Lead Liaison

Are Your Landing Pages Ruining Your Business?

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Are Your Landing Pages Ruining Your Business?Conversion optimization is the key to continually improving landing pages. Your landing pages have only one purpose – driving sales. Regardless of whether your landers collect email information, pop up a chat box, inform people about your services or simply brand your product – or all of these things – landing pages are there to sell you and what you have to offer. For some small businesses, landing pages are so poorly optimized that a potential sale is dead in the water less than 30 seconds after a new customer hits landing pages.

Conversion Optimization and Landing Pages

One of the biggest problems with conversion-optimized landing pages – and web design in general – is that the design expectations of the business owner don’t fit what customers need to see. Many business owners don’t make an aesthetic distinction between what their personal website and business website should look like. The result is two-fold:

  1. The landing page doesn’t meet the needs of the consumer. Meaning the look, general appeal or feel of the site are a turn-off to the user. This can happen when the business owner goes for a site that matches their own preferences and aesthetic rather than meeting the needs of his/her target audience.
  2. The landing page doesn’t meet the customer’s needs for conversion optimization. This can mean several things, including lack of a clear path to leave an email, no contact information for the business, sales copy that isn’t compelling or missing listings of key product features.

Don’t Just Use Your Imagination

When it comes to conversion optimization, let the data speak for you. Google Analytics is one way to get an idea of how users are moving through your website. Marketing automation like Lead Liaison can give you a fuller picture by identifying web actions with a particular user or company. This sort of deep analysis and business intelligence can help you ensure your conversion optimization is timely, cost-effective and enhances your website.

Business owners should also remember that multiple pages on a site have multi-functional purposes. Running an Adwords campaign that sends people to a business index page isn’t always the best way to go – for starters, index pages often aren’t keyword or service themed and using a .com index page as an Adwords destination URL can decrease your quality score. This can drive up the costs of your advertising and CPA when using Adwords.

Instead, create multiple pages that speak to all your services, then practice good conversion optimization on those pages over time as data comes in. In this way, you can ensure your customers get what they need and your business keeps closing sales.

For more information on how a well-placed marketing automation platform can inform your conversion optimization efforts, check out Lead Liaison today!

Lead Liaison

Five Reasons why it is Necessary to Follow Leads with Website Visitor Tracking

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Five Reasons why it is Necessary to Follow Leads with Website Visitor TrackingToday’s consumers are exceptionally fickle because they know they have an endless supply of online options. If they don’t find the answers they are searching for on one website, they will quickly jump to the next. In fact, most companies that don’t use website visitor tracking software will lose 95% of the visitors who have went on their site before they have the opportunity to really connect with them.

Website visitor tracking remedies this problem.

Modern businesses need to utilize a marketing automation strategy that includes website visitor tracking software to retain every potential lead. It is the fastest and most effective way to capture and convert more leads into customers.

Five reasons why it is necessary to follow leads with website visitor tracking

1.       Captures Every Lead on Their Site

Website visitor tracking software automatically stores the IP address of every person who comes in contact with your website. It tells which link they followed to get to your site and which pages they landed on while they were on your site.

2.       Determine Their Stage in the Buying Process

Marketing automation strategists are able to use website visitor tracking to monitor the online activity of each lead. This gives them powerful insight into where the lead is at in their buying process. Certain triggers, like visiting a company’s contact page can be strong indicators that a lead is approaching the end of their buying process.

3.       Faster Responses to Interested Buyers

One great advantage to website visitor tracking is its ability to immediately notify the sales department if there is an interested buyer. If a potential lead’s characteristics and online behavior is similar to the profile of an existing client, the marketing automation software will immediately send a notification by text or email to the appropriate sales professional. This technology also makes it easier to quickly answer lead’s questions and concerns as they occur.

4.       Analyze and Identify Behavioral Patterns

Behavioral patterns will become apparent as the website visitor tracking software evaluates more and more leads. It will be easier to identify buying triggers if you consistently follow and analyze the paths of recently converted leads.

5.       Build a Comprehensive Lead Profile

Website visitor tracking makes it easier to develop a complete lead profile that covers all behavioral and demographic characteristics since it physical follows each lead throughout their buying process. This information will make it easier to connect and convert more leads.

Website visitor tracking software will capture every lead on a site, determine what stage they are at in their buying process, make it easier to quickly respond to interested buyers, identify behavioral patterns and help build a comprehensive lead profile. That is why it is so necessary to follow leads with website visitor tracking.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Needs a Human Touch

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Marketing Automation Needs a Human TouchWhile I was researching information on how I can improve the marketing automation strategies I employ for my clients, I came across a very interesting article that I had to share. In retrospect, I think it was the title of the article that really got my attention Marketing Automation – Set it and forget it!

The set it and forget it slogan is a popular catch phrase for a cooking appliance infomercial, but it was the thought behind it that really intrigued me. Although the automation aspect of marketing automation is what makes it more simplified and scalable, it is not what makes marketing automation work.

Marketing automation needs a human touch.

There has to be a knowledgeable marketing professional creating the scoring criteria, developing the lead nurturing content, and conducting the final sale. The vital components of marketing automation cannot be successfully managed without a human touch.

Human Profile Created by Humans

It takes a trained marketer to determine how a typical buyer should be evaluated. The software is not able to understand the relevance of each lead’s characteristics on its own. Most marketing automation experts, including myself, will recommend gathering your company’s marketing and sales professionals together to create a comprehensive list of relevant lead behavior and demographic characteristics.

Relevant Content Created By Humans   

There is software you can purchase that will spin articles, but the quality of the content is usually subpar. Articles that are not written by humans won’t be compelling enough to convert leads into customers. The content that is sent to potential leads should answer any questions a typical buyer may have while directing the lead towards making a purchase. Automated software is not capable of creating the level of content that your potential leads expect to receive.

Final Conversion Approached By Humans

Marketing automation software profiles and guides leads that are captured on a website, but the final sale should be done by an actual human. Many marketing automation strategist will have a system in place, like ours, where the sales staff is immediately notified by text or email if a lead shows a high likelihood of conversion. This way it is a person reassuring the lead they are making a sound buying decision.

Marketing automation requires human profiling, human content creation, and human conversion. The automated aspects will save time, but it is not meant to be a “set it and forget it” system. Online companies will see superior results by employing an experienced marketing automation expert to oversee the success of their marketing automation strategy.

Lead Liaison

Use SEO and Marketing Automation Together to Optimize Marketing Effectiveness

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Use SEO and Marketing Automation Together to Optimize Marketing EffectivenessSearch engine optimization has been around for over 15 years. And marketing automation has been taking the B2B world by storm over the past few years. Although each provides distinct capabilities for digital marketing, when combined they make a potent combination.

SEO has evolved as Panda then Penguin have changed search marketing strategies. The evolution of SEO provides an opportunity to leverage the strengths of MA; namely, the ability to understand how well organic and paid campaigns have been and the development of other search marketing practices (such as back linking or social campaigns). The key is to use SEO and marketing automation together to optimize marketing effectiveness.

Marketing automation allows marketers to track lead behavior. Search patterns provide potential indications of buyers’ intentions. It seems like a natural fit to combine your SEO strategy with a marketing automation system. With the information available within an MA platform, SEO campaigns can be linked to a deeper view of Web activity and, ultimately, to conversions. SEO performance can be tracked from click to close. Search campaigns can be evaluated through MA analytics then modified based upon the insight platform users have into keywords and referral sources; campaigns can then be optimized to match traffic patterns. MA can help demonstrate ROI for both paid and organic campaigns.

When integrated with a CRM, such as Microsoft Dynamics, a marketing automation platform like our Lead Management Automation™ can point marketing managers to KPIs where the true dollar attribution is visible. Existing SEO analytics products fall short of that capability. By combining SEO and MA, marketers have a wider scope into buyer behavior. Page views and other content consumption data can provide direction for developing lead-centric  content marketing initiatives and site architecture modifications. Not only can MA provide keyword performance metrics for search activities but also within email campaigns and landing pages. Link building is more effective when combining SEO and MA by using the trackable link function, which allows users to follow leads through search, social, and other pathways. The lead intelligence provided through this function can help shape link building strategies more effectively than standalone SEO reporting.

Finally, using MA with SEO allows businesses to budget with more agility, basing decisions on actual revenue generation capabilities of search marketing tactics. Using only SEO analytics requires managers to adjust budget based on traffic, not close rates.

Lead Liaison

Effective Lead Management: More Than Marketing Automation Alone

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Effective Lead Management: More Than Marketing Automation AloneWith marketing automation platform (MAP) adoption expected to generate $750 million by the end of the year, we felt it was important to draw a distinction between MA and lead management. Marketing automation is a function of delivering scheduled messaging to marketing leads. But lead management is a process of advancing those leads appropriately to the point where they can be migrated to a CRM system (like Salesforce.com) and engaged by your sales team.

We believe there is more to MAPs like our Lead Management Automation™ platform than automatically delivering customized messages. To truly leverage the strengths of a MAP, you must use the technology to advance marketing leads through your marketing funnel.

While some companies implement parts of their MAP, those that deploy all the features relevant to lead management within a robust platform see higher ROI. Why is that? Because successful conversions require more than messaging.

Certainly, managing leads involves messaging. But effective lead management also requires appropriate timing, sufficient escalation of the relationship, rapid response, and accurate scoring. For example, our real-time visitor tracker, Streamer, provides visibility about who is on your site. The information provided can reduce response time by allowing the user to quickly engage in a chat or send a personalized email.

Our Briefcase™ dashboard is another example of the robust lead management capabilities that can improve lead classification, scoring, and distribution to sales agents. LMA users can quickly identify the most qualified and sales-ready leads. Features like this expand our MAP beyond simple automated marketing practices.

Lead management takes a fresh suspect and turns it into a marketing-qualified lead that has been adequately engaged through the marketing automation process. Factors such as content development, database segmentation, and lead distribution all play significant roles in managing leads effectively.

Of course, not all leads that enter the pipeline through an MA platform will go on to become a sales opportunity. But leads that are managed effectively through MA functionality such as lead scoring, real-time tracking, or lead qualification are more likely to be converted.

Lead Liaison

Why Your Sales Team Needs to Understand a Lead Score

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Why Your Sales Team Needs to Understand a Lead ScoreLead scoring is a common component to marketing automation. Often, when a lead achieves a specific scoring threshold, that record is automatically migrated to a CRM for sales contact. However, not all lead scores are the same when they are passed to the sales team. In order for sales to be effective at converting a marketing-qualified lead to a win, it’s beneficial to for each sales agent to understand how a fresh MQL has been scored.

The total lead score is often comprised of a letter grade (A, B, C, etc.) that represents the lead’s explicit attributes (company size, industry, job title, etc.) and a numeric score (70, 80, 90, etc.), which represents the lead’s implicit characteristics as evidenced by its online footprint (web page views, email open, social click, etc.). The lead is graded against other suspects according to how well it fits a lead profile or customer persona then given points for engagement activities with your brand.

Why a Score Breakout is Important

The lead grade is fairly standard. The closer it fits to your typical customer, the higher the grade. CRM users can typically view the information used to generate a lead grade in the CRM interface. It’s the implicit score that a sales agent is typically blind to. If your sales agents see a lead score in the CRM, it is usually the total score. But how did the MA system calculate that total score? If your salespeople can identify what factors contributed to a lead’s total score, they will be better prepared to approach that lead and understand his or her motivators, research strategy, and MA awareness level.

Our Lead Management Automation™ platform breaks your lead score “out of the box”. Users can see what tracks a lead has taken to earn its implicit score. Various point values are assigned for each activity. For example, a single ’email open’ activity may receive 5 points; a web form submission may receive 30 points. Each activity-related parameter is assigned a value which contributes to the implicit score.

This implicit score can reveal a lot about how the lead behaves, where he or she is in the buying cycle, how influential the lead may be in the purchase decision process, and other factors that can be critical to both the salesperson’s approach and the likelihood of conversion.

Scoring Weights

Every digital footstep doesn’t deserve the same scoring weight. Website pricing page views typically reflect a higher level of interest than a home page view. A lead that has engaged in a chat is often more sales-ready than one who has submitted a web form. Therefore, it’s critical to improving sales productivity for sales agents to view the lead scoring baseline in order to get a more complete impression of a sales lead.

Within your scoring matrix, the implicit activities should be weighted to account for the importance of each activity to the buying process.

If you’ve gone to the effort of deploying a marketing automation system, you should be able to view a breakout of the lead score. If your system provides this granularity, make sure your sales team is leveraging the information provided within initial and follow up contacts. Your sales conversion rate will rise and your sales team will become more efficient.

If your lead management/marketing automation system does not have a lead score breakout, take a look at our Lead Management Automation platform!

Lead Liaison

Social Posting for Lead Management Success

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Social Posting for Lead Management SuccessThese days, B2B marketers are using social posting for lead management success and lead management purposes. Social media engagement is still a fairly new tactic but there are a few rules that have been established that should be followed in order to achieve success at managing leads through this channel.

Post Frequently – But Not Too Frequently

While there is no magic formula for exactly how often to post on social sites, most marketers consider 3-6 daily posts as sufficient to generate views. Keep in mind that posting will likely not be effective if overused. It’s extremely important not to post simply for the sake of putting something out there. Viewers want substance so, unless there is something meaningful to post, avoid filling up your leads’ post feeds.

Social media managers are constantly concerned with the best time of day to post. The answer often varies depending on the channel. Professional sites like LinkedIn are most often viewed before and after work hours, while Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are more heavily visited at different times throughout the day. Most SM experts agree that posting at night is very ineffective.

Which days are most effective? That depends on the site but most SM visits occur early in the week (Monday – Thursday). Image/video sites like Pinterest or Instagram are frequently visited on the weekend while LinkedIn has more traffic at the beginning of the week.

Use Hashtags to Join or Create Conversations

Hashtags (phrases starting with “#”) are used to group comments around specific topics, such as #marketing automation or #generate quality leads. By embedding a hashtag in your post, you connect a post to a conversation about that topic. This tactic helps to gain exposure and provides a way to establish a knowledge authority or thought leadership position.

Microblogging sites like Twitter, Tumblr,  Flickr, and Google+ are channels where you can deploy hashtags. They can be placed anywhere within the post and posters can embed multiple hashtags in one post. If enough site members promote a hashtag by retweeting or sharing, that hashtag will “trend”, which means the term will appear in trending topics for that site.

Provide Answers

Use social posting as a means to help your markets overcome issues or challenges. SM is an effective way to display your expertise and willingness to provide solutions. Post links to content that shows how to troubleshoot a problem or optimize your solutions. Social posts are a great way to build links back to site pages that address customer concerns or provide FAQs.

Linking to reputable knowledge authorities in your industry can be effective at supporting your online presence. Connect your account with popular figures that can help provide credibility and confidence in your company.

Don’t use social media to broadcast features or benefits of your solutions. While buyers may include SM as part of their purchasing research, they don’t often use this channel to discover new products. Prospects will likely turn to SM to see what others are saying about available solutions (in the same vein as review sites), so avoid making claims or promoting your solutions. (However, social sites may be appropriate to post upcoming event announcements or other one-time experiences.)

When used wisely, automated social media posting can drive website traffic, engage your leads, and provide an effective public image for your B2B company.

Lead Liaison

25 Lead Management Statistics That Prove Marketing Automation Works

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25 Lead Management Statistics That Prove Marketing Automation WorksAre you a numbers person? Do you want figures that show how lead management through marketing automation actually provides better results? Take a look at these marketing automation and lead management statistics. What marketing automation statistics do you have to share?

  1. Sales teams process over 58% of marketing-qualified leads (MQL) with a close rate of more than 23% – AcquireB2B
  2. Lead scoring provides an ROI of 138% versus companies that don’t score leads (78%) – MarketingSherpa
  3. Lead nurturing programs result in 2x open rates and 3x click-through rates compared to one-off email blasts – Silverpop
  4. 47% higher order value on nurtured sales versus non-nurtured sales – Silverpop
  5. 75% of companies using MA see ROI within 12 months, 44% within 6 months – Focus Research
  6. Companies using MA source 45% more pipeline than those who don’t use MA – Marketo
  7. Sales agents spend 22% more time selling when MA is deployed – Marketo
  8. MA drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead – Nucleus Research
  9. 28% of marketers saw an increase in revenue per sale attributable to marketing automation – Chief Marketer
  10. 350% return on investment and 100% annual revenue growth while saving $400K and generating $2MM in incremental gross revenue – Acteva
  11. 70% companies declare that MA met or exceeded ROI expectations – Focus
  12. Mature marketers achieve 32% greater revenue through the use of MA than non-mature marketers – Marketo
  13. Full deployment of MA reduces close rates from 1:221 to 1:20 – Marketo
  14. Companies using MA for nurturing experience a 451% increase in qualified leads – The Annuitas Group
  15. MA provides 225% increase in prospect volume that convert to sales opportunities – ShipServ
  16. 3x more leads passed to sales after one month – Marketo
  17. MA reduces ignored leads from 80% to 25% – Bulldog Solutions
  18. Companies that automate lead management see over 10% increase in revenue in 6-9 months – Gartner Research
  19. 47% of MA-nurtured leads make larger purchases than non-nurtured leads – The Annuitas Group
  20. Companies achieve a 15% savings on creative productions with MA – Gartner Research
  21. Companies that deploy lead nurturing through MA generate 50% more SQLs at 33% lower cost – Forrester Research
  22. MA-generated personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates over 10% – The Aberdeen Group
  23. Event-triggered messaging saves approximately 80% of direct mail budget – Gartner Research
  24. MA-generated emails with high relevancy drive 18x more revenue than traditional email blasts – Jupiter Research
  25. Companies using MA achieve 5% less marketing waste than non-MA companies – Gartner Research

As more companies adopt lead management through marketing automation, there will be more statistics to share!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Makes Small Business Internet Marketing Easier

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Marketing Automation Makes Small Business Internet Marketing EasierSmall business internet marketing is a full-time job in itself – and for many small business owners, its concepts and execution are unfamiliar territory. Fortunately, small businesses are able to access tools that will prove useful in self-managing their online marketing experiences. It’s simply no longer necessary to hire full-time or even part-time marketing employees. With marketing automation technologies, small business internet marketing can be a snap for business owners.

Owning the Learning Curve

Many small business owners are looking for the kinds of tools marketing automation has to offer, but end up balking at automated tools when it comes to the learning curve. Major businesses that offer marketing automation – Marketo, for example – are growing with a ferocity. More and more small business owners are considering automation tools for their internet marketing, but may feel inclined to turn their backs when they find out there are tools to learn.

Truthfully, small business internet marketing with automation tools is much easier than using multiple software and tools to keep track of small business internet marketing. At the end of the marketing auditing process, a small business owner may determine he or she needs services like Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Crazy Egg heatmaps, only to discover these different services spit out metrics that are unmanageable in terms of quantity.

Small Business Internet Marketing and Lead Tracking

Additionally, these tools – even when used together – don’t tend to present a full marketing picture of offer tracking of specific leads. Only the right marketing automation tools can integrate a dashboard that reports on all areas of small business internet marketing. Marketing automation also gives small business owners the specific tools to see who’s visiting, what actions are being taken on the site and how deeply into their sales funnels the leads end up going.

Marketing automation and lead tracking is business intelligence data. Consumers tend to find that marketing automation tools have far less of a learning curve as compared to the various other internet metrics dashboards they end up using. For company owners who are seeking small business internet marketing tools,  the costs associated with marketing automation may end up being far less than hiring a full or part time marketing person or approaching the learning curve associated with multiple tracking channels.

Lead Liaison offers a suite of tools that can help business owners who need small business internet marketing understand their data. Best of all, top-of-the-industry support ensures the learning curve of marketing automation software is minimal. Give Lead Liaison a whirl today and start tracking your data all in one place!

Lead Liaison

New Release from Lead Liaison Makes Lead Scoring Simple and Flexible

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) July 15, 2013 – Lead Liaison, one of the fastest growing marketing automation and lead management software providers in the United States, has added another feature to its flagship Lead Management Automation™ (LMA) platform. The company has developed an out of the box lead scoring module that sets point values for common online activities that buyers of business products and services often perform. The powerful combination of Lead Liaison’s off-the-shelf lead scoring with custom lead scoring creates a unique offering to help B2B marketers qualify leads, faster, with less setup and hassle making lead scoring simple.

LMA users now have a complete view of the typical digital activities that contribute to a lead score, such as web page views or opening an email message, which is automatically calculated as a sales lead engages with digital marketing assets. Out of the box point values may be adjusted from preconfigured values assigned to each activity. For example, a web form submission may be assigned a point value of 100 instead of the default 50 by simply clicking the field value for that activity and entering a different value.

“The new feature adds a level of granularity and simplicity that allows marketers and sales people to define which activities should score higher or lower within their unique scoring paradigm,” said vice president of corporate communications Alex Brown. “For some companies email responses may be more valuable than social post engagements. For others it may be the reverse. We built out of the box lead scoring to make the process of setting up lead qualification for sales people flexible and easy. Our clients can choose to use the preconfigured scoring values for common behaviors or customize their own values with our custom lead scoring capability – which has been a smash hit to date.”

Lead scoring is an essential element to lead management practices. Systems such as LMA rely on lead scoring to measure the relevance and interest level of leads within the marketing pipeline and to notify sales agents of leads that deserve attention based on both company attributes and digital footprints. Lead scoring is also one of multiple parameters used by Lead Liaison to calculate lead priority for sales. Instead of a sales team dealing with a ‘flat’ database, they get a prioritized database and benefit from increased efficiency in the sales process.

“Out of the box lead scoring blows away complex lead scoring configuration typically seen in many systems. Those users cannot easily adjust the scoring matrix to suit proprietary models,” said Brown.

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s new out of the box lead scoring and other recent upgrades and releases,request a 10-minute B2B lead management demonstration.

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Lead Liaison is an application development company that designs, develops, and sells cloud-based sales and marketing 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)