Lead Liaison

The Benefits of Identifying Who is Visiting Your Site

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The Benefits of Identifying Who’s Visiting Your SiteUnderstanding exactly who is visiting your site is essential for success in a global marketplace. Almost every person who clicks on a link to your website is a potential customer. Occasionally they could be competitors or researchers with ulterior motives, but most visitors are on your site looking for solutions to their questions and concerns. They are investigating their options and sincerely interested in your products or services. Marketing automation is a proven method for capturing, profiling, and converting these visitors. Its primary purpose is identifying who is visiting your site and what information they are trying to obtain. This gives your marketing and sales team better insight into customer’s interests and intentions. One of the greatest benefits that you will receive from a marketing automation system is website visitor tracking. Marketing automation software provides you with the ability to monitor and record vital information about every visitor on your website.

Establishes an Accurate Target Market Profile

A company can develop a more accurate profile of a typical consumer by identifying website visitors early on in their buying process. Website visitor tracking will follow the lead to determine the route that was taken from the link that brought them to the site and to the final webpage that sealed the deal. By weighing similar demographic and behavioral aspects on every lead, they can develop a clear picture of who really makes up their target market.

Gains Insight into Visitor’s Online Activity

By identifying who is visiting your website, you can monitor visitor’s online activity in real-time. This way companies can pinpoint certain indicators as triggers and advise the sales team to react instantly. Understanding trends in consumer’s online activity will also help marketers develop a more complete lead profile for scoring.

Gain Insight into your Visitor’s Demographics

How well could you describe your typical consumer? Do you know their age, employment history, job title, sex, or any other aspect that makes them more likely to buy into your brand? By using website visitor tracking to identify who’s on your site, you can gather vital demographic information on your potential customers prior to conversion. This will also further enhance your lead profile.

Provide your Sales Team with Qualified Leads

Using website visitor tracking to identify who is on your site will make it easier to spot leads with the highest potential. Marketing automation providers like Lead Liaison will send sales alerts the very instant online visitors are proven to be qualified sales candidates. A faster reaction time to leads while they are demonstrating interest in a product or service will greatly increases the chance of conversion.

Deeper Understanding of Buyer’s Pre-purchasing Behavior

You will have a better grasp of the buying journey your customers go through by monitoring and tracking who is visiting your website while they are on it. It will make it easier to identify which pages they click on, how long it usually takes from initial visit to conversion, and what content on your website is generating the most revenue. This information is vital for content development and marketing campaign improvements. This is the age of advanced technology in a tough economy. Every company needs an advantage to stay viable. By following who is on your website through advance technology like website visitor tracking, you can bring in more leads, create a more accurate profile, advise sales of qualified leads in real-time, and gain better insight into the pre-purchasing behavior of your typical consumer. This is the advantage your company needs to survive.

Lead Liaison

When Marketing Automation Won’t Work

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When Marketing Automation Won't WorkLead generation. Lead nurturing. Sales pipeline management. These are all benefits of implementing a marketing automation system for lead management purposes. But the grass is not always greener if your company is not prepared to fully leverage the strength of a marketing automation platform. Though marketing automation has proven over the past five years to be an effective tool at shortening buying cycles, providing more qualified leads, and improving sales conversions, investing in marketing automation does not always provide the returns managers expect. It’s important to understand when marketing automation won’t work. There are a few reasons for this:

Don’t Have a Long-Term View

In the “every-minute-counts” world that digital connectivity provides, it is important to remember that marketing is a long-term endeavor. That said, companies that are looking for an immediate fix of poor marketing results through a marketing automation platform may be disappointed. Marketing automation is intended to reduce marketing costs and increase results – over the mid to long-term. Successful implementation takes patience, despite the statistics that show shortened buying cycles.

Don’t Have a Marketing Strategy

Integrating a marketing automation platform will not be effective if your company has not invested time into marketing strategy development. While an marketing automation system may provide decent lead generation capabilities with little planning, the broader functionality that makes an marketing automation system effective requires  thoughtful analysis of what messages you want to deliver to prospects over time, when and how leads will be distributed to your salespeople, and what metrics will be used to evaluate performance. Without careful strategic planning a marketing automation platform will often provide limited effectiveness.

Don’t Have an Evaluation Process

Most marketing automation platforms provide analytics for evaluation purposes. The key to an effective marketing automation integration is having the ability to analyze results and make modifications to your marketing strategy. Not every message will resonate with your leads, and developing effective lead generation and nurturing tactics requires adjustments. Your marketing model should not be cast in stone. Therefore, companies without an adequate campaign evaluation process may find that marketing automation is not beneficial.

Don’t have a Qualified Database

Marketers that start out by injecting unqualified leads into a marketing automation system will likely struggle to see a healthy ROI. Although one of the primary functions of an marketing automation system is lead generation and nurturing into sales-ready prospects, the initial integration phase will present poor results if your database is filled with one-off contacts and stale lists.

Marketing automation has been shown* to

  • Increase qualified leads by 451%
  • Generate 50% more sales-ready leads
  • Nurture leads at 33% lower cost
  • Increase conversion rates by 50%

While marketing automation has been shown to drive revenue faster and manage leads more effectively, this tool is not suited for every company at every stage of the business life cycle. The most effective use of the Lead Management automation platform has been shown by companies with revenues over $5 million. If you’re interested in exploring an marketing automation system for your company, be sure to first determine if your company is prepared to take full advantage of this powerful tool.

Reference: http://www.slideshare.net/McRaeandCompany/four-b2b-marketing-issues-marketing-automation-can-solve-14232631

Lead Liaison

Empowering Your Site: How to Track Conversions

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Empowering Your Site: How to Track ConversionsYou might have some understanding of how to track conversions and sell users on the phone, but converting your visitors via web forms and online commerce is a different story entirely. When you start to track conversions and streamline your web sales funnel, you’re adding an entirely different dimension to your sales strategy.

If you’re considering a website revamp, there’s no better time than the present to analyze your current conversion rates and web conversion strategy. If you don’t have the right tools to track conversions, you definitely need to rectify this and get on the right track before a new or revamped website enters the final build stages.

Streamlining to Track Conversions

One of the biggest obstacles many business owners face with their websites is attracting the user to action. A call to action is an important element of getting the visitor to act. This can include urging the user to act immediately to receive a special offer, inciting the user to fill out a form or contact your company, etc.  Most calls-to-action are text, but when paired with a visual element, the user experiences a sense of further urgency.

Visual calls-to-action that may incite users to interact with you or leave their information include things like:

  • A quote form
  • A “get more information” button
  • A download
  • A visually appealing link
  • A click-to-call or chat

Without some type of conversion or call to action in place, all users have is information about your company with no upfront way to contact you. If your site’s conversion opportunity isn’t front and center, it’s important to monitor your bounce rates and track conversions to see if you could be losing visitors.

Track for Success

When you do change your site – or even if it’s not a consideration yet – the most important thing you can do is let the data you collect make decisions for you. If you need to decide whether or not to incorporate a form on the front page, to change the look of your site or to test one page against another, the data you collect through tracking conversions is key to your success. Without knowing how visitors experience your site, you’ll have no idea how to change your assets to make your site more informative and useful to your visitors.

When you use programs like Google Analytics, you’re tracking visitors, but you’re doing so anonymously. With more advanced data like a user’s parent company, frequency of an individual user’s visits or their particular activity on your site, being able to track conversions with an advanced suite of data tools can vastly improve your business sales strategy.

Next week we’ll talk more about anonymous vs. identified user tracking and how to track conversions of identified users. In the meantime, take a look at Lead Liaison’s visitor tracking tools and track conversions more efficiently than you ever thought possible.

Lead Liaison

What Is A Marketing and Sales Service Level Agreement? How Can It Help My Company Boost Sales?

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What Is A Marketing and Sales Service Level Agreement? How Can It Help My Company Boost Sales?A fair number of companies we’ve spoken with have wanted to know “what is a marketing and sales service level agreement (SLA) and how does having an SLA in place help to increase our sales conversions, reduce customer buy cycles, and drive higher revenues?” The short answer is: it’s a document that inspires symmetry. The longer answer is:

What an M&S Service Level Agreement Is

A marketing and sales service level agreement is a binding agreement between the sales and marketing teams that specifies a lead generation and management process. The purpose of a service level agreement is to broker collaboration between both departments by defining a qualification process, lead scoring criteria, and accountability standards. Typically, the goal for executing an SLA is to generate an acceptable level of marketing-qualified leads (MQL) for the sales team to convert into sales-qualified leads (SQL) or sales opportunities.

Within a marketing and sales service level agreement there are requirements for how leads will be managed by marketing and delivered to sales. On the sales side, there are requirements for follow up responsibilities on marketing-qualified leads and converting MQLs to SQLs. In some cases, there may be parameters for how demand will be generated as well.

5 Ways an SLA Aligns Marketing With Sales

  1. Provides a defined pipeline that clarifies when a lead has reached marketing-qualified status.
  2. Provides clear stages for advancing leads towards sales-readiness
  3. Provides lead scoring metrics that reflect lead engagement levels with marketing assets (sales can see how effectively marketing assets are educating leads)
  4. Provides goals for sales to generate sales-qualified leads and opportunities
  5. Establishes that marketing is responsible for de-duping, filtering competition, and removing bot-filled forms

4 Ways an SLA Aligns Sales With Marketing  

  1. Provides defined follow up time for leads received by marketing
  2. Defines an automated lead nurturing process aimed at providing the highest quality leads at the earliest possible point
  3. Provides a criteria-based lead distribution process for sales optimization
  4. Provides goals for marketing to generate marketing-qualified leads and a percentage of leads that eclipse a lead scoring threshold

Operating without a service level agreement can reduce the efficacy of your lead generation/marketing automation system. Be sure to set the standards for both departments early to get the most from your MA platform.

Lead Liaison

Marketo IPO, Eloqua and Pardot Buyouts, Silverpop Funding are Signs of a Booming Industry

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Marketo IPO, Eloqua and Pardot Buyouts, Silverpop Funding are Signs of a Booming IndustryThe B2B marketing automation space has established itself as one of the most vibrant industries in the United States. Recent activity, including a $78 million Marketo IPO, a $100 acquisition of Pardot by ExactTarget, a $871 million acquisition of Eloqua by Oracle, and a $25 million venture funding of Silverpop, suggests the marketing automation industry is growing at a breakneck pace.

Marketing automation has become the bellwether of online marketing for B to B marketers. Companies in business-to-business industries from IT consulting to manufacturing have been adopting lead generation and management applications at a furious rate since 2009.

The industry is still in its infancy. None of these big hitters is even 15 years-old: Eloqua and Silverpop were founded in 1999, Marketo and Pardot in 2007.

These marketing automation industry players are leading (in terms of capitalization) a group of smaller but no less effective MA vendors. For example, Lead Liaison’s Lead Management Automation™ cloud-based platform is a competitive lead management solution because it allows marketers to expand their email delivery without overage charges. There are several other examples of competitive advantages that smaller players have which MA vendors like HubSpot, Pardot, and LeadLander do not provide.

Since 2005 digital marketing has grown substantially. PPC advertising, social media marketing, and SEO have all played a part in marketing B2B solutions. However, marketing automation software appears to have one important differentiator from other B to B digital marketing components: while buying behaviors may change (such as reduced PPC click-through), capturing and managing Big Data for marketing purposes is not vulnerable to changing online behavior trends. The function of marketing automation will remain viable for B to B companies for decades. Perhaps this is why companies like Marketo, Eloqua, and Lead Liaison are forging a sustainable path for this booming industry.

Lead Liaison

6 Ways to Retain B to B Customers Using Marketing Automation

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Retain B to B customers using marketing automationThere are many ways to retain B to B customers using marketing automation – let us tell you 6 key ways to do so. With Marketo raising $85 million and Silverpop raising $25 million recently, the marketing world is abuzz about the awesome potential of B to B marketing automation for lead generation and management practices. More prospects are being targeted and nurtured using a marketing automation (MA) platform than ever before, but did you know that MA can be just as effective at retaining your existing customers? It’s important to remember that customers should be managed as leads at all times; B to B buyers can migrate to competitors at any time. Here are a few ways you can maximize customer retention through marketing automation:

“Typically, much of our effort is focused on filling top of the funnel, but seldom do we make time to plug any leaks we may have in the sides.  If we’re serious about maximizing customer lifetime value, however, we’ve got to find room in our strategy to prioritize retention as well as acquisition.” – Andy Worobel, Eloqua

1) As a purchase follow-up tool. Customers want to feel like they are cared about after a sale. Using a marketing automation platform like our Lead Management Automation™ solution, your sales team can schedule email messages to routinely “check in” with customers to inquire about satisfaction, provide tips and tricks, uncover issues that must be addressed, or provide product updates. A follow up process is a great way to retain B to B customers using marketing automation.

2) As an up-sell/cross-sell tool. Sales agents know that it is often easier to sell add-ons to existing customers than it is to solicit new business. A marketing automation platform can be an effective mechanism at driving ancillary sales. Through a sustained campaign of sharing special offers and other purchase opportunities delivered by an MA system, your sales team can be more effective at revenue generation.

3) As a time-sensitive reminder tool. An MA platform allows your sales team to deliver reminders about deadline-driven offers without the need to personally contact each customer. Special offer reminders delivered occasionally throughout the offer period can be a great way to stimulate interest and generate revenue.

4) As a customer engagement tool. Even with a protracted sales cycle where your sales team spends months building a relationship with their prospects, there are likely still hidden needs or wants that a customer might have. A marketing automation platform provides cost-effective yet powerful way to engage in an ongoing dialogue with customers without your sales agents spending valuable time performing outreach activities. Creating dialogue and interactive discussion with customers is a great way to retain B to B customers using marketing automation.

5) As a “Happy Birthday” tool. Users can automatically deliver holiday or special occasion greetings to customers following a purchase. Once a sale is complete, your sales agent can immediately schedule brief messages to be delivered throughout the year. This tactic will drive top-of-mind-awareness (TOMA) by maintaining a consistent contact process and recognizing your customers.

6) As a customer appreciation tool. Customers often want to sense that your company appreciates their business. While a sincere expression of gratitude is important at the time a sale closes, occasional expressions of gratitude months or even years after a sale can be effective at maintaining TOMA.

Lead Liaison

Salesforce.com Understands the Power of Marketing Automation

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Salesforce.com Understands the Power of Marketing AutomationLast week’s announcement of the $2.5 billion acquisition of ExactTarget by Salesforce.com had the marketing automation space buzzing – with good reason. Sales force optimization remains a key objective for most companies, and marketing automation is quickly asserting itself as a primary contributor to sales force effectiveness.

Salesforce.com has long recognized the benefits in automating customer relationships, but the move last week confirms that the company views the marketing cycle as an important contributor to optimizing B-to-B sales force automation. It’s clear Salesforce.com understands the power of marketing automation.

It Starts With a Click

Rare is the sale today that doesn’t start with a mouse-click. From the Pew Research Center to Gartner, study after study shows the marketplace, b2b or b2c, conducting online research prior to a purchase. Through its acquisition, Salesforce.com recognizes the benefit in tracking lead behavior from the first point of contact.

80% Do Not Buy at First Contact

Marketers understand that most prospects require multiple touch points to be effective. Using a marketing automation system like Lead Liaison’s Lead Management Automation™ platform, an enterprise sales force can manage each relationship prior to the sales engagement. Lead nurturing through MA saves sales agents time; Salesforce.com has shown that it understands how critical lead nurturing is to sales force optimization.

Cold Opportunities Get Hot

Research has shown that just because a prospect doesn’t convert immediately into a sales opportunity, that prospect should remain a lead. Sirius Decisions found that nearly 80% of qualified leads that don’t buy initially go on to make a purchase within 24 months. Marketing automation provides the tool to maintain TOMA throughout that period. This factor, among others, has led vendors like Lead Liaison to focus on SFDC integration in order to provide a seamless transition between platforms.

Changing Marketing Automation Landscape

As MA becomes an integral part of sales force automation, companies like Salesforce.com, Marketo, and Lead Liaison must continue to improve their offerings to adapt to evolving marketing and sales practices. But as the evolution of marketing automation continues, one business principle remains constant: providing quality support following implementation is important to effective sales force automation. Without customer-centricity, some MA/CRM vendors may face the same fate as early dot.com failures – even in the wake of a $2.5 billion transaction.

Lead Liaison

Telappliant Improves Lead Distribution Capabilities Through Lead Liaison’s Marketing Automation Platform

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Telappliant Selects Lead Liaison for Lead Distribution and Marketing AutomationAllen, TX (PRWEB) June 1, 2013 – Telappliant, one of the United Kingdom’s first Internet telephony providers, has improved its lead distribution process by selecting Lead Liaison as its marketing automation vendor. Telappliant was a founding member of the Internet Telephony Service Provider Association and was one of the first VoIP providers in the UK. Among its customers are BBC, Vibrant Media, and WorldPay.

As a leader in VoIP deployment in the UK SME market, Telappliant has been delivering telephony solutions for over a decade and has built an impressive database of sales leads. Prior to selecting the Lead Management Automation (LMA) platform primarily for its superior lead distribution capabilities, Telappliant’s marketing team manually distributed leads to its sales team.

According to marketing manager Tommy Powell,

“The process was time-consuming in terms of human resources. Often we would spend at least one hour per day distributing leads generated through online forms and landing pages, more when we were running major marketing campaigns. Leads were checked and distributed several times per day and pushed through Salesforce.com. (This was) inefficient, as there were often delays between leads arriving and being distributed.”

Powell also noted that Telappliant’s previous lead management process provided “no way to automatically redistribute a lead if it was not…properly worked by a particular salesperson.” Through an integration between Lead Liaison’s LMA platform and Salesforce.com’s CRM each lead is now distributed through an automated lead distribution process which includes a series of filters that ensure the lead is sent to the salesperson most likely to convert it based upon available capacity and strongest recent track record of closing similar leads. Leads are automatically redistributed if not worked in a timely manner. Round robin distribution, the “Hopper” and lead distribution analytics further complement Lead Liaison lead distribution capabilities.

Since adopting the Lead Management Automation platform for its lead distribution capabilities, Telappliant has seen a “marked improvement” in percentage of leads closed and a reduction in the average lead cycle. These improvements have led to increased revenue generation and a more efficient sales team.

Powell is excited about leveraging more of the software’s functionality. “We intend to gradually roll out additional functionality, starting with lead scoring/grading and lead nurturing. I expect this to work just as well as (the) lead distribution (function) has for us.”

Powell was quick to note that one of the primary criteria for selecting Lead Liaison as its marketing automation vendor was the “incredible level of customer service and support that we have received from the team at Lead Liaison. I can honestly say that the level, speed, and quality of service has been second to none.”

For more information about Lead Liaison’s marketing automation products or its support services contact Lead Liaison at 888 895 3237 or sales(at)leadliaison(dot)com.

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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. Its 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)

Lead Liaison

How Marketing Automation Makes B2B Marketing More Efficient

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Marketing Automation Makes B2B Marketing More EfficientThe world of business has become increasingly competitive due to the vast reach of the internet. Companies can now easily conduct business online from anywhere in the world. They can work with any vendorthey choose and receive almost the identical products or services as they would locally. No company is too small to be exempt from global competition.

B2B providers need an advantage to stand out from every other supplier if they expect to convert online traffic into sales. Marketing automation is that advantage. It is an automated system that efficiently streamlines the entire marketing process, so companies can create stronger relationships with B2B buyers faster.

Automated & Efficient Lead Generation

Marketing automation makes B2B marketing more efficient by tracking every contact on a business’ website and automatically recording all of their online activity. It starts at the very beginning of the B2B purchaser’s buying process when they are still researching their options. It evaluates the pages they are clicking on and the information they are gathering to determine what they need to know and what they are interested in buying.This is valuable information that can be used to direct a lead towards additional information about a specific product or service.

Determines Leads with the Greatest Potential

Marketing automation is used to screen and segment leads based on their demographic characteristics and online behavior. It compares each lead against a typical B2B buyer and ranks their activity based on relevancy. For example, if a lead is a senior buyer with a lengthy history with their company, there would have a greater ranking than a new junior buyer. Once the potential of each lead is assessed they are grouped into similar segments based on their profile. Lead segment groups will make it easier to create more personalized lead nurturing campaigns.

Encourages B2B Leads to Share Information

Marketing automation uses online registries as barriers to encourage leads to share vital information. A quick pop up questionnaire appears prior to revealing pertinent content, so it can extract details about a lead to determine theirbackground and purchasing authority. Anytime a lead wants to download relevant and informative content, they are first required to share a bit about themselves. If the B2B lead needs that article or tutorial to help with their decision, they will willingly supply the necessary contact information to obtain it.

Marketing Automation Focus on Quality Content

Today’s B2B buyers are smart. They have higher expectations and want businesses that are willing to offer support and guidance prior to the sale. Marketers will have greater insight into what a lead needs because marketing automation profiles every lead. Various articles and tutorials can be created for each different lead segment and then sent automatically using auto-responders. Offering a lead informative content prior to a sale will help build trust and loyalty in a company.

Most computerized marketing approaches fail to connect with B2B buyers, because the entire system is automated. Marketing automation makes B2B marketing more efficient without eliminating the human element by automating the lead generation, scoring, segmenting, and nurturing process while always maintaining focus on the customer’s needs and interests.

Lead Liaison

Why You Should Track Visitors on Your Website

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Why You Should Track Visitors on Your WebsiteIf you haven’t made the decision to track visitors on your website, now is the time. Companies are ramping up for summer marketing campaigns. For some of us, this means a busy few months ahead. Others will experience slower times in the year – and for these companies, every lead counts. If you’re not ready to track visitors on your website, you could be missing the opportunity to close leads that will ensure a stronger summer for your business.

The Key to Visitor Tracking

Many web admins or business owners throw Google Analytics on their domains and call it a day. This is great – but if you’re not analyzing or using the data in the right way, Analytics won’t help you. Many businesses are opting to track traffic using marketing automation software that can tell them so much more about user behavior on the site.

If you’re considering tracking visitors on your website, it’s important to know the tracking information that sites like Google Analytics may not be able to tell you. Some of this info includes:

Business email collection. If visitors from certain companies are reading your blogs or engaging with you via email, you can get a better idea of how users from certain companies are interacting with your website. If you’re ready to track visitors on your website, you can work with a suite of tools that will work with your email. When you send out a newsletter or an important email message – or write a new blog – and a user captured via marketing automation clicks around on your site, the software will track that user’s email domain along with their activity.

This allows you to get an idea of how many individuals from different companies are interacting with your site. If you decide to track visitors on your website and see a certain number of visits from a particular company, it might be worth engaging with that company’s marketing department as a lead.

Track Visitors on Your Website with Marketing Automation

When you know what content your users are looking at, you’re in a viable position to give them more of the same. If you have great blog content, users can literally fall “down the rabbit hole” and become lost in your content throughout their visit. When you track visitors on your website, you can see the path users are taking through your website and come up with new blog topics and content that matches what your target audience is looking for.

Without the ability to track visitors on your website, you can’t follow users down the rabbit hole, profile specific individuals at companies that may be of interest or know what features of your site might need changed. This summer will be more competitive than ever, so it’s time to get a game plan in place that ensures your content and offerings can compete.

Take a look at Lead Liaison’s robust platform if you’re ready to track visitors on your website. We can get you set up in just a few days!