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Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing What's The Difference

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: What’s The Difference?

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales /

You wake up, check your phone, and immediately delete three spam emails without even opening them. Make your coffee, hop in the car, and encounter a handful of billboards on the way to work.

Drive home, tuning out the loud, angry men arguing on a talk show, and the ads that too frequently interrupt them. Get home, realize your sister’s birthday is next week, look up great gifts for cat-lovers, and send her one. Make dinner, using a recipe that was emailed to you by a food blog you follow and go to sleep.

We all encounter an endless barrage of marketing every day. Some of that marketing is effective and made with the help of sales AI, and some of it’s, well, annoying. This division between effective and ineffective marketing strategies can be acutely seen when comparing inbound vs outbound marketing.

This guide will cover the differences between the two and much more. Here are the sections to follow:-

Inbound Marketing: The “pull” strategy

Inbound Marketing
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Inbound marketing is a customer-focused approach technique that focuses on acquiring and engaging a target audience through relevant content and experiences. Rather than pushing your products or services to your customers, it is all about making genuine connections with them. 

As a result, it is known as the ‘Pull’ tactic. 

Here are some of the most popular inbound marketing channels used by businesses

  • Content marketing:- Creating articles, blogs, and other forms of content.
  • SEO:- The process of optimizing content (blog posts) in order to rank higher in search engines.
  • Social media marketing:- Interacting with audiences channels like as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
  • Email marketing:-  Sending tailored emails to subscribers.

Outbound Marketing: The “push” strategy

Outbound Marketing
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Outbound marketing is a traditional marketing method of reaching out to potential customers via multiple channels. The traditional advertising tactics comprised television ads, radio, print media, and billboards. 

The same push approach is now being used in digital media, with ads on social media and cold outreach via DMs, phone calls, and emails.

Here are some of the most popular outbound marketing channels used by businesses:-

  • Traditional advertising:-  Ads on television, radio, and print advertisements.
  • Direct mail: Sending promotional mails to potential buyers directly.
  • Trade shows: Participating in offline events to display products or services
  • Digital Outreach:- Cold emails, Cold DM’s and Cold Calls

Difference Between Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

This section is written to help you grasp the differences between inbound and outbound marketing efforts at a surface level. Here you will get a simple understanding of pros and cons of both.

Inbound MarketingOutbound Marketing
1) Inbound marketing is all about the pull. It entices the audience with value and then pushes products to your customers.
1) Whereas Outbound marketing is all about pushing our products and services in front of people.
2) Inbound marketing focuses on customers first.
2) Outbound marketing relies on the product/offer first.
3) Inbound marketing is largely done online through blogs and social media. As a result, it’s ‘Trackable’.
3) Outbound marketing is done both offline and online. Such as billboards, TV commercials, and Meta advertising too. But some of these campaigns are ‘un-trackable.’
4) The emphasis is on audience who are either interested in their product (or) aware of their problem. Hence covering the whole sales funnel. Audience are nurtured.
4) The emphasis is on a wide spectrum of audiences. As a result, you may find yourself targeting an unqualified set of audience. Hence audience are not in a nurture sequence.
5) Inbound marketing is about creating brand awareness, hence it’s a long-term strategy.5) Outbound marketing is about generating leads/sales to the business. Hence it’s a short-term strategy.
6) The success of this strategy is determined by the quality of your content and activities.
6) Here, quantity determines success. What matters most is the volume of outreach and the number of ad impressions.

We feel a short table will not justify the actual depth of this article. Hence we’ll go over both marketing methods in detail in the following sections.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Based on Audience Behaviour

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Audience Behaviour
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Audience Behaviour

Audience behaviour and preferences are a critical factor in distinguishing between inbound and outbound marketing. For effective marketing, it’s damn important to understand your audience and where they stand in your funnel.

Without proper analyses of your target audience behaviour, will leave your marketing tactics worthless.

Outbound Marketing (Audience Behaviour):–

1. Reactive Response: In outbound marketing, the audience often reacts to the information offered to them, whether it’s a television commercial, a billboard, or a cold call. Their participation is frequently spontaneous and depending on the advertisement’s immediate impact.

2. Short Attention Span: Because outbound techniques are obtrusive, the audience may have a shorter attention span. If the message does not resonate with them within the first few seconds, they will most likely move on or disregard it.

3. Broad Audience: Outbound marketing frequently targets a broad audience. As a result, not every viewer or listener may find the topic relevant, resulting in a wide range of varied responses

4. Seeking Quick Value: When a prospect responds to an outbound advertisement, they frequently seek quick value or benefits, such as discounts, promotions, or limited-time deals.

Inbound Marketing (Audience Behaviour):–

1. Proactive Engagement: In inbound marketing, the audience are actively seeking for information or solution to their problem. They might look for a blog post, view a tutorial video, or sign up for a newsletter because it is useful or relevant to their requirements.

2. Increased Engagement Time: Because the audience chooses to connect with the content, they spend more time learning, reading, or watching. Thus resulting in greater engagement.

3. Specific Interests: Inbound marketing is designed to address unique audience concerns or interests. As a result, the content is precisely targeted and relevant to those interests, resulting in higher conversion rates.

4. Relationship Building: Inbound marketing audiences are frequently looking for reliable sources of information or answers. Thus offering consistent and valuable content can lead to the audience forming a relationship with or loyalty to the brand over time.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Based on Technology

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Technology
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Technology

Technology is at the forefront of redefining marketing techniques in today’s digital world, that includes both inbound and outbound approaches. With the help of tech, there are plenty of new ways through which marketers have been leveraging these strategies for their businesses.

What Technologies impact Inbound Marketing?

1. Content Management Systems (CMS): Platforms such as WordPress or HubSpot help businesses to efficiently develop, manage, and optimize website content, ensuring it effectively reaches the target audience.

2. SEO Tools: Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs provide insights into keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and competitor analysis, allowing businesses to structure their content for improved search visibility.

3. Social Media Platforms: Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have potential prospects on their platforms, allowing businesses to reach out to certain demographics and interact with their audience in real time.

4. Analytics: Google Analytics and other comparable tools provide insights into user behaviour, traffic sources, and conversion rates, helping businesses with understanding the efficacy of their inbound efforts and making any improvements.

What Technologies impact Outbound Marketing?

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zoho CRM help businesses in managing leads and customer interactions, thus ensuring timely and appropriate communication.

2. Email Marketing Platforms: Tools like Instantly AI that are used for cold emails to reach out to a large number of people at once. Alongside tools like LeadBoxer can help you in collecting leads for your outreach by providing leads.

3. Programmatic Advertising: Advanced algorithms automate media inventory purchase, placement, and optimisation on ads. Thus ensuring ads to reach the correct audience at the right time.

4. Retargeting Tools: Cookies and other technologies track user’s online actions, allowing businesses to provide tailored ads to their consumers who have previously interacted with their website or products. However, because to privacy concerns, Apple and other platforms are clamping down on this.

As technology advances, it will undoubtedly play an increasingly greater role in determining the future of marketing including both inbound and outbound.

Inbound Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them 

While being effective, inbound marketing has its own set of obstacles. Understanding these challenges and developing solutions to overcome them is critical for success.

1. Saturation of Content:–

  Challenge: With so much content available online, standing out and capturing the audience’s attention is becoming increasingly tough.

   Solution: Concentrate on producing high-quality, distinctive, and value-added content. Do extensive keyword research and research in general in order to meet specific audience inquiries.

2. Longer Time to See Results:-

 Challenge: Unlike outbound marketing, which can produce quick results, inbound techniques can take time to gain traction.

 Solution: Be persistent and patient. Monitor and adapt your plans on a regular basis based on analytics and feedback. Celebrate minor victories while keeping in mind that inbound marketing is a long-term commitment.

3. Changing Search Engine Algorithms:-

– Challenge: Search engines, particularly Google, regularly updates their algorithms, which can have an influence on website rankings.

   – Solution: Stay updated on SEO changes and best practises. Consider creating content for both people and search engines as a priority.

4. Engaging the Right Audience:-

Challenge: Getting traffic is one thing, but getting the right traffic that converts is another.

   Solution: Develop detailed buyer personas to better understand your target customer. 

5. Creating Consistent Creation:-

Challenge: Creating fresh and relevant content on a regular basis can be time-consuming.

Solution: Have a content calendar in place to plan and schedule content ahead of time. To keep them coming, consider collaborating with guest authors or outsourcing your content generation.

Outbound Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Just like Inbound marketing, outbound marketing has it’s own set of challenges.

  • Higher Costs:-

Challenge: Outbound marketing strategies, such as TV commercials or billboards, can be costly.

Solution: Spend your money wisely by focusing on platforms and channels that provide the best ROI. If you’re a small online business, shift to Meta ads or cold outreach.

  • Intrusive perception:-

Challenge: Consumers frequently perceive outbound ads as interruptions, especially when they are irrelevant.

Solution: Make sure your messaging is focused. Understand your audience’s preferences by using data analytics. Tracking website visitors and email click-throughs can help you develop an understanding of your audience’s behaviour and preferences.

  • Tracking ROI:-

Challenge: Traditional outbound campaigns, unlike digital methods, are difficult to measure. Hence their direct impact on the businesses can be attributed.

Solution: If possible, you can incorporate tracking measures, such as unique promo codes for offline marketing. If you use cold emails, however, our Outlook email monitoring can assist you in tracking your efforts.

  • Rapidly Changing Consumer Habits:-

Challenge: With the rise of ad-blockers and streaming services, traditional advertisements may no longer reach as broad an audience as they once did.

Solution: Expand your marketing mix. While TV and radio advertisements are still effective, consider incorporating digital outbound strategies like running cold email campaigns or pay-per-click ads.

  • Compliance and Regulations:-

Challenge: Outbound marketing, particularly telemarketing and cold email operations, might face stringent laws.

Solution: To prevent legal ramifications, keep up with the latest updates on local and international marketing regulations.

  • Saturation and Competition:-

Challenge: As more and more businesses use outbound strategies, it leads to market saturation and makes it difficult to stand out.

Solution: Concentrate on generating captivating and memorable campaigns. Understand your unique selling proposition (USP) and make sure it’s featured in all of your marketing content.

  • Short-term Effect:-

Challenge: The influence of outbound marketing, such as a television commercial, can be brief.

Solution: Strengthen your campaigns across multiple media. If you have a TV ad, supplement it with radio spots, print advertisements, and internet banners to ensure consistent visibility.

Inbound or Outbound Marketing for Your Business? Which One To Choose?

If you run a business of this era, then your primary objective should be to test out all possible channels over time and establish your own brand. Because people love brands and once they start seeing your brand name everywhere they start trusting you more.

This is where, integrated marketing, the big brother, steps in.

Integrated marketing is a comprehensive approach that incorporates both inbound and outbound marketing methods to provide consumers with a united and seamless experience. Thus making your business have that omnichannel presence.

Rather than considering each marketing channel separately, integrated marketing considers all channels to be interrelated components of a wider ecosystem. The primary purpose is to ensuring that all marketing initiatives, online and offline, present a consistent and cohesive brand message.

Examples Highlighting the Effective Integration of Both Strategies 

1. Nike’s “Just Do It” Campaign:-

Overview: Nike’s classic “Just Do It” campaign effortlessly combined TV advertisements (outbound) with social media participation (inbound).

 Results: Not only did the campaign boost sales, but it also created a community of dedicated customers who connected with the company online, sharing their own “Just Do It” moments.

2. Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” Marketing Campaign:-

  Overview: Coca-Cola customised their bottles with common names and encouraged people to share their “Share a Coke” experiences online.

  Outcomes: The campaign resulted in a huge boost in sales as well as a massive influx of user-generated material on social media, demonstrating the successful blending of traditional advertising and digital interaction.

3. Dove’s “Real Beauty” Campaign:-

Overview: Dove began a series of television commercials that questioned beauty norms. They supplemented it with online content, such as films and essays about actual beauty.

 Results: The campaign resonated emotionally with consumers, leading to widespread media coverage and a surge in online discussions regarding beauty standards.

4. Airbnb’s “Live There” Marketing Campaign:-

Overview: Airbnb promoted the idea of experiencing cities like a local through television advertisements. This was coupled with their internet platform, which allowed customers to find local experiences and accommodations.

Outcomes: The campaign successfully positioned Airbnb as more than a housing provider, emphasising the unique experiences it provides, resulting in increased bookings and user engagement.

These case studies demonstrate the value of combining inbound and outbound initiatives. When done well, integrated marketing can magnify brand messages, create deeper engagement among consumers, and generate measurable business results.

Conclusion

While each marketing technique has its advantages, it is the harmonious combination of both that accelerates a brand’s success. 

However, we recommend small businesses in the B2B space to begin with outbound channels such as cold emails and cold emails. Because you can easily contact your target audience and make money in the short-run.

Using services like Lead Boxer an excellent place to start searching for leads for your outbound email campaigns.

However, once your company is up and going, the emphasis should be more on creating a brand. Like that businesses can develop strong, long-lasting relationships with consumers by producing consistent, high-quality content and engaging with audiences across many channels, resulting in increased growth and brand loyalty.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: What’s The Difference? Read More »

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What is Lead Enrichment?

Lead Generation, Tools /

Imagine you have a lead in your CRM, basically other than their name you don’t know anything about them. What if you’re able to find details like their company, location, job title, and other relevant information.

Now that same lead which was is your CRM was just a random lead. After enriching that with relevant data you’re able to qualify the lead for sales. This is called lead enrichment.

What is lead enrichment and how do you incorporate it into your sales process and CDP software? This guide will cover all of that and more. By the end, you’ll know how to uncover lead details on autopilot so you can close more deals with ease.

To get started, keep reading or ”jump ahead” to these sections:

What is Lead Enrichment?

Lead enrichment is the process of data enrichment that gives your sales team enhanced insight into a prospective customer. With this data, sales reps can better understand how qualified prospects are and what’s the best way to interact with them so they can close the deal.

Lead enrichment is often presented in a profile that gives sales reps an overview of the prospect.

overview of the prospect for sales team

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Types of lead enrichment data points can include:

  • Identifying info about individuals, such as job title, email address, contact information, and social media profiles
  • Firmographic info, like a company’s industry, location, and size
  • Lead behavior, like how often a lead visits your company’s website or engages with your email marketing
  • Lead personality info, which can give you guidance on how to engage with an individual

Basic Steps in Gathering Lead Enrichment Data

Lead enrichment process is closely tied to lead generation and demand generation marketing. When you generate a new lead in the funnel, you should also have systems in place that gather additional data to help you qualify and understand that lead in detail.

There are a few ways to generate and enrich new leads.

1. Capture with a form

With this method, prospective customers learn about your company through email, social media, or blog posts. Prospects then give some of their personal information in exchange for a special offer, such as a white paper, demo, or free trial of your product.

special offer form for prospective customers

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When a lead fills out a form in exchange for an offer, enrichment really begins to happen.

Take a look at this lead generation form from Salesforce. Visitors who want to start a free trial of Salesforce’s product first have to answer a series of questions:

lead generation form from salesforce

lead generation form salesforce

free trial form from salesforce

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Once submitted, this info is sent to the marketing and sales team’s customer relationship management (CRM) software, where it’s turned into a lead profile that’s already populated with several data points about the individual and the company he or she represents.

2. Search social media

Another way to find and learn more about leads is through social media. LinkedIn is often considered as an excellent source of B2B leads. There are several free and paid strategies for finding leads and enrich your leads.

The most basic way to find and enrich leads with LinkedIn is to first create a list of companies that fit your ideal customer profile, also search LinkedIn for those companies. Their profiles often include many relevant data points, such as company size and location. You can also zero in on the employees that most likely have the authority to buy your product. Hence improving your conversion rates.

After finding all this info, you’ll need to manually input the data into the lead’s profile within your CRM.

How to Automate Lead Enrichment

There are several tools available that automatically gather lead enrichment data and sync it with your CRM or other software. Determining which one is best for your business depends on the kind of data you want. Here are just a few to get you started.

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer makes it possible to identify and enrich leads without capturing their data through a form. With LeadBoxer, you can identify visitors to your website who would otherwise remain anonymous, and then populate their profile with contact info.

lead enrichment data from leadboxer

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LeadBoxer also records lead’s online behavior, such as how much time they spent on a certain webpage or what resources they’ve downloaded. This gives your team insight into what topics or pain points are most relevant to individual prospects.

To give your team even more of an edge, LeadBoxer scores leads so sales reps know exactly who is most likely to close. With a tool like LeadBoxer, your team will spend more time pursuing the most promising prospects and none of it chasing dead ends.

VisitorTrack

VisitorTrack is similar to LeadBoxer in that it can identify and track website visitors that would otherwise remain anonymous.

website visitors tracking from visitortrack

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VisitorTrack further enriches leads with intent data. Intent data tells you whether or not a lead is in the market to buy a product like the one you offer. It works by tracking and analyzing certain context clues, like what kind of topics a lead has been searching for around the web.

Crystal

Crystal is an app that tells you how to communicate with and pitch to a prospect. It works by gathering data about a prospect from their LinkedIn profile and around the web and then crafting clear dos and don’ts that are unique to that person.

communication with a prospect from crystal

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If you want to walk into any conversation with a lead feeling confident about your communication style, Crystal is worth checking out.

CRMs and Lead Enrichment

It’s usually possible to integrate a separate lead enrichment software with your main CRM so that both tools automatically work together.

However, if you prefer having an all-in-one system, consider using a CRM that comes equipped with needed features. Also most of these CRM helps you with lead routing where you can automatically assign your leads across the sales team.

These are just a few of the most popular choices.

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is a CRM that lets you track and accelerate everyone in your sales pipeline. There are also several helpful features that uncover new leads and enrich the ones you have.

predictive lead scoring from hubspot

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HubSpot can show you who is visiting your site, how often they visit, and what pages they’re most interested in. It also logs which emails they open and what links they click on. Predictive lead scoring then prioritizes the prospects that are most likely to become customers. Hence marketers and sales teams can focus right kind of leads for lead nurturing and right kind of leads for sales.

Sugar Sell

Sugar Sell is a sales CRM solution from SugarCRM. The platform includes a feature called Sugar Hint, which automates lead enrichment.

lead enrichment automation from sugar sell

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Sugar Hint gathers data from social media, news, and business sources, and then automatically offers insight and intelligence within the platform. Sugar Hint can also give you actionable intel so you know to act when prospects are most engaged, open to upsell or cross-sell opportunities, or at risk of churning.

Freshsales

Freshsales is a CRM offered by Freshdesk. The platform comes with AI-based lead scoring and automatic profile enrichment.

automatic profile enrichment from freshsales

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With Freshsales, you no longer have to spend hours combing through LinkedIn for info or doing manual data entry. Their lead enrichment helps you dig into leads social media accounts and publicly-listed info, then saves the data for you.

Benefits of Automated Lead Enrichment

Automated lead enrichment increases the efficiency of your sales process in a few ways:

  • It reduces the time sales reps spend manually mining lead data on social media platforms or around the web
  • Lead scoring tells reps which leads to focus their time and energy on converting
  • Insights guide reps on when and how to interact with leads so they’re more likely to make the sale

All of these factors work together to increase your team’s productivity, and ultimately, your revenue.

Automated lead enrichment can also help improve your lead generation efforts. Without automated it, you may find yourself relying on lengthy lead generation forms like the Salesforce example shown earlier in this article. However, the longer the form, the more likely that some prospects will lose interest and leave the page before completing it.

If you’re using the right lead enrichment tool, you can shorten or in some cases forgo the form. LeadBoxer, for example, only requires an email before you can start a free trial.

the best lead enrichment tool

Prospective customers can start using the product for less effort, and since they only have to submit their email, they’re less likely to become distracted or navigate away before submitting their info.

By attracting more leads and enriching their data later, you can further optimize your lead-to-conversion rate.

Start Using Lead Enrichment Today

There’s no doubt about it: lead enrichment can massively improve the efficiency of your sales process. The goal of lead enrichment is to help with lead conversion, close more deals faster, and increase your revenue with less effort.

However, manual lead enrichment can be a time-consuming and inefficient process. The key to getting the most out of it is to use a tool that automatically mines as much data as possible, then gives you actionable insight into each prospect. The same goes for sales intelligence tools.

LeadBoxer can help. With LeadBoxer, you can identify anonymous website visitors or enrich profiles of existing leads with contact info, company details, and their online behavior. LeadBoxer then creates a score that tells you whether or not a lead is worth pursuing. Take it for a spin and try LeadBoxer for free today.

What is Lead Enrichment? Read More »

Demand Generation Marketing Strategies Tips and Tricks scaled 1

What is Demand Generation in Marketing?

Marketing, Sales /

Business-to-business (B2B) demand generation is important for any business. It is especially crucial for start-ups, companies launching new apps, and those offering business services. Awareness of your business products and services involves demand generation marketing strategies.

You can skip some parts of the post and jump ahead:

What is Demand Generation Marketing?

Awareness is at the heart of demand generation marketing. To sell your services, your customers need to know they are solutions available and you provide the best solution for their business challenges.

Demand gen marketing reaches out to customers who are unaware of your brand, products, or services. This type of marketing positions your offering as the best option to meet their needs.

Basically demand gen marketing is a lead generation strategy where you target qualified leads to create a demand for your product who didn’t know your solution existed before.

what is demand generation marketing

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How to Develop and Implement a Demand Generation Marketing Strategies

There is an effective way of creating demand for your products (or) services and it needs a hefty investment of efforts in marketing and sales. Below are the steps to create a demand generation campaign to make sure your customers’ needs are paired with the solutions your business offers:

1. Create a Robust Content Marketing Strategy

When people visit your website and blog, they need to know what your company does and what it offers them. Your content needs to be clear, concise, informative, timely, and relatable.

A content calendar is a great way to regularly get information out about your brand. When people and search engines see you consistently produce original, quality content, your company will become visible. It will also be seen as credible.

Quality content is for both readers and search engines. Search robots will notice the keywords and relevancy of your content. When you provide important, useful keyword-rich information, your content will appear higher in search results. This will increase your brand’s visibility and expose more web users to your brand and its offerings.

2. Offer Free Content

You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who will refuse free stuff. When you’re looking for new customers to introduce to your brand, products, and services, you need to appear trustworthy.  When you offer free content, you’ll establish your brand as an authoritative source in your market.

A successful demand generation strategy involves offering lead magnets and free content. Some of the content you can offer for free include:

  • Blog Posts
  • White Papers
  • EBooks
  • Infographics
  • Free Tools
  • YouTube Videos
  • Social Media Posts

3. Engage Online, Particularly on Social Media

After you have content on your website and free offerings, make sure you share it on your organization’s social media pages. 53% of consumers are more likely to make purchases from brands that are transparent on social media.  Your content must be authentic to your brand and share relevant, engaging content.

4. Partner With Influencers

Some of your marketing efforts needs to be directed towards collaborating with reputable, well-known individuals in your market is another way to improve your brand’s online visibility and credibility. When your brand associates with a well-known influencer in your industry, your brand will get attention.

These associations through influencer research and outreach take many forms. Some of the common ways partnerships develop include podcast interviews, social media mentions, advertising on industry-related websites, and guest posting on their website.

5. Continually Measure and Tweak Your Demand Generation Program

Your work isn’t done when your demand marketing campaign comes to an end. Compare the results to your original goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Did your B2B demand generation marketing campaign meet, surpass or fall short of those benchmarks? Continue to analyze it after its completion through the use of tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

demand generation marketing strategies from leadboxer

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Why Demand Generation Marketing Strategies are Essential

Brand awareness is the most important goal for 89% of B2B marketers. What is the importance of a demand generation in b2b marketing and why is it a “must-do” for your organization? Here are some benefits to this type of marketing strategy

  • Help Make Small Businesses and Startups “Known”

B2B demand generation efforts are crucial for any business. It is more important for start-ups and new brands who have yet to form a substantial customer base.

Demand marketing fast-tracks these new businesses in establishing credibility and trust with their customers in the sales funnel. Once this happens, business and client relationships can form.

  • Increases the Conversion Rate = More Sales

59% of consumers are more likely to purchase a new product or service from a brand they trust. Bringing awareness to your brand through demand generation marketing is the first step in building this trust.

  • Builds Trust and Credibility

B2B demand generation marketing is most effective when customers have a strong relationship or connection with the company they do business with. Demand marketing exposes your brand and its products and services to business leaders through well-written, engaging, informative, and optimized content. Your digital marketing efforts needs to instill a sense of expertise in your niche while also relating to the reader.

6 Tips and Tricks for Demand Generation Marketing

Below are some tips for B2B demand generation marketing your marketing team can use to spark interest in your products or services. And don’t forget about sales enablement for your team too.

1. Consider Your Marketing Sales Funnel

According to Salesforce, 79% of a company’s leads never convert to a sale because 65% of companies don’t have a funnel or lead qualifying system in place, and of those who do have a funnel, the majority don’t have a way to measure its effectiveness.

When your company has a marketing funnel that is measured, you’re able to meet customers where they are in the sales and marketing process. You’ll be equipped to give customers the appropriate content and messaging that moves them closer to a sale.

The typical B2B funnel consists of six stages: awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and purchase. Demand generation marketing addresses potential customers at the top of the funnel in the awareness stage.

For demand generation, you’re interacting with a large, broad audience that is not familiar with your brand, service, or product. You want to avoid any sales content. Instead, offer them blog posts, downloads, free ebooks, infographics, and engaging social media content. Here some of the best customer data platform software can help.

b2c vs b2b marketing funnel comparison

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2. Don’t Forget Form, Email, and Webpage Tracking

Remember to insert tracking on registration forms, emails, and webpages. The insertion of tracking on your business’ online properties provides valuable information about those curious about your brand. Some popular tracking programs to try include:

3. Score Your Leads

While demand generation marketing targets and engages with customers at the top stage of the funnel, it doesn’t mean you should neglect to implement a lead scoring system or have a strong lead strategy.

As with every business funnel, the number of customers who make it all the way through to create a sale is a small percentage of leads that entered the funnel at the awareness stage.

As leads progress through the funnel, the costs, and resources needed to keep them moving forward to make a sale increase. This is because they are qualified and are the most interested in doing business with you. A lead scoring system evaluates how likely a lead is to make a purchase.

4. Invest in Display Advertising

Most marketers today invest in online advertising. With the high competition for prime advertising real estate on websites, it can be difficult for new, small businesses with limited advertising budgets to compete. Especially when the future of sales post pandemic isn’t so clear.

Google has a suite of marketing platforms geared toward different budgets and marketing goals. Google Display Network consists of partnerships with millions of websites on which business owners can advertise.

The purpose of this type of advertising is not getting people to purchase your product or service but to create brand awareness. According to Clutch and WebFx, 55% of companies use display advertising and receive an average click-through-rate of 35%.

5. Offer Your Best

Rather than bombard customers with information, put your brand’s best foot forward by sharing your finest piece of content. Content should be informational, not promotional.

When you offer your best content, your brand will become recognized as the go-to information source. This is key in the long run as it forges positive relationships between your company and its customers.

Consumers who feel they can trust an organization will most likely become loyal to it. This benefits your business as loyal customers are easier and less expensive to retain than new ones.

6. Build Online Relationships and Credibility

Customer experience plays a bigger role in a company’s bottom line than ever before. Nearly three-quarters of consumers say good customer service plays a role in their loyalty to a brand. Conversely, negative customer service experiences cost businesses billions of dollars each year. Check out more about cost per lead on our blog.

Some customer relationship-building ideas include:

  • Show-off your expertise through your social selling, blog and website content
  • Be responsive, authentic, and transparent in your social media comments and direct messaging (DM)
  • Invest in producing YouTube videos where consumers can see the people behind your brand which will give it a personal touch
  • Participate in industry podcasts and online industry conferences
  • Get connected with influencers to review and talk about your products or services
  • Encourage customer reviews

LeadBoxer can help your start-up or small business with its demand generation marketing through lead qualification. With LeadBoxer’s tools and services, you can better connect with leads that are most interested in and in need of your services.

What is Demand Generation in Marketing? Read More »

assets

Discover 2023 Lead Generation Software solutions

Lead Generation, Sales /

Businesses, particularly B2B models, rely on successful navigation of the sales journey to close the deal, like lead generation platforms. One of the most important stages of the journey is the beginning, which means lead generation. All companies have limited amounts of energy and resources to accomplish their goals, so it’s crucial to spend these on the right prospects.

Continue reading for an examination of why automation is a necessity in sales today and a breakdown of are the top five lead generation systems or “jump ahead” to the following topics:

Lead generation is the starting line for all sales. The research and efforts spent on this step will determine the rest of the sales cycle. Rather than burying employees with manual identifying and qualifying, automating the process with a lead generation company can kickstart a smoother customer journey.

What is Lead Identification and Lead Qualification?

traditional b2b lead funnel

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The first stage in any sales journey is pinpointing the prospects worth reaching out to, or in short, identifying leads. The next step is determining if these potential clients are worth your time and energy, also known as qualifying leads.

While there are many manual ways to determine the value of prospective clients, finding ways to streamline the process can help your company focus its efforts on closing the deal. The easiest way to simplify lead generation is through automation by investing in a platform that meets your needs.

Lead Generation Software and Data Analysis

Understanding the role data plays in automated lead generation will help your company better utilize any chosen tool. This data provides insight into a prospect’s engagement with your brand, as well as information that helps tailor your marketing strategies for maximum outcomes.

Lead generation companies help you accurately target clients who will benefit from your services. The data analysis from these platforms works to help break down information provided by online engagement, as well as score prospects based on their actions.

By tracking online traffic across your platforms and identifying these visitors, lead generation companies help you target customers and pitch your services based on their needs.

Lead generation companies help you see which parts of your brand visitors are engaging with. With this insight, you can tailor your marketing and sales strategies to highlight the ways you will be able to help these customers.

Top lead generation companies are able to collect contact information from anonymous web traffic, which makes it simple to connect with these prospects. Using a lead generation platform allows you to see how qualified these online visitors are in terms of benefiting from your services.

Crucial insights provided by this type of software kickstarts the sales journey. By targeting leads most in need of your services, your business will be able to increase sales conversions.

Understanding Lead Generation Software

Automation is one of the most important features of lead generation software. Instead of using employees and company resources on manual paperwork for data analysis, automated software streamlines the process by doing the crunch work.

Platforms track website and email engagement to identify potential prospects. By having a list of potential clients given to you, with data to illustrate their recent activity, your team can focus on selling instead of research.

So, how do you decide what software is best for your business? “Lead generation platform” has become a loose term covering several different types of technology.

Programs like LeadFeeder and Snitcher are considered  IP lookup tools. Their main function is identifying potential leads based on the IP addresses that visit your website. While online visitor identification is an important part of lead generation, other platforms offer more robust operations to dive deeper into the sales cycle.

Taking it a step further, other programs focus on providing contact details from visitors who engage with websites. Lusha and Seamless.ai are tools that create lists of email addresses and other contact information from online engagement. This gives a business the ability to get in touch with potential leads after being identified by the software.

The Top 5 Lead Generation Software

Getting the most bang for your buck is important when it comes to lead generation companies. You’ll want a program that offers both lead generation and IP address verification for website traffic. A strong combination of data analysis and integration capabilities will go a long way to helping simplify and strengthen your generation process.

1. LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer leads accounts clean
LeadBoxer leads and accounts view. Version 3.

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A strong choice that analyzes data across multiple channels, LeadBoxer is a platform with built-in features designed to enrich company or personal data. LeadBoxer makes your best leads easy to find so you can turn them into customers. It is a complete solution; from marketing campaign through to qualified leads – use leadboards to manage MQLs.

Included are powerful filters and intuitive scoring algorithms to divide your audience into segments. Results can be synchronized or exported using native solutions.

Free Trial. Click here to Get Started.

Top Features:

Integrations: Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Marketo, Google Data Studio, Clearbit, Active Demand, Gmail, Outlook, Copernica, Google Big Query, Zapier, Google Tag Manager, MailChimp, Drupal, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Pipedrive. Open API.

Pricing: Free trial and starting at $195/month billed annually. See pricing for details.

Pros: Ease of use. Intuitive, automated reporting, flexible, syncs with 1st-party data, automatic scoring, multiple integrations, and tracks email and newsletters. Tracks BOTH companies and individuals. Compliant.

Cons: No ROI tracking, no free lite version

2. LeadForensics

leadforensics lead generation program

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LeadForensics is a software that works to uncover the identity of website traffic, so you can turn website visitors into actionable leads. This platform allows you to utilize it as an additional data source to gather names, job titles, and contact information of site visitors.

LeadForensics also analyses the engagement on your site. You will be able to see what was searched for, which pages were visited, and how many times they have visited your site.

Features:

  • Website & email tracking
  • Smartphone app for easy access
  • Lead manager for the organization
  • Upload your own data to track potential clients
  • Data insight
  • API
  • Lead scoring
  • Email notifications

Integrations: Salesforce, ZOHO, Microsoft Dynamics

Pricing: Flexible; Free trial + plan created based on your needs

Pros: Identifies leads in real-time, lead scoring based on multi-criteria system, customizable, provides integration options

Cons: Does not give a price plan upfront; fewer integration capabilities than competitors

3. Albacross

albacross

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Albacross brings together revenue teams to accelerate conversion rates. Their lead generation software works on identifying anonymous visitors, analyzing engagement, as well as segmenting and qualifying prospects. This platform allows integration with most major tools and CRMs for easy data access.

Features:

  • Website engagement tracking
  • Lead identifying and qualifying
  • CRM integration
  • API
  • Easy organization for captured leads
  • Automated email reports
  • Flexible filtering

Integrations: HubSpot, Sugar CRM, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Slack, Microsoft Dynamics, ZOHO, Base

Pricing: Flexible; Free trial; Pricing plans are discussed with Albacross to determine the best fit for your needs

Pros: Easy to use; integrates with most major CRMs and business tools, customizable

Cons: Lacking pipeline management feature, no upfront pricing

4. Leadfeeder

leadfeeder

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This platform focuses on bringing web intelligence to businesses. Leadfeeder wants to help integrate your sales and marketing team to create a smoother process and increase conversion rates. The software identifies anonymous web traffic, qualifies potential leads, provides important contact information, and syncs data with your CRM.

Features:

  • Website tracking
  • Contact insights
  • Automatic Lead Scoring
  • Personal email alerts
  • CRM integration
  • Unlimited users
  • Company search function
  • Versatile filtering

Integrations: Pipedrive, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Hubspot, ZOHO, Zapier, Microsoft Dynamics, Slack, Active Campaign, Google Hangouts Chat, Google Data Studio, Google Analytics

Pricing: Free trial; Free lite version; Plans start at $63/month

Pros: Strong integration system, lower cost than many competitors, allows as many users from your company as you would like

Cons: No in-depth data analysis, functions mostly as a “look-up” tool

5. KickFire

kickfire

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KickFire’s IP address intelligence translates IP addresses to companies and provides vital data for B2B organizations. KickFire enables access to this data across multiple channels including their LIVE Leads platform, API, and software integrations that best fit your company’s needs.

Features:

  • Website & email tracking
  • Real-time lead alerts
  • Lead management
  • Lead scoring
  • Live dashboard feature
  • API

Integrations: Adobe, Act On, Drift, Eloqua, Ensighten, Google Marketing Platform, Integrate, Intercom, LiveRamp, Marketo, Openprise, Segment, Sitecore, Slack, Tealium, Connectwise, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Sugar, ZOHO, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Active Campaign

Pricing: Free trial; Plans created based on your company’s needs

Pros: Large list of integration abilities, customizable software, ROI tracking, free lite version

Cons: Short 7-day trial window before purchasing

Getting Started with Lead Generation Software

Overall, lead generation software can be a complete game-changer for most companies.

For small and large companies alike, automation will speed up the sales process and result in higher conversions to sales. Important data insights are provided in real-time, so your team will never miss a hot lead again.

Having the right lead generation platform is crucial for encouraging productivity and can play a huge role in targeting sales efforts that lead to successful conversions. Take the leap for a more productive sales team, and get started with your free trial of LeadBoxer today!

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The Future of Sales in the Post-Pandemic Remote/Hybrid Workplace

Lead Generation, Sales /

While the future of sales is constantly shifting as the pandemic continues to disrupt everyday life, figuring out how to navigate the world of post-pandemic business is the topic on everyone’s mind. 

The new “normal” will look a lot different than how business was conducted pre-pandemic. With an emphasis on remote working, finding ways to lean into these changes and social selling will help your company thrive as the effects of the pandemic set in.

Adjusting from the abrupt change to the way business was conducted led to a push for remote working environments to become the norm. While some companies and leaders are still hesitant to make a permanent switch to virtual or hybrid models, workers are enjoying the benefits of telecommuting. Finding a balance that allows your employees the flexibility to enjoy remote work can help your business thrive in the post-pandemic world.

In this updated guide, we dive into post-pandemic sales to provide tangible actions your team can take to make sure your business comes out on top. Once you have an idea of what the post-pandemic world may look like, you can start planning effective methods of introducing these ideas into your content marketing plans. Keep reading, or jump ahead to the following sections:

Swapping over to remote business has been a huge undertaking for most companies. Luckily, everyone is finally getting the hang of virtual work. The most important takeaway from the sudden shift to virtual—it’s here to stay.

A 2022 Gallup survey found that 8 out of 10 employees are taking part in virtual work. The demand for hybrid or remote work continues to increase as employees experience an improved work-life balance. In fact, the Career Pulse Survey found that 97% of employees want some kind of hybrid (32%) or remote (65%) work option.

What does that mean for your business? You have to be flexible and use sales AI tools for example. Continued evaluation will go a long way as you navigate virtual business for your workers and clients. Shift your thinking from short-term solutions to a long-term plan.

Navigating this new environment is important for employee retention. Despite its popularity among workers, some companies are still pushing for a return to office culture. Microsoft found that only 12% of leaders feel confident in their remote employees’ productivity.

However, the same study shows that 87% of employees feel they are just as productive at home. Virtual work can help prevent burnout among top performers, allows for more focus time, and cuts out commute times. Employers should take the time to create long-term plans that encourage productivity while acknowledging the benefits of remote work.

The Future of Conferences and Networking

future of sales - virtual meetings

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Before the pandemic, it was common to go to multiple conferences a year and several networking events to generate leads and cultivate relationships with potential clients. Since going virtual, the business world has come to the realization that these events aren’t actually necessary to create relationships.

This may be a huge shift for you if you are a handshake-deal kind of salesperson, but virtual networking events can be just as effective when implemented properly.

Now, you can network from the comfort of your home office, and your company doesn’t have to foot the bill for expensive travel plans. Zoom, and other video platforms, have the option for break-out rooms and screen sharing, so your networking can be focused on direct conversations with prospective clients.

Working Remotely With a Full Staff

Since the switch to remote work in 2020, employees are continuing to enjoy the benefits of their virtual environments. The demand for telecommuting has remained strong. According to an AT&T study, hybrid work models were at 42% in 2021, and they are expected to increase to 81% by 2024.

Now that everyone is beginning to adjust to virtual sales operations, it is important to set standards for your employees when they are conducting business from their homes. Outline clear goals and keep a constant stream of communication.

Overcoming Remote Working Challenges

While many employees continue to see benefits from virtual work, employers are faced with challenges in creating sustainable remote or hybrid options. Facing the issues that remote work may create can help your company find its footing and get ahead. Most importantly, understanding that hybrid and virtual options are here to stay, at least for the short-term future, is crucial to a business’s success.

Assessing pain points to help better manage a hybrid team is a great way to figure out where improvements can be made. Using the 5Cs checklist means evaluating communication, coordination, connection, creativity, and culture. These factors can help strengthen your team and boost productivity in virtual environments.

Communication remains the backbone of a solid team. Due to the abrupt transition to virtual work, teams have had to readjust the way they interact with each other and other departments. Utilizing technology and establishing workflows can help streamline communication, which allows teams to work together effectively.

Coordination and connection help make sure no one is left out of the loop in important conversations. When working in-person, employees are easily connected with each other as well as coordinate meetings. Overcoming these challenges in the remote environment will help your team remain social and committed to the organization’s cause.

Finding ways to encourage collective creativity as well as individual ideas can help your team get ahead. Working remotely can silo members and discourage team collaboration, which is when group creativity shines. By utilizing zoom meetings and sidebar conversations, ideas can continue to flow and push for innovation.

Lastly, finding a way to cultivate company culture in remote working environments is important to retaining and attracting talent. While the transition to virtual work may have kept the culture among current employees, new hires face the challenge of finding ways to integrate with teams that don’t meet in person. Company culture is important for all employees, however, and businesses should focus on differentiating themselves from competitors with the environment they create for their workers.

Get Comfortable With Your Technology

Find your favorite virtual platform, and master it. Technology can be unreliable, but knowing how to troubleshoot efficiently can save your meetings when they experience problems. Using your platforms with confidence will show clients you are prepared.

Use e-signatures and make sure your clients are on board with this practice. This practice isn’t something that developed because of the pandemic, but with fewer in-person meetings, there is a greater reliance on closing deals electronically.

Like your other platforms, find a format that works for you, and be prepared to walk your client through the steps. Address their concerns about signing documents over email. Assurance and understanding will go a long way in making this process as smooth as possible.

Generating Leads and Creating Connections

Sales has always been an industry that requires a lot of communication, especially in-person, for sales conversions. Shifting to virtual sales operations provides more options when generating leads if you supplement in-person cultivation with an online generator.

Relying on technology to help generate leads can make a big difference for your team. With the current lack of chances to meet new leads in-person, supplementing with an online platform will create new opportunities.

Leadboxer’s platform is an example of this technology. It allows you to track every movement, beginning with the first interaction with your website, so you can qualify each prospect and plan your pitch accordingly.

Creating Genuine Connections

Without the ability to hit the golf course or meet for drinks with clients, finding an effective sales process during virtual meetings is crucial. Zoom meetings can seem formal compared to your usual networking activities, so find ways to make these interactions feel natural for all of the participants.

Take a few minutes before starting your meeting to chat about non-work related things. Use your camera and crack a few jokes instead of jumping straight into your pitch. Your clients will appreciate these efforts, and it will ease tensions going into the meeting.

Utilize Visual Materials

stats ob b2b content consumption during covid pandemic

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Virtual meetings give you the ability to screen share with participants. Take advantage of this feature. Come prepared with Powerpoint presentations, do live demos of your products, and use engaging visuals to help the customer understand your services.

These visual tactics will boost engagement and keep your attendees’ attention throughout the meeting. With virtual meetings, vying for your client’s full attention is difficult since you’re competing with web browsers, cell phones, and instant messaging. Delivering a presentation that keeps the client’s focus will make a huge difference.

Don’t Forget the Follow-Up

Virtual business means it is possible for more meetings to be scheduled back to back during the day. So following up in a timely manner is important to stay fresh on your client’s mind.

After your meeting, send a quick email summarizing your discussion. Attach your PowerPoint presentation, or send links to your website. It is important to provide clear next steps with your client while demonstrating that you are committed to helping them through the process.

Reach out when your services can be valuable to their efforts. It’ll help strengthen the relationship by showing your client how dedicated you are and it’s important for account expansion too. Try to stay fresh on your client’s mind without bombarding them with constant messaging.

Don’t forget personalization when following up. Virtual doesn’t have to be boring. Send a personal thank you card or take time for a check-in phone call.

Content-Driven Sales

Using all of your marketing channels will help as you navigate the post-pandemic virtual sales game. Let your content speak about the company’s mission when it appears in the client’s inboxes and on their social media feed.

Work alongside your marketing team to craft content that illustrates the points you make during your pitches. Use images when giving presentations and when sending information to prospects.

With the switch to virtual business, relying on content and utilizing these channels will help boost your sales. Provide concrete calls-to-action and direct steps for your clients to take when they receive your content. Create a strong lead strategy.

Key Takeaways

Embrace the virtual world. Get comfortable with Zoom meetings and online networking events. Allow technology like Leadboxer to fill the gaps in areas like generating leads and tracking client action.

Leadboxer offers proven ways to generate leads and help your sales team as they navigate the current business climate.

Allow employees to provide feedback on remote work before making decisions about returning to the office. As senior leadership within companies begins to discuss the possibility of on-site work, it’s important to understand how that will affect workers. These transitions can have strong impacts on productivity, company culture, and overall employee wellbeing.

Invest in ways for your employees to connect. Focus on cultivating a strong culture, regardless of where your workers are located. Setting your company apart from competitors within the virtual landscape can help retain employees.

Make sure to find strategies for continuing to cultivate genuine client relationships via inbound or outbound marketing. Make time before each meeting to chat and connect. Utilize visuals and online presentations in your virtual meetings.

As we continue to navigate the new normal and adjust to remote workspaces, keep in mind— virtual business is here to stay.

The Future of Sales in the Post-Pandemic Remote/Hybrid Workplace Read More »

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Top Lead Strategy for 2023

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Top Lead Strategy for 2023

Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing /

The most effective lead strategy methods are constantly changing and your company must evolve with them. The nuances of technology mean what worked for lead generation even a year ago may not be applicable now. If you aren’t regularly reassessing your lead strategy tactics, you’re missing opportunities to find new prospects.

We’ve compiled a list of the top lead strategy approaches for 2023. We have included statistics that will make you want to start using them. We will first go over some of the foundations of an excellent lead generation campaign. 

Read on or jump ahead to a section:

First-Party Data Analytics

When it comes to data collection sources, you have two options: your own data or data from a third party. While there are instances when using data collected from an outside business can be helpful, your own data is better. First-party data analytics are important for many reasons including: 

  • The data is your own, meaning it’s readily available and it’s free to use
  • The data is obtained from interactions with your customers
  • The data can be easily tweaked and improved upon

Third-party data gets gathered by a company that likely doesn’t fully know your target audience. They aren’t as familiar with your products or services so they can’t relay the same convincing messaging that you can. This can lead to inaccurate, less thorough data analytics on which to build your lead strategy. 

The foundation of a strong lead generation strategy begins with the quality of your data. The source by which you collect data will impact how successful your lead generation campaign will be. Your own first-party data takes time to collect and requires effort, but will better bolster your bottom line.

Once you decide to use your first-party data collection, you need to research your target audience and competitors. 

Know Your Audience

It’s important to get your content in front of people who want to read it. Potential leads who are interested in what you offer are more likely to convert into a sale. On the other hand, those who aren’t interested will leave your site and/or delete your emails. 

You need to figure out who your target audience is, those who see value in what you offer. Once you identify your audience, you’ll need to find them and learn how to reach them. 

You likely already have access to information on your target audience. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics give you insights into your target audience such as demographics and preferred communication channels. 

Analytics tools identify your ideal customers and what channel source they will most convert through. Researching your target audience includes taking note of the following:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • User’s interests
  • User’s location
  • Language
  • Browser type
  • Device
  • Channel
  • Source
  • Referral

In addition to learning about your target audience, Google Analytics can also reveal information on your competitors. Competitor research gives you valuable insights into what the competition is doing and alerts you to their strengths and weaknesses.

Google Analytics 2

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Know Your Competition

The next step requires you to dive into competitor research to uncover where your competitors are investing. You can find everything your competitors are doing using tools like Google Analytics Benchmark Reports, SimilarWeb, Semrush, and SpyFu. These tools will show you which networks they’re advertising on and how much they’re spending to do it.

Then, you need to figure out what is in-between where you are and where your competitors are. To help you with this, ask yourself the following questions: 

  • What is your spend, and what is theirs?
  • What is your cost per acquisition for each channel?
  • How much can you scale each channel?
  • What is the saturation point for each channel?
  • What is the plan to improve each channel so that it converts for less?

After you get first person data and research your audience and competitors, it’s time to look at lead generation strategies. 

1. Product Demos

You can extensively market your product, but people need to be convinced that what you offer meets their needs. Product demos show people how the item works and how it can help solve a problem. Demonstrations are an excellent way to sprinkle video into your lead generation strategy. 

Product demonstrations are one of many video formats you can use. Some other lead generation video ideas include explainer and straight offers.

2. Email Marketing

People check their email up to 20 times a day, making email marketing an effective lead generation channel.  What makes email marketing so effective is that it captures email addresses. An email address is another avenue by which you can interact with a lead. 

There are numerous ways to get a lead’s email address off your website including:

  • Email capture pop-ups.
  • Nano bars.
  • Footer captures.
  • Gated content.

A strong email marketing campaign centers on testing and analysis. A/B testing of messaging, performance, and delivery will help your emails avoid the spam folder. In addition to testing, map every page on your website to a micro-conversion for improved tracking.

A cold email campaign is a great place to start an email marketing strategy. The content of a cold email is valuable to readers and features links to your website. 

Getting Started With an Email Marketing Campaign

The purpose of an email strategy is nurturing leads into customers through continuous touches. Each email should offer content that urges prospects onto the next step of the buyer’s journey.

The first step in developing an email marketing strategy is to implement a tracking pixel into your email campaigns. The tracking pixel will provide better statistics to measure email engagement and give real-time data. Use software that will integrate with website data for the most accurate view of users’ behaviors.

Lead Nurturing Campaigns

With the average conversion rate of 2-5%, lead nurturing campaigns are vital to lead generation.You need to foster relationships with those in your sales funnel. Lead nurturing takes time and effort and must be done correctly to maximize conversions. 

Implementing a lead nurturing campaign that uses marketing automation sends relevant information based on what leads view on your website. This increases the possibility of them converting into customers. 

Newsletter

If you don’t already send out a newsletter, you need to start. Newsletters help inform your current customers of your service or product offerings to cross-sell them on other services. People are more open to reading an e-newsletter than an email ad, which makes newsletters great for getting contact information. 

Email Marketing Help

Check out LeadBoxer’s complete email tracking guide for B2B sales teams to learn about successful email marketing campaigns. You can also review the best email tracking apps that work with Gmail and Outlook to track campaigns.

3. Conferences And Events

Around 75% of marketers generate leads through event marketing with 85% of leadership teams saying events are important for business. At events, you meet with people who are more likely to be interested in the services or products you provide. Also, conferences are a great place to show people your company’s brand and let them know what you stand for. 

Demand Generation

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4. Networking

Networking is one of the best ways to get to know other people who may be interested in your services.

When you go to trade shows, you can expect to acquire 5% to 20% of your new customer base.  When networking, you need to remember you’re not meeting these people with the intent of selling to them.

You’re simply making new business connections. Even if you’re able to help them or sell them something they need, it shouldn’t be your top priority.  

5. Cold Calling The Right Prospects

You might hear people say cold calling is dead, but in fact,  cold calling was still relevant. When you combine this tactic with the right tools, it can be extremely effective.

Use a lead intelligence tool that can identify website visitors and provide you with their information. This way, you’re only calling people who are interested in your services.

Though poorly-trained marketers and pushy salespeople tarnished cold calling, it’s still one of the most effective lead-generation tools. In fact, according to marketing research by MarketingSherpa, 92 percent of B2B buyers are open to cold calls. 

According to a leading lead generation company, SalesHive, cold calling is still one of the fastest ways to get direct prospect feedback. This, in turn, optimizes your pitch and marketing strategy. The goal is to allow your reps to focus on one thing and one thing only – booking meetings. 

To be effective in cold calling, consider outsourcing qualified B2B sales cold-calling specialists. Such reps are dedicated to your account, are more comfortable with your market, and consistently book meetings with prospects. 

6. Video Campaigns

More than 90% of people say videos make their buying decisions, and 84% say a video makes them more likely to purchase. Below are some great ways to begin creating videos: 

Webinars

You can start creating video content by hosting live and recorded webinars. Create a content calendar to schedule topics, dates, and times when the webinar will go live. Then, send people emails asking them to sign up for the webinar, and promote it on your social media channels.

Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn Live

Another way to get started with video content is by going live on social media platforms. You can do this from your smartphone.  You’ll notice you reach a larger audience compared to the response you receive from a standard image or video post.

Survey Data

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7. Social Media Advertising

Nearly 4.5 billion people use social media, allowing you to easily reach new people who fit your target demographic(s).

Facebook

Facebook is great if you’re looking for a less formal way to reach your potential customers. Two-thirds of Facebook users regularly visit a local business’ Facebook page. 

Posting interesting content and images that grab people’s attention allows you to build a large audience without advertising. If you use Facebook advertising, you can do so without spending much money as the cost ranges from .63 to $3.77. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the best places for B2B companies to generate leads. More than 90% of marketers use LinkedIn because it produces 80% of all B2B leads. The leads from LinkedIn far outpace those from all other social platforms. 

One of the best tools LinkedIn offers to aid in your strategy is its lead generation forms. These are specific LinkedIn ads that get people to fill out their information so you can contact them. 

These lead generation forms work so well because people are actively engaging with you by volunteering their information. Additionally, they understand that you’re going to reach out to them. Once a cold lead, they have now been converted to a warm lead ready to receive your pitch.

Lead Generation Statistic

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Instagram

For companies that have products and not a service, Instagram is a great place to showcase it. The platform only allows posts with images or videos, making it the perfect venue for grabbing attention with eye-catching photos. Around 90% of Instagram users follow one or more businesses, so posting on this platform can yield great results.

8. Public Relations Strategy

Most companies only look at public relations (PR) strategies after something bad has happened. With most people having a cell phone to share videos, your company could easily find itself facing a PR disaster. 

Consider hiring a PR manager if you don’t already have one. Work with them to start doing community outreach and implement positive campaigns before a crisis occurs. Be sure to fully inform employees about your company’s values and guiding mission.  

Any kind of negative publicity is bad, especially if you’re trying to generate leads. With easy access to information and countless competitors, prospective customers will be critical of your brand. Show your leads that your company can be trusted with great PR.

9. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a popular and effective solution when done right. That’s because, like consumers, business firms want to equip themselves with the right information before a big buy. 

Approximately 47 percent of buyers read three -five pieces of copy before contacting a salesperson. This means that nearly half of your potential customers have already done research on your company. When a salesperson contacts them, many likely have already decided whether or not to make a purchase. 

It is important your content provides targeted, valuable information so it can sell your brand before your salesperson contacts them.  You can also make sure you integrate your content with lead magnets. Whitepapers, courses, or e-books are free resources you offer your visitors in exchange for their information. 

Create A Content Marketing Plan

Companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. Blogging generates 3 times as many potential customers compared to outbound marketing. It also costs 62% less than traditional marketing campaigns, making it a powerful lead strategy. 

Inbound marketing best practices

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Blogging is one of many content marketing strategies. Others include social media and video. However, it’s not enough to create content; you need to have a plan that includes the following:

Search Engine Optimization 

It would be unproductive to create content, only to find you’re not showing up in search results. This is why you need to create a search engine optimization (SEO) plan. This way you can understand the types of information your customers are searching for and develop your content accordingly.

A foundation of any SEO strategy begins with identifying keywords to use in your content. The keyword tool on Google lets you see the search volume for words and other valuable content information.

You can go on with ongoing SEO campaigns with B2B content marketing support to generate meaningful leads. It aligns with your intentions by offering first-rate content that educates prospects and moves them through your lead generation funnel. 

You can do this in a variety of ways. For example, you can start by understanding how keywords attract different users. Keyword use will drive different people to your website, so it is vital to understand each set. 

A Link Building Strategy

A backlink is an incoming website link that Google factors in determining search rankings. To gain more backlinks, you need to look for opportunities to guest post on blogs within your industry. For example, if you’re a web designer, write guest posts for these 11 blogging platforms that specialize in web development.

Keep Your Website Updated

A good content marketing plan can go wrong if you have a bad or outdated website. Google recommends websites aim for a loading time that’s less than 2 seconds. If you create a great article relevant to your target customer, but it loads slowly, people will not read it.

Keeping your website updated is an essential component of your lead generation strategy.  When looking at your website, implement both inbound and outbound marketing strategies.  

Start Generating Leads Today

Now you know how to start a lead generation campaign and use the top lead strategies it’s time to get started. Read this post on B2B lead generation strategies for additional information on drumming up more profit for your business. 

There are people out there who need and want your products and services. You need to find them, engage with them, and deliver quality content.  If you’re ready to get serious about your lead strategy, Start free or get a demo with LeadBoxer today.

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B2B vs B2C Clients Buyer Intent

B2B Vs B2C Clients: Key Comparisons in Buyer Intent, Decision Making, and Sales

Data-Driven analysis, lead hacking, Sales /

Successful  B2B (b2b stands for business to business) and B2C (b2b stands for business to consumer) sales rely on in-depth knowledge of targeted customer bases. While both of these business models involve sales, there are key differences between the worlds of B2B and B2C. Customers for each of these business models base their decisions on different factors. Understanding the decision-making process and buyer intent in B2B sales versus B2C will help you optimize the sales process.

Continue reading or ‘jump ahead’ to the following topics:

B2B Vs B2C Mindsets

b2b vs b2c comparison

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B2B companies sell their products and services directly to other businesses. B2C companies sell directly to consumers. There is no right or wrong business model, but B2B and B2C have different mindsets when it comes to the sales process and buyer intent.

In a B2C environment, the product is being directly marketed and sold to the customer. There is no middle man in this process. 

Customers are directly interacting with the business during their purchase. With this model, customers tend to make purchases based on emotion.

Since the customer is directly involved, the emotional investment carries more weight in a B2C market. Advertising in the B2C world usually appeals to the customer by invoking feelings about the product. For example, a primary motivator to make a purchase may be because the product and advertisement make the customer feel happy.

B2C purchases typically see a shorter buying cycle. Customers tend to be less informed about the differences between competitive products.

It is easy for the business to capitalize on the quick decision process of these consumers

With B2C, there are fewer parties involved in the purchase. This allows B2C companies to relate directly to their targeted customers without waiting for their product to be approved by multiple decision-makers.

A B2B business focuses more on the logic behind buyer intent. B2B consumers tend to spend more time on research, and the sales cycle is longer. Typically, these purchases are larger in quantity, and the product has the ability to affect an entire company.

Because B2B consumers spend more time on research between competing products, B2B marketing tactics tend to lean on product information to sell products and avoid emotional appeals. B2B buyers invest time in the purchasing process, which allows them to thoroughly research and understand the product and compare it to alternative solutions offered by competitors.

The Markets of B2B Vs B2C Models

B2B models rely heavily on customer retention and strong client relationships. Since the sales cycle is longer and requires more resources in their sales and marketing, it is crucial for these companies to have successful customer outreach. B2B sales teams must be prepared to speak with multiple stakeholders throughout the sales cycle, and the product must have broad appeal to the client.

A B2C model has a larger consumer base, but only targets customers on an individual basis. Most likely, any purchase made from a B2C company will be on a smaller scale with the majority of the decision-making done by a single buyer. That’s one of the key difference between b2b and b2c businesses.

Because of this B2B models tend to focus on a large-scale market. Typically, the products and services being sold aim to solve a problem that an entire team within a company is facing.

Understanding the price points of these purchases provides insight into the value of the product. The average B2C sale is $147. In contrast, the average B2B sale is much higher at $491. The vast difference between the average sale totals in the two business models illustrates the divergence in sales cycle length.

When B2B consumers are considering making a purchase, the higher price tag helps encourage a more informed buying process and buyer intent. The value of this purchase will most likely reach larger numbers of people since these services and products target entire organizations, teams, or departments.

The B2B Decision Making Process

Understanding the B2B buying process and buyer intent of B2B customers will help your company streamline its sales efforts. 

It is important to keep customers engaged throughout the sales cycle. B2B sales rely on informational marketing to provide an in-depth look at the product or service, as well as a strong sales strategy to make it to the finish line.

First, B2B consumers must identify a problem they need to solve. Known as the “awareness” stage in the sales process, a customer will realize there is an issue in need of an outside solution. This recognition pushes the consumer to begin researching potential products to help resolve their dilemma.

An active buyer in the B2B process will begin searching through their options to narrow down the products they would like to explore further. The market is full of B2B solutions, so customers most often begin their search online.

This is where B2B marketing and strong customer relationships play a huge role. If your marketing is targeting the correct audience, customers in need should become leads in your sales funnel. 

New leads can also come from existing clients. Strong customer relationships may result in a referral if a company knows someone who could benefit from your product.

Next, customers will begin to evaluate the solutions they have discovered. This is when numbers begin to play a huge role in the sales process. 

B2B consumers are driven by data-backed results

These clients will be evaluating products by features, conducting cost-benefit analyses, and researching the supply company.

After coming to a decision, B2B customers make their purchase. While completing a sale seems like the easy part, there are several things that will take place before a transaction occurs. Payment terms are negotiated on an individual customer basis and then the successful launch of the product can take place.

The final stage in the B2B decision-making process is nurturing the post-sales relationship. B2B models rely heavily on repeat customers. Continued contact after the original sale can be a pivotal determining factor in how long a sales relationship lasts.

Post-sales contact should include any troubleshooting with the client, collecting feedback, and providing additional offers or services over time. These interactions will help strengthen your ties with the customer and lead to future purchases during the escalation or contract renewals.

Influencing the B2B Purchasing Decision

As a B2B company, it is important to understand what factors help customers come to a decision. Knowing the driving forces behind purchase intent can help your company successfully target and provide information to potential clients.

A Gartner study reveals that a buying group spends 27% of their time researching solutions online, and only 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. This means that your B2B marketing campaign and online resources play a crucial role in instigating the customer life cycle before a sales rep even reaches out to a potential client.

When looking at their purchase decisions, customers will focus on product performance. They will need to know how your product can provide a solution, as well as how your services perform against options your competitors may offer.

Durability and product pricing plays a critical role when it comes to landing a sale. The client will need to know how long your solution will last, as well as what the cost-benefit analysis looks like. In addition to the overall price, customers will look at discounts, credits, and any hidden fees that could be incurred during the product launch and regular use.

By providing transparent information about your services, the sales process can be influenced. Focus on your online marketing as well as the information provided by any sales reps to make sure customers have access to the appropriate resources.

B2B & B2C Customer Lifecycle and Buyer Journey

customer lifecycle of B2B and B2C models

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The customer lifecycle of B2B and B2C models varies in length. Most commonly, the B2B customer will go through four phases within its cycle. The customer lifecycle follows general stages for both B2B and B2C models, with greater emphasis on each stage depending on the product.

First, awareness and reach are crucial to the lifecycle. When a consumer becomes aware of a problem, they will begin searching for a solution. 

For B2B customer bases, this includes research of product options and potential outreach to companies. B2C buyers rely on advertisements and marketing to inform their buyer intent.

Next, customers will begin to act on their needs. It is important to capitalize on this stage to begin converting these leads into sales. Most of the B2B customer lifecycle will focus heavily on the purchasing process while the client tries to get the best (return on investment) ROI on their purchase. 

Converting a B2C sale will lean on emotion through promotional outreach

The end of the cycle includes engagement and retention. Both B2B and B2C businesses need to form relationships with loyal customers.  

B2B and B2C customer journeys vary in terms of complexity and client involvement. B2B models engage with more people on their journey, as there will be multiple departments involved in the purchasing process.

Customers from B2B tend to make fewer, but larger purchases, which means the relationship is more valuable. More time and resources go into closing a B2B deal than a B2C sale. Overall, the B2B process can be lengthy due to the high complexity of the decision for the customer.

Check out Leadboxer for a free trial to begin finding clients at the beginning of their customer journey today!

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customer centric strategy

Using CRM to Craft a Winning Customer Centric Strategy

Marketing, Sales /

Managing your customers is an important task for every successful business. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has become a major asset for companies, and the global market for this technology continues to rise, helping in arranging a winning customer centric strategy. CRMs help provide easy management of employee, customer, and lead interactions. This software automates sales processes, integrates seamlessly with other technology, and assists in organizing operations in individual silos.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have found themselves leaning on CRMs more than ever to manage interactions with customers. In a recently released report by Global Industry Analytics, INC (GIA), research digs deeper into the current trends and predicts continued CRM growth in the coming years.

As companies continue into the world of digital communication and increased remote work environments, knowing the best practices for CRM use can help with successful operations.

Continue reading or jump ahead to the topics below:

Increasing Popularity of CRMs During COVID-19

CRM software market

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The pandemic has reshaped the way many companies approach their business strategies. Throughout these unprecedented times, there’s been an increased emphasis on remote working environments. Managing customer relations remains an all-time priority, yet the challenges for successful outreach have grown.

With an unexpected mass shift to virtual work, there has been a need for technology conducive to interdepartmental collaboration. CRMs can help fill multiple deficiencies across workflow when departments are communicating remotely. With integrations and automation, these systems help improve productivity.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the GIA study reveals that the global market for CRM software is projected to reach $81.9 billion by 2024. While CRMs may have been underutilized pre-pandemic, research demonstrates how crucial this technology is for successful remote work.

The GIA study also shows the overwhelming use of CRMs across different sizes of operations from start-ups to large corporations in the United States. CRM software in the U.S. accounts for 49.7% of the global market for this technology.

In a time when employee disconnect saw an all-time high, CRMs were able to help provide a sense of relief to businesses. Due to the rise in popularity, the usage of CRM software continues to be on an upward trend.

Workflow Management for CRMs in Remote Environments

Due to COVID, companies saw a quick switch to virtual work with little time to prepare for the transition. Since then, employees have relied on technology to stay connected with their teams. Improving workflow in remote work environments can be done through proper organization and constant company communication.

Improving operational activities within individual silos is just as important as encouraging collaboration between departments. CRM usage played a role in assisting companies to work at maximum efficiency within specific teams.

CRMs benefit employees through features like calendar and email integration, as well as notification systems. These are crucial in helping reduce the amount of missed information between employees. 

With data organized on one platform, workers are able to stay on the same page while working from different locations. Switching out of the office setting means the workflow of most departments faced disruption. 

Using CRMs means teams are able to utilize automated features to ensure proper delegation. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) can recognize and route customer emails directly to the right person without getting lost in the digital shuffle. 

Since coworkers no longer have the ability to quickly ask questions in person, built-in pipelines through CRMs can drastically improve communication.

Customer Outreach During COVID-19

In addition to causing employee engagement challenges, the pandemic also impacted customer outreach efforts. Keeping in touch with current and potential clients is vital to building out a sales pipeline. 

Due to the lack of in-person meetings and a constant stream of Zoom invitations, staying at the top of customer inboxes is an easy way to boost sales.CRMs can assist this process by sending out mass emails and setting reminders for timely follow-ups. 

CRM software allows companies to utilize templates and build-out personalized campaigns. By tracking customer engagement and storing data, CRMs also help your sales team nurture leads and re-engage stale leads.

Sales & Marketing Alignment

Successful sales campaigns are the starting line for closing a deal. To have this communication with customers, sales and marketing departments must work together. 

CRMs encourage alignment between sales and marketing teams through data collection, seamless communication systems, and software integrations. With a centralized database in your CRM, both teams can access all of a lead’s information for easy contact. 

CRM software can also help each team keep track of where a lead is within the sales pipeline. Allowing both departments access to this information helps direct marketing and sales communications to the correct clients while cutting down on duplicate outreach.

CRMs work to increase the success of your business’s lead generation and nurturing process, which ultimately improves your sales conversion rates. Utilizing a CRM can provide deeper insight into the customer journey.

Building out complete customer profiles in your CRM encourages your teams to get personal with their strategies. This allows your salespeople to understand the persona of each customer when pitching your product, while your marketing team can finetune campaigns for targeted audiences.

Customer feedback can be recorded in the system, which helps sales teams improve their sales strategies. Employees are able to track each interaction with potential customers. This information can be accessed across all departments. 

By properly using a CRM, your company can easily improve customer experience.

Customer Centric Strategy

A customer centric strategy also referred to as client-centric, means focusing your business model on creating a great customer experience to build brand loyalty. These businesses make sure that customers remain the center of their operations. The end goal is always client satisfaction.

This business approach uses the theory that going above and beyond to meet customer expectations is the best way to gain repeat sales. When utilizing the customer centric strategy, the goal is to properly maintain your existing client base to ensure long-lasting relationships.

Benefits of a Customer Centric Strategy

customer centric marketing

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Focusing your sales efforts to attract loyal customers can help your business in the long run. Simply put, new customers can be hard to find. Investing in existing relationships will help boost your sales.

Not only can it be a challenge to track down leads, but acquiring new customers is costly. Nurturing current relationships helps save your team money while selling more. The goal is to continuously provide a seamless customer experience across all of the products and services your company offers.

Using Your CRM for a Customer Centric Strategy

Improving your customer experience starts internally with your sales and marketing departments. Teams should have the proper resources to successfully meet client needs.

CRMs help streamline communication channels between teams and better your customer management practices. With easy access to contact information and the ability to track engagement with leads, staying on top of customer outreach should be a priority.

Implementing a Customer Centric Workflow

You don’t have to start from ground zero to centralize your business around customer needs. Taking advantage of your CRM and other software can help you get started with a customer centric model. There are a few key takeaways to keep in mind when using this theory:

Focus on all-hands involvement. To ensure your company is providing the best customer experience, get your teams on the same page. Emphasize interdepartmental communication. 

Make sure your employees are utilizing CRM functions for efficient workflow. Provide every team with access to customer insights so they can work to improve your client relationships.

Communicate with existing customers and gather valuable data. Understanding what your current customers like and dislike about your services provides valuable feedback for your company. Dig deep into the analytics and make sure your CRM has the most up-to-date data available for your teams.

Personalize your outreach. Automation is a huge help for mass outreach, even to your existing customers. Use your CRM to develop personalized email campaigns for segmented customer groups. 

Be sure to reach out to customers at the right time. CRMs can help keep track of when to follow up by setting reminder notifications for when it’s time for your next outreach.

Don’t be afraid of change. A customer centric strategy requires constant analysis of trends. The goal is to best predict your customer’s needs and continually provide quality solutions. As those needs evolve, make sure you are adapting to serve your base.

Automating and Integrating Your Technology

Devoting more time to an improved customer experience is easy when you have the ability to automate parts of the process. Integrating your CRM and other technology helps improve workflow and frees up time for customer outreach. 

Rather than having multiple tools to get the job done, merging your technology will create efficiency within your workflow. When combined with a CRM like Hubspot or Pipedrive, Leadboxer works with your existing stack to help push data where it needs to go. 

When using Leadboxer, your sales and marketing teams can easily access contact information, use tools for email tracking, and manage your customer relationships from multiple platforms.
Get firsthand experience with CRM integration capabilities by checking out a free LeadBoxer trial.

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sales enablement in 2022

Sales Enablement in 2022

Lead Engagement, Sales /

A major priority for all sales managers should be to put their team on the path to the highest earning potential. While the art of closing a deal is natural for some, businesses must provide all their sales reps with the most up-to-date resources for success. With remote working environments and a reliance on technology for company communications, sales enablement plays a major role in developing your sales team. Even though your employees may be working from different locations, it is still the duty of managers to successfully guide teams toward one unified goal.

As industries continue to navigate a post-pandemic economy, earnings from virtual selling tactics are at an all-time high. Coupled with increased work from home arrangements, sales enablement continues to be crucial for any sales department’s success. 

Despite the challenges derived from remote work in 2021, the potential to increase revenue remains extremely promising. Providing your team with support and focusing on sales enablement in 2022 will help companies thrive in the coming months.

What is Sales Enablement?

At its core, sales enablement is the process of providing sales training, coaching, enablement technology, and lead enrichment data to sales and marketing teams to improve performance across the board.

It doesn’t matter how great your top-earning sales reps are, there’s almost always room for improvement. Sales enablement helps everyone on the team excel by teaching, motivating, and most importantly, enabling them to exceed office quotas and expectations.

The Impacts of Virtual Working Environments

productivity statistics

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced employees to remain flexible as working from home has become the new normal for many. Despite a rushed transition period into remote accommodations during early 2020, workers have successfully settled into their new environments.

In fact, 77% of employees report higher productivity while working from the comfort of their home office. With increased engagement and focus comes the uncapped revenue potential from these eager salespeople.

In order to reach these exciting earning levels, sales managers must be able to provide their teams with the proper resources. On the flip side, due to an ever-increasing digital world, it is important to focus on quality versus quantity when utilizing sales engagement tools.

According to Forbes, globally, companies are averaging the use of 23 learning and engagement platforms. This number has doubled since 2011, and it is very likely it will continue to increase as long as remote work continues. While sales engagement tools can play a huge role in successful conversions, overload and employee burnout need to be taken into consideration.

The Importance of Sales Enablement

Consumers today have more information and power at their fingertips than ever before. A study by Salesforce & Publicis Sapient found that 87% of consumers begin their buying journey with online research. The study also found that 64% of shoppers say they feel that brands don’t truly understand their individual needs and desires.

Brands have to work hard to personalize their approach. Therefore, selling to informed customers has become a nightmare for many in the sales game. Check out this post on how to make a brand persona to learn more.

In order to break through and start a genuine conversation with potential buyers or clients, your sales and marketing teams need to be equipped with the most advanced resources available.

Four Benefits of a Sales Enablement Strategy 

The benefits of a sales enablement strategy are vast. So long as the sales reps within the team are capable and the products or services being sold are valuable.

1. Better Teamwork

Sales enablement enhances the team as a whole, not just the best sellers and not just those that need help. By implementing sales enablement strategies, companies no longer have to rely on top earners to carry the sales team.

2. Better Data

Sales enablement provides a superior framework for the collection and organization of data from engagements between reps and consumers. Data relating to pain points, customer personas, buyer intent, historic behavior, and more, all combine to help salespeople personalize each engagement.

3. More Efficiency

Better data and organization also increase team efficiency. With valuable resources at their disposal, salespeople are able to make faster data-driven decisions, decreasing the time it takes to go from prospect to client.

4. More Collaboration

Sales enablement increases collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Sales reps have to provide valuable, personalized content to prospects in order to persuade them to make the deal. The marketing team is often the source of that content. With that being said, marketing is invaluable and, in many cases, inseparable from the sales process.

Fostering Team Collaboration in Remote Environments

sales enablement approach

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The sudden switch to remote work during 2020 caused companies to adapt their communication strategies to a digital world. Zoom happy hours and endless slack threads became the roots of establishing a virtual rapport.

Now, continuing to navigate the challenges of working from home, teamwork remains vital for overall success in the sales industry. Cohesion through a single platform encourages collaboration and streamlines communication and project management.

Along with helping build your team’s correspondence, utilizing single platforms with integration capabilities will help with trans-departmental conversations as well. Lead generation and lead nurturing practices can be kept up within the same tools as your sales funnel. These combinations help keep your marketing and sales teams on the same page. 

Integration of Sales Enablement Tools

Just as capturing a customer’s attention amid the endless stream of online content has become a new challenge, so has to maintain the focus of your team during the workday. 26% of employees feel that app overload makes them more inefficient at work. 

74% of employees have more than five apps open at once. While 16% of employees are using 15 or more apps simultaneously.

Along the same line, the average worker switches through 13 apps around 30 times per day. Productivity is key to closing deals, but over inundating employees with too many platforms may have adverse effects.

Automation, artificial intelligence, and digital sales platforms can improve your team’s workflow when implemented correctly. Finding ways to consolidate the digital clutter that your employees are clicking through can drastically save time and preserve attention spans.

Leadboxer helps cut down on the number of individual apps used by your team through seamless integration with some of your most-used platforms. Through this combination, sales reps are able to find all of the necessary resources in one program. 

Whether it’s email automation, marketing campaign tracking, or data analysis, multiple sales engagement tools can be accessed from one place, hassle-free. 

The Importance of Better Content

One of the most important functions of sales enablement is ensuring that your teams have the right content and that they utilize that content at the right time.

There’s a wide variety of sales enablement content, but three of the most common types are:

  • Case studies
  • Blog posts
  • Emails

Case Studies

Case studies document real-life examples of a product or service in action. They’re essentially glorified testimonials, as they help identify the struggles faced by your customers as well as solutions you bring to the table.

They’re versatile, as they can be distributed to customers to highlight the advantages of working with your products and services. They can also be distributed to sales and marketing teams to highlight consumer behavior and customer pain points.

Blog Posts

Although content marketing and sales enablement are two different fields of study, there are some obvious applications that are worth highlighting here. Blog posts provide value to readers without asking anything in return. Not only can you build a wealth of trust and establish your brand as an authority in the industry, but you can also reveal to readers problems they didn’t even know they had.

Emails

For many brands, email is the first contact with potential customers. While this may be true, email marketing is an invaluable tool for the closing stages of a sale. It can be difficult to discern which types of emails to send and the best time to send them, but the combination of a great CRM and a great CMS will make the job much easier. 

There are several types of emails that are perfect for the closing stages of a sale. They include:

  • Order confirmations
  • Thank you emails
  • Abandoned cart emails

Most people check their emails on a daily basis. There are several elements to a great email and demand generation marketing strategy, and we won’t dive into them here, but emails are personal and you can customize them in a number of ways.

Continuing to Move Forward 

Navigating the changing landscape of the sales industry in 2021 has been a challenge for most, as well as an opportunity for uncapped growth and development. Teams who are willing to invest in the proper sales engagement tools will be set up for success as they continue to thrive in remote environments.
Focusing on integration and collaboration will help your team perform at all-time highs. To get started with a cohesive platform and see the ways consolidation can improve your workflow, check out Leadboxer for a free trial.

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lead nurturing in 2022

Lead Nurturing in 2022

Lead Nurturing, Sales /

Creating lasting relationships and increasing conversion rates are the main goals of your customer sales cycle. The process begins with lead generation and relies heavily on successful lead nurturing to obtain the desired end result – a sale.

Putting increased time and effort into your marketing and sales process means your client relationships will benefit. Ultimately, your company will begin to see a higher return on investment (ROI) on its efforts. Jack Born, the creator of Deadline Funnel, speaks about the many ways lead nurturing plays a role in successful conversion rates.

  • In 2022, walking leads through the sales process means navigating an increasingly digitized world. Timeless tactics like cold calling are great ways to cultivate leads. Although utilizing newer tools like data automation and content creation can improve your customer lifecycle. 
  • Incorporating AI software alongside tactics like audience segmentation and targeted messaging are the first steps to take for creating competitive marketing campaigns.

To learn more, read on or jump ahead to these sections:

Using Automated Messaging

automated messaging

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Born also points out that in this current time of endless content streams, maintaining top-of-mind awareness with your leads is crucial to nurturing client relationships. On the flip side, successful digital communication relies on avoiding repetitive and irrelevant content to reduce the clutter in a prospect’s inbox.

  • Marketing sequences require time and resources. Utilizing automated messaging can help alleviate these burdens. Automation allows your team to accurately target customers with informative content. It can help them make decisions throughout their sales journey.
  • Segmenting your leads will help improve your focused marketing and lead to high engagement rates. The immediate goal of your campaigns should be prospect interaction with your brand, rather than just a sales conversion. This helps get leads excited about your product. Also gives them the tools to explore the ways you can help them.
  • Through lead segmentation, specific content should be directed to customer groups based on their needs, buying habits, and customer profiles. Separating your outreach will help potential clients understand the distinct value of your product in relation to their unique business. 
  • Automated messaging allows content to be sent across multiple channels to reach audiences on different platforms. Data collected by these automated campaigns will also help improve your return on investment (ROI) since money spent on engagement will lead to higher sales conversions. 80% of users saw the number of leads increase when automation tactics were employed.
  • This technology tracks important data like email open rates, click through rates, and customer engagement with promotional content. For example, you will be able to see when a customer fills out a form through your campaign. This allows you to move them into the next stage of the sales process. 

Timing Your Marketing Campaigns for Lead Nurturing

Born stresses the fact that perfecting the art of segmentation is just one small step in utilizing automated messaging to its fullest potential. Understanding how crucial timing is for your outreach can help improve your conversion rates.

  • One of the biggest benefits to automated messaging is being able to ensure leads don’t run cold. Your chances of landing a sale are a lot higher if you contact a lead when you can offer a solution to their current problem. By being able to schedule sales follow-up sequences, clients will be reminded of your product when their needs are high.
  • Data analysis allows AI software to track a lead’s activity and engagement throughout the day to determine the best time to hit send on your campaign. By having a deep understanding of your client’s schedule, automated messaging helps increase engagement rates. It happens by delivering your content at the ideal hour for interaction.
  • Predictive sending takes the guesswork out of your email lead nurturing campaigns. This means your team can focus on creating informative content while technology handles the rest. Nurturing leads with targeted messaging sent at their peak activity times will help avoid the sales funnel leakage. It commonly occurs with infrequent contact.

Authenticity in a Digital World

types of content b2b marketers use

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Your content quality directly affects your credibility. No matter how big or small a role it plays in the marketing plan. It is crucial for your brand’s success to remain authentic when utilizing automation.

While technology helps maximize your outreach, nothing can replace genuine human connection. This means your marketing strategy needs to be driven toward providing relevant information that starts a conversation with your prospects.

  • Avoid creating a bad reputation for cluttering inboxes with fluff emails. The goal of automated messaging is to successfully nurture leads by effectively communicating with clients. And not to alienate them with a constant barrage of meaningless spam. When used correctly, automation helps boost your brand by sharing relevant, informative content with your prospects.
  • Another key component to increasing your credibility is ensuring automation does not remove the ability for conversation. Sequences, like email campaigns and deadline messages, often come in automatic waves across multiple days to spread awareness. Make sure your team is still available for contact if leads want to speak with a representative directly. Rather than relying solely on the scheduled follow-up emails.
  • Automation is meant to supplement your marketing efforts. Your sales team should still be putting in the effort to cultivate strong client relationships alongside your digital campaigns.

Evaluate Your Pricing Models

In order to make a sale, you need to drive traffic to your website to generate leads for cultivation. So, what does this traffic see when they visit your site? Most companies are going to be looking at your product and what type of solution it offers. But they are also going to focus on pricing.

tactical triangle

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As Jack Born has sketched out, there is a Tactical Triangle that can help your team evaluate your prices. As well as understand the lifetime value of your client. Simply put, the model explains how it is necessary to work backward to land a sale while understanding the moving economics of your campaigns.

  • Pricing models are an aspect that should constantly be evaluated. The most effective way to come up with prices for your product includes working off customer personas, using correct metrics, and listening to your customers.
  • Proper presentation is crucial for relaying your prices to clients. Are you offering one price or are there multiple price points for leads to contemplate? 
  • Ideally, you will want a price point for each level of the customer persona. This ensures web traffic will not be overwhelmed with your options. Plus, automated messaging can target specific groups with product promotions at the correct tier.
  • Another aspect to keep in mind when evaluating your models is the amount it costs to drive this traffic to your site. You’ll want to see a higher ROI on your marketing efforts. So prices need to be set accordingly, based on the amount spent to generate and nurture leads.

Utilizing Order Bumps to Increase Engagement

Staying competitive means more than just evaluating your pricing and offering deadline deals. Working with an order bump strategy can lead to higher conversion rates and bring in more overall revenue. 

  • This doesn’t have to be something that requires resources to create. But rather an automated offer to help increase sales among well-qualified leads. If a customer is already committed to the purchase, offering an order bump such as an upgrade from the basic to professional plan, can be an easy way to maximize the sale.
  • Using this tactic helps your lead take more time to think about your product and the benefits it can provide. Since this happens close to the end of the sales cycle, you can feel confident that a lead has already seen the value in the purchase. By offering a bump at checkout, the client may go ahead and make the switch to a higher price without feeling like the process was too pushy.

Extending Customer Life Cycles for Lead Nurturing

Determining your customer lifetime value (CLTV) can help your business successfully retain valuable clients. The CLTV also works hand-in-hand with the customer acquisition cost (CAC) to illustrate the timeline needed to recover the investment spent to generate leads.

  • The CLTV can be found by evaluating the amount of revenue brought in by a client in addition to the predicted length of the relationship. This metric is crucial to creating a customer retention solution, as well as company budgeting. It also allows your team to analyze the ways in which these customer life cycles can be extended.
  • Lead nurturing is the first step in building a customer life cycle. This process should continue past the initial sale. Client relationships will improve when you actively listen to their onboarding experiences, provide frequent check-ins about your product, and incentivize repeat purchases.

To experience how LeadBoxer can help you nurture leads into successful sales through the website and email tracking, lead segmentation, and marketing campaign tracking, get started with a free Leadboxer trial today!

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Creating Sales Urgency

Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Sales /

Marketing campaigns play a huge role in creating higher sales conversions. These tactics are the ways your company and brand are being introduced to potential customers. While effective marketing strategies can be based on multiple factors, focusing your messages on creating sales urgency within customers can help boost sales.

Jack Born, the technical founder of Deadline Funnel, speaks about how he developed a solution that nurtures leads and increases engagement. Through the implementation of a deadline strategy, Born helps companies understand the importance of authentic offers.

In a world of constant digital interaction and never-ending streams of promotional content, success comes from making a genuine human connection with leads. Tapping into universal human experiences, such as procrastination and the fear of missing out, sales urgency works to motivate prospects into action.

Increasing Sales Conversions Through Marketing Tactics

increasing sales conversions through marketing tactics

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Digital content has become the new normal for marketing. Customers have the ability to see constant advertisements through social media and email messaging. Because of these trends, successful marketing campaigns rely on calls to action to engage customers.

Email lead generation relies on participation to score and nurture leads. Once a prospective lead is identified through web traffic or other means, focus on introducing your product and providing tangible ways to interact with your brand.

Using persuasion in your messaging is a way to create urgency among potential clients. When your content only pertains to your product but doesn’t give clear steps for engagement, customers are likely to scroll past. Providing a reason to interact with your brand will persuade leads to learn more.

Your marketing team has the ability to convince customers to try your product through their communication. It’s human nature to hit snooze on products that provide future benefit when there isn’t messaging demonstrating ways your company can make a difference now. For example, providing special bonus offers or free trials are clear ways potential clients can engage with your content.

Another way to add sales urgency to your campaigns is to utilize deadlines. When potential leads are on the fence about your product, deadlines help push candidates towards a decision. These types of campaigns play a role in creating a steady sales funnel throughout the year, rather than just during promotional periods.

If you are constantly providing ways leads can interact with your brand now, they most likely will engage rather than putting it off until a later date.

The Importance of Reaching Your Target Audience

Creating content takes time and resources, but it is important to put in the effort to customize your campaigns for different audiences. Although you are promoting your unified brand, each of your clients may be at a different place in the cycle, with unique perspectives about your product.

The goal of your marketing tactics should be to reach as many customers as possible with the tailored messages. This means segmenting your email lists and utilizing different emails for each base. Targeted campaigns increase engagement because customers feel as if the content you’ve provided is valuable and specific to their needs.

It is crucial to understand your sales pipeline, as well as the customer journey, to successfully segment leads. Digging into the data your team has will help map out which customers need to hear certain messages. This will help direct your emails to the right inboxes at the correct time.

Creativity from your marketing team will fuel prospect engagement. Focus on producing dynamic content for each segment of leads. Make sure to create appropriate content based on the different stages for customers, which should provide tangible action items for prospects to engage with.

These emails can be as simple as having different versions of the same promotional incentives. Your marketing team can work to pinpoint the different customer personas of your clients, as well as their engagement patterns. This strategy will help each campaign reach its targeted demographic.

While customization can seem like a hefty undertaking, there are ways to do it without wasting time or resources.  Use automation to swap out images and copy text to tailor to specific customer data. Include automated pop-ups or recommendations on your website to provide valuable insight when prospects engage with certain pages.

Using Automation Effectively in Marketing Efforts

evergreen email sequence plus special offer

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Utilizing automation helps streamline your marketing communication with prospects. This allows you to focus on promoting your brand while allowing automation to do the heavy lifting. Taking advantage of this technology allows you to send automatic welcome emails, track engagement across platforms, and segment your prospects.

Effectively automating your marketing cycle means you are using platforms to help nurture leads, score leads, and walk clients through the customer journey. For example, automation can send follow-up messages when prospects interact with your website to help nurture the relationship.

Avoiding leakage from your sales pipeline helps increase your conversion rates. Automation ensures that consistent messaging is being sent to leads, so they don’t go cold. This is a huge help for businesses that want to continue establishing strong relationships with their customers.

Automation focuses on passive marketing, which allows prospects to hear about your brand in ways other than live launches. When your company doesn’t have any product updates to share, sales funnels may seem smaller than usual. Avoiding these dry times by implementing automated campaigns will help build out your pipelines.

An evergreen funnel works to gain your business passive profit through automated engagement. This works by enticing the lead to become a buyer through content-driven messaging at the beginning of their journey.

The goal of these tactics is not limited to an immediate conversion. Evergreen funnels may be a long game strategy, as they work hard to push for brand engagement that will eventually convert to sales.

Using the Deadline Tactic in Your Messaging

Furthering this marketing tactic, the deadline, or countdown, funnel is an add-on that leans into the idea of urgency. Prospective customers receive dozens of promotional emails per day. Capitalizing on your digital real estate within a lead’s inbox will allow for the successful implementation of a special offer.

This is where your call-to-action will start. Whether it’s a free download, promotional code, or even a limited-time discount, the key is having a real deadline in place. This allows you to create a timeline of communication that introduces your offer and entices prospects into engagement over a period of a few days.

Authentic deadlines should be created through the personalization of the unique customer journey. By using tracking points, your email campaigns will tailor to each lead and automatically generate content that relates to their place in the sales funnel.

Deadlines work to help your sales team avoid the stress of a lead going cold. Once a prospect is discovered by your team, this tactic will help illustrate the importance of swift action. The quicker a potential customer interacts with your brand, the quicker your sales team will be able to begin the lead nurturing process.

The 5-Day Sequence

One successful series of implementation can be found by trying the 5-day sequence. This campaign will consist of five or more emails spread across five days to nudge potential clients into engagement.

Your first two emails will be the beginning of brand awareness. These first contact points will aim to provide value to the recipient as well as insight into your product. The third email will be a hybrid of value and promotion, as it transitions into a call-to-action. This will serve as the first introduction to the offer and the deadline.

The final two emails work to sell the offer and convince your prospect to take the leap. Sales urgency remains a vital characteristic at this stage of marketing communications. By highlighting the impending deadline, scarcity is also shown to the prospect. This tactic helps motivate the lead to act, as they won’t want to miss out on the valuable deal.

Finding Balance Between Being Pushy & Creating Sales Urgency

Why do these tactics work? Human nature leans towards procrastination. Even the best workers can admit to being guilty of occasionally putting tasks off to a later date. By using incentivization, you are helping clients move along through their customer journey.

These strategies speak to the human need for timelines and the fear of missing an important offer. By giving a deadline, you can motivate prospective customers who may be facing hesitations to engage with your product, as well as rule out ones who aren’t worth your time.

Finding a balance between sales urgency and pushiness is a key component to successfully mastering this marketing strategy. One of the most common mistakes is emphasizing the deadline too soon.

When applied too early, the urgency created can come off as inauthentic or even gimmicky. Avoiding the desperate salesman look and focusing on tactfully introducing the timeline can help boost your credibility with leads.

Born recommends emphasizing the promotion deadline in the last 48 hours of the campaign. This can be done with three final emails to help nudge the prospect into action.

Discover the many ways LeadBoxer can help you increase the effectiveness of your efforts to create urgency in sales today.

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Strategies for Reviving Old Sales Leads

Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Sales /

Chasing a warm lead is the best way to expand your business and maximize your sales pipeline, but what do you do once the lead runs cold? While there are many reasons prospects may not work out, it is always possible to revive the relationship. If you plan on reviving old sales leads or creating urgency in sales, it is best to have a strategy before jumping back into the sales conversation. Understanding your lead cycle and focusing on trigger events can help determine when is the best time to reach back out to a prospective customer.

To learn more, read on or jump ahead to these sections:

What is the Sales Lead Life Cycle?

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Each prospect goes through the sales lead life cycle before your team is able to determine the customer’s status within your pipeline. Some leads may go through the cycle quicker than others. Understanding the process will help your marketing and sales team properly nurture these relationships.

Web Traffic and Subscribers

To create a lead, your business must come into contact with prospects. This can happen in many ways including cold outreach, website traffic, or email subscribers. Think of this as the first introduction to your brand.

During this stage, most customers are doing their research to determine if there is a product that will help solve the problems they are facing. To get these prospects to the next stage, your goal should be to provide light content that will create interest in interacting with your product.

Prospective Lead

In the next part of the cycle, your web traffic becomes prospective leads. This means the customer status has not been determined yet, but they have interacted with your brand. A customer can typically be moved to this stage once they have provided your team with additional contact information or filled out a website interest form.

Marketing Qualified Lead

Commonly referred to as MQLs, these are the customers that are readily engaged in your product. They have determined there is a need in their company, and your brand is on their list of solutions.

Your team should have determined trigger points for this stage. For example, if a customer visits your product page a certain amount of times in a week, requests a demo, or downloads a promotional offer.

Sales Qualified Lead

Once a prospect has become an MQL, the next stage will be determining if they are a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). These are the leads your sales team has decided are ready for direct follow-ups about your product.

When a prospect is in the MQL stage, your marketing team should be directly introducing your product as a viable solution. Once the lead is handed to your sales team, it should be ready for warm contact from a salesperson.

Customer

After an SQL has been identified, the lead becomes a customer once the product has been purchased. The goal of your sales life cycle is to have high conversion rates from traffic to customer. Not every lead will make it to the customer stage, but this will help you determine which old prospects in your pipeline can be recycled and potentially revived.

Determining the Status of a Lead

Accurately deciding where a lead falls in your pipeline is crucial to a successful sales cycle. The status of a lead plays a huge role in your sales and marketing efforts. To ensure time and resources aren’t being wasted, you’ll want a smooth process for qualifying leads.

Known commonly as lead scoring, the beginning of this process will help your team decide which prospects are sales-ready. With this strategy, points are assigned based on a list of factors. These include the buyer profile, company information, and online behavior.

By using these traits to score your leads, your team will have an accurate understanding of each prospect. This helps to gauge interest in your brand, so your sales team knows where their efforts are best directed.

Teleprospecting Old Leads

Before jumping into the importance of this strategy, let’s define the role of teleprospecting in the sales cycle. Typically done by an inside sales rep, teleprospecting engages with leads through cold and warm contact to determine their status in your pipeline.

As discussed earlier, not every lead will complete your sales cycle. This means your company may have a list of old leads with the potential to be revisited. Your team won’t want to waste their resources on leads that cannot benefit from your product, so this is where teleprospecting can help.

If a prospect has gone cold but is already aware of your brand, the relationship may be revived when the time is right. Businesses are constantly changing, and telepropsectors can help determine when a lead is ready for contact again.

Teleprospecting should be done when an old lead goes through major changes as a company, or if they have requested you reach out at a later date. Your teleprospecting efforts should keep track of any leads that mention future interest, so you can circle back at the right time.

When employing this strategy, it is important to avoid overwhelming a potential customer. Your teleprospectors should approach each conversation as a check-in, rather than a sales opportunity. This will help accurately determine where the customer is in dealing with their issue without seeming too pushy.

The Importance of Lead Recycling

the importance of lead recycling

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Ideally, your sales team will want to have the highest conversion rate possible, with very little leakage from the pipeline. However, every salesperson knows how much effort goes into the early stages of the cycle just for the leads to drop off throughout the cycle.

Rather than casting aside and giving up on leads gone cold, your business can reuse leads to optimize the pipeline and increase the conversion numbers. Recycling leads can play a huge role in the success of your sales team.

The best way to start the recycling process is to continue to send relevant content to passive leads. Avoid filling their inbox with useless clutter, but make sure to share occasional emails about your product. The lead was originally in your pipeline because they had a problem and your product offered a solution, so continued communication can help nurture the relationship.

Pay attention to engagement from these leads. Are they opening your emails, engaging with your website, or filling out website forms? If so, try to use teleprospecting efforts to determine their interest.

Once your team identifies whether a lead is ready to re-engage, add them back into your pipeline and continue with them through the sales process. By recycling these leads, your sales conversion rate may increase and you will begin to see a higher return on investment (ROI) on your pipeline.

Reviving Old Sales Leads

One way to approach initiating outreach to old leads is following company trigger events. These occur when a potential customer goes through big changes, which means they may be ready to utilize your product now.

Timing is crucial when it comes to completing a sale, so understanding what your leads are experiencing can help your sales team maximize their efforts. A trigger event is an event that provides an opening for a sales opportunity.

The key to reviving old sales leads after a trigger event is knowing when the event occurred and reaching out during the right timeline. Tracking major trigger events in potential customers can help you restart the conversation around your product.

For example, pay attention to when new executives get added to your old leads. Typically, new leadership will want to maximize efficiency without concern for company tradition, so discovering new solutions will be on the table. You can keep tabs on these types of changes through LinkedIn or press releases.

Another trigger event could be company expansion or a merger. If a prospect is growing, problems may become more apparent within their workflow, so you’ll want to reach out with the solution.

Additional Strategies For Re-engaging Leads

In addition to trigger events, there are many other strategies for reconnecting with past leads. As the business world continues to dive deeper into the digital realm, social media has become an invaluable tool for sales teams.

Utilizing LinkedIn and other social media can help your teams reviving old sales leads, as well as provide the opportunity to reignite the conversation. If you see major changes happening within a prospect on LinkedIn, use it to your advantage and reach out. Use the conversation as an opportunity to provide a solution to problems the business may be facing.

Rekindle warm leads through your content. If you feel like your product may be a good fit for a lead, send them a guide or invite them to a webinar. This helps your team demonstrate the value of your product without seeming overly pushy.

Make sure to keep past conversations in mind. One mistake to avoid is approaching re-engagement as a new lead. These prospects are familiar with your brand, and you should treat the conversation as such. Remind them of your past interactions, and if needed, show the ways your product has improved.

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Lead Types: How to Determine Your Sales Lead Temperature

Sales, Warm Leads /

Learn how to properly identify the different lead types and determine your sales lead temperature in this ultimate guide.

Have you ever played a game where you hide something and give clues like “getting hotter” or “getting colder” until the person eventually finds it? Working with and nurturing leads is kind of like that.

  • The warmer a lead, the closer they are to buying.
  • If a prospect is cold, it means you need to keep providing the lead with information until they are ready to buy.
  • It isn’t always easy to recognize the signs indicating which lead type you’re dealing with, which is why we created this guide.

Keep reading to learn how to rate each sales lead temperature and how the right lead scoring system helps you correctly categorize all of your leads.

You can also choose to “jump ahead” to the following subtopics:

cold, warm and hot leads

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What Are the Different Sales Lead Temperature?

A sales lead is someone who is in the market for your service or product. This person fits your criteria for being an ideal client and would benefit from what your company offers.

These lead types are segmented into three major categories:

  1. Cold lead
  2. Warm lead
  3. Hot Lead

The ability to recognize sales lead temperature is essential for establishing where leads are in the funnel. This information aids in finding the sweet sales spot to ensure successful conversions.

Cold Lead Definition

Cold leads are those who ft your target audience but haven’t yet interacted with your company or brand. These leads are the farthest from converting and need to be educated about your company’s mission, exactly what you offer, and why your product/service is the right solution for meeting their specific needs.

This lead is not ready to buy in any capacity. If you try to make the sale at this stage, you may alienate and lose them altogether. Instead, focus on warming the potential client up through high-level, informational content.

Warm Lead Definition

Warm leads are closer to converting because they have shown some interest in your product or service. They may have searched a business on Google that offers a comparable product or service or even visited your website. A warm lead may have also engaged with one of your social media posts or clicked a link in an email.

These types of leads are categorized as warm because they’ve already had some interaction with your product or service so they are at least acquainted with what your business offers. This means they are actively researching solutions and are looking to buy in the near future.

Hot Lead Definition

A hot lead often referred to as a qualified lead, is a lead that is very interested in what your company does and is ready to buy. This person has been to multiple sites, talked to people about their solutions, and has likely eliminated the competition.

It’s essential to recognize the buying signals for each lead type, so you’re prepared to move them along the customer journey.

Buying Signals for Lead Types

There are surefire buying signals you need to be keenly aware of to be an effective salesperson. Typically cold leads aren’t going to emit any buying signs, but there are ways to identify when a lead is cold.

How to Tell if You Have a Cold Lead

If you see a new lead on your dashboard and have nothing more than a name or an email, that’s a cold lead. These leads haven’t interacted with your company and don’t know about you or your service/product.

How to Tell if Your Lead Is Warming Up

You’ll start to notice a lead is warming up when you see them interact with your brand more. Maybe they fill out a form to download a PDF, or they sign up for a free trial of your software. At this point, they’re familiarizing themselves with your brand and deciding if you’re the right solution for them.

If you’re going to reach out to this person, it shouldn’t be to convince them to buy, but rather, to offer additional support if needed. As a sales representative, you need to show them that your company cares about how they use your services and wants to be the helping hand they need when they have questions.

At this point in the sales cycle, you still may not be sure whether the lead is qualified or not. Thankfully, there are questions you can ask to help determine where they are in the buying process.

How to Tell If My Lead Is Hot?

Only when a lead comes to you and asks about pricing, signing a contract, or getting started should you try and close them. You can nudge them in the right direction by asking them how their free trial went once it’s over,  but a lead isn’t truly a hot lead until they ask for concrete steps to move forward.

If you think you have a hot lead but aren’t sure, try a soft close. An example of this would be letting them know you have a deal going on but not asking them to purchase. Let them tell you they want to buy.

The Importance of Sales Lead Management

Sales lead management is the overall lead qualification process for a business. The flow a lead generally goes through is:

  1. Identified: A lead is recognized.
  2. Educated: A lead learns about your brand.
  3. Engaged: The lead has performed an action with your company.
  4. Qualified: The lead is qualified and is ready to purchase.
  5. Passed On To Sales: Sales has the lead and is closing it.

As a sales manager, you need to be clear about the sales process and determine the parameters for a lead’s temperature. Without setting clear guidelines and expectations, your sales team won’t know how to move a prospect through the temperatures and turn them into a hot lead.

By creating a winning lead strategy, you can expect to see your team more confident in their sales. They will also be more capable of closing deals and building long-lasting relationships with your new clients.

It is tough to look at those five stages and manually move leads around to serve them best. That’s why lead management software is a great choice to help classify a sales lead temperature.

Why You Should Use a Lead Management Software to Determine Sales Lead Temperature

A CRM can boost your sales by up to 29% and has proven to increase productivity by 34%. Getting the right lead management software helps you to warm leads up and increases the amount of time your sales team is selling rather than prospecting.

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Automatic Lead Tagging

A lead management software will automatically tag and filter your leads to show you the ones that need interaction with you. After setting up the parameters for a cold, warm, and hot lead, your sales team will save time by only focusing on the closest to-converting prospects.

Built-in Integrations

Lead management software is typically built with numerous integrations to make your daily life easier. These integrations can help warm up your leads by sending them relevant emails to inform and encourage them to keep interacting with your brand.

built-in integrations

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Superior Tracking Abilities

When it comes to understanding a lead’s temperature, don’t underestimate the importance of tracking your prospect’s actions. IP tracking will tell you when a prospect comes to your site, opens your emails, and what they end up doing with that information.

Knowing what they interact with and what they ignore will help you tailor your sales pitch to meet their unique needs.

Advanced Segmenting

Using filters helps to remove clutter in your dashboard. Filters and segments enable you to focus your efforts on leads that are inside your target audience.

You can filter data such as a company’s name, the business’s size, where their head office is, and how they initially found your business. From there, your lead management software will be able to automatically send targeted messages to help move prospects through the funnel.

Lead Qualification

Good lead management software helps you segment your leads and enables you to qualify leads. Knowing how to qualify a lead is a skill that all salespeople and marketers are constantly working to perfect. Don’t try to do it all yourself; allow the software to help make the process easier and more efficient.

Notifications

When you use the right lead system, you’ll automatically be notified when someone interacts with your site, indicating they are ready to buy. You no longer have to rely solely on identifying the signals yourself. You can trust your software to alert you of critical actions your prospects are taking.

To begin using an automated lead generating and nurturing system, request your free LeadBoxer trial today!

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determining ideal client profile

The Importance of Determining Your Ideal Client Profile

Lead Generation, lead hacking, Sales /

You’ve generated a new lead, now what? Conversions happen when your pipeline is filled with quality prospects that are in the market for your product. Determining which leads will turn into active accounts is an important first step in the sales cycle. Lead generation focuses on gathering potential customer contact information. Sales prospecting takes it a step further to convert leads into revenue. Setting aside time and other resources for these processes will help improve your sales conversion rates. The best way to start your customer pipeline is by outlining the ideal client profile as a way to guide your sales and marketing efforts.

Read on or “jump” ahead to these sections to learn more:

What Is an Ideal Client Profile?

Before you can begin planning, you need to understand what an ideal client looks like for your company. A client profile is a strategy that helps determine which prospects are most likely to convert. This information allows you to personalize marketing tactics and use appropriate resources to create conversions.

Your client profile is a fictional representation of your best sales leads based on research, past experiences, current leads, and your team’s resources. The goal of this outline is to help discover what your target audience should be.

This strategy is crucial for successful lead generation and sales prospecting efforts. The ideal client profile illustrates that not all generated leads align with your company goals.

Creating an Ideal Client Profile

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Creating an ideal client profile is an important step in taking your business development cycle to the next level. This requires research, time, and resources to properly determine your target prospects. Allowing your collected data to drive this process and maintaining flexibility are key factors in building an accurate client profile.

Conduct Research Based on Current Clients

Whether you have a developed sales pipeline or are just starting out, research is the most crucial step in the creation of this profile.

If your company is already well-established with a substantial customer database, start by identifying your top clients. Research and compile answers to the following questions:

  • What makes this account profitable?
  • How long has the account been active with your business?
  • Does this client provide constructive feedback on your services?
  • Do you provide a high return on investment (ROI) on the requested services for this account?

Next, analyze the data surrounding these businesses and their interactions with your company. Pay attention to the ways these customers are responding to your digital marketing tactics. Focus on their social media presence, website traffic, and responses to email campaigns.

After gaining an initial understanding of their role within your pipeline, set aside time to conduct client interviews. This will allow you to dig deeper into their actions while strengthening your relationship with these accounts.

Make sure to focus on gathering insight into the following:

  • The decision-making process for business transactions
  • Company data such as industry, budget, and location
  • Company goals and current challenges to their mission
  • Purchasing decisions for your product

Using these research tactics will help you gain a better understanding of the role your company plays in each customer’s continued success. This gives you tangible evidence of how your product is being used while enabling you to examine the various ways companies interact with your brand.

Research Prospects and Industry Trends

While analysis of your current customer relationships provides valuable insight as to how your services are used by existing customers, it’s equally important to gather data on prospects within your industry. This allows you to explore new brands and discover leads in your target audience.

Use sites like LinkedIn to investigate what experts are saying about your industry. Join social media groups and listen to webinars to keep up with current trends. Knowing the market and tracking how potential clients use social media helps you tailor your marketing tactics to effectively communicate with prospects.

Compile Your Data

The next step in creating the ideal client profile is compiling data and resources to build out the profile. This information will come from market trends, current customer data, and research on potential clients.

Use the following categories for your profile’s outline, and fill in the information based on your research:

  • Background and demographic information
  • Communication style
  • Company goals
  • Potential challenges your clients may face
  • Decision making and purchasing processes

This profile should be reviewed by your sales, marketing, and customer service departments. Consistent communication about the ideal client profile across internal departments will allow your sales team to stay focused on high-quality prospects.

Remaining Flexible With Ideal Client Profiles

Of course, you want to reach out to potential accounts that fit your ideal client profile. But you also want to remain open to going after prospects with minor differences.

The point of determining your ideal client is to help your teams engage with target audiences, and then convert that customer engagement into sales.

This tactic is extremely helpful in determining which leads are worth your time and those that don’t match your company’s goals. An examination of industry leads that don’t precisely fit your ideal client profile may inform your sales team and aid your attempts to expand the reach of your brand.

Ideal Client Profile vs. Customer Persona

ideal client profile vs customer persona

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An ideal client profile shows your model sales prospects, while a customer persona is the representation of that ideal buyer based on research and data.

The two terms sound similar but serve different functions in the process. A customer persona is a detailed analysis of the employees who make sales decisions, not the company itself. This encompasses the different buying patterns seen in the profile of your ideal client.

Companies may have multiple personas. While there are specific roles you will interact with to land a sale, each employee will have a different personality. This varies depending on who your sales team interacts with and the challenges each of these employees face in their day-to-day work.

These personas help your business interact more effectively with leads. Your marketing tactics can be tailored to fit the different roles each of these personas encompass.

For example, you may interact with a “by the book” salesperson, rather than someone who is open to nontraditional pitches.  Doing this allows you to shift messaging across departments as needed to show how your product can be beneficial for a range of account types.

The Links Between Ideal Client Profile and Customer Persona

A solid client profile and a well-defined customer persona can work together to inform your decisions on which leads and prospects you should pursue. Your ideal client profile focuses on identifying prime targets, and your customer persona helps find the best points for communication.

Think of it as your ideal client profile doing the front-end of the cycle by identifying qualified leads and generating prospects. Then, the customer persona continues the process by targeting messaging and communication efforts to the right audience.

Ideal Client Profiles and Account Based Marketing

traditional marketing vs account based marketing

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Account based marketing is a strategy that allows sales and marketing teams to collaborate to target potential accounts for high conversion rates. This allows companies to spend resources on the leads that are most likely to generate revenue.

Your ideal client profile plays a major role in account-based marketing strategies. If you understand your target audience, you’ll be able to successfully communicate the ways in which your product can specifically help each prospect.

Account based marketing strays away from the one-size-fits-all messaging. Instead, it allows businesses to emphasize the parts of their services that will benefit individual companies.

Using the description detailed in your profile, your sales team gains a deep understanding of which leads will most likely be interested in your product. From there, your marketing team will be able to research and target the correct audience.

With a firm understanding of the role, your company plays in your ideal client profile’s business model, account based marketing strategies allow for personalized messaging. Potential customers will be shown the benefits of your product through multiple channels.

Using Your Ideal Client Profile

There is a large amount of work that goes into creating a completed profile. To maximize the return on your efforts, proper implementation of the profile goes a long way.

Target leads with high conversion potential. This profile gives an outline of the ideal client that will be most interested in becoming a buyer. Your sales team should use this data for lead generation and prospect cultivation.

Use the information from your profile to guide the content coming from your marketing team. Develop keywords that highlight the main aspects of the ideal client profile. Use consistent themes that speak to a company’s needs.

Make adjustments to your outlines as the market changes or your business grows. The best part about this strategy is the opportunity for growth as your company discovers new leads.

Continuously research current and potential clients, keep up with industry trends, and tailor your ideal client profile as needed. Also you can learn about creating sales urgency to help.

By devoting time to reach out to potential customers who fit this profile, your conversion rates will improve.

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A Complete Guide to Thought Leadership + 6 Ways to Drive Sales Using It

Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Sales /

What ultimately determines whether a customer buys from you or a competitor? Is it the price of your product or service, its features, or your return policy? While all those things factor into a person’s decision, studies show that your brand’s thought leadership is just as important.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what thought leadership is and why it drives sales. We’ll also dig into actionable, data-backed strategies for how you can cultivate thought leadership. As a result, you’ll be able to attract and qualify a constant stream of leads for your sales team.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

What is Thought Leadership?

A person or brand is said to possess thought leadership when they are seen as an expert in their field. However, a thought leader isn’t just knowledgeable about their industry—they are also the figures who blaze new trails. Research that determines more effective industry techniques and solutions often comes from such experts.

Consider these thought leadership examples:

  • If you are looking for the latest search engine optimization tactics, your first impulse might be to check the blog of Neil Patel, an online marketing guru.
  • Top-tier copywriters looking to brush up their skills would likely read the Copyhackers blog or buy a course from them.
  • Hikers and campers looking to purchase a new mattress pad might consult a comparison guide on REI’s blog before hitting the “add to cart” button.

By disseminating high-quality advice free of charge, these thought leaders engender a feeling of trust in their audience. That confidence increases the likelihood that a potential customer will purchase a product or service from them instead of a competitor.

There’s plenty of data to back this up. The 2019 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study found that 55% of decision-makers use thought leadership as a way to vet potential vendors before agreeing to work with them.

The same study found that interest in thought leadership is growing. Between 2018 and 2019, the percent of decision-makers who spend an hour or more a week reading thought leadership content grew by eight points.

It is clear that thought leadership is a crucial element of any marketing and sales strategy. Fortunately, cultivating it is relatively low-tech and relies on knowledge and skills you likely already have.

6 Ways to Increase Sales with Thought Leadership

For best results, employ all of these strategies to become a thought leader and leverage your status.

  • Create Educational Content for Ideal Customers

Thought leadership is often synonymous with content creation. For example, the three experts highlighted in the previous section—Neil Patel, Copyhackers, and REI—all have a robust blog where much of their advice lives.

However, these leaders don’t just publish what they think is most important to talk about in their field. They anticipate potential customers’ questions and answer them. This shows that you are in tune with prospects’ needs and are capable of supplying the solution on demand.

Creating content not only fosters thought leadership but also doubles as a way to qualify leads for your sales team. Once you have a repository of content, you can then track the behavior of people visiting your site. This data will help you zero in on the most promising prospects.

LeadBoxer is a tool that identifies visitors to your site and analyzes the actions they take while there. You can see what content they’re engaging with, the duration of their engagement, and the frequency of actions.

mail tracking data

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In addition to showing your sales team who they should get in touch with, this information reveals what problems a potential customer needs to solve. This allows sales reps to prepare answers to possible questions that might arise during outreach.

Creating thought leadership content that anticipates and answers questions for ideal customers both drives sales and makes your sales reps’ jobs easier. Prospects will be more informed about your industry and product or service, while reps will know who to reach out to and what talking points to use.

  • Conduct Research or Publish Case Studies

When it comes to creating content, thought leaders don’t just rehash what others have already said. They put out studies and research that create new viewpoints for their industry.

You don’t need to have a huge budget or poll thousands of people to accomplish this. In fact, case studies about your existing clients are a solid way to build thought leadership.

Consider Copyhackers, a brand that provides education about copywriting. The company’s blog features case studies that use data to back up claims about the effectiveness of certain techniques. For instance, take a look at the opening of this article:

case studies from Copyhackers

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By claiming a 108% lift in revenue, Copyhackers-founder Joanna Wiebe instills confidence in the three featured copywriting principles. Results like that sell your brand without you having to make a more obvious pitch.

  • Contribute Content to Media Outlets

In addition to putting out your own blog posts, try to create content for other sites. This helps build awareness for your brand and shows potential customers that other industry leaders value your insight.

There are two different types of media outlets you can write for. The first is a mainstream outlet, such as Forbes, Business Insider, or Fast Company. Prospects will immediately know and trust these high-profile sites and magazines.

The second type you can contribute to is a niche outlet. Research which brands are the leading publishers of content in your field. For example, companies looking to increase their clout in the field of digital marketing might try to write for the HubSpot Marketing Blog or the Moz Blog.

  • Give Talks About Your Field

Like writing for media outlets, being involved in digital or in-person events can raise your brand’s profile. This could be something as simple as leading a free webinar or participating in a conference.

  • Turn Your Sales Reps Into Experts

Thought leadership content is often written or delivered by your company’s C-level executives. This helps potential customers connect to the human side of your brand. However, it’s vital that all of your employees are just as knowledgeable about your product and industry as your C-level executives. After all, customers will spend most if not all of their time working with your sales and customer service teams.

Picture these two different scenarios:

  • A prospective customer asks a sales rep a question about your product, and the rep refers them to a piece of content in your knowledge base.
  • A prospect asks a question, and the rep is able to easily answer it in real-time (though perhaps sending them content for future reference).

Which would you rather experience as a potential customer? Chances are, you would be more likely to buy from a company where the reps can answer your questions right off the bat. This knowledgeability demonstrates a company-wide passion for quality.

  • Be Strategic in Your Self-Plugs

While thought leadership content is a sales tool, it should be able to stand on its own as a free service. Cluttering articles with plugs for your brand is a quick way to turn off potential customers. People instinctively know when they are being sold to, and might tune out anything that comes after.

However, that doesn’t mean you should never pitch your product or service. The key is to be intentional about how you do it.

For example, readers of a long-form piece of content likely won’t mind one or two natural segues into a description of how you can help. Those who are actively searching for a product to solve a problem will be even more appreciative of the information.

Case studies are great because they organically tout your brand without you ever having to make a pitch. Readers should reach the end of the piece impressed with your results, so much so that reaching out to you with their problems is a no-brainer.

Get More Sales with Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is simply the process of putting your expertise on display. This is critical for building trust with your prospective customers and ensuring they choose you over your competitors. The majority of decision-makers consult thought leadership content when determining who to give their business to.

Publishing guides or case studies and participating in public conversations are all ways of demonstrating your knowledge. Combining this content with a tool like LeadBoxer lets you qualify leads on autopilot.

Perhaps most important to remember is that the best thought leaders are passionate about education. They find joy and value in creating informative content that, on its own, can make peoples’ lives better. Potential customers can sense that dedication and will feel endeared by it.

Already have plenty of thought leadership content and looking for a way to make it work harder for you? Take LeadBoxer for a spin and see how it can transform your blog into a lead generation tool. Get a free two-week trial and try out LeadBoxer today.

A Complete Guide to Thought Leadership + 6 Ways to Drive Sales Using It Read More »

how to use intent data to drive sales

How to Use Intent Data to Drive Sales

Lead Generation, Sales /

If your sales team isn’t leveraging intent data when researching prospects, then you can assume there’s a huge leak in your pipeline. When it comes to identifying accounts with the highest likelihood of doing business with your company, intent data is the most important tool at your disposal. It also gives you a head start on your competitors.

This guide covers what intent data is, why it’s more valuable than other types of business-to-business (B2B) data, and step-by-step instructions for how to use it in your business. In no time, you can shore up your sales pipeline and maximize your output while minimizing your effort.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

What is Intent Data?

Intent data tells you whether or not an individual or account is actively seeking the kind of solution your company provides. It’s derived from things like:

  • Recently searched topics or keywords
  • Ads clicked on
  • How prospects are using social media
  • News about the company such as job changes, new investors, or new owners

Vendors gather intent data by tracking cookies and IP addresses. With intent data at your fingertips, you can figure out who might benefit from your product before they come across your brand. This can give you a head start over competitors when identifying accounts worth reaching out to.

We previously published a detailed guide on the different types of intent data and the best software for finding it. Check it out here.

Why Intent Data is More Valuable Than Other Types of Data

In addition to intent data, sales teams often rely on a few other types of B2B data during the sales process:

  • Firmographic Data: Firmographics are for companies as demographics are for people. This data describes a business’s name, how many employees it has, its location, revenue, etc.
  • Contact Data: These are the details that help you reach a particular individual within a company, like their name, phone number, email address, social media profiles, and job title.
  • Technographic Data: This tells you what software a business is already using, but it can’t necessarily tell you how often employees use it or how long the company has had a particular tool.
  • Engagement Data: Engagement describes things like how often an account is visiting your website, what links they’re clicking in your email marketing, and how long they stay on a particular page.
  • Prioritization Data: This is when you analyze all the data described above—usually with the help of artificial intelligence—and rank prospects according to how likely they are to buy. A lead score is a common example of prioritization data.

All of this data is useful. But without intent data, you’re not getting an accurate picture of which accounts are most worth your time. It’s like finishing a puzzle but missing the most important piece.

For example, your lead intelligence software might highlight an account that fits your ideal customer profile and has high engagement with your brand. What it’s not seeing is that the individual visiting your site is researching market trends or thinking about making a career change in your industry.

What Intent Data Shows

Intent data shows whether that account is actually interested in buying your product or if they’re just passing through. This prevents sales reps from wasting their time on uninterested contacts.

Intent data is also more valuable because it brings your brand to someone’s attention earlier in their buyer journey.

Your sales team might not start collecting other types of data—especially engagement data—until after someone visits your website for the first time. However, that prospect may have been researching your competitors long before ever coming across your brand. Intent data finds your ideal customers even if they don’t know who you are yet so your reps can contact them first.

How to Leverage Intent Data to Drive Sales

  • Use a Third-Party Intent Data Vendor

A third-party intent data vendor lets you see what topics and keywords accounts are searching for across thousands of sites. This gives your sales reps insight into who is potentially looking for a product or service you provide before they ever land on your page.

Popular third-party intent data vendors include Bombora and Aberdeen. With Aberdeen, you can integrate the software with Salesforce so companies expressing intent appear on the dashboard.

aberdeen intent for salesforce

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According to research from Insights For Professionals, 99 percent of businesses are using some form of intent data, so it’s crucial that your sales reps have every advantage when reaching out to accounts. Aberdeen’s alerts give them that edge.

There are some downsides to using third-party intent data. Vendors are limited by the number of sites and topics they monitor. They also can’t give context for someone’s searches.

If you aren’t using an automated pop-up as the one Aberdeen provides, there’s the chance that the data you find will be too old to act on.

  • Track Anonymous First-Party Behavior

Anonymous visitors to your site are also prospects who are early in their buyer journey. They haven’t yet filled out a lead generation form or signed up for your email list, but they are viewing pages and consuming your brand’s content.

You can identify some of these accounts for free by digging into your Google Analytics. Simply access the Network Report within the dashboard, assuming you already have Google Analytics connected to your site.

google site visitors tracking

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To access the report, begin by logging into your Google Analytics account. Click ‘Technology’ under the ‘Audience’ header, then click ‘Network’.

Adjust the data range as needed. This will show you some of the major ISPs visiting your site.

However, software like LeadBoxer takes this a step further and identifies individuals and their contact info, not just their ISP—all without requiring them to fill out a lead generation form.

leadboxer 360 view identification

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With this info, a rep can ring up a prospect and start chatting with them about some of the topics they might be interested in.

  • Analyze Context

It’s important for reps to know whether a company is undergoing job changes, gaining investors, or being bought by another business. All this news provides crucial context that can add or take away weight from your intent data.

sales updates dsk

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great source for some of this context. It sends you alerts about what’s going on at a company, like job changes. At a starting price of $65 per month, it’s accessible for most professionals.

EverString is another tool that gives you a 360-view of a prospect’s current situation. Not only does it track news about companies, but it also monitors 20,000 different intent signals. With a starting price of $820 per month, this solution is better for enterprise-level businesses.

  • Prioritize Accounts

Intent data on its own can’t tell you who is most worth your reps’ time. You need to analyze the data along with the company’s firmographics and other details. The software can make sense of all this data and create a ranking system or visual that makes it easy for sales pros to select their next contact.

LeadBoxer’s solution is its lead scoring tool. You decide which factors are most important when determining a lead score, then LeadBoxer crunches the numbers to calculate it.

LeadBoxer’s leadscoring tool to score intent

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A result is a number up to 100 that illustrates how likely a prospect is to buy. The higher the number, the more likely you can close a deal with them.

Reps know at a glance exactly who they need to get in contact with. This saves them time so they can devote more individualized attention to qualified prospects.

  • Personalize Your Messaging

If you’ve used the right tools and done your job well, you know what products or solutions prospects are looking for and if they’re the right fit for your business. Using all the data at your disposal, sales pros should reach out to contacts with content tailored to their needs and interests.

Nothing beats the human touch. When you use intent data to zero in on the most qualified accounts, sales reps have more time and energy to speak with contacts directly instead of sending them a templated email. Your prospects are sure to notice the difference.

Exceed Your Sales Goals With Intent Data

Leveraging intent data isn’t just about increasing the speed and efficiency of your sales team. It’s also essential for providing the highest quality experience to your potential customers. With intent data, you can anticipate their questions and provide customized content, which helps build confidence in your business.

With 99% of survey respondents claiming they already use intent data, you can’t afford to sleep on this sales strategy. If your competitors aren’t already using it in some way, they will be soon. Fortunately, several solutions work seamlessly with your existing software.

Looking for an all-in-one tool that gathers intent data as well as other types of B2B data, then analyzes it to generate a lead score? That’s where LeadBoxer can help.

LeadBoxer works out of the box and is intuitive enough that your team can test it out without much training. Get started today with a free trial.

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B2B Lead Generation: Customer Journey Map

Lead Generation /

Business to business lead generation is one of the most essential parts of the sales cycle. Utilizing all resources at your disposal will help generate and convert your leads into sales. A crucial part of successful lead generation is the customer journey map.

Not only will customer journey mapping help contribute to successful lead management, but it will also help to improve your overall customer experience. B2B companies rely on customer experience for conversion rates. These strategies will help increase these rates, as well as contribute to customer satisfaction.

Overall, the successful implementation of these strategies and maps will create strong relationships with customers. This will also improve your marketing focus and accomplish your business goals. This article will cover the best practices for B2B lead generation.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

Distinguishing Between B2B and B2C Customers

b2b vs b2c: marketing and sales comparison

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There are two major types of business models, Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C). While both of these are centered around sales, each includes different customer journey stages.

In short, B2C companies sell directly to consumers, while B2B companies sell to other businesses. While it seems like B2C would involve more direct interaction with people, B2B sales often involve multiple people throughout the sales cycle. It is important to remember you are not selling to the company, but rather the people who work there.

Because of these differences, the customer journey maps for B2B and B2C businesses follow separate outlines. For B2B companies, the buying cycle can take 1-3 months and 80% of these cycles include up to six people.

The Basics of a Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer cycle from start to finish. This strategy takes into account the entirety of a customer, including pains, emotional needs, and actions. By mapping out all of these factors, B2B companies are able to better understand their target demographic and create meaningful relationships with their leads.

The ideal customer journey map looks at the complete lifecycle from the introduction to any post-sale support services, including the engagement that occurs in between. While each one will look different for unique leads, there are a few customer journey mapping tools all will include based on universal experiences.

Common Elements for Customer Journey Maps

  • Persona: A profile of the brand and its client groups.
  • Touchpoints: All possible client interactions with your brand. These may include advertising, social media, direct communication, and purchases.
  • Moments of truth: Information regarding which touchpoints impact a customer.
  • Performance Indicators: Anything that evaluates how customers are responding to touchpoints.
  • Visuals: Typically, this is either a linear or cyclical illustration of the customer cycle.

Creating The Customer Journey Map

Once you understand the concept of the map, you can begin creating for each of your customers. Begin with the prep work and go through the process one step at a time. These maps won’t seem like a huge undertaking if you have a plan of attack.

Set your objective. Determine what you want to get out of the map to make sure you are including the correct information. Clear objectives will guarantee that the map is beneficial to your sales process.

Next, define the persona and determine the touchpoints. These parts will be crucial in generating your B2B leads. Finish mapping by identifying the performance indicators. Choose ways to best identify how the customer is interacting with your brand and learn about creating sales urgency.

What is Lead Management?

Before you can start successfully using your customer journey maps, understanding lead management will ensure the conversion of leads to sales. Simply put, lead management is the process of managing throughout the buying journey.

The Lead Management Cycle

Lead management goes through five major steps to help create conversions.

  • The Lead capture: determining leads and preparing them for the cycle
  • Lead qualification: scoring the lead to find out how sales-ready it is
  • The Lead nurturing: helping push leads from expressing interest to purchasing
  • Lead routing: handing off the leads that are sales-ready
  • Lead reporting: closing the gap between marketing and sales

Important Elements of B2B Lead Management

B2B sales involve a lot of moving parts. It is important to keep track of everything in the beginning stages to have a high conversion rate later on in the cycle.

Lead management involves identifying the people in the process, including your internal team and the contacts of your leads. Determine your internal processes as well. Make sure to decide upon a centralized lead qualification process, as well as have passive marketing content ready for the early stages.

Avoid the common mistakes where lead management can fall short. For example, don’t pass off qualified leads unless they meet all of the agreed-upon criteria. Use cross-marketing for all of your lead nurturing. Make sure to view your lead management through the customer lens.

Using Your Customer Journey Maps

b2b journey mapping

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Creating the map is the first step to making the most out of this sales strategy. Ideally, you will have a customer journey map for each lead. The main objective of this strategy is to properly nurture your leads to convert into sales, as well as improve the overall customer experience.

These should help with introductions, creating brand awareness, and successful education of your product to leads.

Introduction to Your Lead and Starting a Conversation

Using your gathered information, plan the introduction of your brand to the lead. This is the first part of your customer’s journey with your brand, and first impressions really matter. Determine the best first touch and be sure to document all of the following interactions.

From this point, the goal will be to build your relationship while allowing passive content (social media and paid advertising) to further educate the lead about your product.

This tactic successfully combines your customer journey map with your brand’s marketing strategy. It’s been found that laying out this plan can increase marketing to sales conversions by 25%.

Getting to Know Your Lead

Once the conversation has begun, the customer journey map plays a role in better understanding the target customer. The data collected by your map provides crucial insights into how your customer behaves and the motivations behind their actions.

To move from a lead to a qualified lead, multiple touches must happen. By being able to place these touchpoints into a specific section on the map, you can begin to see underlying needs and patterns within the customer.

This data is important for providing an excellent customer service experience. Imagine, you’re able to have an in-depth understanding of your lead’s actions. This allows you to predict their movements, choose the best times to reach out, and provide solutions to problems for them.

Customer satisfaction is key to having repeat purchases. Being able to identify the needs of a lead and provide solutions with your product will help create a meaningful relationship that benefits both sides.

Collecting Data and Measuring Conversions

collecting data and measuring conversions

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Customer journey maps do more than just provide the framework for your actions. These plans allow you to collect data and analyze it to continually improve your sales process.

These maps allow you to track the channels incoming leads originate in. By having this information, your company is able to see which tactics are worth focusing on and which areas need improvement to create engagement.

Data also allows you to trace the path each lead took before converting to a qualified lead. You will be able to see if they responded to a LinkedIn message, interacted with an Instagram post, or visited your website through a search.

By including these paths as they occur in your map, you can begin to understand the customer and utilize this information to best generate new leads. Keeping track of this data allows you to keep an eye on changing trends, so you can shift your focus to channels that provide the most engagement.

Generating New Leads and Discovering Generation Channels

A completed customer journey map provides a clear view of all the possible generation channels. Usually, undiscovered generation channels may get passed over or lumped together with existing ones. By having this map, you won’t miss any opportunities to generate leads.

Along with discovering new channels, these maps may help you generate new leads by providing new touches. All of this can be measured through your data, so you can fully understand what is the best way to create conversions and grow your customer base.

The Importance of the Customer Journey Map

Overall, this strategy should play a prominent role in B2B sales, account based selling, and marketing strategy. From the initial prep work and research of a lead to closing the deal, this map will be there to guide and collect data.

Start as soon as you capture a lead, and continue using the map throughout the customer journey stages. This will ensure that your leads are following the path to conversion.

B2B Lead Generation: Customer Journey Map Read More »

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Using Lead Nurturing Email Content to Boost the Buyer’s Journey

Email, Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing /

This article will discuss how the buying cycle and content mapping can guide your lead nurturing strategies to ensure that the customer journey is effortless. This article also includes a few examples of email nurturing content that can help boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, convert leads into sales, and help your company understand the impact of content on the buying journey.

Read on or “jump” ahead to these sections to learn more:

Content Mapping and the Buyer’s Journey Guide Lead Nurturing Strategy

Creating lead nurturing campaigns has become one of the most successful ways to transform leads into sales. Both B2B and B2C companies are familiar with the strategy. And 35% of marketers have some sort of strategy currently in place. More than that 50% of companies who have one or more successful lead nurturing campaigns have created more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost than those without lead nurturing strategies.

lead nurturing strategy

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Over 55% of marketers have said that email campaigns drive the highest ROI of any of their other lead nurturing platforms. As such, email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for converting leads to sales, advertising, and leveraging insights to boost the customer journey experience. Using lead nurturing email content can help your brand convert leads into sales, ensuring that customers have the most personalized and helpful customer journey content.

the buying cycle diagram

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  • The Buyer’s Journey

The Buying Cycle makes up the broad stages of a customer journey. Personalizing your lead nurturing content to a given customer means ensuring that they are targeted with the most useful product or service options. The Buyer’s Journey represents each step in the process of a potential customer becoming a repeat buyer. The buyer’s journey, also known as the customer journey, is comprised of three core steps that a potential buyer may follow:

  1.  Awareness
  2.  Evaluation or Consideration
  3.  Purchase

As the buyer moves through these three steps, your brand must also supplement the buyer’s journey with email nurturing content. This kind of content is crucial for the success and follow-through of a sale from a particular buyer. And therefore, requires careful consideration and planning. Leadboxer’s platform offers a variety of tools that can aid in lead generation, and gather insights so that your company can create the most effective content for each lead.

  • Content Mapping

Content Mapping is one strategy that ensures that your brand is creating the most relevant, effective content for your target audience. The kind of content that is created for a particular content map relies on the sales cycle of your own company, as well as that of your industry. It is also crucial to create buyer personas so that your strategy is well-informed of what your clients needs.

creating buyer personas

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Defining and redefining your target audience, and aligning this audience with the correct buyer persona is crucial to ensure a successful email nurturing campaign. Creating a variety of content assets that differs from competitive brands is one sure-fire way to stand out among current and potential customers. Fostering a customer-driven mentality throughout the brand exhibits consistency and trust with customers who feel they have derived value from your brand’s content and relationship.

Aligning an Email Nurturing Campaign with the Buyer’s Journey

Targeted, customizable, and valuable email campaigns provide a high return on investment (ROI) for inbound marketing tactics. The ultimate goal of email nurturing or lead nurturing through email campaigns is to build trust with customers.

The benefits of email lead nurturing campaigns from a logistical standpoint are that while they do require planning and prepared execution, these kinds of campaigns are ultra-targeted, automated, and timely. Creating unique content for each stage of the buyer’s journey is an email campaign strategy to carry out lead nurturing that converts prospective buyers into customers.

  • Stage One: Customer Awareness of Your Brand

During the awareness stage, the focus of your lead nurturing content should be on providing information about the customer’s problems, not on your brand’s solution to those problems. Providing information that educates a potential buyer about their problem begins to foster trust in the customer and sends the message that your brand is not just simply looking for another source of business.

Certain kinds of informational content are most appropriate for this stage in the buyer’s journey, and once a client has expressed awareness and interest in learning more, your brand can begin its lead nurturing email campaign. Below is a list of some potential types of content that are appropriate for the awareness stage:

  • Informational emails: These emails serve to give customers more information about the brand. They should provide information about certain potential problems that a customer might have, based on buyer personas, and other demographics.
  • Demo Videos, social media, and tip sheets or checklists: Visual cues are crucial for any kind of marketing campaign, and can be especially useful for giving information to customers who are previewing many different products or services. Quick informational facts and product information can be compiled into a comprehensive video, infographic, or social media post.

  • Stage Two: Evaluation, Deeper Exploration, and Consideration

At this stage, a customer has identified their interest in your brand. And has possibly reached out to the sales team, marketing team, or has otherwise expressed a deeper interest in exploring your product offerings. This is the time to begin advertising your brand’s products and services. But most importantly, specifying how your products can address that customer’s pain points.

Creating lead nurturing content at this stage of the buying cycle is crucial. Because it can determine whether a customer will follow through and convert into a sale, or take their business elsewhere. The goal of this kind of content is to highlight the usefulness of your brand’s products and offerings. The more that a customer values their relationship with their brand, the better the customer journey, encouraging sales conversions from prospective leads.

Having compiled various types of content now is the time to offer more in-depth content that provides a comprehensive look at how your products or services would solve the customer’s pain points. Some appropriate content might include:

  • Educational Webinars, e-Books, and blog posts: In-depth and long-form content are effective for providing information about how your brand’s products or services can solve the customer’s pain points. Webinars provide space for customers to take in your products and services at their own pace and reach out with questions. While e-books and blog articles can offer more tailored information about specific topics, customer testimonials, and your brand’s insight into various industry problems.
  • Case studies and Whitepapers: Case studies and whitepapers are effective forms of content for customers who are looking for more data-driven and technical information about your brand’s services and products. Case studies can act as in-depth testimonials and consistently rank as one of the most effective marketing strategies. Using case studies as a unique pillar page to tie in other kinds of content builds customer trust and education.

  • Stage Three: Purchase and Sale Conversion

During the final stage in the buyer’s journey, customers are ready to take the next step and commit to a brand’s offerings and products to aid in solving their pain points. The content that is most effective at this stage requires the lead to take action and your brand should have already provided information about the lead’s problem. And how your company can best solve that issue.

That being said, there is still a variety of content that can solidify a sale in this final stage. Effective content at this stage can include:

  • A free Trial or Live Demo: Providing these kinds of interactive content is crucial to showing the customer that your product or service is going to solve their problem. Showing the lead that your brand is the best fit for them is important. A customer is more likely to invest long term when they know a product works well for them.
  • Consultation or Estimate: Gives the lead an idea of how your services would fit into their budget and company overall and should be used to educate the customer to the fullest about their situation. And help them come to a decision.
  • Coupon or Product Reviews: Past product reviews can act as “recommendations” from past customers who have experienced similar issues and may provide the lead with the needed proof that your company is the solution to their problems. Coupons or a discount on a certain product or service are another way to demonstrate to the customer that your brand cares about helping them with their problem, rather than just treating them as another sale.

All of these different types of content can and should be used in your lead nurturing email campaigns. By providing potential clients with a variety of content at each stage of the buying cycle, a qualified lead is nurtured from beginning to end and is more likely to lead to a sale.

Making sure that the right kind of content is reaching customers at the right time is important to ensure that customers don’t feel overwhelmed or spammed with content that is not useful. LeadBoxer’s platform can help you create the most effective content for boosting the buyer’s journey. For additional information, contact LeadBoxer for a free demo.

Using Lead Nurturing Email Content to Boost the Buyer’s Journey Read More »

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What is IPv6 and Why Does it Matter?

Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing /

Don’t be scared of the technical jargon surrounding Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). If lead generation is a major component of your company’s marketing plan, then learning about the latest version of the Internet is a must.

Once you understand what IPv6 is, why it’s important to your business, and how to leverage it, you’ll be able to identify and nurture prospects more effectively and responsibly than you currently do. To learn more, read on or jump ahead to these sections:

What is IPv6?

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), which is the system for identifying and connecting devices across the Internet. In essence, your device’s IP address is a series of numbers that tell the Internet where to send emails, articles or other content you want to access.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) started developing IPv6 in 1998 in preparation for the inevitable exhaustion of IP addresses provided by Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). Under IPv4, IP addresses are only 32 bits. A typical IPv4 address looks like this:

typical IPv4 address

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There are only about 4 billion possible 32-bit IP addresses available, a limit the world has long since hit. To accommodate the growing number of devices connecting to the Internet, IP addresses created by IPv6 are 128 bits. A typical IPv6 address looks like this:

typical IPv6 address

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With IPv6, there are approximately 3.4×1038 addresses available, or 340 undecillion addresses. Simply put, the world will never run out of IP addresses under IPv6.

Pros and Cons of IPv6 for Your Business

Hypothetically, IPv6 addresses can make it easier for marketing and sales teams to track and nurture leads. In reality, there are a few technical factors that complicate matters.

  • Pro: Better At Identifying Individual Devices

IPv6 addresses are potentially capable of acting as an identifier for each connected device on the planet, which would allow marketers to refine their targeting.

With IPv4, addresses typically describe a group of devices that share a network. For example, a laptop, tablet, mobile phone, and connected TV that belong to a family might be assigned a single IPv4 address. If there are multiple people within that household, marketers are limited in how well they can target a particular individual across devices.

With IPv6, the nearly infinite number of addresses theoretically makes it possible to assign a unique address to each device. Marketers could then associate an address with an individual as opposed to a household, thus making it easier to target that person whether they’re on their phone or laptop. Not only could this help increase conversion rates and customer experiences, but it could also make analytics more accurate.

While this sounds great in theory, there are a few considerations.

  • Con: Less Stable Tracking Technique

Not every device currently uses IPv6. In fact, IPv4 and IPv6 will likely be in use simultaneously for many years.

As of January 2021, only about 33% of people around the world who access Google have an IPv6 address. In the U.S., IPv6 adoption is just above 44%.

IPv6 adoption stats in USA

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This can create confusion for marketers. For example, a tablet within a household might have an IPv6 address while other devices connected to the same network might share an IPv4 address. To marketers, this would make it appear as though those devices came from two different households.

  • Con: Privacy Issues

Since IPv6 addresses can describe a unique device, you could make the argument that they can identify an individual better than IPv4 addresses. This would classify IPv6 addresses as personal information under privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

IP addresses were never meant to be a tool for marketers or advertisers, which is why the GDPR regulates how companies can use them. However, as you’ll later see, there are ways to leverage IPv6’s benefits while respecting your customers’ privacy.

How to Take Advantage of IPv6 in Your Business

Don’t let IPv6’s shortcomings prevent you from leveraging this new technology. With the right software and strategies, you can identify individual leads and determine how likely they are to buy from your business.

  • Use an IPv6 Tracker

There are countless tools out there that help you gather data about leads so you can better target and nurture them. For example, you could collect info about prospects through a sign-up form like this one:

sign-up form to collect info about prospects

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The data would then be sent to your lead intelligence software or customer relationship management (CRM) tool for your marketing and sales teams to review. With this knowledge in hand, employees have a better idea of who might be interested in your company’s product or service.

But what if a visitor to your site doesn’t fill out a form? This doesn’t mean they aren’t a good lead for your business. It also doesn’t prevent you from figuring out who are they or how to contact them.

Lead intelligence software like LeadBoxer can track and do reverse lookups on IPv6 addresses. You can see who is visiting your site, what company they work for, and even what their contact info is, all based on their IP address.

track IPv6 addresses with Leadboxer

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Best of all, this capability works right out of the box, so you can start capturing lead data on autopilot.

  • Create Personalized Customer Experiences

Want to make a stellar first impression? Tailor your website so that it’s even more relevant to prospective customers. You can do this by optimizing pages with content that automatically adjusts based on a visitor’s IP address.

This doesn’t require a ton of leg work or crafting personalized pages from scratch. Consider this example from Quicksprout:

Quicksprout personalized pages

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A single element within the copy changes depending upon the visitor’s geographic location. In this case, it’s Corpus Christi. This small detail instantly catches the user’s eye and increases the likelihood that they’ll answer the call to action.

  • Assess “Hot” Prospects

Leadscoring is the process of assigning a prospect a number between one and 100. The number reflects how likely the lead is to buy from your company. The higher the number, the better the prospect. This saves your sales team time by showing them who they should focus their attention on.

Tracking leads via IP addresses can increase the accuracy of a lead score. When you track a particular address, it’s easy to know which pages a prospect has visited or how much time they’ve spent on your site, which is essential for calculating a lead score.

LeadBoxer’s leadscoring tool

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LeadBoxer’s leadscoring tool is completely customizable. You decide which factors are most relevant to your team and how much weight they carry.

  • Update Your Privacy Statement

If you intend to use IP addresses in your lead generation efforts, there are a few legal considerations to keep in mind. In order to be GDPR compliant, companies must include a privacy policy on their website that states:

  • What type of information the site collects
  • Why this data is collected
  • How it’s processed, like where it’s stored and for how long
  • What steps you take to keep the info secure

There should also be clear, easy-to-follow instructions for visitors who want their personal information removed or not collected in the first place.

If you use lead intelligence software like LeadBoxer, you’ll need to add a disclosure about the product. Click here for paragraphs that you can copy and paste into your privacy policy.

For a more in-depth look at how to be GDPR compliant, check out this guide.

  • Mask IP Addresses

If you don’t want to disclose the use of LeadBoxer in your privacy policy, you can always enable IP address masking within the software. This feature keeps IPv4 and IPv6 addresses anonymous in the sense that the software won’t record the addresses onto a disk and store them. However, LeadBoxer can continue to identify companies, geographic locations, and other generic data points and be GDPR compliant.

IP masking with LeadBoxer is easy. Simply go to the datasets overview, click the settings icon, then tick the box labeled Enable Ip Masking.

IP address masking with Leadboxer

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IP masking with LeadBoxer

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Final Thoughts: Start Leveraging IPv6 Now

Of all the technological advancements that affect marketing and sales teams, IPv6 is perhaps the most important one to understand and prepare for. Adoption is ongoing and IPv6 will likely never be surpassed in our lifetime. In other words, resistance is futile.

Fortunately, there are several advantages to using IP addresses in your business. Tracking IPv6 addresses can give you a detailed picture of who is visiting your site and how engaged they are as a prospect. There are also several lead intelligence tools, such as LeadBoxer, that are already equipped with IPv6 address-monitoring capabilities.

There are some downsides to IPv6, such as privacy infringement. LeadBoxer has an answer for that, too. The IP masking feature makes it easy to stay GDPR-compliant, all without sacrificing any of the benefits of address-tracking, like identifying companies or geographic location.

Want to see for yourself? Get in touch with LeadBoxer and start a free trial today.

What is IPv6 and Why Does it Matter? Read More »

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Outlook Email Tracking Plugin: Customer Data Integration (CDI)

Email, Tools /

Tracking the online behavior of customers and prospects is becoming increasingly important. This helps to understand who’s visiting a website, why they’re there, and how the organization can contact them. While understanding website behavior is vital, tracking emails is also essential. That is where an email tracking plugin comes into play. These tools can attach to a user’s email provider and track who opens a message, when they do so, and much more. LeadBoxer is happy to introduce their new, sophisticated Outlook email tracking plugin. Before giving it a try, it is important to understand how it works and the benefits it provides for organizations.

Keep reading, or use the following links to “jump” ahead:

How Does the Outlook Email Tracking Add-In Work?

The LeadBoxer Outlook plugin is a feature that gives organizations better control of their email management process.

LeadBoxer outlook plugin

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The picture above is an example of how the tracking details appear in an Outlook account. The user can clearly see what email was opened, the time it was seen, and how many people viewed it.

This advanced tool can easily be downloaded to an Outlook account, giving instant access for improving lead generation efforts. That is not all; this sophisticated plugin also provides the following:

  • Link Tracking

Aside from tracking who opens emails and when the LeadBoxer Outlook plugin also tracks link behavior. The tool understands what links are clicked on, allowing a business to learn more about its customers or prospects.

When an email link is clicked, users of the plugin are able to see which exact link was chosen. This may help to paint a clearer picture of the customer’s needs.

  • Auto-On or Off Capabilities

Users may wish to employ the Outlook email tracking plugin only at certain times. Luckily, this advanced tool allows teams to do this with ease.

Users can simply switch the plugin on or off, giving them complete control. Users can also schedule the add-in feature to automatically turn on or off at set times. This customization is very convenient and can make an organization much more efficient.

  • Automatic Lead Scoring

While the Outlook plugin brings many benefits, it also effectively integrates with Leadboxer’s other valuable tools. When a customer or prospect opens an email, LeadBoxer will determine if that user is a qualified lead. If they are, LeadBoxer will give them a lead score.

This Outlook email tracking add-in helps sales teams understand more about their customers and where they are in the sales funnel. It can help organizations learn more about the user’s interests, making it possible to strategically target prospects for further engagement.

  • Website Activity

Those who integrate this plugin also have the ability to see the website behavior of their email users. When someone clicks on an email link, it will take them to the organization’s website. This advanced tool then tracks everything the user does on the site, providing many valuable insights.

What is even more beneficial is that LeadBoxer will remember the website and email behavior over long periods of time.

For example, let’s say someone clicks on an email link and looks at a few site pages. Years later, they go to that same website for more browsing. LeadBoxer will remember every detail of the online behavior from both instances.

The lead generation platform will then use those valuable insights to determine qualified leads and understand more about customers. If a user ever returns back to the same website, LeadBoxer will track every move. This can provide extremely valuable analytics to help power lead generation efforts.

Email Tracking Pixel

This Outlook plugin solution is all made possible thanks to something called an email tracking pixel. To learn more about how these can help lead generation efforts, read this post from LeadBoxer: How to Use an Email Tracking Pixel to Identify Sales Leads.

A tracking pixel usually comes in the form of a 1 pixel-by-1 pixel transparent image. This is then placed in the header, body, or footer of an email. When an email that contains the image is opened, the tracking pixel will load.

After the email has been seen, a message is sent to the server that indicates the action taken by the recipient. This is exactly how the process works for the LeadBoxer Outlook add-in. When the plugin is integrated, these tracking pixels are placed in every single email sent to customers.

how email open tracking works

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Benefits of Email Tracking

While estimates show there are currently 3.9 billion daily email users worldwide, having an effective email marketing strategy is imperative. As technology has advanced greatly over the years, email tracking services are becoming more popular.

Here are a few benefits of utilizing an email tracking solution:

  • Provides Context

Email tracking provides users with many insights regarding their customers and prospects. These can be used to boost outreach efforts and cater to the specific needs of the user. Learning which emails are opened, what’s clicked on, and how the user maneuvers around a site can provide tons of useful insights.

One example of this involves a customer that opens up an email multiple times in one day. In this case, the organization may reach out to this user to see if they need any assistance. Chances are, they may be highly interested in buying a product or learning more.

  • Saves Time

Some email users get annoyed if a business continues to send them emails, even if they have never opened up a single one. Email tracking allows organizations to better understand how successful their emails really are.

If a recipient did not open up the first, chances are they will not view the follow-up emails. When email tracking is used, businesses can make smarter decisions about who should be on their email list. These details can also help businesses determine if changes should be made in their email development process.

  • Team Benefits

The LeadBoxer Outlook plugin allows teams to work smarter than they ever have before. Instead of blindly sending emails to potential customers, this tool helps specify the best prospects to target.

A team within an organization may spend countless resources trying to reach potential customers. When they are unsuccessful, it can be difficult to understand the best course of action moving forward.

When email tracking software is integrated within a team, it provides more clarity on the success or failure of the group’s email strategy. If there is room for improvement, changes can be made to gain better results.

How Email Tracking Impacts Lead Generation

Lead generation is a hot topic for businesses around the globe. However, many businesses struggle to have the right strategy in place. That’s when leads drop and profits shrink.

Email tracking is geared towards powering lead generation efforts. It does this by providing valuable data for organizations to make faster and smarter decisions.

The LeadBoxer Outlook plugin offers a wide variety of details once a customer or prospect opens up an email.

detailed metrics of leadboxer outlook plugin

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Once a user opens up an email, details will then be displayed, similar to the graphic shown above. The information populated may include:

With all of this data at the fingertips of the user, targeting customers or prospects becomes that much easier. Businesses can use these detailed metrics to build ads, adjust marketing campaigns, and execute lead generation strategies.

  • Unlimited Emails

While some email tracking solutions limit the number of emails that can be tracked, that is not the case with LeadBoxer. Its Outlook plugin enables users to utilize this feature on each and every email they send. This means ample opportunities to gain more leads.

  • Unlimited Users

LeadBoxer’s email tracking Outlook solution provides users with an unlimited number of accounts. Whether an organization has two employees or two hundred, each and every person can utilize this plugin. This feature can also help drive more leads.

Installing the Outlook Plugin

LeadBoxer has made it extremely easy to integrate their email tracking plugin into an Outlook account.

To take advantage of this feature, be sure to follow these steps:

  1. Open Outlook, then download and install the add-in
  2. Restart the Outlook app, then click on the setting symbol
  3. Find your LeadBoxer dataset ID, then copy and paste it into the field that populates

Note: This number can be found in your signup email

how to integrate email tracking plugin into outlook

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Next, compose an email as you normally would, then click on the track email icon located near the top of the screen.

how to enable email tracking in outlook

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While LeadBoxer offers an exceptional email tracking plugin, they also provide many other incredible tools to help organizations succeed. Schedule a demo with LeadBoxer today to find the high-quality leads that drive business growth.

Outlook Email Tracking Plugin: Customer Data Integration (CDI) Read More »

Customer Engagement Strategies for Millennials

Lead Engagement, Lead Nurturing /

Most organizations strive to engage with their customers at a high level. However, engagement with the right audience at the right time can be difficult to achieve. When assessing who to target in your lead generation efforts, it’s important to find the right demographic best suited for your offerings. While an organization may target a wide variety of people, Millennials are currently a common demographic to approach. In order to effectively develop and cultivate leads, it’s best to understand a few key customer engagement strategies for Millennials.

Keep reading or use the following links to “jump” ahead:

Customer Engagement Strategies for Millennials

When comparing millennials to other generations like Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z, there are many differences to consider.

Millennials operate very differently when making purchase decisions. For example, a Baby Boomer may call a retailer while a Millennial would rather surf the web before calling. Due to the constant changes in how this demographic operates, it’s vital to stay updated on the following customer engagement strategies to boost engagement and generate leads.

Complete a Marketplace Analysis

To effectively target Millennials, it’s important to understand how this audience behaves. The first step in learning more about this demographic involves completing a marketplace analysis.

  • What is Marketplace Analysis?

A marketplace analysis dives deeper into the behaviors and patterns of a target audience. Additionally, it involves an assessment of the industry, competitors, and other market variables. The process involves the following three elements:

  • Customer Analysis: Understanding more about the needs and wants of the customer in order to provide relevant offerings.
  • Competitors Analysis: Reviewing competitors to see how your organization can improve.
  • Partner Analysis: Understanding how partners or suppliers help to achieve goals.

As the visual below demonstrates, there are several factors used to complete an effective marketplace analysis. The process involves both internal and external elements.

effective marketplace analysis

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By completing a marketplace analysis, organizations can better understand the buyer landscape for Millennials. However, effectual customer engagement strategies for Millennials rely on the ability to appeal to this generation by understanding the typical buyer journey of this audience.

Understand the Modern B2B Buyer Journey

It turns out that more and more Millennials are making key B2B buying decisions. In fact, a 2018 survey showed that 13% of Millennials are decision-makers in B2B purchasing. The same survey showed that 28% of them help to influence purchasing decisions within their organizations.

As these numbers are relatively low, we expect those percentages to continue to grow. We learned in 2015 that Millennials are now considered the largest generation in the workforce, passing Boomers.

So, what’s the best forward-thinking approach to increase engagement with Millennials and create more leads? It involves understanding more about the modern B2B buyer journey.

The Millennial buyer journey looks different compared to other generations. According to HIPB2B, 86% of millennials prefer to not engage with sales until the middle of the buying process. Additionally, 67% of the buyer’s journey is now completed in a digital format.

Those statistics show that Millennials will review your website and content before making a purchase decision. Other generations may make a decision much sooner in the process.

  • Privacy

As Millennials enjoy browsing through a website until they decide to make a purchase decision, they don’t like to be pressured. If they open your emails or download something on your site, experts suggest not calling them right away.

While calling them may sound like the most practical decision for your lead generation efforts, it can make them feel pressured. Millennials prefer to stay behind a screen. It’s best to be patient and focus on a lead-nurturing approach.

cell phone habits graphic

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As the graphic demonstrates, Millennials are far more inclined to text rather than call. As you’re looking to increase customer engagement with this demographic, these findings are important to consider.

  • Sending Nurture Messages

Instead of pressing this generation into a phone call, sending lead nurturing messages is encouraged. Some common types of nurture messages include:

  • An introduction or greeting
  • Information about a product or service
  • Directions
  • Call-to-action
  • Availability hours

While GenXers and Boomers may prefer to speak with a sales agent about a product or service, Millennials prefer doing research on their own before making a call.

Know Where Millennials Go for Information

Another customer engagement strategy for millennials involves finding where they get their information. It’s vital to understand how they operate online and what information they use to make purchase decisions.

Millennials use some of the less traditional B2B sources to find their info. According to MarketingSherpa, 38% of Millennials rely on industry analysis when making decisions about what B2B products/services to purchase or recommend to others. 36% rely on in-person meetings with vendors, while 33% of Millennials gather information from a vendor’s website.

  • Building Trust

Why do you think Millennials rely on an industry analysis when making B2B purchase decisions? For the most part, it involves trust.

Industry-analysis content gives your brand third-party validation that creates trust in the eyes of the buyer. If a Millennial is able to see that you’re a reputable brand in the industry, they are more likely to become a high-quality lead.

Provide a Bargain

As every adult today has lived through some type of great recession or depression, we all understand the value of a dollar. In fact, the majority of generations are still experiencing the impact of the 2008 recession.

That could point to the fact that Millennials are constantly looking for a good deal. According to MediaPost, 48% of Millennials used online coupons in 2016. That was more than both Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.

While Millennials may not be using their own budget when buying something, these B2B buyers are still bargain shoppers.

To cultivate as many leads as possible, it’s encouraged to send out coupons to your entire audience. As everyone enjoys saving money, providing coupons can be a driving force for increasing conversion for your Millennial shoppers.

Properly Segment Content

Another smart tactic is to ensure your content is segmented effectively. Content segmentation involves positioning your website to effectively convert visitors into buyers. Due to how differently Millennials operate online, it’s important to know which content segmentation strategies work best for this demographic.

The process starts by first assessing what you see working for each age group. Through A/B testing and optimization, organizations can determine what types of content these audiences enjoy. Following that step, you’ll then want to target those generational demographics based on your findings.

As the graphic below indicates, four key areas must be understood to properly segment content. Given how different age groups are more responsive to specific types of content, understanding the proper segmentation process can allow you to make smarter, more relevant decisions with your messaging.

market segmentation graphic

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Develop Personalized Mobile Messaging

According to The Future of Customer Engagement and Experience, personalized mobile messaging is what drives conversions. These messages are more relevant when received via text, and these messages receive higher open rates compared to other mobile marketing tactics. Furthermore, mobile messaging boosts customer loyalty.

While mobile messaging is a driving force for millennials, it also provides these benefits for retailers:

  • SMS works on any device and any network
  • Requires no apps to download
  • Relatively inexpensive
  • Easy to implement
  • Safe and secure
  • A simple source of communication
  • Cost-effective

With the abundance of digital services available today, it’s easy for retailers to start mobile engagement strategies to boost lead generation. Areas such as shipping and account alerts are easy places to start. From there, an organization may choose to promote personalized marketing offers or even a loyalty program.

Another part of your personalized mobile engagement strategy could include two-way communications with customer service, personalized shopping assistance, and surveys and polls that operate in real-time.

  • Intelligent Notification Platforms

Organizations may choose to utilize intelligent notification platforms in their mobile messaging strategy. These are used to improve service quality for the customer. Without it, users may receive the wrong messages on the wrong devices.

These platforms help to ensure the following:

  • Messages reach the right user on the right device
  • Messages align with objectives
  • Interactions are private, safe, and secure
  • Messaging is reliable
  • Interactions build customer loyalty
  • Messaging increases engagement

Utilize Data Resources

Understanding more about Millennials involves understanding more about the data at your disposal. Luckily, there are many avenues to find valuable data insights regarding how the Millennial audience behaves online.

Today, it’s even possible to get near-real-time anonymized mobile data aggregated from millions of mobile users from across the world.

To provide the most relevant and timely messaging, you should leverage internal and external data sources and intelligent notification platforms as well as account based selling if it fits. This can ensure your organization has the most relevant, valuable data to drive your lead cultivation efforts. It can also ensure the right content is delivered to the right audience at the right time.

Boosting customer engagement with Millennials involves utilizing high-quality lead management software. Contact LeadBoxer today to learn more about its sophisticated lead and customer data platform.

Customer Engagement Strategies for Millennials Read More »

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Customer Data Security: What You Need to Know and How LeadBoxer Does it Better

Data-Driven analysis, Tools /

“We guarantee 100% privacy. Your information will not be shared.” All businesses pursuing leads through emails try to reassure their clients of the security of their email services. However, customer data security is not only different from data privacy. It’s also more complex as it involves the collection and processing of data along with its protection from unauthorized sources.

Read on to learn about data collection and customer data security, why they are necessary, and how LeadBoxer is helping you keep your customers’ data secure or “jump ahead” to the following subtopics:

data privacy vs securitySource

Lead Generation and Data Collection

Lead generation is an integral part of the sales process, and identifying quality leads is important. LeadBoxer has been using data-driven lead qualification for a number of years.

By collecting and analyzing tracking data from websites and emails, platforms such as LeadBoxer help you generate, identify, and follow up on promising leads by providing you with an individual lead score. This method of quantifying makes it much easier for you to evaluate the quality of leads.

Modern email marketing is automated with the help of tools that can be integrated with major platforms such as Gmail and Outlook. Tools such as a tracking pixel may be used to uncover data on who has opened your emails, or clicked on a link, or started drafting a reply.

email marketing statistics on customersSource

Some popular email tracking plugins compatible with Outlook include those provided by HubSpot, ContactMonkey, SalesHandy, and Bananatag. LeadBoxer has integrated a new Outlook email tracking add-in to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your lead generation process.

Data may also be collected via other means, such as social media profiles, particularly LinkedIn. Intent data, including topic data and context data, is a useful up-and-coming indicator of a potential lead. Leads generally respond favorably to the first ones to approach them in a timely manner. That’s why LeadBoxer’s data collection and analysis tools are built for speed.

While data is not infallible, it highlights major trends and subsets in your potential leads. It also showcases which parts of your service are being more frequently used, which calls to action (CTAs) are working well, and which marketing strategies are most productive. In the modern, data-driven world, lead generation is more reliant on data collection than ever before.

With highly detailed data being collected on an unprecedented scale, customer data security is more important now than ever before.

layers of protection from ADP

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What is Customer Data Security and Why is it Necessary?

Customer data security is the process of securing data against all forms of unauthorized access and corruption. This is done using a variety of techniques, including encryption, secure cloud storage, designated channels for data transfer, and more. In the case of email security, databases containing email tracking and other information are secured to prevent data breaches.

facts about cyber security and vulnerability

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When a client hears the word “tracking”’ or approves of their data being collected and used by a business, they worry that their sensitive information might fall into the wrong hands. That’s because data can be misused in many ways.

If email data is made public, phishing and spamming agencies will begin harassing clients. Potentially even widening the data breach. Multiple online accounts can be compromised, intellectual property can be stolen or misappropriated. Or worse, data can be sold to the darker sides of society.

In order to prevent a data breach—which would lead to these scenarios—data security is necessary.

When talking about the importance of customer data security, trust is another aspect to consider. The entire sales process is based on building brand awareness and trust. A breach of security would cause a breach of trust, greatly hampering your brand image. In a study conducted by IBM in 2018, 78% of respondents in the US said a company’s ability to keep their data private was “extremely important.” You can also read about brand persona more.

Lastly, leaked data may be used by competitors in order to steal your clients, reversing all your hard work. Needless to say, data security is critical to the success of a data-reliant lead generation system.

Where Do Businesses Go Wrong?

  • Not Keeping Track of Access Permissions

Instances of multiple access permissions can cause confusion within an organization. In cases where employee turnover is high, former employees may still have access to data. All databases should be strictly monitored to reconfirm who has access. Access redundancy should be eliminated.

  • Not Being Aware of Internal Threats

In many cases, internal stakeholders may “betray” the company by initiating a data leak. It is important for an organization to assess and monitor those potential threats to customer data security. It is also important to educate all internal stakeholders about safe operating procedures, ensuring the security of emails, and the importance of keeping company and client data secure.

  • Not Knowing How to Respond to a Data Breach

Many organizations do not have the knowledge or experience to effectively react to a data breach. This aggravates the issue: it leaves data compromised for a longer period of time. And encourages data thieves to expose much more data than would normally be possible, painting the organization in a poor light.

In the event of a data breach:

  • Identify the source and the extent of the breach. When you have a proper security log, this task and improving security for the future will become easier.
  • Alert your breach task force so they begin work on containing the breach.
  • Test to ensure that the temporary fix is completely secure, and implement the fix on any similarly vulnerable systems.
  • Inform all concerned authorities and affected customers of the breach. Make sure you have complied with all applicable laws in this regard.
  • Work to recover customer trust and reduce the economic impact of the breach.

  • Not Accounting for Physical Factors

Software is not the only risk factor for data security. Companies should make sure that all hardware is protected against risks such as side-channel and Trojan attacks. They should further ensure that hardware is protected against environmental and physical hazards, to prevent data loss and corruption.

  • Not Caring or Knowing Enough About Customer Data Security

Hackers and others with malicious intent often pick out “easy” targets for attacks. When an organization doesn’t put in proper safeguards to protect customer data security, there may be backdoors into your network. Remove them as soon as possible.

Organizations should routinely scan all systems for malware that may create such weaknesses, and remove them. They should also routinely check for improper configurations and corrupted files that may create weaknesses in your network. It is also important to educate employees so that user errors are kept to a minimum.

Organizations with poor data security make themselves more vulnerable to multiple/consecutive attacks. Because hackers are more aware of the weaknesses in the system, and how to exploit them.

What are Good Personal Data Security Practices?

  • Maintaining Strong Passwords

Weak passwords are hackable, providing those with malicious intent an entry into the system. A strong password should include lowercase and uppercase letters, at least one numeral, and at least one permissible special character. Take care not to repeat passwords (often). If you have a poor memory or too many passwords, use a password manager.

  • Educate Yourself (and Others)

Make sure to know the best customer data security practices, to use them. And to help others in your professional network, particularly colleagues, with the process. It will help you and your organization.

  • Be Conscientious

Integrate good data practices into your daily life! Use a virtual private network (VPN) when possible. Don’t share secure data without checking for HTTPS or a security certificate. Don’t share sensitive information over public networks. And don’t leave yourself logged in to online accounts.

How LeadBoxer is Keeping Client Data Secure

  • GDPR Compliance

LeadBoxer understands the potential risks of a data breach, and endeavors to keep your clients’ data secure. In accordance with this ideal, LeadBoxer’s lead generation process is fully GDPR compliant. GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is a regulation agreed upon by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission. It applies to all companies who market to—and therefore collect the data of—citizens of the European Union, irrespective of where the company is based.

GDPR infographic on one year of work

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The regulation is stringent, ensuring that companies are transparent in their data privacy policies, and do their best to maintain data security. According to a 2018 survey by DMA, 62% of UK respondents felt more comfortable sharing their data once these laws were in place. General public response to the regulation is positive, and LeadBoxer’s compliance reflects a commitment to data and email security.

  • Privacy Policy

LeadBoxer’s privacy policy is GDPR-compliant and highly transparent. Steps we take to ensure the security of all data, irrespective of origin, or function. While data security and privacy are not the same, LeadBoxer is striving to ensure that data security and data privacy are both ironclads.

LeadBoxer provides a digitally secure, automated solution for data-based lead generation. Security of emails ensures that you are getting genuine clients and that your clients are protected. Alongside providing a secure system for your sales team, LeadBoxer is committed to maintaining customer data security and email security for you and your prospects.

Customer Data Security: What You Need to Know and How LeadBoxer Does it Better Read More »

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How to Implement a Customer Engagement Strategy With Customer Engagement Trends

Lead Engagement, Lead Generation /

When comparing interest in customer engagement over the last 15 years we see a steady increase in search volume. It’s no wonder, with software companies constantly looking for new ways to view and use data to improve customer engagement strategies and customer experience.

We want to help guide professionals through this ever-changing journey. That is why we put together these trends and strategy tips to help improve your company’s customer engagement strategy through the use of emerging technologies.

Read on or jump ahead to a section:

What Is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is the process of interacting with your customers through the use of different channels and mediums. By connecting with your clients this way you’re strengthening and improving your relationship with them.

Most companies consider the starting point for the customer engagement process as the first interaction a potential customer has had with your business. The process continues even after you have made a sale.

Social media tends to be one of the most popular ways for brands to directly interact with their customers. When done right, it has great benefits. In fact, 71% of people who have a good experience with a brand on social media are likely to refer others to that business.

One way companies continue to create personalized engagement is through conversation in the comments section of social media ads and posts. Companies that do this offer a unique and engaging experience for their customer base, making them more likely to buy from them in the future.

The 4 Types of Customer Engagement Levels

There are four distinct types of customer engagement levels every company should be aware of before crafting their customer engagement strategy.

1. Contextual Engagement

When you do not have any context in your advertising efforts, any engagement you try ends up turning into noise customers tune out.

Contextual engagement means interacting with your customers at the optimal time in the way they want to be communicated with. We can do this through the use of analytic technology that assists your teams in understanding your customers’ behaviors.

A lead generation and management software can help you identify demographic information such as IP addresses, filled out forms, and other website engagements, giving you the context you need to interact with them effectively.

customer engagement
customer engagement

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For example, in this photo, we can see the engagement potential clients had with the site. From this, we can engage them with the content they are already interested in.

If LeadBoxer were a potential lead of ours, we would see Eddie engage with us on Twitter, but Wart likes to read our emails. To reach each of them effectively, we would send Eddie a direct message on Twitter and Wart an email.

These are examples of how we use contextual engagement to interact with our customers based on the information we have about them. By focusing on the individual client’s behaviors we can achieve a more personalized customer journey and offer an unmatched experience.

2. Engagement of Convenience

Engagement of convenience is any type of interaction that increases convenience for your customers and allows the company’s software to better understand each customer’s needs. Put simply, it’s when a customer can easily engage with your business through simple channels. Consumers engage with you because it’s easy for them to do so.

An example of this is Amazon’s  “one-click” purchase option where purchasing preferences such as payment and shipping address are pre-saved and speed up the purchasing process. Because of the convenience, more people shop with Amazon even if it ends up costing them more.

If you sell products online, implementing this level of customer engagement in your strategy could help you convert leads quicker and make it more likely for them to come back to you.

3. Emotional Engagement

With 95% of buyer decisions happening unconsciously, it is important to consider the emotional reaction of customers. Emotional connections have traditionally been marketed through brand color schemes or imaging. However, consumer awareness has evolved, making it necessary for companies to engage with consumers in a more personalized way.

Utilizing software that tracks an increasing number of data points means increased awareness of each customer’s ideal environment for making buying decisions such as when to buy and how often they should purchase.

By using an emotional engagement data manager, you can create more accurate buyer personas. You can even identify the point where leads are most likely to convert and become long-term customers.

Some of the more advanced software will send you emails when a lead is likely to convert so you can jump on it right away.

customer activities
customer activities

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4. Social Engagement

Social engagement is the real-time advocacy of your company.

And social media is where people go to get information, real-time reviews, and customer testimonials for your business. It is easy for your customers to leave reviews online for others to see.

You must make sure your customers have a good experience with your brand to avoid negative reviews. Being vigilant about your customer experience also helps you avoid losing customers due to a negative experience. It is also important to respond to customers in a  polite, helpful manner.

Having positive social engagement is essential for a business to be successful. When you have positive endorsements online, say from influencers, you’re more likely to have a positive online identity.

Understanding how the different types of customer engagement levels help your business will guide you to create an effective customer relationship marketing strategy.

The first must-use customer engagement marketing trend you need to be a part of is using a customer relations management platform (CRM) that profiles your customers. CRM software enables the profiling of your customers and provides an enhanced understanding of your customer engagement levels.

lead-management-platform

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A good CRM can even tell you how often a customer would like to be engaged and when they would like to be engaged, helping you do better with contextual engagement.

The second must-have in your marketing strategy is a strong mobile-first strategy. Almost half of all online shopping is done using a mobile device. You can’t get away with having a site that looks great on the desktop but does not work on mobile devices. It is imperative for you to have a well-functioning, mobile-friendly website.

The third customer engagement strategy you need to implement is becoming extremely personalized in your marketing messages. Use the potential customer’s name in the subject line or intro in your email campaigns. 82% of marketers have seen an increase in open rates when they use personalization in their campaigns.

It’s simple to set up personalization, especially with email campaigns, and there’s no reason not to include it. You can even extend personalization into any type of advertisement, such as tracking which products people look at on your site, and then serving ads to them later featuring those products.

The last customer engagement strategy you must include is SMS/text messaging. Text messaging open rates are at a whopping 98% compared to just 20% of email marketing. If you are not including an SMS strategy in your plan, you are missing out.

Now that you understand what the emerging trends for 2021 and beyond are, let’s get into how to use these to build an effective customer engagement strategy.

How to Develop & Implement a Customer Engagement Strategy

With up to two-thirds of a company’s profits relying on customer engagement, it’s imperative to create a customer engagement strategy and implement it early. Follow these steps to create your customer engagement strategy:

  1. Define your customer journey map. You have to understand who your ideal customer is and where they are likely to shop.
  2. Identify interaction points—where and how are your customers are engaging with you.
  3. Setup engagement where people want to be engaged. If you post on social media all the time but no one ever comments, you are wasting your efforts. You need to find new channels for customer engagement.
  4. View behavior in real-time. See what your customers are doing as they’re interacting with you, and give them the content that’s most important to them.
  5. Offer personal service. Give each customer a unique and personalized experience.
  6. Watch conversions and non-conversions to see where people are converting and where they drop off to improve the experience.
  7. Take feedback. Ask people how they felt while interacting with your brand and make changes when needed.

Implement Your Customer Engagement Strategy Today

Now that you understand the current customer engagement marketing trends and the steps you need to take to get started, it is time to create and implement your customer engagement strategy. Be sure to check out this helpful guide to help you build a top lead generation strategy.

Are you serious about getting your strategy launched today? Check out LeadBoxer’s website to schedule a free demo.

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lead generation versus prospecting

Lead Generation Versus Prospecting: Similarities and Differences

Lead Generation /

You may believe that closing a sale is the most essential part of the sales journey. However, how that journey begins is equally important. It begins with identifying potential customers—the people who are most likely to convert into a sale. Leads are another very important element in the sales process. Although leads and prospects have some similarities, there are many differences to consider. Understanding these variances can help you achieve more success in your sales efforts – lead generation versus prospecting is what we’re going to cover.

Keep reading or use the following links to navigate to different sections:

Sales Prospecting Definition

Sales prospecting is the process of finding, initiating, and developing new business. It involves a wide variety of tactics for targeting potential customers. At a critical stage of the sales funnel, the goal of sales prospecting is to convert prospects into revenue-generating clients.

One of the fundamental elements of prospecting involves finding potential customers who are best suited for your offerings. This process involves understanding the challenges this audience is facing, then finding solutions to those needs.

Essential Sales Prospecting Elements

Sales prospecting techniques and tactics can vary from one organization to the next, but there are some key components to consider.

  • Ideal Client Profile with Elasticity

Developing an ideal client profile is essential in your sales prospecting efforts. This step involves conducting research into defining your ideal customer. Then, you develop a profile that lists out each of those characteristics.

While it’s vital to build a profile of your ideal client, it’s best to build one with some elasticity. In the podcast Sales Reinvented, The Key to Successful Lead Generation and Prospecting, Bill McCormick asserts, “You’ll want to build an ideal client profile with some elasticity. Don’t be so rigid in your profile that you don’t look outside of it.”

Of course, you want to target prospects who fit your ideal profile, but giving it some flexibility is the smartest tactic. This can lead to developing more prospects, which could eventually result in more sales.

ideal customer profile

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The visual above is an example of an ideal client profile. As you can see, the customer is described using the following characteristics:

  • Values, goals, wants
  • Fears
  • Success
  • Pain
  • Objections
  • Failure

By asking these questions regarding this specific person, organizations and sales professionals can gain insights into whom to target. Knowing this information can lead to making better, more informed decisions in the sales process.

Social Selling

Social selling has become an important component of sales prospecting. It involves leveraging your social network to find highly qualified prospects. This is achieved by building relationships and making social connections.

To have a better understanding of social selling, there are four key pillars to consider:

  • Build a professional brand
  • Focus on the right prospects
  • Use insights for engagement
  • Develop trusted relationships

A professional brand shows trust. As buyers are selective with the brands they choose, you must position your organization in a professional light.

When it comes to engaging with prospects, you want to be seen as an expert in the industry. Be sure to share relevant industry content with your followers, comment on news alerts, and stay engaged with users.

As 62% of B2B buyers respond to salespeople that connect with relevant insights and opportunities, relevancy and engagement are essential.

  • The Power of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the leading channels for your social selling efforts. As it’s essentially known as “the social media for business professionals,” it’s a great place for sales prospecting.

Currently, there are nearly 700 million active users on LinkedIn. This platform is used by business professionals and organizations across the globe that provide many potential prospects.

LinkedIn is a leading destination for social selling for the following reasons:

  • User-friendly platform
  • Very popular
  • Many useful features
  • Paid media available
  • Simple messaging

Social selling is also an effective tool for authentically nurturing a prospect. It is a way to show value to the potential customer and position you as a reputable force in your industry.

nurturing a prospect in linkedin

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According to the information on the graphic above, LinkedIn has a huge impact on sales prospecting and buyer decisions. If you’re looking to boost your social selling efforts, LinkedIn is a great place to start.

“Ditch the Pitch”

A sales pitch has always been a key aspect of any sales process. However, Ben McCormick from the Sales Reinvented podcast urges sales professionals to “ditch the pitch.”

“We have to develop ways we are providing value and insight at every turn so we can nurture someone along,” Ben adds.

Instead of leading with the pitch, you want to focus on nurturing and adding value through every phase of the cycle.

  • Selling from the Heart

Authenticity is a big factor when trying to close a deal. After all, customers want to trust you and believe your product or service is what they need. That said, you want to focus on how to authentically nurture relationships with prospects.

As you want to move prospects along in the sales funnel, show them you genuinely care. Give them valuable information and insights wherever they are in the sales journey. Remember to never be pushy, don’t pitch right away, and focus more on the conversation.

“Don’t think in terms of closing a sale. You don’t want commission breath. Think in terms of having a conversation,” Bill McCormick adds.

Lead Generation Definition

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers to obtain their contact information. The goal is to find effective ways to make someone interested in your products or services. If they do become interested and provide contact information, that’s when they become a lead.

While sales prospecting and lead generation do have some similarities, Ben McCormick from the Sales Reinvented podcast points out some clear differences.

“I see a lead like they’re at the top of the funnel. They aren’t yet qualified, and they may even not be a part of the sales process. But a prospect is someone who is already qualified,” Ben notes.

“All prospects are leads, but not all leads are prospects,” he adds.

As 60% of marketing professionals say lead generation is a key pain point for their business, understanding its key elements is essential.

Key Components of Lead Generation

Finding highly qualified leads is a vital part of the sales process. Using various techniques and tactics, organizations have developed very specific steps for their lead generation efforts. While this process can vary from one organization to another, there are some key components to understand about generating leads.

  • It Happens Early in the Process

Bill McCormick points out that lead generation happens in the beginning stages of the sales journey. However, rather than prospecting, lead generation is all about lead qualification.

The process involves quickly assessing an ideal client profile to decide if that person will move to the prospecting stage. Once a prospect, further research is needed to nurture these potential customers through the sales funnel.

  • Profile of High-Value Lead

Similar to sales prospecting, successful lead generation efforts begin with developing an ideal client profile. However, as you want to convert leads with the most value, it’s best to build a profile of a high-value, ideal customer.

Once you design this client profile, it can help you determine which leads to moving forward and which leads to discarding. Once these leads are generated, the next essential component involves deciding if these leads can become prospects.

Lead Qualification

Lead qualification is an important element of lead generation. Although many organizations have different tactics, lead qualification involves the characteristics that qualify someone to become a lead.

This process is completed by capturing client information using the following resources:

  • Site views
  • Website behavior
  • Email subscriptions
  • Email tracking
  • Social media

lead qualification map

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As seen in the graphic above, the lead qualification phase is a vital part of the sales funnel. This step is when a business decides to move on with a lead, or discard them altogether. If a lead isn’t interested at the time, they can swing back to the marketing phase where further nurturing occurs.

Targeting and Nurturing Leads Authentically

Just like in sales prospecting, authenticity goes a long way in lead generation. After all, no one likes a pushy, insincere salesperson.

As persuasion is a fundamental element of a sales job, there is a way to persuade in an authentic manner. This is done by providing value and useful insights through natural conversation with the customer.

  • Don’t Rush the Process

Ben McCormick from the podcast also mentions how sales prospecting and lead generation should never be rushed. “Timing is everything,” he notes.

“If we focus on valuable and insightful conversations, the sales will come when the time is right,” Ben adds.

While sales prospecting and lead generation involve many elements, data and analytics are what powers these efforts. LeadBoxer is a platform that assists in collecting and mining data to properly identify high-quality sales leads.

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social selling best practices

Social Selling Index Best Practices

Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Sales /

Does your business do social selling? And no, we’re not talking about social media marketing. Are your salespeople developing meaningful online relationships with prospects?

If you rely on cold-calling and sending spam emails then you’re at a disadvantage. Your customers want to interact with and buy from a person, not a company. Such kind of selling creates beneficial relationships between businesses and customers.

In this article, we explore social selling and how it has revolutionized the B2B market. We also explore the social selling index and what a positive score can mean for lead generation and meeting sales quotas. Read on or jump ahead to the sections listed below:

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is the use of social media to find, engage, and nurture leads. It is different from social media marketing which seeks to increase brand awareness. It sets your business up as a trustworthy industry leader.

Salespeople who do this kind of selling become the source of information and solutions to their prospects’ problems. They rise to the top of their prospects’ minds and are most likely to get the lead’s business.

social selling sales model

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How to Start a Selling Business Through Social Selling

The first step in setting up successful social selling is creating social media profiles. A professional LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, and Facebook business page are all essential foundations. Ideally, each salesperson will have a social media account tied to your business.

The next step includes finding and socially listening to your prospects. Once you find qualified prospects, identify their unique problems to make it easier for you to offer customized solutions. Below are some ways you can use Facebook and Twitter to identify and begin having interactions with prospects:

  • Facebook

With a Facebook Business Page, social selling salespeople can flaunt their expertise and professionalism while showing some of their personality. After creating your business page, connect with current followers, and reach out to other businesses for social selling success.

You can engage followers by publishing open-ended questions and responding to customer posts and comments. Rapport also happens when you like and share customer posts. Publishing an ebook, report, infographic, or white paper on Facebook, based on customer feedback, also promotes engagement.

You can set yourself apart from other salespeople by sharing, liking, and commenting on the posts of other businesses. When you engage with other companies on Facebook, they will likely return the favor through reciprocal engagement. When businesses engage with your brand, your name will be shown to their followers. This expands your prospect pool.

LeadBoxer Facebook Page Example

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  • Twitter

Twitter Lists are a great way to find and organize sales prospects. These lists help you keep track of which leads get what content. Sharing targeted information with prospects will move them along the sales funnel quicker.

Here are some examples of lists salespeople should create and update regularly:

  • Existing customers
  • Leads
  • Competitors
  • Twitter lists

Social Selling Best Practices

Social selling relationships that are cultivated correctly will be more successful. Due to your sales team’s diligent and consistent efforts, your business will be positioned as the best solution in the minds of current and potential customers. As a perceived industry leader, these best practices will increase your sales conversion rates:

  • Be Human

Robots are impersonal and don’t engage prospects. While there are automated liking and commenting tools to save you time, they don’t build rapport with leads. Automation robots can actually damage your brand’s reputation and customer relationships.

Show up instead! Prospects will more likely trust, interact with, and make purchasing decisions when feeling they have made an authentic connection with a real person. Do this through friendly professionalism.

You can share your personable approach to sales through your professional social media profiles. Optimizing your profiles through titles, job functions, and industry keywords can enhance your visibility to prospects. Posting helpful articles, partnering with other industry leaders, and participating in industry online groups illustrate your friendliness and value.

LeadBoxer LinkedIn Profile Example

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  • Do Social Listening

A glance at your prospects’ social media profiles alerts you to what they like, need, and want. With this information, you’ll be poised to deliver targeted, relevant content to them. When you offer a solution to their specific problem, a relationship forms.

Social listening also provides salespeople valuable information concerning mutual contacts. And what people are saying about the company. Request a brief introduction from established customers to these shared connections so you can network. Observe problem areas people are commenting on about your company or industry and respond with solutions.

  • Provide Valuable, Helpful Content

The goal of social selling is to build relationships with leads. This isn’t done through sales pitches and presentations. Instead of praising your product or service, produce valuable, helpful content.

Prospects are more willing to interact and do business with a salesperson who is seen as an industry expert. Write informative posts and add knowledgeable insight to others’ posts via comments. Sharing posts from other industry leaders illustrate to your sales leads that you have a genuine interest in enabling them to resolve their own issues.

Relationships take time. So, salespeople engaged in social selling should not seek to make a sale from their first interaction. Your product or service should only be referenced if it adds value to your conversation with a lead.

  • Build Lasting Relationships

Building relationships with prospects to nurture them into customers is a common goal. However, the relationship after conversion needs to continue to produce repeat customers. Customer retention is more cost-effective and profitable than constantly acquiring new ones.

Lasting relationships involve give and take. Salespeople should do more than provide valuable content and contributions. They also need to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and comments of the prospects they’re cultivating a relationship with.

Social Selling on LinkedIn and the Social Selling Index

LinkedIn is a social networking site built around forming professional connections. It is where professionals can showcase their expertise. Sales reps in the social selling business have a LinkedIn profile and are actively engaged in LinkedIn groups.

LinkedIn helps establish brand credibility and connects salespeople to valuable leads. For those in B2B sales, LinkedIn is the place where one can connect with those making purchasing decisions. Here are some ways you can maximize your social selling on LinkedIn:

how to maximize social selling on linkedin

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  • Boost Your Authority

When creating your profile, be sure to emphasize relevant experience, accomplishments, awards, and memberships. Highlighting how you’ve helped past customers makes your profile customer focused. Additionally, ask your contacts for recommendations and to endorse your skills.

With an optimized profile, you’ll be visible to prospects and be viewed as an authority and a valuable resource. Most importantly a resource that is offering the solutions leads are looking for. You’ll secure prospects, building relationships with them, and converting them into customers.

  • Expand Your Network

LinkedIn is an example of online business networking and a good place for account expansion. The more connections you make, the greater your network becomes. The larger your network, the more opportunities you’ll have to meet promising leads. Or people who’ll introduce you to prospects.

Here is a great example of a Guardian Life financial advisor whose leads took off with LinkedIn. With one client, he obtained 35 referrals. Since then, his social selling business has more than doubled.

  • Participate in LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn has many professional networking groups that offer opportunities to meet other professionals and prospects. Here, one can share and post relevant, informative content and comment on other’s posts. When you’re active in a group, it conveys that you’re knowledgeable in your industry.

  • Social Selling Index

Salespeople with a high social selling index do better at attracting and converting prospects. LinkedIn is a great place to boost one’s index score. LinkedIn social selling index correlates to more leads and met sales quotas.

This index is a score that takes into account the following variables:

  • The quality of relationships
  • The salesperson’s personal brand
  • The amount of relevant content and engagement they produce
  • How well ideal prospects are targeted and nurtured

reps sell more with social selling

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Tips on Using Social Selling to Optimize Sales

Businesses that employ multiple salespeople to make big-ticket deals, such as in the B2B industry, benefit from social selling. Prospects and customers are more likely to engage when interacting with a human rather than a heavily automated business. Successful social selling salespeople are able to effectively blend their professional and personal lives.

The use of social media and digital marketing channels offers a great way to do that. Salespeople can be professional by stating their employer, skills, connections, certifications, memberships, and so on. They can also show prospects a glimpse of their personal side including their hobbies, interests, and personal goals.

Gone are the days of cold-calling and email spamming. Engaging with leads via social media channels has proven far more successful in building relationships between businesses and customers. Here are some suggestions on how social selling can be used for sales:

  • Require each salesperson to create a personal business profile on social media
  • Educate your salespeople in the basics of social media marketing best practices
  • Establish regular collaboration between sales and marketing
  • Align sales and marketing lead funnels

Salespeople and sales lead generating platforms like LeadBoxer use social selling to build relationships with prospects to get more leads and make more conversions. Social selling salespeople will greatly benefit from LeadBoxer’s seamless lead scoring and data gathering. Begin your social selling success today with a LeadBoxer free trial.

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digital marketing channels scaled 1

Using Digital Marketing Channels for Lead Generation

Lead Generation, Marketing /

A business must generate leads to be successful. Lead generation consists of content and media that nurture leads into paying customers. Digital marketing solutions and digital marketing channels facilitate the capture of quality leads and enable lead nurturing through digital media.

Meanwhile, continue reading or use the following links to “jump” ahead:

What is Digital Media?

The term digital media refers to the tools and programs that share information online. This content comes in many forms including audio, video, images, website content, web pages, social media, and email.

Digital media is most effective when it includes personalized content. So when your online messaging speaks to individual consumers, it builds credibility for your brand, service, or product. And when you put effort into content personalization, the reader will trust your brand and offerings and make a purchase.

Personalized content is also good for improving the visibility of your business website. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing tool that utilizes unique, high-quality content to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). According to WebFX, 75% of people do not go past the first page on SERPs.

As mentioned above, your digital media, or personalized content, can take many forms and appear in many places. Most content involves SEO website content and blog posts, social media posts, and videos. Your digital media is most impactful as a part of a digital marketing strategy.

how keyword planner for seo works

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What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is “the use of the Internet, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other channels to reach consumers.” There are numerous digital marketing channels and techniques available to get your digital media noticed by your target audiences. The most common include:

  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
  • Content marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Social media marketing

A strong digital marketing strategy incorporates the above digital marketing channels and techniques. Your digital strategy should not replace your sales lead generation and nurturing strategy. Your digital marketing and sales strategies work best when used together.

the best digital marketing strategy

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The Digital Marketing Sales Process

Now that you understand what the terms “digital media” and a “digital marketing strategy” mean, we will discuss the combination of digital marketing and sales in the digital marketing sales process. This process incorporates sales funnels, lead generation, and lead nurturing. And it is using digital marketing channels to reach prospective buyers online, boosting your brand’s digital presence.

The five-step digital marketing sales process can be seen as the journey your customer takes from lead to paying customer. Researching your qualified leads and developing a content personalization plan for each stage of the buyer’s journey lays the groundwork for your digital marketing sales process. Here is a list detailing the five stages of the digital marketing sales process:

1. Marketing/Prospecting Your Target Audience

The first step in the digital marketing sales process involves coming up with your brand’s unique selling proposition (USP). This sets your company apart from your competitors and shows leads why they should do business with you. Your USP should answer how your business is unique and how your product or service fills a void within your industry.

Your USP and personalized content are ineffective if online visitors aren’t consuming it. This is why you need SEO, PPC, and social media marketing to drive traffic to your website. Once you attract website visitors, you will be able to track and analyze who finds your content useful and converts. Website visitor tracking enables you to further narrow your audience, fine-tune your target customer-base, and assess which types of content resonate most with your target audiences.

2. Building Credibility and Trust

The ease and quickness of digital transactions have made the internet a prime target for cybercrime and scams. Your potential customers will be extremely wary when choosing which businesses get their money. As the online storefront of your business, your website must give a good first impression.

Excessive sales solicitations are also prevalent online. Leads require nurturing to accomplish the goal of having them develop a relationship with your particular brand, product, or service. This connection is crucial to cultivating new customers. Companies that are seen as trustworthy both online and offline will be more successful in bringing their leads through their sales funnel and make a successful account growth.

Here are some things to consider when assessing whether or not your website appears credible:

  • Does it look legitimate and professional?
  • Does it have working links and high-quality images?
  • Is the site easy to navigate?
  • Does your content contain proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation?
  • Does it include clear privacy and security policies?
  • Is the product and support information easily accessible?

3. Escorting the Buyer

Due to busy schedules and the abundance of digital media that is readily available, most first-time visitors to any website are not yet ready to buy. When people land on your website, you will need to guide them to the point where they realize they have a need for what you offer. For this guidance to be successful, the organization, navigation, and checkout process on your website should be fast, secure, and simple.

Having detailed product pages, resources, FAQs, and testimonial pages, visible contact information, chatbots, and internal linking are some ways to make your website user friendly. Your website also needs to be optimized to fit the small screens on smartphones and other handheld devices and should load quickly. Your site should escort the buyer on their journey from a casual website visitor, to the checkout process and through post-purchase follow-up.

4. Presenting the Product or Service

After you guide website visitors to your website, you need to present your products or services in a way that shows buyers your solutions are the best available options for meeting their needs. Every product or service should include relevant, specific descriptions that answer any questions a prospective buyer may have. High-resolution images and videos featuring the products or services in action should also be included.

5. Closing the Sale

The ultimate goal of every business website is to make a sale or a desired conversion. For e-commerce sites, the goal is to get people to make a purchase. For brick-and-mortar stores with an online presence, a website can be used to get leads to sign up for a mailing list or schedule a call with a sales representative.

The use of digital marketing channels makes it easy to analyze the results of your digital marketing sales process. You’ll be able to see the impact of your digital marketing efforts on your sales strategy. And make necessary adjustments and improvements. Both digital marketing and sales are processes that include post-purchase follow-up.

post-purchase follow-up with leadboxer

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Why is Digital Marketing Crucial for Sales?

Businesses can’t thrive without digital marketing. Even with a solid sales team and sales process, a company without an online presence won’t succeed. This is because consumers prefer the speed, ease, and accessibility the internet offers.

Here are four reasons the utilization of digital marketing channels is crucial for sales:

1. Mobile Device Optimization

Today’s smartphones are small, portable computers. This allows consumers to make purchases anywhere, anytime.

According to Forbes Insights, 7 out of 10 senior executives use mobile devices to look up product or service information after they first hear of it. Most of them also use smartphones to conduct research and make buying decisions. The vast majority of consumers have a smartphone and use it for researching, shopping, and entertainment.

2. Easier Follow Up

In sales, follow up is crucial. Most consumers require 7 to 13 contacts with a sales professional before they are ready to buy. Digital marketing makes follow up quicker and cheaper through scheduled emails, retargeting ads, and personalized ads included in social media interactions.

3. Provides Buyers With Personalized Content

As opposed to a “one size fits all” message, digital marketing allows you to prepare more relevant and personalized content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Digital media comes in many forms including blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, coupons, and case studies. When you use digital marketing solutions, you can offer prospects a tailored sequence of content that takes them from lead to customer.

4. Measured and Optimized Results

With digital marketing, results are measurable. Whether it’s a social media ad or an SEO campaign, you can gather important data about leads and measure results to identify what’s working and what isn’t.

mapping marketing offers to sales cycle

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In sales and digital marketing, your time and money are better spent on those who see your products and services as the solutions to their needs. This is where lead qualification and social selling comes in handy. A sales lead scoring platform like LeadBoxer’s customer relationship management (CRM) program identifies leads most interested in your product or service.

LeadBoxer’s lead generation and lead qualification platform gives you insight into which prospects are most likely to find your digital media useful. Understanding who your target audiences are and which digital marketing channels are most likely to reach them increases the likelihood of successful sales conversions.

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best sales ai tools

3 Ways AI Empowers Sales Enablement & 10 Sales AI Tools to Help

Sales, Tools /

As a sales team manager, you want to see your reps improve their close rates. This means more growth for the company and a more enjoyable work experience for your employees. The secret to making it a reality? Equipping your department with tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

This guide takes a deep dive into what sales AI is, how it aids your team’s success and 10 of the best software options for the job. Read on or jump ahead to these sections:

What is Sales AI?

Your sales team deals with an immense amount of data, from prospects’ contact info, to what pages leads are visiting, to the number of emails they’ve received and opened. This is an essential part of sales enablement, or the process of supplying your team with info, tools, and training that help them close more deals.

This goldmine of data empowers your sales team by helping them identify, nurture, and convert more potential customers into clients. However, it’s impossible to make sense of it all without a little help.

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. AI collects and processes mountains of data into actionable insights. This reduces the time reps spend on repetitive tasks or making unreliable judgments about prospects. It also increases close rates and the company’s profits.

3 Ways AI Improves Sales Enablement

If more leads for less effort is a priority for your business, you can’t afford to skip on AI-driven sales enablement. According to a study from Harvard Business Review, sales AI can increase leads by more than 50%, contribute to cost reductions of 40-60%, and reduce call times by 60-70%.

How exactly does it do this? There are three areas along your sales pipeline where AI can step in and optimize tasks.

  • It Identifies Ideal Leads

Gone are the days of having to search databases for possible leads, manually creating profiles in customer relations management (CRM) software, and deciding who to call or email first. AI turns what was once an imprecise, time-consuming task into an automated, data-driven process.

An AI-empowered sales tool can gather intelligence about the individuals and accounts actively engaging with your brand’s site or social media. It syncs and enriches their contact info and other details to your CRM platform, then analyzes each lead to determine which ones are most worth pursuing. This indication is often called a lead score, which is based on how closely an account matches your ideal customer profile and whether their behavior suggests an interest in your product.

  • It Automatically Nurtures Leads With Tailored Content

Your sales reps don’t have to guess which email or white paper leads are most interested in receiving. There are AI-backed software options that listen for signals from your prospects, such as clicking on a link, then emails them content relevant to that behavior.

  • It Tells You What Action Will Most Likely Convert a Lead

AI can do almost everything except hop on a call or step into a meeting with prospects. AI can, however, coach your sales team on how to close more deals. Some tools review the lead and offer insights on their communication styles and preferences. Other software options analyze the behaviors of sales reps, then provide feedback on what they can do to improve their close rate.

10 Top Tools for Sales AI

Here are the best software options to help you find the most qualified prospects, nurture them, and close the deal.

  • Identifying Leads

Need to pinpoint exactly who your team should focus on? These sales intelligence tools stand out from the pack.

1. LeadBoxer

top tool for sales AI

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The first step to increasing your sales is knowing exactly to who you should devote your time and energy. LeadBoxer finds that info on autopilot. The platform aggregates tons of identifying and behavioral data about prospects and then calculates a lead score illustrating how likely they are to buy. With this insight, reps don’t waste any time trying to woo the wrong people.

LeadBoxer’s clear, intuitive interface makes it easy to get started right out of the box. Within minutes, you can see exactly which companies are visiting your website, how long they stick around, and what pages they’re checking out.

2. HubSpot Sales

hubspot sales CRM with lead scoring capabilities

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If you’re looking for a tried-and-true CRM with lead scoring capabilities, check out HubSpot Sales. This lightweight tool tracks visitors to your website and creates a comprehensive profile on each one. You’ll be able to see who’s interested in your product with little to no effort.

HubSpot Sales has several flexible and affordable pricing options. Small business owners will love starting for free, getting used to the product, and growing their company before ever whipping out a credit card.

3. Everstring

everstring platform

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Everstring hangs its hat on intent data or an indicator that someone is interested in the solution provided by your company. For example, if an individual is actively researching project management tools, Everstring will let you know. The platform is great for finding and reaching out to leads that might not have heard about your product yet.

A common complaint is Everstring can be a little tough to learn. Fortunately, the company provides training to get you up to speed.

4. ZoomInfo

zoominfo supplies you with intent data

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Like Everstring, ZoomInfo supplies you with intent data about prospects, so you can know exactly who’s in the market for your products. ZoomInfo also automatically enriches contact info within your CRM, negating all the time reps would otherwise spend on confirming up-to-date email addresses or phone numbers.

Nurturing Leads

Lead nurturing software keeps your prospects engaged with content that’s perfect for them, freeing up more time for sales reps.

5. SharpSpring

sharpspring tool benefits your marketing and sales departments

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SharpSpring is a tool that benefits your marketing and sales departments. It combines CRM with marketing automation, like sending personalized emails after a lead completes a particular action. The visual builder, like the one pictured above, allows your marketing department to create, see, and optimize journeys that turn more prospects into buyers with less lift from your sales team.

At $550 per month for a small business, SharpSpring is a bit on the pricier side. Fortunately, there are month-to-month plans and no long-term contracts are required.

6. Keap

keap tool for sales AI

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Did your prospect book an appointment or download an ebook? Keap automatically follows-up with a personalized email sequence. In addition to lead nurturing features, the platform comes equipped with a CRM, lead capturing tools, invoicing, and payment processing. Plus, with plans starting at only $79 per month, it’s an affordable all-in-one option for many small businesses.

7. Marketo Engage

marketo engage platform

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Marketo has long been an industry heavyweight and for good reason. The platform can provide personalized experiences for leads both on and offline. Whether someone is checking in for a live event or visiting your site, Marketo Engage follows up with email campaigns tailored to their behavior. It also targets them with custom ads and even pop-up messages sent to their phone.

The downside? At a starting price of $1,000 per month, Marketo is almost exclusively a large enterprise solution.

Closing deals

When it comes to making the sale, nothing beats a personal touch from a rep. Even for the sales in the future. These platforms increase the odds that they say the right thing at the right time.

8. Gong

gong AI sales tool

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Gong gives you data-driven insight into what’s happening with the market, your leads, and your sales team. Most alluring are the people intelligence features, which analyze reps’ calls and offer suggestions about how they can close more deals based on the behavior of the department’s highest-performing members.

If you think AI can’t replace an in-person sales coach, think again. With Gong, some customers report increasing close rates by 30% and deal sizes by 33%.

9. Crystal

crystal personality assessment tool with AI

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Crystal gives you a peek inside what makes your prospects tick. Do they prefer a little chit chat before diving into business? Are they more of a straight shooter? With Crystal, there’s no need to guess. Reps can adapt their calls and emails to perfectly fit every lead’s personality, ensuring the best conversation possible.

10. Sugar Sell

powerful feature sugar hint

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Sugar Sell, a product of SugarCRM, comes equipped with a sneaky, powerful feature called Sugar Hint. Simply input a name and email into the software and then sit back as it gathers data from social media, news, and business sources.

Sugar analyzes this info before offering insights like when to contact the lead and what message to give them. The platform claims to increase your team’s productivity by over 30%.

Turbocharge Your Sales Team’s Success With AI

Knowing exactly what your prospects are thinking can massively accelerate your pipeline. Thanks to sales AI, you don’t need a psychic or crystal ball to do it.

Looking to implement your first AI-empowered sales tool? Consider one that finds leads and ranks them according to their likelihood to buy. A steady supply of top-notch prospects is the first step to increasing profits.

LeadBoxer can help. The platform analyzes who’s visiting your site, then assigns them a lead score. Get started today with a free trial.

3 Ways AI Empowers Sales Enablement & 10 Sales AI Tools to Help Read More »

using email tracking pixel to identify sales leads

How to Use an Email Tracking Pixel to Identify Sales Leads

Email, Marketing, Sales /

Although email marketing remains a popular marketing tool for many industries and brands, few realize that email tracking is a crucial tool for optimizing your business’s marketing strategy. New email tracking software and tools are constantly improving. But one thing that remains critical to the success of any email marketing tool is the email tracking pixel.

According to data from OMC, 19% of all “conversational” emails contain an email tracking pixel to aid in marketing campaigns and other lead conversion strategies. With millions of spam emails on the web, tracking pixels are often noted as a primary reason many email users block certain features. When used correctly, tracking pixels enhance customer experience through personalized, targeted content.

Keep reading, or use these links to “jump” ahead:

email tracking pixel to identify sales leads

What are Tracking Pixels?

While there are many ways to create and name a tracking pixel, the most common form of it is a 1 pixel-by-1 pixel transparent image. It’s placed somewhere in the body, title, header, or footer of an email.

Marketers often use email tracking pixels in targeted email campaigns sent to a small group of subscribers. In order to prevent spam being sent to the entire email list. They are useful for gathering information about individual customers or subscribers such as browsing habits. So that individuals can be grouped for future campaigns.

Using a tracking pixel within an email campaign allows the sender to know:

  • Whether the recipient received the email
  • Whether the email landed in a folder other than the inbox
  • If the email was read or clicked on
  • What time and where the email was opened
  • If any links or advertisements within the email were clicked and followed

Limitations

At its base, an email tracking pixel is an image. The image is either a PNG file or a GIF file and must be downloaded in order for it to send information to the sender. The receiving server then downloads the image for correct functionality. And can block it in some cases.

Information received from an email tracking pixel can be hindered in a few ways:

  • If the recipient is automatically blocking images from loading.
  • When the recipient is displaying all content as text in received emails. This will block the tracking pixel.
  • If the recipient has software to block email tracking downloaded.

An email tracking pixel is unable to relay information back to the sender when any of these options are enabled by the recipient. Pixels provide valuable insights and are an advantageous tool for any email marketer. Even though there can be limitations to a tracking pixel because of a user’s setting choice.

When you use a tracking pixel, an email that is opened counts either when the images in the email are loaded. Or the user clicks on a link in the email even if the images are not loaded. Once the user opened an email, its data gathered and transmitted back to your email tracking platform. Where it is used for customer relationship, experience management, and in demand generation marketing strategies.

While they function similarly to internet browser cookies, cookies can be blocked by the user. Email pixels cannot be overtly blocked unless the user uses additional software. However, if tracking pixels are overused, they can significantly slow down your website.

Websites that are overloaded with tracking pixel tags lose traffic and render the pixels ineffective. Avoiding pixel tag malfunctions and website tag bloat is crucial to keeping customers coming back to your website. Overusing tracking pixels can slow down your website. This can cause inefficiency and an oversaturation of usable data that simply becomes confusing.

Benefits

LeadBoxer specializes in email tracking. And relies on tracking pixels to achieve one thing: to create in-depth and accurate insights. They allow your brand to leverage compelling data for a competitive edge.

Email tracking pixels are the technical component that enables software access to various marketing information. The benefits of tracking pixels are also representative of the improvements to technology that have allowed for increased consumer insights.

Using an email tracking pixel has many benefits. On the surface, they offer your marketing campaign a variety of insights into one or more potential or current customers. This can help you personalize your email content for a targeted audience. At a deeper level, email tracking pixels are proven to increase click-through-rate. And also the likelihood of lead conversion.

You can also use tracking pixels for a variety of email marketing campaigns and account growth. While they can be tools to gather marketing information about groups of consumers, they are also useful as tools to reassert the importance and relevance of your products.

retargeting vs remarketing difference

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Retargeting Vs. Remarketing: Does it matter?

Retargeting or Remarketing campaigns are essential to reminding customers that your product exists and is worthy of consideration. Remarketing is slightly different from retargeting. This type of campaign focuses on reintroducing a current product offering. Often with the release of new improvements and updates in order to show that your company continues to innovate.

Remarketing campaigns work best with cross-selling and up-selling content offerings. And email tracking pixels offer a powerful tool for tracking these campaigns. When multiple products are featured as content within an email, it is useful to know which customers click which products. So that those customers can be included in further targeted campaigns.

This method of tracking customer product interest so that they might be included in a more targeted campaign is called retargeting. Retargeting campaigns are often most effective as the next step of a remarketing campaign. So that content is tailored to a specific, small audience likely to lead to a conversion.

Other Kinds of Campaigns

Tracking Pixels are not only useful for retargeting and remarketing campaigns. But also for any kind of email that you want your audience to see. Whatever product your brand is selling, whether it be software, marketing services, or high-end fashion, email marketing campaigns are still a great way to remind your customers that your brand is worth exploring.

Although the tracking pixel works essentially the same way, regardless of what kind of email you are sending, your brand can decide which insights you want to focus on based on the type of email campaign. For example, if your company wants to focus on getting the brand out with a welcome campaign or a standard promotional campaign, then you might focus on simply who clicks on a link to visit your page. And some basic background about the customer.

Once it’s determined which customers have shown initial interest in your brand or product, you might decide to run a new kind of campaign. It will be focused on finding out what products customers are most interested in. Or what parts of your website are most visited. Email tracking pixels attached to campaigns such as a seasonal, connect-via-social, or a cart abandonment campaign could all give you further insights into the interest level and buying habits of your customers.

After customers made a purchase or visited your website a few times, you can follow up with a newsletter, post-purchase drip, or re-engagement campaign. These campaigns, if instilled with a tracking pixel, can all continue to give insights. This can help you retain long-term customers through promotions, giveaways, and other benefits.

Tracking Pixels Improve Customer Experience

Tracking pixels are extremely helpful for customer experience management (CEM). CEM is the overall customer journey map for either a single customer or a group of customers. The information gained from tracking pixels not only gives you insight into specific details that you can use to market with greater success. These details can also help you organize and classify customers based on desired information.

The process of leveraging these tracking pixels to reveal buyer information begins with an audit. The technical process of running an audit on the performance of email tracking pixels starts with implementing a tag inspector scan. This scan runs diagnostics on issues related to your pixel tracking tags. These issues affect load performance, security, and privacy factors such as third-party website tags.

Managing tracking pixels accurately and efficiently ensures that your website avoids website tag bloat or tracking pixel overuse. Tracking pixels improve customer experience. Because brands are able to better predict the kinds of content or products that an individual or group of customers are interested in. Leading to increasingly targeted conversions.

Looking for More Help?

Using email tracking pixels to identify website visitors, control your data, and create compelling content in one place propels your brand toward creating a unique relationship with customers who are seeking distance from brand fatigue. Contact LeadBoxer to learn more about how its streamlined, user-friendly platform can help your brand generate quality leads.

How to Use an Email Tracking Pixel to Identify Sales Leads Read More »

lead capture pages software scaled 1

Lead Capture Pages 101: Importance, Strategies, and Software

Data-Driven analysis, Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Tools /

If you spend more of your time scouring the internet for leads than actually closing deals, consider adding lead capture pages to your marketing strategy. With lead capture pages, you can automatically populate your CRM with fresh, highly qualified prospects, letting you spend more time connecting with people and less time combing through lead databases.

Best of all, lead capture pages can be implemented quickly. With the right software and strategies, you can get a lead capture page up, running, and working for your business in no time. Before you know it, you’ll find new leads for your business without lifting a finger.

What is a Lead Capture Page?

A lead capture page is an essential component of an inbound marketing strategy. Visitors usually land on the page after searching for business solutions or learning about your company through social media, blog posts, or search engines.

nutshell inbound marketing strategy

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A lead capture page attracts potential customers by offering a free resource, such as a white paper, report, or trial of a product. In exchange, the prospect fills out a short form with their contact information. This supplies your sales team with a continual source of leads.

The info collected from a lead capture page is then uploaded to your CRM, becoming the foundation of any contact record in your sales pipeline. Once you’ve identified a lead, lead intelligence software can uncover additional details about a prospect, analyze how engaged they are, and offer insights into how to best communicate with that person.

How Lead Capture Pages Help Sales Teams

Between calling clients and closing deals, your salespeople are busy enough. Lead capture pages give them the freedom to focus on these high-touch tasks and understand their prospects better.

Find qualified leads on autopilot

An efficient lead capture page reduces the time your salespeople would otherwise spend trawling LinkedIn or contact databases for leads. It also automatically begins the qualification process, as leads who express interest in your offerings are likely to be more receptive than cold leads to communications from your sales team.

Gain insight into prospects

Manual lead generation can’t compare to the level of contact enrichment that lead capture pages help provide. Many programs that build and run lead capture pages can take the data submitted and use it as a launchpad to uncover tons of other details about leads. This gives your sales reps a greater understanding of who they’re selling to.

Score and prioritize leads

If members of your sales team often wonder which leads they should prioritize over others, a lead capture page can help. When used in tandem with lead scoring software, you can analyze the online behavior of leads captured from a web form and more accurately predict which ones are likely to buy. That way, sales reps know exactly who to focus their energy on and who they can pass on.

15 Lead Capture Page Software Options

Many tools and sales artificial intelligence tools too with lead capture page functions come packed with additional features that help you get more from your leads. These software options usually fall under one of three categories:

  • Lead capture page software with lead intelligence and nurturing
  • CRMs with lead capture page builders
  • Landing page builders

Lead Capture Page Software with Lead Intelligence and Nurturing

1. LeadBoxer

lead capture pages software

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Out of the box, LeadBoxer can start identifying leads from forms, as well as IP addresses, email, and other touchpoints.

Pros:

  • Tracks leads’ online activity, including what web pages they visit on your website, how long they spend there, and what emails they click through
  • Creates a lead score to help your sales team prioritize prospects
  • Can identify website visitors who don’t complete a form

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include a CRM

Cost: LeadBoxer starts at $195 per month.

2. Leady

marketing strategies from leady

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Leady identifies and scores new leads based on their level of engagement. It includes features that help flesh out contact records, giving sales reps greater insight into who they’re selling to.

Pros:

  • Creates detailed profiles about people visiting your site so you can better segment leads for your sales team
  • Reveals where leads came from so you can zero in on the marketing strategies that work best
  • Tracks a lead’s activity with your website and email marketing, as well as all communications with your sales team

Cons:

  • Only downloads data once per day, so you can’t start nurturing new leads immediately
  • Basic plan only identifies 300 unique site visitors per month

Cost: Leady starts at $39 per month.

3. Autopilot

marketing automation software autopilot

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Autopilot is marketing automation software that can help you build lead capture pages, then nurture new leads on, well, autopilot.

Pros:

  • The interface allows you to visualize exactly how the customer journey will unfold
  • Can automate repetitive tasks like educating new subscribers, assigning leads to members of your sales team, and following up on new leads
  • Easy to build multiple drip campaigns tailored to lead segments

Cons:

  • Doesn’t come equipped with a CRM, so you’ll need to integrate it with a separate program
  • Integrates with a limited number of tools

Cost: Autopilot starts at $49 per month.

4. Act-On

web form builder act-on

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Act-On integrates with your CRM to help you attract, convert, nurture, and score leads with ease. Its web form builder tracks conversion rates and the source of form visits so you know which of your marketing efforts are working best.

Pros:

  • Automatically starts sending drip campaigns to leads
  • Comes with features that help score leads based on their website activity, so sales reps know their level of engagement
  • Easier to use than direct competitors like Marketo

Cons:

  • Incredibly feature-rich and on the pricier side, so it’s not feasible for many small and medium-sized businesses

Cost: Act-On starts at $900 per month.

5. Karta

marketing and sales solution from karta

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Karta was designed as the most complete marketing and sales solution on the market. It touches almost every aspect of the customer journey, from letting you build lead capture pages to scoring and prioritizing leads for your sales team.

Pros:

  • Includes lead tagging and scoring features
  • Doesn’t require integrations to manage all aspects of your business
  • Can create segmented campaigns that respond to specific behaviors, so you can start nurturing new leads automatically

Cons:

  • With so many features, Karta can sometimes feel clunky or unwieldy
  • Karta is newer to the market, so some kinks are still being ironed out

Cost: Karta starts at $99 per month.

CRMs with Lead Capture Page Builders

6. HubSpot

hubspot marketing platform

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HubSpot offers an all-in-one CRM and marketing platform that can build lead capture pages, organize leads, and prioritize them based on engagement.

Pros:

  • Comes with tools to build lead capture pages or embeddable forms with 1,000 form fields and a dozen different form types
  • Automatically uploads leads into the CRM and begins nurturing them with email campaigns
  • Gauges lead engagement, then prioritizes them in the CRM so salespeople know who to focus on

Cons:

  • While HubSpot CRM is free, you’ll likely need to invest in the sales and marketing bundle to get all the lead capture features you want

Cost: HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales Hub start at $50 per month, while a bundle starts at $112.50 per month.

7. Pipedrive

marketing automations from pipedrive

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Pipedrive is a popular CRM known for working well right out of the box. With its web form builder, you can start capturing leads within minutes.

Pros:

  • New contacts in your CRM are automatically created from form submissions
  • Tracks all calls, emails, and contact activity for each lead
  • Pipedrive is so easy to use, you can train new users on it in just one day

Cons:

  • Doesn’t come equipped with predictive lead scoring, so you’ll need to integrate an additional tool if you want this feature
  • Limited marketing automation features compared to a CRM like HubSpot

Cost: Pipedrive starts at $12.50 per user per month.

8. Zoho CRM

lead generation from zoho

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Zoho CRM, one of the top-rated CRMs available, comes packed with features like web forms for lead generation. The tool can meet your customers at every stage of their lifecycle, from marketing to customer support.

Pros:

  • Drag and drop web form builder makes it easy to launch lead capture pages in minutes
  • Multiple levels of billing is great for businesses that plan to scale up
  • The interface is so user-friendly, many customers claim not to need training before getting started

Cons:

  • Customers report that importing and exporting leads sometimes leads to corrupted files
  • Emails generated by Zoho CRM can sometimes get sent to leads’ spam or blocked entirely

Cost: Zoho CRM starts at $12 per user per month.

9. Agile CRM

lead capture form tool agile

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Like Zoho CRM, Agile CRM lets you manage marketing, sales, and customer service all in one platform, but with a slightly cheaper price tag.

Pros:

  • Lead capture forms automatically sync data with the CRM, which can then segment leads based on behavior and characteristics
  • Can help you find unknown email addresses for leads using only a lead’s name and their company’s website address
  • Allows you to purchase additional features without upgrading to the next subscription level

Cons:

  • Users find some of the marketing automation features buggy
  • Customer support can be inconsistent

Cost: Agile CRM starts at $8.99 per user per month.

10. Keap

marketing and sales processes from keap

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Keap is the solution for teams who want all of the marketing and sales processes within the same platform. From the moment you capture leads to the time they make a payment, Keap does it all.

Pros:

  • Automatically segments leads based on form answers, then nurtures them with emails and content based on certain behaviors and triggers
  • A great e-commerce business solution
  • Full range of marketing automation capabilities is notably strong

Cons:

  • Doesn’t work well at blocking spam form submissions
  • New users need significant training before they can expect to use the program efficiently

Cost: Keap starts at $79 per month.

Landing Page Builders

11. Instapage

landing page builder from instapage

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Instapage started as a dynamic landing page builder but has since transformed into an advertising conversion cloud. With Instapage, you have all the tools you need to optimize your advertising funnel and turn more leads into customers.

Pros:

  • Create an entire advertising funnel to attract visitors to your web forms, then convert them into leads
  • Automates the process of creating multiple landing pages that match the messaging of your social media or search engine ads
  • Drag and drop landing page builder creates stunning lead capture pages with no coding required

Cons:

  • Doesn’t integrate with email marketing platforms like ConvertKit, so you’ll need to find a workaround if you want to start automatically nurturing new leads from form submissions

Cost: Instapage starts at $149 per month.

12. Unbounce

lead capturing opportunities from unbounce

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Unbounce offers many of the same features as Instapage but at almost half the price. Small businesses that want to build unique lead capture pages to match all their ads will love Unbounce’s functionality and affordability.

Pros:

  • Drag and drop builder lets you collaborate with team members and make edits in real-time
  • Lets you create pop-ups and sticky bars for even more lead capturing opportunities
  • Uses A/B testing to automatically optimize pages for the best conversions

Cons:

  • The builder isn’t as intuitive as some of its competitors, so new users should expect a slight learning curve
  • Certain landing page features require additional coding

Cost: Unbounce starts at $79 per month.

13. Leadpages

lead generation tool leadpage

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Leadpages is a landing page builder and lead generation tool geared toward small business. It’s extremely easy to use and has almost no learning curve.

Pros:

  • Comes packed with templates so you can start capturing leads even faster
  • Has a feature that tells you exactly what you need to tweak on your landing page in order to increase your conversions
  • If you only want to build a few basic lead capture pages, Leadpages is the most affordable option

Cons:

  • Doesn’t integrate smoothly with software like Stripe, so if you want to add fields like coupon codes to your pages, you’ll have to find a workaround
  • The price of the fully functional version can be prohibitive for small businesses

Cost: Leadpages starts at $25 per month.

14. Landingi

landingi landing page creator

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Landingi is an affordable alternative to some of the bigger landing page builders in the industry but is just as easy to use.

Pros:

  • Customer service is receptive to user feedback and often implements suggestions into future upgrades
  • Includes a feature that tells you where site visitors came from, so you know which marketing efforts are leading to the most conversions.

Cons:

  • Not good for making several similar landing pages with tweaks only to certain blocks or modules
  • Less feature-rich than some of its competitors

Cost: Landingi starts at $29 per month.

15. Mailchimp

mailchimp all-in-one marketing platform

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Mailchimp has long since upgraded from an email marketing tool to an all-in-one marketing platform, offering features like a landing page builder, conversion rate tracking, and even free domains.

Pros:

  • Easy to integrate with almost any tool
  • Start building and hosting landing pages for freet
  • Its paid version is the most affordable of its competitors, making it ideal for small or new businesses

Cons:

  • A landing page builder isn’t nearly as dynamic as others on this list
  • Limited segmentation ability
  • No plugin with Spotify

Cost: Mailchimp’s paid plans start at $9.99 per month.

Tips for Creating an Optimized Lead Capture Page

Not all lead capture pages are created equal. To maximize your conversions, there are certain best practices you should keep in mind when designing a form.

Limit the fields in the lead form

Having too many fields, especially ones that feel irrelevant or invasive, can lead many visitors to navigate away before they finish completing the form. The quicker a visitor can enter their info, the more likely they are to convert.

For example, visitors who want to sign up for a free trial of LeadBoxer only have to enter their email address to get started.

lead form from leadboxer

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Even if they need to enter additional info before they can start using the program if feels less forced than a form that demands several lines of data upfront.

Compare that to this form, which requires visitors to fill out seven fields before they can access a report.

how to loose valuable conversions

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Chances are, this company is losing out on valuable conversions because visitors aren’t ready to divulge that level of information.

Match the fields in the lead form to the offer

It doesn’t matter if it’s helpful for you to know a lead’s company or job title. If that info doesn’t relate to the gated resource you’re offering, it might reduce your conversion rate.

Check out this registration for a free webinar from Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider, which only requires that attendees submit their name and email.

registration form from kinsta

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This is presumably so attendees can receive the link and a calendar reminder for the webinar. If Kinsta were to ask for less relevant information, such as company name or job title, visitors might be put off and leave the page before completing their registration.

Choose the right positioning for the lead form

There are three places you can position the lead capture form: above the fold, at the bottom of a page, or in a pop-up. Each has different benefits.

If the form is above the fold, that means you can see the form at the top of the page without having to scroll. This type of form is quick to grab a visitor’s attention and works best when used as a post-click landing page for a search engine or social media ad.

right positioning for the lead form

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Sometimes the form is positioned next to an image of the product. This serves as a visual reminder of what the visitor will receive in exchange for their info.

Another option is to position the form at the bottom of the page.

lead capture form from hubspot

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Visitors who read through all the info about your product or resource before submitting their info demonstrate a high level of engagement, which helps your sales team prioritize them.

Finally, you can put your lead capture form in a pop-up, as Instapage does for visitors who want to download a free guide.

pop-up capture form from instapage

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This method keeps visitors focused on the form, so they’re less likely to be distracted by other links or elements on the page before submitting their info.

Include your privacy policy

The info collected through lead capture pages is sensitive enough to qualify as personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR, which regulates the personal data of all European Union residents, requires that you disclose how and why the data is collected, as well as how you handle the data and dispose of it.

In addition to including this disclosure in your existing privacy policy, you should also link to your privacy policy on the lead capture page. HubSpot, like many B2B companies, positions this link at the bottom of the form so that visitors are sure to see it before they submit their info.

privacy policy on display ob hubspot

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Aside from being a legal necessity, having your privacy policy on display shows your brand’s professionalism and commitment to the customer’s best interests.

Generate Leads on Autopilot for Your Sales Team

Your B2B marketing strategy is incomplete without a lead capture page. A lead capture page is the simplest way to find and qualify prospects for your sales team, who can then redirect their energy on nurturing leads and closing deals. In the long run, this relatively inexpensive strategy can end up generating significant revenue for your company.

However, even if you follow all the tips and best practices for creating an optimized lead capture page, the page only works as well as the software you pair it with. With the right software, you’ll never have another high-quality lead slip through the cracks because of pipeline mismanagement. Your best bet is to use a lead intelligence tool that can take the info you collect from lead capture pages and turn into actionable data that helps you prioritize leads and convert them into customers with ease.

Lead Capture Pages 101: Importance, Strategies, and Software Read More »

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Comparison: The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools

Big Data, Data-Driven analysis, Lead Generation, Sales, Tools /

It’s no secret that to make sales, you need to know your individual prospects inside and out, from the size of their company to their most recent source of funding. However, gathering this data is time-consuming. Most sales reps are extremely busy communicating with their leads and working to close deals.

Meanwhile, sales intelligence tools automatically find and interpret this data so your reps don’t have to. With the right sales intelligence tools, your reps can focus more on delivering a better sales experience to prospective customers and less on data entry.

This guide offers an introduction to sales intelligence and a comparison of some of the most popular tools available. That is to say, with the right suite of tools, your team will be able to close more deals faster and with less data entry.

Keep reading or skip ahead to these sections:

What are Sales Intelligence Tools?

Sales intelligence involves gathering and analyzing information about prospective customers. As a result, sales reps can keep their pipelines filled with high-quality leads that are likely to close.

While a sales rep could do this manually by collecting data from social media, news outlets, lead capture pages, and company websites, in reality, the process is too time-consuming for this approach to be feasible.

That’s where sales intelligence tools come in. These tools automate the collection and interpretation of data, helping reps to:

  • Find potential new customers
  • Populate prospect records with details such as contact info, company size, and revenue
  • Track online behavior, including email clicks, website interactions, and search habits around the web
  • Qualify and rank leads according to their likelihood to buy
  • Update lead records so their data is always accurate
  • Gather relevant info from public sources like social media or news outlets

The Importance of Sales Intelligence

The main selling point for sales intelligence is its ability to streamline your workflow, therefore saving your team time and energy.

Moreover, without sales intelligence, reps can end up wasting time:

  • Searching for leads and accurate contact info
  • Pursuing leads with no real interest in buying
  • Passing up on prospects that actually want to hear from them

In short, with sales intelligence and sales AI, not only do reps know who they should contact, in addition, they’re already familiar with that company’s unique financial situation, any recent staffing changes, and other details that influence their pain points. As a result, reps can then refine their pitch to be sure they’re addressing each prospect’s most pressing needs.

The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools

1. LeadBoxer

sales intelligence tool leadboxer

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LeadBoxer helps you identify, track, and prioritize leads with ease.

Pros:

  • Identifies anonymous website visitors
  • Finds and fleshes out prospect profiles with contact info, company size, and other important details
  • Tracks website and email marketing behavior
  • Assigns contacts a lead score and helps prioritize prospects

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include intent data
  • Doesn’t gather insights from news outlets regarding recent company changes

Price: LeadBoxer’s basic plan starts at $195 per month.

2. ZoomInfo

zoominfo sales tool

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ZoomInfo keeps your lead database up-to-date with the most relevant and actionable details.

Pros:

  • Includes intent signals, so you know exactly which accounts are actively researching problems for which you provide solutions
  • Enriches contacts within your CRM, as a result, information like company size, funding, and technology use is always accurate

Cons:

  • Doesn’t score or help prioritize leads

Pricing: Contact ZoomInfo to find the right plan at the right price for your needs.

3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

linkedin sales navigator

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you find new leads and offers a ton of insight, for example, who they are and what makes them tick.

Pros:

  • Advanced search and lead recommendation options make it easier than ever to find prospects that fit your ideal customer profile
  • Integrates with your CRM so the leads you find are automatically saved as new contacts
  • Sends you alerts about job changes and other big shifts happening at target accounts

Cons:

  • Offers no insight into a lead’s behavior on your company’s website or around the web
  • Doesn’t help score or prioritize prospects

Pricing: LinkedIn Sales Navigator starts at $65 per month for a basic plan.

4. EverString

everstring business data tool

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EverString uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence to monitor companies and give you the most comprehensive view of their current situation.

Pros:

  • Firmographics, news, intent data, and more certainly give you a 360-degree view of prospects
  • Tracks 20,000 intent signals per company, therefore giving you insight into who needs your product most
  • Automatically verifies contacts so you’re reaching out to the right person every time

Cons:

  • Requires significant training before you can use it efficiently
  • The cost can be prohibitive for smaller businesses

Pricing: EverString starts at $820 per month, so it is on the pricier side.

5. HubSpot Sales

hubspot lead searching tool

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HubSpot Sales is a CRM and lightweight sales intelligence tool all in one. As a result, making this a comprehensive solution for businesses on a tight budget.

Pros:

  • Tracks who visits your website in real-time so you can find new, qualified leads without actively searching
  • Prioritizes leads and scores them, showing reps who to reach out to first

Cons:

  • Doesn’t search for news or other insights that may impact your lead’s willingness to buy
  • Doesn’t automatically update or verify contact information

Pricing: HubSpot has a free version of its popular CRM, but Sales Hub starts at $50 per month.

6. Clearbit

sales contact database clearbit tool

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Much like ZoomInfo, Clearbit for sales is a contact database that updates your records with a range of insights.

Pros:

  • Includes a database of 200 million contacts at 20 million companies. So finding leads within your parameters is a breeze
  • Automatically enriches records with up-to-date contact and company information
  • Scores and routes leads to reps, who can strike while the iron is hot

Cons:

  • Doesn’t track website or search behavior
  • Some customers complain that Clearbit’s databases don’t update often enough

Pricing: Clearbit starts at $99 per month.

7. Adapt

lead builder tool adapt

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Adapt is one of the more lightweight and inexpensive tools on this list. However, it also offers limited features.

Pros:

  • The lead builder tool lets you build a list of new prospects in seconds using Adapt’s contact database
  • Chrome extension finds emails for leads on LinkedIn

Cons:

  • Doesn’t offer insights based on news or intent signals
  • Doesn’t score or prioritize leads

Pricing: There’s a free version, or you can choose a basic plan that allows more views and downloads. The basic plan is $39 per month.

8. InsideView

sales acceleration tool insideview

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InsideView integrates with your CRM to provide accurate information about target accounts and employees.

Pros:

  • Includes data like finances, recent news, and competitors, therefore giving you the clearest picture of who your lead is and what their pain points are
  • The “corporate family tree” feature shows you all the key players involved in a decision-making process. As a result, allowing you to build all the necessary connections to make a sale

Cons:

  • Doesn’t score or prioritize leads
  • CRM integrations can sometimes be buggy or clunky

Pricing: InsideView’s Sales Acceleration tool starts at $99 per user per month.

9. Lusha

lusha tool for connections with leads

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Lusha makes it easy to enrich and verify contact profiles. In other words, you can make faster and better connections with leads.

Pros:

  • Can be used as a Chrome extension to verify leads during your browse in LinkedIn
  • Automatically updates leads in Salesforce
  • Comes with a feature that scores and routes leads. As a result, reps always connect with the right prospects

Cons:

  • Customers complain that the phone numbers for leads are often incorrect.

Pricing: Lusha offers a free version of the tool. A basic plan starts at $23 per user per month.

10. UpLead

uplead sales process acceleration

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UpLead is similar to Adapt or ZoomInfo. For instance, you can find verified contact info for leads, therefore enriching the records in your CRM.

Pros:

  • Their database of 46 million contacts in 200+ countries makes it easy to get in touch with key players at target accounts
  • You can search for contacts and companies using over 50 different criteria. For example, location, management level, and revenue
  • Verifies email addresses in real-time, so you’re always getting the most accurate information right when you need it

Cons:

  • Revenue levels are broad. However, you can filter for revenue in a range of $1m-$10m, but not $1m-$5m
  • Smaller database size than its competitors

Pricing: UpLead offers a free version or a basic plan that starts at $99 per month.

Accelerate Your Sales Process With Sales Intelligence Tools

To build a strong relationship with your prospects, most importantly you need the most up-to-date information about their company and its needs. Sales intelligence tools and customer data software automate the collection and interpretation of this data, letting sales reps focus on moments of actual connection.

However, not all sales intelligence tools are created equal. Some excel at finding accurate contact information, while others stand out in their ability to gather intent data and relevant news from media outlets.

None of this data is helpful if you don’t know which leads are most worth focusing your efforts on. In the end, sales intelligence tools with lead scoring or prioritization features and demand generation marketing strategies are perhaps best able to accelerate your pipeline and close more deals.

LeadBoxer does exactly that. With website visitor identification, record enrichment, online behavior tracking, and lead scoring, LeadBoxer can find and prioritize prospects on autopilot, putting sales reps closer than ever to the actual sale. Get started with a free trial today.

Comparison: The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools Read More »

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The 12 Best Lead Nurturing Software Options for Your Business

Lead Nurturing, Tools /

Engaging with a sales rep may be the core of a B2B or high-ticket item buyer’s journey, but lead nurturing is what moves the process along. Without a personalized marketing experience filled with carefully timed emails and retargeted ads to keep you top of mind, many of your leads could stall out or fall through the cracks.

Lead nurturing software automates much of this process, letting your sales reps stay focused on high-touch connections. With lead nurturing software, you can deliver tailor-made emails, texts, and other content in response to any number of lead behaviors, all at scale.

Whether you’re a small business with a limited budget or enterprise-level operation, there’s a lead nurturing solution and demand generation marketing strategy that’s the right fit for you. We’ve compared the pros, cons, and costs of the 12 best lead nurturing software options to help get you started:

What is Lead Nurturing Software?

Lead nurturing software cultivates a relationship with your lead even when your sales reps are off the clock. It usually works closely with customer relationship management (CRM) tool to deliver personalized content to prospects after they exhibit certain behaviors, like downloading an ebook or clicking on a link in an email.

Features you’ll likely find in lead nurturing software include:

  • Email Automation – Automatically send emails to leads depending on where they are in the sales process, then move them in the pipeline based on how they respond to the email.
  • Lead Scoring – Assign leads a number value describing how engaged they are with the process so sales reps know who to focus their attention on.
  • Campaign Management – Create campaigns across different platforms to engage with leads wherever they are.
  • Personalization – Switch up the messaging, tone, or details of content based on a lead’s characteristics and preferences.
  • Lead Segmentation – Group leads according to their characteristics or behavior in order to deliver them the right content.

The 12 Best Lead Nurturing Software Options

Whether you want just one feature or all of them, chances are there’s a lead nurturing solution to suit your needs.

1. LeadBoxer

lead nurturing software option

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LeadBoxer primarily nurtures leads through its lead scoring technology. The software assigns each prospect a number expressing how likely they are to buy based upon their previous behavior and interaction with your brand. With this level of intel, sales reps know exactly who to direct their attention to so they can better engage with top prospects.

Pros:

  • Includes lead segmentation for easy grouping and filtering
  • Website and email tracking gives you insight into who to retarget and what content to serve them with
  • Can identify and track anonymous leads

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include email automation or drip campaigns
  • Doesn’t include campaign management

Cost: LeadBoxer starts at $195 per month and includes everything you need to track and score leads.

2. Nutshell

email campaigns

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Nutshell is first and foremost a CRM that manages your sales pipeline. However, it comes packed with tons of lead nurturing features like personalized email campaigns and automated messages for each stage of the sales process, making Nutshell a good fit for small businesses that need an all-in-one tool.

Pros:

  • Combines pipeline management with basic lead nurturing
  • Lean and intuitive interface
  • Includes reporting function that analyzes how well your lead nurturing activities are working

Cons:

  • Not as many automated marketing features as HubSpot or SharpSpring
  • Starter plans don’t include all email automation features

Cost: Nutshell’s plans start at $19 per user per month.

3. HubSpot

marketing automation feature

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When working together, HubSpot’s Marketing and Sales Hubs are a lead nurturing powerhouse. The marketing automation features allow you to create emails, content, offers, and outreach that are personalized for specific lead behavior. On the sales side of things, reps can schedule a series of tailor-made emails that land in a prospect’s inbox at exactly the right time.

Pros:

  • Includes tools to help create blog content, landing pages, and emails so every step of a lead’s journey is optimized
  • Know exactly how much you’re spending on each lead with ad ROI tracking
  • Tracks lead email activity to show you who is engaged and who isn’t

Cons:

  • If you want the full range of features, prepare to splurge on a bundle
  • Doesn’t identify anonymous website visitors with the same depth as LeadBoxer

Cost: HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales Hub start at $50 per month, while a bundle starts at $112.50 per month.

4. SharpSpring

visual marketing automation builder

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If you’re looking for a tool that can do it all and then some, SharpSpring might be right up your alley. In addition to its many features, SharpSpring nurtures leads by sending carefully timed emails at every step of the sales process to keep your brand on a lead’s radar. However, it’s features like the visual marketing automation builder and VisitorID that really set SharpSpring apart.

Pros:

  • A CRM combined with marketing automation
  • Personalized emails that send in response to lead behavior
  • Create marketing automation workflows with a visual builder

Cons:

  • Might be too bulky for smaller businesses
  • The introductory cost is nearly five times more expensive than HubSpot’s comparable product

Cost: The smallest plan for small businesses starts at $550 per month.

5. Keap

successful marketing processes

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Keap starts working for you from the moment a lead fills out an info form. The program instantly segments leads into different groups and sends them carefully timed messages based on triggers like downloading an ebook or viewing a demo. All these features fit snuggly inside Keap’s CRM, so you can keep all your sales and marketing processes in one place.

Pros:

  • Combines lead capturing, nurturing, pipeline management, invoicing, and payment all in one platform
  • Plenty of features while still easy to use
  • Stellar support team

Cons:

  • Some Keap customers complain of emails going to spam
  • Has a tendency not to save work if the program freezes or logs out unexpectedly

Cost:     Keap starts at $79 per month.

6. Autopilot

personalized email journeys

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If you struggle to visualize exactly how a customer journey should unfold, Autopilot is the answer. Users rave about how easy it is to build multiple drip campaigns with a series of triggers for different lead segments. The program doesn’t come equipped with its own CRM, but offers several integrations so you can connect it with the tool of your choice.

Pros:

  • The visual builder makes creating personalized email journeys a breeze
  • Comes packed with templates to make your messaging shine
  • Easy to use and great customer service

Cons:

  • Integration with Salesforce and other CRMs can be clunky and not work as expected
  • Can be slow to load in your browser

Cost: Autopilot’s basic plan starts at $49 per month.

7. Act-On

marketing and sales tools

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Act-On is a lead nurturing solution that caters to larger enterprises. It integrates with almost any CRM on the market to help companies automate their email marketing, track website visitors and their activity, then score and prioritize leads so sales reps know who to prioritize. Best of all, it offers an easier to use interface than Marketo but with just as many features.

Pros:

  • Comes equipped with automated campaign templates that are easily customizable to suit your buyer journeys
  • Includes lead scoring and list segmentation options to help you target leads at various levels of engagement
  • Can create different lead scoring rules for different audience segments

Cons:

  • Lacks lead attribution functionality, so you can’t be sure how people arrived at your business
  • Act-On is so feature-rich that the learning curve may be too steep unless your team has someone committed to using the program full-time
  • Cost is likely prohibitive for many small and medium-sized businesses

Cost: Act-On starts at $900 per month.

8. Karta

lead behavior

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Karta is perhaps the closest you can get to an all-in-one marketing and sales solution. From building landing pages to lead tagging and scoring, the software includes so many features that it practically negates the need to integrate it with any other tools. With Karta you can also create automated emails based on certain lead behaviors, so lead nurturing happens even while you sleep.

Pros:

  • Create behavior-based automated emails for your leads
  • No more fumbling with integrations and potential points of failure to get all your business tasks completed
  • If you want to start a business from scratch, Karta has all the features and tools you need

Cons:

  • It takes a long time to learn how to use the program effectively
  • Documentation and video tutorials are still in their infancy

Cost: Karta starts at $99 per month.

9. Marketo Engage

successful email campaigns

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If you want to reach leads wherever they are – literally wherever – Marketo has you covered. Marketo manages ad experiences as well as email campaigns so that leads are targeted with the right content at the right time across any possible platform. Marketo can even deliver experiences through mobile push messages or after lead behavior on social media platforms.

Pros:

  • Create and schedule email campaigns based on lead behavior like web visits, social shares, or checking in for an in-person event
  • Assigns a lead score based on unlimited dimensions and characteristics so sales reps know who to contact and when
  • Engage leads through personalized ads and even mobile push messages

Cons:

  • Cost of entry can be prohibitively expensive for some
  • The interface feels dated and lacks the email design functions of many competitors

Cost: Marketo starts at around $1000 per month.

10. Pipedrive

automated email capabilities

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Pipedrive is the highest-rated lead nurturing software on Capterra, but it’s also one that is lightest on features. Its main function is a standard-issue CRM with some automated email capabilities built in, but this is par for the course with many CRMs in its class. If you want some basic lead nurturing nested directly into a familiar CRM, Pipedrive might be the right fit for you.

Pros:

  • Good if you want a CRM with lightweight lead nurturing features, like automated emails at each stage of the sales process
  • Gives a probability for how likely a lead will be won so reps know which accounts to prioritize

Cons:

  • Lack of LinkedIn integration can be a serious downside for B2B companies
  • No way to design unique campaigns based on lead behavior

Cost: With email automation features, Pipedrive starts at $25 per user per month.

11. EngageBay

pipeline management

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EngageBay’s all-in-one suite offers the best in marketing automation, pipeline management, and customer support. The holistic customer profiles let sales reps know what the appropriate follow-up activities are and whether or not now is the right time to sell or to offer more service.

Pros:

  • Create automated messages to nurture leads across SMS, social media, email, and the web
  • Equipped with lead scoring and prediction
  • Customer segmentation allows you to deliver personalized journeys

Cons:

  • Email templates aren’t as easy to use or dynamic as competitors
  • Design limitations when creating sign-up forms to attract leads

Cost: Start using EngageBay for free or get a basic contract for $9 per user per month.

12. SalesExec

customer support

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SalesExec is Clickpoint Software’s solution to lead nurturing for companies that rely on a high volume of calls to reach their ideal customers. It also comes equipped with the email automation features that are standard in most lead nurturing solutions.

Pros:

  • Offers SMS nurturing and call routing to make sure a lead always reaches the right rep
  • The interface is easy enough for a first-time CRM user to use
  • Customer support is prompt and highly attentive

Cons:

  • Limited integrations
  • Limited reporting functionality

Cost: SalesExec starts at $46 per user per month.

Nurture Your Leads On Autopilot

These days, it’s hard not to find a marketing tool or CRM that comes equipped with at least some lead nurturing features. Whether you want to deliver personalized email campaigns that delight, track your social selling index, or segment leads for easier prioritization, it’s never been easier to find a software solution that delivers it all within your budget.

If you want to keep your sales reps focused on the most promising prospects, take a look at LeadBoxer. LeadBoxer helps you nurture the most engaged leads with its automated lead scoring technology. Set dozens of dimensions to grade leads, from company size to website activity, so sales reps know exactly which prospects are ready to be turned into customers. Try it for free today.

The 12 Best Lead Nurturing Software Options for Your Business Read More »

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Sales Enablement 101: A Guide For Empowering Your Sales Team

Lead Engagement, Sales /

There’s a new buzzword on the minds of sales managers across the country: sales enablement.

It’s not a new concept, just a new name. The idea is to provide your sales teams with the resources they need to excel. Doesn’t sound too revolutionary, right?

Unfortunately, many offices are structured in such a way that a few top earners carry the entire office and the rest of the reps don’t get much attention.

In reality, some people are just naturally great at selling things. That doesn’t mean the other guys can’t perform at the same level, or even that they don’t perform at a high level themselves. They just need a little help to develop their skills, and that’s where sales enablement comes into play.

Read on or use these links to jump to a particular section:

What is Sales Enablement?

At its core, sales enablement is the process of providing sales training, coaching, enablement technology, and content to your sales and marketing teams to improve performance across the board.

sales enablement definition

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It doesn’t matter how great your top-earning sales reps are, there’s almost always room for improvement. Sales enablement helps everyone on the team excel by teaching, motivating. And most importantly, enabling them to exceed office quotas and expectations.

Sales enablement is sales empowerment, and it’s more important now than it’s ever been. Of course, we could repeat that statement every week. Because the competition is always on the rise, and buyers continue to become more informed than ever before.

Sales enablement provides the clearest avenue for sales and marketing teams to take their game to the next level. Regardless of where they are now.

The Importance of Sales Enablement

Consumers have more information and power at their fingertips than ever before. A study by Salesforce & Publicis.Sapient found that 87% of consumers begin their buying journey with online research. The study also found that 64% of shoppers say they feel that brands don’t truly understand their individual needs and desires.

Brands have to work hard to personalize their approach. Therefore selling to informed customers has become a nightmare for many in the sales game. You can check our post about how to make a brand persona to learn more.

There was a time when interruption ads stood a chance. Many buyers were naive, and if something popped up and caught their attention, they clicked. They didn’t know any better, but these days, they do. In order to break through and start a genuine conversation with potential buyers or clients, your sales and marketing teams need to be equipped with the most advanced resources available.

Four Benefits of Sales Enablement

The benefits of a sales enablement strategy are vast. So long as the sales reps within the team are capable and the products or services being sold are valuable.

1. Better Teamwork

Sales enablement enhances the team as a whole, not just the best sellers and not just those that need help. By implementing sales enablement strategies, as a result, companies no longer have to rely on top earners to carry the sales team.

2. Better Data

Sales enablement provides a superior framework for the collection and organization of data from engagements between reps and consumers. Data relating to pain points, customer personas, buyer intent, historic behavior, and more, all combine to help salespeople personalize each engagement.

3. More Efficiency

Better data and organization also increase team efficiency. With valuable resources at their disposal, therefore salespeople are able to make faster data-driven decisions, decreasing the time it takes to go from prospect to client.

4. More Collaboration

Sales enablement increases collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Sales reps have to provide valuable, personalized content to prospects in order to persuade them to make the deal. The marketing team is often the source of that content. With that being said, marketing is invaluable and, in many cases, inseparable from the sales process.

Sales Enablement Resources

Sales enablement empowers sales and marketing teams to enhance their performance near the end of the cycle, where the actual sale takes place when it counts most.

sales enablement resources

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Sales enablement is proven to increase sales efficiency. Booking.com for Business is the B2B division of the popular travel website. They used LeadBoxer to improve the quality of the leads being presented to the enterprise sales team.

After implementing a variety of sales enablement solutions, LeadBoxer helped Booking.com disqualify false-positives, qualify false-negatives, and even provide the enterprise sales team with invaluable behavioral data, allowing them to focus their efforts on consumer interests and buyer intent.

It seems like a no-brainer to want to give your sales and marketing teams better resources, but it’s not always the case for many companies. In most cases, when a sales rep fails to meet a quota, the blame falls squarely on their shoulders. They didn’t listen. They didn’t work hard enough.

While there are reps out there who simply don’t belong on a sales team, more often than not, better training, coaching, enablement technology, and content can improve the performance of almost anyone. These elements make up the foundation of sales enablement, but what do they truly entail?

What is “Better Training?”

A lot of companies are using the same onboarding process they’ve had for 25+ years. There’s no way the company is in the same position it was in two decades ago, but the onboarding and training materials still reflect that version of the company. The goals have likely evolved, the products and services have likely evolved, and the average customer has most certainly evolved.

In this context, “better training” means more relevant training. You could hire the most capable sales rep in your state, but if they’re not accustomed to your products, your services, and your culture, they won’t perform at the level you anticipate.

What is “Better Coaching?”

Sales coaching is essentially the process of putting proven leaders in front of your sales and marketing teams and allowing those leaders to guide your reps to better performance. For companies that offer no coaching at all, any type of coaching is an improvement.

When we talk about coaching, a lot of sales managers probably think of professional speakers who travel around the world giving live presentations. Of course, it’s valuable to have one of these sales and marketing gurus speak to your teams in-person, but this isn’t always an option – and it’s not always necessary.

You likely have one or two employees among your staff right now that are ready to step up and lead the pack. You likely have a manager that could take the initiative and coach your teams to more success.

What is “Enablement Technology?”

Most sales managers and marketing directors are familiar with the various types of sales enablement technology available today, even if they don’t make the connection right away.

The most common of these include Content management systems (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, lead nurturing software, and learning management systems.

Content Management Systems

cms connections

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Buyers today want personalized content. They need education and entertainment. If you educate consumers about various problems they face, not only can you reveal problems they may not have known about, but they’ll trust you as an authoritative source of value.

The problem is that there’s a growing sea of content readily available and anyone with a keyboard, a monitor, and an internet connection can create and distribute with the click of a button. Consumers have come to ignore the majority of what they see online, so your content has to catch and hold their attention.

In order to stand out, companies need a lot of content. Sales and marketing teams must work together to create and curate personalized content that speaks directly to consumers. Without a good CMS and lead capture page strategy, this process is nearly impossible.

You need to be able to provide relevant content at different steps in the buyer journey. If the buyer is just looking for information on a particular product, hitting them with sales copy is not the answer.

Customer Relationship Management

crm importance

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While a good CMS helps you identify the right types of content to use, a good CRM helps you identify the right time to use it.

The path a customer takes from learning about your brand to purchasing your products is called the customer journey.

As previously stated, a buyer who’s just looking for information about a product or who’s researching possible solutions to a problem is not ready to be hit with sales copy. They need informational copy that educates them about their problem and about your solutions, but they need content that does this in a way that’s not pushy or “salesy.”

The right CRM helps your team achieve this and much more.

A CRM helps your team organize customer or client relationships. Every interaction is a touchpoint, and every touchpoint must be documented. When an initial email goes out to a potential client, the team marks that interaction in the CRM. This keeps your sales and marketing teams from going overboard and pushing prospects and current customers away.

CRMs help with lead management, as well. When a new lead is entered into the CRM, the entire team has access to this data. This type of teamwork is key to the success of your company, and the right CRM allows and encourages this collaboration.

The sales process racks up a ton of data. Without a great CRM, the data alone will overwhelm your team and crush productivity and morale.

Learning Management Systems

lms value

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All of the enablement tools in the world won’t make a bit of difference if your sales reps aren’t capable and well-informed. At the end of the day, the success of your company depends upon the expertise of your sales and marketing teams and their ability to persuade prospects to invest.

There are several roles played by the LMS. The role it plays for you will depend on your goals and objectives. Most LMS solutions allow you to create and deploy training initiatives for your teams and track the progress of individual employees.

You can also utilize training and coaching content from other professionals in your industry. These high-profile coaches bring a lot of energy and expertise. Names that come to mind include Brian Tracy, Grant Cardone, and others.

SalesHacker.com released a list of the best sales training programs and coaches of 2019. The top five included:

Importance of Better Content

One of the most important functions of sales enablement is ensuring that your teams have the right content and that they utilize that content at the right time.

There’s a wide variety of sales enablement content, but three of the most common types are:

  • Case studies
  • Blog posts
  • Emails

Case Studies

Case studies document real-life examples of a product or service in action. They’re essentially glorified testimonials, as they help identify the struggles faced by your customers as well as solutions you bring to the table.

They’re versatile as they can be distributed to customers to highlight the advantages of working with your products and services, but they can also be distributed to sales and marketing teams to highlight consumer behavior and customer pain points.

Blog Posts

Although content marketing and sales enablement are two different fields of study, there are some obvious applications that are worth highlighting here. Blog posts provide value to readers without asking for anything in return. Not only can you build a wealth of trust and establish your brand as a source of authority in the industry, but you can also reveal to readers problems they didn’t even know they had.

Emails

For many brands, email is the first touch with potential customers. While this may be true, email marketing is an invaluable tool for the closing stages of a sale. It can be difficult to discern which types of emails to send and the best time to send them, but the combination of a great CRM and a great CMS will make the job much easier. There are several types of emails that are perfect for the closing stages of a sale. They include:

  • Order confirmations
  • Thank you emails
  • Abandoned cart emails

Most people check their emails on a daily basis. There are several elements to a great email and demand generation marketing strategy, and we won’t dive into them here, but emails are personal and you can personalize them in a number of ways.

Bringing it all together

Using a Lead & Customer Data Platform like LeadBoxer helps you to bring all this data together. Build rich customer profiles and track all behavioral events to get a complete picture of your audience.

Key Takeaways

Sales enablement is still a buzzword. But as the B2B and B2C landscape shifts in the coming years, it will become an indispensable element of the sales process.

Sales managers must deal with growing competition, a growing sea of content, and a new generation of sales reps.

LeadBoxer offers proven sales enablement solutions that can help your sales and marketing teams excel. By embracing smart sales enablement techniques, they can help their teams excel and perform at a higher level than ever before.

Sales Enablement 101: A Guide For Empowering Your Sales Team Read More »