Up Close and Personal with WOMM

Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) is fast emerging as a popular trend among marketers. But the fact is that WOMM is one of the earliest marketing techniques known to man. When mass media became popular, marketers diverted their attention on exploiting the potential of direct advertising. Direct advertising was an instant hit as it was able to garner the attention of a larger audience. As a result, the power of WOMM as a successful lead generation software technique was soon forgotten.

What is Word of Mouth Marketing?

WOMM is nothing but recommendation from a satisfied customer to a prospective customer about a product or service. What makes WOMM unique is the fact that unlike advertising, it is not at all a paid campaign. Moreover, communication takes place at a personal level, thus bringing in more credibility and trust. However, WOMM is not a substitute for any other marketing technique. The most effective way to increase sales with WOMM is to use it for initial marketing and when sufficient buzz has been created, replace it with other forms of marketing.

The Great Differentiator - The Power of Trust

WOMM revolutionized the marketing world as it brought back the most essential factor that was found missing in most of the current marketing automation software techniques: Trust. This is the fundamental factor that helps WOMM influence buyers’ decisions greatly.

Today prospects are knowledgeable and have access to a wealth of information through the internet. Hence, it is not an easy task for marketers to convince them to buy a product or service. And this is where WOMM scores the point. In WOMM, recommendations are made not by marketers or sales personnel, but by common people who have tried and liked a product or service. Hence they are more likely to be trusted.

WOMM Best Practices

Today WOMM is believed to be an effective marketing strategy and marketers are trying to make the most of it. However, they have to be very careful when creating word of mouth for products or services, as there are several rules that shouldn’t be broken:

• Avoid Over-Promising

Never over-promise if you can’t keep it, since over-promising and under-delivering never go down well with customers.  

• Never Adopt a Promotional Tone

Never promote your business in WOMM, as it would defeat the very purpose of this technique.

• Never Make Controversial Statements

   Avoid making any statements that hurt sentiments and trigger negative reaction.

• Never Betray Trust

WOMM is all about trust. Therefore, avoid doing things that betray trust.

WOMM has been a trusted method in the past, and will continue to be so in future. There is no doubt that it is an effective lead generation technique that would go on to play a crucial role in lead management process.

Know more - marketing automation

Enhance Your Marketing Campaigns

Marketers all over the world strive to ensure that their marketing campaigns are planned and executed effectively. But despite this, not all marketing campaigns work out the way marketers expect them to. So what are the reasons for their failure? Are there any lessons to be learnt from campaigns that have failed? This article is an attempt to understand why marketing campaigns fail and what could be done to ensure they don’t!

So why do marketing campaigns fail?

No Communication Means Zero Impact: A communication gap between your marketing team and other teams whether sales or IT, can give rise to a constant mismatch between objectives which can negatively impact your campaign. Once this gap is bridged, objectives are clearly defined, and dedicated goals are set, your campaigns are sure to bring about the desired results.

Lack of Relevance in Messages: If your campaign carries messages that inherently lack coherence or relevance, then the possibility of its success is very low.

Gap in Comprehending Prospects Needs: A thorough understanding of where a demand arises, and which group of prospects really need the product is essential to fulfill their demands. Once you get this information, your campaigns can be strengthened with more targeted messages.  

How Marketing Automation Solutions Help

A 2010 IDC insight report claimed that while there are several challenges as far as sales and marketing automation processes are concerned, the benefits are quite evident: lower cost, higher efficiency and productivity, greater accountability, better performance, improved customer experience, and potentially shorter sales cycles. Thus opting for the best marketing automation solution can work wonders for your enterprise and enhance your marketing campaign.  Marketing automation solutions can enable:

• Effective lead management including lead generation and nurturing
• Enhanced CRM
• Efficient data management
• Cost-effective marketing campaigns
• Streamlining of all marketing processes
• Swift execution of multi-channel marketing campaigns

So fill in that missing link between your marketing and sales team by giving your enterprise the marketing automation edge, and see how easily your leads will be converted into actual sales!

Know more on- lead nurturing, lead management,  marketing automation software

Role of Affiliate Marketing in Lead Generation

The popularity of the Internet has thrown open a myriad of opportunities to organizations to augment sales. Internet marketing otherwise called online marketing makes use of the innovative strategies over the Internet to help businesses grow and expand. The interactive nature of Internet marketing makes it a successful marketing automation tool.

Internet marketing techniques include email marketing, display advertising, social media, affiliate marketing, interactive marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, mobile advertising and others.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a relatively new concept that is growing rapidly as an effective lead management strategy. It is an online marketing technique employed by the marketing automation solution team, which makes use of another website to drive traffic to theirs. This makes affiliate marketing a unique lead generation strategy compared to traditional lead management techniques.

Most lead generation techniques involve interaction between the customer and the marketing or sales team. However, in affiliate marketing it involves the services of a third person called the ‘affiliate’. Hence, the main players here are merchants, affiliates, and customers. Here is a more detailed look at their roles:

Merchant: In affiliate marketing, the term merchant stands for the seller or advertiser or a brand. The merchant takes up the services of the affiliate to advertise their products or services.

Affiliate: Affiliate is the one who owns the website. Since affiliates publish or market others’ products and services on their websites, they are also referred to as Publishers.

Customer: Affiliate marketing is all about attracting customers’ attention to the merchant’s products and services.

How Affiliate Marketing Helps in Lead Generation

In affiliate marketing, affiliates advertise the merchant’s products or services in the form of links, banner ads, call-to-action buttons etc on their websites or blogs. The aim is to get the readers to click on the ads, which takes them to the merchant’s web page. Here detailed information about the products or services is provided. If the reader purchases something or provides contact details or even shows interest, the affiliates are compensated. If the merchant is able to close a sale or generate quality leads the affiliate gets commission.

Importance of Content in Affiliate Marketing

Making affiliate marketing a success is upon the affiliates. Hence, it is very important to make their websites attractive and appealing. And the only way to do this is by providing value-based content that is not only relevant, but also up-to-date. If people find the content appealing then it would drive more traffic. More traffic means more visitors, more clicks, and more leads. However, for effective lead generation, affiliates must ensure that the content and the products promoted are along the same line.

Though affiliate marketing is relatively new, it has the capability to deliver great results. While, only some marketers so far have tapped its potential as an effective lead management tool, it is sure to be used more widely in the years to come.

When Marketing Automation Meets Social Media…

“Drop your line where the fish are”- this is the most fundamental rule of marketing and is largely applicable to the current day scenario. Prospects are now typically reachable online, especially through social media. And these channels have become the primary target of marketers all over the world.

The proliferation of social networks and their widespread usage has taken marketing to an all new level. Consumers have a wide array of options to connect online and seek out product/service recommendations on Twitter, facebook etc. They use LinkedIn to find executives in companies who may be able to give them better deals on purchase.

The frequency and volume of these cloud-based conversations makes one thing evident- social media offers a promising platform for lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead management. And the only way to leverage this platform is by integrating social media features with marketing automation software. This can be done in the following ways:

Enabling Sharing: Including ‘share to facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn’ buttons in email messages and landing pages can make a huge difference in gaining prospects. And if the marketing automation software is further equipped with the capability to track who shared information and how this has increased website traffic, lead segmentation and scoring becomes even more easier.

Gathering Lead Intelligence: Social networks offer great potential for gathering insights about prospects. And by integrating features for gaining lead intelligence, marketing automation tools can identify prospects, and put their Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn profiles onto the automation system. This in turn can facilitate lead scoring and segmentation.

Social Media Monitoring: Some automation tools in the market also come with social media monitoring features. These tools track relevant discussions in social networks and suggest where marketing teams can join the discussion and generate quality leads.

Tracking ROI: Majority of marketing automation solutions in the market, come with an in-built ROI tracking mechanism, which can be easily extended to social media. Also, by analyzing the HTTP referrer or by posting a tracking link on social networks, it is possible to track social media as a lead source, which can clearly demonstrate the value gained from investing in them.  

Integrating social media features with marketing automation software can prove to be highly beneficial. It empowers marketers by seeding social networks with track-able back links to the business website. Thus it makes it possible for marketers to measure the effect of social media marketing on their website traffic. It also helps optimize lead nurturing campaigns by enabling relevant, timely responses to conversations on the cloud.

Know more - marketing automation

Can Modern Marketing Tactics Out-beat Traditional Ones?

Marketing as a concept has been around for quite a while, its the techniques that undergoes changes over time. While the old school of marketing relied on expensive billboards, phone book ads, and magazine ads etc which required large scale investments and sometimes offered zero returns, the advent of the Internet, however has ushered in a new dimension in marketing.

The New Age of Online Marketing

The old school definition for marketing has been replaced by a new one. Today’s marketing strategies are more interactive and inexpensive and offer definite results. All this has been made possible by the Internet and its inherent paraphernalia which includes blogs, e-books, online advertising, community forums etc. The Internet has also facilitated communication with customers in real-time through social networks. So marketers can now instantly assess the performance of their campaigns and be more responsive to prospects’ demands.

Opportunities Presented by Contemporary Marketing Techniques

Digital marketing strategies help businesses reach out to a wider audience through online media, social networking sites and other cloud-based avenues. This improves visibility and offers several other benefits which includes:

• Effective Monitoring –  Successful Businesses require a lot of information about competitors, prospects-their needs, and opinions. Hence monitoring sources where vitally relevant information may be acquired, is important. Social networks, blogs, newsfeeds and newsletters, search engines, forums and Google alerts can provide easy access to popular views and opinions. And new marketing technology helps monitor these sources.

• List Building – A group segmentation pattern for competitors, prospective leads, customers and industry experts, has to be followed. Constant interaction with these groups and regular updates from them are essential to develop effective campaigns. With a new age marketing technology like automation software, segmentation and timely communication are guaranteed.

• Optimization of Content – Businesses need to optimize the content of their communication with popular keywords and compelling content to ensure maximum reach. And today, advanced Search Engine Optimization techniques help in understanding the actual reach of the content.

• Brand Management – It is very important to maintain brand consistency. Online customers need to be constantly engaged in order to build a long lasting  relationship with them. Marketing Automation technology today facilitates this with lead nurturing best practices, thereby improving sales opportunities.

Leverage Your Online Marketing Strength Smartly

The worldwide web has opened up new avenues which businesses can utilize to promote their products and services effectively. They present opportunities to understand prospects’ needs and cater to them in a better way. Marketing automation software has further simplified online marketing by offering lead scoring, lead management and lead nurturing capabilities, which help streamline processes and achieve better results.http://marketingautomationtool.viviti.com/entries/business/build-relationships-with-lead-nurturing

Making a Difference with Social Media

Social media have completely transformed the way businesses function. Today, social media are an integral part of the lead generation process, and an indispensable tool for B2B marketing. 

So what makes social media an effective lead generation software? It is the fact that a considerable large percentage of today’s population is hooked on to social media channels. Hence marketing automation through social media helps in getting the message across to a wider audience. However, success still depends on the kind of lead generation pipeline built. Marketers cannot straightaway promote products or services through social media, as it would completely ruin the company’s credibility and online reputation. 

Since social media are all about conversation, the best way to trigger conversation is by using relevant content. Such content can be in the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, photos, presentations, eBooks, and so on, which can bring in positive as well as negative responses. When more and more people comment on a blog or for that matter any content, it becomes more popular. And thus social media can help by bringing in greater visibility.

Why Businesses Need Social Media

 

Today organizations can no longer ignore the role of social media in connecting with their target audience, because they have come a long way from just being interactive tools meant for friends connecting online, to those that provide maximum potential for marketers to reach out to their target audience. 

How Social Media Can Make a Difference

Organizations are now waking up to the fact that social media are the easiest, affordable and effective means to create awareness about their products/services. They contribute to successful business growth by:

• fostering new business relationships and networks
• fortifying existing relationships
• building brand awareness
• recruiting well-experienced and talented professionals
• helping to know new technologies and competitors
• creating powerful online reputation
• improving customer relations and customer loyalty
• connecting with target audience
• finding prospective customers
• making new clients
• generating direct sales

Hence, employing social media for marketing is all about sharing useful information with community members. And the best way to build quality relationships through social media is to develop value-based content good enough to be shared. This helps considerably in enhancing visibility, improving traffic, and facilitating lead nurturing programs. And to make the best use of social media as a lead generation tool, marketers have to share useful content, engage in fruitful conversations, and interact regularly with prospects.

Why Your Company Needs Lead Management

Every potential customer is looking for a good deal. It is no different in B2B marketing. It is most often seen that when a customer is contemplating over which company would suit his/her needs the best, he’s most likely to opt for a company that provides him with the assistance and specific information that he requires. Consequently, capturing and nurturing a customer’s interest is essential, as it is this interest that will ensure the prospect staying long enough to actually buy the product.  This is what ‘lead management’ is all about. 

What is Lead Management?

Lead management is simply a process of coming up with such leads or potential customers, nurturing them, observing and analyzing them, and then forwarding them to the sales team. The sole intent of lead management is to build a relationship with each of a prospective customer in a way that their interest develops into an opportunity for sales. The goal however always remains the same - ‘ensuring complete customer satisfaction’.

What is Lead Management Automation?

Forrester defines lead management automation as “Tooling the process that helps generate new business opportunities, manage volumes of business inquiries, improve potential buyers’ propensity to purchase, and increase alignment between marketing activity and sales results.” And since lead management is now more about using technology, lead management tools have also become significantly important in effective lead generation.

Your Company Needs Leads!

Once you realize the importance of leads and how lead generation can help your sales team ensure higher sales, there are certain elements that should be considered before you buy a lead management automation tool.

• Quality over Quantity

Many lead automation tools help you acquire many leads, and it is quality and not the quantity of leads that matter. It is therefore important that your lead generation tool should necessarily focus on the quality of leads to ensure higher sales.

• Prioritized and Organized Leads

To ensure an increase in the actual sales by the sales team, leads need to be prioritized and organized to be converted into sales. Therefore opt go for a solution that is capable of segmenting and prioritizing leads.

The lead generation process can be efficiently streamlined with the right lead management software. You can be assured of a faithful customer base, if your sales team is following organized and prioritized leads. Enhancing customer relationship will increase sales, and in turn bring about productivity and profitability for your enterprise. So choose your lead management solution with care!