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Lead Liaison

How Marketing Automation Strengthens B2B Relationships

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How Marketing Automation Strengthens B2B RelationshipsMarketing automation strengthens B2B relationships. Savvy purchasers are spending more time researching their buying decisions online and it is resulting in higher expectations of online businesses. They are now craving more personal attention from the fast-paced, highly-technical commercial business world. B2B buyers want to feel like they are valued customers again. They want the same customized service from their online vendors as they are accustom to from their local suppliers.

Offers Value before the Sale

Marketing automation strengthens B2B relationship by offering advice and guidance prior to the sale. It shows the B2B buyer that the company cares enough to offer them advice without expecting anything in return. Let’s compare this method using a traditional office furniture store. Prior to the internet, a salesperson would book an appointment with a buyer to go over their catalog and pricing. During this meeting, they would offer their advice and expertise on what type of furniture would best suit the space.

When a customer is browsing office furniture online, they may not know exactly what they need. They know what appeals to them, but unless they have some interior design experience, it will be difficult to figure out which pieces of furniture will work best in their given space. If the website for the furniture store offers the perspective customer design tips and helpful articles that explain how to choose the ideal layout, it will provide the buyer with additional value.

Offer Personalized Content that is Helpful to the Lead

In marketing automation, this is referred to as lead nurturing content. It is not meant to be a sales pitch or ad copy. Its main goal is to brand a business as an expert and develop trust with a buyer. This relevant and informative content can be further personalized based on the lead’s online behavior. The possibilities for customized content increases dramatically when a lead is profiled and scored using marketing automation.

Gain Greater Insight into Each Lead

Lead scoring provides deeper insight into buyer’s behavior and demographic characteristics. It assesses and ranks each lead compared to a typical consumer. By tracking which pages a lead visits, which tutorials a lead downloads, and how frequently a lead visits a site, marketing can determine their likelihood of conversion. When past purchasing history and demographics are added into the mix, lead scoring can provide a clearly defined profile containing all of the lead’s vital details.

Group Leads Based on Similar Needs

Once leads have been profiled and scored, they can be segmented into similar groups for a more customized approach. It will most likely be too difficult to cater to every leads concerns individually. Leads that share the same needs are grouped together and nurtured by providing information that is more relevant to their online activity and demographic profile.

Marketing automation provides a deeper insight into each lead and their unique needs. This insight can be used in countless ways to strengthen the connection between supplier and buyer. By using marketing automation to strengthen B2B relationships prior to a sale, a business can brand themselves as an expert and develop trust with future clients that will last well beyond the initial sale.

Lead Liaison

The Real ROI achieved from Marketing Automation

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Real ROI from marketing automationMarketing automation is gaining in popularity among big businesses, but is it really worth the investment? What’s the real ROI from marketing automation?

Absolutely! Anytime a traditional system is changed from manual to automated, it increases efficiency and enhances its capabilities. Automation significantly reduces labor expenses while increasing the total volume of leads generated, since more can be achieved in less time. In today’s highly competitive and fast-paced marketplace, most time saving solutions are worth the investment. Let’s talk about the real ROI achieved from marketing automation.

Marketing automation uses software to automatically generate leads based on online activity. Every visitor on a site is a potential consumer and the only way to effectively track each of these visitors is by using an automated program. Every lead also leaves their own unique trail of evidence in regards to their purchasing potential. The manual labor that requires tracking and profiling every visitor’s behavior and characteristics would be astronomical, especially if the website generated a high volume of website traffic.

Being able to quickly capture leads and generate useful profiles on every lead is one of the real ways marketing automation is able to achieve ROI. Lead profiles can be used to categorize each lead into segments based on similar attributes. Rather than focus on thousands of individual leads, a company can focus on groups of related leads.

Another way to measure the true value of marketing automation comes from how these profiles can then be used to nurture and convert each lead into a sale. Marketing automation efforts should always be aligned with a personalized lead nurturing campaign. Content used to persuade each lead should be targeted to a particular concern or interest of a various lead segment.

For example, if automation software has established that a group of leads have all visited the site’s “do it yourself home renovation” page. These leads can then be targeted with helpful articles on how to successfully complete a home renovation project on your own.

Being able to tap into a lead’s needs is a priceless ROI and it is a direct result of effective marketing automation. The more a company can connect and develop trust with the lead, the more likely the lead will become a life-long customer.

Another ROI factor worth mentioning about marketing automation is its ability to produce higher quality leads. Marketers are only handing over leads that are truly interested and ready-to-buy. This pre-screening process will use the sales team’s time more efficiently. Since every lead is first profiled, nurtured, and scored before the sales team is involved, they are closer to being ready to make a decision.

Marketing automation is popular because it works. Big businesses benefit from a reduction in labor expenses, stronger lead profiles, a more personalized approach to lead nurturing, and a higher lead conversion rate. The ROI for marketing automation is certainly worth the investment.

Lead Liaison

Better Lead Management using Marketing Automation

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Better Lead Management using Marketing AutomationLead management drives business. Being able to gather, nurture, and direct leads is a fundamental aspect of every company’s success. Marketing automation has streamlined this process into a highly-effective machine that produces leads with a 50% higher conversion rate than traditional marketing. It provides better lead management using automated software combined with a personalized approach to target leads efficiently and effectively. Here’s how you can achieve better lead management using marketing automation.

Driven by Lead’s Online Activity

Marketing automation sources leads based on their online behavior and demographic profile. This gives marketers the ability to tap into a lead’s buying process to determine how they research and source their purchases. It is focused on the links they click on, the pages they visit, as well as the demographic characteristics that they volunteer during online registrations.

Measures Activity Using Lead Scoring

Online activity is measured using lead scoring criteria to determine which leads have the highest potential for conversion, resulting in better lead management. It gives higher priority to leads with recent activity and it degrades leads based on periods of inactivity. Lead scoring also attaches a value to each lead based on their professional information and the behavior they have exhibited on a website.

Gives Sales Only Qualified Leads

By comparing leads to an ideal customer profile using lead scoring, marketing can determine where each lead is at in their buying process and how likely they are to convert. Only qualified sales leads with the highest scores are passed onto the sales department, so their time is never wasted on leads that have a low potential for conversion.

Offers Further Lead Nurturing for Leads that are Not Ready

Unqualified or cold leads are redirected back into the lead nurturing program until their engagement level increases. Lead nurturing offers potential consumers answer to their most frequently asked questions. It is personalized and relevant content that provides leads with free advice in an effort to build trust in a particular brand.

Creates Strong Relationship with Leads

Since leads are first profiled and then nurtured, marketing automation has the power to create a strong relationship with the lead prior to the purchasing being made. Effective lead nurturing will establish a company as being a trustworthy expert in their field. If the lead nurturing program is effective, leads will feel like they can rely on the free information provided by the business. This will also make them feel more confident in their decision to buy.

Lead management is a complex process that used to require a team of marketing professionals. It can now be efficiently managed using marketing automation software that is driven by potential lead’s online behavior and demographic profile. It generates more qualified leads and nurtures undecided leads until they are ready to make a decision. It also builds trust between lead and supplier. There is no doubt that better lead management can be achieved using marketing automation.

Lead Liaison

How to Generate More Revenue using Marketing Automation

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Generate More Revenue using Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is an extremely streamlined and systematic process for generating the greatest number of potential leads using automated software. Its principle function is to generate more sales and revenue by improving the quality of every lead given to the sales department. It also naturally uses fewer resources, since traditional marketing tasks are now automated. There is no debate whether marketing automation generates more revenue than older methods of marketing and that is not the focus of this article.

Instead, this article will explain how a company can exploit the power of marketing automation to generate even more revenue. There are proven techniques to ensure a company is generating the greatest number of leads possible, as well as strategic ways to nurture these leads to increase their chances of making a purchase.

There are also simple methods for monitoring and prioritizing each lead using effective lead scoring to make sure leads with a higher chance of conversion are given the most attention. More revenue will be generated using marketing automation when all of these efforts are combined.

Generate More Leads

A lead is anyone who comes in contact with a business’ online entities. A business can increase the number of leads they generate by focusing more on their SEO efforts and expanding their online presence. They need a dynamic and intriguing website that ranks on the first page of search engine results using keywords that are relevant to their consumers.

Modern businesses also need to use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to engage more potential leads. The marketing department must create posts and promotions that generate interest and encourage social sharing. Leads that are obtained through relevant content and posts have a higher potential for conversion.

Convert More Leads with Better Nurturing

All nurturing should start by segmenting the leads into similar groups based on their demographic characteristics and online behavior. Lead nurturing needs to be personalized to generate more interest and more revenue. Although marketing automation is an automated process, the content it produces should not sound like it is coming from a machine.

It needs to speak directly to the reader and create a real connection. Marketers should focus on a common need or concern of a group of potential leads and then provide them with informative content that answers their questions.

Prioritize Lead with Lead Scoring

Every visitor on a site has a different level of interest. Some are anxious to buy while others are still in the initial research phase. It is important to know which ones may buy today and which leads have no intention on every making a purchase. This can be determined by monitoring and scoring their online behavior.

Marketing automation software is designed to pick up on these triggers and identify which characteristics indicate a greater chance of conversion. A solid marketing automation strategy should also incorporate online registration forms that are geared at extracting demographic information from a lead to improve the scoring model. All of this information is ranked and compared against a typical customer to determine each lead’s potential.

A business can generate more revenue using marketing automation by using SEO to increase their website traffic, creating more customized lead nurturing content, and by prioritizing leads using accurate profiling and scoring. There is an endless supply of new customers roaming the web and marketing automation is the most efficient way to secure them and turn them into revenue.

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Provides Another Lead Management Tool to Sales and Marketing Executives

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) March 19, 2013 – Lead Liaison, a leader in marketing automation, has released another free lead management tool: the Lead Scoring Model Designer (LSMD). This time their implementation team has created a lead management asset that not only assists executives in building scoring rules for leads in their databases but also provides hypothetical testing capabilities and helps broker alignment between sales and marketing teams.

This lead scoring tool is built within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which allows users to adjust data. It is intended to be used by executives from sales and marketing, along with other relevant parties, when they meet to discuss lead management issues.

The Lead Scoring Model Designer employs a system of one to five stars that are used to represent the impact of each scoring parameter on a lead’s sales-readiness score. The layout organizes lead scoring parameters into three buckets that characterize demographic, behavioral, and qualification status. The 25 fields of predefined and user-entry parameters are adjustable to meet unique sales and marketing practices.

There are five facets in the Lead Scoring Model Designer that help guide sales and marketing through an alignment process which allows both teams to contribute to a lead scoring model. The first step in the alignment process is to bring both function silos to the table so the LSMD includes a meeting attendance verification mechanism. Attendance can be confirmed and the total meeting participants are calculated within the first section in the tool.

Following attendance verification, users then determine a star rating that reflects the importance of each scoring parameter. After each parameter is assigned one to five stars, users define thresholds that represent significant values for moving leads from one classification (for instance, warm lead) to another through the marketing pipeline and, eventually, into a customer relationship management (CRM) application such as the Salesforce.com Sales Cloud.

Once threshold values have been determined, users assign weights to each bucket included in the scoring matrix. Weighting from 0% to 100% can be applied to indicate the impact of each bucket towards an overall lead score. Next a point value for each star is assigned. For example, a parameter that is assigned four stars with point values of 10 contributes 40 points towards the overall lead score.

Finally, users can test the validity of the scoring model by determining if each parameter appropriately represents its contribution to the overall score. Sales and marketing executives can see the total lead score then apply the total score to each threshold in the marketing pipeline in order to evaluate if each parameter is defined accurately.

The Lead Scoring Model Designer can be used to design models for specific marketing campaigns or as a comprehensive model for lead management practices.

Download the Lead Scoring Model Designer here. It is available at no charge for existing customers and other interested parties. For more information contact Lead Liaison at 888 895 3237.

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Lead Liaison is an application development company that designs, develops, and sells cloud-based marketing and sales automation software. The company markets to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, and focuses on creating the broadest and most user-friendly revenue generation software platform. Applications cover all phases of lead management automation including sales prospecting, lead generation, and marketing automation functions that directly influence revenue generation. It’s innovative and robust lead management platform combines unparalleled sales prospecting, lead capture, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing and ROI reporting. The Software as a Service (SaaS) model delivers an effective user experience and integrated cloud computing capabilities.

Media Contacts:
Alex Brown
VP Corporate Communications
abrown(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.89.53237 (LEADS)

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Helps Marketers Measure Lead Management Effectiveness

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) March 5th, 2013 – Lead Liaison has released another free lead management tool, the Lead Management Grader (LMG), for business managers to rate the effectiveness of their sales and marketing activities. The company announced the release following a survey period which ended in February to help marketers measure lead management effectiveness.

The Lead Management Grader was released in response to customer requests for an easy way to gauge effectiveness of their sales and marketing practices. Lead Liaison’s product development team reviewed the lackluster and sometimes complicated tools available, and then created the Lead Management Grader to be simplistic yet comprehensive. As part of this announcement Lead Liaison is also offering a complementary review of lead management processes for qualifying businesses using the Lead Management Grader. The review will give businesses the proper “color” behind the process and give them the confidence to further assess their company’s operations.

The Lead Management Grader is a dynamic tool built with Microsoft Excel that provides 25 preconfigured scoring parameters. The parameters measure common practices within five distinct phases of lead management. Executives are able to input scoring values and adjust the relative weight for each scoring parameter.

The tool allows users to calculate the effectiveness of their lead management practices within each phase of lead management. Companies can easily and quickly grade how well their sales and marketing teams are doing in areas such as lead generation, lead distribution, and lead nurturing. The tool gives companies a way to self-assess their lead management process by determining what areas need improvement and which practices are well executed.

Values can be entered for parameters like passing only qualified leads to the sales department or segmenting CRM records into targeted lists. There are 50 fields which can be adjusted to accurately reflect company-specific measures and parameter weighting. Default values for rating and weight are preconfigured but users can adjust the values to reflect their company’s unique business analysis practices.

Company executives can analyze six facets of its lead management process: sales prospecting, lead generation, lead qualification, lead distribution, lead nurturing, and campaign ROI measurement.

Measurements for each facet are configured to determine a final grade. Scoring for each facet is then displayed graphically in brilliant colors that visually depict the relative strengths and weaknesses for every practice.

Lead Management Grader can be requested from the company’s website, http://www2.leadliaison.com/lead-management-grader/. It is available at no charge for existing customers and other interested parties. For more information contact Lead Liaison at 888 895 3237.

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Lead Liaison is an application development company that designs, develops, and sells cloud-based marketing and sales automation software. The company markets to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, and focuses on creating the broadest and most user-friendly revenue generation software platform. Applications cover all phases of lead management automation including sales prospecting, lead generation, and marketing automation functions that directly influence revenue generation. It’s innovative and robust lead management platform combines unparalleled sales prospecting, lead capture, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing and ROI reporting. The Software as a Service (SaaS) model delivers an effective user experience and integrated cloud computing capabilities.

Media Contacts:
Alex Brown
VP Corporate Communications
abrown(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.89.53237 (LEADS)
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Lead Liaison

Marketing Analytics: Turning Your Sales Funnels Into Data

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Marketing Analytics Sales FunnelRegardless of the size of your business, you probably have an idea of what your sales funnel looks like. Just in case you’re green on all this, your sales funnel refers to the process a customer goes through before buying from you. This process spans the time at which they become a lead through their (sometimes long) decision-making process, right up until the moment the sale happens. In most cases, a sale doesn’t mean the buyer is out of your funnel. Once customers buy there’s always the chance they can become repeat customers – thus, once in your funnel, customers are almost always in there. Sound marketing analytics can give you some idea of what stages of your funnel a typical customer is in and for how long.

Many business owners give the side-eye to the thought of truly sitting down to look at their marketing analytics. There are a variety of reasons for this – one could be lack of ability to interpret the data. Another could be the lack of easy tools one can use to track and interpret the data, as well as integrate it into the rest of your marketing plan.

Marketing Analytics Help You Make Decisions

The truth is, if you’re not digging into your marketing analytics to help you inform future directions for your business, you’re missing a hotbed of potential for new decisions and creativity in your business. Here are some examples:

Setting up Goals: Google Analytics allows you to set up Goals in your Analytics install. Goals can be used to track the actions users take on your site. For instance, if you want to see how often users who come to a certain page will click through a sequence of pages before filling out a form, Goals can track that. If you’d like to see how many users from Facebook are taking a certain action on your site, Goals can help you. Goals are a great way to set up and take full advantage of marketing analytics based on your funnel.

  1. You can learn more about setting up Goals at: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=1032415 or watching some helpful videos such as
  2. Melinda Samson’s Setting Up and Using Analytics Goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDNkXdOuhBc
  3. John Duffy’s Advanced Use of Analytics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijniFqC3PaM

Refining Your Funnel: Your sales data might actually show you that your funnel needs work. Are you overestimating the amount of time it takes for a client to decide they should use your services? Data will corroborate these kinds of hunches.

Marketing Analytics: Putting it all in the Cloud

Every organization should be watching to see how Marketing Analytics shows customers behaving on and using their site. You should be including data from your Marketing Analytics tools in your lead management system to give you detailed info about your leads. What is your typical lead conversion time? Where do the most highly converted leads come from? Are you truly getting the best ROI out of your marketing?

Lead Liaison is a system that can integrate marketing analytics and lead data to show you if your marketing decisions are helping you make the most out of your leads. It’s time to take a tour and ensure marketing analytics informs your business decisions today.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Analytics: Metrics to Focus On (Part 3)

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B2B Marketing Analytics Metrics to Focus onPart 3 of B2B marketing analytics. In this post we continue the discussion about analyzing your B2B marketing ROI. As we mentioned in Metrics to Focus On (Part 2), the effectiveness of your blog and SEO practices can be measured in several ways. Such is the case for your social media and content marketing practices. In fact, your overall B2B marketing strategy should be analyzed for each marketing practice employed. Establishing your social media and content marketing ROI takes more than counting click-throughs and “likes”. Here are some key metrics to analyze for your social media and content marketing practices.

Social

Connections

Measuring the sales effectiveness of your B2B social campaign should not only be focused on esoteric behavior such as “likes” or followers. While metrics about linking can be an important indicator of brand awareness or favorability, those numbers represent a shallow level of engagement. Which social channels are actually driving sales? Connecting social engagement with revenues is more effective in evaluating social media ROI. Examine the number of conversions resulting from social connections to see how effectively your social messaging is being received.

Engagement (Comment Streams)

As with blogging, articles, and other channels that provide feedback via comments, social conversations should be analyzed. The unstructured conversations that revolve around your brand provide deeper insight into your markets compared to less expository activities like website visits. Social media monitoring should include a thorough analysis of comments received from Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and other inbound channels. Which threads are longest? What topics generate the most threads? Social engagement should be directly linked to revenue generation in order to evaluate social media ROI.

Channel Effectiveness

Not all social channels provide the same impact on your bottom line; the amount and complexity of messaging shared through SM streams varies. Although responses through different channels may be similar (likes, favorites, shares, retweets, etc.), the return from social channels is often variable because of the costs associated with SM activities. For example, a 140-character Twitter post typically will cost less than an artfully crafted image posted on Pinterest. Which channels provide a bigger bang for your buck?

Content

Channel Effectiveness

We’ve all heard that children learn in different ways. The same concept holds true for sales. The effect your messaging has on buying triggers will often vary according to the content channels used. For instance, some B2B buyers may be more sales-ready following a product video while others may be prepared to purchase following a podcast or webinar. Which assets drive website traffic, which ones generate comments, and, most importantly, which assets lead to conversions? Are product videos more effective or do webinars drive more sales? Examine which content channels lead to sales engagements.

Message Effectiveness

Within each content channel, the return from messaging should be analyzed. Which messages lead to extended engagements? Which ones drive leads to other content streams? It’s important to analyze your messages to determine what contributed to the success or failure of a campaign.

Shared Content

Once your content is viewed how often is it shared? Which content is being shared most frequently? Of course, the ultimate goal is to drive sales but content sharing levels are also an important objective of content marketing. Analyzing the frequency of shared content, as well as the duration of each exposure, can reveal how effectively your content appeals to your markets.

Our next post in this series will discuss the metrics you should analyze from your PPC and email practices.

Lead Liaison

5 Keys to Maximizing Demand Generation

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Maximizing Demand GenerationDemand generation requires discipline, patience, and focus. The process of building awareness, creating interest, and provoking action requires a deeper strategy than simply building a marketing campaign. Here are a five key considerations to maximizing demand generation:

Website as hub

Design marketing, sales, fulfillment, and customer service through the prime portal for the company – your website. This can increase efficiency when interacting with your markets and lead to greater demand for your solutions. The site can be used to aggregate contact data from marketing inquiries, product orders, shipments, and feedback forms. By enhancing visitor experience and maximizing the functionality of your site, it becomes the lead touchpoint and will convert customers to advocates.

Your website can be used as a demand generation vehicle in itself through design elements that align with a lead’s decision-making process, build engagement, and progressively reduce objections. In order to be effective at demand generation, it’s also important to ensure that the site appeals to market participants at different points in the buying cycle.

Deploy multiple tools

Effective demand generation requires a basket of tools. Start with an integrated marketing approach that deploys multimedia communication tools to cultivate relationships. Channels such as blogs or Twitter feeds provide effective exchange mechanisms where suspects, prospects, and customers can connect with your company and provide meaningful information that can be used for future marketing campaigns.

There is no shortage of options for database mining, touch point tracking, and contact management. Tools that manage the distribution of information and track lead activity provide more robust market interaction and granular analytics. And with marketing automation tools such as our Lead Management Automation™ platform, companies are able to cultivate lead relationships and measure campaign effectiveness.

Know thy audience

The first step is to analyze your markets. Not just demographics, but psychographics and buying triggers. It’s important to develop a persona or profile for your market(s) that provides marketing and sales with an audience they both can connect with. Marketing campaigns should be persona-centric, letting the audience figure out why they want your solutions.

Turn your marketing strategy from ego-centric to customer-centric. Ask questions, get others to praise your solutions, and make buyers feel good about choosing your solutions. Successful marketers understand who their buyers are by learning about what they do, what they care about, and how they see themselves. Above all, learn how to talk with your market(s) and not at them.

Remember the long term

In a perfect world your B2B sales cycle would be complete within 30 days. Maybe two weeks. But that’s just not the way most purchases happen. With lead times of six months, a year, or even 24 months, demand generation is a long-term proposition. Keep in mind, it can take up to ten impressions just to register in a suspect’s consciousness!

Integrate marketing, sales, and customer experience

Future demand is generated through reputation management. The reputation you earn is formed through the entire process a customer experiences, from first contact to solution delivery to satisfaction follow-up surveys. It is important to blend your marketing strategy, sales execution, fulfillment process, and customer feedback together.

Throughout the lead nurturing process a strategy of integrating marketing and sales touch points is essential to generating demand. Messaging is more effective when combined with a marketing inquiry follow-up call from a sales agent. As a lead moves through the marketing pipeline it often becomes necessary to execute sales calls in order to elevate a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead.

Once a purchase is made, customer satisfaction feedback through forms and phone surveys help to deliver the expectation that the relationship doesn’t end with a sale. And though a sales conversion has taken place, demand generation is still necessary to maintain a long-term customer relationship.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Automation Tips for 2013

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B2B Marketing Automation Tips for 2013B2B marketing automation tips for 2013. Marketing Automation has streamlined the business-to-business marketing process, allowing lead generation, lead scoring, and lead nurturing to be systematically manageable using efficient software solutions. The following are several strategic tips to help gain the most qualified leads using the marketing automation machine.

Develop a Complete Profile for a Typical Buyer

The first and most important tip for using B2B marketing automation software is to establish a detailed and accurate profile of a typical buyer. Every buyer will be different, but there will be similar demographic qualities and behaviors that they will all exhibit. Lead scoring is a vital component of marketing automation and it works best when leads are ranked based on proven characteristics.

Start by assessing current B2B buyers to determine their job title, experience, budget, and the type of business they represent. Give each attribute a score based on relevancy. The next step is determining the normal online activity that signifies a buyer is interested in a product or service. Look at what links they click on and what material they download prior to purchasing. Gather all of the qualities to create a complete profile that can be compared against potential leads to determine their likelihood of conversion.

Ask the Sales Team for Input on Lead Scoring Criteria

Once a profile has been established, bring it to the sales team for their input. The sales team works directly with potential and existing clientele. They know what information and guidance buyers need to become customers. The sales team has a greater insight into leads, which they can share with marketing to create a comprehensive profile that will produce high-quality leads. Remember the philosophy that two heads are better than one. It might be worthwhile to include sales at the beginning of the process rather than the end.

Segment Leads based on Similar Scoring

B2B marketing automation is designed to gather an endless supply of leads based on online activity. The amount of leads marketing automation generates cannot be effectively nurtured and directed on an individual basis. By segmenting leads based on similar scoring attributes, marketers can develop customized approaches that will target large groups.

Develop Lead Nurturing Campaigns directed at each Lead Segment

Now that leads have been divided into segments, the final tip is to create compelling and informative nurturing campaigns geared towards each segment group. Lead nurturing campaigns need to speak directly to the B2B buyer. It should answer all of the lead’s questions and concerns while guiding them towards making a purchase.

The world of B2B marketing has changed drastically with the introduction of automated software. B2B marketing can now be managed using an efficient and systematic program for gathering, scoring, nurturing, and converting leads. In 2013, the focus will be improving this process using a complete buyer profile that includes input from the sales team, segmenting leads into defined groups, and developing personalized campaigns based on what each segment needs to know. B2B marketing automation can be a powerful tool if it is fully utilized.