Ryan Schefke

How to Plan for a Successful Automation Strategy

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How to plan for marketing automation with a “TOPS” approach? Team, Objectives, Personas, Scenarios

Planning a successful automation strategy shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. It should be methodically planned out and executed only after your plan is created. But how do you start a plan? We came up with an easy acronym to help you. Whether your automation strategy is for sales automation, marketing automation, event automation, or all of the above, all strategies should cover a basic approach (at a minimum). We call this approach the TOPS strategy. If done right, you’ll find yourself at the top.

TOPS stands for Team, Objectives, Personas, and Scenarios. It’s an easy way to remember how to assemble a great automation strategy. Let’s cover each of these points in more detail, starting with Team. Having a great team is important and probably goes without saying. The real point is that you shouldn’t go at it alone. Use other members of your organization to put together your version of a dream team. Your team could include should include at least two of the following: data scientist, marketing person, salesperson, and content creator. Gather your team and let them know you’re trying to plan a successful automation strategy.

Next, identify your objectives. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. With your team in the room, whiteboard a mind map that identifies your end goals. Are you trying to convert people (collect their information), drive demonstrations of your product, increase awareness, educate, etc. You might want to start with a bunch of different objectives, but keep it simple. I’ve always learned there’s only one way to eat an elephant – and that’s one bite at a time. Pick your one objective, run with it, then rinse and repeat using your automation strategy.

The “P” in TOPS stands for persona. A persona is the type of person you are targeting. This could be an ideal buyer, partner, etc. Come up with criteria for who you’re trying to target/sell to with your strategy. For example, with our business, we commonly target marketing leadership. So the role is marketing, with titles containing “Chief” or “VP”. List out all your criteria with your team. Once you’ve identified the persona, put yourself in their shoes. Empathize a bit. If you were them, what messaging and/or communication would interest you? It’s important not to think like a vendor, but think like a prospect.

Finally, run through different scenarios. Come up with messaging around each scenario. For example, if you were to execute your automation strategy what would trigger it and what would you say to your targeted persona? Let’s begin with a simple one. When someone submits a contact us form, what information do you want to collect on them? Who do you want the lead to go to using what criteria? What do you want to respond to the lead with? How do you want to nurture the lead (what will you say to them and for how long?). It’s not uncommon to have 10s of different scenarios you’ll go through. Start with one (remember that elephant), and then tackle the next one.

In summary, remember your TOPS strategy when implementing automation to help scale your sales and marketing. Having a team, objective, persona, and scenario are the four basic steps to go through for any successful automation strategy. Alright, let’s get going. We look forward to seeing you on TOP(S)!

Lead Liaison Press Release
Lead Liaison

Sales and Marketing Automation Solutions Provider Lead Liaison Celebrates Major Milestone

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Dallas, TX – Lead Liaison officially opened for business in November 2013 with a clear vision: to help companies drive revenue by scaling sales and marketing. They made a splash with the introduction of a website visitor tracking solution. A few short months later, a fully integrated marketing automation solution was launched. Over the years, Lead Liaison has grown exponentially with last month marking five years in the industry.

Founder, Ryan Schefke, shares why he acted on his vision to create sales and marketing solutions that drive revenue. “I spent 15 years working for organizations, from large to small, that constantly had sales and marketing teams operating in silos. Most of my time was spent in the sales organization. I always wanted more leads, better quality leads, and software that could help me and my team do our jobs better.”

“I couldn’t handle the constant differences between sales and marketing teams and had to take action,” Schefke continues. “We first created a website visitor tracking solution because it’s an essential component that all businesses should have to support their sales and marketing. It’s the only way to close the loop on inbound and outbound activities as it ties it all together. We’ve evolved to be much more than that. When I reflect back over these five years on our progress, I’m blown away by the breadth of our portfolio and the number of businesses that have sought out our help to take them to the next level. We’re helping marketing teams, sales teams, and more importantly, we are helping both of them work better together – that’s the ultimate goal.”

From the beginning, Lead Liaison has focused on building a suite of solutions for marketing and sales teams. Last year they launched an event lead management solution, GoExhibit!™, which integrates seamlessly with almost any CRM or marketing automation platform – including their own marketing automation platform called Lead Management Automation (LMA)™ and their own CRM, aptly named OneFocus™. They’ve taken the market by storm, quickly becoming a leader in event lead management.

“Our focus on events started in October 2017 with our lead capture app, GoCapture!™. We’ve gone on to develop an end-to-end Event Lead Management (ELM) solution called GoExhibit!™, which is powered by our original app,” says Sam Darrell, VP Product Management at Lead Liaison. “We already provide incredible value to sales and marketing teams. Our enterprise customers were asking us for a solution that could replace antiquated badge scanners and poor quality OCR apps, while also integrating instantly with all other marketing and sales efforts.”

Also in recent months, Lead Liaison enabled advanced security features to support evolving online privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Their Sales Enablement solution debuted in December 2017.

Lead Liaison has not wavered in their core values of simplicity, personalized and intimate support, and flexibility. Clients continue to benefit from this clear focus, and that is represented in top ratings on esteemed software review sites such as Capterra and G2 Crowd. The company is forecasting 2018 revenue growth to be double that of 2017, another indicator of stability and growth for a company that plans to be a force in the sales and marketing automation industry for years to come.

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s innovative solutions, visit leadliaison.com.   

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

event lead management
Lead Liaison

Creative Uses for Lead Capture

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Download the PDF here!

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Businesses can use Lead Liaison’s GoExhibit!™ in many ways – it’s not just for trade shows! GoExhibit!™ is an event lead management solution, powered by a slick mobile app, aptly named GoCapture!™. If you’re using an event lead management solution like ours, this article will help you explore the other ways you can use the system and/or mobile app to capture leads. We’ve rounded up seven creative uses for event lead capture using our system.

Everyday Lead Capture

Let’s say you are a salesperson running into a meeting with a client at their office. In the elevator on the way up to your appointment, you meet someone that might benefit from your service or solution. You grab their business card and hope to A) not lose it, and B) remember to enter the information into your CRM later. Or, you could open GoCapture!™ on your mobile device, quickly take a picture of the business card, have it automatically transcribed, and sync it with your CRM. Problem solved!

Corporate Event

Does your company host, or attend, corporate events or conferences? Use the power of GoExhibit!™ to collect lead information in a streamlined, unobtrusive way. The system also includes options to create your own custom badges with QR codes. A customized registration and check-in portal can be used at the front door to help manage attendance.

Trade Shows

Exhibiting at an industry trade show? Forget those antiquated badge scanners and opt for end-to-end event lead management. Use GoExhibit!™ to announce your attendance at the event via marketing emails, social media, and more. Go a step further and use complementary marketing services that integrate with GoExhibit!™ to book demos/meetings at the trade show. Then, have your team use the GoCapture!™ app at the trade show to collect lead information via badge scan, business card transcription, attendee list search, or manual form fill.

Lead Kiosks

Speaking of trade shows, another way to encourage excitement with potential prospects about your service or solution is to set up individual kiosks at your booth that allows visitors to fill out their information if they are interested.

Experiential Marketing

Instead of a table, a sign, and a person – create an experience at your booth. Your experience should engage the prospect in some way. Consider these 20 examples of experiential marketing to get your creative juices flowing. Be smart about setting up the experience though. When people engage, capture their information. GoCapture!™ can be configured to display custom content, such as videos, text, maps, and more to perfectly pair with your experiential display.

Product Showcase

Consider setting up your booth with individual solution areas. Each area could showcase specific solutions. Have each solution on display with a tablet sitting next to it. The tablet could run a purpose-built lead capture form that has an explainer video embedded into it. This approach helps you tailor the experience to specific solutions and results in higher lead conversion rates.

Sales Qualification

One aspect of GoExhibit!™ is lead qualification. Lead Liaison uses a system of scoring and grading to qualify leads. Have your sales team use GoCapture!™ as the primary method to get new leads into your system. Set up automated processes around each new lead that qualifies them. For example, give all CMOs captured with GoCapture!™ a grade increase from C (default you might set) to B. And, if the person is located in the USA then increase their grade another level, to A. On the backend, administrators can filter out ideal buyers captured anywhere, anytime, by your sales force using GoCapture!™.

Check-In System

If you host your own marketing events, then using GoExhibit!™ should be a no-brainer. With the ability to create custom badges ahead of time or on the fly, sign people in at the front desk, or register new attendees, your team can streamline the check-in process across all of your events. Leads are readily available after the event, in GoExhibit!™, for export or further processing. Statistics on attendance and return on investment (ROI) for your event is visible in the GoExhibit!™ dashboard.

 

To learn more about GoExhibit!™, request a free, customized demonstration here.

Lead Liaison

9 Trade Show Booth Design Ideas to Delight Visitors [Infographic]

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Social media may have transformed the way that brands and customers engage with one another, but trade shows persist as a cornerstone of face-to-face marketing. And precisely because so much brand interaction has been digitalized, the potential for trade shows to create a meaningful and memorable brand experience has only become greater. 

One of the greatest benefits of participating in trade shows is that attendees, simply by virtue of deciding to be there, are incredibly receptive to your message. A striking design is arguably the most important factor when it comes to attracting these open-minded, warm leads into your booth.

But standing out in a crowd of competitors is no easy task. While more traditional, tried-and-true booth design schemes that consist of a graphic backdrop, spandex table covers, and a few banner stands may be the best option for traditionally conservative industries, the trends in trade show booth design have in recent years taken a turn for the stunning and creative. Trade show attendees are increasingly expecting more from the exhibits they visit, and a well-designed booth space plays a decisive role in all of these expectations.

Effective trade show booth design ideas serve to do a lot more than just look good. They are the backdrop against which an entire brand experience can unfold. From the first encounter, to interacting with your staff, to leaving your booth with a goodie bag, your trade show booth design can either enhance or detract from a visitor’s experience every step of the way. Engineering your exhibit to be both attractive and functional, both unique and on-brand, may be the single most important project you undertake to make your brand’s next trade show appearance worthwhile.

Looking for some trade show booth design ideas? The following graphic offers nine creative trade show booth design ideas that are eye-catching, versatile, and sure to impress:

Author Bio:

Joseph Robison is the Marketing Manager at Coastal Creative, a large format printing company based in San Diego that specializes in designing stunning trade show booths and branded spaces. He is also the founder of Green Flag Digital, an SEO and digital marketing consultancy.

Lead Liaison

5 Creative Ways to Generate Leads You’ve Probably Never Tried Before

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When your company needs to generate leads, your goals should be to find creative methods that allow you to communicate and network better with other businesses as well as untapped customers and, simultaneously, establish yourself and your company as an authority figure. You need to cut through the noise and get in front of people. When you show up, you need to be remarkable so that people see you as an expert and want to work with you. Here is a look at five ways to generate leads by getting in front of your prospects, where they are. 

1. Slack Channels

Slack channels are tight-knit communities and, typically, you need an invitation to join them. However, once you get access to a channel, you can begin one-to-one communication with channel members or send broadcast messages to everyone. Slack channels are usually active, so you’re able to get in front of people passionate about a specific topic. By joining Slack channels, you can grow your brand within that community, and then help the other people in exchange. By helping others consistently, you can grow your status and authority within the group. Remember to bring value always and don’t spam.

2. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is an effective way to improve your company’s reach. Websites require content to attract new visitors and nurture their existing audience. When you provide blog posts for other sites, you gain exposure, and they benefit as well because they get to publish great content. Guest blogging positions you as an authority figure because a website is endorsing your work by publishing it. Guest blogging also helps you build backlinks, enhance your search placement and drive relevant traffic to your site.

3. Answering Quora Questions

Quora is a wonderful way for you to answer important questions relevant to your industry and build your credibility. Make no mistake that answering Quora questions has a similar effect to that of guest blogging. Quora is an adult version of Yahoo Answers where people are actively asking for help and looking for specific answers. At the time of this writing, the website recently reached 100 million monthly unique visitors. Quora allows people to answer questions and establish themselves as an authority figure.

Answer questions that come from members of your community and industry. Doing so will help you target users who fit the profile of your ideal customer. When you use this website, you can create a company profile and then answer the questions that are related not just to your company but your industry as well. You can handle reputation management by searching for questions that people are asking related to whatever service or products you provide and then answer those questions. You can even set it up so that each member of your team creates a unique profile and team members can answer questions in conjunction with one another based on different levels of expertise.

4. Syndicate Your Content

Syndicating your content gets more mileage out of a regular blog. There are so many online platforms that have many visitors, and they often need quality content. Blogs, community websites, social media sites, forums and question-and-answer sites are an ideal solution. Syndicating content is a terrific way to enhance your lead generation because it amplifies the reach of your content, allowing you to tap into an audience you might not have otherwise been able to access. All of this optimizes your returns and puts your content in front of a demographic with a high potential for sales.

You aren’t just restricted to publishing your content to your immediate audience of current customers. When you put effort into making high-quality content, you should be rewarded by expanding your reach, so prospects get to see what it is you offer. Sharing your content through syndication also improves search engine ranking with enhanced credibility and relevant backlinks. This puts you in a place of authority as a leader in your industry, which generates more traffic and potentially more qualified leads.

With content syndication, you can collaborate with another company to co-market your promotional efforts where you both promote a single piece of content. You can also swap content with another brand where you both agree to promote one another’s content on your respective social media channels.

5. Public Speaking

Public speaking is a superb way to gain a captive audience. In today’s world, as things become increasingly more internet-based, people are trusting the face-to-face selling method much more. Known as the podium effect, being a public speaker will position you as an expert in the industry, which is what each of these methods helps to do. Focus when you start at small, intimate events. This will help you figure out what your audience wants to hear and help you fine-tune your selling methods. The right strategy is important in setting your business up. You can begin at small events with just 10 people at a time put on personal company events where you make an offer at the end for your attendees. When you start out, you want to create your own events so you can craft your signature talk and gain experience with your audience. Libraries or community centers make ideal places for these local events. You can book area venues and market it to local residents. Once you become more comfortable with it, you can host bigger events. Just remember that, at the end of each public speaking event, you need to give your attendees something like a free consultation or the opportunity to try a product for free. Give them an offer they can’t refuse. On the topic of syndication, if you know other people are having events, and they are looking for speakers like at expositions, conferences or trade shows, offer yourself as a speaker. Even if it’s just a few minutes, this could be a low-cost opportunity with a lot of return.

Overall, the purpose for each of these five creative methods is to allow you a way to generate leads by establishing yourself as an authority figure. You want to expand your reach and make sure that people see you as a leader in your industry — someone they can trust to whom they can turn for answers.

To learn how to properly manage those leads, once you have them, contact us here.

Bio

Morgan Williams is a Sales Professional and B2B Lead Gen Consultant based in Chicago, IL  For a case study on how to use automated cold email marketing to spend $166.70 and make $3,435.30 in profit (2,061% ROI – email templates included), head over to his blog.

Lead Liaison

40 Event Marketing Statistics

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Business is changing at the speed of light. As marketers, it seems like every time we feel like we’ve mastered a new strategy, a new one emerges. Advances in modern technology drive marketing organizations at a fast pace. But, just because more and more people are adopting new technology, it doesn’t mean that one-to-one contact is gone. In fact, most of the technology that we create is intended to give businesses the opportunity to automate administrative tasks to make room for more person-to-person contact.

Marketing events are a great way to engage in one-to-one contact. Multi-day conferences, trade shows, conventions, seminars, thought-leadership workshops…these are all great examples of event marketing. They give businesses the chance to interact with consumers who are already 10 steps closer to purchasing, just by the simple fact that they are at the event in the first place.

Perhaps you are trying to decide if your business should invest in event marketing. Maybe you have already started exhibiting at events and you just want to learn more about them. Or perhaps you are a seasoned exhibitor who’s just looking for a few good stats. Either way, you are in luck! We have rounded up 40 important statistics that help shed light on event marketing for business-to-business (B2B) companies.

Why do Companies Invest in Event Marketing?

  • 63% of marketers use tradeshows as a form of lead generation (source)
  • 79% of US marketers actually generate sales using event marketing (source)
  • 81% оf trаdе ѕhоw attendees hаvе buуіng аuthоrіtу (source)
  • 77% of marketers use experiential marketing as a vital part of a brand’s advertising strategies (source)
  • 52% of business leaders say event marketing drives more ROI than any other marketing channel (source)
  • 48% of event attendees say face-to-face interactions are more valuable today than two years ago (source)
  • It takes an average of 4.5 calls to close a sale without an exhibition lead, and only 3.5 sales calls to close a sale with a lead from an exhibition (source)
  • 73% of B2B marketers say events are better than other tactics for customer engagement (source)
  • The three most commonly used B2B lead generation strategies are email marketing (78%), event marketing (73%), and content marketing (67%) (source)

Strategies

Businesses around the world are investing in marketing events. Here’s how those strategies are affecting budgets and goals.

  • Annually, companies spend about $24 billion on exhibiting at events (source)
  • The top three event marketing goals are to increase sales (83%), increase brand awareness (73%), and to enhance product knowledge (53%) (source)
  • Events occupy 14% of budgets, which is the largest share of B2B marketers’ budgets. (source)
  • B2B companies spend 29% of their marketing budgets on events, on average, versus 19% for B2C companies (source)
  • 91% of event professionals stated that increasing engagement at their events was an important priority for their organization (source)

Event Lead Management

Managing the leads from your event is only part of a robust event lead management strategy. An event lead management solution should not only assist you in capturing your lead, but also in properly managing the data, enabling you to follow up quickly, and helping you track ROI.

  • 17% of respondents still use spreadsheets to store information on their leads. (source)
  • Just 6% of marketers believe their company converts trade show leads, contacts and conversations into customer business extremely well, although 27% feel they do so moderately well, and another 41% feel they’re getting better (source)
  • 14% of marketers plan to integrate marketing automation with their events and only 7% currently do (source)
  • 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first (source)
  • The top benefits for event technology adopters are: improved ability to track and measure their events (40%), increased process productivity (31%), and a better attendee experience (30%) (source)
  • 76% of marketers say their event and experiential marketing initiatives are integrated with their other marketing campaigns (source)
  • 22% of brands do not have a way of measuring their events (source)
  • 91% of event planners say that adopting a mobile event app has provided a positive ROI (source)
  • The top 5 metrics marketers feel are best for quantifying event value are: new referrals and introductions; quality and quantity of leads; deal closure; value of sales; and upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Yet, only 34% use those 5 metrics to assess trade show and event ROI (source)

Looking into the Future

  • The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics stated conventions and events are expected to expand by 44% from 2010 to 2020 (source)
  • 40% of marketers say they’ll increase spending on hosted events in the year ahead (source)
  • Companies are spending on event marketing at a growing rate, with 54% boosting their event activity over the past three years, and only 17% cutting back (source)
  • 43% of marketers believe the value of face-to-face interactions will continue to increase over the next 2 years (source)
  • 85% of executives say the number of exhibitions will stay the same or increase over the next several years (source)
  • 75% of marketers believe that in the upcoming years, live events will become increasingly important to their organization’s success (source)

Conclusion

You get the picture, right? Event marketing holds a significant position in the future of growing businesses. It’s never too early to start mapping out your strategy – whether you are a seasoned event marketer, or you plan on trying it out for the first time. Below is an infographic that summarizes all of these important stats. 

Luckily, we have many resources to help companies make the most out of their marketing events. Here are a few we think you might like:

And, to learn more about our enterprise-level Event Lead Management solution, click here.

Ryan Schefke

Creative Strategies for Your Next Trade Show or Marketing Event

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Looking for creative strategies to use at your next trade show or marketing event? Look no further! We’ve gathered lots of ideas that can help you before, during, and after an event.

Before an Event

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Planning for an event is the most important part of your process. If you don’t get the right tools in place, you’re bound to make mistakes.

  • Do your research and see what your biggest competitors’ booths look like. Track competitors in your CRM so that you know if any competitors stopped by your booth.
  • Invest in a great display, so that prospects will want to invest in you. If your display looks pathetic, so will your company.
  • Send 1:1 emails and offline marketing pieces, such as direct mail, ahead of time offering people a chance to schedule a meeting at your booth.
  • Send a marketing email (or a series of emails) announcing your presence at the event and what you’ll be showcasing. Offer educational content in these emails to establish yourself as a thought leader at the event.
  • Send a reminder email (or text, if possible) to stop by your booth.
  • Engage with conference attendees prior to the event – ask for attendees to vote on what swag they’d like best. This is a great excuse to reach out to attendees and an easy way to get them to engage. Lists of registered attendees can usually be found by contacting the event manager.
  • Speaking of swag, reconsider your definition of swag. A few ideas are: headphones, socks, or a free t-shirt with a offer for a free beer if they are seen wearing it to networking parties after the convention.
  • Post to all of your social media accounts. Choose a different image or message for each platform to keep readers’ attentions and reduce redundancy.
  • Consider how you’re going to capture leads at the event (badge scan, business card transcription, upload registrants, manual form fill, etc.). Some event lead management solutions offer all of these!
  • Do all of these things in your marketing automation platform to track key engagement prior to the event. Find one that does it all.
  • Extra Tip: Ensure consistent lead follow up by setting up an automated process to segment, tag, distribute, and follow up with those leads. Create a nurture campaign in your marketing automation platform to distribute leads, assign tasks call tasks, follow up with educational content, and more. (LL)

During an Event

You already believe in your product or solution. Now, it’s time to show off! Make sure you’re the star of the show.

  • Keep your display clutter-free. Don’t distract visitors. Clean lines and a simple, sleek design allows your message (and the experience) to play center role.
  • Don’t list features on your banners. Keep your message simple. Answer “How will your product make their lives easier? What makes you better than your competitor? What problem does your product solve?”
  • Host a wireless charging station at your booth with a fun activity, or snack, for people waiting.
  • Place devices in front of your booth and run them as a kiosk for leads to self-service (watch videos, submit an inquiry to learn more).
  • Use an event lead capture app, such as Lead Liaison’s GoCapture!™, for all representatives to use in place of outdated badge scanners. (LL)

After an Event

Evaluate & measure ROI. This is key to growth and future success.

  • Evaluate your process. What worked? What didn’t? Did your team run into any issues? Did your technology support your properly?
  • Measure ROI of your event using Cost Per Prospect (CPP), Revenue Generated, and overall ROI metrics. Some event lead management solutions offer an Events Dashboard to compile and report these key metrics, which makes things really easy.

Hopefully you picked up some great tips today. We’ve included this infographic below for you to download and/or share with your colleagues. And, if you’re interested in our home-grown event lead management solution, request a free demo here.

Lead Liaison Press Release
Lead Liaison

Broadleaf Commerce Chooses Lead Liaison to Execute Sales & Marketing Strategy

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Dallas, TX – Broadleaf Commerce provides robust commerce solutions to support enterprise retail brands. They’ve recently been named in Inc. 5000’s List of Fastest-Growing Companies in America for the second year in a row. Their brand is rising to the top, and that’s no accident. The company practices effective and efficient strategies, both internally and externally, in order to compete.

Broadleaf has experience with marketing automation solutions outside of Lead Liaison. Prior to using Lead Liaison’s solutions, they used a competitor for email campaigns, website tracking, and social media. They started looking for an alternative solution that would enable them to do their wholistic prospecting and marketing automation within a single platform. They needed a solution that better aligned their sales and marketing team, with automation tools and the ability to personalize content.

After much research and consideration, Broadleaf Commerce chose Lead Liaison to replace their current marketing automation solution. In the video testimonial released this week, Broadleaf Commerce’s Chief Operating Officer, Brad Buhl, and his team speak to the reasoning behind that decision.

“Lead Liaison helps us have a single platform to look at visitor views into the website and their interaction with us, on a more passive basis,” says Buhl. “We’ve also gone through Sales Enablement with them, so now all of our emails are synced up with Lead Liaison from our sales team. We are able to get a full picture of when a customer comes in the door, what they click on, what they are interested in, and how we personally communicate with them.”

Lead Liaison’s Sales Enablement is one of two cutting-edge solutions the software provider brought to the table over the last year – the other being their innovative event lead management solution. Sales Enablement provides a suite of sales solutions designed to make salespeople’s lives easier.  It provides two-way email sync so reps never have to use Bcc addresses to get content into their CRM, a sales automation functionality called Rhythms to help reps book more meetings, and even more customization options.

From a sales velocity perspective, Lead Liaison’s solutions allow Broadleaf to see when their team starts working with a customer, how long it takes to close and what the steps are to get them closer to close. What’s more, they can zoom out even further and look at the leading indicators for how a lead originated, to getting to the point where the customer reaches out.

“When it comes to content creation and building emails,” says Cassandra Gaston, Marketing Specialist at Broadleaf Commerce, “I’m able to both use the editorial mode but also edit in HTML, which means that I can get as granular as I want to. When it comes to picking the right messaging for a campaign, you need to be able to get that granular.”

Broadleaf Commerce’s account executives also use Lead Liaison’s CRM and Sales Enablement functionality for organization and outreach purposes. Their marketing team uses Lead Liaison’s marketing automation and website visitor tracking solutions to create and distribute relevant and educational content, thus creating meaningful exchanges that build brand awareness. Their leadership team utilizes the reporting and analytics that come standard in Lead Liaison’s software.

“We have five people on our business development team,” say Nick Staargaard, Account Executive at Broadleaf Commerce. “We are competing against organizations that have thousands. By being able to use Lead Liaison in an effective manner, it allows us to compete with those bigger companies and really brings us to the forefront of that competition where we are being recognized by bigger companies now.”

The collaboration between departments gives Broadleaf a lot of insight into their prospects and the kind of information they should be leading with when they make contact.

“In order to do a lot, you have to spend a lot,” says Buhl. “But with Lead Liaison, you can do a lot without having to spend a lot. That’s not only in the price of the software, but it’s in the time that you have to consume in order to get there.”

This video testimonial, plus many more, are available here.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

Ryan Schefke

Infographic: Post-Event Lead Nurturing Strategy

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Want the executive summary? Download the infographic here.

To access our Event Lead Management Kit, which includes this resource, click here. 

Marketing events can be a very costly effort. There’s the booth rental, the booth design/display, travel and expenses for your employees working the booth. Service costs like electricity, cleaning, or wifi can sneak up on you. Badge scanners are expensive (have you looked into other options?).

I think you get my drift: marketing events cost a lot of money. Return on investment (ROI) is paramount. Once your team has captured hot leads at an event, you should be prepared to follow up with those leads quickly and effectively. There’s no time to waste – don’t let your competitors beat you to the punch.

We are often asked for examples of how a business can (and should) nurture leads post-event. Below is an infographic that examines a tried-and-true post-event lead nurturing strategy. 

Technology to Support Lead Nurturing Strategy

The first step in determining your post-event lead nurturing strategy is to make sure you have the technology in place to automate it. Don’t count on these things being done manually – it’s just not realistic. Companies are busier than ever these days, usually with multiple people wearing multiple hats – stretched thin. There’s also tons of room for distraction at (and after) marketing events. The more administrative tasks you can automate, the better. Let your employees spend their time building relationships and making connections.

There are lots of options out there, but we recommend a wholistic approach. Look for technology that works together, so you don’t have to spend time exporting and importing. For example, our event lead management solution allows businesses to create and customize lead capture forms, prepare intelligent post-event workflows, quickly capture leads onsite, instantly sync with a CRM, and then place them into those previously mentioned workflows. No additional technology is needed.

Of course, we love our solutions. But, there are lots of options out there! Just make sure you have something in place to be able to effectively execute your plan.

Lead Management Strategy – Instant Tasks

Create a list of all the actions you want to take once you’ve captured the lead’s information, and separate them into groups based on the time of the outreach. Here are a few examples of what you might want to do instantly:

  • Tag the Prospect with the Event Name
  • Add the Prospect to the Event Leads list
  • Assign a grade or score to the Prospect based on your ideal buyer criteria
  • Distribute the lead (Prospect) – based on round-robin, geography, or product interest
  • Sync the Prospect Record with your CRM

Side Note – Lead Scoring vs. Lead Grading

Let’s talk more about lead score versus lead grade. You may want your reps to call a Prospect if their score is high and their grade is high. Or maybe just one or the other. To make that determiniation, you should know the differences. 

Lead scoring is a way to measure engagement, and it happens over time. Even before your event, a Prospect may have already been to your website, scanning a few of your webpages, which would increase their score. It will continue to increase as they continue to interact with your website or your content.

On the other hand, grading is a way to measure how well a Prospect matches your ideal buyer criteria. Your reps can qualify and assign a grade onsite at the event. With our event lead management solution, reps can collect lead data quickly and either grade them in the moment, or they can go back later and grade them when they have a lull in booth traffic.

Lead Management Strategy – Starting Your Nuture

Once those organizational actions have been completed (usually within seconds), what do you want to do next? Let me answer that for you…you want to follow up. Insidesales.com conducted a study that found 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. That means that the timing of your follow up matters.

If at all possible, reach out to your leads within an hour of them visiting your booth. A great example of this kind of outreach is with a text message. If you’re capturing a lead’s mobile phone number, use your marketing automation platform to send a text message saying, “Hi Jane, it’s Bob. Thanks for stopping by our booth! We’ll be in touch soon – but in the meantime, here’s my number if you have any questions…” That is sure to make your company stand out.

24 Hours Later

Send an email. Even though you already sent a text message, send an email 24 hours later. Give your Prospect time to filter through messages from other booths, but not enough time that they forget who you are. Remind them of a product feature that sets you apart from other exhibitors at the trade show.

Pivot

At this point in the game, you may want to consider customizing your lead nurturing strategy based on the previously mentioned lead score and/or grade (depending on what matter most to your business) and how the Prospect interacts with your outreach or content. Your marketing automation platform should have the capability of customizing the workflow using this kind of criteria. If the lead score is high, assign a task to a rep to make a call. If it’s low, continue to nurture via email.

Don’t disqualify leads with a lower score or grade. They may be hesitant because they are taking this decision more seriously. Offer a piece of educational content, like an infographic or a case study. Try to be their source of education in the industry, so they begin to see your company as a thought leader.

If they download the content, you may want to pivot further based on that. If they downloaded it, offer another link to an informative blog post with a powerful call-to-action (CTA). Make the decision to reach out to you easy.

If they didn’t download the content, perhaps they need the same information as the lead above, but rather they need it summarized within the email itself to reduce effort. Include your CTA within the email itself, to make it even easier.

In Summary

Continue nurturing your Prospects for several weeks until they are ready to buy, or place them into your newsletter list so that you can continue your educational content without being too pushy.

It’s all about creating a sense of authority and innovation within your industry. Those that actively attend trade shows, conferences, or other marketing events are not passive. They are engaged, and their presence at an event will make them hyper-aware of you and your competitors.

If you decide to exhibit at an event, be prepared to make it count. Here’s an infographic that you can save for when the time comes. And, good luck!  

Lead Liaison Press Release
Lead Liaison

Texas General Contractor Chooses Lead Liaison to Support and Simplify Marketing

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Dallas, TX – Bartlett Cocke General Contractors has been in business since 1959. They are one of the largest, most respected and trusted general contractors in the state of Texas. So, it’s no surprise that they found themselves in need of an enterprise-ready marketing automation solution that would support their efforts.

In a video testimonial released this week, Bartlett Cocke’s marketing team explains why they chose Lead Liaison as their partner. “Lead Liaison was very proactive,” says Kirk Kistner, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. “They helped us get set up with what would work best for us. As a general contractor, we are unique to a lot of the other users of a product such as Lead Liaison. We have a very defined audience, and Lead Liaison helped us define our outreach and messaging.”

“Unique” is what Lead Liaison does best. With a world-class support team behind the scenes, the sales and marketing solutions provider is able to zero in on a client’s process and pain points, and provide support exclusive to those needs.

Bunmi Collins is the Manager of Corporate Marketing and Branding at Bartlett Cocke. In the testimonial, she explains how Lead Liaison’s White Glove service gives her exactly what she needs. “Lead Liaison’s support team is very helpful and prompt, but I’m that kind of person that really appreciates having that one-on-one phone call walking me through the process if I have a question,” says Collins. “The Lead Liaison’s White Glove service gives me that opportunity.”

The testimonial goes on to cover several ways that they put Lead Liaison to the test. Bartlett Cocke wanted to determine if Lead Liaison’s platform would work for their company and for the construction industry. They focused the initial campaigns on a few upcoming events. They were able to thoroughly test out the platform and better understand their engagement with clients and prospects. They were pleased with the results.

“My favorite feature of Lead Liaison is the ability to create reports and to filter them down, so that I can get a better idea – very quickly – of what the end user is doing, and how they are utilizing our content.” says Sharee Bridges, Digital Marketing and Multimedia Specialist for Bartlett Cocke. “For me, in a position like mine, that’s one of the only ways to track what’s happening on the other end.”

From start to finish, Bartlett Cocke found that Lead Liaison streamlined their process and gave them the insights they were looking for. The platform is flexible enough to accommodate their unique needs, and Lead Liaison’s support team empowers them to be more effective and efficient.

To view Bartlett Cocke’s video testimonial, plus many more, click here.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).