Winning Strategies for Lead Generation

Inside sales teams were a frustrated lot, earlier. This is because they constantly had to deal with dead end calls as they worked with incomplete lead contact information. Marketing automation tools have made this process simpler by capturing qualified leads visiting the website. By tracking down leads that show buying interest, teams could generate faster sales and develop a more targeted responses to those browsing the website.

When leads are generated using lead intelligence, they have a significantly higher conversion success rate than cold contacts. When lead website activity is tracked, they can be scored based on the profile set by the marketer. This way, marketers can pre-qualify their leads, and pass them on to sales teams when they deem fit.  A robust lead generation system combined with some smart marketing techniques will aid marketers in closing deals faster.

Email Marketing
Email marketing is the most widely used B2B marketing technique that is used to connect with prospects. It can be used to send personalized and targeted messages for lead generation and lead nurturing purposes. Marketers can choose to email exciting offers, propositions, events, newsletters, etc. Analyst reports, survey results or website metrics are always a good draw with prospects. So, sharing these reports through email will aid in increasing click through rates for landing pages.

Content Marketing
Marketing collaterals like newsletters and articles are an effective way to touch base with subscribed prospects. When prospect is in the awareness stage, he will be actively looking for information about related products and solutions. So, well-written and researched articles/whitepapers/case studies/success stories can help to engage him on a regular basis.

Nurture
Marketers need to follow up on all leads that have shown interest in the product, irrespective of their buying stages. With the help of marketing automation systems, marketers need to install a regular follow-up system on all leads and customers to ensure they remain warm.  Integrating their own CRM system with marketing automation software will help to automatically nurture these leads.

Display Customer Success
The company website has to project the product’s benefits and the customers who have benefited from it. Customer success stories or case studies are widely read by prospects in the considering state. Therefore, it is important to have a testimonial column on websites which displays the customer success stories as well.

Marketing automation
Using automated tools, marketers can build a pipeline of qualified leads in the marketing funnel (who will be nurtured through email marketing), track visitor intent in real time, shorten sales cycles and boost revenue, and align marketing and sales goals.


Also read more on - Lead Scoring Model, Search Engine Optimization Tools

Leveraging Marketing Automation for Lead Scoring

Lead scoring enables marketers to assign a quantitative value to website visits based on the visiting person’s profile, which includes demographic information and website behavioral activities. The value assigned is determined based on what profile the marketer is interested in. For example, if a marketer is specifically interested in Canadian prospects coming from the automobile industry background, these parameters could be assigned a greater value to denote that whether prospects match (or not) with the marketer’s search criteria.

Scoring also lets marketers to sort leads and identify changes in behavioral patterns so that marketers can work with sales-ready leads. And, lead scoring is one of the primary uses of implementing a robust marketing automation solution.

Marketing automation tools help to automate the manual process of lead management and lead generation. By using the lead tracking features of marketing automation software, marketers can touch base with leads they are interested in, by assessing their buying interest.

Marketing automation can enable B2B marketers to:

• Analyze lead scores to personalize email campaigns.
• Assess the effectiveness of campaigns executed for a specific geographical location or specific purpose.
• Create automated responses to prospect web activity such as form-fills or registrations.
• Create mailing lists based on scores.
• Identify buying stage of prospects and their responses.
• Restrict or provide access to prospect information based on his buying stage.

By implementing a lead scoring model in marketing automation software, companies can:

1. Identify the improvement in quality of leads procured over a period of time. When lead profile criteria is fine  tuned on a regular basis, marketers will be able to rightly define a sales ready lead and then plan effectively towards closing the business deal.
2. Decrease the overheads experienced due to manual processes and focus more on the campaign execution process.
3. Note a marked improvement in campaign development and management. This means, marketers will spend less time in transitioning leads from one phase to another, thereby contributing to the base line.
4. Bridge the divide between sales and marketing departments so that they work can together in identifying sales-ready leads.

Marketing automation solutions and lead scoring is a winning combination for B2B marketers who want to gain visibility into lead intent. This lead intelligence can be leveraged to move leads faster in the marketing funnel and drive revenue for the company.

Read more on - marketing automation solutions, Search Engine Optimization Tools

Marketing Automation Solutions - Providing a Cutting Edge

Today's business environment is an aggressively competitive one. Technological innovations and globalization have helped enterprises stay ahead of their competitors. With the basic aim of every business enterprise to be  profit oriented, they  take steps to market their products and services across wide  geographical regions  through various modes including the world-wide web.

Effective marketing of products and services leads to generation  quality sales leads. However,  the enterprise today with all the technology know how are still challenged to create business strategies that would help manage demand generation campaigns and effectively evaluate  return on investments.  Adoption  of effective marketing automation solutions  by the new age business enterprises help them combat the  complex scenario and streamline marketing and sales functions.

The business enterprises that think of creative and innovative solutions to meet the demands of the customers tend to achieve maximum sales leads. Thus innovation is must in the enterprises marketing plan. The marketing automation solutions is innovative and intuitive and provides the B2B  and B2C sales channels an spontaneous platform for the ever-changing marketing landscape.

Today with technology so involved in every aspect of the business world,  e-commerce has  become a popular method of  business expansions. This has brought to light a number of marketing  tools that has been developed over the years. Email marketing is a powerful marketing tool popular among the B2B enterprises. Being  low cost and  effective means to reach a wide range of  targeted audiences this is an effective way for  building relationship with prospects,  past and present customers. Combined with marketing automation tools from the leading service providers helps enterprises target their emails accordingly.

However, success of the business enterprise is largely dependent on the level of  synchronization of  the sales and marketing efforts of the various teams. Marketing automation systems  facilitates  a high-level of real-time communication between the teams. Social media campaigns also play a great role for communication and feedback between teams as well as customers. This helps to augment the marketing campaigns on the basis of sales team feedback  which further facilitates  greater lead generation.

An effective marketing automation solutions  will  aid generation of qualified leads. Together with the insight provided by the marketing automation  systems the teams can work out better campaigns. With foundations of the marketing campaigns today  based on real data, enterprises gain greater control . The marketing automation solutions thus provides greater return on investment and  a competitive edge for the global enterprises.

Also read more on - marketing funnel, Search Engine Optimization Tools

Reinforce Your Sales Pipeline with Effective Email Marketing

According to Forrester’s marketing forecast based on an online survey conducted, “email marketing and spending is expected to actually balloon to $2 billion by 2014”. This means that greater numbers of businesses are looking at email marketing to offer them higher levels of cost-effectiveness and efficiency to derive better ROI. Email marketing has been a great source to get access to as many people as you want and it works because it allows marketers to target their audience. Email marketing is s data driven, it influences direct sales and it builds relationships, loyalty and trust.

Being an extremely cost-effective way to communicate with prospective and existing customers, the key objective of email marketing for most businesses is to create “brand awareness” and get as many leads as possible. While the success of any marketing campaign depends on delivering the right message to the right people at the right time, it is important to have a sophisticated email marketing tool tracks and analyzes prospect behavior based on the email campaigns run.

To ensure maximum returns from email marketing programs, it is important to see if the campaign is relevant and if it carries the right message. Though these aspects may be frivolous, they are essential to determine the success of your campaign. An interesting fact in email campaigns is that “if 8 out of 10 people read your email subject and from address, only 2 will read the rest.” If that is the case, then you need to ensure that your subject line is pertinent to the reader, and arresting to retain their interest. This makes it vital to arm your email campaign with a solid database would ensure better leads.

An effective integration of your email marketing with your social media campaigns can add that extra push to your campaign.  The social media site is an effective email marketing platform that provides beneficial contributions. Through the social media sites it is possible to send promotional emails to capture the attention of the customers. While it helps maintain a long relationship with loyal customers, it also helps reach out to a larger audience effectively using this marketing strategy without making large investments.

The right execution of an effective email marketing campaign would certainly bring in added benefits. Effective email marketing allows companies to proactively communicate with their existing customers instead of passively waiting for them to return to your  Web site, visit your store or office, call you on the phone, etc. With email marketing you can solidify existing relationships, initiate new ones, and convert your one-time visitors, buyers, and members into repeat business and long-term customers.

Go ahead and announce recent developments and new products and services to your prospective customers. Reinforce your sales pipelines, and give your business an email marketing edge.


Also read more on - Lead Scoring Model, marketing funnel, Search Engine Optimization Tools