Lead Liaison

Why Marketing Automation Can Produce More Sales-Ready Leads

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Why-Marketing-Automation-Can-Produce-More-Sales-Ready-LeadsMarketing automation can produce more sales-ready leads for your business. Not every online lead is ready to make a decision. Many online shoppers are still deciding whether or not they even need a product or service. They have not begun the process of deciding where they will make their purchase and they have no desire to speak to a salesperson until they are ready.

Marketing automation is designed for these types of leads. It produces more sales-ready leads by first identifying leads that are actively demonstrating interest by researching information online. Marketing automation then tracks each of these lead’s online behavior and rates their activity against the pre-purchase behavior of existing customers.

Lead Profiling and Scoring

By comparing potential leads to the typical buying patterns of current customers, marketing can prioritize leads based on their likelihood of conversion. They can also encourage leads to volunteer their demographic information using registration forms for newsletters, white papers, or tutorials. Leads that are willing to fill out online surveys are given higher priority, since it demonstrates a more sincere interest in a product or survey.

Marketing automation is designed to gather as much information on a lead as possible to determine BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, & Time). Can they afford to make a purchase? Do they have the authority to make a purchase? Do they need to make a purchase? Are they ready to purchase? The answer to all four questions should be yes before the lead is given to the sales department.

Use Quality Content to Nurture Leads

If the lead is not sales-ready, the marketing automation program will build on their interest with informative content that confirms a need for a product or service. For example, if a lead has clicked on a page that discusses general information about the online accounting software program that the site offers, lead nurturing can be programmed to email a helpful article on how accounting software programs can save a business time and money.

If a lead is further along in their buying process, the nurturing content can be designed to make them feel more confident about their purchase. Using the previous example, it could be an article on how technology has made it safer and easier to manage your finances online. This aspect of the marketing automation process will produce more sales-ready leads by nurturing leads based on their individual needs.

Customization based on Lead Segments

To make the content customization process more efficient, leads are broken down into lead segments based on similar profiles and score. Marketing automation generates an abundance of leads and it is too difficult to personalize content for every single lead. By grouping leads together, content can be created for each type of lead.

The marketing automation process can produce more sales-ready leads by profiling, scoring, segmenting, and nurturing each lead throughout their buying process. Only leads with the highest scores are given to sales, so valuable time is never wasted on leads that are not ready to buy.

Lead Liaison

How to Develop an Effective Marketing Automation Strategy

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How to Develop an Effective Marketing Automation StrategyAn effective marketing automation strategy has the ability to quickly generate new customers and increased revenue. It gathers potential leads that are actively searching for information online, profile’s each lead’s interests, nurtures leads with helpful and relevant content, and then scores them to assess their potential for conversion. The process is efficient and automated, but a truly effective marketing automation strategy will also require a human touch.

It is All about the Customer

The first and most important focus must always be on satisfying the customer’s needs and concerns. This can be achieved by understanding the critical attributes of existing customers and then using those factors to create a lead scoring model.

What is the lead researching online?

What is their buying history?

What are their interests?

An effective marketing automation strategy is based on finding out as much information as possible on every potential lead. Clever marketers will use registration forms to block particularly valuable content, requiring leads to volunteer pertinent information prior to access. Marketing automation also uses online newsletter registries as a method for gaining greater insight into a lead’s characteristics.

Lead Profile & Ranking

Once this information is obtained, marketing automation software compares and ranks it using a profile of an ideal prospect. For an effective marketing automation strategy, the profile it is ranked against should as closely represent a typical buyer as possible. A good plan is to create the lead scoring using a collaboration of both the sales and marketing team’s experiences with current clientele.

Marketers know what landing pages and tutorials are bringing in business and the sale’s team understands what their customers need and want. Any marketing automation strategy will need both perspectives to effectively capture an accurate and complete lead profile.

Segment Leads into Groups

Using the information gathered for the profile, each lead will be segment in groups based on similar needs and wants. Marketing automation cannot effectively target every lead individually due to the massive volume of leads it generates. However, personalized campaigns make a huge difference in the eyes of the customer. Since the customer is the first priority of marketing automation, lead nurturing campaigns are created to target specific lead segments.

Content that Provides Value

The last fundamental aspect of marketing automation is creating relevant and informative lead nurturing content. The content that is being provided to lead must offer them real value. This is a business’ chance to brand themselves as experts in their field and earn the customer’s loyalty.  All lead nurturing content must be focused on building relationships and trust.

An effective marketing automation strategy begins by profiling, ranking, and segmenting each lead. Once leads are grouped together and their needs are understood, quality content can be customized to satisfy their concerns. All of this is designed to produced more qualified leads and build stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships.

Lead Liaison

Five Reasons Why Content Marketing is Not a Waste of Time

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Content MarketingContent marketing is not a waste of time. Like most other forms of marketing, content marketing has the capacity to either set you back, or hopefully get you a ton of great clients. In case you’ve never even heard of it, content marketing refers to sending information to your clients in order to sell your services, tell them more about your industry – or for our purposes, generate some leads.

There are many different kinds of content marketing including:

  • EBooks
  • Social media posts
  • Blogs
  • Whitepapers
  • Newsletters

Pretty much anything that presents your audience with information with the purpose of generating a lead or sale qualifies as content marketing.

Content marketing has the capacity to become a waste of time if your organization isn’t doing it correctly. If you’ve seen a terrible, poorly written, completely off topic blog out there, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve seen businesses advertise totally irrelevant, cutesy small talk or photos on their social media networks rather than messages that elevate them and increase their branding power, you know not what to do.

If you’re keeping away from content marketing for your business because you’re intimidated, it might be time to either do some exploring, or hire a content genius to help you. However you decide to handle it, content marketing can be time worth spent for your business. Here are five reasons why.

Content Marketing is good for Your SEO

When your content marketing utilizes well-researched keywords, your SEO will start to look better over time. Sure, good search engine optimization isn’t just about writing great articles – but one major factor in ranking over competitors is sharing good, updated content both on your website and in your link building. If you’re not using content to beef up your website and get great, authority links back to your site, you can be sure your competitors are.

Content Marketing Helps You Not Come Off Like a Cheapskate

These days, information is power – AND money. Getting an email address because you gave away an eBook is a great way to keep in touch with clients. Each time you use someone’s email, you’re keeping them in your sales funnel.

You can’t just ask customers for emails without being willing to give something in return. Content marketing allows you to give the customer a valuable piece of information they can use in their everyday lives or business transactions. Giving the client great content for their personal info is quid pro quo, and it’s expected these days.

Content Marketing Establishes Trust

Reading your content gives customers the opportunity to know who you are, what you can offer and to gauge your expertise on a certain subject. The more in-the-know you appear to be, the more your potential clients will trust that your products or services are the right choice. Content marketing allows your clients to get to know you before making a purchase. Establishing that trust from the get go can make for an easier, more harmonious working relationship as well.

Content Marketing Gets You Out There

If you and your competitor offer the same services at the same prices –but I find out your competitor has a kept-up blog, a huge social media following and a good number of guest blogs out there, who would I trust more?

Not only does good content make you more competitive, good content marketing gets in front of more eyes than no marketing at all. You can create great content for your Facebook and run $5-at-a-time sponsored ads to reach friends of friends. If your content is worth reading, just $5 can result in hundreds of subscribers.

Content Marketing is Multipurpose

Great SEO, trust building, brand building, reputation energizing – the best reason to engage in good content marketing for your business is that content marketing is multipurpose. You can use it for SEO, for great social media, for better brand awareness and more. Because it’s easy to do and robust, a good content strategy can benefit you in all channels of your marketing.

If you find the right help or have the expertise to deploy a great content marketing strategy, you’ll next need to look at measuring your results. A lead management system that scores and helps you follow up with leads can integrate directly into your content management program. Lead Liaison is a great choice. If you aren’t ready to deploy a content marketing strategy yet, now is the time to work with Lead Liaison to ensure your tracking needs and goals are met before you begin content marketing. Talk to us about how we can integrate our services with your content marketing strategy today!