Lead Liaison

Alternatives to LeadLander®

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LeadLanderLooking for alternatives to LeadLander®? Looking for a lead tracking product? Look no further, welcome to Lead Liaison. Lead Liaison can track your website and much more! LeadLander® has been used effectively by a number of organizations to track website visitors. LeadLander®’s solution is great at identifying which companies visit your website and fits the bill for companies with basic needs. However, if you’re looking to deepen relationships with prospects/customers, automate processes for sales and adopt a scalable sales and marketing platform to fit the needs of any growing organization you should consider alternatives and contact Lead Liaison today.

“I was impressed with LeadLander®’s solution, I had no idea you could track companies visiting your website. Then I was introduced to Lead Liaison’s revenue generation platform. Their true real-time technology allows them to do so much more. I look forward to leveraging some of the things Lead Liaison has coming down the pipe. Rather than having a single product to fit a niche need, I feel like we’ve got a platform to fit our long term needs.” – Global High Tech Company

Whether LeadLander® or Others – Qualify your Vendor

When comparing Lead Liaison to LeadLander® and other competing solutions it’s important to consider the big picture. Ask your vendor the following 10 questions. If they can’t help you – we will!

Top 10 Questions to Ask your Lead Management Vendor

1. Is your solution real time? What do you mean by real time?
2. What sales prospecting solutions do you have?
3. How integrated is your solution with other sales and marketing tools?
4. How easy to use is your tool?
5. How do you automate processes for sales and not just push out lists of website visitors?
6. What type of personalized and intimate support do you offer?
7. If necessary, how open are you to adapting your tools to meet our needs?
8. Do you offer a platform or a product?
9. How do you satisfy all aspects of the lead management lifecycle – sales prospecting, lead capture, lead response, lead tracking, lead distribution, lead qualification, lead nurturing and ROI measurement?
10. What is your roadmap?

In summary, Lead Liaison differentiates both our offering and our company from other lead management competitors in the following ways:

  • True real time performance
  • Sales prospecting solutions
  • Multi-dimensional access (web, desktop, CRM)
  • Opportunity to scale up to other products and solutions
  • Personalized and intimate support
  • “We-listen” mentality with a “yes-we-can” attitude

Contact Lead Liaison today to see how our growing company can help yours.

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Disclaimers:

  • (1) Lead Liaison is not affiliated in any way with LeadLander®, does not provide LeadLander®’s services, and does not own the LeadLander® Service Mark. Lead Liaison provides its own unique visitor tracking solution as shown here.
  • (2) True real-time means after logging in, you’ll see website visitors as they’re on your site without having to refresh the page.
  • Reference our Blog Disclaimer.
Lead Liaison

Marketing Trade Shows

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Marketo put together a nice wall-hanging-graphic on marketing trade shows in the United States. Attending all marketing trade shows would be exhausting; but, surely there are a few shows to highlight for attendance. The graphic groups marketing trade shows by region and orders them by month. Dreamforce and MarketingSherpa are two of the biggest shows around. SXSW is a great show that adds lots of social events to the agenda, mixing entertainment and business together. But before you invest $10K+ per show, let’s discuss how to make marketing trade shows successful.

Making Marketing Trade Shows a Success

Keep three rules in mind when you attend marketing trade shows. Plan, qualify and follow-up. A great teacher once told me, “Output equals input”. Make sure you make a list of targeted prospects or customers, schedule meetings before hand, get promotional material in place and assign roles and responsibility to your team. Next, qualify your leads at the show. It’s amazing to me how many marketing trade shows I’ve been to where the marketing person comes up to me – while I’m chatting with someone else – and asks, “Can I scan your badge”. I think they’re just doing that because they’re paid on how many contacts they can collect. Make sure you engage with attendees at your booth. Try not to sell, but to listen. Finally, make sure to follow-up. It’s amazing to me that some of these companies do not follow up after I’ve expressed some interest at marketing trade shows. So, how can lead qualification and lead follow up be improved?

Simplifying Trade Show Qualification and Follow Up

By using Lead Liaison’s revenue generation software sales and marketers cut through the clutter of qualifying and following up with leads from marketing trade shows. Using our software allows marketers to:

1. Upload collected contacts into our database
2. Send relevant email communications to their contact list (email marketing)
3. Listen to how recipients respond and engage with your communications (lead tracking)
4. Automatically qualify respondents based on how they engage with your brand and marketing content online (lead scoring)
5. Keep a complete record of the respondent’s current and future engagement with your company (lead management)
6. Nurture the contact by sending them relevant communications over time to further build the relationship and educate them on your solution (lead nurturing)
7. Surface only the hottest marketing trade show leads ready to be handed to sales (lead distribution)

We’re compiling our own list of top marketing trade shows for 2012. Are there any shows that are missing in the graphic? Which marketing trade shows are your favorites?

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Online Lead Generation Services

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Lead Generation ServicesWith the influx of social media tools – Google+ being the latest, greater online marketing demands and a changing B2B buying process lead management has become difficult and complex. Without a lead management framework, companies are like a ship without a sail – going nowhere. Lead generation services have sprung up to try to mitigate process complexity. For example, there are many companies offering lead generation services to handle lead qualification, appointment setting, event promotion, email marketing, content delivery, inbound call handling and more. What companies don’t know is that many of these lead generation services can be accomplished using cost effective technology. In many cases, less than the cost of a trade show.

Lead Liaison’s lead generation services are packaged into web-based software, which ultimately is a service – or Software as a Service (SaaS) as the industry calls it. Although SaaS-based technology cannot deliver the human element, such as inbound call handling, it can deliver a multitude of lead generation services online. Lead Liaison’s online lead generation services enable companies to:

  • Automate marketing and sales processes such as lead qualification and outbound marketing
  • Prospect for new leads
  • Synchronize activities with CRMs such as Salesforce.com and cleanup database records
  • Nurture leads with intelligent and intuitive campaigns
  • Capture leads with easy to create landing pages and smart forms
  • Target prospects with professional-grade email marketing

Hopefully this post leaves you with some food for thought. Should you reach out in desperation to traditional lead generation services agencies or embrace technology to mitigate the complexity of the lead management process?

Let us show you why you should choose the latter.

To learn more about how Lead Liaison’s online lead generation services can jump start your lead generation activities and simplify the lead management process let us know. We’re more than happy to explore how we can help you solve your problems in a complex sales and marketing environment.

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Marketing Automation Market

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Marketing Automation MarketLast month we wrote an article on the size of the marketing automation market. A couple weeks after writing the article we picked up David Raab’s article on “B2B Marketing Automation Industry Size and Segments”. David’s post presented some interesting data on the marketing automation market worth summarizing as a follow up to our last post on the industry.

The report shed some light on how many clients per company type are using marketing automation. Company type was split up into four categories using revenue ranges, defined below:

  • Micro business: Under $5M in revenue
  • Small business: $5M – $20M in revenue
  • Mid-size business: $20M – $500M in revenue
  • Large business: $500M+ in revenue

The report then estimates annual revenue of the marketing automation market for each segment, yielding $257.5M in annual revenue, which comes very close to our estimate of $200M in last month’s post. David’s estimate does not include smaller marketing automation vendors as well as B2C marketing automation vendors. When these vendors are included, the marketing automation market is around $325M in annual revenue.

Here’s a breakdown of estimated revenue per company type:

Company TypeCustomersRevenue/Client/YrAnnual Revenue% Total
Micro business11,917$3,600$42.9M17%
Small business2,848$12,000$34.2M13%
Mid-size business3,609$30,000$108.3M42%
Large business1,203$60,000$72.2M28%
Total19,557$26,400 (Average)$257.5M100%

Experts typically estimate about 2% to 5% of all businesses use marketing automation technology. Interestingly, actual penetration may be lower than that – particularly very small businesses (<$20M in revenue). It’s estimated that less than 1% of all micro and small businesses use marketing automation technology, which presents a huge opportunity for these businesses to grow and gain a competitive advantage in the market place. Using data from Manta about the number of companies in each revenue range we can estimate approximately half of all businesses are a candidate/fit for marketing automation. Based on this data we can estimate the footprint of the marketing automation market relative to the TAM (total available market).

SegmentCompaniesTAMCustomers% Total
Micro business2,991,6271,500,00011,9170.8%
Small business645,121320,0002,8480.9%
Mid-size business237,130120,0003,6093.0%
Large business9,2454,5001,20326.7%

Growth potential in the marketing automation market is huge. Micro and small businesses outside the manufacturing and high tech industries (current adopters) stand to gain the most.  Lead Liaison uses marketing automation technology as part of our Revenue Generation Software. If you’re a business looking to adopt marketing automation below are a few additional resources to help:

  • Risk of not using revenue generation software
  • Revenue generation for marketers
  • Revenue generation for sales

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Lead Liaison

New Marketing Technology

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New Marketing TechnologyEarlier this week we published a blog post entitled “marketing automation challenges – avoiding status quo”. Our second post in the marketing automation challenges series covers new marketing technology. The primary challenge marketer’s face in adopting new marketing technology is lack of awareness. Marketers need to know that new marketing technology exists that represents today’s minimum marketing requirements.

Let’s begin by comparing old marketing technology with new marketing technology. The marketer using old marketing technology feels their “batch and blast” email program works just fine. They use the email program to send the same email bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or bi-annually to their entire database. They track opens and clicks to measure campaign effectiveness. Sadly, they feel this is adequate.

Conversely, the modern marketer uses new marketing technology to communicate with prospects and customers. The modern marketer uses marketing segmentation and sends tailored email communications to related groups within their database on behalf of sales (appearing to come from the sales person). They schedule a series of relevant email communications and track how recipients respond and interact over time. They setup optimized landing pages and use lead tracking technology for lead capture. Finally, their new marketing technology automatically qualifies leads for sales and alerts sales when a hot lead is ready to buy.

Additionally, the modern marketer integrates newsletters, testimonials, content libraries, events and more into their company’s website and uses landing pages and other opt-in strategies to grow a segmented database.

Are you a marketer using old or new marketing technology? Below is a table that further compares old marketing technology to new marketing technology. Lead Liaison provides new marketing technology that transforms Flinstone marketers into Jetson marketers. Please ping us if you’re still in the Flinstone era!

Comparing Old to New Marketing Technology:

Old Marketing TechnologyNew Marketing Technology
“Batch and blast” email marketing toolIntelligent, closed-loop email marketing
Communication to a single database of contactsAbility to quickly and easily segment database by various parameters such as demographics, company information and interests
Leave contacts that have hard bounces in their databaseMarks the contact as “graveyard” status and/or adds “email opt-out” automatically to the record
Automatically opt-in contacts to their batch and blast emailUses landing pages, web forms, email campaigns and email client plug-ins to opt-in contacts
Manually pull reports to count opens and link click throughReal-time updates of whose interested and when. Tracks current and future page views to build a prospect profile and prepare sales
Subjectively qualifies leadsUses automated lead scoring technology to find only the hottest leads ready to speak with sales
Uses google analytics to measure website trafficUses real-time lead tracking technology to identify businesses and people visiting your site
Relies on web forms to capture informationUses real-time lead tracking technology to capture web form submissions as well as general website visits
Has no way of auto-responding to leadsUses intelligent automated campaigns to send relevant, personalized and automatic email communications based on a prospects interaction with your website and marketing content
Consults a web master or IT group to build a landing page or web formMarketers do it themselves using PowerPoint-like tools to visually build web forms and landing pages in minutes

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Marketing Automation Challenges – Avoiding Status Quo

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Marketing Automation Challenges Avoiding Status QuoMatt Smith, Executive VP and Co-Founder of 3forward, recently published an article on the MASG blog highlighting four roadblocks of marketing automation. Over the next few weeks we’ll issue four blog posts related to each obstacle. Each post will summarize the individual marketing automation challenges, include color commentary and provide additional recommendations.

Our first post pertains to Matt’s marketing automation challenge, “afraid of the water”. Here’s the premise; if companies maintain sales and marketing status quo and fail to keep up with new technology and process enhancements then they prohibit change. Most of the time change is good. I’ve always said the biggest risk is not knowing what your risk is. If your company seems to be off in their own world thinking their marketing processes and technology are just fine – to be blunt – it’s a bit ignorant.

In the post-Google and high tech era (year 2000 and beyond) change is inevitable. For example, sales and marketing processes have changed considerably. Buyers no longer opt to contact the vendor as their first step. Instead, they research solutions online and only contact the vendor when they’re ready. Check out our posts on B2B Buying Process and B2B Buyers to see how the sales and marketing landscape has changed. A growing number of businesses are adopting marketing automation or revenue generation software as we like to put it, to foster advancement and change in their sales and marketing processes. Revenue generation software increases leads, improves organizational efficiency, and produces higher quality leads. The benefits aren’t limited to these three things either. For example, revenue generation software provides vendors with valuable insight into a potential buyer’s interests and online behavior prior to vendor contact. For more information on how revenue generation helps marketers and sales click here: revenue generation for marketers, revenue generation for sales.

Before adopting marketing automation platforms companies need to avoid ignorance and embrace education. Matt recommends educating the entire C-Team on the new sales and marketing 2.0 environment (how marketing and sales should work together, what is marketing automation, how buyer’s buy, etc.). Once executives are up to speed it’s time to implement a plan. Matt suggests the head of marketing and sales mutually build a demand generation program. Finally, Matt suggests the CMO and CEO ask the rest of the organization to stay out of the way. Marketing will have their hands full adapting to sales and marketing 2.0.

Its clear avoiding status quo is a major obstacle to overcome when adopting marketing automation. Lead Liaison can help your organization get an education and design a plan. We can provide you with a complementary overview of the changing sales and marketing landscape and give you and/or your team an education on marketing automation. We also have a template to help you build and define your demand generation program. The template is called a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is a contractual-style document between sales and marketing teams for sales and marketing teams. The SLA provides a framework for a company’s entire lead management process.

Feel free to contact us if you think Lead Liaison can help your company avoid status quo in route to adopting marketing automation and revenue generation solutions.

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Lead Liaison

Blogging as an Inbound Marketing Tool

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Blog Inbound MarketingWe spotted some research done by Marketing Sherpa and HubSpot highlighting why blogging is a very effective inbound marketing tool. The research sparked the thought of sharing results of our own blogging efforts. At Lead Liaison, we’ve seen tremendous benefit in our blogging campaign. We launched our blogging strategy at the beginning of 2011. Our goal is “blog 104”, blogging twice per week every week of the year (52 weeks x 2 = 104 blogs). We’ve already seen a huge increase in organic SEO website visits because of our strategy. Our website traffic has increased by 243% since we started. Our approach is simple. We’d like to share five things we’ve done and hope this will help your blogging efforts:

5 Rules of Blogging to Increase Inbound Marketing:

1. Use a content management system (CMS) such as Word Press or Drupal for your blogging platform. Many tools are included out of the box to help you optimize every blog page for optimal traffic. For example, tools to link keywords to other pages (something viewed positive by the search engines), defining keywords and description, and more. Lead Liaison uses Word Press. 2. Use Google’s Keyword Tool and pick one keyword per blog page. Optimize your article around the keyword. 3. Blog frequently, keep a “blog 104” or “blog 52” rule in mind. 4. Keep blog posts short. Try to limit blog posts to four paragraphs or less. 5. You don’t always have to write new content. Use 3rd party articles and comment on them in your blog post.

Benefits of Blogging:

As mentioned, blogging has increased Lead Liaison’s traffic considerably. Marketing Sherpa and HubSpot shared a few highlights from their survey on why blogging is an effective inbound marketing tool: • Companies who blog get 55% more visitors on the site. • 55% of companies that blog have acquired a new client because of that. • Blogging is the most effective social marketing tactic. This is directly linked to the popularity of blogs as platforms for optimized organic searches, as well as the blog’s inherent ability to retain the attention of the public. • Most B2B marketing professionals search for key-words and create pertinent content, in line with the subject matter that surrounds them. One of the most popular content platforms is the blog. It’s a given that blogging isn’t easy, but B2B companies should do it (because it works). Blogging will increase website visits, help acquire new clients and boost your social media strategy. For a free consultation on how you can increase ROI of blogging contact Lead Liaison. How has blogging helped your company? Sources: 2011 Survey research by HubSpot (76% of respondents were B2B professionals) and Marketing Sherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

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Email Automation

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Email AutomationMany businesses rely on email as a means to communicate with their prospects and customers. Unfortunately, plain vanilla email has become prehistoric. Intelligent email automation is necessary to hold meaningful, relevant and interesting conversations with prospects and customers.

Not using intelligent email automation has the following drawbacks:

• It takes more time as individual emails need to be crafted and sent

• Communications are usually one to one and not one to many

• It’s ineffective since the same messages are broadcast out to a large group

• There’s no interaction and opportunity to converse with your prospects/customers

Don’t make the mistake of thinking email marketing is email automation, it’s not. Email marketing is great for things like newsletters; however, email marketing doesn’t understand how recipients engage or interact with email messages. Also, email marketing requires marketers to manually dig through reports to analyze email opens. Additionally, email marketing has misled marketers to believe ROI is measured on email opens.

Email automation technology solves these problems. It helps marketers measure the true ROI of email campaigns by presenting who’s genuinely interested in real-time. Email automation is commonly called lead nurturing or closed loop email marketing. When marketers automate email they’re able to nurture leads. Here’s an example of an email automation process:

• Marketer sends a single email message to many recipients

• Message is personalized by using the recipient’s name, company and other credentials

• Recipient opens the email message and clicks a link of interest in the email

• Lead tracking technology shows which link was clicked and tracks the recipient’s entire online behavior (pages viewed, web forms submitted, content downloaded, etc.)

• Email automation kicks in and triggers a series of related, future communications based off the recipients interests thereby nurturing the lead

By using email automation businesses can increase marketing efficiency and build stronger relationships with prospects and customers. Using intelligent automation results in closer engagement between a buyer and a seller as two-way conversations occur vs. one-way “email blasts”.

To learn how Lead Liaison’s email automation can help nurture your leads contact us using the form on this page at the top right.

How has email automation helped you nurture leads?

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