Lead Liaison

Targeting Leads Using Marketing Automation

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Targeting Leads Using Marketing AutomationTry targeting leads using marketing automation. Thanks to impressive advancements in modern technology anyone can now manage the targeting, timing, and content of their outbound marketing messages in direct response to prospect’s online behavior.  Marketing automation is designed to first qualify each potential lead and then target the leads based on their established online history.  Lead qualification criteria are setup specifically for each business, so every aspect can be customized to find leads that have the greatest potential.

It is quality over quantity when it comes to potential business, so any program that can categorize each lead based on how their interests relate to your company’s main focus is worth its weight in gold.  Marketing automation searches for strong leads that have a higher chance of conversion.

Marketing automation qualifies leads by analyzing prospects online activity, so a potential vendor can better understand needs and buying patterns even before first contact is made.  This way the marketing team can create campaigns designed specifically to appeal to customers they are targeting.  Marketing automation uses website activity profiles to segment your audiences for various campaigns based on their personal interests. For example, if you know someone has registered to run a marathon and you sell high end fitness gear, then you can direct the ad towards how your shoes are superior for long distances.

Every marketer wants to get to know their potential customer’s faster and the best way to tap into their thought process is to analyze the sites they are visiting, the articles they are reading and the products they are purchasing.  Marketing automation does all of that in less time than humanly possible.

Marketing automation also allows you to personalize your lead nurturing efforts to target specific leads by providing them with useful and relevant content.  Imagine sending educational articles geared toward subjects that the potential customer is interested in reading.  Companies can sell their product or service in a more subtle way.

Marketing automation can also create landing pages that adapt to different audience segments.  A company has mere seconds to grab a potential customer’s attention since first impressions are important.   By customizing every interaction to prospect’s unique taste, it will automatically improve your conversion rate.

In today’s high tech world there is no need to randomly spread marketing messages hoping the right people will see it at the right time.  By using marketing automation a company can specifically target each prospect based on their personal interests.

Lead Liaison

Why Is a Lead Management System Important?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Why Is a Lead Management System ImportantAfter your marketing efforts generate a lead, what happens to it? According to recent reports, most marketing leads are never pursued. In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of leads generated through marketing get lost, discarded or ignored. That’s a lot of lost revenue. The most effective way to prevent leads from evaporating is to use a lead management system.

Why is having a lead management system important? There are two answers: 1) you’ve spent money and resources on marketing activities to capture a lead, so it’s important not to waste that effort; and 2) most leads don’t convert on the first impression, which means they need to be nurtured over time.

So, most organizations can benefit from implementing a lead management system. Some of the more important benefits include:

Lead Organization

An lead management system provides an organized method of classifying and scoring leads as they are captured. They can be organized in multiple ways – by geography, media channel, behavioral traits, engagement period and more. Without a lead management system, it can be challenging to coordinate distribution or maintain an appropriate exposure schedule.

Response time

Today’s consumer demands rapid response to an inquiry. Without a lead management system, requests to the most likely buyers might be delayed. If some leads don’t receive a response in one hour to one day, they have likely moved on to other options. Lead management allows a company to schedule automated responses – including requests made during peak hours and off hours – which allow companies to maintain contact with leads while requests are distributed to the appropriate departments.

Lead distribution

For companies with large sales territories, a lead management system provides an organized flow of leads to the sales force, either geographically or chronologically or by product line. This helps optimize the sales staff by distributing leads to appropriate salespeople in a timely fashion. The distribution process helps optimize the sales team’s efficiency – and reduces the risk of calling on dead ends.

Lead tracking   

With a lead management system a company is able to determine a lead’s position in the sales pipeline in real-time. When leads become more engaged they can be scheduled to receive more influential exposures, such as webinar invitations or free white papers. As they progress through marketing impressions, leads can be prioritized for sales engagements. Lead management often promotes accurate sales forecasting, which leads to better operations management.

Build and maintain a relationship

Many buyers are not prepared to purchase after only one or two contacts. A lead management system funnels leads through a process of multiple engagements, so buyers become more familiar with the company or products and more comfortable with the decision to buy. When a lead requests information, responds to free offers, clicks a link or views a page, those actions create a profile that can be analyzed then used as a guide during sales calls.

Lead Liaison

Use Marketing Automation to Avoid Human Error

/0 Comments/in , , /by

To ensure that marketers are able to target potential leads with the right messages at the right time, today’s businesses need a marketing automation software platform that can automatically tailor messaging, as well as the timing of their marketing communications to provide the optimal results.  Automation provides a more accurate and thorough process than someone who may have their own agenda.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

By having an unbiased view without personal preferences, lead data produced will end up being a more realistic reflection of each lead.  Every interaction is being judged by the same criteria and will be evaluated solely on merit rather than human opinion.   Leads that may not strike an individual as having potential could rate as a qualified lead when objectively considered by a marketing automation program.

Marketing automation software can also run email campaigns and track responses, which is normally a very tedious and time consuming task.  If a person was managing your campaigns, they may miss out on opportunities simply due to time crunches or failure to see the potential in a specific lead.   Marketing automation can organize and interpret data faster without the potential for human error.

People may have the tendency to rush through work assignments and they often miss important things without realizing it.  It is only human to make mistakes, but fortunately software programs are guaranteed to do exactly what you instruct them to do.  That way you can be sure that everything it is supposed to look for has been reviewed and that every potentially useful fact has been considered.  An automated system can easily adapt to handle an increase in volume without an increase in cost or time.  If it wasn’t automated, there would be an increase in salary and a higher probability of human error any time work load increased.   Human capital is going to go up when business improves, but not marketing automation. If the company already has a smooth running operation and a clear understanding of their target market, then it only makes sense to put it on autopilot.

Use marketing automation to improve efficiency of your business’s lead generation efforts and to remove costly human error.

Lead Liaison

Maximizing Results Using Marketing Automation

/0 Comments/in , /by

Maximizing Results Using Marketing AutomationIt’s important to understand how to begin maximizing results using marketing automation. Marketing automation is a tool for increasing operational efficiency and for generating revenue. It is about automating the routine and repeatable tasks associated with lead management, lead nurturing, lead qualifying, and creating and maintaining a marketing lead database. If it is done right, then it can help marketing organizations improve their productivity as well as their collaboration with sales organizations. Automation software enables marketing departments to measure what works and determine the impact on revenue. It does this by integrating with your existing sales force automation system, so that it makes marketing a true partner with sales throughout the lead management process.

Making the Most Out of Your Reach

Marketing automation helps you locate and engage prospects everywhere possible. Prospects may touch your blog, community site, social pages or a partner page, but they may not be visiting any site pages that are monitored by your revenue generating software (RGS) system. So simply engage the prospects wherever they are, with interactive, branded, marketing strategies that are embedded wherever possible. You can use partner-owned channels, their web sites, email blasts, community sites or any other avenue that is available. Rapidly create and offer engaging co-branded marketing units to partners, so they can easily incorporate into their campaigns. You can also launch using their channels to mutual prospects. This allows you to capture a short-form lead, right at the point of engagement. This will result in less re-directs, less friction, fewer dropped leads and fewer opportunities missed.

Tracking Prospects

Marketing automation can tell you what web pages a specific prospect has visited. You can use that information to score a lead to determine if the lead is sales-ready. You send out newsletters and nurturing emails to tens of thousands of prospects every month. You can learn more about specific prospects and their needs directly from your email. Marketing automation allows you to get answers in a simple, non-intrusive way, no matter where the prospect engaged with your brand.

Gathering Data

Marketing automation systems, along with real-time IP data providers are delivering more accurate information from prospects for landing pages and it is common to pre-fill form fields with the prospect’s crucial customer information (mapped from the prospect’s IP address). It is now possible is to leverage the same real-time IP data, combined with target account or account relationship information in an RGS system to dynamically change and serve highly targeted, relevant, marketing offers everywhere. Marketers will soon be able to define rules in their RGS system to map or update target accounts into different sales pipeline stages. RGS systems will then interact with external partner systems to make all of this possible.

Get More from Marketing Automation

Marketing automation can increase sales through lead nurturing using multi-touch, multi-offers nurturing campaigns. It also uses outbound marketing to follow up, nurture and qualify inbound sales leads. Use automation-driven campaigns to generate more referral or to up-sell  cross-sell, and resell to existing customers. Marketing automation can increase sales productivity by focusing on qualified leads and reactivate old leads. It also offers useful content to build your site’s credibility. There are so many powerful ways that marketing automation can maximize your results and generate increased revenue.

Lead Liaison

How to Optimize your Marketing Efforts Using Marketing Automation

/0 Comments/in , , /by

How to optimize your marketing efforts using marketing automationOptimize your marketing efforts using marketing automation. In today’s competitive business environment marketing needs to be directed to the right person at the right time in the right manner.  It is no surprise at all that older techniques no longer bring in the results that one would normally anticipate.  Consumers are changing, competition has become global and technology is offering businesses more opportunities to directly engage with potential customers.  Your marketing plan has to keep up with current trends if you expect it to grow to reach its full potential.

Marketing automation has the power to generate revenue in faster and more predictable cycles than traditional marketing campaigns.  In order to obtain optimal responses from your marketing efforts, you will need a proven system that can qualify leads that are worth nurturing and targeting.  Using it will increase your profitability due to the use of marketing strategies that are designed specifically to improve your lead conversion rate.  It works because it starts with scoring and qualifying leads before your sales team’s valuable time is invested and it follows up with a proven plan to nurture those leads into new business.

You can use marketing automation to develop new ways to segment your list of leads by combining demographic information with the behavioral data of potential consumers.  You can create marketing offers targeted to specific buyer profiles or personalities.  Marketing automation will help you identify the areas of your revenue cycle that need the most improvement, so you can prioritize your efforts.

Instead of a manual process that can be quite time-consuming and could lead to human error, marketing automation solutions are programmed to be efficient and accurate.  It will enable you to create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to prospect’s behaviors, life-cycle segments and other predetermined criteria.

Marketing automation is necessary technology to support and optimize your potential for growth.  Use it to handle the many complex and time-consuming aspects of lead scoring, lead nurturing and lead management, so your time can be spent securing leads that have the greatest potential for conversion.  At its essence, marketing automation is the optimization of the entire marketing process, from campaign planning to execution to the analysis of the ROI.

One of the beauties of marketing automation software is that companies can use it in numerous ways to meet the specific goals of their particular business. Companies will employ marketing automation to create, execute, manage, and measure the success of their online marketing programs in order to get optimal results.

Lead Liaison

How Marketing Automation Can Help your Marketing Team Achieve More with Less

/0 Comments/in , /by

How Marketing Automation Can Help your Marketing Team Achieve More with Less

Trying to figure out how marketing automation can help? Before we start off with the details and get into complications, let’s get a clear perspective about what marketing automation is, it’s a process to replace repetitive, ‘manual’ actions which involve excessive human interaction with automated solutions to streamline the marketing processes within an organization. Let’s consider a bottling factory. Before automation, the plant had about 300 workers on their payroll bottling 3000 bottles an hour – after installation of a machine the rate jumped to 100,000 bottles in 30 minutes. Net effect? Increased productivity. What the plant did was to ‘automate’ a clearly manual process with the help of a machine which essentially is an example of what marketing automation is – a naive one perhaps.

The focus in automating your company’s marketing tasks is on moving leads from the top of the marketing funnel through to becoming sales-ready leads at the other end of the funnel. Prospects are scored, based on their activities and then presented drip campaign messaging via email and social channels, thus nurturing them from first interest through to the final nod. Marketing automation may be applied within the company’s infrastructure for many purposes, some of which may be:

• Designing and running email marketing campaigns

• Automation of repetitive, inherently manual business tasks

• Developing an automated campaign to increase visibility and hence sales

• Ideally suited for low-budget SMEs

I should clarify here that marketing automation is not a product category, rather, it’s a lose definition of products that help marketing teams reach out to ever greater numbers, qualify leads and run their marketing campaigns that yield better results.

One primary benefit your marketing team can immediately reap from putting in place an easy-to-use marketing automation service (not software, but a service) will be an increase in the number of quality leads given to your sales staff. The definition of ‘quality’ here is essentially iterative since it would vary from team to team, organization to organization. Lead qualification is something that can definitely increase your sales team’s efficiency and eventually, your sales!

In addition to ‘implementing’ marketing tasks, you can also ‘measure’ your marketing activities. No one does blind marketing anymore, specially with tight budgets. Automation tools can help you track your marketing expense e.g. on online advertising networks like Google Adwords. Measuring your online marketing campaign will equip your marketing team with the right data to tweak their future campaigns for improved penetration and eventually, more conversions.

The world of desktop software for marketing management has largely been replaced with web based services, hosted and served from the ‘Cloud’. These services are sold as subscriptions following the SaaS model. This has clear advantages over software installed on workstations/laptops. First, you don’t need any installation, all you need is a subscription  to the service and you’re good to go.

SaaS has now become a common IT services delivery method for many organizations – either big or small. It is adaptable for many business models such as accounting, collaboration, customer relation and human resource management. One of the key features of SaaS is that companies no longer have to spend resources on IT as they can simply subscribe to SaaS providers. They can provide readymade structures – ready to be integrated into your home grown systems.

Lead Liaison

How Your Sales Department Drives Marketing Strategy

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

How Your Sales Department Drives Marketing Strategy

Learn how your sales department drives marketing strategy. Marketing and sales departments provide essential functions for company success. Marketing creates awareness and sales creates revenue. Each department has a distinct role, but in order to maximize effectiveness the two must operate in tandem.

So how can your sales force support your marketing people?

Through feedback from customers and prospects.

Certainly the marketing department can obtain feedback through focus groups, A/B testing, and other market research techniques. However, the feedback received by your sales force is invaluable, and should be used to shape your marketing strategy.

The marketing strategy primes the sales pump through the delivery of value-based messaging to your markets. The sales department operates under the umbrella of that messaging, but has a closer relationship with your customers and prospects, and has access to the real-world application of your products.

A reciprocal relationship exists that shouldn’t be overlooked. The reciprocal nature of the relationship provides opportunities for the sales department to support the marketing department. After all, without sales there is no product to market.

Your sales group can provide evidence of the success or failure of those messages. But what feedback provided by your sales staff can help the marketing department develop effective campaigns? There are five critical questions for marketing to ask sales that will help build a successful marketing campaign:

5 Questions Marketers Can Ask Sales

1. Is exposure adequate within each territory? – Ideally, the selected channels should reach targets frequently through effective channels in order to support the sales effort. “How did you hear about our company or product?” sheds light on whether the appropriate channels are being used effectively.

2. Do the markets understand the product clearly? – Messaging should express benefits, image, offer, and value. “Which features or benefits of our product are important to you?” can allow your marketers to understand if the messaging is clear.

3. What are the obstacles to closing sales? – Sales people receive valuable feedback from prospects about buying decisions during sales calls. “What can I do to make your buying decision easier?” often exposes overlooked objections that can be categorized for analysis by the marketing department.

4. How is the competition being received by your markets? – Your sales staff has the ability to determine how effective your competitors’ marketing activities have been. “Who else has a product like ours?” provides feedback about the competitive environment your company is working in. The marketing department can use this information to develop messaging that positions your product within the marketplace.

5. Are customers receiving the benefits they’ve been promised? – By checking customer satisfaction, your sales people can share with marketing whether the messaging is appropriate. “Is our product providing the solutions you need?” reveals how the product is being received in the marketplace. Sharing responses with marketing provides real-world feedback that will support or contradict your messaging.

By training your sales staff to generate feedback that will improve marketing, your company can develop messaging that is responsive, timely, and effective.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Begins With Consumer Intelligence

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Marketing Automation Begins With Consumer IntelligenceConsumer intelligence comes first. Walmart pioneer Sam Walton was adequately prepared to open his Bentonville, Arkansas dime store to offer customers low prices on daily needs and even niceties for children. Through his small scope in customer interactivity, he was able to affect an entire community – and do so one customer at a time. In today’s budget conscious eco-friendly society, consumerists are jumping straight for automation of customer marketing, taking lesser amounts of time with each campaign in actually segmenting and learning the human’s decision changes before running their diatribe of marketing materials across social media and email marketing platforms. Before any successful automated marketing solution can transpire, proper intelligence into customer needs, desires and budget constraints needs to be passably performed prior to automation if companies want their overall ROAS (return on ad spend) showing up above the red.

Research Habitual Activities

Since marketing automation relies heavily upon proliferation of consumer purchase habits. Since in order for purchases to happen a customer will research, study and interact with certain questions, automated marketing programs will cease effectiveness if specific polls, studies and lead scoring aren’t performed prior to campaign launches. Demographical data, such as geo-specific customer locality and types of products or services being sought online, needs scored along with social media data to propagate factual information sets to be considered when marketing automation processes commence. Since humans are creatures of habit, spending the time to study these habitual activities will provide information your competition fails to collect due to haste.

Giving Away Reaps Equivocal Returns

Another heavily used and plausibly marketable source of collecting customer intelligence is through giveaways such as eBooks, DVD’s or coupons via email or snail mail. Through carefully asked questions placed in data collection fields, you can understand buying habits, collect useful customer database fillers and even learn frequencies of social media interaction – along with what sects are being connected with the most such as family, groups or games. The initial revenue drop experienced through giveaways can easily recuperate with valuable customer information collected.

View Tracking

Commonly called mystery shopping when done in person, another way one can implement customer intelligence into marketing automation betterment would be tracking views in online storefronts. By seeing what customers are looking at but not buying, product offers can be price-adjusted to placate customers who may show interest yet lack funding for your marketed products or services. Views can be tracked through cookie integration or server-side programming which self-tracks pages visited by IP address.

Customer Intelligence Is Obligatory

Marketing automation, undoubtedly, has won the aggressive marketing company and small business over with easy methodologies of handling multiple segments and niches. In order to ameliorate the human error factor, performing customer intelligence prior to sequestering marketing campaigns is an imminent marketing gorilla which must be adamantly tamed through more exacting data collection, scoring and redirection efforts. Without intelligible customer data practices, you’ll begin automating for naught. Spend the quality time in giving away samplings, asking direct questions and viewing your targeted niche from a distance to substantiate, then propagate, more effective marketing automation efforts altogether.

Lead Liaison

Five Factors to Consider before Choosing Marketing Automation Software

/0 Comments/in , /by

Five Factors to Consider before Choosing Marketing Automation SoftwareThere are five factors to consider before choosing marketing automation software. Those five factors are your marketing department’s capabilities, your marketing needs, your software requirements, transition time and budget.

Your Marketing Department’s Capabilities

This is by far one of the most important factors to consider in choosing marketing automation software. Before actually making a purchase, assess your business’ marketing department. Is your marketing team tech savvy? Are they able to use new software with comfort? If they are used to using complex software, will simpler software make them feel like work is too mundane? Since there are so many choices of marketing automation software out there, an honest assessment of your marketing department significantly narrow down the choices.

What Are Your Marketing Needs?

Lead management or lead acquisition? Fully integrated software to simple marketing software? Discuss your marketing needs in a meeting with your marketing department during the assessment. Compile a list of these needs to find the marketing automation software that’s right for you.

What are Your Software Requirements?

What exactly is it that you need the software to provide? What do you expect out of it? What results are you looking for? These are questions you should be asking yourself in order to narrow down the choices for the best marketing automation software.

Key features to analyze include:

● Landing page management
● Customer segmentation
● Web site activity tracking
● Email distributions
● Real-time notifications
● Form tools
● Survey tools

There are many more features offered by marketing automation software providers, these are just some of the more important features to consider.

Transition Time

Transitioning from your current method of lead management may take some time. Some businesses that use marketing agencies assume that obtaining this software will totally replace all of what the agency does immediately. This is not true. Marketing automation software like any other software has a learning curve, so it will take some time to actually gain full benefit from it.

Budget

How much can your company afford to spend on marketing automation software? Keep in mind that you will need to factor in the cost of the software as well as the cost for training and support. Once you decide what your company needs the software for, make an assessment of how much you can spend on it.

Lead Liaison

Understanding the Lead Management Process

/0 Comments/in , /by

Understanding the Lead Management ProcessA lead is any person, organization or company that could become interested in your products who has not yet made a commitment to buy. Regardless of where you get your leads (trade show, purchased leads, online lead generation, or referrals), you will need a systematic way to receive and evaluate your leads. Your methodology should be consistent and efficiently formatted to expedite entry into your database and distribute it to your sales force. It is important to nurture your contacts more proactively and qualify leads faster, especially if you want to get ahead of your competitors.

The goal of an effective lead management process is to ensure that all sales opportunities are taken advantage of without dropping any qualified leads through cracks in the sales funnel. It will also improve the odds of turning potential leads into new customers. A good lead management process will plan and execute strategic campaigns and effectively measure your marketing ROI.

Did you know that more than half of your leads are not ready to buy after their first experience on your website? If you don’t sell them on your business in the first visit, you may not get them back again. You need to put a lot of work into attracting leads, but how you manage them after the conversion is what will determine if it was time well spent.

In business, time is money! Proper lead management will make your sales team more efficient and effective. Your sales force is paid to make sales and their time needs to be used wisely. It is important to ensure that your sales team is only working on the most qualified leads. Lead management will help you filter out the unqualified leads, so you better understand the buying cycle of those leads with the highest potential.

An effective lead management process helps target more specific customers, which is a more cost-efficient way to generate increased revenue. Inbound marketers put out a lot of new and relevant content on a regular basis. The secret to success comes from knowing exactly which content has attracted someone’s interest. Lead management enables you to identify which content and channels brought in your best, most qualified leads so you can focus your marketing activities and time on those.

A strong lead management system will also create a better experience for your prospects and leads. In a lead management system, content delivered to leads is targeted and tailored to their personal interests. In addition, because lead management documents the full history of their interactions with your company, your leads won’t have to spend as much time educating your sales team about their interests. Sales and marketing are already aligned and have an inside advantage into the customer. Lead management is more than just a software program. It is the secret to converting more sales leads into revenue.