Tag Archive for: Marketing Automation

Lead Liaison

Why is Marketing Automation so Popular?

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Why is Marketing Automation so Popular?You may be wondering why is marketing automation so popular.  After all, you already have leads – why should you invest money into a product that may not work for you?  Simply put, adding marketing automation to your repertoire of business solutions will help you turn your leads into customers while growing your sales from your existing database. However, marketing automation can do much more.  Let’s explore why marketing automation is so popular and how you can leverage it to generate profits.

Building Better Relationships

With marketing automation, the customer experience is optimized and able to be measured throughout the entire experience.  You save money because you’re able to track each prospective customer’s activity from the first engagement through lead conversion, making adjustments to revenue whenever you see fit.  Instead of guessing what your leads are doing, or where they’re at in the process, marketing automation provides you with that information – as it happens – so you’re able to simplify your customer engagement.

As your company grows, it’s impossible to maintain 1:1 customer relationships.  This is even more of an issue when you take into account the high-tech world we’re living in.  No longer are customers just down the street or in the same town – you’re dealing with leads from different countries, time zones, and cultures.  Marketing automation assists you in managing your marketing program in a way that makes sense for you.   Automation software will streamline your approach and measure tasks and workflow so that you’re operating at top-efficiency.

Communicating Effectively

A common myth is that automation means the messages you’re sending to your leads are cold, impersonal and ineffective.  This is simply not the case.  Marketing automation means that you’re actually able to personalize your messages to your targeted audience.  You’ll be collecting individualized data on leads, thus strengthening your communications and adding personal touches to your campaigns.

Marketing automation isn’t spam, either.  You’re not blasting messages to a wide range of people.  Instead, you’re focusing on leads and looking at website patterns to get a clear picture of what they’re doing.  That way, you can focus on molding communications around personalized experiences.  You’re nailing down your leads and audience, while nurturing them and guiding them into your sales funnel.  In a world where leads are getting blasted with ads and communications, sometimes on an hourly basis, it’s imperative that your communications are personalized to stand out from the crowd.

Let us help you take the next step to marketing automation.  It will change the way you do business and how your leads and customers communicate with you!  Contact us so we can take a look at how marketing automation can revitalize your business today.

Lead Liaison

How to Choose a Marketing Automation Vendor

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How to Choose a Marketing Automation VendorMaking an informed decision regarding your marketing automation vendor can be the turning point of lead management and execution for your small business. Many marketing automation platforms offer a host of similar features that move towards a common goal: capturing leads and creatively persuading them in your direction. With so many cloud-based solutions available, selecting one marketing automation tool over the others can certainly be a daunting task. There are many things to carefully consider when looking at how to choose a marketing automation vendor that will meet your needs best.

To start off, we’ll take a look at the top ten marketing automation platforms according to Capterra, a business software search-and-compare site:

  1. Eloqua
  2. Infusionsoft
  3. HubSpot
  4. Teradata
  5. Unica
  6. Marketo
  7. SimplyCast
  8. Silverpop
  9. Pardot
  10. Act-On

Capterra rated the above list on the premise of popularity, with metrics including number of customers, number of social media followers, and Google searches. But we know it’s not always just about the numbers—how do you choose a marketing automation vendor that is the best solution for your needs? This list only touches on much greater list of solutions, each one with their own strengths and weaknesses. Lead Liaison is another marketing automation platform that caters to small to mid-sized businesses with an flexible business model that rivals its competitors and boasts personalized and intimate support. Although they may not have 22K Twitter followers, their solutions might actually be a better fit, with all of the automation features the bigger platforms offer but with a more personalized feel. Getting used to a new system is never easy, and it’s important to consider the amount of time you’ll spend learning how to use the platform—does it seem intuitive from the beginning? Everyone interacts with interfaces in their own unique way. Don’t set yourself up for frustration. Make sure whichever platform you go with has a solid customer support reputation.

Each with their own unique solutions (such as the Streamer), the various marketing automation platforms are meant to cater to your business. All of the options must be weighed according to the purpose you want it to serve.

Outline your goals

When determining how to choose a marketing automation vendor, the first task is to outline your goals. Each company will have vastly different needs and an equally diverse set of prospects. The end goal is ultimately the same for companies big and small—to drive your prospects’ interactions with your brand. What numbers do you expect to hit after implementing the new system after six months, nine months, or one year? How many team members will you be able to allocate to managing this process? How much time per week will be spent gathering analytics or scheduling emails?

Select the most effective marketing tools

Each platform offers a variety of marketing tools that can draw prospects in. How you choose which marketing automation vendor will be best for your company depends on how your audience prefers to gather knowledge. Each industry is different—social media may be where many of your leads come from, or maybe the warmest leads are a result of diligent visitor tracking and lead nurturing. Determining the preferred route of communication is a crucial stepping stone to selecting the right marketing automation platform for your needs. Consider the following: email marketing, visitor tracking, lead nurturing, database segmentation, lead scoring, lead generation, analytics, social media, and content creation.

Find a solution that fits your budget

Finding a good fit can be like hiring another employee (who actually does the work of an entire team), and it’s important to choose a marketing automation vendor that you have carefully vetted. Pricing schemes may not be readily available to simply do all the research on your own. This is due to the endless possibilities and a la carte options you can select from to create a plan that matches the needs of your business. Select a few marketing automation platforms that highlight the marketing tools your audience responds to, then read reviews and references to gauge their customer service and overall quality of product. Last step: request a demo. It’s free and you’ve got nothing to lose.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation: Where Do I Begin?

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Marketing Automation: Where Do I Begin?Delivering the appropriate message to engage leads and customers is the biggest challenge for many marketing companies.  Marketing automation provides you with ways to generate leads and reach a broad audience.  But for those with little to no experience in Marketing Automation, it can be a harrowing journey to begin.

Understanding The Multiple Stages of Marketing Automation

If you’re asking yourself – “Marketing automation – where do I begin?” understand that marketing automation really begins with the right message at the right time, for the right audience.  Streamlining sales by delivering engaging content and advertisements targeted to your audience is the key for any successful marketing strategy.  Since marketing automation will always rely on adjustments based on how your communication strategy evolves, it’s essential that marketing professionals learn how to do this themselves, instead of relying on an IT team.

The second crucial step in marketing automation is creating lead stages.  Lead stages help you identify where your leads are in the process and how long before you can expect them to move on to the next stage.  On average, it takes a lead three times to research a purchase online before moving on to a salesperson.  Lead stages include the following:

  • Lead Stage 1:  This stage helps you find those leads that have just begun the process.  They have no identified timeline and have just started their search for solutions or products.
  • Lead Stage 2:  This second stage is a potential customer who knows exactly what he needs and wants but isn’t able to make a purchase yet.  These leads have ideas but are looking for approval from their team before moving forward.
  • Lead Stage 3:  Leads in Stage 3 are the best leads to offer demonstrations to.  Leads often have a short list of products in mind for their solution and many have already decided on which they prefer, even without a demonstration or sample.  Stage 3 is imperative for making the lead sees why they should set up a meeting with you, as opposed to your competitors.

Bringing it All Together

Making sure that content is personalized instead of generic will make your marketing automation a success.  Delivering messages that focus on your potential customer’s wants, needs, and interests while avoiding the harsh hard-sell approach is what you want.

Marketing automation makes this whole process much easier.  It will give you better insight into what your leads are doing, including content they are viewing and downloading; how they respond to emails, and where they are in sales process.  Each step of the way, you’re able to monitor and measure your marketing automation system, making incremental adjustments to ensure success.

Understanding Marketing Automation and Knowing Where to Begin

If you’re feeling lost in the process, don’t hesitate to chat with a Lead Liaison rep today! We know how and where to get you started and would love to take your business to the next level.

Lead Liaison

Is Marketing Automation Worth the Hassle?

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Is Marketing Automation Worth the Hassle? Is Marketing Automation worth the hassle? We’ve been asking our clients over time whether or not they’re glad to have invested in marketing automation services. Time and time again we hear a resounding ‘yes’.

There’s no doubt that some work is involved on the back end after deciding to implement a marketing automation program. Different clients have different needs and it takes some time to analyze data and make decisions about what will be best. We believe – and our clients believe – the end result is worth it.

Understanding the Benefits

The first step toward understanding the benefits of marketing automation is to work with a team that can take a deep look at your business, your staff and your marketing. Not all companies need the same services. Ideally, we’ll help grow your business so much that you’ll have a greater need to automate various forms of marketing over time. However, starting out, most companies require a specialized look at what their needs are by one of our staff. Doing things in this way ensures the greatest value and builds a long and trusting relationship.

Analyzing the type of marketing automation your company needs is also helpful in terms of determining overall goals. Obviously you’ll want to increase revenue over time – but how can we best work together to analyze granular data and create a future roadmap?

Knowing where you want to go, how long it will take to scale and understanding the best ways to implement marketing automation for your business will help you understand the overall benefits. Working with a company that will come up with the systems, stay behind for the proper training and help you understand how the data can affect your decisions is critical to success.

Is Marketing Automation Worth the Hassle?

If you’re interested in establishing systems that help you understand granular data, as well as deploying marketing strategies that work on their own to establish further data and generate conversions, marketing automation is for you. The right team will help ensure there’s little heavy lifting on your end. You’ll just need to be ready to help create future goals and determine strategy as well as get your team prepared for training on how to use the systems.

Marketing automation isn’t a hassle for a business that’s ready to take the next step in onboarding and deploying advanced data information systems. These systems are easier to work with than you think with the right team in place.

To find out more, talk to us about how hassle-free marketing automation services can benefit your business today!

Lead Liaison

Can I Afford Marketing Automation?

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Can I Afford Marketing Automation?Many businesses are asking themselves, “Can I afford marketing automation?” We hear it all the time – “What’s in it for me?” Or maybe, “How can I be assured such a major purchase is the right one for my company?” Generally, our answer always tends to be the same – with such advanced data tracking possible, the question is more, how can you not afford to be doing marketing automation these days?

Gathering the Granular Data

The basic and most fundamental principle of using any type of marketing automation is the timely gathering of data. If you’ve ever worked the back end of any business you know how powerful data can truly be.

Let’s start with an example – say the same individual keeps coming back to your site over and over again. They’ve bought once from you before, but are interested in comparing your pricing and services with a competitor’s. The thing that will truly make the sale is a more personalized touch.

Through marketing automation, you see this specific individual checking out service and warranty pages throughout your site. They keep coming back to these specific pages, and then bouncing.

Other analytical programs simply won’t give you the kind of knowledge about this customer that marketing automation can. Knowing that one specific person from the same IP is hitting the same pages can give you quick incentive to act. Reaching out to that user via chat program and explicitly describing your value could turn this repeat browser into a sale.

Can I Afford Marketing Automation?

Having this level of granular detail can shorten your sales funnel, build more trust with buyers and give them exactly what they’re looking for. With a potential increase in sales based on this type of information, why wouldn’t you want to invest in marketing automation? Data drives understanding of your customers and their needs, and knowing what your customers want drives sales. We can all sit back and assume what we’re doing to please our customers is good enough – but when an opportunity to get to know customers presents itself and could lead to new sales, it’s an investment worth making.

So the next time you ask yourself, ‘Can I afford marketing automation?’, ask yourself if your company is doing enough at a high level to engage your customers and get to know their individual needs. By its very nature marketing automation can offer you the type of information that will lead to increased sales.

To get an idea of how marketing automation can increase your revenue over time, talk to a friendly member of the Lead Liaison team today!

Lead Liaison

3 Ways to Use Marketing Automation to Enhance your User Experience

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Use Marketing Automation to Enhance your User ExperienceThe art of converting prospects into customers begins with their first interaction and experience with your brand, whether that’s through a landing page, social media ad, or (fingers crossed) word of mouth. If this experience is frustrating and not user friendly, what incentive do they have to return? Here are a few points to consider when shaping your user experience and ways to use marketing automation to your advantage:

Customize

  • Landing pages: How did a visitor find your website? Be sure what they’re looking for is the first thing they see. Create a few different landing pages for various scenarios, especially if you have a vast range of products.
  • Emails: Make sure you are providing pertinent information that will warrant them to open the email, not unsubscribe. This may include special deals/offers, but nothing too spammy.
  • Verbal contact: Utilize marketing automation software to synchronize platforms to be sure sales reps and customer service are on the same page when speaking to a customer or a prospect.

Interact

  • Survey your customers: Ask questions about what they believe is your most useful and convenient feature. Survey prospects, ask what they’re looking for in a product and see how closely you can meet their needs.
  • Reward: Host contests on social media to engage your followers, and provide a coupon code or free service to those who interact with your brand.
  • Customer support: There’s nothing more frustrating for your customers than to pay for a monthly subscription service and not receive the support they need to use your service to their greatest benefit.

Personify

  • Don’t be the bot: When automating your marketing process, it’s important to keep in mind your customers are real people that are intelligent and think for themselves. Canned messages just won’t cut it for most. Steer clear of creating bulk messages to send out on social media platforms, as that only invites ridicule. Engage with customers through carefully planned social media campaigns.
  • Get the details: Often a step of the implementation or customer support process, getting details from your customer in how exactly they plan to implement your service or product can truly help start a beneficial relationship. By understanding their needs, you’re able to gather insight for further improvement while also providing them with the most efficient way to implement your service.
  • Create a two-way conversation: This one is pretty self-explanatory. The basic take-away point is to create an environment in which your customers and prospects alike feel comfortable to interact. Check out these simple steps that encourage your customers to engage in a positive way.
Lead Liaison

Why Small to Mid-Sized Businesses Should Use Marketing Automation for Prospecting

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I Love Prospecting with Lead LiaisonProspecting is a headache for most sales reps. Sales people get pressure from leadership to sell faster and meet the demands of the current quarter. As the day-to-day pressure mounts salespeople get distracted and lose focus on prospecting as they concentrate more on closing existing deals in late pipeline stages. What salespeople wind up with is more business at the bottom of the funnel but a very non-existent top and middle of the funnel. For small to mid-sized businesses these issues compound as smaller companies have less resources to work with.

It’s vital salespeople close deals and prospect at the same time. However, it’s unrealistic to think most salespeople will be consistent with their prospecting efforts. Using sales automation, salespeople can be ultra-efficient, almost like an assembly line, with a systematic and scalable way to prospect. Marketing automation software for small to mid-sized businesses helps salespeople use automated workflows to “chase” prospects once they’ve identified their targets. Prospect communication happens in the background using multiple touch points, something that’s imperative when prospecting, to connect with your prospect. Executing such a process looks like this:

  1. Add the contact to your CRM
  2. Add the contact to a Lead Liaison Workflow
  3. Boom! A series of 2-week communication automagically chases your prospect by sending them personalized communication
  4. When prospects engage, you’ll know about it in real-time and remove them from the Workflow

The flow chart below depicts a sample Chase Workflow that a small to mid-sized company might build to automate sales prospecting. I promise, we can make you love sales prospecting!

Let us know if we can help you build this awesome process into your sales organization.

Marketing Automation for Prospecting

2 Week Chase Workflow

Lead Liaison

Top 7 Ways to Maintain Customer Retention through Marketing Automation

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Customer RetentionIt’s easy to get lost in the process of lead generation, mindlessly nurturing and scoring in order to convert and build your customer base. However, just as a top-scoring, warm lead is easier to persuade to sign the deal, increasing your customer retention even as little as 5% can produce increase in profit from 25% to 95% percent. Technology makes it even easier to keep in tune with your buyers and ensure you’re staying on their good side. Check out these top seven ways to maintain customer retention through marketing automation:

  1. Understand the insightful feedback. Your current customers are already giving you valuable market information. Check their activity on your site—what are they clicking, downloading, and sharing? Also, don’t forget to encourage feedback from them, whether through social media surveys, website forms, or directed email marketing campaigns. These customers have already been converted, chances are they are nearly guaranteed hot leads with insightful feedback on your products.
  2. Drip Marketing. Maintain customer retention through marketing automation by utilizing personalized drip marketing campaigns. They didn’t open your last email? Try segmenting those customers and sending them a second email, targeted at their needs.
  3. Stay in touch. Don’t quit your lead scoring just because they’ve converted. Continue to score them and determine which content you’re producing is most valuable to (lifelong) customers. Provide helpful how-to’s on the best practices and most recent updates on your products. Cultivate this relationship to maintain customer retention through marketing automation by scheduling regular touchpoints with buyers at least once a month.
  4. Don’t get caught up in filling the top of the funnel. Lead generation will no doubt be an imperative player in your company’s success. There’s no reason to forget about the bottom of the funnel, though. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to capitalize on the leads that are already warm and proven to be ready to buy.
  5. Give them what they want. Analyze buying cycles, particularly those of your current customers, and remind them when they want to buy based on their previous behaviors. For example, if your product is a yearly software program, send out a notification a few months before their service expires, giving them a personalized reminder to renew. Maintain customer retention through marketing automation by giving your customers what they want and when they want it.
  6. Thank them. Give them a special coupon code on their buying anniversary or provide a unique offer right after their purchase. Incentivize them to share your product with others as well through referral systems. Use social media to provide a contest among followers, encouraging their interaction and engagement (AKA business insight) with your company.
  7. Provide the solution. Chances are, your buyers put their trust in you. They count on you to be the expert; in fact, they’re probably paying you to be the expert. Don’t let them down by providing shotty customer service or not updating your resources regularly. Use creative and timely content to maintain customer retention through marketing automation practices.
Lead Liaison

Grow Your Business through Customer Responsive Marketing Automation

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Grow Your Business through Customer Responsive Marketing AutomationBuilding a relationship with prospective customers should not be seen as a one-way street, with your brand constantly reaching out—calling, mailing, posting—and hearing nothing in return. Rather, this process is more successfully a bi-directional path with many winding trails. Encouraging customer responsive marketing automation will pave this process of nurturing your leads to their state of buying readiness. Providing the means and the channel(s) of communication between your brand and your prospects can open up an enlightening conversation.

Everyone likes a personalized message (except when it’s a little too personalized). I couldn’t delete emails starting “Greetings #1 Customer” any faster. It’s no surprise that personalized marketing encourages customers to respond and interact at a higher rate. Personalization of each message based on their previous interactions with your brand (read: lead scoring) helps to determine their stage of the buying cycle, and thus the types of messages you should be sending.

Seamless Interaction

The end goal of carefully personalizing each message broadcasted is to encourage seamless interaction between sales and prospects across multiple channels. There are a multitude of tools that make customer responsive marketing automation a process easily integrated with your current system. Mobile applications are increasingly a crucial part of engaging customers and text messaging is burgeoning into an acceptable means for B2B communication.

Tailor your customer experience and encourage their response by scheduling social media posts (make it easier on yourself) that survey or poll your followers. This somewhat organic way of discovering data can then be used to create relevant content. Ask about the customers’ needs, determine an appropriate means to “score” your posts (evaluate the number of “likes” or “retweets,” for example) to gauge your audience’s interest level in various topics. Don’t forget to keep in consideration the peak times for posting to maximize exposure and response.

Realize Customer Needs

Through customer responsive marketing automation, your business is enabled to more fully realize your customer needs through their interaction with your brand. Analyze their past behaviors (CTRs, landing pages, etc.) to predict how they might respond to future messaging campaigns. Incorporating customer service into the customer responsive marketing automation process becomes second nature through technology. Catering to the customers’ needs at a time when they’re ready (timing is everything) can be the make it or break it of the deal. It’s important to have the marketing and sales teams in communication with each other to coordinate respective campaigns and actions to maximize touchpoints, get to know the prospect, and go in for the win. Utilizing strategic techniques such as the “sense and respond” in correlation with other technology advances will provide a better grasp of what prospects and customers alike want and expect from your brand.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation: How Does the CEO Fit In?

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Marketing Automation for the CEOWhen is it best for a company’s CEO to get involved with the marketing team’s overall efforts – this is the question marketing automation answers for many organizations. The idea that the CEO of any-sized company turns his or her back to the marketing team’s efforts – taking a “set it and forget it” approach to advertising – is one that comes to life for many agencies and gets in the way of upgrading legitimate marketing efforts.

Knowing this, how can any organization’s CEO make sure that the company marketing team is on board with making changes that benefit the organization from the ground up?

Understanding Marketing Automation

Many companies avoid choosing marketing automation services due to the work it would create on their end. Let’s face it – many companies don’t make it a priority to connect sales and marketing departments the way they should. This results in a disjointed effort between sales and analysts, creating unhappy customers and getting in the way of productivity.

Marketing automation is a great way to not only establish and track legitimate leads for any organization, but to develop an internal process that unites sales, marketing and execution departments. Because the process of getting a lead all the way to working for a customer require follow-up, tracking and cooperation on the back end, a work system can be set in place that solidifies the efforts of these departments like never before. The result is a workflow that’s not just fully automated, but addresses the unique needs of all areas of the business.

Getting the Right Training

The training involved with implementing marketing automation is not just for employees or individual department heads  – the top-level of the organization – particularly the CEO or business decision maker – should have some idea of how marketing automation works and how it may be implemented within the organization as a whole.

The best way to ensure these strategies are in place and working for a business is to have the CEO go through the appropriate training, delegate responsibility and understand how everything works. This can only be accomplished with a marketing automation team that cares about its business and customers. A solid marketing automation system needs to be in place, but a team willing to train employees (and CEOs) and to stick around for follow-up is integral to the process working for everyone involved.

The Lead Liaison team doesn’t drop off service after marketing automation – we stick around to make sure all companies’ needs are met from the top down. Talk to us about a consult today!