Lead Liaison

How to Grow Your Business Faster with Website Visitor Tracking

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How to Grow Your Business Faster with Website Visitor TrackingThanks to the global reach of the internet, online competition is fierce. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, there are countless companies across the world trying to secure the same leads as you. Businesses today must take advantage of new technology, like website visitor tracking, to ensure they are not missing out on any potential opportunities.

Faster Lead Generation

Many industry leaders have already discovered how they can use website visitor tracking and marketing automation software to grow their businesses faster. It is a simple and effective method for automatically capturing every lead that comes in contact with your website. It is estimated that 95% of the visitors on your site will end up leaving your site unnoticed, if you don’t use some form of website visitor tracking software.

Lead Profiling and Scoring

Bringing in more leads will most likely help to grow your business faster, but these results will be significantly amplified if marketers and sales professionals have a better understanding of each leads’ wants and needs. Website visitor tracking monitors a lead’s online behavior and then analyzes their unique buying process. When this program is accompanied with online registries, it can also provide valuable insight into a lead’s demographic characteristics. This will create a comprehensive lead profile.

Marketers can compare each new lead’s profile with existing clientele to determine their likelihood of conversion. This is referred to as lead scoring or ranking. Leads that demonstrate a significant potential for conversion can be passed immediately on to the sales department while those who are still undecided can remain in the marketing automation engine for further lead nurturing.

Lead Nurturing and Conversion  

The lead profile that is generated by website visitor tracking software should provide a clear picture of what the lead is interested in and the questions they have about their buying decision. This will make it easier to grow your business by creating helpful and personalized lead nurturing content designed to answer every lead’s questions and concerns.

Generate, Profile, Score, Nurture, & Convert

Website visitor tracking allows you to grow your business faster by ensuring that no lead is missed, that every lead is profiled and ranked, and that content is customized to give leads the answers they need. It is the most effective marketing method for lead generation and the easiest way to gain greater insight into what it will take to convert a lead into a customer.

Lead Liaison

How to Use B2B Social Media Automation Effectively – in 5 Easy Steps

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How to Use B2B Social Media Automation Effectively – in 5 Easy StepsA growing number of B2B companies want to learn how to use social media automation in their marketing campaigns. We thought it would be a good time to discuss how you can use social media automation to accomplish your marketing objectives.

  1. Create a posting schedule. For B2B marketers, it’s important to maintain a consistent profile for your leads. It can be helpful to create at least a month-long posting schedule with topic ideas and targeted audiences. Allow for flexibility if there is a need to post a message in response to an unforeseen event or issue but develop a messaging sequence that moves your B2B prospects through a series of unique posts.
  2. Select recipients. This can seem like an easy step but beware: ineffective SM use can spell doom for your business just like with other channels. Not all B2B leads are the same, and not all view social media favorably as a business tool. Focus on prospects that have engaged previously on the network rather than those that simply have an account profile.
  3. Create posts. Compose a message that is conversational (not salesy) and addresses a single issue that your prospects are interested in. Be careful not to compose messages that are complex or confusing. Keep posts short (hard not to on Twitter!) and engaging. Throw in a question, conduct a poll,  host a contest, find ways to engage your audience. And avoid repeatedly asking your prospects to share, like, or otherwise socially deliver your posts; doing so frequently can appear desperate.
  4. Select networks. Choose the networks to post on that are most visible to your prospects. In many cases, LinkedIn will be a solid choice. Investigate as many networks as possible and select the sites where your hottest prospects “hang out”. Our Lead Management Automation™ platform allows posting to multiple SM networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
  5. Schedule delivery. Determine when each post should be delivered and schedule social post delivery dates and times when posts will most likely be read. Select various times throughout the day to deliver your posts. It may be helpful to use A/B testing to determine the most effective times for social media posting.

As more B2B companies discover how to use social media within their marketing strategies, competition for prospects’ attention through SM channels will likely become as fierce as PPC and search marketing has been in recent years. The winners will be early adopters who position themselves effectively within the social media channel.

Lead Liaison

Marketing and Sales Process: Web Chat Automation

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Marketing and Sales Process: Web Chat AutomationIf you’re interested in engaging with users as part of your marketing and sales process, direct engagement from your website is a good way to do it using web chat automation. Users tend to have mixed experiences and reactions when it comes to web chat utilities, but for some, the ability to talk to someone right away without picking up the phone is a bonus. Giving customers the ability to choose whether or not they want to react with you is an important way of recognizing whether a web chat utility is a good option for your site.

Tracking Your Web Chat

Most full-featured web chat services have some type of analytics involved. You should be able to log into a centralized web chat dashboard to see a user’s history with you, their return rate and their activity on your site. Some of your users could be one-hit wonders – landing on your site once, never to return again – but it’s those return visitors you need to be paying attention to. If they’re coming back as prospects again and again, they want to be communicated with. Even if they don’t engage in web chat, they should be followed up with.

When you use marketing automation systems, you have the ability to integrate your web analytics in one. When a user hits your website multiple times and you’re able to see them coming back, you’ll be able to customize your greeting message and your reach-out to the potential customer. If your sales team has been in contact as a normal part of your marketing and sales process, automated marketing tools allow you to pull up that history, know where a potential lead is segmented and communicate with them appropriately. The right solution will be streamlined from start to finish.

Marketing and Sales Process for Webchat

Web chat is a great way to customize your responses to returning customers. When marketing automation allows you to segment customers and tailor your sales pitch to their individual experiences, you’re more likely to make a sale.

What happens when customers aren’t using your webchat? You may not need a fully-trained, full time person on webchat, but if customers aren’t using it, you don’t have to staff the chat 24 hours a day. Ask clients to leave a message with the chat – and if you’re using a system like Lead Liaison, the ‘away’ message will go to the client, while his or her query or information enters the system automatically. From there, simply follow up with the customer asap. Piece of cake!

If you’d like to see further engagement, try modifying the look and feel of your chat on your site or add specific greeting or away messages that may better suit the lead’s needs. Test out these different messages and ensure you are keeping track of those tests on your back end – or let automated marketing services do it for you!

Your marketing and sales process is integral to getting the right clients in the door. Let Lead Liaison help you track, automate and reach out to your target client with savvy webchat, email segmentation and advanced analytics tracking systems.

Lead Liaison

Why Prospect Management is Impossible Using Google Analytics

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Why Prospect Management is Impossible Using Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics has long been a useful tool for webmasters to monitor website traffic. But GA is not an effective prospect management tool. While it breaks down traffic sources, visitor activities, and conversion rates, Google Analytics doesn’t provide the functionality required to be useful tool for B to B marketers to manage leads.

Prospect management is at the heart of most business-to-business marketing automation practices. Google Analytics only provides part of the story. To effectively manage prospects, marketers must rely on more robust data sets and integrated engagement mechanisms. If your sales cycle lasts more than a single website visit, you need marketing automation to manage prospects as they move through the sales pipeline.

Here are a few ways in which our Lead Management Automation™ is a more effective prospect management to for B to B marketers:

  1. Automatically tracks leads that have engaged with your brand, whether it’s through a submitted web form, survey response, social post, or other digital asset
  2. Links IP addresses with business intelligence generated from Dun and Bradstreet and/or Hoover’s
  3. Assigns a lead score and grade based upon business intelligence and visitor activity
  4. LMA users can schedule digital engagements while viewing expanded lead information
  5. Segments visitors by industry, location, size, and other criteria
  6. Users can adjust messaging, asset delivery, and offers within the user interface
  7. Website traffic can be filtered through a robust set of parameters
  8. Visitor activity is grouped together to provide a holistic view of a prospect’s online behaviors
  9. Users can see organic search terms used to find your site
  10. A chat feature can be enabled to provide instant engagement with a website visitor
  11. While GA provides alerts pertaining to traffic anomalies, the LMA alerts users about who is on your site
  12. Google Analytics is not concerned with optimizing your marketing and sales practices. The interface is provided to display general traffic information so users might spend more on advertising rather than improve marketing and sales practices

While GA provides robust traffic intelligence, you can see why prospect management for B to B marketers should be conducted through a marketing automation platform like our Lead Management Automation solution. For more information, contact a Revenue Generation Specialist today.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Offers Real-time Visitor Tracking

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Marketing Automation Offers Real-time Visitor TrackingModern businesses need marketing automation to record and monitor who is on their website and how they are behaving. It is estimated that 70% of people begin their purchasing process online and visitor tracking is essential for capturing these leads. Websites that are not equipped with real-time visitor tracking capabilities can miss out on up to 95% of these potential consumers.

Real-time Visitor Tracking

High-quality marketing automation software will also be able to monitor their behavior while they are still active. Potential customers are online searching for answers and it will improve the chance of conversion if marketers and sales professionals can provide them with an immediate and helpful response.

Creates an Accurate Profile in Real-time

Marketing automation generates a detailed profile of every lead’s interests and needs. It follows leads along their buying journey and uses pop-up registries to obtain useful demographic information. Website visitor tracking can tell you who is on your site, their location, purchasing history, employment background, and which pages they are reading.

All of these details can be matched to characteristics of current clients to determine their likelihood of conversion. Marketing automation is the fastest way to develop a lead profile in real-time, so the sales team can quickly decide whether that visitor is worth pursuing.

Keep Better Track of Favorites

Marketing automation uses lead scoring to determine which leads have the highest potential. Leads are ranked based on similarities to existing clients and then prioritized. Once these potential customers are identified, they can be marked as “Favorites.”

The majority of reputable marketing automation companies, like Lead Liaison, will send instant updates via text messaging or email when a “Favorite” goes online. This will offer sales the ability to immediately connect with qualified leads in real-time.

Provides the Opportunity for Live Conversions

Many websites that use marketing automation and visitor tracking have installed a helpful chat feature where they can conduct live conversations with leads as they are actively researching their options. When the person is online browsing your site, a little box will appear in the corner asking if they need any assistance. This offers the ability for open dialogue and live conversions.

Marketing automation offers online businesses real-time visitor tracking. It allows you to quickly generate a profile on each lead, determine their potential, connect with favorites while they are online, and it provides the opportunity for live conversions. This level of concern and service is what modern consumers expect.

Lead Liaison

8 Ways to Improve Sales Productivity With Lead Management Automation

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8 Ways to Improve Sales Productivity With Lead Management AutomationIs your B-to-B enterprise challenged to uncover ways to improve sales because of stiff competition? If so, here are 8 ways to improve sales productivity with lead management automation. Often, the solution is how well leads are managed from the point of acquisition to the point they are handed to your sales team. The way to improve sales productivity is also the answer to increased marketing and sales efficiency – lead management automation.

Within most traditional lead management programs, there are multiple factors that impact sales outcomes, such as outreach or lead qualification. The problem is that most of these factors take time to develop, implement, and evaluate. Even with all the automated functions available to B-to-B companies, there are still countless small, mid-size, and (yes) large enterprises that continue to acquire and manage leads manually. This leads to lost time, discarded leads, and inefficient sales practices.

Lead management automation provides several key functions that, when implemented properly,  can reduce sales cycles, increase close rates, and generate greater revenue. Here are 8 cornerstones of a strong lead management platform:

Sales Prospecting

Sales agents can search a database of over 200 million companies to find industry, company, and contact details. System users can target prospects by company, job title, or state. Additionally, agents can search your existing database for social and behavior profiles of your prospects.

Lead Generation

Identifying leads can be a difficult and time-consuming activity. Through an automated lead generation function, your sales team has an additional member – your website. Lead management automation supports your sales agents’ prospecting by tracking website visitors and delivering only interested prospects to your sales team.

Lead Nurturing

Most experienced sales professionals will tell you that 80% of leads are not ready to buy when they are first contacted. Companies can improve sales productivity through an automated process of consistent outreach and escalating messaging as leads advance through the sales pipeline.

Lead Qualification

It’s tough to close sales without reaching the right person with adequate buying signals. Leads can be easily qualified through a lead management automation solution that identifies whether a prospect is viable and appears ready to buy.

Sales Pipeline Management

One of the more effective ways to improve sales is to recognize where a lead is in the sales pipeline. Contacts that are approached too soon or too late result in failed sales attempts. Lead management automation provides a lead scoring matrix for sales to identify when a lead has become marketing-qualified and is ready for a sales call.

CRM Integration

Today’s sales force uses customer relationship management software to manage sales activities. To optimize your sales team’s ability to understand its prospects from first contact through sales support, a lead management automation platform integrates with existing CRM software.

Buy Signal Detection

When a prospect is ready to buy, there are often digital buy signals that indicate sales-readiness. Salespeople can be alerted when a signal is transmitted, such as opening a time-sensitive email message or submitting a web form.

Email Campaigns

With lead management automation, the return on email campaigns can be markedly improved. Users can create multiple email messages at one time then schedule delivery throughout a specified time period. Sales agents can focus follow up activities with only those that performed specific activities like opening the message or clicking through a link.

Despite the term “marketing automation” being often used to describe products that provide a digital lead management process, lead management automation is just as effective at improving sales productivity as it is at improving marketing practices.

Lead Liaison

On Website Visitor Identification: Does Conversion Code Cut It?

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On Website Visitor Identification: Does Conversion Code Cut It?One of the primary ways you can understand who’s visiting your website is by having website visitor identification in place. You already know that Google Analytics and Google Adwords give you tracking and conversion codes that help you determine how visitors are using your site – but is that really all there is to it?

Defining Your Conversions

Some businesses are using what they think is conversion tracking without ever really defining their conversions. A web visit alone shouldn’t be a conversion – a conversion involves a user taking a specific action on your site – not just visiting.

Because this is the case, you’ll need to have specific milestones set up for what qualifies as a conversion. A lead form fill-out is a great example. Since converting typically requires leaving personal information – such as an email address or a phone number – the client enters your sales funnel upon taking this action.

Many businesses set up multiple conversion opportunities on their sites so they have the best chance of getting the customer’s information. Once you have this info, you can contact the client again and again to make a sale. A conversion doesn’t necessarily have to be the sale of your product, although a sale is one type of conversion.

Tracking conversions doesn’t necessarily mean you’re using website visitor identification to find out where those visitors are coming from. This makes marketing automation even more important in your lead generation efforts.

Website Visitor Identification: Why Do It?

When you know specifically what company your visitors are from and can assign a name and background info to a conversion, you have valuable information at your fingertips. For instance, if someone comes back and converts again and again, you can improve customer relations by reaching out to that visitor personally to discuss a long-term relationship.

Website visitor identification also helps point out leads that aren’t converting in the way you’d like. When you have a potential client’s info and can see they’re returning again and again but not converting, you can contact the lead to encourage conversion or even a sale. Many leads need that personal touch in order to become a client, and website visitor identification can help you make the sale.

The right marketing automation system will include website visitor identification. You don’t just want to know that someone visited your site – you need to know who, why they visited, how they got there and other identifiable information such as geographic location, source company, and contact information. The more you know about your leads via website visitor identification, the more you can prime leads in the most effective way to generate a sale.

Lead Liaison offers in-depth website visitor identification for all your site’s content, including in-depth analysis of thank you pages and conversion points. Find out more by visiting us today!

Lead Liaison

9 Points to Mull Over in Your Marketing and Sales Service Level Agreement

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9 Points to Mull Over in Your Marketing and Sales Service Level AgreementWant to know a great way to make your marketing automation platform  more effective? Align your marketing and sales departments with a service level agreement. But what should you include in your service level agreement? Here are 9 points to consider in your marketing and sales service level agreement.

The key to drafting any agreement is to clearly define objectives that must be fulfilled and the responsibilities of each party. The M&S service level agreement establishes the common ground that both teams operate under. Gaining common ground effectively typically requires both departments to contribute to the agreement. Companies we’ve engaged that have implemented an SLA tell us that a service level agreement provides a useful way to hold both teams accountable for commonly-held goals.

When you’re developing a service level agreement for your company, keep these 10 points in mind. It should save you some heartache during the process.

  1. Define important terms. Those who will follow this agreement must understand and agree to what a term means, such as “sales qualified lead (SQL)” and “Trigger Events”. Both teams should be on the same page when it comes to, as former US President Bill Clinton put it, “what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
  2. Clearly define responsibilities – what is expected from each department? The SLA should include marketing response conditions when a lead is activated and sales response when a lead is passed through.
  3. Provide focused metrics. You can’t draft a successful SLA without clearly defined, timely metrics for each department. Metrics should include such parameters as “marketing will add X (number) contacts to the CRM database per month” or “sales will generate X (number) SQLs per month”.
  4. Incorporate team benchmarks – what are the minimums? As part of metric development, each parameter should have at least 3 hurdles that each department should leap over.
  5. Provide an ideal lead profile (customer) profile. Both teams should agree on who you’re targeting. The service level agreement should describe ideal profiles for your market(s). Typically, the profile should include factors from both a lead’s attributes (size, location, etc.) and its online behavior (white paper download, completed form, etc.)
  6. Insert a lead scoring model that ranks leads as they advance through the pipeline. Take each attribute and online activity and assign it a value that both marketing and sales can agree on. For example, using ‘title’ as a parameter, you could assign a 7 each time the condition ‘sales supervisor’ is satisfied as a result of a lead selecting that title through an online form. Don’t forget to include negative scoring!
  7. Establish lead routing rules. Lead distribution is a key component to an effective marketing automation platform; therefore, the SLA should outline which sales team or agents will receive certain leads and how generic leads will be distributed.
  8. Explain the lead nurturing process. Each team should know how leads that enter the marketing pipeline will be advanced towards marketing-qualified. Though this provision will often apply to automated marketing activity, the sales department’s lead nurturing responsibilities should be defined as well.
  9. Determine a meeting frequency for marketing and sales alignment. Each service level agreement should establish a meeting schedule and meeting goals and objectives to make sure that both sides are on target for fulfilling their end of the agreement.

If you would like to have a free service level template delivered via email, contact a Lead Liaison Revenue Generation Specialist today.

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Improves Lead Distribution Capabilities in its Lead Management Automation™ Platform

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) June 15, 2013 – Lead Liaison, an emerging innovator in the marketing automation space, has improved its flagship Lead Management Automation platform by optimizing its lead distribution capabilities. The company announced in May a roll out of the enhanced lead distribution functionality, as well several automation improvements, improved analytics, and deeper integration with Saleforce.com.

Lead Liaison has paced its product development according to market demands. Lead distribution has become more important to the SME market the company serves. VP of Communications Alex Brown explained that “within many industries, companies are running leaner since the Great Recession, often deploying lower marketing and sales spend. They are turning to MA for more efficient resource allocation.”

“We recognize the need for lead stream management that provides breakout according to performance, geography, and other parameters,” said Brown. “Our focus has extended beyond how a lead moves through the funnel. It’s just as important to assign leads effectively.”

One company that has leveraged the lead distribution functionality is Telappliant, Ltd., a major telephony and VoIP provider headquartered in London. Marketing manager Tommy Powell has seen improvements in productivity since implementing the system. He said the previous lead distribution process “(was) inefficient, as there was often a time delay between leads arriving and being distributed marketing manager. A member of the marketing team…manually used SFDC to distribute leads to various members of the sales team. This process was time-consuming in terms of human resources.”

“(The platform) has enabled each lead to be instantly and automatically distributed to the salesperson most likely to be able to close it. In addition, the sales team is now working leads more effectively,” said Powell.

Company executives plan to announce additional platform enhancements at another upgrade release later this summer.

For more information about Lead Liaison’s marketing automation products or its support services contact Lead Liaison.

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Lead Liaison is an application development company that designs, develops, and sells cloud-based marketing and sales automation software. The company markets to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, and focuses on creating the broadest and most user-friendly revenue generation software platform. Applications cover all phases of lead management automation including sales prospecting, lead generation, and marketing automation functions that directly influence revenue generation. It’s innovative and robust lead management platform combines unparalleled sales prospecting, lead capture, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing and ROI reporting. The Software as a Service (SaaS) model delivers an effective user experience and integrated cloud computing capabilities.

For More Information:

Alex Brown
VP, Corporate Communications
abrown(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.895.3237 (888 89 LEADS)