Lead Liaison

Social Monitoring: Do You Need It?

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Social Monitoring: Do You Need It?Many businesses implement complex marketing automation systems with a goldmine of data coming in – yet never seem to think about social monitoring. Taking a look at how customers behave when they use your website or view your marketing materials can give you a ton of great information, but you’re not always going to get the full picture of a user’s behavior scope.

While you’re confronted with raw data that can inform your marketing plan and increase branding or even sales, you may be missing out on valuable information that puts you in the loop about what customers are actually looking for. By monitoring conversations surrounding your brand and relevant keywords, you can get a better idea of how to craft customized content and engage with your audiences at a higher level.

Social Monitoring: What is It?

In a nutshell, social monitoring is about watching what your customers are tuning into online in order to make decisions about the types of content you put out there and how you represent your brand.

For instance, if you own a tire company and communicate with customers directly on your Facebook page, you may find that a decent amount of customers ask questions about flats – repairing tires, when to buy new tires and how to avoid driving on a tire that is in dangerously bad shape. You see social media conversations on your Facebook as well as web searches asking questions about tires.

However, major news stories are out there highlighting the dangers of driving in various weather conditions without the appropriate tire. Your competitors are engaging in dialogue with potential customers on their own Facebook pages and within various news stories about tire conditions in bad weather.  If you’re not having these conversations, you’re missing out on putting yourself and your expertise in front of customers in a way that would result in brand recognition and sales.

Engaging Socially

The above is a simplistic example, but you can apply it to just about any industry. There are plenty of ways to figure out the kinds of things your customers want to talk about. Check hashtags on Twitter, set up an alert for your core business keywords using http://alerts.google.com, or incentivize customers to complete online surveys that gauge what types of topics they’re interested in talking about. You can also look to click through and open rate in your email marketing efforts to determine what content best engages customers.

Marketing automation is a must for your business, but the more data you can collect from other channels, the more reliably you can determine the best direction for your marketing. You deserve a marketing automation dashboard that gives you everything in a package – from article writing to social monitoring to robust reports and engagement suggestions. Check out Lead Liaison’s dashboard to find out more about how a well-rounded marketing automation tool can take your business to the next level!

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Partners with CodeLaunch Event to Give Away Complimentary Visitor Tracking Package

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Code Authority’s annual incubator event sets the stage for an array of unique startup business ideas.

Marketing automation company Lead Liaison, is pleased to announce its sponsorship with Frisco based tech company Code Authority Custom Software to sponsor this year’s CodeLaunch event. CodeLaunch is an annual Dallas-based ‘pitch’ competition that serves as the showpiece in an annual competition that allows select individuals to pitch their startup ideas to recognized area business leaders. The competition awards incubation resources such as investment and startup consultation to selected winners.

In addition to the grand prizes, Lead Liaison will offer six free months of complimentary visitor tracking to winners as part of a prize package totaling over $2100 in value. The addition of visitor tracking allows startup companies to focus on their target audience and potential companies with laser precision, identifying important website visitor characteristics such as business names, geographic location, IP, user behavior, people and other quantitative data that speaks to qualitative business decision making.

Jason W. Taylor, President of CodeLaunch and Code Authority spoke over the weekend on CodeLaunch and Lead Liaison’s sponsorship:

“Lead Liaison is exactly the kind of product that our CodeLaunch startups can benefit from. We are thrilled they are supporting CodeLaunch and the startup ecosystem.”

This year’s CodeLaunch Pitch Day will happen August 21st, 2014 at the NTEC Conference Center in Frisco, Texas. Code Authority will determine finalists and grand prize winners. Applications were accepted through May 31, 2014.

For more information, please visit CodeLaunch or follow @CodeAuthority. More information will be available on Lead Liaison’s corporate website at http://www.leadliaison.com.

About Lead Liaison:

Lead Liaison provides cloud-based marketing and sales automation solutions that help businesses worldwide attract, convert, and close leads. The company markets to small to mid-sized businesses and focuses on providing a user-friendly and innovative Revenue Generation Software® platform. Their software delivers powerful solutions that accelerate sales, improve efficiency and build stronger relationships with prospects, customers and partners through the use of automated processes.

About CodeLaunch:

CodeLaunch is an annual concept competition and pitch event for Embryonic Stage software technology startups produced by Code Authority Custom Software and a group of partners and sponsors interested in fostering entrepreneurism.

Press inquiries:

Amber Turrill
VP, Corporate Communications
corporate(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.895.3237 (888 89 LEADS)

Lead Liaison

Boost Demand Generation through Sales and Marketing Alignment

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Boost Demand Generation through Sales and Marketing AlignmentWe know successful deals aren’t created and closed by the sales team alone; there’s significant homage due to the marketing team in their demand generation efforts and kick-starting the funnel. To maximize outcome, the secret is to enable your business to boost demand generation through sales and marketing alignment. Don’t get us wrong—this doesn’t mean cutting the marketing team altogether and asking sales to take over (check out this case study); rather, have the two teams work harmoniously to achieve the best results.

Manage the Data

Between the two departments, data should be gathered and analyzed and best practices defined. When determining which strategies have proven most successful, keep in mind the four primary phases of demand generation: awareness, interest, preference, and commitment.

The goals here are to drive awareness and interest through successful inbound and outbound marketing that will enhance the sales cycle. In order to boost demand generation through sales and marketing alignment, both teams must be focused on determining the buyer persona. The marketing team gains awareness of and attention from potential prospects (suspects) through understanding who they are and what they want. This knowledge comes through the eyes of the sales team. By having a comprehensive profile of the current buyer persona, marketers can more directly target the audience and create more personalized campaigns, such as email marketing, which in turn drive higher return rates. Gather, analyze, and share the knowledge.

Guide Validation

Once the marketing team has generated demands, the next step is to convince the suspects that your solution is best through generating the leads. The marketing team has a plethora of ammunition to accomplish this: whitepapers, videos, blogs, reviews, direct mail, etc. Re-analyze and reuse the data collected from automated marketing solutions to further personalize each point of contact with the prospect to determine scoring and qualification, and pass only the qualified ones over to sales.

Nurturing the leads to the point of qualification comes when you boost demand generation through sales and marketing alignment. If the demand generation is low, activity in the pipeline is low, close rates are low. It’s key to have a solid grasp of the initial steps in order to maximize flow in the funnel to the closing steps. Implementing marketing programs that work together with a structured sales process will help to build awareness about your solution, remind prospects why your solution is better than others, and convert prospects into customers.

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison to Offer Text Messaging Automation

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Automated text messaging via Twilio technology creates new possibilities for responsive marketing.

Allen, TX (PRWEB) June 03, 2014 – Lead Liaison, a sales and marketing automation solutions company, announces the inception of its text messaging feature technology via Twilio solutions. Current customers now have the power of texting technology available via Lead Liaison’s drag and drop interface, further positioning the company as the easiest to use solution in the industry.

Twilio is a flexible communications platform that allows users to text in bulk. Texts can be scheduled from within Lead Liaison to segmented lists with specific messaging specified by the end user, personalizing each text message using Lead Liaison tokens. This allows the sender to send marketing messaging based on a desired outcome such as further sales, re-engaging with the company or taking advantage of a specific offer.

The addition of text messaging strengthens Lead Liaison’s multi-channel marketing capability, giving users the ability to send targeted texts along with direct mail (postcards), email and promotional marketing items – deepening their offering around online and offline marketing. The service is intended to be flexible and to add value to current marketing automation properties.

Lead Liaison VP of Customer Success, Alan Page, spoke Monday on the benefits of utilizing text technology: “We’re excited to integrate another marketing channel for our customers. Text messages are like no other marketing method. Instead of traditional broadcast marketing facilities like email, text messaging is a form of narrowcast marketing. People check their cell phones 150 times per day on average. With 98% of all text messages being opened – you can bet our customers messages will get read. When used for very narrow, targeted marketing it’s highly effectively. The good news is that Lead Liaison enables companies to target their customers in a microscopic way, using demographics, social and behavioral information to pair down their audience.”

About Lead Liaison:

Lead Liaison provides cloud-based marketing and sales automation solutions that help businesses worldwide attract, convert, and close leads. The company markets to small to mid-sized businesses and focuses on providing a user-friendly and innovative Revenue Generation Software® platform. Their software delivers powerful solutions that accelerate sales, improve efficiency and build stronger relationships with prospects, customers and partners through the use of automated processes.

Press inquiries:

Amber Turrill
VP, Corporate Communications
corporate(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.895.3237 (888 89 LEADS)

Lead Liaison

The Value of Multi-Channel Marketing

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Multi-Channel Marketing is the Way to GoIn today’s marketplace, it’s essential to reach as many customers and prospects as possible. The best way to communicate with your target audience is with multi-channel marketing. Using just one marketing method – such as email – is no longer enough to remain competitive. The various marketing channels all offer unique advantages for promoting your company. By creating an integrated marketing plan, you ensure your company’s survival and profitability. Forrester Research reports that 86% of marketers understand that multi-channel marketing is essential for long-term growth. It’s important to understand the value of multi-channel marketing.

Email Campaigns

Marketing with email is still a viable and inexpensive option. With email you can send out useful information to targeted customers on your lists. You can also easily split test your emails to find the one that offers the highest return on investment. Express Pigeon reports that email marketing brings in a 4,300 percent ROI.

Print Media

Although many companies market online, it’s still a good idea to promote your business offline as well. Sending out print brochures, postcards, flyers, and other printed materials are a good way to generate new leads and bring potential customers to your website.

Promotional Items

Branding is another important method for selling your products or services. With a company name and logo on promotional items such as pens, calendars, note pads, and magnets, you can spread the word about your business by giving something useful away for free.

Direct Mail

For many, sending out direct mail pieces to a targeted audience is still an effective method of lead generation. Although it is more expensive than other methods, your letter is more likely to be opened and read, especially with fewer companies utilizing direct mail today.

Text Messaging

Mobile marketing is on the rise with around 98% of text messages read within a few minutes, reports EZTexting.com. By using text messages, you can communicate and interact with potential customers while increasing brand awareness. It’s no longer enough just to use email. To compete in the business world today, a company has to utilize a host of marketing strategies. The strategies should all work together, and compliment each other, to send out a unified message. By creating an integrated marketing approach via multiple channels, you boost your company’s success in a global marketplace.

Lead Liaison

How to Design a Successful Lead Distribution Process

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How to Design a Successful Lead Distribution ProcessDon’t let another lead slip through the cracks because of poor lead distribution practices. Minimize human error through an automated distribution system while also implementing an analytical way to effectively distribute your hard-earned leads. There are several methods of lead distribution to choose from; it is critical that you have done due diligence in determining the best process for distributing your leads. Take the following considerations into account when determining how to design a successful lead distribution process for your team that will maximize conversion.

Iterative Process

First and most importantly, optimize the distribution process through iterative evaluation—test, evaluate, optimize, and retest. Each lead is different and each sales rep unique, so it is expected that results will vary each time. Create a systematically evolving process that encompasses the most effective combination of the various distribution methods (round robin, push/pull, top performers, etc), depending on which stage of the sale you’re in. No one method will be the most effective; rather it’s a combination of them that will produce the successful lead distribution process.

Utilize Your Skill Sets

With your marketing automation practices, you are already collecting a plethora of data on each lead. Put it to use. Use the “specialization method” of lead distribution to assign leads to reps based on the lead’s interest and buying readiness (all of which can be found through visitor tracking practices). Evaluate the lead’s profile and distribute to a specific channel that will enable your rep to be the most prepared and able to accommodate the lead.

Evaluating each lead before distribution can be a timely process and may or may not be worth the marketing team’s time; reserve this method for leads that have greater buyer readiness (based on their previous behavior). Misdirecting a lead can have a detrimental consequence, for example, sending a lead to the incorrect sales rep and wasting the lead’s time as they are redirected to the correct sales rep with the corresponding expertise.

Effective Scaling

In order to design a successful lead distribution process, you must be able scale the lead management process effectively. For high volume lead processing, round robin is not the best route to take. Take time to understand the patterns, and from those results implement a shared push/pull method that enables sales reps to better manage their workloads (which translates to higher quality lead nurturing) while also holding them accountable for assigned tasks.

Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. There are many dynamic factors to consider when you are trying to design a successful lead distribution process, and because of this, the best distribution process is a constantly evolving one. Keep in mind the skill sets of your sales reps, the specifics of each product being sold, and the expectations of the leads. Utilize marketing automation practices to increase ROI and decrease lead loss. To learn more about how Lead Liaisons can make your lead distribution process more efficient, check out their solutions.

Lead Liaison

Create Content That Nurtures Your Leads

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Create Content That Nurtures Your LeadsUse your inbound marketing strategies beyond lead generation—learn how to create content that nurtures your leads too. Once leads have been generated and placed into the appropriate sales funnel, it’s crucial to qualify leads accordingly and determine as quickly as possible if a lead is not interested in you.

There are several things to keep in mind when determining best practices for nurturing qualified leads. Segmenting your streams of prospects into nurture tracks that meet their needs, ensuring a personal touch on all communications, maintaining a two-way communication channel, and integrating sales teams with marketing teams are all productive steps to nurture leads. Another way to help nurture your leads closer to the buying stage is to provide them with interesting and relevant content. Here are a few ways to integrate this into your lead nurturing system already in place:

Educate your leads

Help them to make a smart buying choice by thoroughly letting them know their options. Provide original market research stats (or find a reliable source) that show them how others in the industry make buying decisions. Be sure not to skew it too much in favor of your brand, though, to assure them it is legitimate data.

Use analytics from marketing automation

Determine how your leads prefer to receive information—via email, blog content, white papers, etc. Your marketing automation software allows you to accurately monitor the activity on your site, record when leads are available to communicate with you, and enable you to nurture targeted segments of leads. With all of this data, you are informed to create content that nurtures your leads and provides what they’re already looking for.

Repurpose content

Get the most out of each piece of content you publish. Create an informative white paper and split it up into sections to publish as individual blog posts. Then create a slide deck out of these different sections, and finally voice over the slide deck to create a video. This provides four separate types of content you can use to nurture your leads. You might find that leads that have been qualified into a particular stream prefer video over white paper, so this makes a more personalized attempt to reach out to them.

In order to create content that nurtures your leads in the most effective way, you need to utilize your marketing automation process to get the best understanding of what it is that your leads want to know. This will give you the best odds in turning leads into customers through nurturing your leads with content marketing. When considering your lead nurturing campaigns, be sure that no lead goes unnoticed and that you contact them when you say you will. Here are five additional tips to make sure you don’t lose your leads before have the opportunity to nurture them.

Lead Liaison

3 Ways Marketing Automation Helps Qualify Sales Leads

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3 Ways Marketing Automation Helps Qualify Sales LeadsDon’t waste your sales reps’ valuable time and energy chasing leads that are dead ends or aren’t your ideal buyers. But how do you weed out unfit leads from your database? It’s tedious work, even with the ability to do extensive research online. Let software relieve some of these headaches by using marketing automation to help qualify sales leads and determine which leads are worth the effort. We’re excited to share 3 ways marketing automation helps qualify sales leads.

Understand your ideal buyers

Train sales reps to qualify leads by considering long-term compatibility and potential relationships that can be built. By considering the profitability down the road, you have the opportunity to build and maintain a working relationship with these leads, communicate regularly through personalized outbound efforts, build trust, and ultimately end up with an ideal buyer. Merging creative efforts between your sales and marketing teams to determine the most effective traits you expect of the ideal buyers will greatly benefit your company. They come in handy not only for the sales team in their lead qualification process, but also for the marketing team in focusing their targeted efforts.

Maintain your database

In order to have a well-oiled CRM, it’s important to utilize lead management practices that will make life easier for sales reps and help them close more leads. Once you’ve set behavioral characteristics for your ideal buyers, Lead Liaison’s marketing automation software will help qualify sales leads and update that information for you. No need to worry about manually entering the details.

Ask the right questions

There’s no faster way to lose a lead or misqualify a lead than to have the sales rep asking indirect or irrelevant questions. Because you should be able to qualify your sales lead into one category or the other after the first call, it’s critical to gather the right information from them as efficiently as possible. During the collaboration meeting between the sales and marketing teams (as mentioned above), a helpful exercise is to brainstorm targeted questions for sales reps to ask prospects in that first phone conversation. We all know how sales calls can go—it’s easy to sound over-salesy if you exclaim the wonders of your company at the very start of the call. Instead, use that time to ask questions, determine if they may fit into the ideal buyer bucket, and most importantly, create a relationship and an emotional connection. Determine how they make decisions and what they’re looking for when they select a service provider.

Marketing automation software helps qualify sales leads through properly managing all of your lead information and ensuring accurate CRM upkeep so that sales reps have current data available to them as they need it. To learn more about how marketing automation software can help your business, check out Lead Liaison’s solutions.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation: You Still Need a Sales Strategy

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Marketing Automation: You Still Need a Sales StrategyAnyone 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!

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How to Integrate Social Media with your Lead Tracking

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Integrate Social Media with your Lead TrackingTo maximize your online presence, it’s important to make sure you’ve got all of your social media channels covered and that you’re regularly posting to each one. Keeping track of posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. can be a full-time job on its own. Save time and employee resources by letting marketing automation help you integrate social media with your lead tracking practices.

By tracking all of your marketing activity, including website traffic, targeted email opens, and clicks via social media campaigns, your marketing team can get a better understanding of which marketing channels are most effective and produce the highest quality leads. When you integrate social media with your lead tracking system that is already in place, you have a greater chance of generating quality leads that are more likely to convert.

With Lead Liaison’s social media solution, you have the ability to keep track of who is clicking which links, how often they’re doing so, and which of those prospects end up converting—all in one place. Using lead tracking software alongside social media campaigns allows you to track and measure real-time visitor activity and clearly see where site traffic is coming from to determine which of your marketing efforts are most successful in relation to your customer base.

Here are some capabilities to take advantage of when you integrate your social media with your lead tracking:

  • Scheduling: Create a predefined schedule for your social media posts. Spend a few hours Monday morning (or whenever you prefer) creating all the posts you’ll need for the week, and set up a time and day to send each one out. You can even create “canned messages,” which are multi-use messages that you don’t have to worry about retyping each time.
  • Nurturing: If you integrate social media with your lead tracking, you have the ability to better understand your prospects’ needs. This empowers you to send out more personalized and direct messages that your prospects are more likely to respond to. Tracking leads in this way also helps your team to manage who needs to be nurtured and who is ready to be given to sales and move on to the next level.
  • Enrich prospects’ profiles: Joining lead tracking practices with your social media campaigns also helps manage and update the prospects that are already in your pipeline, lending to a better understanding of their online activity, and can ultimately suggest their buying readiness. Keep track of shares and clicks and add that information to their profile in your system.

Most importantly, having that connection between tracking your leads efficiently and managing your social media marketing allows you to communicate with prospects more directly and effectively, leading to a higher conversion rate. Take advantage of your marketing automation system and integrate social media with your lead tracking.