releases, digital marketing assets can be deployed at scheduled intervals using a streamlined process provided by a marketing automation system.

6. Allows Managers to Manage Better

With the incredible level of analytics an automated marketing system provides, marketing and sales directors can now analyze critical details about marketing activities. From page views to click-throughs, MA systems provide data and information that can be used to either improve good marketing campaigns or scrap ineffective ones. Some marketing automation systems require a sizeable investment and may not be appropriate for every company, but those that invest in a marketing automation system to manage their sales lead pipeline find their marketing and sales effectiveness improves. To learn more about how marketing automation can help your company contact a Lead Liaison representative.

Lead Liaison

Five Ways Marketing Automation is Good for Your Company

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Five Ways Marketing Automation is Good for Your CompanyMarketing automation is good for your company. In the world of marketing, automation makes sense. Why? For two reasons: 1) automation provides better tracking and lead management for digital marketing campaigns; and 2) automation provides marketing and sales alignment, which allows both functional silos to operate more efficiently and effectively.

Lean B2B companies with smaller sales and marketing departments can automate functions that, in the past, have required hours of work. Mid-size companies can be more agile with messaging that reacts to market sentiment. Large companies can maintain a competitive edge through targeted, sustained campaigns that strengthen brand loyalty and grow top line revenues.

Marketing automation (MA) is used to streamline workflow and provide measurement for marketing activities in order to increase operational efficiency and accelerate revenue growth. How does MA help small to large companies improve their marketing effectiveness? There are five benefits that marketing automation provides:

Nurture Relationships

Marketing  industry analysts claim that 20% of leads that connect with your brand are not sales-ready at the point of first contact. Therefore, a relationship must be built to move a suspect lead to a customer. In fact, when done properly, lead nurturing can yield nearly 50% more sales-qualified leads from marketing campaigns. Marketing automation allows marketers to develop, execute, and monitor extended campaigns that move leads through buying stages.

Retain/Strengthen Existing Relationships

Marketing automation provides a way to encourage brand loyalty through scheduled messaging to customers. Companies that incorporate MA have significantly improved their customer retention rate versus those that don’t, according to industry leaders. Data collected through digital engagements can be analyzed and leveraged towards stronger relationships. In addition, MA provides a structured approach to up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

Segment Market Participants

Companies are able to segment leads by various criteria through the use of marketing automation. For instance, groups can be easily organized by geography, demographics, online behavior, and other attributes. Marketers can increase messaging effectiveness by tailoring campaigns that capitalize on stored data.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Marketing automation is the best way to blend marketing and sales activities for greater efficiency and effectiveness. MA helps each silo through coordinated messaging, lead scoring, and pipeline management functions. Companies can more readily identify hot leads through a combination of lead nurturing and lead scoring. And systems that integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) platforms provide a seamless transition for leads that have moved from marketing-qualified to sales-qualified status.

Measure ROI

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of marketing automation is the ability for management to measure return on investment in both sales and marketing functions. Executives can analyze response rates,  social media impacts, and other metrics with a few clicks. For example, our Lead Management Automation™ platform provides details about lead sources, campaign types, and most active lead territories, to name a few.

The bottom line is that marketing automation solutions like those developed by Lead Liaison provide companies a streamlined approach to marketing activities and builds alignment between sales and marketing. Business executives can save time and money, measure and optimize marketing investments, and drive revenue growth faster through a robust marketing automation platform.

Please share how your company reaps the benefits of marketing automation. To find out how Lead Liaison can strengthen and improve your marketing process, contact us today!

Lead Liaison

How to Get the Most from Marketing Automation

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How to Get the Most from Marketing AutomationRecently, there have been some marketing specialists that have besmirched the reputation of marketing automation (MA). They have said marketing automation does not work or that MA is not cost-effective. But we are here to tell you that evidence shows B2B marketing automation can make many companies more effective in their marketing practices. The key to making an MA system work effectively is the strategy that is developed before the system is deployed. Here are a few ideas to consider when you’re developing an automated B2B marketing strategy to get the most from marketing automation.

Keep email lists up to date

B2B marketing automation relies heavily on email transmissions. Unfortunately, email addresses often change and job tenure is not as extended as it used to be. Therefore, it’s critical to maintain a current email database with active accounts. Email records decay at a rate of 25% per year so stay on top of your email list: plan to review database records annually and review deliverability reports monthly or quarterly.

Provide timely information

According to a Gartner Research “customers will manage 85% of their relationship with (an) enterprise without interacting with a human.” This means that automated marketing messages had better be relevant and timely. Inbound marketing relies on connecting digitally with leads at the right time, but it’s just as important that auto-response messages connect mentally when prospects are searching for solutions.

Match messaging to lead source

Prospects can connect with your brand from a number of sources. Make sure that the automated messages that follow a lead’s action support the lead source that “sent” the lead. For instance, a lead that connects with you through a Facebook share should receive a message that references the share link that was used to find your brand. This way you recognize your prospects as unique and provide personalized messaging.

Set a reasonable pace for message delivery

With so much email – both wanted and unwanted – filling up mailboxes, it’s a challenge to grab attention and generate enough interest to get read. To get opened you must approach your leads cautiously but consistently. Avoid sending messages too frequently, you may become an irritant. Send messages too infrequently and you risk losing a customer to another more timely message. There is no magical formula for setting delivery schedules but a good rule of thumb is to schedule messages for delivery between three and seven days from the previous contact event.

Tailor messaging to lead behaviors

Don’t simply send a broad message to market segments, acknowledge the path that has brought a prospect to your brand by addressing previous online activities. You can’t rely on your messaging to be simply relevant to your markets’ objectives (i.e. seeking a solution); messages should also remind leads of the digital journey they have taken to get to your brand. Blog reads, website visits, purchase history, and search activity should all be considered when designing automated marketing messages.

Change with customer evolution

Automated marketing should not remain static. Ten years ago there was no Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. The channels that B2B buyers use to find solutions will likely change over the next 10 years. B2B prospects use search engines 93% of the time to find solutions and 37% post questions on social networking sites for information. Your automated marketing strategy should be flexible in order to adapt to changing digital marketing channels.

Don’t rely on email alone

Marketing automation systems are evolving. Use automated article delivery or set landing pages to deliver messaging. In the era of full mailboxes, consider other assets to drive lead engagement.

Automated marketing practices are relatively new, and some claim that the verdict is still out on their efficacy. However, the Lead Liaison sales team has found that customers have seen improved response rates and higher conversion rates through the use of our automated marketing solutions. This means more revenue is being generated. The key takeaway here is that, in order for your marketing automation system to be effective, your automated marketing strategy should be solid. To find out more about setting up an effective marketing automation strategy, talk with one of our knowledgeable Lead Liaison sales agents today!

Lead Liaison

Why Marketing Automation Can Produce More Sales-Ready Leads

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Why-Marketing-Automation-Can-Produce-More-Sales-Ready-LeadsMarketing automation can produce more sales-ready leads for your business. Not every online lead is ready to make a decision. Many online shoppers are still deciding whether or not they even need a product or service. They have not begun the process of deciding where they will make their purchase and they have no desire to speak to a salesperson until they are ready.

Marketing automation is designed for these types of leads. It produces more sales-ready leads by first identifying leads that are actively demonstrating interest by researching information online. Marketing automation then tracks each of these lead’s online behavior and rates their activity against the pre-purchase behavior of existing customers.

Lead Profiling and Scoring

By comparing potential leads to the typical buying patterns of current customers, marketing can prioritize leads based on their likelihood of conversion. They can also encourage leads to volunteer their demographic information using registration forms for newsletters, white papers, or tutorials. Leads that are willing to fill out online surveys are given higher priority, since it demonstrates a more sincere interest in a product or survey.

Marketing automation is designed to gather as much information on a lead as possible to determine BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, & Time). Can they afford to make a purchase? Do they have the authority to make a purchase? Do they need to make a purchase? Are they ready to purchase? The answer to all four questions should be yes before the lead is given to the sales department.

Use Quality Content to Nurture Leads

If the lead is not sales-ready, the marketing automation program will build on their interest with informative content that confirms a need for a product or service. For example, if a lead has clicked on a page that discusses general information about the online accounting software program that the site offers, lead nurturing can be programmed to email a helpful article on how accounting software programs can save a business time and money.

If a lead is further along in their buying process, the nurturing content can be designed to make them feel more confident about their purchase. Using the previous example, it could be an article on how technology has made it safer and easier to manage your finances online. This aspect of the marketing automation process will produce more sales-ready leads by nurturing leads based on their individual needs.

Customization based on Lead Segments

To make the content customization process more efficient, leads are broken down into lead segments based on similar profiles and score. Marketing automation generates an abundance of leads and it is too difficult to personalize content for every single lead. By grouping leads together, content can be created for each type of lead.

The marketing automation process can produce more sales-ready leads by profiling, scoring, segmenting, and nurturing each lead throughout their buying process. Only leads with the highest scores are given to sales, so valuable time is never wasted on leads that are not ready to buy.

Lead Liaison

How to Develop an Effective Marketing Automation Strategy

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How to Develop an Effective Marketing Automation StrategyAn effective marketing automation strategy has the ability to quickly generate new customers and increased revenue. It gathers potential leads that are actively searching for information online, profile’s each lead’s interests, nurtures leads with helpful and relevant content, and then scores them to assess their potential for conversion. The process is efficient and automated, but a truly effective marketing automation strategy will also require a human touch.

It is All about the Customer

The first and most important focus must always be on satisfying the customer’s needs and concerns. This can be achieved by understanding the critical attributes of existing customers and then using those factors to create a lead scoring model.

What is the lead researching online?

What is their buying history?

What are their interests?

An effective marketing automation strategy is based on finding out as much information as possible on every potential lead. Clever marketers will use registration forms to block particularly valuable content, requiring leads to volunteer pertinent information prior to access. Marketing automation also uses online newsletter registries as a method for gaining greater insight into a lead’s characteristics.

Lead Profile & Ranking

Once this information is obtained, marketing automation software compares and ranks it using a profile of an ideal prospect. For an effective marketing automation strategy, the profile it is ranked against should as closely represent a typical buyer as possible. A good plan is to create the lead scoring using a collaboration of both the sales and marketing team’s experiences with current clientele.

Marketers know what landing pages and tutorials are bringing in business and the sale’s team understands what their customers need and want. Any marketing automation strategy will need both perspectives to effectively capture an accurate and complete lead profile.

Segment Leads into Groups

Using the information gathered for the profile, each lead will be segment in groups based on similar needs and wants. Marketing automation cannot effectively target every lead individually due to the massive volume of leads it generates. However, personalized campaigns make a huge difference in the eyes of the customer. Since the customer is the first priority of marketing automation, lead nurturing campaigns are created to target specific lead segments.

Content that Provides Value

The last fundamental aspect of marketing automation is creating relevant and informative lead nurturing content. The content that is being provided to lead must offer them real value. This is a business’ chance to brand themselves as experts in their field and earn the customer’s loyalty.  All lead nurturing content must be focused on building relationships and trust.

An effective marketing automation strategy begins by profiling, ranking, and segmenting each lead. Once leads are grouped together and their needs are understood, quality content can be customized to satisfy their concerns. All of this is designed to produced more qualified leads and build stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships.

Lead Liaison

Five Reasons Why Content Marketing is Not a Waste of Time

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Content MarketingContent marketing is not a waste of time. Like most other forms of marketing, content marketing has the capacity to either set you back, or hopefully get you a ton of great clients. In case you’ve never even heard of it, content marketing refers to sending information to your clients in order to sell your services, tell them more about your industry – or for our purposes, generate some leads.

There are many different kinds of content marketing including:

  • EBooks
  • Social media posts
  • Blogs
  • Whitepapers
  • Newsletters

Pretty much anything that presents your audience with information with the purpose of generating a lead or sale qualifies as content marketing.

Content marketing has the capacity to become a waste of time if your organization isn’t doing it correctly. If you’ve seen a terrible, poorly written, completely off topic blog out there, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve seen businesses advertise totally irrelevant, cutesy small talk or photos on their social media networks rather than messages that elevate them and increase their branding power, you know not what to do.

If you’re keeping away from content marketing for your business because you’re intimidated, it might be time to either do some exploring, or hire a content genius to help you. However you decide to handle it, content marketing can be time worth spent for your business. Here are five reasons why.

Content Marketing is good for Your SEO

When your content marketing utilizes well-researched keywords, your SEO will start to look better over time. Sure, good search engine optimization isn’t just about writing great articles – but one major factor in ranking over competitors is sharing good, updated content both on your website and in your link building. If you’re not using content to beef up your website and get great, authority links back to your site, you can be sure your competitors are.

Content Marketing Helps You Not Come Off Like a Cheapskate

These days, information is power – AND money. Getting an email address because you gave away an eBook is a great way to keep in touch with clients. Each time you use someone’s email, you’re keeping them in your sales funnel.

You can’t just ask customers for emails without being willing to give something in return. Content marketing allows you to give the customer a valuable piece of information they can use in their everyday lives or business transactions. Giving the client great content for their personal info is quid pro quo, and it’s expected these days.

Content Marketing Establishes Trust

Reading your content gives customers the opportunity to know who you are, what you can offer and to gauge your expertise on a certain subject. The more in-the-know you appear to be, the more your potential clients will trust that your products or services are the right choice. Content marketing allows your clients to get to know you before making a purchase. Establishing that trust from the get go can make for an easier, more harmonious working relationship as well.

Content Marketing Gets You Out There

If you and your competitor offer the same services at the same prices –but I find out your competitor has a kept-up blog, a huge social media following and a good number of guest blogs out there, who would I trust more?

Not only does good content make you more competitive, good content marketing gets in front of more eyes than no marketing at all. You can create great content for your Facebook and run $5-at-a-time sponsored ads to reach friends of friends. If your content is worth reading, just $5 can result in hundreds of subscribers.

Content Marketing is Multipurpose

Great SEO, trust building, brand building, reputation energizing – the best reason to engage in good content marketing for your business is that content marketing is multipurpose. You can use it for SEO, for great social media, for better brand awareness and more. Because it’s easy to do and robust, a good content strategy can benefit you in all channels of your marketing.

If you find the right help or have the expertise to deploy a great content marketing strategy, you’ll next need to look at measuring your results. A lead management system that scores and helps you follow up with leads can integrate directly into your content management program. Lead Liaison is a great choice. If you aren’t ready to deploy a content marketing strategy yet, now is the time to work with Lead Liaison to ensure your tracking needs and goals are met before you begin content marketing. Talk to us about how we can integrate our services with your content marketing strategy today!

Lead Liaison

B2B Demand Generation – How Does it Work?

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B2B Demand Generation How Does It WorkB2B demand generation is the process of facilitating the buying process through a combination of marketing and sales assets. The purpose of generating demand is to proactively build awareness about your solution and convert a suspect (unqualified prospect) to a customer.

Effective demand generation aligns your marketing and sales teams through an integrated system, such as the combination of our Lead Management Automation™ platform with the Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud CRM application. To maximize results, a dem gen strategy involves having the two function areas share information and knowledge.

Data from each silo should be analyzed to determine what has worked within each discipline. The most productive strategies should be combined to fulfill the four primary phases of demand generation:

  1. Awareness
  2. Interest
  3. Preference
  4. Commitment

These four phases in the demand generation funnel move suspects to buyers through distinct approaches and unique objectives.

Awareness

The first objective is to open eyes.  Creating awareness can be achieved through inbound and outbound channels and is focused on connecting a potential buyer with a problem to your solution.

Exposure is critical during the awareness phase, so experts suggest deploying as many touch points as possible. Frequency is important as well because it can often take up to seven exposures to register in a suspect’s mind. Remember, before a suspect can show interest he must first be aware that your solution exists.

Interest

The next phase is to stimulate interest in your solution. What makes your solution appealing? What features are commonly in demand? Building interest requires an sharper focus on what your solution can do for your suspects. Once buyers are made aware of your solution, the strategy used during this phase is to target needs and match benefits.

Here is where you strive for TOMA (top-of-mind-awareness) through a series of messages that escalate need/benefit match-up  Buying triggers should be targeted during this phase. Using the data that was analyzed during the development of your demand generation strategy, highlight the most appealing features or benefits to generate interest.

Preference

This phase may be owned by both marketing and sales. Now the objective is to become the preferred solution for your suspects. Prior to buying, most B2B prospects become interested in a few options. This stage moves them to a point where, if a purchase has been approved by management the suspect will be interested in a sales engagement with your company.

To be considered a preferred choice means that most of a buyer’s objections have been overcome. At this point your target is close to making a decision – and your solution has been deemed the best solution for her company.

Preference for your solution can be established through deep marketing engagements such as webinars or white paper downloads. Qualifying sales calls can also develop preference within your leads.

Commitment

Your sales department should have ownership of the commitment phase. Here BANT has been confirmed and final objections are overcome. Commitment is gained through advanced questioning intended to root out hidden objections and preparing your target to buy your solution. Demand has been cultivated, the lead has been nurtured, and your solution has become the clear option for your target.

Lead Liaison

How Marketing Automation can Improve Web Experience Management

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Marketing Automation for Web Experience ManagementMarketing automation can improve web experience management. Web Experience Management (WEM) is focused on managing a user-friendly website by presenting a seamless contextual experience across many digital channels. Marketing automation (MA) is the process of automating manual marketing strategies to improve lead generation. Although both processes are quite different, they share the same main focus: enhancing the customer experience to build trust and loyalty.

By integrating these two systems, marketing can gain a better understanding of customer needs and how they can effectively enhance their customer’s online experience. Powerful content can be created to address specific customer needs, new features can be added to the website to improve the customer experience, and new promotions can be offered that are based on live customer feedback.

In the same way that the combination of marketing automation and web experience management will improve the customer experience, a failure to focus on either component can have a negative effect on both. For example, it is fair to assume a customer will quickly leave a website if the site is slow or it cannot be easily navigated. This customer may have the need and the budget to make a purchase, but instead they will find a site that is easier to use and forget the original site ever existed.

Marketing automation cannot generate high-quality leads, if the site is not user-friendly. There is an endless stream of online resources, so consumers will not tolerate a site that does not meet their expectations. They will simply leave and find one that meets their needs. That is why WEM is necessary to marketing automation.

Marketing automation is used to delve into the characteristics and behavior of visitors on a given website. It creates a detailed customer profile using lead scoring and then develops relevant and informative content to nurture each lead. If a business is focused on WEM, but they are not tapping into their leads online activity, they are not giving the user an ideal online experience.

For example, a marketing firm has a home page plus seven content pages (Website Design, Printing Services, SEO, Social Media, Video Optimization, Mobile Optimization, and Advertising Campaigns).  If the website consists of eight pages and only two of them are clicked on repeatedly by customers, there needs to be a greater focus on content that pertains to these two pages.

Using marketing automation, a company can pinpoint that 65% of visitors spend the majority of their time reading content on the SEO and Social Media pages, where only 5% click on the Printing Services or Advertising Campaign pages. A smart online business would then incorporate more SEO and social media topics onto their other pages and into their nurturing content.

Marketing automation can also provide insight into where a lead is at in their buying process. It is beneficial to have a WEM site that engages visitors, but there comes a time when the lead should be handed over to the sales department to seal the deal. Marketing automation ranks leads based on their likelihood of conversion and it will identify leads that are ready to buy.

When marketing automation is intertwined with web experience management there is more focus on the lifetime of interactions with a customer instead of one single transaction. This will enviably increase the chances of conversion and strengthen brand loyalty.  Marketing automation improves web experience management and vice versa. It takes both to be successful in today’s competitive global market.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation is Like Dieting – But We Mean ‘Good’ Dieting

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Marketing Automation is Like DietingMarketing automation is like dieting. We’re not too far out from the New Year, are we? It’s already the end of March, but some of us are taking those New Year’s resolutions pretty seriously. Sticking to a gym regimen, spending more time with family, cutting back on the sweets – many resolutions change the lives of the people who make them. We universally agree that paying better attention to our bodies and caring for our physical health should be of utmost importance. Some folks claim their business is the chief focal point of their lives and the time spent on business matters prevents them from better health or a more rewarding personal life.

If you’ve ever said this, it’s time to think about how the health of your business correlates directly to your own health. Marketing automation for your business could be key.

Marketing Automation is a Resolution You Can Keep

The New York Times ran a great opinion piece last month about how relaxing and enjoying more personal time – including sleep time – can create a better work experience for all of us. One statistic from this piece rings true:

Spending more hours at work often leads to less time for sleep and insufficient sleep takes a substantial toll on performance. In a study of nearly 400 employees, published last year, researchers found that sleeping too little — defined as less than six hours each night — was one of the best predictors of on-the-job burn-out. A recent Harvard study estimated that sleep deprivation costs American companies $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity. [1] – New York Times

We all know that more sleep and more efficient self-care will improve our lives, but many of us miss the fact that streamlining our businesses is required to take that time off. If your back end is a mess, a chain reaction starts – you spend more time managing things at work that could otherwise easily be handled (think marketing automation), which then deprives you of personal or self-care time.

For many business owners, the way with which customers are handled and managed, leads are processed and followed up on and billing is managed can all be part of separate processes and platforms. Marketing automation helps bring those platforms into one centralized place for business owners.

With marketing automation, you know that a lead will be qualified properly and will get the amount of follow-up time deserved. You’ll have an idea where money is wasted on your marketing – on what’s working and what’s not. The more efficiently you spend your money, the more you’ll have in the bank. What does this mean for you?

  1. More money to hire great people and bring on new clients
  2. Ability to let things go and not micromanage – you know your tools will tell you what’s working, so you don’t have to poke in on your team as much. The data’s right there.
  3. Better metrics in place to liaison with your marketing company or team.

Marketing Automation is Like Changing Your Lifestyle

If your leads are coming in and managed in a sloppy way that even you don’t fully understand, you’re missing out on the opportunity to get more life and productivity out of your business. Marketing automation may be a great solution for you. Think of it like going on a diet [2] – before you start, you have to really take stock of your eating habits and make decisions about which ones adversely affect your health. Some people are moving at the speed of light and eating high-calorie lunches at their desks rather than preparing meals at home. Some people crash out by 10 pm after a long day at work, only to skip the exercise and repeat the cycle the next day. Over time, not confronting habits that don’t ultimately serve you negatively impacts your health.

Your business can be in bad health, too. Many slender, in shape people aren’t in great health – and likewise, just because you’re in the green from month to month doesn’t mean your business is in great shape. Try sitting down and making a list of your business bad habits and how they negatively affect your growth and your work flow. How can marketing automation help?

It’s time to sit down and confront bad habits that a good marketing automation program can help you fix. Lead Liaison is the answer for many, and could be for you! Talk to us how we can help your business get into shape today!

 

 

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/relax-youll-be-more-productive.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[2] We mean a diet you actually love, of course.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Analytics: Metrics to Focus On (Part 4)

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B2B Marketing Analytics: Metrics to Focus On (Part 4)In this post we continue the discussion about analyzing your B2B marketing analytics. As we mentioned in Metrics to Focus On (Part 3), your B2B marketing strategy should be analyzed for each marketing practice you employ. These days marketing automation platforms are available that provide executives with granular views of how effective their marketing activities have been. Here are a few key metrics that should be analyzed for your PPC and email marketing practices.

Pay-Per-Click

Click-through rate (CTR)

On the surface this metric is pretty obvious but, in this case, we recommend going beyond counting how many clicks resulted from each marketing asset. Focus on the resulting activity. What occurred after the link was clicked? Did your lead bounce from your landing page? Analyzing the activity after you earned the click reveals messaging effectiveness and indicates whether leads are being advanced through the marketing pipeline.

Cost per click (CPC)

Certainly, “how many sales resulted from our PPC campaign?” is an important question but there are additional metrics that can also be measured from a paid campaign. For example, one way to fully capture the ROI is to calculate how many repeat sales resulted following an initial paid click. Did a PPC buyer return to buy again? Consider returns other than financial ones from your CTR; metrics such as new email subscribers from a paid campaign may be worth analyzing as well.

Landing page

They’ve clicked your ad and viewed your landing page. What happens next? If a click-through bounces quickly from a landing page, for instance, it can be a good indicator of the ad’s messaging effectiveness. As mentioned before, measuring activity following a paid click is important. In this case, look at your landing page conversion rate as a ratio against your CTR – that can tell you whether sales are resulting from ads or your landing pages.

Email

Click-through rate

Our view for this metric is the same as for PPC assets: look beyond the number of click-throughs and examine what happened after the click. Analytics tools can evaluate email ROI so you can determine how effective your email messaging is at converting sales. Remember to look beyond financial returns. For example, measuring the number of leads that have shared an email after clicking embedded links can reveal message effectiveness and brand advocacy, and contribute to better lead profiling.

Subscribers

It is important to evaluate your subscriber base for patterns and trends. Segment email subscribers by title, industry, or budget to evaluate what lead profiles are interested in your messages and where messaging can be improved. Don’t forget that your subscriber base can provide an opportunity to expand your reach through message sharing or forwarding.

Sharing/Forwarding

Whether an email asset is shared through an embedded Twitter button or via traditional forwarding this activity, which is recognized as being social in nature, should be analyzed to evaluate message effectiveness and develop lead profiles. Which method was used to share your message? How often are recipients sharing your email messages? Examine which messages are being shared and who is sharing messages to get a feel for how effective your email campaigns are at developing brand advocates.

For more solutions that will improve your marketing ROI contact a Lead Liaison representative today – and look for more great sales and marketing ideas in our revenue generation blog.