Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Combines Marketing Automation With Content Creation

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) October 22, 2013 – Lead Liaison broke new ground last week when it became the first marketing automation SaaS company to provide Web content creation within an automated marketing platform. The new feature provides access to over 2,000 content developers, allowing marketers to request content then seamlessly deploy that content through the automated marketing platform.

Recent studies have found that, while 91% of B2B marketers are deploying content marketing, 93% create content from scratch. Lead Liaison developed the integration of content and marketing automation to alleviate marketers of having to create content in-house.

Content is ordered through a portal that offers blog posts, newsletters, social posts, white papers, press releases, video scripts, articles, and landing pages. Users can manage current content requests with an expandable view of relevant information about each content type. The interactive system allows users to post comments and revision requests before final acceptance of the content.

The company’s flagship Lead Management Automation™ (LMA) application has expanded over the past 12 months to offer landing page creation, traceable URLs, social posting, and now content development. VP of Corporate Communications Alex Brown explained the company’s commitment to the evolution of its products during a recent conference call with investors.

“We need to compete on innovation. We believe adding content creation capabilities is yet another innovation we’ve developed that will generate revenue. We’ve found that our clients need additional tools to optimize their marketing practices beyond automating tasks so we’ve invested considerably to deliver those tools.”

When requesting content through the system users can designate specific topics, industries, keywords, and references that should be included in each piece. In addition to content requests, LMA users can provide content feedback along and select content authors for future assignments. Users can track progress of content requests using multiple filters as well.

To learn more about this first-to-market innovation, request a 10-minute demonstration of Lead Liaison’s Content Creation solution.

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Lead Liaison is a software company that provides cloud-based marketing and sales automation solutions. The company markets to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, and focuses on creating the broadest and most user-friendly revenue generation software platform. It’s innovative and robust software combines lead capture, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing, content creation, social media engagement and ROI reporting into a single platform.

For More Information:

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

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation and the 3 Pillars of Lead Management

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Marketing Automation and the 3 Pillars of Lead ManagementManaging your B2B marketing leads is a process that runs through three phases: generation, qualification, and nurturing. Back in the day, marketers generated leads that the sales team had to qualify and nurture. Now the three pillars of lead management can be optimized by using a marketing automation platform (MAP). The introduction of the MAP in the B2B community saves time, improves sales productivity, and helps manage leads until they are ready for your sales team.

Lead Generation

Lead gen is best practiced when you deploy outbound and inbound marketing assets. A marketing automation platform fits with both asset types. You’re able to track a lead’s behavior – which assets did he engage with, what time did he visit your site? Marketing automation allows you to “batch” lead gen activities over extended periods in very little time. For example, creating and scheduling three integrated email delivery and social posting campaigns can be accomplished by a single marketer in as little as a few hours.

Lead Qualification

Once leads have been captured, automated marketing engagements provide consistent opportunities to gather lead intelligence. Capturing data is a strength of marketing automation because it allows marketers to present consistent message delivery, which engenders trust from potential buyers. Marketing automation users gather lead intelligence more easily than using traditional methods through the automated delivery of multiple messages through multiple channels (scheduled at one time) – all exhibiting a consistent brand that leads can be comfortable sharing information with.

Lead Nurturing

Perhaps the most important stage of the lead management process is lead nurturing. Lead nurturing for most companies is best accomplished through a well-planned campaign of escalating messaging and increasingly engaging activities. You may start with an email campaign that offers a free download then extend an invitation to a webinar then provide a ten-minute product demonstration. For most companies earning over $2 million annually, there are likely multiple campaigns running at the same time. A marketing automation platform runs each campaign simultaneously, moving leads through the pipeline without extensive personnel resources.

With marketing automation you can execute and monitor all three phases of lead management from one user interface. These days, buyers are faced with countless distractions and it may take months or years to convert a prospect. Generating revenue requires a commitment to consistency that is easily maintained through a marketing automation platform.

Using a marketing automation platform like our Lead Management Automation™ application can ensure that the three pillars of lead management remain strong for your company.

Lead Liaison

Effective B2B Content Marketing Tactics

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Effective B2B Content Marketing TacticsBest practices for B2B marketing have changed drastically in the last few years. The introduction of the internet, ecommerce, and social media networking has created brand new marketing needs. Consumers also now have an endless supply of choices, which has create a desire for real engagement between online retailers and potential customers. That is why there is now a greater emphasis on B2B content marketing.

Online content is a company’s best opportunity to communicate directly with potential leads. Millions of people use the internet every day in search of solutions to their biggest problems. A company’s tutorials, newsletters, articles, webpages, and blogs are all valuable reference sources that can turn potential leads into consumers. If you are still not convinced you need content marketing, you can read my earlier blog; Five Reasons Why Content Marketing is Not a Waste of Time before proceeding with this article on how to actually use it to your advantage.

B2B Content Marketing Tactics

Creating relevant and informative content is necessary for success, but it has to be effectively marketed or it will never be read. Social media is the most popular content marketing tactic because of its vast reach and frequency of use. Over 80% of B2B marketers use social media to promote their content.

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the most commonly used social sites for content marketing, although YouTube and Google+ are also used by a high percentage of B2B marketers.

Content Marketing worth Sharing

Crafty B2B content marketers will develop articles and content that social media users actually want to share. The information must be compelling, informative, or humorous to insight a strong reaction. B2B marketers will also use contests and giveaways as an incentive for reposting or sharing particular content.

Content Marketing SEO Strategies

Search engine optimization is another powerful content marketing strategy. Most people start their product research using a search engine. If your articles and website are not appearing in the first few pages of the search results, they won’t be seen. Strategically-placed keywords and meta-tags, along with genuine link-building are needed to drive your content to the top of the rankings.

Market Content on Forums and Discussion Boards

Another B2B marketing tactic is spreading word of your article all over the internet by posting snippets of it on forums and discussion boards. Make sure to use boards that are related to your industry or target market. You also need to include your website and authorship, so readers and web crawlers can reference it back to your original blog.

Content Marketing with Marketing Automation

There are countless ways to gain exposure for your content and most of which will be enhance when it is incorporated with a marketing automation strategy. Marketing automation software streamlines the process without distracting from the customer engagement. It profiles your typical website audience and then develops content that taps into their needs and interests.

Always keep in mind that your content has to be as strong as your B2B content marketing tactics, otherwise readers will be disappointed and less likely to follow you in the future. Business buyers are savvy consumers and it is important to create and promote content they truly want to read.

Lead Liaison

Email Open Rate: What Are Your Clients Seeing?

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Email Open RatesIf you’re familiar with email marketing, you know the average email open rate for any standard campaign is between 12-20%. This rate varies by industry – a real estate company newsletter may not do as well as a coupon retailer, for instance. It’s important to have a firm grasp on how your client base uses your content and continually provide them with what they want to see.

How do you find out what your users want? First, try asking them. As simple as it sounds, engaging your users via social media and incentive-based surveys can get them talking to you. Once you’ve shown that you’re interested and you’re paying attention, people have a tendency to start talking. It is in this engagement that you’ll be able to ask for feedback and opinions, and tailor your marketing efforts to best suit your audience.

Email Open Rate – What About Mobile?

Over the past year or so, smartphone email opens boosted at about 80%. This means it’s especially important to ensure that your emails and other content can be viewed by your readers in the format they prefer.  You might be amazed at how many small businesses don’t take the time to discover how their readers would like to receive content.

The best way to get an idea of how delivery can affect your email open rate is to view your email on different devices. Try to make it a point to open the emails you’re sending on a PC, tablet and a smartphone as well as using different email programs. Most email service providers give you a preview of what different email messages look like in different formats.

Make Sure You’re Looking

Don’t just open your emails in several different places- use email metrics tracking to get an idea of how your clients are opening them. Even if your emails are beautiful, you’re still wasting time if your emails go to a smartphone where your click through links aren’t visible on different browsers. This can cause your email open rate to plummet – once a potential client knows he or she can’t open an email from you a smartphone, they’re probably not going to give you the benefit of waiting to get in front of a computer to open your content. They’ll most likely delete your email.

It’s important to determine how your users are translating your content into something that supplements their lives – even if it’s only during the minute or two they take to open and read your email. To determine how clients are using your email marketing based on all your other marketing efforts, it’s a good idea to look into marketing automation and determine the value of your campaigns per client. The Lead Liaison team can help you do this. Contact us today for an assessment of your advertising assets so we can determine how to help you!

We also recommend Search Engine Land’s Free SEO Primer. And remember: Email open rate is important, but understanding how your users access and read your content can make all the difference!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation & Reputation Management Go Hand In Hand

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Marketing Automation & Reputation Management Go Hand In HandIt’s never fun or easy talking about what will happen to your business if your products or services are panned on the web somewhere – i.e., if your reputation management is on high alert because of a bad review. Let’s take Yelp reviews, for instance. If you’re a fan of the popular US version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you know how resistant some business owners can be to change.

Ramsay’s latest airings show him confronting “stuck” business owners with negative Yelp ratings. Many owners, rather than taking their customers’ complaints seriously, would rather tell themselves that “not everyone likes the food” rather than changing things they know don’t work about their businesses.

Are You Watching?

Some of us watch programs like these and think, What morons! How can these people not see their own business failings! Truthfully, even a business that’s turning a profit has failings, and reputation management is often a stumbling block for many business owners.

If you’re not watching Google, social media outlets and the news, you might be missing customer complaints. Just one unresolved customer complaint can turn into a reputation management fiasco for a company.  So, given the complexity of your current marketing campaigns and what little time we all have in a day, how can you make sure your reputation is being managed properly?

How Marketing Automation Affects Reputation Management

To succeed in today’s competitive business place – particularly if you’re monitoring your reputation – your marketing message has to be socialized. This means that the core points that make your product compelling should be laid out as part of your social media strategy. This also means you need to be watching your customers.

When you use marketing automation to maintain your brand, you have the ability to pinpoint specific users who spend time on your website. If they’re coming from a bad Yelp review by the droves, you’ll be able to set up an alert that gives you this information immediately. Social signals translate to users spending time on your site. If a customer needs to be taken care of via Facebook or Twitter, you can use socialized marketing automation tools to stay on top of resolving your customers’ complaints.

Consumers are using social media to air their grievances with business. Good reputation management is all about using the tools available to you to connect with customers and solve difficulties – sometimes even before they happen. Marketing automation can help you keep track of specific customers and integrate your marketing efforts in a way that no other marketing concepts can.

To find out more about socialized marketing tools and how reputation management is informed by marketing automation, contact Lead Liaison for a free consultation today!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation and the Latest Google Update

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Marketing Automation and the Latest Google UpdateThe latest Google update change, Hummingbird, rocked the search engine world this week. What’s most interesting about this update is that most SEO experts didn’t even see it coming. The algorithm has actually been in effect for over a month, and is Google’s largest update in years.

Small businesses are particularly nervous about the change. The Panda and Penguin programs Google rolled out in the last few years significantly damaged rankings for many businesses, literally causing small businesses to go under in some cases. This is particularly true for those that were relying on organic rankings to provide search engine traffic. If your business relies on help from the search engines to get new customers, you don’t necessarily have to worry-you just have to make sure your site is set up to provide more contextual engagement with your potential client base.

Working With the Hummingbird Update

The latest Google update ensures that not just a few keywords will rank a site – all of the keywords in a search query are important for determining search engine position. For instance, before this update someone could type in Train fares in Nova Scotia. Sites with good keyword ranking for Nova Scotia or train fares might show up, rather then search engine results that actually match with the user is looking for.

With this latest update, Google puts an emphasis on the user’s actual intent. Now, the user typing in train fares in Nova Scotia is more likely to actually get train fares rather than just general information that’s irrelevant to the query.

You can get a better idea of how your particular site is affected by checking your URL’s analytics and other metrics.

How does this affect your small business?

If your site is already rich in information and you have fairly streamlined advertising campaigns and an SEO plan, you shouldn’t necessarily worry about the latest Google update. What you should worry about is continuing to make sure that your advertising campaigns are in line with your SEO, and that the content you’re putting on your site is relevant to your users.

Marketing automation can help you here because it can allow you to identify what users are coming to your site based on keyword searches, and how to look at information about how those searches changed over the past month. Real time search results will allow you to determine your best marketing path moving forward. Once you know your results, you can change your SEO strategy to address what users are looking for, and discover how you can better get them to your site.

Plus, with the ability to flag particular users who visit your site via IP tracking, you can give your users a customized experience that other tools just can’t. To get an idea of how those customized tools can better your business, set up a consultation with an expert at Lead Liaison today!

Lead Liaison

What Makes Content King?

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What Makes Content King?In a previous blog on How to use Lead Nurturing Content to Convert More B2B Customers, I mentioned that content is king when it comes to lead conversion. I only touched on the topic briefly, but decided the subject is worthy of its own post.

Content Creates a Connection

Most marketing automation strategists focus on the sheer volume of leads and the speed of automated software when they are promoting their services to new businesses. Although these are beneficial to the success of a marketing automation campaign, they do not actually create a connection between the company and the consumer.

Lead nurturing content is a company chances to build a lasting relationship by communicating directly with the lead. It has to give the reader real value to keep them interested. Unfortunately, even clever and helpful content will still be useless if it is never read. That is why there also needs to be an emphasis on effective content marketing.

Promote Content on Discussion Boards

Content marketing will require strategic networking with other people in your industry. Spend time establishing your online authorship by posting compelling quotes and tidbits from your nurturing content on other forums and discussion boards. Make sure to create clear links back to original blog posting to encourage two-way traffic.

Content Marketing with Social Media

Millions of articles are shared every day on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter. Marketing automation strategist will create content worthy of being shared and then use a combination of different social media sites to distribute and promote the information online.

The techniques for approaching social media users vary depending on the site. LinkedIn and Google+ are ideal for professional business content while Facebook and Twitter should have a more entertaining or educational aspect to the article.

Understand Your Target Audience

How and where you promote your content will depend on your company’s unique target audience. Start by using website visitor tracking and lead profiling to gather valuable information on your potential leads. Look for similar interests and online behavior that will help you understand their needs and interests. This will allow you to create lead nurturing content that answers their questions and help you promote it in the places they are most likely to look.

Online consumers are aware they have an abundance of choices, which gives them higher expectations. They expect real engagement, free advice, and useful resources. Lead nurturing content is necessary for creating a more meaningful connection with potential leads and content marketing is needed to spread word of your valuable content and attract new visitors. Successfully combining these two marketing strategies will show you exactly why content is the king when it comes to lead conversion.

Lead Liaison

5 Marketing Automation Best Practices

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Best Practices for Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is here to stay. While we’re ecstatic that companies both large and small continue to adopt MA at a frenetic pace, we feel it is important to remember that effective marketing using an automation platform should follow some fundamental best practices. We’re delighted to present to you 5 marketing automation best practices.

1) Start small and build

Avoid deploying a huge campaign when you start out with MA. The temptation may be to run multiple campaigns as quickly as possible. But programmed marketing takes time to master – and you don’t want to risk alienating your markets. Develop a deployment strategy that includes all features but open with a few small campaigns and learn to master tactics before rolling out to a wider audience. You’ll minimize risk by starting small.

2) Create MA campaigns that build profiles and strengthen marketing practices

Effective automated marketing campaigns should qualify leads as they relate to a specific offer or opportunity, but deploying MA is also beneficial in discovering market behaviors through content consumption. The digital footprints your leads leave behind while engaged through marketing automation helps shape your customer persona. Use that data to develop stronger campaigns.

3) Don’t set to auto-pilot

It will be tempting to “set-it-and-forget-it” but campaign management is still required – especially early on. Though marketing automation creates efficiencies through automated functions, it’s important to stay on top of ongoing campaign results and tweak app settings, messaging, or other elements to maximize your results.

4) Create great content

Buyers are constantly getting targeted by content intended to attract and persuade. Having that content delivered routinely via MA is not going to instantly convert. Marketing automation, though an important and rapidly adopted technology, is but a tool. The key to effective MA campaigns is to provide content your markets want and need. A mix of formats is important. Deploy video, email, social posts, and other assets. Most importantly, project a consistent image across all your MA channels.

5) Test and test again

Not every MA campaign will achieve desired results. One of the strengths of MA is the ability to segment and target audiences. Prior to a general distribution, make sure messaging generates response for each market segment. Use A/B testing for each asset deployed through your MA platform to gauge click through, site time, conversion, and other KPIs. Marketing automation can reduce marketing costs and improve close rates but the effectiveness of the platform you use will depend on establishing best practices that work for your company. For more best practices, check out our other blog categories.

Lead Liaison

Why Marketing Automation is Essential for Lead Qualification

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Why Marketing Automation is Essential for Lead QualificationB2B lead qualification is a process of determining suitability for sales engagement, right? Actually, lead qual is just the opposite: it’s determining as quickly as possible if a lead is NOT interested in you at the moment and, furthermore, if you are NOT interested in that lead enough to devote sales resources to pursuing that lead. The way provide your sales team with the highest quality, most qualified leads is to manage leads through a marketing automation platform.

In ultra-competitive industries where 80% of leads are not worth pursuing at the first touch point, an effective lead qualification strategy manages leads in a way that delivers the hottest leads to sales first, nurtures others who may be interested in your solution until they are ready to buy, and ignores leads that appear unqualified to purchase. This allows your sales team to focus on the most likely candidates.

One of the strengths of deploying marketing automation is that the application segments and nurtures leads without directly engaging the sales team. The system can quickly indicate which leads are worth pursuing and which are just curious. Traditional practices have sales determining whether a lead is suitable to be a prospect, now marketing automation enables that process.

Marketing automation platforms, including our Lead Management Automation™ application, are designed to score leads as they engage with your brand. A lead threshold can be set that marks when a lead becomes marketing-qualified and ready to migrate to a CRM for sales engagement. The process puts the most likely buyers in front of sales. During the qualification process, leads accumulate scoring based upon demographic attributes and digital behavior. A good platform will manage leads as they become qualified at different paces.

B2B qualification these days is achieved more often by inbound marketing techniques. This allows prospects to qualify themselves. The key to merging inbound marketing and automated qualification is to translate initial interest into actionable data that sales agents can use when they engage with leads. Through MA the sales team is typically more efficient because reps aren’t chasing unqualified leads.

Inbound marketing allows you to let the prospect indicate how ready to purchase he may be. Inquiries such as ad clicks, website visits, email messages, and webinar registrations qualify leads by indicating their level of interest in your solution.

But there are two important questions that must be answered that marketing automation cannot provide. These questions must be answered during sales engagements.

  • Do they NEED your solution? People search online often with the desire to buy but may not have the need. It can often be more challenging to sales to convince a prospect of need when she realizes that a purchase fulifills only a desire to acquire your solution. Typically, these cases involve frequent and repeated objections.
  • If they need your solution, can they USE it? Does yoru prospect have the capability of implementing your solution or will implementation require investment in other areas? Often, a purchase makes sense in a standalone situation but if there are capital requirements beyond the purchase, a sale may actually move the customer to hold your brand in a negative view if money was wasted because a solution cannot be implemented without costly investment.

Lead qualification can take weeks or months. Without a marketing automation platform, lead qual will continue to be costly if handled by your sales team.

Lead Liaison

How to “Spark” a B2B Conversion

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How to "Spark" a B2B ConversionThat first touch. That first look. That first sound. That spark! We often remember first impressions when something significant happens. It’s no different for business-to-business sales. In this case, though, we’re not talking about attributes like a snazzy website or a funny TV ad, we’re talking about timing, response, and good old-fashioned value. That first impression can come from how quickly you respond to a sales lead and what you deliver when they inquire about your brand.

We’ve created the spark that can transform the curious to the converted and can help you spark a b2b conversion.

A Spark is a real-time event trigger in the Lead Management Automation™ (LMA) application. What events can be triggered, you ask? Anything from adding the lead to a contact list to creating a CRM task in Salesforce.com. The value in automating these events is in the rapid response you can provide each sales lead.

What constitutes a Spark? A Spark happens when a visitor to your website uses a specific search term to reach you, has visited multiple pages on your site, or other activities. The Spark can be the start of a long-term relationship with that lead through a nurturing process. By quickly responding to an “inquiry” (a user-defined request), you provide value that can lead to a conversion from prospect to customer.

Here are some examples that are used as sparks:

  • A prospect submits a web form, which triggers an email sent to the prospect with more information and distributes the lead to your sales team
  • A link within an email is clicked, which triggers and alert to the lead owner and creates a task in your CRM for that lead owner
  • A hot prospect (measured by lead score) visits your pricing page, which triggers an email to the lead owner.
  • A lead is converted in your CRM from Lead to Contact, which updates the fields and status in your CRM

A Spark can trigger multiple activities, reducing redundant processes and increasing your spectrum of response. Research has shown that prompt response and value delivery rank high among reasons buyers purchase from a vendor. Using Sparks to trigger events in response to inbound activity shows your leads that your brand acknowledges their interest and wants to provide value in their customer experience.