Corporate Travel Management Now Easy with Expense Management Software

There was a time when companies favored face-to-face meetings to establish, maintain and grow business relations. But when the economic and market conditions became volatile and unpredictable the companies and enterprises were forced to look for green pastures. The advancements in communication technology in the form of internet, email, VOIP, video conferencing, and so on made companies to look at technology as a less expensive replacement for face-to-face meetings. Advocates of virtual meetings considered it as a great time and money saver.  But the fact of the matter is however cost effective or time saving option virtual meetings might be, nothing can replace the human elements that is ingrained in face-to-face meetings. These human elements go a long way in developing mutual trust, good faith and confidence, which no amount of virtual meetings can bring about. Hence, in today’s global business environment, business travels are the indispensable tools for building and fostering business relationships.

It is a fact that in a slow economy steps must be taken to cut back on costs but it should never be at the cost of company’ potential growth prospects. Business travel is definitely one of the largest corporate costs but rather than reducing business travel budgets, a proper management of business travel expenses can do the trick. Instead of taking extreme cost cutting measures that impede company’s progress and development, enterprises should look at effective business travel management to facilitate continuous growth and development.

In today’ tight unpredictable economy, most companies and enterprises cut down business travel budgets as a means to tide over financial crisis. Such a move do more harm than good since  studies have proved that those companies that increase their business travels during economic slowdown succeed in making new business deals than those who cut down business travels. Hence, what is required is the development of business travel management as a core function of businesses. This would help companies to

·         Properly manage company’ travel policy
·         Negotiate shrewdly with vendors
·         Efficiently manage day-to-day activities of the corporate travel program
·         Ensure adequate levels of safety and security for travelers
·         Proper credit-card management
·         Effective management of  travel and expenses (T&E) data

More and more companies are now depending on expense management software for effective corporate travel management. This helps them to lower direct travel costs, to speed up employee’s travel administration, to ensure that internal rules and policies are followed, and to achieve better travel spend analysis.



Also read on - Digital management, eGovernment

Drip Campaign for B2B Marketing

Drip campaign is a technique of slowly and steadily sending across messages to prospects over a certain period of time. This is done slowly to ensure that the prospect has enough time to read the message and understand why the product or offering would be suitable to his/her problem or need.

In drip campaigns it is important to understand the goal of each and individual email that is sent out. Email messages should be customized to suit the purpose of the drip campaign - whether it is for educating prospects or selling. The message must come across clear and concise and the recipients must have an idea what is to come in future emails.

The first step in drip campaigns is to establish trust. For this, every email message must have the option to unsubscribe. This is an effective way to filter out inactive or uninterested prospects as well.

Drip campaign emails must be devoid of promotional content. This will only annoy subscribers into opting out or hitting the spam button. Drip campaign is a great way to build relationships. So, email messages must be created in such a way that it creates and builds bond between the prospect and the company.

Be wary of the number of drip messages sent. Although some campaigns do require emails to be sent frequently, pace them well so that prospects have enough time for retrospection.

For effective lead management, post drip campaigns create a follow up campaign. This campaign should be nurturing in nature, till the prospect becomes sales-ready. This is highly critical since it takes care of those prospects that need to take time for making a purchase decision, especially since in B2B a purchase decision is a collective one.

Ensure that your drip campaign effectively tackles the challenges of your marketing endeavours by following these 6 essential tips for great email drip campaigns.

Don’ts of Drip Campaign
Below is a list of 10 things to avoid for every excited marketer embarking on a new drip marketing journey on a newly acquired marketing automation platform.

·         Don’t keep dripping the prospects who are sales ready
·         Don’t overlap the lists for different drip marketing tracks
·         Don’t over-drip a prospect to annoy him/her- don’t give a chance to hit unsubscribe
·         Don’t make the drip marketing template ‘sales-y’ in content
·         Don’t drip a contact who is not even remotely interested- don’t give a chance to hit spam
·         Don’t repeat messages/themes in drip campaigns
·         Don’t repeat HTML rich emails
·         Don’t make it impersonal- as drip campaign is a series of emails, it is easy to get lost
·         Don’t make a list too long – segment your list and have multiple drip marketing tracks
·         Don’t just send a ‘Thank You’ email in drip campaign- attach interesting content to engage further

Using marketing automation software for drip campaigns can be highly beneficial because it helps to easily tailor campaigns based on the purpose of the campaign. By making the lead generation activity of “bulk emailing” simpler and user-friendly, marketing automation software can be considered an ideal tool for drip campaign and lead generation.

 

Also read on - Marketing automation

Useful Tips for Creating Effective Banner Ads

No one who spends time on the Internet could fail to notice the small rectangular ads that appear on almost all web pages. These are called banner ads, and they are one of the most popular forms of online advertising. What makes banner ads so effective is that any visitor who clicks on them is taken to the advertiser’s website. Banner ads are actually hypertext links or HTML codes inserted into a webpage. Almost all companies, irrespective of whether they are big or small, use banner ads because they are the easiest and the most affordable means of promoting a product or service. The following are some pointers on creating successful banner ads:

• Since banner ads have limited display area, it is always good to keep it short, simple and to the point. Cluttering it with details can do more harm than good. Advertisers have only a few seconds to attract the attention of visitors, and if the banner ad looks cluttered nobody will read it.
• Avoid wordiness, but the words used should be good enough to create a positive impact.
• Use large fonts and a small file size. Large fonts make it easy to read while a small file size helps banner ads load faster.
• Make changes to banner ads depending on the sites where they will be displayed. Because webpages will also have other banner ads, changing font size, color and, if possible, the message can help your banner ad stand out.
• Advertise banner ads on the right websites. Study the audiences of the websites to ensure that you are targeting the right audience.
• Make the banner ads attractive by using interesting images or animation, catchy phrases and bright colors to grab the attention of readers.
• Always include a strong ‘call to action’ in banner ads.
• Make sure there are no typos or grammatical errors.
• Ensure there is a powerful heading that grabs visitors’ attention.

Most people do not consider banner to be an effective lead management technique but rather a tool that helps enterprises and organizations in getting themselves or their products and services known to the people. That is, they are more of a promotional tool than a lead generation tool. But the fact of the matter is that, if implemented properly, they can be leveraged to generate quality leads. For instance, if by clicking visitors are directed to a query section where they can fill in details to get solutions to their problems, it means a lead is generated.

For more info - lead nurturing, lead scoring, lead intelligence

Measuring B2B Marketing ROI

One of the key factors for performance measurement while implementing marketing automation software for B2B marketing is Return on Investment (ROI). Whether we like or dismiss it, ROI measurement is a deciding the performance of marketers and marketing agencies. Here are a few reasons on why ROI measurement can actually be a boon for a marketer.

Helps optimize marketing campaign resources
Since B2B marketers use multiple campaigns and multiple channels to promote these campaigns – knowing which campaigns or channels are bringing in the leads or business enquiries can help optimize the company’s resources and spends on those campaigns and channels that are yielding the desired results.

Increases the risk-taking quotient
If marketers can track their performance and the way their efforts yield results, they will become more comfortable taking risks and checking out new avenues and methods of marketing, than the tried and tested formula. By measuring returns marketers can limit the company spending when marketing efforts are not responding as expected.

Improved Budgeting
Investing marketing budget on the right channels can ensure that the company can get maximum out of investments, but deciding on which channels are more popular with target audience can be tough decision to make. During such times, ROI data can show the marketing channels that are most receptive, thereby helping top management to make a quick decision.

Better Prospecting
Measuring the ROI helps companies to predict and prepare for the future. How a company has been performing in the previous years, how much did marketing contribute, what were the pitfalls and achievements, etc. become the ground for estimating and evaluating on what the company can safely expect in future from their marketing activities.

Fodder for marketing collaterals
Measuring marketing ROI will provide enough fodder for the company’s marketing collaterals like, case studies, blogs and whitepapers that can be used for lead generation.

Better strategizing
ROI analysis helps to evaluate and analyze a new marketing strategy or improve the overall marketing strategy, add different elements, make it more dynamic, yet practical. This helps to create a clear roadmap that ensures more productivity and better performance by marketing teams.

Some B2B companies do not measure ROI thinking that it may disclose the faults with a campaign or highlight its pitfalls. On the other hand, the fore sight that ROI measurement provides is invaluable to marketers, which should not be avoided at any cost.

How Marketing Automation Helps
Marketing ROI can largely be enhanced if prospect intent is deduced early in the sales funnel. By introducing marketing automation software for lead generation, marketers can:

·         For Lead Generation - Track visitor behavior and measure their intent and interest levels.
·         For Lead Management - Empower the sales team with superior lead intelligence and ample prospect information that can help close deals faster and shorten the sales cycle.
·         Easily measure ROI using integration and analytics features

Also read on - Lead nurturing best practices, lead scoring

Effective Lead Nurturing Best Practices – Raw Lead to Being Sales Ready

Lead Nurturing is a discipline that helps businesses maintain a healthy relationship with their customer, delivering content of relevant value to them so that they remain consistently engaged, thus helping convert prospective leads into sales ready customers. Almost 95% of the prospects visiting your website today are there for research, most of them may not buy at all, but as many as 70% of them will eventually buy maybe from you or your competitors. Lead nurturing helps you to track these leads and move them down your funnel, so that when they are ready to buy they purchase your solution.

Lead nurturing software allows leads to be tracked and content delivery to be automated through various marketing channels and helps convert prospective leads into sales-ready customers. It also addresses the challenge that marketing and sales teams face in establishing a strong bond with their customers. The biggest advantage of lead nurturing is that, it builds the brand and product preferences moving them gently along the path of becoming a customer, long before they are ready to buy.  

Here are a few effective lead nurturing best practices that needs to be followed at each phase of the sales cycle to ensure a successful sales conversion.

1.    Understand the Needs of the Customer and Map out a Strategy – You need to clearly map out your typical buyers buying cycle with an interesting and attractive introduction. It is the basis of any good lead nurturing campaign.  Plan out the kinds of content that you want your leads to receive, keeping in mind their interests. The kinds of content that can be sent include white papers/articles, case studies, data sheets, videos, podcasts, webinars, links to specific industry news/resources and interviews with experts/executives.

2.    Personalize Your communication – Start building relationship by personalizing emails. Send relevant content based on the interest in the prospect. Provide information they want rather than filling their inbox with information that is irrelevant to their need. You have a much higher chance of keeping your prospect in the fold if you provide information they want.

3.       Build and Reinforce Brand/Product – Brand building is absolutely necessary today. If you are a known brand, lead generation will work better. With information in abundance online buyers are not dearth of information and choice. Web 2.0 has changed the brand building scenario. If the prospect has shown interest in your product, it is up to you to keep his attention with timely messages. Share white papers, videos or demos about your brand or product. Develop case studies and share success stories with clients. In this way you will be able to create an image about your brand.

4·         Create a Thought Leadership –By engaging prospects early, you build awareness and increase your chances that the prospect will respond to future demand generation efforts.  Develop a schedule for sending out information to the prospect. This helps you keep track of where you are in the lead nurturing funnel.

5.       Strengthen Relationship – Once the brand is built, you need to strengthen it and maintain that interest further. You now need to send a controlled communication to influence the prospect’s buying decision. This helps your prospects learn more about you and your background and helps build the foundations of a healthy relationship.  Use whitepapers, eBooks, demos, case studies and let loose yourself in the social media. Remember the first eight seconds are very important to get their attention, so be precise to the point, short forms and definitely no external navigation.    

6.   Close the Deal – Once the prospect is ready, it is time to pass them on to the sales team to close the deal.

Marketing is a dynamic job and you need to be malleable, ready to automate building and managing lead generation and lead nurturing best practices.  By nurturing your prospects database, it is easy to identify your most qualified leads that are sales ready. The ones who are not, regular follow up and regular consistent nurturing can help them move up in the pipeline.

Also read on - Marketing automation

Creating a Marketing Revolution with Lead Generation Software

Lead generation always takes precedence for marketers despite the fact that businesses have to deal with limited resources and time constraints. To connect with customers, a large part of today’s businesses are using a number of contemporary methods and techniques. Marketing teams are under tremendous pressure to come up with strategies to generate effective and qualified leads. And this can be successfully achieved only when there is collaboration and harmony with between the sales and the marketing teams. Lead generation needs to be all about quality and not quantity, and many companies have revamped their lead generating tactics.

For companies to be successful, lead generation needs to be the focus of business. Effective planning and maintaining a consistent marketing automation tool effort are the two biggest challenges of any promotion, and by adopting the right lead generation plan with helpful tools, there can be a significant difference.  If you do not have a workable lead generation system, then your attempts at lead generation can get difficult. It is therefore necessary to have a complete set of sales lead generation tools at your fingertips to reach your sales prospects.

Making the best of a lead generation software
Having the right lead generation software can be a game changer for any business. Lead Generation Software can add new dimensions without affecting your existing sales. It is a  powerful tool that captures the names and contact information of your prospects from online directories. It is an effective technique that can dramatically lower your lead costs. As it is automated, it facilitates a database of your own out of the generated business contacts and is one of the many lead generation techniques that can help in increasing your traffic and advertising. Lead generation software can manage any kind of leads and do wonders with your lead generation efforts. As lead generation software helps in sorting out the leads, it also helps in distributing them to the sales department. Installing leads generation software is an effective option as they identify your target customer and make all the right decisions for you. Software as a service will help you acquire your customers’ confidence.

With the right system, you can make the most of your lead generation software. With qualified lead generation leveraging efficiencies, marketers can determine their ideal prospects and create the perfect formula for generating leads to drive that population and control your ROI destiny with lead generation software.

Also read on - Lead management

Bridging the Sales-Marketing Gap

Every company which has marketing and sales departments has at some point witnessed the famous – sales and marketing fight and blame game – more commonly known as the sales and marketing misalignment.

One of the most significant reasons for the sales and marketing divide is the difference in objectives and their measurement of success in closing the sales deal. In a B2B set up these differences are more glaring as compared to a B2C company.

In B2C, both marketing and sales are measured by the sales and market share the company enjoys for its products. In such a scenario, marketing invariably assumes the role of assisting sales and propelling the company’s revenue share in the marketplace.

However, in most B2B companies, the primary objective of marketing is to generate quality business leads and of sales to convert these into closed deals. Both these departments are also measured based on the number of leads generated and the number of sales closed, respectively.

In reality the role of marketing in a B2B company is relationship building and that of sales to use this relationship and help prospects make a rational buying decision based on business value offered by the company’s solutions.

Irrespective of how companies want to position their marketing and sales objectives, the truth is marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin.

Selling starts the very minute the company goes out into the world and talks about its offering. Companies spend on marketing activities because they want to attract people who can buy their offerings. So what really differentiates marketing from sales is the point of their entry in the relationship building process.

Hence it is essential for companies to create a common ground or process for marketing and sales teams to work together in the in-between stages of qualifying and nurturing Leads.

Define Lead Profile

Defining a good Lead is the first step in this direction. It starts by putting down a definite list of attributes and a score for each attribute; this process helps in scoring the Leads and qualifying them. These pre-defined Lead attributes should be arrived at after doing ample research on how the Leads in the company’s Lead funnel behaved in the past, this requires an in-depth study of both Leads closed and opportunities lost. Also, this should be an ongoing process, where the Lead behavior is watched and the common definition accordingly developed over a period of time.

Automate Processes

Use of technology like marketing automation solutions can help in easing and automating the process of scoring and qualifying leads if the primary source of Lead generation is Internet.

Just this one process can go a long way in bridging the sales-marketing divide, at least in settling the blame game.

Setting up such a process not only helps in bringing clarity to the end objectives of both, but also equates the success metric. The Lead definition becomes the base measurement value for both the departments. Marketing is measured not on the basis of Leads generated but on the basis of qualified Leads generated in accordance with the common definition. Sales get measured on how many of these qualified Leads it managed to close.

Marketing automation solutions allow sales and marketing to have a common free-flowing communication channel through a common “Lead view”, even if they fail to fit the pre-defined criteria.

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