Material specific to marketing automation such as needs, best practices, lessons learned, and benefits of marketing automation.

Marketing Automation to Meet All Business Needs

July 22, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison is busy adding bits and pieces to our marketing automation software that deliver a better customer experience all the way around. With marketing automation, it’s important to bend your solution to what your business needs – not try to change the way your business operates to best fit your marketing automation purchase. This is why partnering with a company that’s changing its offering to better suit what customers need over time is a good solution for your business.

Event Planning

Many companies have event planning needs – consistently scheduling conferences, meetings and impromptu phone or Skype chats to get the job done. Without a system in place to get meetings off the ground at a moment’s notice, many companies have headaches ensuring that associates check their emails or phone messages in time to make crucial meetings or to prepare necessary meeting elements.

This is where marketing automation steps in – with the right company, event planning assets can be incorporated into the company’s marketing automation back end, creating an opportunity for employees to keep and access all necessary meeting information in one place and receive meeting reminders and scheduling details. Marketing automation for companies can be more about tracking leads when event planning capabilities are available.

Marketing Automation and Advanced Reporting

Marketing automation tools should come with easy to run and understand reports. These reports should be able to pull data that will shed light on the finer details of your company’s marketing automation efforts. From responses to a certain marketing campaign to fine data that can be used for quality control, the right reports should be run and viewed on a regular basis to give clients access to details and data that help make marketing decisions.

Your marketing automation team should be able to train you in running these reports as well as understanding them. It’s best to run and review reports on a schedule, perhaps as part of a regular departmental team meeting.

With changing technology, companies need to be ready to change their offerings to give better service to their clients. This includes incorporating phone, text, email marketing, social media tracking, article writing and other services into marketing automation offerings. At Lead Liaison, we’re proud to offer this technology as part of our increasing efforts to upgrade client services and provide integration of the latest technologies into our own services. We’d love to show you more – talk to us about how we can best service your business today!

Marketing Automation: Do You Know Your Data Stream?

July 17, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation/by Lead Liaison

Marketing automation isn’t just about gathering data – it’s about learning to collect data in a way that can be palatable, interpreted in a timely fashion and applied to your particular business situation. In general, the word ‘data’ tends to freak people out – many company execs anticipate binary numbers spitting out at them once data tracking solutions are in place, but this simply isn’t the case.

Today’s data sets are completely different than they were a few decades ago. The data marketing automation provides a company can include information like social media engagement statistics, email readability and click through and whether or not paid advertising campaigns are truly working for a business. Sophisticated marketing automation campaigns can even tell whether or not visitors to a business website are repeat customers or first-timers. What business decision maker wouldn’t want this type of information?

Starter Marketing Automation Data

Many companies put marketing automation on the backburner because they simply don’t want to worry about the incoming data. Regardless of whether or not marketing automation is the best decision for any business, chances are most businesses have a wide variety of different kinds of data coming in over time. Many companies don’t have anyone taking a look at this data in a collective way.

The problem becomes more significant when a company outsources marketing. If a firm overseas is handling your social media while a US firm is optimizing your website – all while your internal staff handles email and general marketing messaging – your attentions could be divided. Each different part of your marketing is one piece of a whole. Your SEO strategy is affected by PPC, your email strategy is affected by whether or not your website is optimized, etc. How can you know how different areas of your marketing are working the most effectively for your business? It’s simple: Marketing Automation.

Focusing on the Right Data

It’s more important than ever to ensure that you’re looking at data that will best benefit your business over time. One of the best ways to know whether or not your data stream is optimized is to work with a marketing automation company who can get you set up – then determining a person within your organizational structure who will monitor the data, report to you and help you assess whether or not marketing campaigns could be made more effective.

Working with a marketing automation company that can give your business the training and solutions you need for your data stream is critical to marketing success. At Lead Liaison, we’re integrating new and improved solutions on a monthly basis for clients all over the world. Talk to us about how we can meet your marketing automation needs today!

Marketing Automation: You Still Need a Sales Strategy

May 20, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog, Sales/by Lead Liaison

Anyone running a business comes to find out they need some type of sales strategy. While marketing automation executes a lead to sales flow seamlessly for many businesses, others find that the one-size-fits-all solution they were looking for simply isn’t present when employing their marketing automation.

As a small business, how can you make sure using marketing automation software benefits your operation at a higher level? The key is found in your strategy. Think of it this way – many business owners employ a CRM and find it absolutely necessary to the growth and success of their companies. Organizing the information and having an agreed-upon method for continuous and optimal use of the CRM isn’t something that necessarily happens overnight – it takes a deep understanding of the software and a willingness amongst team members to use an agreed-upon operations method. Without these things, onboarding a CRM would be pointless.

Sales Strategy Development for the Small Business

Many small business owners develop their companies themselves and get caught in the undertow of change as the company grows. Small business owners can find their staff increasing by a dozen people in a year. Suddenly there are many workers without a clear sales strategy for how information will be collected and employed in marketing campaigns.

This is why growth strategy is crucial before growth even happens. Knowing where to allocate resources, how businesses will collect information and how the information informs marketing and development processes is 100% critical to keeping this organized and manageable. Starting out with tangible business goals based on calendar years or quarters is a great way to figure out what resources are needed and who will perform what task.

Using Marketing Automation for Sales Strategy

Many business owners are finding that sales strategy and marketing automation processes are inseparable. Marketing and directional decisions should be made on concrete data – and the right tools are necessary to ensuring any data collected is on point. Even the most advanced marketing automation systems may return data that’s incomplete or doesn’t work for the business. This is where good training and human monitoring come in – sifting through data in an easy, manageable way is possible. This allows companies the opportunity to work on data that is incomplete or isn’t really helping the business achieve end goals.

In order to sift through that data and make good decisions based on overarching business goals and sales strategy, the right marketing automation company and training for staff have to be in place. Lead Liaison offers training and marketing automation solutions for businesses of all sizes. Connect with us for a consult to determine what would best serve your business!

Discovering Hidden Agendas with Marketing Automation

May 12, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

People buy based on specific personal agendas and interests. In order to sell to such people, you need to know what their personal interests are, what drives them…. and ultimately speak to their personal needs. Kevin Allen, Founder of Planet Jockey, said he was “one of the best pitch guys in the industry” because he could “sense what was in the heart of my [his] buyer”, as discussed in this video. In Kevin’s book, The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following, he talks about understanding the buyer and their needs to create a connection that assures a mutual win. The good news is that your company can discover hidden agendas with marketing automation.

Lead Liaison’s Revenue Generation Software® provides you unique insight into your customer’s hidden agenda at every stage of the process. We help you to identify a prospect and their personal demonstrated interests in your product (even factors that they will not tell you about). For example, Lead Liaison gives our clients insights into which topics on your website or video that a prospect showed interest in. We tell you how deep their interest was (for example, how much of your video they watched), we will even let you know what time of day they tend to care about you the most!

Let’s take the concept of discovering hidden agendas with marketing automation a bit further. We then expand this search to a very granular personal level by spidering 110 social media sites to learn about that person’s interests and motivations. We identify keywords that are important to them, and give you access to their public social media profiles (linkedin, facebook, etc). Our platform is the technological arm of “The Hidden Agenda” concept.

How to Use Marketing Automation to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Pages

May 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Are your landing pages optimized to drive sales? Landing page, lead capture page, and lander are all words used to describe the same thing: the gateway to your site. Essentially, your visitors will only take about five seconds to understand the call to action, so the point on your landing page needs to be loud and clear. The landing page is essential to lead generation and lead tracking. It gives you the opportunity to ask your leads to take the next step, whether that’s to complete a form or download a white paper. Use marketing automation to drive traffic to your landing pages and help distribute the analytics of your site directly to your sales team and saves time doing so.

Landing Page Testing 101

Maximize your visitor’s activity and gain more conversions on your landing pages through A/B testing. While it can be tedious work, you’ll get the best results if you set specific goals that are easily measurable. When A/B testing, it’s important to keep in mind you’re looking for a dramatically better performance from either Landing Page A or Landing Page B. Be sure to keep your URLs descriptive and provide unique meta-descriptions for each landing page. The goal is to constantly analyze and continuously improve landing page conversions. Here are some things to vary in a split test:

Vocabulary
CTAs/Conversion options
Layout/button placement
Images

Still new to A/B testing? KISSmetrics has a great guide to help you get started.

Tracking Your Landing Page Traffic

Inbound marketing is a great tool, but knowing how to use it to your best advantage without letting it soak up valuable employee time can get tricky. Use marketing automation to not only drive traffic to your landing page but also track it efficiently. Have clear and concise goals that you can track in terms of managing content creation and keeping tabs on how each category is performing. Are your blogs converting visitors into leads, or do most conversions come from keyword searches to your site? Here are a few things to watch:

Bounce rate: how long are visitors hanging out on your various pages?
Users’ activity: what are the strongest CTAs, which buttons rarely get clicked?
Inquiries from users/usability: are there any users confused about the layout/CTAs that have submitted an inquiry?

Marketing Automation that Helps Drive Traffic to Your Landing Page

Your landing page is the first impression visitors have, so it’s important to make it count. Automate your content creation process, send comprehensive analytics directly to your sales team, and implement unique landing pages that complement social media posts. Use marketing automation to analyze and determine landing page usability and effectiveness. Find out more about how Lead Liaison can help you manage your site visitors and track them in real time here.

Why Marketing Automation Makes Sense

March 27, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Marketing automation is the perfect tool for today’s consumer audience. Marketing automation makes sense. There are several features that give automated marketing the upper hand when it comes to conversion rates (we’ll get into that in a bit), but today’s consumer is certainly web-savvy—they spend more time on the internet than they do watching TV or reading magazines. So why not reach them where they’re already going to be, right?

Behavior-based lead scoring

Companies benefit from choosing marketing automation in that the potential customer’s behavior is tracked and scored. No need to manually track click-through rates from Google Analytics, your software is already doing that for you. Marketing automation tracks your leads and generates profiles based on their online behavior. This information warms the leads automatically for the sales reps. How awesome is that? No more shots in the dark, no more cold calling. Read more about how this is helpful for small business owners.

It’s not just for scheduling; it’s for maintaining a conversation

Automation is so often misunderstood as simply a means of scheduling. Sure, scheduling happens, but more importantly using marketing automation includes complex analytics that capture the behavior of your potential customers, scores it for you, and therefore helps maintain a relevant conversation that closes the lead. The important thing to note is that, although it sounds like kind of the opposite, automation actually helps to keep the personal touch in your interactions with leads. Automation supplies enough relevant information to take the relationship to the next level by offering products that the lead is already interested in. Of course, this can be done manually, but automating this relationship-building process saves so much time for your business, allowing your employees to spend their time closing the leads rather than researching them.

The bottom line is a higher conversion rate. These rates are ultimately a result of a system that creates highly targeted and personalized efforts, utilizing conditional logic. This means that once you reach out to your lead it is not in an unsolicited manner (such as a spammy email campaign). What good is your analytical data if you don’t utilize it in future lead generation endeavors? Marketing automation makes this process a breeze.

Mobile Marketing Automation: Is Your Business Ready?

March 20, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Mobile Marketing Automation

Mobile marketing automation is happening – though mobile marketing and marketing automation are not new concepts, businesses who pay attention to their mobile marketing are finding the information they gather more useful and profitable than ever.

If you’re thinking about doing mobile marketing for your business, the first question is, how mobile is your audience? If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, if you’re not working on being found in places like Google Local or doing any form of local marketing and if you have no plans to consider a mobile-friendly site in the future, you might consider skipping mobile marketing.

Is Mobile Marketing Right For You?

Not all businesses really need to do mobile marketing – but many who would find qualified mobile traffic are avoiding mobile. Likewise, the vast majority of businesses haven’t discovered how amazing marketing automation could be for their businesses. Considering a mobile marketing plan for your business could put you ahead of the curve.

Putting the Data Together

A marketing automation dashboard gives your company access to marketing funnels that are individualized and that work for your particular business. Your dashboard not only streamlines your funnel – it helps you better manage team workflow, marketing tasks and to more easily interpret your data stream.

Mobile marketing data may be vastly different from your regular data – for instance, mobile users may tend to look at your site at a specific time of day that laptop or desktop users don’t. Without the proper analytics, this type of information is hard to come by. Many companies aren’t even using the free, most basic analytics out there. The only way to truly determine whether or not your marketing services are working to bring in new leads and re-engage existing clients is to consistently and carefully analyze your data.

With mobile use consistently on the rise, mobile marketing will play a key role in the success and productivity of future businesses. Many businesses don’t want to go into mobile marketing because they fear the cost – but there are many responsive website builders out there that will convert your website at low cost. For many businesses we work with, responsive web technology for mobile marketing has been worth looking into.

How Will I Know if I’m Ready?

Talk to us at Lead Liaison and let us take a look at your site, your offering and your mobile-readiness. Mobile marketing might actually benefit your business more than you know.

Marketing Automation for Small Businesses : Why Automate?

March 4, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Marketing automation for small business is no joke – growth in the marketing automation industry is already up 50% per year based on 2012 and 2013 results, and some experts indicate that growth will increase another 10% by the end of 2014.

What does this mean for your small business? It means that marketing automation is clearly something business owners are finding effective – so if the price is right and a customized package can suit your individual needs, why not jump on board? We’ve compiled a list of reasons why marketing automation for your small business is worth taking on. And here we go…

You’ll Save Money

For many companies, revenue seems to disappear at the speed of light. Small-business owners often don’t have enough time in their busy days to take a step back and look at how their current sales and marketing processes are benefiting their companies. The result is a messy lead flow, lost revenue and outdated systems governing the way your business operates.

The streamlined processes that good marketing automation puts in place for you can actually save you money and time. Your employees will have a better idea of how to sell, track and engage leads that are currently in your funnel, and you’ll have a better idea how these leads and automation steps are helping you meet your bottom line from month to month.

Marketing Automation: We Do it For You

The right marketing automation resource won’t just give you the tools you need and walk away. At Lead Liaison, we strive to create a process for our clients that truly works. Creating a process is all about putting tools in place that match the needs of each individual business, as well as providing training on those tools.

The right way to set up marketing for a small business is not just to put systems together and walk away, but to place the appropriate tools in a way that meet the company’s individual marketing needs. Only a qualified marketing automation specialist can help you understand what those needs are, and how to implement them in the best way for your business. The bottom line? With the right company, you don’t have to worry – the initial steps are done for you.

You’ll Save More than You Spend

When all this is done correctly, you’ll save more money than you spend. A streamlined sales funnel allows for better conversions – which allow for more income. Once this process is 100% refined, the service pays for itself. That break even point makes life easier for clients and their employees, and is the key reason why marketing automation services continue to grow year over year.

Let us assess your business and recommend a solution via a consult today!

Complexity and Commitment: Keys to Marketing Automation

February 12, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

The past week has been an interesting one in the world of marketing automation – particularly in terms of freemium marketing automation services making substantial changes in order to survive. We’ve been a captive audience to these changes here at Lead Liaison – it’s interesting to see what works for other marketing automation companies and what doesn’t.

David M. Raab wrote a great article on his Customer Experience Matrix blog about recent changes in the industry. It’s worth taking a look at to get an idea of this week’s mergers – in particular, SalesFUSION acquiring Loopfuse and CallidusCloud’s acquisition of LeadRocket. Raab hypothesizes – likely quite accurately – that the buyout of these two services may have something to do with the ‘freemium’ payment model the companies used to market their services.

Marketing Automation and Freemium Payment

Raab guesses quite accurately,

“My take is that freemium doesn’t fit well with marketing automation because marketing automation takes a lot of work to use effectively. Compare this with email and Web site hosting, where freemium has worked well: casual users can be quite successful with those products.”

A commenter observes that the ‘freemium’ model doesn’t tend to work with products that involve complexity. Marketing automation products are definitely complex – for many users, installing a marketing automation platform ensures that a new way of working on basic tasks needs to be adopted. This new way requires adoption at all levels of the business, training and a fully integrative customer support experience that just isn’t casual.

For Us, It’s About Commitment

Taking things a step further, we believe marketing automation is about commitment, not just complexity. Marketing automation systems are definitely complex. Dealing with that level of complexity and changes to a company’s workflow process requires a level of commitment businesses should be ready for. We truly believe that Lead Liaison’s marketing automation process can save a business a lot of hassle and can even lead to generating more revenue – but that does require some understanding of how the process will work for clients from start to finish.

We can communicate the need for that level of commitment from the beginning, but customers need to be on board all the way through. For us, freemium wouldn’t work as we need to be actively involved and available in our clients’ marketing dashboards – giving tutorials, being available for assistance and showing our clients better ways to use the platform. Commitment is key to dealing with the complexity of marketing automation – but that complexity is worth it, solving many challenges our clients face over time.

We’d love to talk to you about how we can take the pain out of the complexity involved in marketing automation – let us give you a consult today!

The Future of Marketing Automation: 3 Steps to Smarter Actions

January 29, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

What’s the future of marketing automation? Instead of relying on a small marketing team to consistently execute campaigns and surpass quotas, enable the technology to work smarter for your business. The implementation of an automated marketing system will provide a more efficient allocation of your team’s time and resources. Use the data you gather for marketing automation to do more for your business through predictive analysis. Here’s how:

Leverage your data. Know what’s worth promoting and what should be sacked. Using a predictive analysis program will enable a more productive use of the marketing and IT budgets. Use technology to enhance your move on target leads—don’t just follow up on “Lead A” because they had more clicks thus more ‘interest’ in a particular product, follow up on the right interests. Were the clicks here because they had a trial run product that recently expired? Did they inquire on a product because they own something similar or are having difficulties with another product your business offers? Understanding why the user interacts with your system will ultimately provide successful leads.
Make the most of your leads. Cut your annual revenue loss by making smarter lead actions. In conjunction with leveraging the right data, use automation software to calculate lead scoring through efficient management of the marketing activity touchpoints.
Integrate your sales and marketing teams. Keep the human touch of a good customer support system to pave the way for future upselling opportunities. Making personal telephone calls to keep direct contact with customers provides the most accurate feedback. Personalized marketing is successful marketing, but be sure to ‘personalize’ accurately. Use the information gathered by the sales team to better target and communicate with your leads.

In today’s marketing, a single channel of marketing isn’t enough. Utilizing a marketing automation system is more than email marketing. An effective system integrates sales prospecting, lead generation, and automation to leverage the data being gathered. What’s the best practice for executing a successful, comprehensive marketing campaign? Involve the sales team. The communication gap between customers, sales, and marketing is a huge shortcoming and often a cause for loss in revenue. Combining social media marketing, email marketing, smart landing pages, and promotions we can get a better grasp of the consumer base. These programs are ideal for companies large and small; a limited staff no longer means cutting channels. Marketing automation is a technology that will continue to grow and develop to improve the customer’s experience through targeted, analyzed marketing actions.