Creating a content marketing strategy is a crucial step for any B2B company. SMEs (small and medium enterprises) have a lot to gain from a successful content plan. Using this as a way to connect with your target audience helps kickstart a strong relationship with customers.
Small businesses benefit from repeat clients, and investing in a content marketing strategy can help improve your overall sales. Keep reading, or use the links below to “jump ahead” to learn more about the essentials of content marketing:
Social media marketing has skyrocketed in recent years, causing trending ideas to emerge. However, maintaining a consistent tone and voice across your digital marketing channels should remain a top priority. While hopping on trends can temporarily boost engagement, your company’s values should always be at the core of each post.
Your team should create and share content based on the interests of your target audience. Thanks to the convenience of online buying and virtual sales interactions, buyers today have increased control over their overall customer experience (CX). Your SME must take charge of branding by adhering to consistent messaging and tone.
To get started, you should begin by defining your target audience. Begin by evaluating your product, creating an ideal client profile, and using data to segment marketing lists.
Rather than just looking at demographics like gender and age, dive deeper by assessing lifestyles and other factors. This information will help your team understand what influences customers to complete a purchase. Using this data, your marketing department can focus on attracting and engaging similar prospects to fill the sales pipeline.
With the right target audience, your team can start creating and sharing content. Develop an active presence on the online platforms your target prospects already use to search for content. Meet your target audience where they are most likely to be!
Determine whether your company gets more engagement from social media, website traffic, or email marketing. From there, ensure your marketing has a consistent schedule when posting to the platforms with the highest traffic.
Establishing a brand, voice, and tone for your company is crucial for cultivating brand loyalty. Consumers can easily follow and engage with multiple companies simultaneously, especially on social media. Consistent messaging and tone let customers know what to expect from your company.
This approach helps establish your brand as a leader in the industry, and prospects can use your content as a knowledgeable resource. Rather than constantly posting ‘fluff’ content, your team can share relevant industry information and help guide customers to the solution offered by your product.
How to Connect and Create a Lasting Relationship With Customers
Long-standing customer relationships are the key to success for B2B companies. Developing a strong, easily identifiable brand voice helps build awareness while encouraging engagement with your content. Measuring audience interaction rates allows your team to tailor future content to the interests of your target prospects.
Your marketing content should help funnel customers toward the sales pipeline. By understanding your ideal client profile and your quality customer journey, you can target audience segments where they are in their sales experiences.
Audience segmentation based on interests helps your customers enjoy a more personalized experience. Providing value to prospects, regardless of where they are in the sales funnel, can earn your company a reputation as a key player in your industry.
Consistency in your brand helps content work across the different stages experienced by each prospect. For someone just beginning the research process, engagement through social media or your company’s website can provide valuable insight into the solutions you have to offer.
Prospects more advanced in the customer journey may benefit from email marketing campaigns that direct to downloadable content. Both of these, however, should work to explain the benefits of your product.
Brand awareness is an additional piece that must be part of developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy. Educational resources that help establish your company as a knowledgeable player within the industry and introduction pieces targeted to new prospects are vital for success.
Customers who recognize your brand as a leader in the industry will likely make repeat purchases and view your company as an expert source for business knowledge and guidance.
What is a SWOT analysis?
A SWOT strategy that focuses on your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). The goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that should contribute to your overall business strategy. It helps companies see the big-picture of their mission and correctly identify new pathways for success.
Strengths. These are the services or products your company excels in providing and what makes your business stand out among its competitors. For example, if your company is in a niche industry, having an extensive network of industry contacts sets you apart from other businesses.
Weaknesses. These are factors that need improvement to ensure your business is performing to the best of its ability.
Opportunities. These are external factors that help boost your company within the industry. If something gives your team a competitive advantage, it can create opportunities for advancement in the marketplace.
Threats. Anything that may cause harm to your company is considered a threat. Your team’s ability to recognize factors outside your company’s control such as an increase in the cost of materials or the introduction of new competitors, can minimize the harm to your business.
Using SWOT Analysis to Improve Your Business
Successful use of a SWOT strategy, which creates a matrix analysis with the proper framework, relies on team collaboration. By freely sharing feedback and ideas, as well as using data to back up observations, this information will help your team see the most benefits.
This strategy can help the marketing department identify gaps in its yearly plan. With this data, your team will be able to pivot and change objectives to ensure the highest level of success. By using data analytics, the marketing team can set realistic KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and track the performance of their content marketing campaigns.
Getting started with a SWOT analysis requires asking questions to understand each aspect of the strategy. Going further into this plan, a TOWS analysis, or matrix, helps map strategic choices.
This strategy combines the factors of a SWOT analysis to help form plans for the future. Integrating the 4 elements of SWOT can help audit your organization, as well as move forward with successful marketing campaigns.
Utilizing Data Analytics to Measure Success
When creating your yearly content marketing strategy, it’s important to set up KPIs that will help determine the success of your outreach. Rather than basing these indicators on hypothetical goals, your team can use data analytics to measure a campaign’s success.
Content marketing should be focused on attracting new prospects, engaging with warm leads, and funneling customers into the sales pipeline. By actively tracking these objectives, your team can gain an accurate understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. Data analytics also play a role in brainstorming and initiating change within the marketing plan.
By tracking engagement like link interactions and form submittals, your team can see what content resonates with potential clients. These benchmarks help your team create a winning strategy to stay competitive within the B2B market.
Since customers can choose which brands they want to interact with most, having updated data on audience interactions allows your team to compare itself to competitors. Tracking success is important to remain a key player within your industry.
Engagement with content and sales conversions are both factors that help your team understand what type of marketing works for your target audience. A quality customer journey begins with marketing outreach, and this communication should continue until a sale is finalized.
Kickstarting your B2B SME may seem like a challenge, but taking it one step at a time and implementing a content marketing strategy can help you get ahead of the competition. Measuring how your team successfully connects with your target audience will play a huge role in increasing your company’s overall ROI.
Learn how LeadBoxer’s cutting-edge Lead Generation platform can facilitate the growth of your SME through online Lead Identification, Qualification, Lead Management, and the native integrations compatible with your existing tech stack that you need to build a solid content marketing strategy.
Technology innovations are changing the way we work, including the sales and marketing landscape for many industries. The skyrocketing popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT give companies yet another tool to surpass their competitors and use data-driven marketing to boost sales. The use of chatbots can help improve customer service and provide a better overall customer experience(CX).
In the B2B sector, it’s important to understand the impact ChatGPT can have on sales. Experts predict organizations striving to remain competitive will soon find the integration of AI into daily workflow crucial to success.
Continue reading, or use the following links to “jump ahead” and learn more about ChatGPT and its expected impact on Data Driven Marketing.
By using data from customer engagement and third parties, companies are able to base their marketing practices on these insights. This information sheds valuable light on the motivations and behaviors of your customers, enabling you to have a better understanding of their preferences. Using data to backup your marketing plans can help your company save money.
According to Forbes, two trillion dollars in revenue is wasted when marketing and sales don’t gather and use insights before making vital decisions that should be strategically determined based on available lead data analytics. In this time of economic uncertainty and downturn, maximizing the marketing budget is crucial to seeing the highest return on investment (ROI) for your company.
Using AI like ChatGPT can keep humans from missing vital information that can serve to drive sales. This cutting-edge technology can do more than simply create quick content. It can put data at your fingertips that pushes your company to the top of its industry.
For those who may be intimidated and hesitant to jump headfirst into a data-driven model, AI can play a role in relieving some of that burden. It may seem daunting to base your marketing strategy on current data and customer trends due to the workload needed to find this information. Using AI is a way of assisting employees as they seek to balance their workload and avoid human error while collecting and putting this insightful data to work.
What is ChatGPT?
Artificial Intelligence has been a driving force for innovation across industries. For those in tech, AI has been the subject of many conversations as well as a factor in new product releases and even the basis for some companies. Other industries are beginning to see the potential in adopting AI into their workflows.
ChatGPT is a language processing tool that uses AI to allow for conversations with its users. This chat bot reads and understands text to allow users to experience the technological innovation of this new information delivery method. For those who are new to AI, it’s important to understand why ChatGPT is such a game changer.
Rather than sorting through a multitude of links from a Google search or compiling data from different sources, ChatGPT makes it easy to locate information for quick use. The chatbot feature allows for a conversational approach, which makes it easily accessible and non intimidating for new users to try. You don’t need to be a tech expert to recognize the immediate benefits of using ChatGPT.
Designed by OpenAI, this platform launched at the end of November 2022. It has been the subject of many conversations across various industries. According to an analysis by UBS, ChatGPT managed to gain 100 million users after its first two months.
With this type of traction, it’s become an incredibly fast-growing app, and taking advantage of its features is important for many B2B companies. By using it with your current techstack, including Leadboxer, ChatGPT can seamlessly integrate into your team’s workflow to assist with marketing and sales efforts.
Getting started is as easy as typing your first question into the chatbox. Your team is able to access its features through the free version, or an upgrade is available for $20/month with the addition of a few extra perks. This type of technology can integrate with your current techstack to help streamline your sales process.
Lead generation and qualification is important for creating a strong sales pipeline. Making sure your sales team is working off quality leads helps save time and boosts overall sales. Using AI to automate your process can lessen the time between a lead’s interaction with content and when a salesperson reaches out.
Using a chatbot can help qualify a lead without expending valuable manpower, as AI can engage with leads to gather information and score leads based on defined criteria. Adding high-quality leads to your pipeline empowers your sales team to quickly identify and reach out to customers who will benefit most from your B2B solution.
Reaching your target audience is vital to ensuring your marketing team is earning the highest ROI possible. Creating relevant content helps showcase your company as a viable solution to your prospects’ problems.
It’s also a great way to establish your business as an industry expert. ChatGPT can help your team create content that shares important information in a timely manner.
ChatGPT is an incredible language generation tool. Its capabilities can help your marketing team develop blog posts, whitepapers, and social media content to distribute to target audiences. This tool doesn’t replace a marketing department, but it does help allocate resources to other tasks.
This type of tool can also help your team easily segment audiences to make sure content gets to prospective clients at the right time. By using ChatGPT, your marketing team can create pieces for all stages of the sales cycle. Automating workflows can ensure this personalized information lands in the inboxes of each segment to help walk them through the sales pipeline.
AI can play a major role in forecasting market trends and analyzing patterns within your industry. This data is gathered by ChatGPT through historical sales data, previous customer behavior, and market trends. This allows your team to take a data-driven marketing approach to optimize sales strategies, plan future product roll outs, and push marketing campaigns.
By adding ChatGPT into your team’s tech stack, your company can stay ahead of competitors by using data-driven marketing tactics. Allowing accurate customer information to guide strategic decisions helps increase ROI and boost sales.
Using ChatGPT to Improve the Customer Journey
Leading customers successfully to closing a deal is the goal of any salesperson. The customer journey starts as soon as a lead is identified, and the experience throughout the sales pipeline plays a large role in landing a sale.
While you can’t personalize your outreach for each individual customer, content should be segmented based on audience groups in similar stages of the customer journey. This helps funnelcustomers through the sales pipeline by providing relevant product information on a timeline that meets their needs.
Understanding how to measure customer satisfaction is the first step toward improving your sales cycle and the overall CX. Setting metrics and using a scale like a Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a great way to keep your team on track. This type of data is important for understanding how your clients feel about their experience with your company and its services/products.
ChatGPT can also help your team streamline efforts and boost the overall experience for your customers. Time is one of the most crucial parts of a successful client interaction. Automation is a powerful way to make sure communication is quick and efficient.
By allowing a ChatGPT chatbot to be used on your website, prospects can immediately meet and engage with your brand. This technology can initiate conversations, gather initial information your team will need, and provide quick assistance for their questions. Personalizedinteractions like these can help leads learn more about your solutions and provide a positive first impression.
ChatGPT uses the information discovered to assess the needs of potential customers. Engaging in immediate conversation allows the chatbot to ask targeted questions that dig into your prospect’s pain points and explore the challenges they’re looking to resolve. With this information, AI has the ability to help qualify leads to ensure your company can provide the right solution(s).
Throughout the journey, proper communication can assure customers that their needs are being suitably addressed and met. While having an actual salesperson to contact throughout the process is important, ChatGPT can help cover any real-time assistance around the clock. Using a chatbot can provide instant responses to customer questions, troubleshoot common issues, and guide prospects through the decision making process.
For companies where price is determined by the customer’s needs, ChatGPT can be used to help put together proposals, including product details, pricing, and terms of business. This streamlines the sales process, and can help your salespeople get this information over to the customer as soon as they’re ready to buy.
ChatGPT can also play a major role in fostering strong relationships and encouraging customer loyalty. By using AI for post-sales engagement, your clients can have access to onboarding and training materials. It is also great for gathering feedback from customers, which can inform company decisions about product roll outs and future implementations.
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 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
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 Marketing
Outbound 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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Your company, like every business, wants to draw in website traffic and generate sales. With everyone online, your first step is to create a website. You could try and wow potential customers with a fancy website and hope that word gets around about it.
However, a snazzy, optimized website is not a recipe for effective digital marketing and lead generation. You’ll have to do more. You need a comprehensive content distribution strategy.
A content-focused marketing strategy is essential for many reasons. The most important reason to invest in content distribution is that content fosters relationships between your customers and your brand. When it comes to people buying your products or services, relationships mean everything.
People who have a relationship with a brand are more likely to do business with that company. Content distribution and content promotion are key to building vital customer relationships. Lead generation content begins with a solid content distribution strategy. Keep reading, or use the links below to learn how to create a content strategy in your company:
To produce piece of content your customers will love, you must know what content distribution is and how to do it well. Content distribution is when you share, create, and promote content across various media channels to an online audience. Content comes in many forms that include:
There are three types of content you can share with your online customers. These are: owned, earned, and paid. For effective content promotion, you need to distribute your content in a way that uses all three types.
Owned
Owned content is the content you already produced. With this type of content, you can control how and when it is published and distributed. Examples of owned content include website content, blogs, social media pages, and e-newsletters.
Earned
With earned content, third parties share or promote your content. These third parties include bloggers, customers, influencers, and journalists. This sharing and promoting of content is free to your business.
Earned content are product reviews, social shares and mentions, guests posts, forums, and public relations shared by third parties. Though the sharing of the content is free, the third party owns it, not your business.
Paid
With paid content, you pay to have your content distributed. The most common paid content distribution forms include pay-per-click ads, sponsored content, paid influencer content, and paid social ads. Each type of paid content has varying price points, format, and audience.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads
With pay-per-click (PPC) ads, you pay a third party when people click or have an impression on your ad. These ads are commonly seen on search engine results pages (SERPs). They can also appear on social media platforms where they have “ad” identifiers next to the page listing.
PPC is a search engine marketing tactic that, when paired with your SEO strategy, can produce quality leads. Google Ads is a popular pay-per-click ad platform used by businesses.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is paid for by an advertiser that is shared by a publisher, person, influencer, or brand. The most effective sponsored content includes a company or person that targets your ideal audience. Sponsored content can include videos, images, podcasts, and social media.
Paid Influencer Content
With paid influencer content, you pay a top content creator to write, refine, and promote the content for you. This influencer should be a well-known person in your industry. Influencer content benefits your business by boosting your brand awareness, conversions, and website traffic.
Paid influencer marketing uses word-of-mouth and social proof. Both of these are crucial in establishing brand trust with customers. This type of content has been so successful that companies spend around $15 billion on influencer marketing.
Paid Social Ads
Paid social ads include influencer content, PPC, and sponsored content. These paid ads share your content on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Your content targets a specific audience most likely to interact with it.
To maximize your content’s impact on social media, you need a strategy. A strong paid social strategy will include native social media tools to create, schedule, and share the ads.
To have an effective content marketing strategy, you need to incorporate owned, earned, and paid content. SEO, PPC, and paid promotion are ways to blend the three content types. The most powerful content is the middle ground where the three types overlap.
Content production and distribution takes time, effort, and resources. It also tends to be overlooked. While content marketing may have taken a back seat in your strategy, there are many reasons to prioritize it.
You can undergo a thorough search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to make your website and your brand more visible. What you’ll find is that you can’t optimize your website without quality existing content. Additionally, posting content because you have it will not do you any good.
High-quality content production and distribution are important in your lead generation strategy. Content marketing is important because it centers around relationship-building. It is a chance for you to both share information and bond with your online customers.
Chances are that, your customers are already being bombarded with different content pieces. With all the websites out there, they will only do business with those whose content is valuable. This is because people want quick, relevant answers to their problems and questions. Hence it becomes essential to refine your content distribution strategy.
If you’re still skeptical of content marketing, here are some key statistics to consider:
6 Steps To Develop an Effective Content Distribution Strategy
Not all content distribution strategies are created equal. Throwing out poorly conceived digital marketing content everywhere you possibly can is not a good strategy. You can develop a successful content distribution strategy once know your audience and understand what they find interesting.
Promoting your new content can be overwhelming and time-consuming. If you want your create an effective content promotion plan, here are some steps to get you started:
1. Clearly Identify Your Target Audience
As great as you think your content is, not everyone will be interested in reading it. Those who could care less about your great content will go to another website for content they deem to be more relevant. When people bounce from your website, your search rankings and reputation can take a hit.
For successful lead-generating content, you need your content to be read by people interested in it. This requires you to research and identify precisely who your target audience is.
People who see value in your content are more likely to continue consuming the information you make available. Ultimately, these are the leads that are most likely to convert into successful sales. This is your target audience.
To create content your target audience will value, in addition to properly identifying who your ideal audience is, you must understand their typical consumer journey. Look at their demographics, pain points, objections to buying, and what they are interested in reading.
Research your customers’, website visitors’, email subscribers’, and social media followers’ income, age, gender, education, location, and other relevant demographics. You can find this information using Google Analytics and social media analytics tools. Try to narrow down the reach of your content, but don’t over-filter your audience so that it is too narrow.
After looking at the demographics, collect customer feedback. Ask readers how they feel about the content and how it’s distributed. Ask them what their pain points are and whether the content you provide adequately addresses these issues.
Use the feedback and demographics to create buyer personas. These buyer personas represent the preferences, motivations, and pain points of your ideal customers. Write different versions of content geared toward each of your personas.
2. Choose Your Content Types
There are different types of content. Each type of content caters to a different audience. To develop a good content distribution strategy you need to understand that every channel requires a specific content type.
The kind of content you choose to create will largely depend on where it is distributed. For instance, content developed for a blog is very different in style and length compared to what would be appropriate to share in a social media post.
A company blog is a highly recommended place to start creating online content. Blog posts are easy to share and repurpose. Additionally, nearly half your customers will read your blog before making a purchasing decision.
Depending on your objective, tailor your blog content to match the type of action you want the reader to take. If you want to generate leads, for example, offer lead generation and traffic generation content.
In contrast, social media content is much more casual and concise. With social media, it is important to research your audience using each platform’s analytics tools. This knowledge will assist you in delivering multiple pieces of content that will not only catch the readers’ attention, it will help you to make personal connections with them.
Similarly, when you send emails, you have to carefully think about what to say and how to say it. Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of lead generation around, making it a form of content marketing you should engage in on a regular basis.
Content can also be shared via videos and images. Infographics work well when promoted via social media. Video content needs to be engaging, interesting, clear, and brief.
3. Choose Your Distribution Channels
Your website is your first-stop distribution channel. On your site, you have greater freedom as to what you say and how you say it. Your website includes information on your pages and your blog posts.
You must conduct audience research and choose your distribution channels before you write your content. These two pieces of data will inform the type of content you write and where and to whom it is distributed.
Popular content distribution channels include blogs, social media, email, directories, guest posting sites, and forums. Sometimes traditional public relations may be an option. The content distribution channel you choose must be aligned with your target audience’s interests, demographics, and behaviors.
It’s important to know your audience and where they regularly visit online. Young people, for instance, spend a lot of time on various social media sites. Even among social media sites, there are different audiences.
Look to see where your target audience tends to go to gather information. Do they read industry blogs, watch YouTube videos, or scroll through Facebook? Knowing which distribution channels your audience frequents most is vital to planning a successful content marketing strategy.
Your blog should be your first distribution channel as it is one of your company’s owned properties. Two others that you need to optimize are your social media pages and e-newsletter. With these three channels, you control the content and its distribution. Also having a content calendar helps you ensure that content distribution is going according to your plan.
Social media is a popular distribution channel. In fact, 87% of marketers use social media to share content. Of those, most use an average of five social media platforms.
Content distribution via social media is a good option for many reasons:
Ease of distribution
The content is short and largely image-dominant
Ease of audience targeting
Provides a great opportunity to have casual, personal interactions with customers
A majority of your customers likely use at least one social media channel
Content is instantaneously shared with customers
It is free to share your content
People are more likely to do business with your company when they trust you. Finding the best combination of distribution channels to share your content will boost your brand authority. When customers see and consume your knowledgeable content, they are more likely to accept you as an authority in your field and will look to your organization as the best solution to their challenges.
Guest posting on reputable, industry-specific websites and forums like Reddit or Quora are excellent ways to distribute content to new customers. Be sure that the information you provide is high-quality and free from self-promotion and spammy links. This content should not be focused on your company, products, or services, but should be geared toward educating readers.
An effective content distribution strategy involves having a plan for how, where, and when to disperse information. Both the creation of lead-generating content and its distribution need careful thought. Once you settle on a writing and distribution process, you need to be consistent.
Writing content and publishing it everywhere on the Internet will lead to unsuccessful content promotion. If search engines don’t rank your content highly and the appropriate marketing strategies aren’t applied, your target audience will never find your content.
A good foundation for your content distribution strategy is having S.M.A.R.T goals. These goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Having such goals helps you see where your current strategy is at and what future success looks like.
With your content distribution strategy goals in mind, develop a detailed content calendar. There are many tools out there for you to use such as Google Sheets, Excel, Asana, Trello, and Google Calendar.
To start a consistent content distribution plan, assign certain people to develop and create different kinds of content. Then, establish an editorial calendar for publishing the content on a consistent basis.
An editorial calendar focuses and aligns your team to work toward common goals. If you contract out your writing, a calendar can inform your editors and writers about what’s coming up.
Some questions to ask as you start developing your editorial calendar include:
What audiences use which channels?
What opportunities exist on each channel that you can’t achieve on others?
What subjects are most likely to resonate with your target audience?
How often and when does each audience post on each channel?
What content types or formats should you use on each channel?
When should you post on each channel to get the most engagement?
What conversations work best on each channel?
Who will be in charge of managing each channel and posting on them on behalf of the company?
Where do you want to drive traffic to on each channel?
What metrics will you use to assess the success of your content distribution strategy?
No two content distribution strategies are the same. The best one for your company will be unique as there is no silver-bullet solution.
How you produce and publish content will depend on how many resources you have, team size, industry, and brand. The concept of creating a comprehensive content promotion strategy can seem overwhelming at first. Useful content distribution tools include Anchor, AnswerthePublic, Canva, and Vidyard.
You’ve created lead-generating content, but if it doesn’t have a call to action (CTA), it won’t be effective. CTAs tell the reader what to do next after reading your content. With CTAs in your content promotion, be sure to somehow capture the reader’s contact information, especially phone number or email.
To bring more readers to conversion from your content, you need to consistently get new leads to cultivate. Lead magnets are the best ways to capture the names and contact information of prospective leads. Through lead magnets you share the content for free with your audience for the exchange of their contact information.
Lead magnet content needs to be interesting, valuable, and applicable to the reader. If you don’t know where to start, here are three lead magnet strategies to try:
White Papers
White paper content highlights industry news like trends, the current state of the industry, and what the future holds. Industry overview white papers are the most common.
The other type of white paper is a product breakdown. Product breakdowns highlight company products. These white papers may go into detail about what a product does, who benefits, and the problems these items help solve.
White papers let prospective leads know that your brand understands their pain points and questions. These types of content also show leads that your product solves their problems.
Webinars
Webinars are another effective lead magnet. You can use live and recorded webinars to get a lead’s contact information. With webinars, you can ask someone to leave their phone number or email address to access the webinar.
Webinars can be one-off or regular events. Webinars are great ways to show your product or service. When you conduct live webinars, you allow the audience to interact with you.
Risk-Free Trial
Offering a limited-time risk-free trial has been a long-time favorite lead magnet for B2B and SaaS companies. With this type of lead magnet, customers enter their contact and payment information to access a product or service. Besides free access, some free trials give customers temporary access to an upgraded or premium version of products or services.
For most sign-ups, the terms and conditions of the risk-free trial must be clearly stated. You should be up-front about subscription cancellation and when a customer will be charged after the trial period ends. Besides transparency, your risk-free sign-up form must be simple and quick to complete.
Once you’ve created your lead magnet, publish it on your website, in blog posts, and on your social media channels. Lead magnets are also effective when used as part of your email marketing strategy.
6. Publish and Promote Content
Now that you’ve created your content, it’s time to publish it. Use your editorial calendar to push it out to your ideal audience at the best time and on appropriate channels. Regardless of what channel you use, follow the rules to optimize your content promotion on each channel.
Using a combination of platforms for your content distribution is a great way to maximize its effectiveness. For example, you can publish an industry white paper and push it out via email, social media, and paid ads. Use these channels to get your content before readers or have them sign up to see it.
Content creation is and will be key in generating leads. For effective lead-generating content that drives sales, you need carefully-crafted content. A strong content distribution strategy looks at the best content type and what channels you should use.
Thorough familiarity with your target audience is the foundation of any successful content promotion strategy.
Contact LeadBoxer today to learn how we can partner with you to generate more leads and drive more sales.
Creating a marketing strategy that appeals to a diverse range of ages can be a difficult undertaking. Mass appeal to multiple generations requires a deep understanding of how each group tends to interact with marketing materials. Planning ahead and using appropriate resources are essential elements of any successful generational marketing campaign.
Reaching a broad range of target audience members during a marketing campaign is important for maximizing your return-on-investment (ROI). The goal of your generational marketing strategy should be to reach potential customers without alienating any key audience bases.
For tips on creating a successful generational marketing strategy, keep reading, or use the links below to skip ahead:
What Is Generational Marketing and Why Does It Matter?
As you are probably well aware, marketing is not a one-size-fits-all approach when building the right customer base for your business. Even if your team is only selling one product, the pitch needs to be adjusted based on a variety of factors, including age. It’s important to understand ways you can incorporate content that appeals to mass audiences throughout your generational marketing strategy to avoid alienating key target groups.
Generational marketing is a strategy that uses segmentation to split audiences by age to better reach each target demographic. Currently, there are four generations of consumers your marketing team should be targeting: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.
It is important to understand that every generation interacts with marketing differently. By understanding which age demographics are in your target audience, your team will be able to produce appropriate content.
For most businesses, it is beneficial to appeal to multiple generations. By analyzing the preferences of each generation you seek to engage and eventually convert, you can gain valuable insights, making it possible for your team to develop and apply a successful generational marketing strategy.
Most importantly, Baby Boomers are a generation that has had to embrace major advancements in technology as it has developed at an accelerated rate in recent decades. In comparison, younger generations have had high levels of technology use incorporated into almost every aspect of their lives from a young age. Because of this disparity in experience in terms of technology, many Baby Boomers are used to traditional marketing tactics and tend to prefer in-person interactions.
This isn’t to imply Baby Boomers are out of touch when it comes to technology. According to Pew Research, 71% of adults aged 50-64 use at least one social media site.
Baby Boomers are more likely to be converted through in-store marketing, event marketing, banner ads, and other offline marketing channels. They are a great example for how a target market can be influenced by traditional marketing methods for maximum outreach.
Generation X
Sometimes referred to as the “Middle Child” generation, Gen X encompasses those born between 1965-1980. This group was the first to grow up with access to personal computers, and tend to be more tech-savvy than their predecessors.
This group makes up less of the population than Boomers and Millennials, coming in at 19.61% of the U.S. population in 2024. They might be the smallest generation in this list of different age groups but most Gen Xers make the purchase decision for themselves, hence they are a silent generation will better spending power than Millennials and Gen Z.
Gen Xers tend to be swayed by customer testimonials, and it’s helpful to provide a mix of effective marketing which includes mix of traditional marketing, SMS marketing, and other digital marketing strategies.
Millennials
Also known as Generation Y, Millennials surpassed the Baby Boomers in size in 2024. Currently, Millennials make up 21.67% of the U.S. population. The largest generation by the percentage.
They born between 1981-1996 are classified as Millennials, which means they grew up during the rise of technology. Marketing to millennials can be tricky because they tend to have a large online presence and a good grasp of digital marketing tactics.
There are more than 80 million millennials, most of whom are very active on social media and tend to consume information on their cell phones. This target customers can be attracted and engaged with common online marketing channels like content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing.
Gen Zers grew up online, and have embraced social media on mobile devices from a young age. They tend to have a shorter attention span and the ability to consume different forms of media simultaneously. A survey by the National Retail Foundation (NRF) shows 74% of Gen Zers consider ‘spending time online’ to be a hobby.
As a unique group, Gen Z may not be fully entered into the workplace yet, but that hasn’t stopped them from having a substantial impact on the economy. The NRF found that consumer spending on Gen Z equated to $829.6 billion.
Generation Z prefers quick messaging, influencer marketing, and dislikes marketing ads on social media platforms that disrupt their online experience. Basically they are unresponsive to traditional marketing they tend to lean toward tech-savvy sales tactics, but they place a larger emphasis on quality when it comes to products.
Establishing Your Target Audience
With such diversity spread across the generations, it is important for your marketing team to know which groups they need to target. Not all products will appeal to a mass audience, and that’s okay. By knowing your customer base, your company can allocate its resources towards marketing efforts aimed at reaching the right people. Hence generational segmentation in important.
Start by creating your ideal customer profile. The idea is to target clients who will most likely benefit from using your product. Odds are, your customer base will span across several generations, but it is possible it may not appeal to all of them.
Creating an ideal client profile takes time and resources. But the information gleaned is worth doing the necessary research so you understand who is most likely to benefit from and purchase your service or product. This information will prove vital in assisting your marketing team as it begins creating successful campaigns aimed at nurturing potential customer relationships.
Once established, take a look at the generational demographics of your target audience. If your list contains members of Generation X or younger (and it most likely will), your team should start thinking about the best marketing approach is to incorporate social media into its campaigns.
Millennials and Generation Zers are known for their online presence, but they are also in tune with marketing tactics. When it comes to marketing these groups don’t want to be bombarded with ads during their content scrolls, but they do want quality information delivered in an easy-to-digest format.
According to a consumer survey, 81% of consumers prefer receiving personalized communications from brands. This means your company needs to establish which customers are buying your products and then find ways to personalize effective marketing campaigns.
What is Attitudinal Segmentation?
Similar to generational marketing, attitudinal segmentation involves splitting your audience into groups. Rather than focusing on age, attitudinal segmentation groups customers together based on shared beliefs. This strategy dives deeper into the way customers think and feel.
This type of audience segmentation can help your marketing team personalize their outreach based on the feelings of specific customer groups. It is also most successful when combined with other tactics, such as generational marketing.
Using these strategies together can help maximize outreach and avoid alienating key audiences. When beginning the implementation of attitudinal segmentation, starting off with a few simple questions can kick start the process.
Try establishing motivations with questions like “Why do you…”, or focus on opinions with “What do you think of…”. These answers are a way to reach and segment your audience members into groups based on their purchasing behaviors. By understanding the way consumers feel, your marketing team will be able to develop content that speaks to the needs of your customers.
The Importance of Brand Loyalty Across Generations
There is more to creating a successful marketing campaign than simply understanding generational marketing, preferences, and customer attitudes. Audience engagement helps lead a marketing campaign to the finish line by filling the sales pipeline with qualified leads ready to start the purchasing process. 84% of consumers will interact with advertising when they feel loyal to the brand.
The sales cycle begins with marketing touchpoints that happen long before customers get the chance to speak with the sales or customer service departments. That means brands start building their reputation from the moment content is extended to an audience. Establishing and maintaining a credible brand is important for encouraging customer engagement.
According to Havas, over half (60%) of brand-related content fails to deliver and is considered clutter by consumers. Before taking any concrete steps to plan a marketing campaign, the team should understand that consumers value quality over quantity when it comes to brand communications.
Generational and attitudinal marketing align when it comes to understanding what customers want to get from a brand. Not all consumers share the same attitudes, and many are loyal to the same brands for different reasons. Diving into the insights that generational and attitudinal preferences share with brands can help your team create a successful campaign that reaches the correct audience.
For example, Gen Z looks for brands who are able to provide for the greater good and offer value. As a group that has grown up connected to communities through the internet, 68% of Gen Zers say they expect to see brands positively contribute to society. On top of their overall belief in bettering society, Gen Zers look for tech-savvy brands. In fact, the majority of this group won’t engage with websites/apps that are slow to upload. A brand with omnichannel marketing is bound to attract this generation.
Gen X is known for being the most brand-loyal generation. Statistics show four out of 10 Gen Xers will stick with brands with which they have already established relationships. Continued outreach and implementation of customer feedback will be important to maintaining a good loyalty program with many in this age group.
Along with preserving a good standing among consumers, brand loyalty leads to repeat purchases by customers. Studies demonstrate purchases by repeat customers are vital to success, accounting for up to 65% of a company’s business. Brand loyalty helps establish long-term relationships with consumers and encourages multiple purchases from these buyers.
In between buying cycles, marketing plays a large role in nurturing customer relationships through targeted content. This outreach helps your company and the services or products to stay top of mind for consumers.
Creating a Generational Marketing Strategy Without Alienation
After taking a deeper look at the different generational motivations, the best place to start with campaign creation is understanding how incorrect use of this information may cause alienation. Generational marketing can help successfully reach out to consumers across different age groups, but overgeneralizations about the target generation can cause more harm than good.
While understanding generational differences, especially with the preferred communication styles, is important for marketing, it is just as important to avoid stereotyping. A successful generational marketing strategy will combine with attitudinal segmentation to provide a positive personal experience for the target audience.
To start a successful campaign, it is important to identify where age will play a role within your company’s outreach. Knowing how generational differences factor into your brand will help your team segment audiences appropriately.
Diversity Within Generations
One of the main problems with traditional generational marketing is failing to take into account how large these groups are. For example, with 80 million Millennials in the generation, it is safe to assume not all of these consumers share the same beliefs. All of the generations are made up of diverse groups who may act differently from their peers.
Consumer age can provide insights into their preferences, but these trends do not replace a personal connection with the customer. Simply assuming your client will act a certain way due to their generation can cause tension and potentially ruin the business relationship if those assumptions are proven false.
Implementing attitudinal segmentation alongside generational marketing can be a great way to find middle ground when creating campaigns. Using data that provides insight into customer opinions, purchasing history, and lifestyle, these tactics can help companies avoid getting caught in a stereotype trap.
This allows your marketing team to focus on creating content for groups with similar interests, rather than just age. By delivering quality content that speaks to a consumer’s preferences, attitudinal segmentation can boost overall engagement and reach mass audiences.
Continue to communicate with groups via email blasts, but focus on tailoring content to reach the targeted audience. Segment these groups based on preferences like the amount of communication the consumer wants or specific products they may buy.
Quality customer service remains a high priority for consumers. According to Microsoft, 69% of U.S. consumers view customer service as an important factor when maintaining brand loyalty. Customers will continue to repeat purchases from companies they view as excellent in the customer service department. To ensure these efforts are reaching the right audiences, tailor your customer services to the needs of different generations.
Millennials and Gen Z are known for their online presence, and online customer service options make addressing these issues easy. For those who may prefer a more traditional route, implement customer service over the phone and make sure consumers are able to interact with a real person.
Marketing for Tech-Savvy Groups
A huge mistake that can be made during generational marketing is assuming some groups may not be active on social media. While Millennials and Gen Z tend to spend more time online than others, it would be incorrect to assume Gen X and Baby Boomers avoid the internet completely.
68% of Baby Boomers are active on Facebook, which means a majority of this generation sees Facebook advertisements daily. For those companies who want to utilize social media for all generations, sticking with traditional outlets like Facebook can help with effective outreach.
Due to the Millennial’s and Gen Z’s tech-savvy lifestyle, digital marketing tactics are important for reaching consumers in these age groups. It is important to have a strong understanding of the way these groups interact with online communities to maximize outreach efforts.
According to Epsilon, 75% of these generations shop online with their smartphone. That means usability across devices is important for closing sales. Website compatibility and access on smartphones will help connect younger consumers with your products. The study also found that Millennials spend more money online than other generations. Having the ability to purchase items directly on a website is important for tapping into this generation’s spending potential.
While Millennials lead the way in e-commerce buying on sites like Amazon, Gen Z has adopted a different tactic when it comes to online purchasing. According to Forbes, 97% of Gen Z view social media as their main source of shopping inspiration. Being able to purchase items in apps, like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, helps Gen Z have a more personalized shopping experience.
Generalizations about age groups are nothing new, but falling into these traps can be detrimental to your generational marketing strategy. Avoid getting stuck in the belief that all boomers hate technology or that millennials are entitled. These stereotypes often find their way into conversations, but they alienate audiences and can negatively impact your brand’s image.
Instead, focus on authentically presenting your brand in a way that can resonate across generations. Consumers are smart, and they will easily identify inauthentic attempts to ‘fit in’. For example, unless it is already part of your company’s persona, using cheesy social media lingo can be a turn-off to younger customers.
Not only does the youngest generation care about authenticity, but overall, brands with consistent presentation saw a 33% increase in revenue. Across generations, consumers are focused on the image a company presents and how its actions back this up. With customers holding the buying power, authentic brands will benefit and continue to rise to the top.
Key Takeaways
Generational marketing is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. Marketing teams should avoid jumping into a campaign that is based on age alone. Instead, creating a diverse plan with attitudinal segmentation and patterns based on generational behavior will avoid the alienation of key target audiences.
Embracing technology works for all generations, but some may require more creativity to be persuaded into a purchase. Stick with traditional outlets to reach Baby Boomers and Gen X, but don’t be afraid to try out new platforms like TikTok in hopes of reaching Gen Z. Maintain authenticity and transparency across all social media and email, though. Consumers will appreciate consistent branding, and this can increase your company’s brand loyalty.
Establish your target audience through a range of factors. Look into their lifestyles, communication preferences, and product interests. Segment your audience based on attitudes and opinions, as well as generation when applicable. Focus on creating brand loyalty and rewarding repeat customers.
Overall, generational marketing can help companies better reach their targeted demographic, but it is crucial to approach this strategy with ample research. To avoid missing out on outreach to key audiences, combine generational and attitudinal marketing strategies for a successful campaign.
For a free trial on using customer insights from web traffic, check out LeadBoxer!
In one of our previous articles we discussed why warm leads are better for your business but we realised we got ahead of ourselves. So, we decided to double back and try to understand what are warm leads.
Every company needs to follow up and nurture leads as part of its sales process. Warm leads are nothing more than individuals who have expressed an interest in your company in the past or people with whom you wish to establish a relationship. It could be something as simple as a person filling up an online form and asking for more information on a certain product, or making connections with the staff of a particular organisation. When these people get a visit or a call, it classifies as a warm lead.
Whereas cold leads are taken by surprise and often turn negative, warm leads are formed out of a pre-existing relationship or expression of interest. That’s the difference between cold and warm leads. Hence its lot easier to approach a potential sale, and places warm leads on top of cold leads in the sales cycle. Warm leads result in more effective sales talk.
Why are Warm Leads Beneficial?
Think of it this way: Would you like it if someone tried to sell you something within the first five minutes of knowing you? Of course not! The same applies to your customers as well. They hate it when your company tries to push a product/service on them, and are more likely to walk away. Even worse, they will probably remember your company in a negative light.
This is exactly why warm leads are preferred. Businesses, especially small ones, rely on warm leads to establish a certain level of trust with possible clients until they make a purchase from them. Establishing trust is an integral part of the sales process because the warmer the lead, the higher chance there is of converting it to a sale. Sizeable companies have systems in place for a formal sales process, and these involve introducing the brand to a potential customer, referred to as the lead.
The more the lead becomes exposed to the name and message of the brand, the more it begins to trust the brand over time. Warm leads show interest in your brand in such a way that closing sales becomes easy. In fact, companies boasting of solid, well-thought-out sales processes are adept at monitoring calls, messages, emails, and outreach so that each sales rep understands precisely where every lead is in the process.
The Thing About ‘Warm Leads’
The term “warm leads” is quite flexible. For example, any prospect that has been referred to a business website also qualifies as a warm lead, even though the organisation did not contact that prospect directly. Just the fact that the referrer recommended that particular company to the prospect means that an indirect connection has formed between the company and the lead. It is not necessary that the prospect know the business; simply knowing the person who referred them to the company is enough. In this case, the referrer serves as a sort of middleman, which means that generating warm leads is not a linear process.
There is a flexibility associated with warm leads that is missing in others. This makes them all the more lucrative. When a prospect reaches out to the business looking for information, they usually try to find out the contact number or fill out a form on the website requesting a call back. Such prospects are intrigued to go through all the effort to reach out to the business by themselves, without knowing anything about the company. This shows just how easy it is to work with warm leads rather than cold leads in lead generation.
Warm Leads Mean More Conversion Probability
Though there is still some amount of rapport building to be done on your part, warm leads are simpler to convert into sales than cold leads. The fact that the business had previously established a connection or contact with the prospect is indicative of the fact that they already had some amount of trust between them. This is the reason why the prospect will actually read or listen to whatever you have to say. They are ready to invest their time, and will not be as quick to walk away from the product or service as a result.
Warm leads are actually quite pleasant from the standpoint of the salesperson. They find it easier to distinguish between warm leads and cold leads and interact with the former; all it requires is a little bit of common sense and practice on their part. In the end, what matters the most is the way the prospect views the interaction, instead of how the business classifies it. While interacting with a warm lead, the company should always make it a point to introduce itself and then immediately raise the topic of their pre-existing association with the prospect. The way they respond should be an indication whether the sales team should pursue this lead for conversion or not. The moment you get some sort of acknowledgement about your connection with the prospect, you need to move forward in the sales funnel.
A business is better of investing all their efforts on warm and qualified leads rather than cold leads due to the higher probability of conversion. You might have ten cold leads in your campaign, but compared to them one warm lead in your campaign is always a better use of your time. Firstly, it is difficult to try and monitor ten cold leads. A person who is familiar with your name or the name of your company and who is ready to make an invest in your services or products will be easier to pin down, rather than the phone numbers of people who have never even heard of you.
How to Generate More Warm Leads?
Some companies resort to paying for long email list and phone numbers. But this cold approach is a hit-and-miss, and less effective than building and nurturing existing relationships with customers. Your time and money is better spent elsewhere, namely creating new relationships and conversations with interested parties. Such a process can be time-consuming, but the payoff is always greater. Cold calling isn’t something that their sales people enjoy, but they need to do it as part of their job. The trick is converting the cold leads into warm prospects, thereby increasing the chances of a successful sale by the sales team. Some of the most effective methods are given below.
Forming a Blog
If you have an expert sales team on your payroll, chances are you won’t have to work too hard to reach out to customers who know nothing about your business; instead the sales lead will come to you. It becomes possible through the creation of a website that also hosts a blog offering good content. This, in turn, forms a lead nurturing process that sets your company up with warm and hot sales leads.
All you need to do is research, create a blog with the help of one of platforms for business and share good content on your blog. The blog creates a platform to help attract prospects particular a type of lead interested in your business, products (or) services. This not only improves the SEO but automatically alters the feel of the conversation. The tables are now turned in your direction, it’s warm leads vs you because prospects understand that you have valuable insight to provide them before they even engage you directly.
Using Lead Capture Techniques
Get your prospects to visit your website by setting up a well-aimed blog. However, you should make it a point to know who those site visitors are before they leave. Otherwise, it would all be in vain. Use lead capturing to get the details you require about your visitors. Lead capturing involves creating helpful content that solves the problems of your personas. This could be lead magnet, which can be as simple as e-book, Free webinar, or something of those sorts.
You need to link your blog readers to a specific landing page that requests them to fill up a quick form. As soon as the form is submitted, allow them to access the lead magnet for free. Once you have their email run an effective email campaign for these subscribers to warm them up about business and offerings.
Through email marketing catch their interests frequently to make your way towards building a relationship.
Using a CRM System
It is best if your company uses CRM software. This ensures that none of the information you gleaned from your leads go to waste. You will find lots of different tools on the Internet that not only monitor who visited your website, but what they looked at, when they visited, and what offers they downloaded as well. The purpose of this data is to provide you with a clearer picture of your lead and initiate a sales conversion if needed.
LeadBoxer integrated with your CRM system allows a sales representative from your team to understand the lead readiness to buy from you via assigning a lead score to each individual lead. This score is usually anywhere between 1-100, the higher the score the higher will be the probability to convert warm leads.
Harnessing the Power of Social Media
It is important you know how to use social media for the benefit of your company. Simply opening accounts on social networking sites is not going to help; you must know how to get the most out of them. It helps if you begin by thinking long-term.
You will be able to generate the initial interest via a clever post or a giveaway. New leads are always appreciated, but you should also have a plan on how to plan on building on that foundation. Otherwise, you are going to lose any lead as soon as you get it. Social media metrics are a great way to become familiar with your audience and their needs. Not to mention, a great way to generate warm leads.
However, you should first determine the market you wish to cater to. Also, it is important to link your company’s posts, tweets, and updates with the landing page. This will give visitors the chance to know your company even better.
Cross Promotions and Referrals
Warm leads aren’t always the tricky affair that people make them out to be. For instance, customer referrals are a great way to generate business-to-business leads. Customer referrals are built out of trust.
Another great option is cross promotions with other businesses. This method provides a cost-effective, easy and quick way to get more warm leads; leads who you otherwise would never have been able to gain access to. This is a highly exciting prospect. Planning cross promotions carefully is a great way to tap into an audience base that has high interest in your product.
Webinars and Face-to-Face
Despite the rise of social media techniques, the old-fashioned approach is long from dead. It works wonders, especially in the form of executive events and webinars, where it is possible to interact directly with the lead.
Due to the overwhelming focus on technology in the current digital age, the old ways are easy to overlook. But, these methods were used for a very long time and with good reason – they were effective. Because at the end, leads are people just like you and us, it builds when you listen from someone face-to-face rather than the content online.
So your company should try this out. Even telemarketing could be one of the strategies to generate warm leads who are ready to buy if done right.
Email
Generating a warm lead through email is possible if you email one of the higher-ups in the organisation and ask for a referral down to the correct individual, or email the decision maker directly. Irrespective of your approach, a lot rides on the subject line of your email. It needs to be interesting enough for the lead to actually read it and open the mail.
There is a particular way to develop effective cold email subject lines. Use the names of the leads in the subject line only if it makes sense. Keep the subject as specific as possible. Make the subject line as personal as you can so that it appeals to the lead, and turns it warm. Make sure that the email doesn’t sound too much like a marketing email. Try to keep it casual yet professional. You could try experimenting with a question format for the subject line of the email. Always make sure that you deliver what was promised in the subject line in the actual email.
Customers are no longer the same, and sales and marketing are trying to keep up. The rise of search engines and social media, businesses and individuals do not have to wait for sales people to approach them. They themselves can go looking for the things they want and choose whichever company offers the same. Sales and marketing work together to bring in warm leads. This helps create more business than cold leads ever could.
When it comes to marketing, data is king. With in-depth data, marketers can personalize interactions with customers, market to them at the right times, create a more enjoyable experience, and overall, close more sales. However, capturing all of this data, organizing it in one place, and making use of that data has been a struggle. Because using traditional tools such as web analytics, CRMs, and marketing automation is very time consuming. Here a customer data platform software can help.
You typically have to spend a lot of time combining all of this data to get a complete picture of your customer. Even then, this process is limited and you can’t fully take advantage of this data to completely personalize your marketing campaigns.
In this article, we’ll discuss what CDPs are, the difference between them and traditional marketing tools, their benefits, and compare over a dozen CDP options.
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The Customer Data Platform Institute defines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) as “a marketer-managed system that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems”.
In essence, a CDP is a system that pulls together all the data you have on a customer in one place – customer data platform software. With it, you can create a unified view of that customer and see every action they’ve taken since first interacting with your company.
How many times they’ve visited a specific page on your website
When they opened one of your emails
When they clicked a link inside that email
How many times they opened your emails
Information on mobile app sessions, social media comments, purchase orders, and chat history
In short, CDPs can help you understand customer behavior by accurately assessing the customer journey.
Customer Data Platforms vs. CRM vs Marketing Automation: How Are They Different?
You may be thinking, “Don’t CRM or email marketing platforms such as Hubspot and MailChimp already do this?”. Not exactly.
The data that CRMs and email marketing platforms offer is limited. CRMs typically offer basic information and allow you to store customer information such as addresses, emails, etc. Some may even track interactions like email opens and live chat or email conversations.
The same goes for email marketing platforms such as MailChimp. These platforms will store a customer’s email and track email activity. On the other hand, they miss other key areas such as web activity, mobile app activity, and so on.
However, CDPs aim to combine all of this data into one place and try to capture a customer’s entire interaction with a company. A true CDP would have data on a customer’s chat history, email history, website visits, mobile app sessions, purchases, social media interactions. And anything else that would involve an interaction between them and your company.
Some CDPs also allow you to leverage that data to send emails, run marketing automation, optimize advertising, and more.
What Are the Benefits of Using a Customer Data Platform?
CDPs can expand your marketing capabilities with less manpower, saving you time and money. Specific benefits include:
1. Having a Single View of Your Customers
The most obvious reason to use a CDP is that you can get a “single view” of the customer, aka unified customer profile.
You can see their entire interaction with your company in one place, rather than trying to somehow manage and collect this data from multiple data sources and tools.
2. Being Able to Personalize Customer Interactions
Having access to both first-party data and third-party data in one place can allow you to personalize a customer’s entire experience with your company. Instead of going through each data point, you can use data segmentation target particular customer groups.
You can personalize names in emails, send out a coupon directly after a customer has visited a specific page on your website. Also, you can enter them into a B2B marketing automation process when they’ve had a chat with your company, or send them an email when they logged onto your app.
Hence segmentation like the above can help you personalize your marketing campaigns to each single customer. With CDPs, the possible personalized experiences you can craft for your customers are endless.
3. Being Able to Create Highly-Targeted Campaigns
With all of this information at your disposal, you can now create specific targeted campaigns, and in some cases, one-on-one experiences using your customer’s behavioral data.
Do you want to target customers who have visited your pricing page within the past month, have opened up and clicked in your last three emails, downloaded your mobile app and have been actively using it for the past two weeks, and have also contacted your company via email or your live chat widget?
With Customer Data Management Platforms, you can do that
Customer Data Platform Software Options
To manage customer data, CDPs have become common . Different customer data platform software work best for different industries, and each offers unique data across platforms that set each apart from competitors. However here are the top-rated tools in the field:
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a Lead & Customer data platform that focuses on the sales side of the CDP spectrum, by collecting information about your customers throughout their entire customer or buyer journey
We collect and give you information such as:
When a customer visited your website, what pages they visited, and how long they spent on that page
What emails a customer has opened from you when they opened it, and what links they clicked
Get notifications when leads or customers are ready-to-buy or show buyer intent
All of this information is then organized into an Accounts view and a Leads view. And here each of your customers or leads are given a score to gauge how engaged they are with your company:
The score is called ‘Leadscore’ which gives you an idea of which prospects are most worth your sales team’s time and effort.
Each of these customers or leads can be viewed on a micro level to collect real-time data and to see every bit of that person’s activity.
To learn how LeadBoxer can help you understand your customer experience across marketing camapign.
What sets it apart: Instead of manually integrating all of your tools, Segment has a single API that allows you to share data and integrate your entire marketing stack at once. There are also tools for validating and protecting all of your customer data.
Who it’s for: Segment serves a variety of customers, from enterprise-level companies like IBM and Petco to retail like Peloton and SaaS like Zendesk.
Pricing: Segment is free for tracking 1,000 visitors or less per month. The mid-range option for teams, which tracks 10,000 visitors per month, starts at $120 per month. For the enterprise-level option, contact Segment for a quote.
What sets it apart: With the power of AI, Blueshift predicts how likely customers are to purchase, engage, churn, and more, all this based on the data collected. Customer scores and segments automatically update with each interaction, and the predictive affinities function ensures you’re targeting them with the most relevant content.
Who it’s for: Plenty of personal finance companies like ClearScore, LendingTree, and GOBankingRates use Blueshift, as well as B2C companies like Skillshare, Tuft & Needle, and Artifact Uprising.
Pricing: Blueshift doesn’t list their prices, but their solutions range from simple email automation to cross-channel marketing and AI for enterprises.
What sets it apart: In addition to tracking cross-channel data collection on individual customers, Exponea has experiment capabilities that allow you to tweak and test your website’s appearance so that you can always be improving customer experiences.
Who it’s for: B2C brands will get the most out of Exponea’s tools. Their top customers tend to be clothing and accessory brands like Topshop, Missguided, and FitFlop.
Pricing: Fill out a form to receive a custom pricing plan based on the needs of your company.
What sets it apart: QuanticMind unifies all your customer data to help you enhance your advertising and customer experiences. If you want to get more out of your advertising spend, QuanticMind customer data platform software can do it with automated bid optimization.
Who it’s for: QuanticMind is primarily geared toward large enterprises like WP Engine and Rosetta Stone, but it also serves leading B2B and SaaS brands like MOZ.
Pricing: QuanticMind doesn’t list pricing or product tiers on their website. Schedule a demo to learn which solution and pricing plan best fits your business.
What sets it apart: WithCustomerLabs CDP, you can select specific elements on your website to instantly create trackable events to collect customer data. The friendly interface erases the need to write any code, making it possible to start tracking all the website events you want within minutes.
Who it’s for: CustomerLabs has customer relationship management solutions for e-commerce, B2B, and SaaS companies.
Pricing: Personal plans start at $0 per month but tracks only 2,500 customer events. Business plans start at $49 per month and track 0.5 million events per month.
What sets it apart: The CDP is only one capability of Emarsys, a B2C marketing automation platform. With Emarsys, businesses can create personalized customer experiences at scale and show you where to focus on your next marketing steps.
Who it’s for: Emarsys is primarily a solution for B2C brands like Tupperware and Char-Broil.
Pricing: Emarsys doesn’t openly list its pricing on its website. Get in touch for a demo and pricing plans.
What sets it apart: Optimove’s self-optimizing campaigns use customer data to adjust triggered actions so that customers always receive the campaigns they’re most likely to engage with.
Who it’s for: In addition to retail, financial services, and apps, Optimove customer data platform software has solutions for the gaming industry to analyze player behavior.
Pricing: Optimove doesn’t list pricing or product tiers on the website. Request a demo to learn which features and pricing plan best fits your business.
What sets it apart: Tealium AudienceStream CDP is one aspect of Tealium’s Universal Data Hub platform. It claims the biggest integration marketplace in the industry, offering you to setup a data warehouse to unify your marketing stack.
Who it’s for: Tealium countslarge, diverse organizations like Providence St. Joseph Health and the Utah Jazz basketball team among their customers.
Pricing: Telium’s product tiers and prices aren’t listed on the website. To learn which features and pricing plans fit your business, schedule a demo.
What sets it apart: Pimcore CDP is open-source software that aggregates best customer data and customer insights to create real-time personalized experiences at any scale.
Who it’s for: Pimcore CDP serves a diverse and largely European customer view, from freight and port logistics company Rhenus Logistics to online marketplace Modile.
Pricing: Get in touch with a sales rep for a custom pricing plan.
What sets it apart: Boxever is CDP that collects data on web visits, mobile activity, email activity, calls, ads, and more. It combines all of this type of data into one place and allows you to personalize your marketing and deliver predictive offers.
Who it’s for: Boxever’s largest customers tend to be airlines like Jetstar, Emirates, and Ryanair.
Pricing: Pricing is crafted on a per business basis.
What sets it apart: Evergage allows you to personalize the content on your website, app, and emails on a one-to-one basis in real-time.
Who it’s for: Large companies like Intuit and Walmart use Evergage, as well as software companies like Autodesk and B2B solution providers like Citrix.
Pricing: Pricing is offered on a per business basis, so you’ll need to contact a salesperson for a quote.
What sets it apart: AgilOne is CDP specifically for B2C companies. The platform offers a “360 profile” where you can view customer interaction. The platform automatically cleanses, standardizes, and enriches customer profiles to help you deliver consistent experiences.
Who it’s for: B2C companies Lululemon Athletica and Tumi are among AgilOne’s customers.
Pricing: Pricing is offered on a per business basis and you will need to contact the company for a quote.
Customer Data Platforms are the Next Level of Marketing Automation
Having a customer’s data all in one place rather than hopping in between a suite of separate tools saves marketers and salespeople time and money.
Also with a unified view of customers, you can create personalized marketing campaigns that maximize your spend, increase conversions, and create delighted customers for life.
The best customer data platform from the list is definitely LeadBoxer and Segment. You can choose your CDP depending upon you current tech stack and business goals.
Looking for more qualified leads?
We offerLead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
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.
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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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Pop culture would have you believe that the most important part of any sales journey is the art of closing a deal. Equally important, however, is how you open it. Pursuing only the most viable prospects with the need, authority, and budget to purchase your product is a winning recipe for securing new accounts. Lead qualification is an essential part of this recipe. But what exactly is it, and how do you do it?
In this article, you’ll learn how to qualify a sales lead from the moment they first visit your website all the way through to after an initial discovery call. With the information you gather, you’ll be able to effortlessly determine which prospects are worth pursuing and which aren’t, saving you time and money.
Lead qualification is a process of marketing and sales teams working together to forecast the likelihood that a prospect will ultimately make a purchase. It occurs at every stage of the sales journey and ultimately decides if the prospect will be funneled down the pipeline.
The first step of lead qualification happens during the inbound marketing stage. At this stage, your company’s marketing team captures contact info via site visits, email subscriptions, email tracking pixel or social media, then decides if the lead fits the profile of your company’s ideal customer.
This qualifies the prospect to move on to the next step, which is a discovery call from a sales rep. The sales rep leads a conversation that reveals the prospect’s needs, project timelines, purchasing authority, and any budgetary constraints.
Information gathered during a discovery call further determines if the prospect is viable of the time it takes to craft a proposal, or if you’re better off pursuing someone else’s business.
Why Lead Qualification is Important?
Lead qualification is important because it saves you time, energy, and ultimately your bottom line. It occurs very early in the pipeline, ideally when you’re making initial contact or even beforehand. It helps you determine:
If the prospect is in the right industry and territory to benefit from your product
And if they have a need your product can solve
If the person you’re talking to has the budget and authority to make a purchasing decision
If there is some way you can provide value over your competitors or the prospect’s current vendor
But if the lead doesn’t meet your criteria for what makes a qualified prospect, then you can disqualify them. Disqualification may sound like a bad thing, but in reality it saves you time and allows you to focus on more promising contacts.
Bottom line, lead qualifications allows you to quickly assess whether or not you’re talking to a person that has any real intent in buying what you’re selling. This can also help make sales reps more efficient, productive, and motivated. Without it, you could waste time talking to people who will never close, and no one wants to feel like they’re just spinning their wheels.
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We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
Lead scoring is a process of assigning a point value to a prospect at or near the beginning of the sales pipeline. It often happens before a sales rep ever makes a discovery call. In fact, it may inform whether or not a call is worth having in the first place. This ensures that reps spend their time talking to only the most promising leads.
Before you can calculate a leadscore, you’ll need to gather the following data about a prospect:
Buyer Profile
Does this prospect fall into your target industry and territory? Do they fit the profile of your ideal customer?
To find out, you’ll need to include fields in the forms on your landing pages that gather the relevant information. Anyone tasked with this level of qualification – be it a sales rep or a marketing team in charge of identifying prospects – should always keep the company’s ideal customer profile in mind.
From there, you’ll be able to award points to leads whose answers align with your buyer profile and take away points for those who don’t. You can also award points for those who fill out fields that were otherwise listed as optional on the form, as this demonstrates additional interest on behalf of the prospect.
Company Information
If you’re a B2B organization, then knowing the size of the prospect’s company and its contact information is essential to qualify the lead. You can add or take away points depending on how the size of their company relates to your ideal customer profile.
Online Behavior
The more time a prospect interacts with your site, the more likely that they’re interested in your product. Tracking page views, length of visit, downloads, and frequency of visits over a 30, 60, or 90 day period are all good data points to start with.
Email Engagement
Just because someone signed up for to your email list does not necessarily mean they’re ready or even interested in buying from you. Open rates and click-through rates are a more meaningful indication of interest.
Social Media Engagement
Tracking Facebook or Twitter likes, retweets, shares, and click-through rates from your posts are all ways of tracking social media engagement. The more engaged a prospect is, the higher their leadscore should be.
Spam Detection
Using all lowercase letters when filling out website forms is a red flag that the prospect may be a bot. The use of a Gmail or Yahoo email address instead of a company email address may also indicate that they don’t fit your buyer profile. These indicators can subtract points from the prospect’s leadscore if it doesn’t disqualify them altogether.
Now that you have a set of data, you’ll need to interpret it in a way that immediately communicates how qualified a lead is. To manually calculate an actual point value or leadscore, follow these steps:
Step 1: Set Your Benchmark
To do this, divide the number of new customers acquired by the number of all leads generated. This conversion rate is your control, which you’ll use to compare to other characteristics.
Step 2: Choose the Most Valuable Characteristics
Which characteristics did your highest quality leads exhibit? In addition to going with your gut, consult your sales reps, marketing team, analytics, etc. for their insights.
Step 3: Calculate Close Rates
As with setting your benchmark, divide the number of customers acquired by leads generated that exhibited certain qualities. Do this for each characteristic.
Step 4: Compare Characteristics
Which characteristics showed significantly higher close rates to your benchmark? Assign higher point values to those characteristics. For example, if leads who downloaded a certain whitepaper have a close rate of 25%, you might assign that characteristic 25 points on future leadscores.
Once you decide how you’re going to calculate leadscores, you can save yourself time and energy by investing in a lead generation and sales tool. Many will capture all the data you need, then automatically calculate it. Software dashboards are usually visual, easy to reference, and quickly identify who is the most promising prospect to pursue.
Here’s a look at how you can customize different characteristics or information in LeadBoxer to automatically calculate a lead score for potential prospects:
After a lead has been gathered and qualified with a leadscore by the marketing team, it’s time for a sales rep to step in and make a discovery call.
Lead Qualification Frameworks and Questions
At this level, sales reps determine whether or not the prospect has any real need or desire for the product. This is done by asking the right questions during a discovery call.
Several thought leaders and top sales reps have spent decades developing multiple frameworks for their lead qualification processes. The method you chose to follow will ultimately depend on your industry and the average size of accounts you typically work with. Your personal conversation style and comfort zone might also play a role in what framework you reference.
These questions have the added benefit of encouraging potential leads to open up about their needs, frustrations, and pain points. Should you decide that the lead is qualified to move forward in the process, you can use this information to tailor your pitch and deliver a more effective proposal later on.
BANT stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline. Although the brainchild of IBM, it’s the go-to framework for qualifying leads in a variety of markets and companies. Some relevant questions to ask during a discovery call would include:
Budget: How much of the budget is set aside to address this challenge?
Authority: Are you in the position to make a purchasing decision to address this challenge?
Need: What challenge are you dealing with and why hasn’t it been dealt with before?
Timeline: How soon do you hope to solve this challenge?
Strengths: BANT is simple and straightforward. For anyone with a low-stakes or lower priced product with no existing qualification framework in place, it’s a good option to start with and develop from there.
Weaknesses: BANT’s questions don’t follow a logical order. It would be a bit daring to open a discovery call by jumping straight to a question about money. Plus, according to CEB’s research, 5.4 people are involved in B2B purchasing decisions. When considering authority, the answer is likely that multiple people are involved and should therefore be brought into the conversation.
CHAMP
CHAMP was developed as a solution to the seemingly backward sequencing of BANT so that the more important questions are asked first for both the buyer and the qualifier.
Challenges: What problem needs solving in your business? What challenges are you still faced with that your current solution still does not solve or address as effectively as you would like?
Authority: In addition to yourself, who else is involved in this purchasing decision? Should we bring them into the conversation? What are the organizational relationships that influence the decision?
Money: What are your expectations for the investment necessary to purchase the solution?
Prioritization: When do you plan to implement a solution to your problem? Are you looking at any other possible solutions?
Strengths: The ordering of questions follows a more natural trajectory of conversation. For those just beginning to explore qualification frameworks, this may be the easiest to keep at the back of your mind during a discovery call.
Weaknesses: As far as conversations go, CHAMP is still a little shallow. For one, it doesn’t get into how a prospect would measure the success of the project. This leaves the sales rep ill-prepared to fully demonstrate value further down the pipeline during the proposal stage.
GPCTBA/C&I
Hubspot developed what is certainly the longest acronym in sales, but they swear by it. Although they break down their framework into more detail than this, in a nutshell GPCTBA/C&I stands for:
Goals: What’s your top priority right now?
Plans: How do you plan to achieve that goal?
Challenges: What difficulties do you foresee with your plan?
Timeline: When do you hope to solve this? If you don’t buy at this time, what remedial actions do you plan to take?
Budget: What have you spent on achieving this goal so far? What additional funds can you allocate towards it?
Authority: How does your company purchase products of this type? Who else is concerned with this buying decision and what are some of their concerns? What ego or ownership issues come up that need to be managed and respected that I need to be mindful of?
Negative consequences: What happens if you don’t reach this goal? What will it cost you and your company if you keep things the way they are today?
Positive Implications: What can you achieve next if you do reach this goal?
Strengths: In an era when multiple solutions to a person’s problem are just a Google search away, it’s more important than ever to get clear on how relevant your product is to their needs and how closely they fit into your niche. This framework gets into the nitty-gritty and can quickly indicate if a prospect is truly viable. Plus, it was developed by a SaaS company, so it likely translates well to other SaaS providers.
Weaknesses: Sales reps unfamiliar with this framework will likely need to practice holding a conversation that touches on all these topics in a natural way. Otherwise, you risk hosting a discovery call that comes off as more like an interrogation.
It’s possible that there are questions relevant to your product or industry that aren’t covered by any of the frameworks above. In that case, you’ll want to tweak your approach so that you’re covering all your bases.
Some additional questions worth considering are:
What are the concerns or roadblocks that could come up down the road and get in the way of us working together?
What are the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally?
Which is the overall mood of the company and its leaders towards this problem?
What internal resources can you leverage to try and resolve this issue on your own?
How will your current vendors react to the possibility you’ll buy from us?
Whatever framework and sets of questions you go with, don’t overload the person you’re speaking with by asking them too many. The idea is to engage them in meaningful conversation, not convince them that you’re an interrogator.
When to Move Prospects Forward
After making a discovery call, you’ll need to make a decision about whether or not to continue the sales process. Some good signs that prospects are ideal candidates for moving forward include:
Pain Points
The prospect clearly identified what challenge they have and talked about it at length. It’s clear this is an issue that is a top priority and needs to be solved soon.
Specific Goals
During the conversation, the prospect was certain on measurable goals and outcomes. This shows that they’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the challenge and will be receptive to solutions that propose to meet those goals.
Knowledge
Overall, the prospect knew the ins and outs of the challenge or project like the back of their own hand. This shows that they likely have sway over the purchasing decision if they’re not in charge of it themselves.
However, if you encounter some of these signs during your discover call, you might want to consider stopping the process:
Short Answers
Whether it’s because they don’t have the time to talk, they haven’t thought about their challenges in detail, or they don’t have a pain point you can address, this is a clear indicator that the prospect isn’t interested.
Inconsistent Answers
Conflicting responses are an indicator that the prospect might not have that much influence over the project, or it’s not enough of a priority that they’re willing to find a solution just yet. In either case, you’ll want to save your time and pursue other business.
Qualify Leads and Close More Sales
An optimized leads qualification process serves two main functions: to forecast whether or not a prospect is worth the time and effort of a proposal, and to help reps tailor that proposal for maximum effectiveness.
The first step to qualifying a sales lead is to generate a leadscore based on their engagement with your website, emails, and social media posts. The second step is to make a discovery call to determine their needs, purchasing authority, and budget.
While this may seem relatively straightforward, there’s a lot of data and elements that need to be taken into consideration in order to calculate a leadscore. Thankfully, there are several different kinds of lead generation software out there that can gather, analyze, and calculate that leadscore for you. In no time at all, you’ll be filling your pipeline with qualified prospects and winning more accounts.
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The difference between demand generation and lead generation can be confusing. Both share similar traits, however, the goals and specific tactics behind each method are different. Thus, having an understanding of both can help you to create a more effective marketing strategy.In this post, we’ll define both demand and lead generation and how they differ from one another. We’ll also discuss specific tactics that each method uses and talk about when to use demand generation vs. lead generation.Let’s get to it:
What is Demand Generation?
Demand generation, or “demand gen” for short, is the process of creating awareness and demand for your company’s product or service. In short, demand gen aims to bring new visitors to your website or business in order to introduce them to your company.The end result is to build your target audience, establish trust, and to spark interest in your company.Types of demand generation content include:
All of this content is provided for “free” in order to attract new potential customers. At this stage, they shouldn’t have to provide their email or other contact information in order to access this content.
Demand Generation Ideas:
To get you started, here are a few demand generation ideas you can use:
Create SEO-Driven Content
One way to create awareness is to create content that your target audience is already searching for. There are many ways to identify keyword opportunities. For one, you can look at Google related searches. Simply search a keyword in Google and then scroll to the bottom of that page:
Here you will see a list of related keywords that people are searching for. You can also look at the types of questions people are asking in Quora or use a tool like Ahrefs for keyword research.
Guest Posts
Guest posting is the process of creating a blog post for another popular blog in your industry. This is a great way to reach your target audience and “piggy-back” off of the traffic that the established blog already receives.
Create Industry Expert Roundups
An expert roundup is a blog post where you gather quotes from experts in your industry on a particular topic that you know your target audience will enjoy. This type of content is often shared well. Not only that, contributors will typically share the blog post with their own social networks once it’s published.One way to find experts in your industry is by Googling your chosen topic and finding people who have already written on the topic or have provided a quote. You can also use a tool like HARO to help to collect responses.For a great example of an expert roundup, check out our blog post, “19+ Lead Generation Tools from the Experts”.
Advertise on Industry Blogs
Running display ads, investing in a sponsored post, or purchasing a sponsored email slot from an industry blog that you know your target audience already visits, can be a good way to take advantage of a site that has a larger viewership than yours.
Run a Viral Contest
You can create a viral contest by creating a contest where you allow participants to earn more entries by referring new people to the contest, sharing it on social, commenting on a post, etc. This increases the likelihood that contest will be shared, making it a good way to increase awareness.Three options for running a viral contest include:
Lead generation, or “lead gen” for short, is the process of converting potential customers into qualified leads (ie. someone who has a genuine interest in what you have to offer). In short, lead gen is a way to funnel-in eventual purchasers of your product or service down the path of buying.The end result is to find qualified leads for your company so that they then be added to a lead nurturing process or so that a salesperson can follow up.Lead gen typically involves creating “gated” content and then asking for someone’s contact information in order for them to receive that piece of content. Types of lead generation content include:
Any type of gated content (such as an eBook, PDF, checklist, cheat sheet, whitepaper, etc.)
Courses
Free-Trials
Product Demos
Viral Contests (where someone needs to enter their email or other contact information to enter)
In order to receive access to this content, the person must enter in their email and/or other contact information that the company wants to collect.To learn more, this guide breaks down the basics of lead generation and why it’s so important.
If you have yet to create any type of lead magnet on your site, an eBook is a good one to start with. Most eBooks tackle a broad topic in your industry, thus you can promote it across multiple blog posts on your site.
Create a Content Upgrade
A content upgrade is another type of lead magnet that is there to entice people to enter their email and/or other contact information in exchange for the content upgrade.Rather than an eBook which is typically more general, a content upgrade is typically specific to a particular blog post. This increases the conversion rate of signups since the content is more closely related to the blog post the person is reading.Examples of a content upgrade might include:
A PDF version of that same blog post
A checklist
Step-by-step instructions
A cheat sheet
Host a Webinar
Hosting a webinar with experts in your industry can be another way to collect contact information from your audience by requiring them to sign up in advance for the webinar. Software such as WebinarJam and Demio can help you get this set up.
Use a Lead Analytics Platform
While collecting contact information from potential leads via lead magnets and webinars are viable lead generation tactics, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. Not everyone is willing to fork over their email or phone number.This is when a direct outreach approach can be helpful. For people who don’t submit contact information but still might be qualified leads, a lead analytics platform like LeadBoxer can help you to identify these people and find their contact information so you can reach out directly.For more lead generation ideas, we recommend the following resources:
What’s the Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation?
Lead generation is a subset of demand generation. Demand generation is used to create awareness and attract new people to your business, while lead generation is used to qualify those people into “leads” and get them ready for the next step in your marketing or sales process.
A simple way to understand the differences is to take a look at the different types of content each method uses.Demand generation uses free content (such as blog posts, articles, videos, etc.) in order to create awareness and to attract your target audience.Lead generation content is typically “gated”, meaning a person has to provide their email and/or other contact information in order to receive that piece of content (such as a PDF, whitepaper, checklist, etc.).
This allows sales and marketing to continue the relationship and nudge that person towards a purchase.You don’t need to choose one or the other. Both lead gen and demand gen can be used effectively within your overall marketing strategy.
When creating content, you want to consider the goal behind that piece of content. Is the goal to generate awareness or to increase leads?For example, if you create an eBook and the goal is to generate awareness, this is demand generation. In order to maximize your results, people should be able to download the eBook freely without needing to input any contact information.
This will make it easier for people to share it with their friends and colleagues.However, if the goal is to find qualified leads, this is lead generation and that piece of contact should be gated.As you can hopefully see, it’s nearly impossible to go with one without the other.
An effective marketing strategy will include both lead generation and demand generation. Demand generation is used to attract new customers and lead generation is used to identify qualified leads.
Discovering and engaging with new leads is crucial for any B2B company. This is the first step in your marketing and sales process, yet some businesses struggle to keep leads from falling through the cracks. Creating an automated marketing lead lifecycle can help your team excel in lead management.
This cycle will help your marketing and sales department define the process for lead hand-offs and facilitate the creation of a symbiotic relationship between the two teams. The lead flow process will also help ensure qualified leads are getting to the right employees, and other leads are being nurtured until they’re ready to convert.
Taking advantage of an automated lifecycle can help lift the load that lead management puts on your team. Qualifying, nurturing and pushing leads through the pipeline takes time and resources, but utilizing your tech stack can lessen the burden.
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Simply put, the lead lifecycle is the journey your prospects take through the marketing and sales stages. This process helps manage the customer experience by defining what stages your leads need to pass through before the deal is closed. The lead lifecycle sets rules for your teams to follow so prospects are nurtured and passed through the stages at the correct time.
This seems like a simple concept, but it requires buy-in from all departments as well as proper execution. Done correctly, your lead lifecycle can ensure no prospects slip through the cracks, generating more sales.
The lead lifecycle creates a process to manage prospects from the start to finish of their customer journey. This plays a major role in improving the overall quality of leads that are being transitioned to the sales funnel. By implementing a standard lead scoring system, your marketing department can gain valuable insight into each lead’s level of interest.
This process helps determine the difference between a new prospect, a marketing-qualified lead and a sales-qualified lead. This allows your sales team to spend their efforts on customers who are ready to buy, while marketing is able to allocate resources to leads who may need more time. Sales activities can be used to produce revenue rather than spending time on cold outreach.
Once a prospect has been identified, marketing begins nurturing the relationship, which helps qualify the lead. After gauging the level of interest and readiness to buy, the lead is either handed off to sales or recycled back into the marketing funnel.
For leads that are not quite sales ready, your marketing department can begin fostering a stronger relationship through advertisements, email campaigns and in-depth product knowledge. The lead lifecycle also leaves room for valuable feedback to reach your departments. Marketing is able to see which campaigns work well and make adjustments when content isn’t producing the desired results.
Proper lead qualification also helps segment your prospects, which allows your team to engage with targeted audiences. This means your resources can be used on leads where they will gain the most value.
By having a defined lead lifecycle, your company makes sure no lead gets left behind while improving overall lead quality. It will help your company create a loop from sales to marketing, which helps your marketing department tighten up their efforts.
By qualifying leads, your sales team can provide insight and let your marketing department know which channels are producing the best customers. This allows your company to better allocate resources as well as strengthen any areas that are falling behind.
When implementing a lead management strategy into your company, the first step should be defining and understanding what a lead is for your team. While this seems like a basic concept, it is crucial to avoid vague descriptions or loose definitions.
This helps determine at which stage a prospect can be considered sales-qualified, as well as helps place all customers into the right stage of their lifecycle. There are five stages that can help your team create a standard process for the sales funnel.
Marketing Inquiry (MI)
Not quite a lead yet, a marketing inquiry is the first introduction for many prospects. This is when a contact may enter the lifecycle but needs to be nurtured before moving any further in the process.
For example, this type of prospect may come from a website form, webinar attendee, content download or email campaign. They will have most likely engaged with your company but not yet requested further follow-up from a sales representative.
As nurturing begins to take place, a lead score can be determined for the prospect. MIs are not ready to be passed off to sales, and should be handled directly by the marketing department.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Further along in the process, an MQL has shown interest in buying and a need for your product. This is someone who is engaged with your content and shows the ability to convert to a sale. Most likely, an MQL will have asked for a follow up from the sales team, or reached out to discuss the problem their business is facing.
Most importantly, an MQL will have provided contact details including their full name, phone number, email, company name, location and specific product needs. This helps determine the transition from marketing to sales.
Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)
This is the stage where the sales team should do their own vetting to determine if the lead is truly ready for their efforts. This means reaching out, verifying that the contact information is correct, and asking what type of solutions the client is seeking.
This stage helps create a smooth relationship between your sales and marketing departments. For the leads that pass their qualifications, sales will be able to start their leg of the customer journey. However, for the ones disqualified or sent back to marketing for additional nurturing, this provides the sales team with an opportunity to give feedback.
By having a defined process that allows these conversations to take place, marketing will be able to streamline their efforts for MQLs and improve the overall quality of leads that are being handed off.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
When it’s determined that a lead has the need for your product, a willingness to purchase and a timeline in mind, the sales team can label them an SQL. This moves the lead toward the finish line and helps your sales team get closer to completing the sale.
Closed
The last stage in the lifecycle is a completed sale. When the process works correctly, your sales team will have guided the client across the finish line, resulting in a successful conversion.
When a sale fails to go through, there are multiple ways to define a disqualified lead. If the prospect is a bad fit or indicates they will not buy your product, the lead should be disqualified and removed from the lifecycle. However, if the lead determines they just need more time before making a purchase, they can be recycled back to marketing to further strengthen the customer relationship.
Understanding the Difference Between Marketing Qualified Leads & Sales Qualified Leads
Because the lead lifecycle process is designed to help improve the overall quality of your leads, it’s crucial to understand the difference between marketing and sales qualifications. This will help align your departments and ensure all employees are working toward the same end goal—increasing sales conversion rates.
The marketing department is usually the first point of contact for all prospects. Whether the lead is generated through website traffic, downloaded content or social media engagement, their first impression is affected by the content they’re consuming.
Immediately after the initial contact is made, marketing funnels these prospects into the lifecycle to begin nurturing and qualifying the lead.
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is defined by their need and the contact information gathered. Most likely, these prospects have engaged with campaigns, expressed interest in your product to solve a specific business issue and provided valid contact information.
In comparison, a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) has already been determined as a potential customer with buying capacity. This means your product is seen as a potential solution for their business, and they have begun their journey through the sales funnel. SQLs are further along in the buying process compared to MQLs.
SQLs will have a determined budget and some understanding of how your product fits into their business model. They will also have a timeline for their purchase, which helps your sales team determine the validity of the lead.
Having both teams understand the difference between MQLs and SQLs creates a smooth pipeline between departments. Your marketing resources will be allocated to those who need more time in their journey, while sales efforts can go directly to closing deals.
What Is a Marketing Service-Level Agreement?
To help close the gap and avoid silos between sales and marketing teams, a service level agreement (SLA) can be used to align goals and measure progress. Traditionally, an SLA establishes deliverables between a business and its clients, but it can be used for internal operations as well.
There are three common types of SLAs:
Customer Service SLA
Internal Service SLA
Multi-Level SLA
A customer service SLA helps create an agreement of services between vendors and specific clients. For example, this could include the type of product, date of delivery, and point of contact for confirmation.
Internal service SLAs operate only within one company, typically between two departments. This is a great way to create processes, share goals and report on each team’s efforts.
Lastly, a multi-level SLA can work for multiple departments to ensure all teams are working toward the same end goal. Rather than working solely between sales and marketing, this SLA may loop in customer retention or quality control teams.
Utilizing an SLA can ensure your lead lifecycle process is working across the board. This specific SLA will help create guidelines that qualify the hand-off of leads from marketing to sales. It can determine the process for notifying and assigning new leads to the sales team.
The SLA can help lay out appropriate procedures for sales to follow up on MQLs. The agreement can be used to create a rejection process if sales determines leads are unqualified.
To get started, determine numerical values for marketing and sales goals. Sales will be set by their quotas, while marketing can base its numbers around metrics that measure how resources are being used to create revenue.
Assigning numbers and key performance indicators (KPIs) that both teams are expected to meet establishes a standard of accountability across both departments. Numerical values can also help marketing understand the mindset of quote-driven salespeople.
Next, create a system for tracking and reporting these initiatives. This will help both teams measure their successes and evaluate which areas could use improvement.
Lastly, create a system that holds teams accountable to their goals. This means determining a process for what will happen if a department fails to meet its expectations including a plan for making up lost revenue.
To ensure both departments are holding up their end of the deal, encourage open communication and list the best ways to contact each team.
Automated Sales Lead Management
Automating your lead lifecycle can help your company remain competitive in the B2B industry. Lifting the load of repetitive daily tasks and allowing automation to take over data cleansing frees up time and resources for your teams to flex their creativity. In our increasingly digital world, utilizing tech stacks and plugging into the B2B ecosystem gives your company an edge.
The B2B ecosystem refers to a digital network that connects vendors, customers and developers across areas. Going one step further, the business-to-business partner ecosystem brings together similar businesses, typically ones that share ideal client profiles and territories. These partnerships help drive innovation and produce higher Return on Investment (ROI).
Building these partnerships and taking advantage of collaboration helps your company get ahead in the industry. Integration strategy is one way to utilize the ecosystem. Creating Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allows companies to form partnerships and seamlessly integrate tech stacks.
For example, automated lead management software can integrate with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) so sales can see updated information on the status of lead engagement. This also allows marketing teams to see the sales process, enabling them to encourage follow up with MQLs as needed.
By utilizing this integration strategy, business processes can be improved and user ability can be extended. Throughout your company’s personal ecosystem, digital transformation can play a huge role in your company’s overall success. Embracing automation can help connect your departments and create lasting partnerships with other B2B companies.
Automated lead management platforms like Leadboxer do more than simply identify prospects and store contact information. Leadboxer helps capture data from website or content engagement, score leads and segment target audiences to maximize your marketing outreach.
Why Automation Is Key to Success
Manually tracking sales leads through the lifecycle is a big undertaking for most marketing teams. Human error can account for promising leads slipping through the cracks.
Automation is a game-changer!
Sales conversions are the ultimate goal of lead generation. Allowing software to take over repetitive tasks so more time can be spent moving leads through the sales funnel is the most efficient way to increase your ROI and productivity.
An automated workflow helps align team goals and ensures processes are followed. With lead management software, prospects can be segmented for marketing to easily nurture. Leads can be automatically assigned for outreach, and engagement data can be pushed through to your CRM.
Most importantly, automated lead management can fine-tune the qualifying process. Leadboxer uses data gathered based on behavior and client profiles. The platform also includes a scoring algorithm to help your marketing and sales teams determine the validity of each prospect.
Rather than wasting effort with old contact information, automated workflows ensure your team is using the most up-to-date data available. Automatically gathering information and contact details shortens the time between lead introduction and sales follow-up. It also helps your marketing team nurture relationships and determine which leads need to receive additional promotional content.
This innovative software can also streamline the notification system between departments, which helps lessen the time that leads go without being responded to and nurtured. Delays can easily cost your business sales.
With notifications, sales can be ready to reach out to new leads as soon as they arrive in the CRM, and marketing can segment prospects into targeted audience outreach almost immediately.
Leadboxer’s B2B Sales Ecosystem
Innovation and collaboration are driving the B2B industry. Through the business-to-business ecosystem, companies are able to expand their abilities and become competitive leaders while working more efficiently.
An integration platform enables customers to combine their tech stacks and data to optimize workflows. Global key players for this strategy include Microsoft, Informatica, Dell Boomi and others.
Leadboxer also integrates with many applications to form an important B2B sales ecosystem that helps companies boost the performance of their current tech stack.
As a lead management software, Leadboxer works to make marketing and sales easier for B2B companies. Through lead generation, qualifying, scoring and automated workflows, the software is a staple for companies who need help with their lead lifecycle.
Through partnership and integration, your company is able to transfer data between software platforms and streamline communication with internal teams. The use of lead management software like Leadboxer automates the lead lifecycle and eliminates any bottlenecks between marketing and sales teams.
Key Takeaways
Establishing a lead lifecycle and defining qualified leads is an important first step to excelling in your lead management strategy. By aligning the goals of sales and marketing and including an automated process for lead management, your company can begin working with the most qualified leads available.
Understanding the difference between marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads can help your teams make sure prospects are interacting with the right resources. By defining what your team considers an SQL, marketing can make sure these contacts are being delivered to salespeople for immediate follow-up. This will also lessen the amount of rejection of MQLs by the sales team since your marketing department will have clear guidelines on proper lead qualification.
Utilizing a marketing service-level agreement can help organize your internal goals and get multiple departments on the same page. It is crucial for marketing and sales to be aligned in their efforts, and a SLA helps hold both teams accountable. This strategy lays out what each department needs for success and will help increase accountability and boost overall ROI.
Automated marketing lead lifecycle management helps free up resources from your departments and allows software to do the heavy lifting in your lead generation plan. This also helps your company become part of the B2B ecosystem through enterprise platform integration.
Taking advantage of the B2B partner ecosystem encourages innovation and collaboration. It also allows your company to maximize the usage of its tech stack.
Understanding and implementing a successful lead lifecycle management process can lead to higher ROI for your B2B company. Automation helps align goals, eliminate silos and clean data for a better overall lead lifecycle.
To get started with lead management automation with multiple application integrations, check out this free LeadBoxer trial!
Regardless of your industry, you need customers to buy your product or service. However, satisfied customers who make repeat purchases, upgrade and become brand ambassadors for your company are even better. A positive customer experience generates loyal customers. You can accomplish this with B2B marketing funnels.
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Think about it. Would you do business with a company you don’t have a relationship with? Probably not. This is why a positive customer experience through the B2B customer journey is so important.
When customers have a pleasant interaction with your business, they are apt to spend more and recommend your company to others. Conversely, B2B customers who have a bad experience will ditch your company for another and broadcast their disappointment in word of mouth and online reviews. In fact, customer experience will be the main differentiator between brands.
Customer experience is catching the attention of marketers. One study found that almost half of the companies responding seek to invest more in ensuring a positive customer experience.
In a competitive B2B market where customers can access everything at their virtual fingertips, a positive customer experience is everything. The most successful companies deliver superior customer experience throughout the B2B marketing funnel stages.
A positive customer interaction begins with successful navigation through your B2B marketing funnel. This powerful relationship-builder starts with the first interaction with your brand and extends beyond conversion or purchase. Your B2B marketing funnel is designed to not only result in initial sales, but to create a loyal, repeat customer base.
A positive customer experience begins with a map of your customer’s journey through all the touchpoints with your business. This map will help you identify trouble areas and barriers that keep people from making a purchase.
Mapping the B2B Customer Journey
To deliver a positive customer experience, you need to get into the customer’s shoes. This involves being familiar with all the touchpoints a prospect will encounter in becoming a paying customer.
The customer journey begins with making them aware of your brand and ends when their relationship with your company ceases. Touchpoints commonly include advertising, PR, marketing, content production, sales support and interactions with sales representatives.
A B2B customer journey map moves a company to be more customer-centric. Your company will be more mindful of your customer’s experience with your brand throughout the purchasing process. This tool helps you improve your funnel to ensure a pleasant customer service interaction so people will return.
Each company will have a different customer journey. For B2B customers, this journey is complex and time-consuming because of the following:
It takes more time to get buy-in from senior management
It requires getting cooperation from various staff involved in the different stages of the customer journey
There is the unknown availability of resources needed for a company to implement a new product or service
Possible uncertainty about how to get started using your product or service, especially for multi-site locations
Technical or service requirements a product or service needs to pass before being implemented
The added complexities of B2B customer journey mapping can either make maps overly complex or simplified. As a result, there is the risk of being process-driven instead of experience-driven. This can make your brand seem out of touch with customers.
The B2B Marketing Funnel
Marketing funnels are the processes of taking website prospects and converting them into customers and advocates for your brand. Each stage of the B2B marketing funnel has relevant content that boosts your company’s trustworthiness. The more authority your company has, the stronger your relationship with customers, resulting in a better customer experience.
In B2B marketing funnels, prospects are broken into customer journey stages where they are delivered tailored messaging. Each of your customers will travel through these stages on the way to becoming loyal, repeat customers. Your prospects must be moving onto the next stage through the funnel.
B2B Marketing Funnel Stages
As previously mentioned, the B2B marketing funnel is divided into stages. These stages are top of funnel (ToF), middle of funnel (MoF) and bottom of the funnel (BoF). The top of funnel stage will have the largest audience while the bottom of the funnel will have the smallest.
Top of Funnel
At the top of the B2B marketing funnel, you have prospects who aren’t aware of your brand, product or service. This stage is all about spreading awareness of your product or service and how it can solve a prospect’s problem. This is usually done by educating prospects and answering their high-level questions in blogs, articles and videos.
At the top of the funnel, you want to attract prospects to your website in order to spread awareness. As people don’t know much about your brand, product or service, this is not the stage in which to try a hard sell. Once your prospects show interest or desire, they are ready to move forward toward the middle of the funnel.
While the bottom of the funnel focuses on awareness, the middle of the funnel is about sharing product details. Prospects that make it to this stage are interested in learning more about what exactly you have to offer. The extra sharing of information about your offerings helps you gauge your user’s experience.
Some of the content you might use at this B2B marketing funnel stage include:
eBooks
Whitepapers
Case studies
Webinars
Tutorials
Landing pages
Surveys
Email sequences
Customers who respond well to the middle of the funnel stage, then move on to the bottom of the funnel stage. This is where you push for the final sale.
Bottom of the Funnel
At the bottom of the funnel, your goal is to sell your product or service. A secondary goal at this stage is to build customer loyalty. Purchases are good, but generating loyal, repeat customers is even better.
At this stage, customers are familiar with your brand and offerings. They also have had many relationship-building interactions with your company. Your chief aim is to build customer loyalty by informing them of the value of your product or service.
Email marketing, especially onboarding email sequencing is effective at this final stage of the funnel. In these emails, teach customers to fully utilize your product or service and let them know all the ways your offering can benefit them.
You can also send surveys to new customers asking about their experience and inviting them to join a loyalty program. You not only want customers to make a purchase, you also want to persuade them to become brand ambassadors for your company.
The Role of SEO Content in the B2B Customer Journey
Strong content is a game-changer in digital marketing. The more informative, relevant and personal your brand’s content, the better your lead generation and sales will be. This is because well-written content delivered to the right people builds your brand’s authority and trustworthiness.
People who see that a company is knowledgeable and transparent will be more willing to do business with that company. As in generic digital marketing, great content is crucial in your customer journey mapping and funnel effectiveness. In fact, 87% of marketers create content for each stage of the customer journey.
The B2B marketing funnel and all the B2B customer journey steps can’t build customer/business relationships without content. Each touchpoint along the customer journey needs to have well-written, strategic content. What you communicate with the customer should meet them where they are and encourage them to move forward.
With content marketing for B2B marketing funnel stages, produce quality content that answers your audience’s questions. Cover topics of interests in your niche or industry to make your company the authoritative source of information.
Content marketing also includes search engine optimization (SEO). This type of B2B marketing funnel content will utilize researched keywords and link building techniques.
In today’s digital age, you can’t create effective content without using keywords. Content without keywords will not be picked up by search engines. When this happens, your great content will never be seen by your ideal audience.
After you identify your keywords, use them throughout all your digital assets. This includes website content, product descriptions, blogs, whitepapers and video transcripts.
Another tactic used in SEO content is link building. This involves strategically inserting links throughout your content. These links can be either internal, linking to a page on your website, or external, linking to outside sites.
It is best to use a combination of internal and external links. The external links need to go to reputable sites to further your brand’s credibility. When link building, don’t use too many links, as your content will be penalized.
All the B2B marketing funnel stages and each touchpoint along the B2B customer journey need SEO content. This type of content will target a specific audience, catching their attention and compelling them toward the next stage. Your content will inform prospects and turn them into loyal, repeat customers.
To generate B2B leads and sales, you build relationships with your prospects and customers. Excellent customer service and experiences with your company are the foundations for this relationship building.
Great customer experience comes through meeting your customers where they are in the buying process. It also comes through understanding the journey your customers go through from brand awareness to making purchases.
LeadBoxer’s unique lead generation platform with its full complement of integrations, make it easy for you to target and communicate with your ideal customer base consistently and effectively, ensuring a great customer experience.
The B2B industry continues to benefit from innovation sparked by the evolution and implementation of new technologies. As they advance the process of emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are adopting practices that were discovered during the shift to virtual work spaces.
Automation remains a key player for competitive B2B companies. By embracing B2B marketing automation tools, your team will have clean data and continuous communication with leads. Duplication is avoided; the process is streamlined, and you have the flexibility to reallocate resources to other departments as needed!
This means your marketing team will be able to accurately track the success or the need to fine tune campaigns in real time!
By allowing automation to take over parts of your marketing department’s daily, repetitive tasks, engagement and lead nurturing can be prioritized resulting in a higher conversion rate.
Keep reading, or use the links below to “jump ahead”, to learn the best ways to optimize and automate your marketing process.
Marketing is a key component in the success of any B2B company. This outreach allows your company to communicate with leads and generate interest in your product and services.
LeadBoxer’s Workflow Automation allows your marketing team to Assign, Route and Qualify leads using automated rules you can set and configure to meet your customized needs. Learn more about how LeadBoxer can help your organization streamline its marketing workflow by scheduling a free demo and signing up for a free trial today!
B2B marketing automation is a must have for enabling your marketing and sales teams to become more efficient and effective. This is essential for making a good first impression on potential customers. Replacing repetitive tasks with automated workflows allows your marketing team to focus on creating meaningful campaigns that showcase the value of your product or service.
By gathering this data from your automated marketing practices, the department will be able to share these insights with salespeople. This will help refine their sales process and clean up the sales funnel. With the marketing and sales departments properly aligned, less leads will fall through the cracks and customer relationships will be strengthened.
Through automated practices, lead generation is apt to increase. When using a platform like Leadboxer, information can be gathered from website and email campaign engagement. This allows your marketing team to identify more prospects based on their activity with your content.
Follow up time for new leads can be shortened by utilizing trigger points. When prospects engage with your content, follow up communication can be sent automatically.
This practice helps keep the lead warm, as well as collect data to score and qualify the customer. Once this lead is ready to be passed to sales, there will already be a line of communication in place, upon which the salesperson can build.
Automation optimizes the lead nurturing process. For customers who aren’t quite ready to hit the sales funnel, automated communication through relevant content can keep your product top of mind. This helps create strong brand awareness and nurtures the potential relationship.
Your marketing and sales team will have access to cleaner data through automation. Featuring easy to install Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Integration, Leadboxer helps fill in the details while constantly tracking leads. This allows your team to feel confident in their contact information and provides valuable insights into a prospect’s recent engagement.
With accurate data, aligned departments and increased lead generation, B2B marketing automation offers huge benefits for your company. Once your team is ready to move forward with this strategy, creating a workflow will help keep things on track.
Getting Started With an Automated Marketing Workflow
Simply put, an automated marketing workflow is a series of triggers and steps that help streamline efforts. Almost any step in the process can be automated, and your team will need to decide which areas can benefit most from this.
First, identify the steps your team will want to take before, during and after the automation is implemented. The goal is not to replace your entire marketing team but to streamline the process, so your team can focus on improving their outreach and content.
Most likely, your first step will be to generate a list of leads for outreach. Then, the automated marketing will take care of the communication. After the campaign has been launched, your team should carefully evaluate the reactions from leads.
Allow leads to be segmented by their responses. Qualified leads will be handed off to sales to begin their journey within the sales funnel. From there, your team can begin another campaign and restart the process.
Platforms like Leadboxer help automate some of your marketing tasks while also qualifying and segmenting leads. This technology should integrate with your CRM to make sure data is accessible across departments.
Website and social media engagement is crucial for identifying new leads. Most customers begin their search for solutions online. This means their first interaction with your company will most likely occur when your site pops up in an online search, or when a customer comes across your social media.
Having an automated process to collect data can help speed up the lead nurturing process. By allowing software to gather information based on a prospect’s interaction with your site, leads can be accurately qualified.
The gathered data will also help build out customer profiles in your CRM. This helps your marketing and sales team have the most up to date information on leads. Communication efforts will benefit from this data.
Trigger Points
Gathering data is nice, but having action behind website engagement can help boost the number of leads in your sales funnel. Trigger points are a key aspect in automated B2B marketing practices.
To create the best trigger points for your company, study the behavior of website visitors. Identify which interactions lead to customers who are ready to enter the sales funnel. Once this has been decided on, create an automated follow up to streamline outreach.
Keeping leads warm is crucial to successfully moving them all the way through the sales pipeline. An automated touchpoint created by a trigger point takes the stress away from having a real human follow up. This allows your salespeople to begin prepping for their pitch before they’ve even had a conversation.
Trigger points can also help convert leads who may not be in the purchasing mindset. Automated follow ups through website engagement can help your marketing team segment leads who need nurturing. This helps your team get these prospects on email lists for future campaigns.
Email Marketing
Creating touch points through email campaigns is a great way to keep leads engaged with your brand. Automation can help free up your team to focus on other goals by handling the distribution of this content.
Once content has been created, your marketing team can allow automation to handle the rollout of the campaign. This includes monthly newsletters, educational resources, and product updates.
Your team will also be able to track the engagement of these campaigns, which helps plan future marketing efforts. Combine this tracking with your lead scoring efforts to make sure leads are being properly segmented and handed off to sales in a timely manner.
Key Takeaways
Marketing efforts are crucial for companies to remain competitive within the B2B industry. They help your salespeople identify prospects and allow your company to build brand awareness. Your marketing department plays a major role in connecting customers with the right solution for their needs.
By embracing an automated process, your marketing and sales teams can benefit from an increase in leads, better lead quality and cleaner data. Automation also helps free up resources and employees to help your company focus on bigger picture items.
B2B marketing automation helps streamline costs within your organization. By reducing the amount of people who are needed to take on repetitive tasks, your marketing budget can be evaluated for bigger projects.
Automation helps reduce duplicated efforts and the introduction of human error. By utilizing software that integrates with your CRM, automated marketing efforts can avoid duplication across departments.
The customer experience may see improvements from implementing this strategy. With trigger points that handle immediate follow ups, clients will feel important and valued. Having fresh data can also help your salespeople deliver a better customer journey through the pipeline.
Automated marketing practices can also help fine tune your outreach strategies. By gaining feedback from customers and tracking valuable insights, your team will have the knowledge needed to adjust campaigns. It also allows you to see your strengths and weaknesses through lead engagement.
Overall, B2B marketing automation can prove to be a key factor in helping to take your company to the next level.
Take Leadboxer up on its offer of a Free Trial today to see how its innovative lead generation platform featuring key integrations can help automate your marketing efforts and accelerate the growth of your B2B business!
Understanding your target demographic is crucial to successful marketing in the B2B industry. Campaigns rely on strong data surrounding consumer behavior. Rather than reaching out to a broad audience, segmentation can make sure messaging gets to the right leads at the ideal time.
Creating a marketing segmentation plan can help jumpstart these efforts. There are several ways to segment your audience including firmographics, demographics, geographics, behavioral and psychographics.
Psychographics for B2B marketing may be a huge key to helping your company remain competitive within your industry. By separating your clients and creating outreach based on lifestyles, relevant information about your products reaches qualified leads to push them into your sales funnel.
Read on or use the links below to jump ahead to learn more:
Audiences can be segmented into several different categories. By focusing on psychological traits like lifestyle, personal interests and opinions, outreach will target consumers based on their psychographics.
This information looks deeper into the behavior of the target consumer. The goal of psychographic segmentation is to gain valuable insight into the lifestyle and preferences of your ideal audience. While it seems like a great way to categorize leads, this information is not always as obvious as demographics and may require data discovery.
Having this type of understanding allows your marketing team to create content that resonates with buyers. This will encourage engagement and allow for the development of a strong customer relationship.
Psychographics can also help uncover new leads. When identifying the audience and targeting your outreach, marketing can focus on sourcing new leads who follow similar behavioral patterns. Understanding what motivates your customers is important, but psychographics can also be paired strategically with demographics.
Simply put, demographics explain who is buying your products while psychographics break down the factors behind the purchase. Utilizing this data together for segmentation can help narrow your targeted audience even further
For example, demographics might include gender or religion, while psychographics look at the buyer’s habits. Not all individuals in the same demographic group are motivated by the same factors, which is why combining behavioral traits is helpful. This data allows your marketing team to round out the ideal buyer persona as well as segment audiences based on personal preferences.
Along with segmentation, psychographics can provide valuable insights to inform your ideal customer profile. This big-picture strategy helps your company make overarching decisions around marketing, sales and product development.
The customer profile is created by assessing your product and the value it adds to the market, as well as defining ideal customer characteristics. By understanding the psychographics of your clients, this profile can be tailored to reflect real consumer behavior.
This data allows your organization to see the ‘why’ behind each purchase. Lifestyle data helps determine how customers are choosing to buy products and what motivates the purchase. This type of information can play a large role in any product updates or future rollouts.
It’s important to realize there is a difference between behavioral data and psychographics within the B2B industry. Behavioral segmentation relies heavily on product and content engagement. Essentially, this category looks at the way customers are interacting directly with your brand.
Psychographics are still informed by consumer behavior, but it’s more about lifestyle choices. Rather than tracking product usages, this type of analysis looks at how consumer values and habits affect buying decisions. The daily actions of customers are studied to better understand what type of person may benefit from the solution your company provides.
The goal of this segmentation is to target leads who will be most receptive to your outreach. It can help foster strong customer relationships based on emotions and shared values. This can lead to stronger brand loyalty and potentially increase return on investment (ROI) by encouraging repeat purchases.
When gathering this data, it’s important to have a grasp on which factors fall under psychographics. Below are a few examples to help your team get started.
Lifestyle
This includes how a consumer fits into society and where their values lie. Characteristics for this category may include relationship status, type of occupation, or homeowners vs. renters. This data helps segment people based on what stage of life they are in.
Habits and Opinions
People tend to stick to their habits rather than breaking them. This is important for marketing to understand since many customers may have specific habits when it comes to content engagement and the sales cycle.
Understanding the makeup of a customer’s daily life can have a significant impact on advertising choices. For example, if your ideal customers prefer to do product research via social media rather than company websites, outreach can be tailored to better accommodate this type of engagement.
Behaviors
While segmentation can be categorized on behavior alone, it can also work in conjunction with psychographics. These characteristics can be studied through product usage, content engagement and purchase history. This data can help segment outreach by anticipating a timeline for when your leads may be most interested in making a purchase based on their prior actions.
Social Class
Economic status influences purchasing behavior. While social class may also be a self-identification for some people, this information does provide valuable insight for purchase capacity.
Personality Traits
Understanding the types of personality your products attract helps your marketing team develop content that will resonate with your leads. Not all of your customers will have the same personality traits, so this type of segmentation can make sure content reaches the right person. This can help increase engagement across campaigns.
Interests
Similar to personalities, a person’s interests can help steer the direction of your marketing. Segmenting leads and sending outreach based around clients’ interests helps form a strong connection with your brand. This can also help your marketing team avoid sending out fluff to leads.
Using the data found around client interests can make sure your outreach is relevant to the receiver.
The Importance of Audience Segmentation
Your marketing department’s ROI benefits from data-driven campaigns that encourage customer engagement. Before a lead can enter into the sales pipeline, it must be qualified and segmented into the proper group for continuous outreach. These efforts help nurture leads and eventually guide them through the buyer journey.
The goal of marketing efforts is more than just landing a sale. The department should be focused on creating lasting relationships to encourage repeat sales and promote brand loyalty. It can cost up to five times more to acquire a new customer compared to the cost of retaining an existing one.
By using psychographics to tailor content and segment target audiences, marketing can help strengthen client relationships. Using this segmentation helps break audiences down into more specific groups. Broad outreach may feel impersonal and doesn’t provide a unique call-to-action based on the customer’s current needs.
Instead, using psychographic segmentation ensures content is personalized and helps set attainable next steps based on a lead’s preferences. Overall, audience segmentation should help improve the relationship between leads and your company.
Psychographics help by providing a deeper understanding of customer needs and driving communication. By shifting the conversation to focus on customer interests, your teams will be better equipped to sell the product.
Sales pitches and marketing contact can feature ways your product is able to improve your customer’s life. Psychographic data allows for accurate examples of these improvements to be used based on lifestyle and habits.
This data can also help improve overall product features. By understanding why customers are using your product, features and updates can be created to meet their needs. Psychographics also allow your product to be customized based on different buyer personas, allowing for more options to choose from.
Gathering Psychographic Data
Once you have a grasp on the benefits of psychographics, it’s time to start gathering data to implement this strategy. While it may seem like a daunting task to try and understand the motivations of potential new leads, there are several approaches that can jumpstart the process.
Speak To Current Clients
You already have existing customers who use your product, so understanding their lifestyle is a great place to start gathering psychographic data. This approach allows your team to decide how many customers you’d like to speak with to gather this information.
First, make a list of your top clients. If you have a strong relationship with them already, getting to know more about them is a good way to figure out what your ideal client profile looks like. Schedule a time to speak with them, or create questions you’d like to ask next time they reach out.
These questions should focus on their lifestyle, hobbies and interests. They can be as simple as “What did you do this weekend?” or “What does a typical evening after work look like for you?” This can help create conversations around their lifestyles and provide insight into what motivates them.
Going further than a handful of top-tier clients, your marketing team can create a customer survey and send it out for feedback. If you choose to take this approach, try to be as transparent as possible with the recipients. Explain that your company is trying to better understand their clients to help provide the best experience possible.
Try Focus Groups
This is a way to gather unbiased feedback from participants that are not immediately familiar with your product and services. While this group does not include current customers, it is important to keep the sample size as close to your target audience as possible. Use demographic information from clients to model your focus group.
Create a questionnaire that helps provide the type of feedback you want to gather. For example, make sure that the questions you are asking focus on the participants’ lifestyle rather than just your product.
Utilize Third Party Research Companies
While handling the research on your own can help gather insight from current clients, consider sourcing this part out to a third-party company. Market research companies can focus on similar demographics to your target audience. This allows your sample pool to widen while still gathering relevant information.
Use Website Analytics
Content engagement can tell you a lot about a person. Information can be gathered from the type of content that gets the most clicks, the time of day purchases typically occur, and what website forms gain the most traction.
Data can be collected regarding the usage of discount codes to help segment those who prefer a bargain deal. Seeing which blog posts have the most visitors can determine what type of people are using your products and which areas they are searching for more information about.
If you’re not already utilizing the data provided by website analytics, now is a great time to get started. Software like Leadboxer can help track this type of engagement across platforms, while simultaneously uncovering new leads from website traffic.
Approaching Psychographics in B2B Marketing
This strategy should focus on motivating customers based on their current needs. Segmentation allows you to run multiple campaigns simultaneously while making sure content is tailored to the intended audience. Your team should work to provide any resources needed to complete a purchase.
Find ways to incorporate the customer’s priorities into all of the content they receive from your company. For example, if exercise is one of the main hobbies of your target audience, publish a blog talking about how daily exercise can lead to productivity at work. If possible, you could include pictures on social media that display these hobbies in a way that relates to your product.
Make sure the call-to-action is customized to encourage engagement from each audience. This can be as simple as including language that reflects their interests.
When planning outreach and applying psychographics, your team needs to determine which factors are going to segment the recipients. There are a multitude of options to choose from, so it’s important to narrow the scope before planning a campaign.
Leveraging Psychographics to Optimize Marketing Efforts
This strategy goes further than simply segmenting your email campaign lists. It can be used across your website and all social media channels. This content will help reach new leads, nurture relationships and encourage brand loyalty from existing customers.
Social Media
Chances are, your marketing team is posting content on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, as well as running targeted ad campaigns. Psychographics can help determine how to develop content that resonates with your intended viewers.
On social media posts, work to make content that goes further than a sales pitch. Not every post needs to invite a sale. Some of these posts can be educational, or may provide a behind the scenes look at your organization. This type of content can be used to address the lifestyle of your audience without overdoing the promotional material.
Utilize social media as a way to organically grow relationships with your target audience. Becoming a thoughtful leader within your industry that provides content based on psychographics can help promote brand loyalty and boost engagement. Your customers will be able to come to your social media channels for advice and share this content across their own channels when it aligns with their values.
Blogs
Using the blog space on your page should be a priority for your marketing team. This content is crucial for multiple reasons including SEO, website engagement and providing valuable information to customers.
This is a great way to create content that is tailored to specific groups of customers. Using psychographic data can help your team determine blog topics that will resonate with your leads. This helps your brand showcase your product and provide information that is relevant to your industry.
When creating these posts, find ways to incorporate psychographics into the title to immediately draw readers into the piece. Rather than simply writing about the ways your product is useful, tie it into your audience’s interests. For example, if your target customer works in marketing, including a piece about the “Top 10 Ways Lead Generation Can Improve Your B2B Marketing” is a great way to encourage engagement.
Testimonials
Encouraging buyers to purchase your product through other user’s experience helps build trust. If you have clients who are similar to your targeted lead audience, use their positive feedback to showcase the solutions your company has to offer.
This content can be created for different stages in the customer journey, which helps buyers who may be on the fence about making a final decision. Not only should this information discuss how satisfied current customers are, it should also tie into the lifestyle of your segmented audience.
Continuing with the marketing example from above, show your leads how the product has helped customers streamline their marketing efforts and increase ROI. This will entice prospects to either make a purchase or reach out to your sales team for more information on next steps.
Customer Appreciation
While psychographics can be used to uncover new leads, it can also help strengthen current relationships and encourage a continued partnership with your customers. Buyers who have already purchased your product will be more interested in remaining with your company when they feel appreciated.
Using psychographics can provide insight into the lifestyles of customers and shine a light on their current needs. This gives an opportunity for your brand to showcase how well they understand their clients.
Consider sending out appreciation gifts that are relevant to your customer’s interests instead of something with generic branding. The extra effort will illustrate the values your company has in common with these clients.
Key Takeaways
Audience segmentation can play a vital role in successful B2B marketing. Rather than simply grouping customers by demographics, using psychographics can provide valuable insight into the lives of your target audience.
This strategy is a great way to uncover new leads, strengthen existing relationships, and build trust as a key player in your industry. It can also work well with other types of segmentation to help build out your ideal client profile and inform the buyer journey.
Before incorporating this into your marketing efforts, it is important to have a grasp on the different categories of psychographics to determine which will benefit your audience the most. These include personality type, lifestyle and habits. Each can be utilized to create targeted content that encourages engagement.
Make sure to set aside the time and resources needed to successfully gather psychographic data. This can include customer surveys, focus groups or outsourcing to a third-party company. Most importantly, continue gathering this data as your customer base and list of leads grows.
Psychographics may change as your product continues to develop, and it is helpful to have up-to-date data to drive marketing efforts. Track website analytics to have accurate data that provides valuable insights into consumer behavior.
Consider using software like Leadboxer to uncover and qualify new leads as they interact with your site. This can help segment potential leads into audience groups as soon as they are introduced to your brand.
Allow this data to help inform your marketing content and create pieces that provide more than a sales pitch to prospects. Utilize social media channels and blog posts to create organic connections with customers based on their hobbies and interests. Use this content as a way to tie in your product or services with their lifestyle, but make sure the pieces aren’t full of fluff.
Make sure calls-to-actions are personalized. This encourages engagement from customers and can help your marketing team qualify leads by understanding where each prospect is within the sales journey.
Overall, psychographics for B2B marketing can help elevate your campaigns to the next level, as well as increase your ROI. Use these strategies as a way to nurture relationships and promote brand loyalty.
To begin incorporating psychographics and segmentation into your lead generation process, check out Leadboxer for a free trial!
Customer experience is an essential component of success for B2B companies. Building brand loyalty and encouraging long lasting customer relationships can help boost your company’s overall return on investment (ROI).
While having a good product still matters, customer experience has added an additional layer of competition between B2B businesses. A customer centric business model will require transparency across departments and a deep understanding of client behavior.
Through a single customer view, your entire company should be able to access relevant data on clients, regardless of the department. By integrating this into your business strategy, your company can stay on top of the journey and experience your clients receive.
Keep reading to learn about a single customer view, or use the following links to jump ahead:
Simply put, a single customer view is a consistent collection of data that can be accessed by all departments for an accurate summary of clients. Going a little deeper into this strategy, a single customer view is implemented through the daily systems your team uses.
By investing in software that provides the ability to collect this data across departments, your business is able to begin benefiting from this information. This should help your departments seamlessly transition customers between each stage of the buyer’s journey, which will improve the overall customer experience.
A single customer view helps avoid any issues in the buyer’s journey. By aligning data and company goals into one platform, the amount of miscommunication between departments is minimized. This also allows your company to track key performance indicators (KPIs) across all teams, which can help pinpoint problem areas and provide insight into which areas need improvement.
Most importantly, this strategy will help your team make sure the customer is central to all business decisions. According to a Gartner Trend Insight Report, 80% of organizations within the B2B industry are competing with each other on customer experience rather than solely on the product.
By having a data-driven customer strategy, your company will remain competitive within the industry. Gartner also found that 50% of companies have found a way to track the financial gain of customer experience initiatives. Not only will a single customer view help improve the overall journey, it can also provide valuable financial insights for your company.
A successful customer experience doesn’t happen overnight. While your product might help meet a client’s needs, the buyer journey is just as important as the end result. A great starting point for improving the sales cycle is taking a customer centric approach.
This means relying on accurate data to evaluate the journey as well as identify areas of improvement.
With social media marketing and online buying continuing to rise in popularity, the customer journey begins before the prospect is introduced to an actual salesperson. In some instances, they may not even speak with a salesperson until they are ready to make a purchase.
One of the biggest benefits of a single customer view is cleaner data. Information from your target audience and current customers is valuable for informing future product decisions. Traditional marketing and sales practices don’t constantly communicate across departments, which can lead to information being siloed.
By having up-to-date contact information, customer history, and data based on marketing engagements, all departments will be able to see the buyer’s journey in real-time. This helps encourage communication between teams when there is an issue that needs to be addressed or when tactics are yielding positive results.
This also helps cut down duplicate information. Rather than multiple departments logging similar data, a single view allows your team to see what has already been recorded. This keeps your data clean and coherent.
A single customer view allows your team to have access to better insights. An accurate portrayal of the buyer’s experience can help employees measure the success of campaigns and sales tactics. This provides value to your marketing department as they can plan for future outreach to find the right audience.
Alongside having a clearer idea of what the customer experiences, this tactic helps your team measure KPIs accurately. Assigning data driven metrics is a great way to encourage your teams to meet their goals. By using this data, your company is able to create realistic KPIs and re-evaluate when teams are not hitting the mark.
Understanding customer behavior helps your marketing department track which channels are best for campaigns. A single customer view tracks customer engagement across platforms to determine what’s most likely to gain interaction from your target audience. This insight can help your company allot the proper resources for the most successful channels.
A single customer view helps optimize your company’s workflow to produce the best results. From the beginning of the sales process, leads are identified and qualified in the same platform. This helps marketing and sales departments accurately segment audiences to ensure each qualified lead is being nurtured by the right team.
Leadboxer, with its unique offering of the platform’s native integrations combined with the integration of the best email marketing applications, allows your team to integrate with your current techstack. This cuts down on unnecessary duplication between programs, and allows your employees to work with familiar software.
Techstack integration is a major benefit of the single customer view. It helps your marketing department track engagement across multiple channels including email, social media and website engagement. When implemented on a lead data platform, data is collected and accessible for all teams.
What is Customer Intelligence?
It is not a secret that customers are getting quicker and more efficient during the sales process. With the rise of online sales, prospects are able to conduct their own research and engage with a free trial before speaking to a salesperson.
However, customer intelligence does not refer to an increase in self-sufficient prospects. Rather, it defines the process of collecting data to understand insights about consumer behavior. This helps companies create a successful customer journey that provides an excellent experience.
Customer intelligence is more than using data to achieve client satisfaction. It is a practice that helps companies fine tune their internal processes, tighten up marketing campaigns and boost customer retention.
Understanding the target audience, or the ideal client profile, for your product is a crucial first step to B2B success. Customer intelligence takes this one step further by helping provide insights into the behavior of real leads and customers.
Expanding upon the client profile, data from current customers and potential leads can inform the decisions your company makes for marketing and sales campaigns.
Customer intelligence comes from multiple sources and tracks a variety of consumer data. On the internal side, this information can come from outbound calls, sales pitch meetings and interactions with your customer success team.
Internal customer intelligence is generated any time a member of your company interacts with a client. Between marketing, sales and customer success, the number of interactions can start to add up quickly. To avoid missing important feedback or duplicating efforts, storing this data in a platform with a single customer view can be a huge help.
As your teams gather internal information, the client profile can be updated in real time to reflect the customer’s current position in the sales funnel. This data benefits every department.
Your marketing team will be able to segment customers to ensure they are receiving relevant campaigns. Salespeople will be able to create a timeline for communications and set follow-up reminders. Customer success can make sure onboarding materials are prepped.
External data comes from a variety of sources including personal demographics, geographic location and marketing campaign engagement. Using website metrics as external data helps your team identify and qualify potential leads as they interact with your pages.
Successful customer intelligence relies on both external and internal data to provide informed patterns of client behavior. Just like internal information, external data should be stored in your single customer view platform. This information helps give a complete client profile alongside the interactions with your company.
Overall, customer intelligence will help boost your ROI and increase customer retention. Prioritizing the customer experience and tailoring methods through data-driven decisions helps create lasting business relationships.
Having a customer centric approach means your target audience is at the forefront of all business operations. By storing your customer intelligence on a single view platform, the ‘customer first’ approach can be implemented easily across all departments.
Single Customer View Vs. Traditional Marketing Tactics
Although proper software is an important component, the single customer view is more than just utilizing a platform. It is a process for storing data that helps your company provide the best customer experience. To be successful in this strategy, using an integrated platform like Leadboxer is a good place to start.
Traditionally, marketing and sales teams work side-by-side, but not always together. The sales department may put more focus on warm leads, while the marketing team spends their time identifying prospects.
When these employees are working with different types of clients, it is easy for miscommunication to occur. Salespeople may be having active conversations with a customer while the marketing department is adding them to a segmented list of prospects that haven’t been contacted. While this may not seem like a huge slip up, it is a waste of time, and it may confuse potential clients.
The single customer view helps eliminate these mistakes by allowing both teams to work simultaneously with the same data. Using Leadboxer puts important information into one easy-to-access platform. This software allows your marketing department to track email campaigns and website engagement, while your salespeople are sharing where prospects are at in the sales cycle.
Leadboxer provides more than just the ability for teams to see the same data. It encourages collaboration between departments, so customers get the right amount of attention and client relationships are continuously nurtured.
Knowing where someone is in the buyer’s journey helps both teams develop a strategy to close the deal. Sales and marketing employees can work together to determine the best segmentation of audiences and which campaigns each lead type should receive.
Eliminating the silos of information within departments will help your company embrace a customer centric approach. There is more to a successful client experience than getting a sale across the finish line. Proper communication and clean data will make a huge difference in providing a positive experience for those in the sales journey.
The single customer view also promotes brand loyalty. It is cheaper to continue servicing an existing client than it is to onboard a new one. That does not mean prospects are not important, but it does mean cultivating strong customer relationships can lead to a higher ROI.
Implementing Single Customer View Into Your Company
Once you have a grasp on the concept, it’s time to start implementing a single customer view into your business. While your company should already have a customer centric approach, developing a process for a single customer view can further improve the client experience.
It may seem like a big undertaking, but the following steps can get you on the right track:
Collect Your Current Data
This sounds simple enough, but if you haven’t been storing your data in one platform, it may take awhile to complete this step. First, determine who is in charge of storing information in each department.
Collaborate with these employees to understand what type of data they have been collecting and why it is relevant to your customer experience. From there, begin compiling the information and cleaning up any duplicates.
This data may include contact information, personal demographics, previous customer interactions, marketing engagement and purchase history. Talk with your employees to figure out how this data is being used within each department. This will help determine the best ways to store and collect data once you have implemented your single customer view.
It is important for your team to be able to do it all in one location. From identifying leads, qualifying and scoring, Leadboxer is there to help from the very beginning of the customer journey. This platform does more than just filter through website traffic to identify prospects. It provides a series of integrations to help analyze important customer data.
Leadboxer can integrate with CRMs to help optimize workflow and make sure your sales team is spending time on the leads with the most potential. Marketing departments will benefit from its ability to track engagement and store valuable information. The rest of your company will have access to this data, which helps inform future campaigns, customer success outreach and financial decisions.
Determine KPIs Across Departments
The best way to measure the success of your customer centric approach is to set goals across departments. Using KPIs can help your teams stay on track and refine the customer experience.
While everyone will be working off of a single customer view, their tasks will be different. Therefore, it is important to provide clear objectives.
If teams are succeeding in meeting or exceeding their KPIs, your company will be able to see the positive effects within their customer relations. If teams are coming up short, it may be a sign to redirect efforts and come up with a new strategy.
The important thing to remember when implementing a single customer view is to allow room for growth. The first approach may not be the best one. Your measuring KPIs will help your managers guide teams through this process.
KPIs can also help provide insight into areas of improvement within the customer journey. If you notice negative customer feedback regarding specific parts of the sales cycle, your team will be able to adjust and improve their actions.
Utilize Data Managers
This step may be better suited for bigger companies, but if you can, dedicate a role to data management. This will help ensure that your platform contains the most up-to-date information without having duplicate or old data.
This role can also help analyze data to inform teams about how customers are feeling. With one person focusing solely on organizing and cleaning information, departments can feel confident in the data they are using.
Data managers may provide valuable insight for process improvement as well. Once you’ve taken on a platform for your single customer view, processes should be developed and implemented across departments. With constant audit by a data manager, workflow optimization can be handled easily.
Develop and Implement Company-Wide Processes
While the specific actions vary across teams, taking the time to determine best practices makes sure your company benefits from a single customer view. Managers should meet to discuss the way each department uses data currently, and processes can be built out based on these conversations.
When developing these workflows, efficiency should be a top priority. Since all of the data will be stored in a single platform, it’s important to cut down on any actions that may duplicate efforts. For example, if sales and marketing departments were both previously qualifying prospects, decide which team should take that on in the new process.
Take the time to introduce and properly train employees on these processes. Employees should feel comfortable accessing and inputting data into the new platform. Make sure they understand how their current techstack integrates and works with the single customer view.
It’s important to make sure this transition causes minimal interruption to current client relationships. Ensure your departments feel confident in the new processes before letting them loose with the new system.
When deciding what processes should be implemented, make sure customer experience is at the forefront of these decisions. Any changes made should benefit your company’s overall ability to provide top tier services.
Key Takeaways
For B2B companies that want to remain competitive in the industry, successfully taking a customer centric approach is crucial. Pairing customer intelligence with a single customer view can help put your company ahead of others while promoting brand loyalty among your clients.
Investing in LeadBoxer, a fully integrated lead generation platform, can ensure that implementation of this strategy benefits all departments. Make sure your teams are onboard with these changes by providing ongoing support so they can utilize the platform to its fullest potential.
With a constant focus on improvement, your customers will feel valued. It’s important to evaluate the current buyer experience. Using the data collected and analyzed by Leadboxer, your teams will be able to gain valuable insight into customer behaviors.
Allow data to drive your decisions. A single customer view can help take the guesswork out of marketing and sales tactics. Use previous customer interactions and tracked website engagement to plan future campaigns.
Encourage your departments to collaborate based on the gathered information. By having a sales and marketing team that works together, customers can experience a seamless hand off between stages in the buying journey. Customer success teams will be able to track and preemptively do outreach to ensure the best possible post-purchase relationship.
Using a single customer view helps create a robust strategy for managing client relationships. Prioritizing the buyer experience through segmented outreach, personalized sales calls and efficient customer support will increase client retention.
Above all, make sure your company is encouraging employees to value customers. Lasting relationships lead to repeat purchases, referrals and higher sales conversions.
When planning a new launch, understanding the market and having a solid plan before the release is crucial to the product’s success. Blindly releasing a new product to the market without research and planning can lead to failure.
Utilizing a go-to-market strategy is one way to make sure your launch is hitting the market at the right time. Before you can start planning your next release, your company will need to understand the basics of a go-to-market strategy, as well as begin creating one for your new products.
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Simply put, a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the plan your company creates as a step-by-step guide for a product launch. This will include understanding the target audience and collecting data, outlining marketing needs, and creating a sales plan.
Most importantly, a GTM helps identify a need within the market, so your product can be launched as the solution. A good GTM will use data to help drive the product launch decisions, including identifying the right audience and correct timeframe for the release.
A GTM can be used for physical products, as well as services, company restructures, or new businesses. This type of framework will help keep the end goal aligned across departments and ensure bases are covered for success.
New products take time, resources, and money to create. Having a GTM can make sure all of those efforts are being used to their fullest potential. A successful product launch aims to increase return on investment (ROI), and a GTM can be a powerful tool to make that happen.
Many companies have experienced product failures, which can usually be attributed to wrong timing, bad marketing, or poor market research. Outlining a launch strategy can take the guesswork out of a release, as well as prevent oversights or mistakes.
While there is always a chance of a product flop, regardless of planning, having a GTM can help manage expectations and prepare your company for the launch. This strategy can also help your team improve future roll-outs. With a framework in place, it’s easier to see which aspects of the release were successful and which areas need improvement.
There are two types of GTM strategies: flywheel and funnel. On the more traditional side, the funnel method focuses on generating leads and helping them through the sales cycle. The flywheel method engages prospects and customers through inbound marketing to build strong relationships.
5 Components of a Successful B2B Go-to-Market Strategy
Before your team hammers out the details for your GTM strategy, it is important to understand a few key components of a successful B2B go-to-market strategy. These details will help your marketing and sales team craft the GTM strategy while using data to back up their decisions.
Creating a solution to a market need. Before getting any further along, it’s important to take a look at your product and identify how it fits into the market. Understanding how your product solves a current need in the market will help drive its success when pitching to leads and current customers.
Identifying your target audience. It is crucial for your product to reach the right customers. Focusing on marketing to your target audience will help ensure quality leads are being nurtured and pushed through the sales funnel.
Understanding your competition. Knowing which other companies are offering similar products will help your team understand the demand and role your solution can play in the market. Market research will allow your team to make data-driven decisions to decide how your product will fit into the competitive landscape.
Demand for your product. Similar to understanding your competition, knowing the demand for your solution can help determine the success of your launch. It’s important to make sure the market isn’t oversaturated with similar options before releasing a new solution.
Planning the distribution. Getting your product to the masses is one of the last steps in a successful launch. Make sure your team has a plan, whether it’ll be through an app, third-party distributor, or a website purchase.
Step-by-Step Approach to Creating Your B2B Go-to-Market Strategy
Before going any further, your team should focus on identifying the problem your product will solve. Understanding how your company is providing a solution in the current market will help guide your leads and customers to a purchase. The goal of your launch should be to address and solve a specific problem within the market.
Identify the Target Audience
Making sure the product information reaches the right audience is crucial for converting leads to sales. Starting off, your company can focus on determining who is experiencing the problem your product wants to solve.
Next, your team can start working on using an Ideal Customer Profile to define who would be the perfect customer for this product. This profile is made up of certain characteristics including demographics, geography, size, budget, and pain points. Understanding this information will help your marketing team tailor their messaging to attract quality leads that will translate to sales.
In a similar vein, understanding buyer personas will also help your team understand the best audience for your launch. Not all customers are the same, and it’s important to make sure quality leads aren’t getting skipped over. Buyer personas help your team differentiate between the unique customers your brand attracts.
Research Your Competitors
In many markets, including B2B, it’s important to know the companies that are selling similar products. Dig deeper into your competition to understand the audience they’re catering to, as well as the differences in your products. This information will help your team determine where your solution falls in the market.
Plan Your Messaging
Along with knowing your target audience, your marketing team will need to plan their outreach. Your team will need to segment audiences based on buyer personas to make sure the right information gets to each group. Making sure your efforts earn the highest ROI will boost the success of your launch.
Understand the Buyer’s Journey
Once you have a marketing plan in place, it’s time to map out the journey that your customers will take. This will help your team visualize the funnel your prospects go through while making a purchase. By having this information, your customer journey map can show any weaknesses or trouble spots in your sales journey, which allows your company to tighten up the process.
Determine which channels are best for your release, and begin creating content. This can include social media, SEO content, and email content. Make sure your chosen channels are utilized by your target audience.
Creating a sales plan means deciding how your product will be sold. It’s important to identify this process, so your sales team is able to convert leads to purchases. Determine if your team will be using a self-service model, inside sales, or field sales.
Set Goals and Create Processes
Using a GTM strategy helps set expectations for a product launch. By setting key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as using SMART goals, your company can measure the success of a release.
Creating processes will help your team know how to achieve the goals that are being set. This will help sales and marketing work together for the best results and encourage collaboration across all departments.
Tips for Creating a Winning GTM strategy for Startups and B2B SaaS Companies
Once you have a GTM strategy in place, your team can begin planning a successful product release. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to creating a GTM, but following the lead from other companies can help push your business to the next level. Startups and B2B SaaS companies can both benefit from creating a GTM strategy for their product launches.
For B2B SaaS, growing the user base and engaging new prospects is typically the end goal of a product launch. By taking part in community-led growth, your company can increase users and have a successful product release. This strategy focuses on leveraging your community for acquiring new leads and overall expansion.
If your company is a growing start-up within the B2B industry, utilizing a Sales-Led growth strategy can help boost revenue. This tactic requires time and effort from your sales and marketing team, but it means relying heavily on your sales team as a push for higher numbers. If your teams are aligned properly with a strong hand-off process between leads, this strategy can help scale your business and create successful product launches.
Click here to start your lead generation cycle to create a target audience for your GTM strategy by using LeadBoxer’s free trial.
In today’s digital world, your customers are skeptical. It is easy for anyone to say anything online. With all the information, your B2B customers will likely listen only to opinions from those whom they trust.
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The power of referrals is undeniable. Roughly 84% of B2B customers start their buying process with a referral. Additionally, companies with a B2B lead referral program have a 71% higher conversion rate.
A solid way to close more deals is through a B2B referral program. Referral marketing incentivizes satisfied customers to recommend your product or service to business decision-makers.
A referral program involves a process, often with a web page on which customers can enter business contacts. Occasionally, contacting representatives of referred businesses is not a B2B referral program. Instead, these recommendation programs track referrals and reward your customers when their recommendation produces a sale.
The Advantages of Having a B2B Referral Network
A network of customers who refer businesses to your brand can expand your B2B referral program and improve its effectiveness. Below are some advantages of a B2B referral network:
Increased Sales
Word-of-mouth advertising is the basis of B2B referral marketing. When a prospective client is referred to you through someone they trust who loves your brand, they most likely will convert. Referrals can improve conversion rates by up to 71%.
A referral network builds relationships, improves customer experience and expands word-of-mouth advertising about your products and services. These three B2B referral program benefits increase sales.
Lower Acquisition Costs
While getting new customers boosts sales, acquiring them can be expensive. It costs five times more to get new customers than keep current ones.
B2B referral programs lead to lower acquisition costs for new customers. Leads and signups recommended by a current customer are more likely to buy. This is because these new leads trust the opinion of the person who loves your product or service.
You will have customers leave over time. Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with you. You must have new customers to balance the amount of existing ones.
Besides lowering acquisition costs, a B2B referral program can lower churn rate. In fact, referred customers have a retention rate 37% higher than non-referred ones.
B2B referral marketing programs are powerful lead-generation tools that attract high-quality leads. These leads will likely stay and do business with you over the long term, reducing churn.
Increase in Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the total revenue a customer generates for your business. LTV increases the more someone spends and the longer they are a customer.
A B2B referral program improves customer LTV with enhanced engagement with your company. Referred customers loyal to your business have a 25% higher lifetime value when recommended by friends, family members or colleagues. Customers will invest in your brand when the social proof and reputation of someone they trust are on the line.
Promote Brand Awareness
B2B referral programs are excellent ways to promote your brand through word-of-mouth advertising. The more people talk about your brand, the greater your exposure, resulting in more sales.
Brand awareness offers the following additional benefits:
Builds brand equity
Makes scaling up easier
Allows you to collect data on your audience for future marketing endeavors
Why B2B Referral Marketing Is So Effective
B2B referral programs increase the likelihood of closing deals. Below are some ways referral marketing is effective at producing sales:
1. Customers trust referrals.
Customers trust referrals from people they know. Reviews and recommendations from others perform much better than conventional advertisements. Studies show people are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend.
2. Referred customers are more loyal.
When customers are referred to your company by someone they trust, they will stick around. Referral marketing helps potential customers start with a high opinion of your company.
3. Increase ROI
Referral marketing programs increase your return on investment (ROI) because it is more cost-effective than other forms of marketing. Getting customers through referrals can be up to five times less expensive than traditional advertising channels.
While there are costs with the rewards you offer, the benefits to your customers will be worth it. As mentioned, these referred customers are high-quality and will likely become loyal customers.
Your B2B referral program can be even more cost-effective with the types of rewards you offer. Awarding points or credits to people who recommend your brand can be cheaper than giving an immediate gift or discount.
4. Increase your marketing reach
Word-of-mouth marketing is an effective way to spread awareness of your brand and build credibility. Customers trust you when they hear good things about your offerings from those they respect.
People who recommend your brand to others become your brand ambassadors, offering free advertising. Referral advertising is limitless since nobody can prevent people from talking about your business. You also expand your potential lead base as your ambassadors will have diverse circles of acquaintances.
5. Easy setup
B2B referral programs are quick and easy to set up because many are automated. All you have to do is decide which rewards to offer and what people must do to earn the rewards.
You can also create a referral marketing program by asking customers to share the name of whoever referred them. You then reward them according to what your program outlines.
B2B referral programs allow you to gather information on prospective leads and market trends. When you know your referrals, you can give them an engaging and personalized experience by meeting their needs.
7. Increase customer engagement
Consumers buy from brands that are engaging with them. Customers are more engaged in sharing your brand through a referral program. A B2B referral program will drive brand advocates back to your website, increasing the chance of a sale.
8. Boost your social media
B2B referral marketing allows people to refer friends to your business via social media. Incentivizing loyal customers to promote your brand on their social networks will expand your social media presence.
How to Build a B2B Referral Program for Your Business
You may be wondering how you start building a B2B referral program. The first place to start is to figure out the right rewards for your B2B referrals.
To offer the right perks, you must know your audience and provide rewards that your referrals will enjoy. Gift cards, discounts on goods and services and credits are popular B2B referral program rewards.
After deciding on your B2B referral marketing rewards, here are some things to consider when building your program:
Establish a service agreement with a referral section built in. When onboarding new customers, let them know you appreciate and reward referrals.
Request referrals either via phone or in-person from satisfied customers. If you get a glowing review from a customer, ask them to refer your business when thanking them.
Send follow-up emails. After communicating your referral program to customers, follow up with an email campaign.
Conduct customer satisfaction surveys and questionnaires. Ask your customers about the quality of their experiences with your brand and services. Follow up with the ones most likely to refer you.
The benefits of having a B2B referral program have convinced you to create one of your own. You know what you need to get one off the ground, but what does a good referral marketing program look like? Here are some examples of companies with effective referral programs:
1. Bench Accounting
Bench Accounting is a fintech company that provides automated bookkeeping software. Bench Accounting’s B2B referral program offers a free month of accounting to friends of existing customers.
2.Airtable
AirTable offers an all-in-one solution for teams to collaborate and communicate. Their referral marketing program gives credits to those who recommend the company to others.
Those who refer others to Airtable receive 100 credits for new accounts and 25 credits should those customers upgrade. Credits go towards discounts and perks.
3. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a SaaS company that allows businesses to create and analyze the results of surveys. SurveyMonkey uses referral software to run its program automatically. Their referral marketing program gives members $500 for every organization registering a SurveyMonkey account.
4. DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean provides businesses with a workforce management tool to help them with their IT needs. DigitalOcean offers many perks based on the actions taken by the referrals.
With their B2B referral program, members receive a $25 credit when a referral spends $25. Members receive $100 and a 60-day credit when a referral adds a payment method.
Hotjar allows businesses to analyze and understand the behavior of people who visit their websites. Their referral program offers different rewards for different levels of referrals
The top referrer receives a free lifetime business account. The top-five runner-ups get a free hoodie. Those who make five referrals get a free T-shirt.
6. Jawfish Digital
Jawfish Digital is a content marketing and web design agency offering clients content creation, web design and e-book production services. Their B2B referral program awards $100 Amazon gift cards to anyone who recommends their content or web design services.
Businesses that want to attract quality leads and close more deals need a B2B referral program. These marketing programs offer many benefits and are easy to set up and customize.
Conclusion
Check out LeadBoxer today to learn how it can significantly help your company increase its lead generation through custom lead scoring combined with 20 of the most popular and requested app integrations.
As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are continuing to face a challenging economy. For those who weathered the uncertainty of 2020, current rising interest rates and inflation are pushing businesses to streamline spending as much as possible. Despite fears of a recession, there are ways to grow and increase revenue for B2B companies.
Strategically using marketing and other tactics to shorten the sales life cycle (SLC) can help your team capitalize on existing resources, while improving return on investment (ROI).
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Superb customer experience (CX) should be the chief focus of your sales and marketing efforts. This includes reaching out to your target audience in a timely manner and ensuring your messaging contains helpful information. Customers most want to know how your product relates to their needs!
Incorporating automation and taking advantage of data-driven marketing techniques can help improve the individual CX throughout your sales cycle. Rather than trying to apply a one-size-fits-all approach, hyper personalization addresses the unique needs of each customer to help close a deal. This method relies heavily on data collection and proper data analysis, which gives your marketing team an informed understanding of their target audience.
Before jumping into using this strategy, it’s important to create and know your ideal customer profile. Effective lead segmentation is also key for success.
While you can’t personalize your outreach for each individual customer, content should be segmented based on audience groups in similar stages of the buying process. This helps funnel customers through the sales pipeline by providing relevant product information on a timeline that suits their needs.
Instead of selling your product to the masses, hyper personalization provides educational content to help cultivate and deepen customer relationships. This happens by using data to help uncover more information about prospective leads and current customers. This data includes browsing history, content engagement, purchasing behavior, and their activity timelines.
This type of marketing allows your team to capitalize on money that’s already been spent, rather than upping the budget. Your company may need to invest in lead generation software that tracks website engagement and stores data. Once in place, a quality lead information platform can prove pivotal in boosting your ROI.
Costs will begin to decrease as automation, audience segmentation, and a streamlined workflow helps reach your customers. Research conducted by Deloitte shows that in return for more personalized service, 22% of customers are willing to share personal data. In the same report, Deloitte asserts evidence suggests companies can see an 8x increase in ROI when hyper personalization is executed properly.
Maximizing revenue with this tactic can come from boosting online sales, improving CX and increasing customer retention. Start with focused content that showcases your product and brand making it stand out from your competitors. By creating this content, your marketing team can push educational resources to customers throughout the sales cycle to aid their product research.
How To Implement Hyper Personalization Into Your Marketing Strategy
Once you understand the concept, implementing this tactic takes a bit of advance work. Through techstacks, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics, your team can apply hyper personalization to shorten the sales life cycle (SLC).
Get to know your customers. While this seems self-explanatory, this strategy relies heavily on a deep understanding of your current clients and leads. Buyer personas and ideal client profiles are a great starting point for this.
Digging a little deeper into your current customers and their product usage can help you understand what motivates new leads to seek out your services. Take time to gather feedback from your current customers. This can be done through social media, sales conversations, and website forms.
Gather insight through analyzing website and content engagement. Understanding how prospects interact with your page can inform the content your team creates. This information can be gathered and stored through a lead generation tool like Leadboxer for easy access.
Create a strong techstack. Utilizing technology will help streamline your marketing process, remove siloes between sales and marketing teams and shorten the SLC. Collecting clean data is vital to this strategy, and technology is the best way to gather reliable information.
Invest in a lead generation and lead management platform that integrates with your CRM to update data in real-time. This technology will capture prospect information, segment and score new leads, and track content engagement.
Build your content strategy. Using the data your marketing team has gathered, begin crafting a strategy to push out content. This will be a collection of social media posts, educational content, and email marketing.
Rather than rolling out all of this content to every customer, your team should focus on audience segmentation for a hyper personalized experience. Consider trigger points for promotional deals or educational pieces. For example, if an interested lead fills out a web form, your site can offer an informational guide about your industry.
Segmentation will help make sure email marketing campaigns are being sent to customers at the right stage in the sales cycle. By dividing groups based on being in similar phases of the customer journey, your content can help push customers to quicker sales conversions.
Take advantage of automation. Remove some of the burden from your marketing team, and replace repetitive tasks with automation. This will help eliminate room for human error from the marketing and sales cycle, while freeing up resources for other activities.
Using automation to send out content based on different trigger points can help you keep your product top of mind with your customer base. Automated email marketing keeps prospects informed of changes and advancements in the service or product you provide. Automation also helps cleanse your data, as an automated process collects and stores information in real time.
Successfully Using Email Marketing For Targeted Outreach
Shortening the SLC requires good communication to help nurture customer relationships. While your salespeople may be making a good effort to connect with prospects over the phone, engaging leads with email marketing can help increase ROI.
Rather than spending money on prospecting, take advantage of the contacts your company has gathered over the years. These are leads who have already heard of your service or product, so capitalize on their brand awareness to re-engage them in the sales funnel. Continuing communication through triggered email newsletters or drip campaigns can ensure your team is reaching out at the right moment.
Using segmented email lists can help your sales team time align its outreach efforts with customer needs. Your team can track lead engagement to pinpoint when potential customers are gearing up to make a purchase.
Key Takeaways
Shortening the sales cycle is a great way to increase ROI during an economic downturn. With customers spending less time in the sales cycle, resources are freed to engage new leads and attract new prospects. Using hyper personalization can help your team strengthen customer relationships while simultaneously introducing new leads to your brand.
By segmenting audiences and ensuring relevant information is reaching clients during their customer journey, your sales team can pitch your product in a timely manner. Hyper personalization relies on up-to-date data and automation to run smoothly. Incorporating this strategy with a techstack that includes a lead generation tool can help boost your success rate.
Take time to understand your current customers. Evaluate the ways in which your products are meeting their needs. This information will help attract similar leads, while providing valuable insight into the ways clients interact with your brand.
Plan content accordingly, and utilize trigger points to get relevant information into the hands of the most eager customers. By having content ready for all stages of the sales cycle, communication can help prospects make informed purchases.
Automate processes to free up time and other resources for sales and marketing teams. By allowing technology to play a key role in this strategy, your team can avoid human errors and plan content with the most accurate data points.
Increase brand loyalty by promoting new services or product lines to satisfied customers through email marketing. Utilizing email for continued communication, even after the sale has been made, can help retain clients and encourage repeat purchases. Targeted outreach helps demonstrate your willingness to meet customers’ needs.
Get started with a free Leadboxer trialtoday to experience what quality lead generation, lead management, and easy integration with the popular tools you already use can do to improve your bottom line!
Finding someone’s email is a crucial part of cold email outreach. Here are 30 best email lookup tools that can help you in 2024
Without an email address, you’re left to call or message prospects. Options which are likely to lead to low reply/answer rates. With someone’s email address and the right email tracking app, you can reach out to them directly, know that the email has arrived in their inbox, and find out whether or not they’ve opened your email.
While some prospects list their email publicly on social media and their website, others require a little more work. The good news is you don’t need to be a professional detective to find a person’s email address.
Note:- The difference between email lookup tools and email marketing tools is that, email lookup tools help you find emails of your prospects and leads, whereas email marketing software are used to run email campaigns to your list of newsletter subscribers and sign-ups.
We’ve scoured the internet for to tools to find email addresses and these most popular email lookup tools on the net, are here to help you source and approach your candidates with ease. Take a look!
1. LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is actually not an email lookup tool, but the ultimate tool for tracking and managing the leads that are generated by email lead generation. This GDPR compliant marketing tool comes with everything you need to safely capture and convert prospects for your business. LeadBoxer offers multiple ways to identify potential customers, filter your email lists, and qualify your leads through dynamic scoring. This is one of the best Lead Generation tools there are.
With the app, you can also receive notifications and updates when specific customers engage in conversion activities on your site or read your emails. Additionally, you can identify the contact information of your website’s visitors. This reduces the need for spending time finding leads to reach out to.
We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking.
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2. RocketReach
RocketReach uses its large database of 700 million contacts across 35 million companies to help your organization reach the right person. Their browser extension makes finding information on LinkedIn and other sites super easy. Rocket Reach is probably one of the top tools to find anyone’s email in the current market.
Their plans start at $39/month, which offers access to basic email lookup and can be upgraded to fit your business needs.
3. ZoomInfo
With over 100 million companies, ZoomInfo allows your team to find the contact information for millions of employees. Their browser extension works with LinkedIn and other sites. Specialized search features help narrow down the pool to help your outreach.
While their pricing varies per team, starting a free trial is the best way to explore the tool. From there, a sales rep will reach out to help determine the best plan for your needs.
4. LeadGibbon
LeadGibbon cares about quality. With their program, your team doesn’t pay for email addresses unless they are accurate. This lead generation software checks deliverability on the domain before sharing the information.
Track verified email addresses with a single click using LeadGibbon. Starting at $49/month, your company can get 250 email credits and 25 phone credits to discover across LeadGibbon’s 26 million contact records.
5. Vocus.io
An email lookup tool designed for Google Chrome users, Vocus.io is a comprehensive email solution that expands your Gmail capability to find anyone’s email address. Just one of the features included in the system is email prospecting. The tool also includes email tracking, scheduling, and snooze functionality.
To use email lookup tools, type the name and company domain of the person you want to connect with into the search bar. Vocus.io will create a list of possible email addresses, which it runs through a “verification” service. There’s no bulk search available on Vocus. Pricing starts at $5/month.
6. Voila Norbert
Voila Norbert makes it easy to find any email address. Create an account and you’ll instantly receive 50 free searches. To find someone’s email, type the company domain and person’s name into the tool’s search bar, and Norbert will generate a result. You are only charged for emails that the tool is able to find.
The starter plan is available at $49/month for 1,000 leads (emails found).
For companies who prefer one-off usage, Viola Norbert provides pay-as-you-go email verification and email enrichment. For as little as $.003 per email address, this software can verify the contact information. Email enrichment starts at $.04 per email, which can help your team gain access to more leads through quality data.
7. Hunter.io
Previously known as “Email Hunter,” Hunter.io. is a popular email lookup tool that allows you to find an email address by domain. To use the tool, you simply enter a company’s URL and Hunter.io will return a list of emails that belong to that company.
There is a free plan available for 100 “requests” (email searches). Paid plans start at $39/month for 1,000 requests.
A free plan provides 25 monthly searches and 50 monthly verifications, whereas paid plans start at $49/month.
8. HireEZ
This email lookup service is geared toward recruiters, HireEZ helps push candidate information to your ATS or CRM. While their goal is to help find qualified candidates, B2B companies can benefit from their AI-generated search that pulls contact information for accurate outreach. Their email sequencing campaign feature allows your team to schedule touchpoints in advance.
Using artificial intelligence, the service collects information from around the web to build a full profile on the person you’re looking for. The service integrates with Gmail and Outlook. HireEZ pricing can be found by speaking with a sales rep.
9. Lusha
Tool that helps you find emails fast and efficiently, it’s also personal. Companies can customize the Lusha experience by adding the service to Salesforce, LinkedIn, or Twitter. There’s also a “Contact API” available for developers to plug into their existing technology stack.
Lusha has options for all business needs, starting with a free trail that allows 5 annual credits. The Pro plan is $29/month, Premium goes up to $51/month, and they’re happy to discuss pricing if your company needs a larger credit allowance.
10. FindThatLead
Intended for account-based sales, FindThatLead is quick and easy to use. Type a company URL into the search bar and click “Find Leads” to generate a list of email addresses within that company.
Billed monthly, FindThatLead’s plans start at $49/month for 5,000 monthly credits and can go up from there.
11. Skrapp
Skrapp is an email search tool that verifies information from LinkedIn. It syncs with your CRM to easily store leads. Pricing starts at $49/month for 1,000 emails.
12. AnyMail Finder
With Anymail Finder, you can look up email addresses by entering a person’s full name and company URL or name.
For smaller needs, Anymail Finder has a plan for $14/month that gives 50 verified emails. Premium plans are available at $49 per month for 1,000 verified emails, and pricing goes up for there. You only pay for emails that Anymail Finder knows won’t bounce.
13. Nymeria
If you’re hoping to gather prospects from your LinkedIn network, then Nymeria is the perfect tool for you. Offering users the chance to find emails with a single click, the browser extension scans through LinkedIn profiles to find right email addresses. Once found, you can export emails to a spreadsheet.
Nymeria offers monthly or annual billing, depending on which best fits your company’s needs. Their Nano plan is $33/month for 100 credits.
14. Clearbit
Clearbit is an advanced email finder tool that integrates with your CRM system. It currently supports Segment, Zapier, Marketo, and Salesforce. It also comes with a “Connect” feature which works with Gmail and Outlook.
The “Prospector” system scans through 20 million companies to create lists of targeted accounts that fit specific criteria for your business needs, like the number of employees within a company, or preferred technology stack.
Once you find the contacts you need, you can import them directly into your CRM system. Clearbit is a customizable platform based on volume, and their pricing varies. Schedule a demo today to begin chatting with a team member to see what best suits your company.
15. FindEmails
FindEmails.com is a cheap alternative for businesses who want the ability to look up bulk emails. While they don’t provide an accuracy guarantee through email verification process like some of their competitors, plans start at $29/month and go up based on the amount of credits your team needs.
16. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite
Another powerful email tool that integrates with Gmail, LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite is an extension for Chrome owned by LinkedIn. Once you install the extension, you can compose new emails in Gmail by typing a potential address into the “To” field. The system will draw data from LinkedIn to help find email details.
Usually salespeople and other professionals find LinkedIn Sales Navigator to be the most useful sales tool for leads. However LinkedIn sale navigator lets you find LinkedIn profiles of your prospects but it doesn’t provide email address information with it. Hence you have use another tool on our list with this one.
Pricing varies based on your business needs, and you can contact a sales rep to get started with the conversation.
17. SellHack
Sellhack is a simple and effective browser extension. The service uses an “industry leading” 12-step email verification engine to identify correct email addresses. You can even use its one-click integration to sending an email with personalization from your email account to the prospects you find.
Prices start at $3/month for their ‘Lite’ version that comes with 100 email credits. Their ‘Pro’ plan is $60/month with 2,500 email credits and access to other features.
18. UpLead
UpLead focuses on bringing accurate data to the prospecting game. Rather than simply scraping the internet, UpLead spends time gathering clean and up-to-date data including email addresses to make B2B outreach easier and more accurate.
Plans start at $74/month, and can go up based on your needs.
19. Email Permutator
Email Permutator is a free tool that allows you to enter in a person’s full name and their company URL in order to generate a list of potential email addresses. There is no type of verification service with this tool. Using it will require a trial-and-error approach to correctly identify a person’s email.
20. Findymail
Findymail is another email finder… but not only! You can use their Chrome extension to export Sales Navigator search results with verified email addresses, but it also works on Apollo and any Linkedin profile.
They take great pride in the finding accurate email addresses, which means contrary to other email finders, you won’t need to use an email verification tool on the provided data. Pricing is $49-$249 per month, with unlimited users
21. BuzzStream
BuzzStream works by turning search result pages and website lists into a browsable list of prospects. When you search for blogs or influencers on Google, the tool shows up in the right-hand side of your browser to suggest possible prospects and email addresses pulled from those websites.
You can also use keywords like a person’s name to search for specific contacts and find their email address and social profiles. Once you find an email, Buzzstream adds it to a spreadsheet for you, alongside other information like the website the email is associated with, that site’s domain authority, and the prospect’s Twitter name. Their most popular plan is $124/month, which gives access to 25,000 contacts, bulk emailing, and link monitoring.
22. Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach helps with finding business leads and influencers by browsing through social profiles and websites online. Simply type keywords like “technology company” into the system, and it will list possible contacts from its internal database. You can also use the system to track your email campaigns and conversions with a built-in CRM system.
Their prices range from $155/month to $459/month, and all come with a free trial. All of the options allow for full search of their 120 Million influencers.
23. LeadFuze
LeadFuze is an email lookup tool that helps you to find the email and build your contact lists extension for Google Chrome. With LeadFuze, you can create relevant prospect lists without all the hard work and time. The system checks through social media profiles, email addresses, and prospect information on your behalf.
For scaling teams, LeadFuze starts at $147/month which provides access to 500 lead credits. However, they offer an unlimited plan for $397/month if more credits are needed.
24. Getemail.io
A simple yet effective email lookup tool from a startup in France, Getemail.io comes with 10 free credits to get you started. Each credit equals one email search. Although you won’t receive as many free searches with Getemail.io as some of the other tools on this list, the service comes with access to machine learning algorithms and big data for more accurate searches.
The “Basic” plan costs $49/month for 300 searches and email support. The “Standard” plan costs $99/month for 1,000 searches and instant chat support.
If you upgrade to the “Premium” plan at $149/month, phone support is also available, and you’ll receive 2,000 searches. They even offer an ‘Ultra’ plan for those who need 10,000 credits.
25. Snov.io
With Snov.io, you can find all the emails associated with a single person and verify them instantly. A green dot next to a prospect’s name means that the email is valid. On the other hand, a yellow dot suggests that the email may or may not be correct.
The Snov.io free account comes with a generous 100 domain searches a month, 100 verified LinkedIn searches, and the opportunity to upload and verify 200 of your own emails.
Their paid plans start at $30/month which provides the ability to use 1,000 credits and email 5,000 recipients. For custom plans, the starting rate is $999/month and features are determined to best suit your needs.
26. Email Magpie
Email Magpie is an email tool that searches through available public information on the internet and its own database. It finds influencer, company, and customer leads according to your chosen categories online.
For instance, you can look for tech companies, software brands, marketing companies, or any B2B clientele you choose. You can also search for lists according to geographical location or industry vertical. Paid plans $300 per month for 2,750 targeted emails.
27. AeroLeads
With AeroLeads, you can find phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profile information for businesses and their decision makers. AeroLeads is a Google Chrome plugin, so you’ll need to download and activate it before you start searching. With this tool, you can find emails through LinkedIn, Google, and various other blogs.
When you add a prospect name or domain to AeroLeads, the service automatically checks for verified email addresses and phone numbers. Pricing starts at $49/month for up to 2,000 searches.
28. Name2Email
Name2Email is a Gmail extension. To use the tool, compose an email and add a full name and domain to the address bar. The tool automatically generates a list of common corporate email addresses for the person you want to reach.
To improve your chances of finding a valid email with email lookup tools, you can hover your cursor over the generated addresses. If a popup shows the person’s name, then you’ve chosen the right address.
While using this tool will be more time consuming than using some of the other options on this list, the extension is completely free. All you need to do is add it to Chrome.
29. Discoverly
Discoverly works in the background as you search through websites and social media pages. It’s a Chrome extension that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and AngelList, among other services, to automatically pull email addresses and profile information from pages.
The extension is completely free to use. You simply add it to your Chrome browser to get started.
30. ContactOut
A tool frequently used by recruitment teams, ContactOut helps recruiters find valid candidate email addresses. The tool installs as a Chrome extension that’s specifically designed to search through LinkedIn profiles.
ContactOut claims a 97% accuracy rate when finding email addresses. The extension is completely free to add to your Chrome browser.
Choosing from the Best Email Lookup Tools
There you have it, a selection of some of the best email lookup tools online today. Finding someone’s email is a crucial part of cold email outreach.
The perfect tool for you will depend on a range of factors including pricing, whether or not you need to find contacts from LinkedIn profiles, using an email tracking pixel, and if you want to find email addresses at scale.
While most of the tools on this list will help you find email addresses for a list of leads you’ve already identified, what about the ones you haven’t? What about the people who have already visited your website but haven’t contacted your company?
This is where LeadBoxer comes in. With LeadBoxer, you can identify your website’s visitors and their contact information without them reaching out to you first. This way, you’ll never miss out on connecting with a potential lead. To get started, schedule a free demo here.
Start Free trial Now
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
You know how important it is to find potential customers most interested in your products or services. These are the consumers who will make a purchase. Quickly finding these prospects with a lead management platform shortens your sales cycle, increasing profits.
To learn more about lead management software and the importance of qualifying leads, keep reading or use the links below to jump ahead:
To make any sale, you need to invest in building relationships with the best prospects.
Relationship-building takes time and energy. A lead management platform helps salespeople qualify good leads and disqualify bad ones.
Why is it important to qualify leads? 67% of lost sales are a result of sales reps not properly qualifying potential customers. Unqualified prospects will not go through the entire sales process, so they won’t become paying customers.
Qualifying leads will not only result in more sales. It shortens your sales cycle and betters the use of your sales team’s time by focusing them on ideal leads. Sales teams can prioritize building relationships with the most promising prospects with lead qualification tools.
There are people out there who want your product or service. Lead qualification software helps your sales team identify and build relationships with them. Engaging the right people will bring more sales at a quicker pace.
Lead qualification is the process of identifying prospects most likely to make a purchase. The process prioritizes the nurturing of the most promising leads.
Below are the three types of qualified leads:
Marketing qualified leads (MQL): These leads gain interest in a brand, product, or service through marketing strategies. These leads come by clicking on a link in an email, downloading an e-book, or subscribing to a newsletter.
Sales qualified leads (SQL): These leads are interested in a brand, product, or service after interacting with a sales representative. They often will ask about pricing and agree to a presentation or demo.
Product/Service qualified leads (PQL): These leads are interested in a company, service, or product. They usually contact a salesperson after a free trial or consultation.
Lead management platforms identify the prospects your sales team needs to prioritize in nurturing. Qualified leads will progress through the sales funnel at a more rapid rate, resulting in revenue.
Qualified leads are crucial in generating revenue for your organization. Lead qualification tools can help you quickly identify your most promising prospects. Here are some lead qualification tools you can use to attract and nurture quality prospects:
Interactive PDFs
PDFs are effective ways of informing people in a way that is easily accessible. They are downloadable, saveable, and shareable. Interactive PDFs add engagement and shorten your sales cycle.
Interactive PDFs are lead qualification tools that allow you to add filtering questions, thereby identifying your most promising prospects. These PDFs can help tailor your follow-up and move them quickly down the funnel.
Solution Finders
Other effective lead qualification tools are solution finders. They help identify and provide a custom-tailored solution to a customer’s problem. When leveraged appropriately, solution finders can shorten the sales cycle.
Solution finders, also called product pickers, help leads navigate the various products or services your company offers. Prospects get personalized product or service recommendations with short assessments.
Qualified leads may not always know what they want or the best solution. Through solution finders, you help prospects avoid frustration and headaches. This goes a long way in building relationships between your salespeople and customers.
ROI Calculators
ROI calculators work similarly to solution finders in that they provide tailored customer service. These tools generate numeric results for each lead based on a formula generated by customer input. These calculators quickly identify and evaluate pain points, speeding up the qualification process.
ROI calculators offer personalized, valuable content tailored to each stage of the buyer’s journey. ROI calculator data can be used for scoring, disqualification, and trigger campaigns.
Leads don’t automatically get qualified or disqualified on their own. There is a lead qualification process that is simplified using lead qualification tools.
1. Establish Lead Qualification Criteria
The first part of the lead qualification process is establishing prospect criteria. This has two parts: whether the lead is a good fit and how interested the lead is in your offerings.
When looking at whether a lead is a good fit for your offerings, use the BANT methodology. This looks at the following four factors a lead will consider when faced with a buying decision.
Budget:What is the financial capacity of the lead to make a purchase? What budgetary constraints are there that will affect their willingness to spend?
Authority: What is the lead’s position, authority, or power to finalize a deal or make a purchasing decision?
Need:How useful are your products or services for meeting the wants and pain points of the lead?
Timeline: When does the lead need to make a purchase?
The second stage of lead qualification is lead generation. Once you have the qualification criteria set up, you’ll need to attract prospects. There are a variety of inbound and outbound strategies you can use for lead generation.
Inbound lead generation involves methods to get leads to come to you. These include referrals, social media ads, and web form submissions.
Outbound lead generation strategies involve seeking potential leads and using sales strategies. Cold calling, introductory emails, and meetings are examples of outbound lead generation activities. Once you’ve generated leads, you can begin the process of qualifying them.
3. Lead Score and Categorization
Once you have your lead qualifying criteria and the prospects pouring in, it’s time to score and categorize them. The leads that show the greatest interest through your inbound or outbound sales activities will earn more points.
It’s important to separate sales and marketing qualified leads. As you’re interested in sales leads, assign fewer points to prospects that interact with your marketing campaigns. They will be nurtured differently.
You can score and categorize leads manually, though lead management platforms and customer relationship management software does this automatically. After you score your sales prospects, it’s time to rank them.
4. Distribute and Rank Leads
Once you generate your leads and score them, it is time to distribute and rank them. MQLs and SQLs require different lead nurturing techniques.
For example, a sales qualified lead will get a sales presentation or demo to understand your product or service better. Each sales prospect should be ranked and prioritized by lead score or BANT analysis.
To nurture MQLs, offer more in-depth content. Start with emails and free trials for top-of-funnel prospects. Offer an e-newsletter and then whitepapers and e-books to bottom-of-funnel leads.
Once you categorize and distribute your leads, it’s time to rank them. Lead qualification tools prioritize sales-qualified leads with the highest score and rank. These will be your most qualified leads.
5. Continue Qualifying Leads Throughout the Pipeline
The last step for lead qualification is to continue down the steps of your sales pipeline. The goal of lead qualification is to move prospects through the funnel.
For SQLs, your salespeople may ask additional probing questions during presentations and demos. They are qualified and nurtured to move on through the sales funnel.
For marketing-qualified leads, you need to get them sales qualified and handed over to your sales team. MQLs will continue receiving lead scoring points as they show additional interest and interact with your campaign.
Lead management platforms that qualify leads make it easier to move prospects through your funnel. The quicker leads become paying customers, the more closed sales you’ll have.
Every company has a sales process or funnel whereby prospects enter as mildly interested leads and leave as paying customers. Along the way, you employ various marketing and sales tactics to move them onto the next stage. If your sales process is long, there are more opportunities for leads to drop off before becoming customers.
When you nurture your ideal prospects, they quickly progress through your sales funnel. As they are already excited and knowledgeable about your service or product, a long sales process is unnecessary.
Lead qualification tools shorten your sales cycle. A shorter sales funnel leads to more conversions and quicker sales.
The Growth of Lead Management Software
Lead management software is by no means going away anytime soon. Lead qualification software use will increase. Technavio predicts that the lead qualification solutions market will increase by 17.5% between 2021-2028.
Some of the driving factors that contribute to the growth of lead management platforms include:
The development of cloud-based and SaaS software and solutions (especially on mobile)
Increased demand for social interaction between companies and consumers
The heightened popularity of crowdsourcing
The increase in CRMs integrating lead qualification into their marketing and sales automation platforms
More companies looking to improve the relationship between their sales and marketing departments
The higher likelihood of sales conversions
The increased need for enterprise-level lead management software
With information at their fingertips, your leads and prospects will be selective about who they do business with. Building relationships and nurturing the right people will make them paying customers. Lead qualification platforms do this.
Lead management platforms like LeadBoxer are becoming increasingly popular because they allow salespeople to focus on the most promising prospects. There are various lead qualification tools to move prospects through your funnel. Maximize your prospect generation efforts by following a lead qualification process.
Remaining competitive in the B2B sales industry relies on customer retention and overall satisfaction. Many companies are embracing the idea of product led growth (PLG) to help boost their numbers and increase brand loyalty.
It seems obvious you must have a good product, but the value of providing quality services continues to increase. PLG is more complex than simply having something worth buying. It relies on ensuring a user-friendly experience and excellent customer service to create lasting relationships.
Marketing is no longer the only way to push leads through the sales cycle. By combining a focus on the customer experience, sales and marketing can create a cohesive end goal. Not only does a product centric approach help align departmental goals, it allows the customer to have a voice throughout the sales cycle.
To learn more about the ways your team can benefit from PLG, keep reading, or use the following links to jump ahead:
Like many trending B2B strategies, product led growth is not a new concept. It is, however, an important strategy to empower customers and retain sales. As PLG continues to increase in popularity, your team should better its understanding and implementation of the concept.
Simply put, PLG allows the product or service to drive sales and retain customers. This relies on several factors like ease of use and excellent product experience. Rather than expecting marketing to do the heavy lifting for brand awareness, this strategy incorporates product functionality directly into the sales process.
By putting the product at the center of all conversations, it can help align goals across departments and boost business growth. This also means employees will be working toward the single objective of excellent product experience for all customers.
Through this all-company collaboration, more people are introduced to the user experience, which drives conversations with customers from all angles. However, PLG isn’t solely based on your team’s understanding of the services your company sells.
Another key component of this strategy is allowing customers to see the product value before asking for a purchase. This means having a strong user experience that allows prospects to dive deep and trial the product on their own.
Rather than watching product demonstrations or Q&A webinars, customers should be able to test the functionality on their own. Through implementation of this strategy, success relies on overall customer satisfaction before a sale has been completed.
For example, free trials work hand-in-hand with product centric approaches. Allowing customers to test how the product can provide solutions to their unique problems helps provide valuable insight before purchase. It also allows prospects to address concerns and work out potential problems with a company expert.
PLG helps instill confidence in clients through transparency of service. By providing an inside look at user experience, your team can boost customer satisfaction and increase overall retention rates.
It is not surprising that the B2B industry saw rapid digitization during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before this sudden shift to virtual sales, leaders in the industry were finding ways to innovate customer experience through increased use of technology. While the pandemic sped things up, trends like PLG are here to stay.
Buyers have the resources to be more educated than ever on products before making a purchase decision. This means remaining competitive in the industry relies heavily on customer experience throughout the entire sales cycle.
As brands continue to have an increased online presence, customers are able to interact with products before they even speak with a salesperson. In fact, research shows 94% of B2B buyers perform online research before initiating contact with a sales team.
Educated buyers are now interacting with demos and free trials as early as possible in the sales cycle. Rather than wanting to speak with salespeople for a product introduction, clients are eager to have a hands-on approach to testing solutions. According to a 2015 Forrester survey, almost 75% of buyers would rather make an online purchase than go through a sales team.
This has shifted initial sales conversations to focus more on product details and the technical capabilities of products. Customer preparation has led to an expectation of expert customer service throughout the sales process. In most cases, buyers want salespeople to act in tandem with the website so they can navigate the process alongside an expert.
To understand how this strategy can benefit your business, it is important to make a comparison between traditional growth methods. Starting off, marketing teams usually qualify leads through online interactions like targeted ads, web forms, and email marketing. From there, leads enter the sales funnel and the salespeople reach out for an introduction.
Next, the sales department focuses on showcasing product benefits and providing details on how the product can provide needed solutions. If interested, the customer chooses to make a purchase.
Once the sale has been completed, the customer works with the success team for onboarding and implementation. Assuming things go well, the customer becomes a repeat buyer and the sales cycle restarts.
The traditional strategy allows for a long period of time before the customer is introduced to the product’s functionality. In a time where buyers are prone to making quick decisions and competitors can offer easy demos, following a traditional timeline may not land your company the sale.
In contrast, PLG allows the prospect to jump right into the product. Marketing and sales departments act as experts to help guide customers through the user experience. Rather than client information being captured from online traffic, this cycle starts as soon as the customer signs up for a trial.
Known as product-qualified leads (PQLs), these clients begin interacting with the product as soon as possible. Rather than waiting to be contacted by a salesperson, clients are most often familiar with the brand before the introduction occurs. Once a salesperson reaches out, the conversation can focus heavily on the client’s specific areas of interest, potential personalized features, and any other questions the customer may have about the product.
This kind of transparency is a huge benefit to companies. PQLs convert at a rate 3-4x higher than traditional marketing leads. When customers feel confident in a product before making the purchase, retention increases.
PLG is a great way to gather feedback from customers and improve overall product functionality. When the product is a driving force behind sales, customers are able to provide honest feedback to companies about their experiences.
When a sale is completed, your team is able to hear what was the deciding factor. On the flip side, offering your customers a free trial of your product, even if the sale falls through, helps provide insight into areas that need improvement.
This strategy is cost-effective. Customers begin the onboarding process by themselves, which frees up your employees to concentrate on providing excellent customer service. Less time and money are wasted on deals that don’t come to fruition.
Providing a better user experience increases customer retention and provides incentives for word-of-mouth advertisement. When clients are able to test out a product for free, they are able to share this information with others in their network who may be looking for similar solutions.
Since there are no hold-ups on anyone being able to trial the service, these leads come directly into the pipeline once they sign up. Along with increasing a user base, this helps speed up the sales cycle.
Gaining valuable customer contact information is easier when your product leads the marketing strategy. Usually, web traffic may visit a page or interact with an online ad, but their contact information might never reach your pipeline. Since users have to fill out a full form for free trial access, your marketing team is able to take PQLs directly to the sales team.
For example, when using Leadboxer to capture web traffic, your team can tell these customers are already qualified and scored since they began the demo. This pushes them to the top of the sales cycle, which allows for speedy outreach from your team. By encouraging a quick turnaround time, PLG helps outreach happen faster while leads are still interested in the product.
Implementing PLG Into Your Business
Before jumping into this strategy with your employees, it is crucial to understand PLG is a long-term approach rather than a short-term fix. Implementation will take time and resources to be successful. It may require departmental changes and an overhaul of the company mission to ensure a product-centric focus.
When implemented correctly, PLG will help lead your team to higher sales and increased customer retention. Below are tips on successfully getting started and utilizing a PLG strategy:
1. Evaluate your product
Having an intimate understanding of your product, including its flaws, is the first step in implementing a PLG strategy. Before it can sell itself, your company needs to thoroughly understand the value the product brings to the market.
Evaluation can begin with a few simple questions:
What is the core function? What solutions does your product provide to customers? What feedback is most often received?
Compare your product to the competition. Notice the similarities and differences.
Find the best way to engage prospective customers when speaking on these topics. Educated clients are willing to ask directly about these types of variances. Be prepared to answer honestly during these conversations.
For example, your product may lack certain features compared to that of a competitor. However, your starting price point may be lower. Understanding how to explain this to prospects will help build trust within the relationship.
2. Focus on the customer experience
When the customer is driving the sale through self-education, a user-friendly experience is crucial to finalizing a deal. Beginning with initial onboarding, signing up for the product should be self-explanatory and easily accessible. Prospects are eager to get started, so the sign-up process should be quick enough to hold a customer’s attention.
Sales conversations should bring value to the customer. Rather than relying on old-school tactics, your team needs to focus on acting as product experts to prospective clients.
Removing fluff from these interactions is one way to increase trust within the relationship. Make sure customers feel like they took away valuable information from each conversation with your salespeople.
Allow ample opportunities for clients to provide feedback. Not only will this help customers feel more valued, but it will give your team vital information regarding potential product improvements.
Customize features when possible. Buyers love the idea of personalization, especially when they’re looking for solutions to unique problems within their organization. 80% of customers favor the ability to customize their user experience.
3. Provide continuous onboarding
In the initial onboarding process, users will be signing themselves up for a trial. That doesn’t mean your team should take a backseat to onboarding, though. Instead, customer success teams should concentrate on secondary and next-tier opportunities to increase user engagement.
Customer retention increases when there is a strong need for your product. By encouraging clients to continuously use new features and engage with your software, your product will quickly integrate into their daily workflow.
This is another opportunity to allow conversations with customers about their user experience. As they add more features to their product usage, make sure your team is doing their due diligence.
Having check-ins about new features during the continuous onboarding process will help your team have internal conversations about product performance. This allows your team to collect data on what is working, as well as find areas that may benefit from improvements.
4. Align departmental goals within your company
Overhauling long-term business strategy can be a big undertaking. For success, departments must be on the same page about the company’s mission. When practicing a PLG strategy, marketing and sales teams will be trying out nontraditional tactics.
It is important to make sure the product is always central to the mission. Marketing teams should work closely with sales and customer success to understand the feedback being given. Adjust your marketing outreach to lead with the product.
These efforts from all departments should encourage excellent customer journeys and work to increase brand loyalty. Even though the product and customers are doing a lot of heavy lifting, it is still the goal of your team to provide value throughout the sales cycle.
5. Tailor your marketing practices to showcase the value
Since much of the beginning sales cycle in PLG strategy involves solitary customer research, messaging is key. Customers will want to see an overview of key features as well as pricing when comparing brands.
Make sure your pricing sheet is accessible and easy to understand. Marketing content should help explain how clients can benefit from the premium version of your product. Simple explanations of which plans work well for specific groups can encourage prospects to explore the features that are most relevant to their needs.
Online resources, like blogs or social media posts, should showcase the features your product offers. Many users will be looking at multiple options during their research. It is important to make your product stand out by providing valuable information about the user experience rather than fluff content.
6. Utilize upsells and premium features
Once a sale is made, the goal should be to encourage repeat purchases from that customer. This typically happens through contract renewals, but there is an opportunity to add more revenue through upsells and new features.
If a client is thoroughly enjoying the service your product provides, your team should brainstorm ways new features may bring additional value. Asking customers what they want to see in future rollouts is a great starting point.
Offer items in discounted bundles or find ways to include an option for premium features. These types of add-ons may be an easier sell once clients are familiar with your product. Ongoing outreach from the sales team to current customers is crucial for landing these upsells.
7. Encourage user referrals
PLG provides ample room for customers to refer your product to others in their network. If your trial period is easy to access, prospects can sign up and get started within the same day of hearing about your product.
Capitalize on your customer experience by offering a referral program that incentivizes current relationships to bring in new business. This type of program can help boost brand loyalty, as clients can continue to tell others about your product.
User referrals can help boost overall customer satisfaction. Current clients will feel appreciated when their recommendations are rewarded by the brand.
8. Follow through on your advertisements
When customer experience is a major driving factor for sales, following through on promises is crucial. The classic saying ‘under promise, but over deliver is a good motto to have when implementing PLG.
Your product will be doing most of the selling, and it should be able to stand alone while customers are participating in a demo. However, if your salespeople make promises about product features or capabilities in conversations, it is important to see them through.
Transparency is huge when utilizing product led marketing. It will negatively impact customer retention if users don’t see sales agreements come to fruition.
This comes into play when customers are making the transition from the free trial to the premium version. If your team offers specific features or personalized capabilities, it is crucial to ensure these are available as soon as onboarding begins.
Clients have educated themselves on the benefits of your product versus your competitors. Since they’ll have spent time with your services, they will notice any lack of follow-through on promises.
PLG relies heavily on customer retention, and the easiest way to lose a relationship is by not providing the right service. Make sure to have honest conversations about the features your product has, and address any concerns as soon as they arise.
9. Use data to drive product choices
PLG strategy relies heavily on accurate data to understand the customer’s needs. Data analytics will help your company ascertain what value users are receiving from your product. This information can also help develop product improvements as your team rolls out new features.
When implementing a PLG strategy, it is important for your company to equip itself with the right tools and resources for success. Make sure you have a way to track data and pilot the user experience.
Along with using these kinds of tools, manage expectations among departments by setting KPIs and reviewing targeted goals. This allows your employees to easily measure success throughout the process.
Key Takeaways
Product led growth may be the newest trendy buzzword in the B2B industry, but the strategy is here to stay. In order to remain competitive, your company should be looking at the long-term benefits of a product-centric approach.
As customers continue to push for more virtual sales options, your product will need to be able to sell itself during the trial phase. Focus on having your salespeople become experts on product features. Tailor your marketing to showcase features that set your product apart from competitors.
Understand the best way to implement PLG into your organization. Invest in the right resources to ensure this strategy increases your customer base and retention.
Allow user experience and customer feedback to drive initiatives within your departments. Build lasting customer relationships through transparency. By focusing on the customer experience and product value, your company can benefit from this strategy.
To get started with Leadboxer, click here for your free trial!
Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and strategy is vital to a successful B2B sales team. CRM software has become a major asset for many companies as it helps organize, integrate, and streamline customer management.
With more businesses offering remote or hybrid work options, keeping up with customers has begun to rely heavily on the successful use of CRM software. While using a CRM is great once a lead has come into the pipeline, there is value in developing a pre-CRM strategy.
To learn more about the function of pre-CRM strategy and the usage of a marketing CRM, keep reading or use the links below to jump ahead:
Tracking website activity and importing potential customer data into a CRM is usually the first step in creating a relationship. Although, there are probably more website visitors than contacts in your CRM. Not every prospect is going to input data into your web forms, so there needs to be a strategy in place to anticipate prospects who may eventually enter the sales pipeline.
Having a Pre-CRM strategy means your departments are working to improve initial customer interactions to begin developing a strong business relationship. Before companies were able to have a strong digital presence, salespeople needed to greet customers and have organic interactions to cultivate their pipeline.
By taking these old-school tactics and adapting them to fit your company’s digital presence, the pre-CRM stage can help present your company to prospects. Engaging potential customers before they’ve been entered into your CRM can be tough. Utilizing social media, email marketing, and a website can help introduce your brand before customers are familiar with your team.
Most importantly, taking advantage of the Pre-CRM stage means your company is using its marketing and digital presence to help create product awareness. Many customers only become active when they have a need, but engagement can start before then. Marketing should focus on sharing what your company offers while allowing customers to interact with your content.
Reaching Out to Pre-CRM Leads
How do you reach out to customers before you know their needs, or before they understand what your company specializes in? Finding ways to engage pre-CRM leads takes creativity, but the payoff can help boost your sales pipeline.
Thinking of it as similar to greeting customers in the offline world can help map out the best way for outreach. Find ways to humanize digital communication, like displaying employee profiles and making contact information readily available. Encourage engagement through chatbots, and utilize video features to showcase products and salespeople.
The goal of this outreach is to improve initial customer impressions. When your company is able to create a positive first touchpoint, prospects will be more inclined to continue engagement with the brand. This will help filter leads in your pipeline and CRM, which will help boost sales.
What Is a CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is software that can be used to manage your company’s relationships and interactions with clients and prospects. This technology helps streamline your business, grow your pipeline, and organize goals across departments.
A CRM can be used throughout the entire customer lifecycle, including marketing, sales, and customer service. This software stores prospect and customer information, which helps build out your database for maintaining relationships.
By keeping data all in one platform, your CRM can help make sure all of the necessary steps are being done to provide clients with quality service. It also allows your teams to track customer engagement, plan outreach, and identify future sales opportunities.
Many teams have turned to a remote or hybrid working environment, so utilizing a CRM can make a big difference in collaboration when employees are stationed across multiple locations. This software can also align your sales and marketing departments to tighten up the lead generation and nurturing process.
Along with creating more efficient workflow within departments, CRMs can integrate with other technology to streamline the sales process. Many CRMs have the ability to work with your current tech stack to free up time and resources for customer outreach. For example, Leadboxer integrates seamlessly with CRMs to improve lead-generation processes.
The CRM Cycle
CRM is a great strategy for improving the quality of your outreach, and in turn, creating stronger customer relationships. Rather than aiming to cast a wider net, successful customer management will help encourage repeat sales and brand loyalty.
There are seven stages within the CRM cycle, and each plays an important role in customer success. Walking clients through this journey will help fill your pipeline with quality prospects and increase sales.
The Pre-CRM stage begins with brand awareness and creating an environment that encourages customer engagement. Inputting a new lead into the CRM happens once your team has contact and basic information about the prospect. Log the details in your CRM and begin walking them to the next step in the cycle.
Once a prospect begins interacting with your brand, like clicking on an email link or filling out a web form, the nurturing process can begin. By using features in your CRM software, you can tag clients and track their engagement. This helps your sales team determine which leads are cold or warm.
Moving toward the sales opportunity happens once a lead schedules a sales call. This moves the customer from warm to hot.
Your team should be tracking the movements of this client as they move through the sales funnel. Enter the details from the sales call to log the outcome in your CRM. This helps your team see which leads are actively working their way toward closing a deal.
A little over halfway through the cycle, the goal is to have hot leads converted into closed deals. Once the client says ‘yes’ to your sales pitch, you can consider them an active customer.
However, the CRM cycle does not end here.
Next, delivery of your product or services should be scheduled. It’s important to create follow-up reminders to keep in touch with the customer as they begin using your product. This phase should also include gathering feedback and providing any additional training or information that the customer may need to be successful.
Instead of moving on to the next cold lead once a deal has been completed, try bringing your customers into the ‘upselling’ stage. If clients are happy with the product and experience they’ve had so far, pitching an upgrade in your services can help boost the overall sale. Engage with customers to see if there are any additional needs your team can help fill.
Lastly, the CRM cycle relies on continuity to cultivate strong customer relationships and promote lasting brand loyalty. Continue reaching out to current clients.
Schedule regular check-ins and encourage feedback. These actions can help increase repeat purchases throughout the length of the business relationship.
Implementing a CRM can play a huge role in the success of your marketing department. Since the goal of marketing is to create awareness and generate leads for the sales team, a CRM can help align the efforts of these departments.
By breaking down barriers to avoid organizational silos within your company, a CRM helps increase the flow of information between teams. This will improve the overall quality of customer service as your marketing campaigns direct qualified leads into the sales pipeline.
As website visitors interact with content and email recipients click on links, a marketing CRM can help your team track these actions to qualify leads. By integrating with other technologies like lead generation software, the CRM increases conversions and campaign effectiveness.
While a CRM can be a huge asset to many companies, there are a few challenges to be aware of before implementing the software. For employees who are unfamiliar with the system, learning how to use a CRM effectively can be a daunting task. Provide extensive training to make sure your team is confident in the program.
Integration with tech stacks is a great benefit to using a CRM, but it is important to make sure the CRM you choose works with your current technology. Marketing campaigns can benefit from tracking customer engagement, and a marketing CRM can help organize this data.
Key Takeaways
A Pre-CRM strategy can help humanize your company and begin nurturing leads before they have entered your pipeline. Use this strategy to create positive brand awareness with potential prospects. Encouraging early engagement will help drive customers to your business when they have a need for your product.
Utilizing a marketing CRM is a great way to create a communication flow between departments and increase campaign effectiveness. Tracking and tagging engagement from customers can help inform future marketing efforts and outreach for sales pitches.
To see how Leadboxer can integrate with your CRM, click here for a free trial!
Automated lead generation software is paving the way to success for B2B companies. These highly integrated platforms have continued to rise in popularity. For businesses who want to keep a competitive edge within their sales and marketing departments, lead generation software has become a necessity.
Diving deeper into the market trends and forecasts, several reports have closely inspected how lead generation and automated marketing will trend through 2029. Keep reading, or use the links below to explore these findings:
According to an Insight Partners study, the lead generation market was valued at 3,103.80 million USD in 2021. It is expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5%, and reach a value of 9,589.11 million USD by 2028.
The Global Lead Generation B2B Software Market Research Report 2022 shows that the lead generation market is split up into four areas. They are lead capture software, lead intelligence software, lead mining software, and lead scoring software.
These sections each play a role in successfully generating and nurturing leads while saving companies time and valuable resources. 20% more sales opportunities are created when leads are properly nurtured. However, 65% of B2B companies have not established a process for lead nurturing.
Technology-driven processes are crucial for companies to identify quality leads. In fact, 44% of marketers are already using software like automated marketing for lead scoring.
Lead generation software continues to increase in popularity due to its flexibility, low maintenance, and resistance to corrosion. As businesses continue to grow within the digital space, this software helps companies remain competitive within their industries.
Forbes reports that 58% of business leaders see lead generation as a key challenge. Lead generation platforms like Leadboxer are instrumental in helping companies find qualified prospects to fill their pipeline. Through automation, data collection, and software integration, these platforms are able to improve processes across multiple departments.
Lead generation software has benefited from the advancement of technology, and it will continue to optimize its product performance. Integration between customer relationship management (CRM) and lead generation platforms is a step toward success.
The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 released by researchsandmarkets.com takes a closer look at the current environment for this software. The report finds the market was valued at 5.45 billion USD in 2021. As automated marketing software continues to gain traction among businesses, it is projected to reach 8.58 billion USD by 2026.
Due to the increased usage of these platforms, the market is expected to grow by 9.49% between 2022-2026. The report notes the advantages of using this software include improved efficiency, reduced staffing costs, and an overall increase in revenue.
Cloud and On-Premise are the two studied segments of marketing automation deployment types. Cloud deployment was found to cover a market majority at 58%.
This report studied eight channels of marketing automation:
lead nurturing
mobile application
campaign management
inbound marketing
social media
email
reporting/analytics
other
Out of the channel categories, email marketing automation led the way with 17%.
A Demand Gen Report found that 53% of marketing teams say that early-stage lead generation is most effective when done through email. With email automation pulling ahead of other channels, automated marketing software can help companies save time and resources in producing email campaigns.
Across industry applications, it was observed that healthcare began utilizing marketing automation software strategies. This implementation has helped create consistent messaging and improved customer service. During 2022-2026, the use of marketing automation in healthcare is expected to grow by 12.5%.
As for regions, this report discovered that North America made up the largest share of marketing automation at 34.3%. Over the forecasted period of 2022-2026, Europe and North America are expected to be the largest markets. Due to a rise in mobile usage and increasing use of advertisement campaigns, the Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing market.
How the COVID-19 Pandemic Shaped Automated Software
COVID-19 continues to show lasting effects on the way businesses handle sales outreach. With quick switches to digital communication as in-person meetings were canceled, many B2B companies had to adapt to a virtual environment.
58% of experts believe poor technology infrastructure led to businesses struggling to deal with the pandemic. The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 suggests that the pandemic highlighted the importance of marketing automation as companies made the switch to digital channels to keep in touch with customers.
Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing a significant role in the post-pandemic world.50% of businesses plan to push forward with their AI strategies as they enter into post-COVID operations.
While the pandemic caused upheaval across all industries, it also helped drive innovation and advancement. 43.42% of B2B marketers plan to switch their in-person meeting budgets to digital efforts.
By investing in automated marketing and lead generation software, B2B companies will be prepared to face a post-pandemic world.
The Future of Lead Generation and Marketing Automation
While many marketing budgets continue to shrink, a survey from Gartner finds 26.6% of Chief Marketing Officers plan to increase their spending on automated tools. Statista Research Department shows that 2.6 billion USD was spent on lead generation in the United States in 2019. This number is predicted to hit 3.2 billion USD by the end of 2023.
The demand for these tools continues to increase, but this market does face challenges as well. Cyber security and data quality issues were found to be impeding issues for market growth. The quick nature of social media and continued internet usage has posed security and compliance challenges for marketing teams.
As the B2B industry continues to evolve within the digital sphere, lead generation and marketing automation will increase in marketing and sales departments. The content marketing platform is expected to grow the fastest between 2022-2026. Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 suggests it will increase at a CAGR of 17%.
85% of marketers say their biggest focus from content marketing is lead generation. Research shows an emphasis on producing quality customer experiences and a growing need for analytics-based content will drive content marketing growth.
AI integration, predictive analytics, and a focus on personalized marketing are contributing to the market increase.
The combination of AI and automation software is pushing businesses toward better customer service and creating stronger interactions with prospects. Lead generation platforms help target the correct customers to drive marketing efforts in the right direction.
Key Takeaways
Lead generation and marketing automation are paving the way for companies to save time and resources when filling the sales pipeline. 80% of marketers saw an increase in their leads after using marketing automation.
Both markets continue to grow and are projected to rise to new levels by 2029. B2B companies will need to include lead generation platforms and automated marketing into their business strategies to remain competitive in their respective industries.
Marketing automation provides a huge boost in sales leads. Using this software for marketing campaigns can increase these numbers by 451%. Content marketing is used for lead generation by 80% of companies. It is expected to be the fastest-growing channel for automated marketing between 2022-2029.
Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to push companies toward digital communication. Customer trends show that many prefer buying in a virtual space. These habits will most likely increase as social media marketing trends upward.
While lead generation and personalized outreach benefit from automated software, challenges with consumer privacy and data quality will continue to be part of the conversation. Salesforce found that 86% of consumers want more transparency regarding the usage of their personal information.
Investing in highly integrated platforms like LeadBoxer will help departments utilize their existing tech stack to its full potential for lead generation, marketing automation, and customer management.
See what LeadBoxer can do for your business. Get your free trial today!
Creative lead generation can help your B2B company fill the sales funnel with qualified prospects. Social media continues to be vital for marketing teams, and jumping on the upward trend of video content is a way to boost your outreach.
Utilizing video marketing is a great way to increase brand awareness and encourage content engagement. This tactic can push your outreach to additional target audiences and help increase your lead generation. Video marketing can also work when trying to retarget and engage potential prospects.
Keep reading, or use the following links to jump ahead:
While the strategy isn’t new, video marketing has become crucial for staying relevant in a competitive market. According to WyzOwl’s 2022 Video Marketing Statistic Report, 86% of businesses already use video in their marketing strategy.
This marketing tool is important to have across all channels. Videos are an easy way to educate prospects on your product, as well as create brand awareness.
In a Hubspot survey, it was found that video content was the second most popular way to increase social media engagement. By encouraging interaction from customers, this strategy can help boost shares and expand audience reach.
Even though video marketing has been around for a while, many businesses saw a rise in demand for this content during the pandemic. 64% of marketing teams feel the pandemic has affected their 2022 video marketing strategies. Coupling this with the rise of marketing on social media platforms like TikTok, utilizing these tools can make a big difference in engagement.
Increasing Sales Conversions Through Videos
Marketing teams work hard to reach audiences that can be converted successfully for the sales department. These tactics require a lot of planning and resources to make sure content is being delivered to the right prospects.
Video marketing is an accessible tool that helps engage customers before they’ve even spoken to a salesperson. If you’re just beginning your video strategy, a great place to start is finding ways to include this type of content on your website.
According to BizCommunity, conversion rates can be increased by 80% if you include video content on your landing pages. When leads are visiting your site for the first time, videos are able to introduce your product and brand quickly. This type of content encourages engagement as prospects are able to get a glimpse of what your company has to offer.
Additionally, adding videos to your site can help improve search engine optimization (SEO). By having this content on your pages, visitors are more likely to spend more time on your website, which helps boost your page in search engines.
Moving on from initial lead impressions, video marketing can play a role in boosting customer retention. This content has the ability to support salespeople as they walk clients through the sales journey. By having video tutorials and demonstrations, leads are able to interact with your product before making a purchase, which can increase customer confidence.
The options for video content are endless, and it is a great tool to build trust while showcasing an authentic brand to prospects. Utilizing how-tos, customer testimonials, and customer support videos are just a few ways your team can take its marketing strategy to the next level.
How to Create a Successful Video Strategy
Creating content that encourages audience engagement is a good starting place. With high-quality smartphone cameras and a multitude of editing apps to choose from, access to video creation is easier than ever.
However, starting without a plan can be an overwhelming undertaking for any marketing team. Take time to allocate resources and prepare your team for the content rollout. This type of foresight will help align the marketing and sales department to ensure the highest return on investment (ROI) is being achieved.
Once your teams are ready to go, begin by evaluating your company’s needs. Determine which pages and social platforms will benefit most from the content. Laying out the areas that will receive videos can help decide what the content will showcase.
Next, determine the target audience. For video marketing lead generation, have your team identify what platforms see the most traffic from prospects.
Bizcommunity found that videos help 90% of customers make buying decisions. By getting this content on pages that see the most interaction from leads, video influence can help push these prospects into the sales funnel.
Align the goals of the campaign across departments. Multiple videos can serve different purposes, but it is good to have a clear objective before creating any content. This data will also play a role in determining the video’s success late in the journey.
Decide on the video distribution platform. There are a few factors that will help narrow down the best place for your content. Consider your budget, including money for sponsored posts, and your current tools.
Shorter videos may find their home on TikTok or Instagram, whereas Youtube remains a leader for long-form content. Determining a platform before filming will help drive the subject matter. It is important to take into consideration the type of audience on each social media channel, as well as how engagement is measured.
Platforms like Instagram reels and TikTok rely on short, snappy videos that can quickly grab a viewer’s attention. These sites also work off of algorithms that rely on comments, likes, and shares. Longer videos may do better on Youtube or LinkedIn, especially if the goal of the content is to educate.
Begin scripting and filming content. If you are not sure where to start, look at similar businesses or competitors to see what type of videos they are sharing. This can help your team gather an understanding of where your industry fits into the digital sphere.
Once posted, begin measuring the content’s success. While each business may track unique metrics, there are a few basic ones that can help your team see what works and what needs improvement. Engagement is huge. Track comments, likes, and shares.
Time spent on your site is another great metric to consider. If you have longer videos, are your visitors watching the whole thing? Take a look at any generated leads or conversion boosts.
Are your visitors interacting with other areas of your site after watching the video? For example, keep an eye out for any upticks in form completion.
Lastly, continue to re-evaluate and produce video content. While you shouldn’t fix any content that seems to be working, don’t be afraid to add new posts. Variety in content can boost engagement and encourage frequent customer interaction.
Revisit any videos that don’t produce the results your team wants. This form of content is constantly evolving, and it is good to be prepared to embrace changes as needed.
Best Practices for Video Marketing
Once you have a strategy ready to go, implementing best practices can help boost the success of your marketing campaigns. Understanding the different types of video content can help your team see a positive ROI from this work.
Videos like product demonstrations, educational content, or expert interviews can help increase lead generation. While content like customer testimonials, live streams, or personalized messages from employees can create brand awareness.
Use video marketing to retarget old leads. This content can help encourage prospects to re-engage with the sales journey. Maybe the lead wasn’t sure your product was the right fit, but an educational tutorial or how-to guide can help show the ways their company can benefit from a purchase.
The rise of platforms like TikTok and Instagram has expedited the evolution of video content. Now, businesses are able to utilize these channels and interact with leads at a faster pace. In turn, social media has also helped shape marketing trends.
Viral trends dominate the ways content is viewed across platforms, and brands are not exempt from participation. While being TikTok famous isn’t the goal of video content for your business, it’s becoming more common for companies to participate in these trends.
Influencer marketing has also continued to rise in popularity. Videos like a how-to or product reviews from influencers help create brand awareness and build trust with customers. This type of sponsored content speaks to viewers without seeming too forced.
According to HubSpot, 64% of businesses found new customers because of a Facebook video. Social media helps successfully mix business with pleasure, as many adults spend time scrolling through Facebook and Instagram throughout the day. By posting video content on social media, your company can see a higher ROI on video marketing.
Get started with lead generation by trying out Leadboxer today!
Attracting qualified leads to the sales pipeline is crucial for B2B businesses. Identifying prospects and cultivating relationships will increase sales conversions and create loyal customers.
With email marketing filling up a prospect’s inbox from your company and competitors, it is important to offer valuable content that will help your product stand out. Finding ways to establish yourself as an expert in the industry and producing informative marketing materials can help create lasting customer relationships.
When trying to find potential clients and obtain their contact information, utilizing a lead magnet can kickstart the conversation. Use the links, or keep reading, to learn about lead magnet examples and how your company can benefit from their usage:
Simply defined, a lead magnet is an incentive that companies can provide to prospects in exchange for contact information. More than that, though, this type of offer can start building trust with potential clients from their first interaction with a business.
Types of lead magnets can vary across industries, but all of them should provide value to the recipient. For example, retailers may offer first-time website visitors a small discount code if they join their mailing list.
By utilizing a lead magnet, prospective clients can begin to see the value your product offers. With this in mind, planning and executing lead magnets may be different for each potential customer.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this marketing strategy, and businesses that provide innovative and informative lead magnets can boost themselves ahead of competitors. The content within the lead magnet is crucial to forming the foundations of a strong business relationship.
Lead magnets are not seen as optional for businesses that want to remain competitive within their industries. These tools can help plot the trajectory of a prospect’s customer journey by providing a valuable glimpse into a business’s product.
For technical industries, a lead magnet tends to lean into a demonstration of a product’s solution. This can be done in many ways, like White Papers or Webinars, but the content should provide valuable market insight.
The Importance of Customizing Lead Magnets
Just like any other marketing tool, customization of outreach is important for lead magnets to be used to their fullest potential. Whether your business has a large array of products or only a few solutions to offer, customers will be coming to you with unique problems that are specific to their organization.
Initial content provided by your business, especially as a way to gain contact information and create first touchpoints, should begin the process of selling your solution. The magnet isn’t a sales pitch itself, though. Rather, it’s a marketing tool to generate interest and educate prospect’s on your product’s capability.
The goal of your marketing efforts is to be seen as an expert in the field. This means prospects and current customers will look to your content for industry insight. Using a lead magnet should entice prospects to provide contact information because they want to engage with the content of value.
Knowing your audience and understanding their needs will help create trust between customers and the business, as well as cultivate interest in your products. Alongside providing solutions, loyal customers will appreciate customized content that caters to their interests.
Before choosing the types of content you want to produce, it is important to identify your target audience and take the time to understand their needs. Research prospective clients, find pain points that your product can help alleviate, and pay attention to market trends.
Along with customization for specific customer bases, making sure your content is up-to-date and relevant to current events can help create engagement. Utilize statistics to show ongoing trends in your industry. For example, as the economy continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, providing customers with content that addresses this topic will help your business be seen as an informed source.
Email marketing, lead generation, and content engagement are all important tools for becoming a successful B2B company. These are no longer optional if you want to be a competitor in the market. On top of utilizing digital marketing to reach prospects, any content provided to potential clients should begin to build a relationship.
Creating sales pipelines and adding qualified leads to the funnel can be a tough task. Some prospects may be weary of providing contact information, and others may have no idea who your company is.
By creating and providing quality lead magnets, your business should be able to showcase its value to these potential clients to build trust and begin the sales journey.
Not all lead magnets are the same. Some will serve different purposes depending on the type of customer you are working to attract. All of these tools should be enticing enough to earn contact information.
Digital marketing continues to evolve as new social media platforms pop up and customers continue to be inundated with content. However, lots of clients are still beginning their search for solutions by turning to Google.
Attracting potential clients through organic web traffic is a great way to score contact information from potential leads. This is where lead magnets can become a huge game changer. This content should be accessible on your website, in exchange for contact data, and it should be interesting enough to catch a prospect’s attention.
Below are lead magnet examples that can help your business take its lead generation to the next level.
White Paper
This tool is one of the top lead generators for B2B companies, but it needs to be interesting enough to garner interest from website visitors. There are several approaches you can take to white papers, and any form should provide unique information that is specific to your client’s industry.
As with all lead magnets, the content within the paper should be valuable, and it is important to make sure it’s enough to convert a prospect into a qualified lead. The subject should be creative, but something that can be heavily backed by data.
Providing a professional reference guide or one written by a C-Suite member can be a great start for a white paper. Allowing the CEO or COO to be the face of a paper on a trending topic in the industry can help establish your company’s expertise.
A professional reference guide would act as a comprehensive resource for professionals in your industry. While this type of content may seem basic and geared toward beginners in the field, it helps show off the knowledge of your company. This content is also easily refreshable, which takes fewer resources to maintain.
Taking a more statistical approach can help gain points from prospects who may value insight into market trends. Analyze a case study or write about market predictions based on past trends. This content can help establish your organization’s credibility and focus on how your product fits into the current market.
A simple type of white paper can be a comprehensive product breakdown to provide crucial insight into the solutions your business provides. This helps with the technical aspect of your sales pitch and can help introduce prospects to your tools.
Webinars
Leaning into a product demonstration, webinars are an easily accessible avenue for prospects to become acquainted with your company. Live webinars are a great resource to pitch your product to potential customers who may be exploring several solutions.
These live streams provide in-depth product demonstrations and leave time for questions that participants might have. By showcasing your product and demonstrating your team’s expertise through answering questions in real time, webinars help prospects familiarize themselves with the solution your company provides.
Also, webinars make capturing contact information extremely easy. Many platforms require participants to sign in with their email addresses and include information regarding their role within the company. This allows your team to start targeted outreach to these prospective clients as soon as the webinar begins.
Live webinars help give easy to provide participants with a call-to-action at the conclusion of the demonstration. After seeing your product and its features, potential clients can easily take the next step to set up a meeting with one of your business development employees.
Another option for webinars is creating an ongoing series that is relevant to current market trends. This moves the presentation away from a simple demonstration and allows your team to discuss your product’s role within the industry.
This type of series helps create fresh content to promote engagement from prospects and loyal customers. Along with providing valuable market insight, these conversations and the Q&A following can help potential clients see the way your team interacts with existing customers.
By showcasing your customer service and your expertise within the industry, prospects may feel more inclined to move along within your sales funnel.
Risk-Free Trials
A classic lead magnet for many B2B companies is offering a free trial of the product. This is particularly popular for businesses that are promoting software as a solution. Some prospects may benefit from exploring the product on their own to determine if it’s a good fit.
Important factors for a risk-free trial to be successful in qualifying leads include clear communication about the trial’s terms and ease of cancellation before being charged for the service.
Free trial sign-up forms will capture contact data so your team can reach out to these prospects and discuss their needs while they’re trying out the product. This is a great way to establish a relationship and help potential customers see the full benefit of your services.
Another aspect of the risk-free trial is gaining feedback from prospects as they self-navigate your product. Conducting check-ins to the contact information provided can start the conversation and allow your team to hear about the customer experience.
This type of lead magnet does require a product that can be easily trialed, but other types of products may be able to utilize a virtual demonstration if a free trial is not possible. Allowing prospects to test the software before purchasing can help build trust.
Communication is important for successfully providing free trials as a lead magnet. Make sure your team is able to reach out to the user as they work, listen to feedback that’s given, and be transparent about the subscription details.
eBooks
Similar to a white paper, an eBook is a long form of content that can serve as an informational guide to prospects. However, an eBook tends to cover general topics and may combine multiple pieces into one piece of content.
This type of lead magnet is great if your marketing team works heavily with blogs or has a series on specific topics that relate to your product and industry. Different from a white paper, an eBook tends to be less academic and bundles more information together.
Sharing an eBook with prospects helps them save time that they would’ve spent searching through your website. The information covered in the content can go over trending industry topics and the solution your product provides.
Since prospects won’t be able to view the content in your book before providing contact information, the brief overview and title should be catchy enough to catch their interest.
A quiz can be a fun way to introduce your product and help clients feel comfortable sharing their contact information with your business.
Making sure you’re implementing an appropriate quiz format is important for this type of lead magnet to be successful. Create a relevant title that entices website visitors to engage.
For example, if your company offers multiple solutions to workplace problems, you could use something as simple as “What Type of Product is Right For You?”. Next, the length of the quiz matters. Avoid making it too long because you don’t want prospects to get bored and abandon the activity.
The results of this should prompt action from the prospect. Try to tailor the results to collect contact information from qualified leads. You can take it a step further by using a quiz to assess where the prospect is in their customer journey.
This type of lead magnet can provide your team with data to move the lead within the sales funnel, as well as encourage prospects to take the next step with your product.
Templates
Offering a way for a prospect to streamline their process by simply providing contact information in return is an easy way to start building a relationship. Often, potential clients are trying to achieve something through their search and that’s how they’ve ended up on your webpage.
By providing templates as a lead magnet, customers are able to gain access to a quick solution and then explore your product in more depth as your team begins targeted outreach. Templates are a great resource for your marketing team to create as well because they don’t require constant refreshing.
Templates can also be used for most industries since they are easy to create in any form. For example, your business can offer email, design, social media, or spreadsheet templates. This type of content targets qualified prospects by tapping into their needs and providing a quick solution.
While templates don’t necessarily demonstrate how your product works, they are able to provide market insight. Tailoring these templates to things such as “Cold Outreach” or “Instagram Posts” can help your prospect see the understanding you have of the industry.
Email inboxes are cluttered with promotional emails and irrelevant content, so it is important to find ways to reach your prospect with valuable information. Email courses are a great way to allow potential clients to opt-in to a sequence providing insight into industry topics.
This helps establish a relationship between your company and the customer, and they are actively engaging with your content by reading the course. Also, it can help promote the ways your product integrates with the topics covered in the emails.
An email course provides multiple touchpoints to continue nurturing the lead and qualifying their needs. While some prospects may download an eBook but never get around to reading it, email courses provide a consistent stream of digestible content.
This helps your company stay at the forefront of prospect’s mind while they are searching for solutions to their needs. By sharing educational content, the customer will feel like your business has added value and they may be more inclined to move forward in the sales process.
Using Lead Magnets to Demonstrate Product Solutions
Lead magnets are resources that your marketing team is investing time and money into creating, which means you want it to serve a strong purpose. Rather than passively capturing contact information, a lead magnet should do more than just expand your email campaign lists.
Using these tools to their full potential means finding ways for them to demonstrate how your product provides solutions. Potential clients want to see the value your business can share, and a lead magnet is a great first step.
By relating the magnet to your service, your business should be able to qualify the incoming leads and ensure they are getting to the right salespeople. High-tech service providers need to demonstrate the value of their product, whether its data analytics or AI software. By using a lead magnet to begin showcasing the product’s features, potential clients will start to understand the solution.
While it may seem like the easiest way to do this is using a free trial as a lead magnet, other formats can provide the same kind of experience. Webinars, email courses, and white papers help establish businesses as key players within their industries while building trust with clients.
The important thing is to make sure lead magnets are providing educational information, not just serving as an advertisement for the tools your business offers. White papers can lean into your product’s ability while providing data-backed research on market trends. Webinars and email courses can cover industry-specific topics and demonstrate the solutions offered by your product.
This content should be specific to the audience you are trying to engage. Lead magnets should be tailored to the interests of your potential clients and refreshed as needed to stay relevant within the industry. By demonstrating how a product works and the features it has, targeted prospects should feel more confident in allowing your business to provide the solution.
To get started with engaging prospects with these lead magnet examples, check out Leadboxer’s free trial.
Want to stimulate interest in your brand without paying for ads? Content marketing is the answer. This type of marketing involves making videos, blogs, and social media posts that solve problems for your ideal customers, thus building loyalty to your brand and encouraging them to buy from you.
This strategy is essential for staying ahead of competitors. A 2021 report from HubSpot found that 70% of over 1,500 marketers surveyed are actively investing in content marketing. The same study noted that 40% of marketers consider content marketing vital to their overall strategy.
Creating and implementing a content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be time-consuming. The following techniques will set you up for success.
Great content marketing happens when everybody in a company collaborates. To do this, you’ll need to get the leaders of various teams and departments behind you.
Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions explains, “You need executive backing to fund and source a content strategy. You also need the support to ensure there is enough commitment to see a content marketing strategy through.”
To get leaders of your company on your side, position content marketing as a way to help their departments reach their goals.
Understand Your Audience
Before creating content, you need to think carefully about your ideal customers and anticipate what videos, blogs, or resources they want. Consider these questions:
Who is the ideal person reading your content?
What information do people want that isn’t readily available?
What pain points are your customers feeling?
How does your target audience make buying decisions?
By creating content that anticipates and answers your ideal customer’s questions and pain points, you can simplify their decision to buy from you.
Invest in Branding
Consider hiring a reputable agency to develop your brand’s look. The visuals and messaging used to represent your company impact your bottom line. A 2019 Reboot study of 2,500 consumers found that the right color can increase brand recognition by 80%. Furthermore, a 2019 Lucidpress survey of 400 organizations found that a consistent presentation of brand imagery, messaging, and values across channels can increase revenue by 33%.
Publish Guest Blog Posts
Curating blog posts from thought leaders in your industry is a win-win for all involved. It creates new content for your website with less lift from your marketing team and gives contributing writers a platform for sharing their ideas.
Guest blog posts also encourage the creation of backlinks, or links connecting one website to another. This happens when the contributing writer shares the article on their personal site. Backlinks signal to search engines that your content is valuable, which in turn boosts your site’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Here are some tips for finding and recruiting credible guest bloggers:
Visit other blogs in your industry and see who is writing for them
To grow your audience quickly, reach out to in-demand writers with large audiences and offer to pay them
Mention the benefits of writing for you, such as the number of monthly visitors to your site and the exposure writers will receive
Create Evergreen Content
While new content is helpful for keeping social media and email audiences engaged, there’s no need to churn it out all the time. Instead, invest energy in creating evergreen content, or resources that are always relevant. Examples include:
Frequently asked questions
How-to guides
Tutorials
Encyclopedia pages
Troubleshooting articles
Over time, these pieces of content will rise to the top of SERPs and draw new prospects into your audience.
Repurpose Content
Another way to save your marketing team time is to reconfigure content for different channels. For example, transform an interview between a member of the marketing team and one of your executives into a podcast episode, blog post, infographic, and series of social media posts.
This gets more mileage out of the original piece of content and can help you reach audiences on various platforms.
Organize Content on Pillar Pages
A pillar page is a high-level article that provides prospective customers with an overview on a topic. The page includes links leading to blog posts or pages that cover subtopics in more depth.
Pillar pages help keep your site organized. They’re also another effective way to reuse existing content.
Include Videos and Graphics
Visuals help break up long blog posts, appeal to visual learners, and can increase site traffic and the amount of time visitors spend there. A 2020 survey conducted by Wyzowl found that 86% of marketers say video has increased traffic to their website. The same survey noted that 83% of marketers credit video with helping increase the average time visitors spend on a page. Similarly, engaging graphics can also significantly boost your website’s appeal and traffic. If hiring a professional graphics designer is beyond your reach, you can use Picsart’s templates and craft stunning visuals for your content.
Measure Your Results
Analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing helps determine what types of content lead to the most sales and what parts of your strategy need improvement. To measure your results, use a tool like Google Analytics or LeadBoxer to study your site’s data.
LeadBoxer tracks what your leads do on your website or when you email them. You can see what pages they visit, how much time they spend there, and what resources they download.
By comparing customer journeys, you can identify common pathways or pieces of content that lead to sales. You then know which content types are most effective and worth replicating. You can also determine which pages to keep updating and sharing on social media.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing is vital for attracting, nurturing, and retaining customers. By anticipating and answering questions with your content, you establish your brand as a thought leader with unparalleled customer service.
Techniques like publishing guest blog posts, creating evergreen content, organizing content into pillar posts, and repurposing content across channels help your marketing team reach the most people with the least amount of lift.
A tool like LeadBoxer helps you analyze your strategy. With LeadBoxer, you can see what pages or downloadable resources are driving the most sales. Get started today with a free trial.
Marketing strategies are constantly evolving to keep up with the fast-paced digital world. Now, more than ever before, customers are able to see a comprehensive list of solutions in a matter of seconds.
As technology continues to get smarter, potential buyers are becoming even more accustomed to personalized product searches. In order to stay relevant, businesses must remain on top of the trends to make sure the internet is working to their advantage.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a new term to those familiar with digital marketing practices. However, SEO has become a major buzzword as these campaigns continue to rise to the forefront of marketing plans. With this increase in popularity, successful digital communications rely on an accurate understanding of SEO and best practices for campaigns.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your digital resources to increase visibility and engagement through web traffic. The goal of SEO campaigns should be twofold: to grow the volume of visitors and to improve the quality of their online experience.
This works when your content is able to show search engines that it is the best answer for the topic. While all search engines are powered by different algorithms, Google has a market share of about 92%. Focusing your optimization efforts around this platform is the best place to start.
Spending money and allocating resources for marketing strategies is an investment for future growth. You want to make sure your return-on-investment (ROI) is as high as possible. By using SEO, you should start to see an uptick in web traffic from qualified leads as your site reaches your target audience.
Successful SEO campaigns are based on thoughtful and targeted keyword research, link building, and web analysis. An in depth understanding and correct implementation of fundamental SEO principles will significantly boost your ROI.
The first step to successfully implementing an SEO campaign is understanding who your target audience is. A target audience is a real group of people that could be interested in the products or services offered by your company.
Your SEO campaign should work hard to direct as many potential buyers to your site as possible. This kind of brand exposure will help increase your sales conversion rates and build out your sales pipelines with new leads.
By understanding the ideal base for your audience, you will be able to map out your SEO strategy. This will help guide your keyword search as you narrow down the most likely used terms for optimization. Tailor your online content toward this specific group of visitors to help improve your overall customer experience.
There are a few ways to determine your target prospects. Start by understanding your current client demographics. Open communication between marketing and sales teams will allow salespeople to share profiles of their customers.
Identify the questions being asked by potential buyers. Which problems does your current customer base have that are solved by your products? If you can pinpoint the topics of discussion, your content can reach similar groups facing these issues.
An organic keyword attracts free traffic through SEO, whereas pay-per-click (PPC) words are bid on through paid campaigns.
On average, there are 3.5 billion Google searches happening each day. Organic keywords can help drive traffic from those searches to your website. Using words in your content that people are actively searching for is the best place to start gaining organic traffic.
Organization is also key. Avoid dumping words onto one page, and make sure to use them throughout your site. Unique content that offers genuine information is the best way to utilize these organic keywords.
Data-driven marketing means using collected data as the main component when creating your SEO campaigns. This tactic allows your research to guide the build-out of marketing strategies for effective implementation.
Use data analysis tools to better understand the ways traffic interacts with your content. By analyzing your data, you will gain a better understanding of visitor behavior and drive more organic traffic to your site.
Developing and Implementing a Successful SEO Campaign
Now that you have the basics down, executing your SEO strategy should be easy. Try the following steps to get started.
1. Evaluate Your Current Site and Its Content
Are you using a modern website builder? If your site’s platform is up-to-date, optimization will be a much easier undertaking. SEO will not work outside of a user-friendly environment.
Audit your current SEO plan. Maybe some of your pages already have a good foundation. Don’t throw out anything that is already working.
Make sure to pinpoint the areas that need change. Focus on evaluating your current URLs and page structures.
2. Topic & Keyword Research
Before you can develop a list of keywords, you will need to create a set of topics to explore. A topic is a set of related search terms broader than your keyword list. Gather all relevant details when building out these sets.
You will want to dive deep into the research to have comprehensive knowledge of your chosen topics. Figure out the total search volume for these words, analyze the type of existing content appearing, and gauge competition levels.
3. Create Quality Content
It’s a simple step, but it may be the most important one in creating your campaign. Content needs to be authentic and relevant to your audience.
Your site should be free of technical errors. Pages should include strong titles, which is a key element in SEO.
Try to produce evergreen content. If your blog is full of pieces that are relevant to the industry, chances are you will see more engagement. This can include ‘how-to’ articles, product reviews, and videos.
Establish partnerships and create strong relationships with social influencers. Your content should provide shareable information. Earn credibility by producing pieces to share your brand’s mission with your target audience.
Use backlinks to help build confidence in your brand. This helps signal to search engines that other sites approve of your content. Earning backlinks from highly respected sites should be a desired goal.
4. Implement On-Site Optimization
Once you have content ready to go, it is important to maintain your website for SEO-friendliness. Utilize keywords in your URL slugs. Optimize the alt-text for your digital media, and be sure to incorporate long-tail keywords.
Don’t forget about technical optimization as well. Server speed, source code, and IP addresses should be evaluated for the best user experience.
Making sure your content is mobile-friendly is extremely important. To help with this, use the smallest file sizes possible for graphic content.
Create meta titles and meta descriptions that look natural while featuring keywords. Optimize the layout for user experience and search engines. Focus on fixing any accessibility issues such as any 404 redirects from Google.
5. Combine Your Campaign With Other Marketing Resources
Use personalized blasts to drive qualified traffic to your site. Test content through email, and add successful elements to your site.
While social media isn’t a direct ranking factor, you can still use it to boost your overall brand awareness. Increase engagement through social shares, find link opportunities, and have positive interactions with potential web traffic.
Thought leadership allows your brand to establish itself as a leader in the industry. 47% of C-Suite executives said they shared contact information after reading thought leadership content.
When providing this type of content, make sure it fits within your SEO plan. If potential decision makers engage with your site, it’s important to make sure they are directed to the right place.
Integrations and SEO Campaigns
Once you have a plan to roll out your SEO campaign, use integrations for smooth implementation. Leadboxer connects with email marketing tools like MailChimp to help track data from audience engagement.
This software allows you to see who is visiting your site so you can learn what they do once they land on the page. Use this information to fine-tune your content and improve the customer experience.
By tracking engagement, Leadboxer helps demonstrate which parts of your SEO campaign are working and which areas could use improvement.
To see how your business can benefit from the LeadBoxer lead generation platform and its many app integrations, sign up for your free trial today!
Your business wants to see revenue flowing in. Understandably, it makes sense that the more inbound leads you land, the more paying customers you’ll get. You devote your time and resources to gain new leads.
Lead generation is popular as 53% of marketers say half or more of their budget goes to lead generation. While over half of companies engage in new lead generation, only 35% of B2B marketers have a lead nurturing strategy.
What about your old leads? In the rush to get your brand out there in front of new prospects, they can sometimes be forgotten.
For years, marketers and salespeople have relied on outbound sales to generate new leads. Cold calling and spam emails are common outbound methods of reaching out to prospective customers.
However, people don’t like to be pestered by businesses. Today’s best leads will reach out to you through inbound marketing and sales. Inbound leads are much more likely to convert.
What are inbound leads? They are prospective customers that respond to a piece of content as part of a business’s inbound strategy. Some examples include filling out a survey, downloading an eBook, or contacting a salesperson after reading an article.
Why should you use an inbound strategy? Why is it necessary to pay attention to nurturing your old leads instead of continually generating new ones? The section below highlights statistics that may inspire you to alter your lead generation strategy.
Stats on Recapturing Old Leads
Your business needs customers to make a profit. Constantly devoting resources to generating new leads is not the best strategy. Here are some reasons why:
Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. More than 35% of B2B marketers surveyed have established a lead nurturing strategy.
Inbound leads promise more for your business than outbound ones. To fully maximize the power of inbound leads, they need nurturing. Here are some reasons lead nurturing works:
68% of B2B companies will use landing pages to nurture new sales leads for future conversion.
The leads for 49% of businesses require “long cycle” nurturing with many influencers.
Those old leads you’ve forgotten are important. It is equally important to nurture them.
Maybe you have leads that have gone cold. How do you re-engage old inbound leads? Here are some effective strategies to try:
Continuously Offer Fresh Content
New leads are drawn to your company via interesting, valuable content. However, if the content doesn’t change, they will no longer engage with your brand and will go elsewhere.
To keep people coming back to your website or storefront, you need to continuously provide fresh, interesting content. This content can be website content, new product descriptions, blog posts, webinars, white papers, vlogs, etc.
Invest in Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective lead nurturing strategies out there. They can be sent with minimal effort and costs and they are received immediately.
However, email marketing is more than sending a massive e-blast every so often. Emails spared from the spam or trash bins are those that are interesting and personal. To have a solid email marketing strategy, you need to know your customers.
Categorizing your customers based on where they are on the buyer’s journey is the best way to get conversions. Researching who each audience is along the buyer’s journey will make your emails personal and eye-catching.
Use Paid Retargeting Ads on Social Media and Google
Customers are on social media and/or browsing the internet at least once a day. While social media marketing and SEO are great lead generation strategies, they may not be enough.
Paid Google ads and social media retargeting ads only show advertisements the customer would most likely be interested in. The customer won’t be overwhelmed by irrelevant products or services. This means your offerings will only be shown to those customers most likely to make a purchase.
Send Personalized Notes Through the Mail
In this day and age, it may seem odd to send notes to customers via snail mail. Because of the rarity, personalization, and thoughtfulness of mailed notes, they are effective in warming up cold leads.
The effectiveness and feasibility of mailing notes to leads also depends on your targeted audience and your customer base size. If your ideal customers are younger and your business has thousands of customers and prospects, email is a better option.
Ask For Customer Feedback Via Surveys
In most cases, an inbound lead grows cold because it’s either been neglected, or it’s been engaged in the wrong way. Asking the potential customer to provide feedback will empower them, which sparks engagement.
Asking a cold lead to provide suggestions for marketing efforts shows you care about the customer. Online surveys via email, text, or social media are quick and cost-efficient. They can also be viewed by the customer anytime, anywhere.
To improve the likelihood of survey completion, offer the customer a ‘thank you’ gift or discount.
LeadBoxer Integrations Can Boost Your Inbound Strategy
If your company hasn’t done inbound marketing or invested in lead nurturing, getting inbound leads can be a daunting task. However, you don’t have to go it alone. LeadBoxer is a sales and marketing platform that offers numerous features and integrations to help recapture and nurture leads.
With LeadBoxer, you’ll obtain valuable insights and analytics into your customers and their behavior. Learning who they are and what types of outreach they respond to will boost your marketing strategy and generate quality, loyal leads.
LeadBoxer works with a variety of marketing and sales tools you already use. The LeadBoxer platform identifies, enriches, and provides custom lead scoring so you know you’re targeting the right people. The insights provided also help you reach out to those most promising leads.
Some of the benefits of using LeadBoxer include:
Enjoying cutting-edge, big-data technology
The ability to identify, capture, enrich, score, segment your leads and customers
The ability to combine lead and customer activity and gain valuable insights into profiles and email/website behavior
Email Marketing Integration
You can’t recapture and nurture inbound leads without a strong email marketing strategy. LeadBoxer offers a variety of integrations for the email marketing programs you currently use. These include Hubspot, Marketo, Gmail, MailChimp, Outlook, Pipedrive, and Active Demand.
LeadBoxer provides thorough email tracking that allows you to import and export data. You can gain valuable insight into your audience and their behavior.
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MailChimp Integration
MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing programs. LeadBoxer can help you identify your audience and track their behavior on your website. This offers valuable information about what your leads do once they click through from the email to your website.
Once an inbound lead is identified, you can see their future visits to your site. By learning who visits and returns to your website and which pages they visit, you will be better equipped to nurture your leads effectively.
Through the integration of your MailChimp email marketing platform with LeadBoxer, you can:
Identify more users on your website
Learn what your audience does after they land on your website
Better understand your email marketing campaigns
Be notified when your audience is ready to make a purchase
Qualify leads based on profile data and behavior
Segment leads based on scoring algorithms
Data can be exported and synchronized to multiple programs
Data Analytics
Why are data and analytics important to your inbound marketing strategy and nurturing old leads? The short answer is that it allows you to foster relationships with leads. Your marketing activities are personalized based on each lead’s behavior and preferences.
All your customers and leads are unique individuals who respond to different messaging and strategies. When you send out generic email blasts or paid search ads, they will turn away many leads. Effective inbound marketers know that one size doesn’t fit all.
Inbound leads come to your website looking for something. They chose to do business with you over the competition. To keep them coming back, you need to nurture them.
Lead nurturing involves a relationship between your brand and each customer. When your leads feel like your business knows them and values them, they are likely to come back. Using analytics to track audiences and preferences means you can alter how you connect with each lead.
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The insight you gain from data analytics will help you market to each lead in a way that sparks their interest. Additionally, the relationship they build with your brand will encourage them to become loyal customers.
There are people out there who want your products and services. If you don’t invest in an inbound marketing strategy, you miss these qualified leads. You need to recapture old leads by nurturing them.
LeadBoxer can help you with nurturing inbound leads and take your inbound marketing strategy to the next level. Contact LeadBoxer today and start generating high-quality leads who will become loyal customers.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Business-to-business (B2B) sales involve companies selling products and services to other businesses. B2B companies either sell items to another company so they can make their own products or meet a specific need.
The Purpose of a Good B2B Lead Strategy
In B2B sales, you’re likely to deal with several decision-makers within one company. In fact, salespeople engaged in B2B sales will need to work with an average of seven decision-makers. These people include CEOs, sales representatives, board members, and those in the financial and legal departments.
Selling to a group of people is different than pitching to an individual as in business-to-consumer (B2C) sales. The need to successfully make a pitch to individuals with varying perspectives differentiates B2B lead strategy from that required for B2C sales.
Relationship building is essential to both B2B and B2C lead strategies but takes on increased importance in the B2B arena. Here are some elements of a successful business-to-business lead sales and marketing strategy:
Know Your Prospects
Researching those you’re selling your product or service to will improve your chance of a successful transaction. Keep in mind, not every business prospect is a good fit. If you know this beforehand, you’ll avoid wasting time and energy that could be spent on quality leads.
Focus on Building Relationships
Typically, the B2B sales and relationship-building processes take more time in comparison to B2C. In B2B, businesses lose 45-50% of their clients over five years, which is significant and must be addressed.
To avoid losing B2B prospects, building and maintaining long-term relationships through a strong lead nurturing strategy is encouraged. B2B sales bring in more revenue than B2C sales as you’re dealing with companies, not individual consumers. When a B2B client is lost, thousands, not hundreds of dollars can disappear.
Build an Effective Website
Most B2B leads will do thorough research before making a purchasing decision. They will examine your website and social media profiles. Make sure these look professional, and that your website is easy to navigate and clearly states your company mission, background, and includes testimonials from satisfied clients.
Establish a Social Media Presence
Having a powerful social media presence is beneficial in many ways. It can offer your sales and marketing departments the following advantages:
Insight into your competitors and prospects
An avenue to establish credibility
A means for building trust with leads and buyers
Opportunities to reach out to prospects and buyers
According to Marketing Sherpa, 64% of respondents believe email marketing delivers the best return on investment. Email marketing is effective in cultivating relationships with business prospects and in nurturing them through the sales funnel.
As mentioned previously, relationships are a crucial element in B2B sales. Everything in your B2B strategy should revolve around building long-term relationships with business prospects. A strong business-to-business leads strategy will involve both the sales and marketing teams.
Your organization will appear more credible and trustworthy when the marketing and sales teams work together. Companies with a B2B strategy that features sales and marketing alignment are more successful in nurturing prospects into buyers.
Throughout the marketing and sales processes, both departments work together to provide a cohesive, smooth experience for prospects. Marketing produces valuable content at each stage of the funnel while sales provides personal and prompt lead follow-up. Both sales and marketing must do all they can to serve, nurture, and build relationships with each lead.
Market Alignment Goals
Your marketing message plays a big role in the success of your company’s B2B sales. Market alignment is defined as “the process of creating a marketing message that is appropriately aligned, or in sync, with the target audience the message is intended to persuade.” The goal of your market alignment is to deliver the right message at the right time to the right prospects.
This is achieved when you focus on the buyer’s needs rather than on emphasizing how good your company, products, and services are. Knowing your prospects, their pain points, and how your services and products can help, builds trust and a rapport. The early relationship-building formed by market alignment messaging improves the chances of a sale.
To fully understand which prospects your marketing department should be targeting, regular collaboration with the sales team is required. When marketing and sales are properly aligned, customer-centric messaging is incorporated into each sales funnel stage. Marketing can introduce market alignment messaging into content and sales can include it in lead follow-up and nurturing initiatives.
When sales and marketing aren’t on the same page problems ensue. Beyond the miscommunication and contradictory messaging issues that are bound to occur, misalignment can negatively affect the buyer’s journey. This lack of cohesiveness makes it more difficult to convert B2B leads into paying customers.
Issue #1: Poor Marketing Qualified Leads
A common marketing and sales misalignment issue is the failure to produce marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales. As a result, the sales team is stuck with poor prospects that do not respond to lead nurturing efforts. In turn, these leads fail to convert into paying customers.
Issue #2: Lack of Lead Follow-Up and Nurturing
Whether prospects are qualified or not, marketers can get frustrated at sales for not following up and nurturing the leads they are given. Once the marketing department hands off prospects to sales, its nurturing endeavors may end.
Issue #3: Poor Marketing to Sales Handoff
When the sales and marketing teams use different lead qualification requirements, the prospect handoff can cause problems. When prospective buyers are handed off from marketing to sales, mixed messaging can occur. Leads are quick to notice the inconsistency and may be hesitant to move forward along the sales funnel.
Issue #4: Lack of ROI Attributed to Marketing
In some cases, marketers don’t know how their lead generation impacts the company’s return on investment (ROI). This can alienate the marketing team and lower the incentive and motivation for your marketers to aggressively seek the new leads your company needs.
Strategies for Meeting Your Marketing Goals
Common B2B marketing goals include producing qualified leads for your sales team, creating valuable, targeted content, and building relationships with buyers. Successfully completing these tasks plays an essential role in bringing awareness to your brand, products, and services. These goals are more attainable when they are S.M.A.R.T goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely).
Establish MQLs Criteria: Work with your sales team to create uniform marketing qualified leads criteria. Only prospects that meet all of these established conditions should be referred to sales for nurturing.
Track Marketing ROI Contribution: Inform your marketers of how their lead generation efforts have directly contributed to the company’s ROI.
Involve Marketers in the Sales Process: Create opportunities for your marketers to sit in on sales calls and learn the overall selling process.
Utilize Marketing Automation Tools: Synchronize your company’s email and scheduling software between sales and marketing. Using the same program, a singular marketing message can be carried through in follow-ups by the sales team.
Create Unique Content for Each Step of the Buyer’s Journey: Marketers can create targeted content using buyer data, marketing goals, buyer personas, and lead generation strategies. The diversity of content is geared toward prospects in each stage of the sales funnel.
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Marketing Content
The foundation of your content marketing strategy should be centered around your buyers’ pain points and your company’s unique selling proposition. B2B leads will be more trusting of a company that demonstrates how it is focused on them and the ways it can help them to succeed. Referencing your company’s unique value proposition will make you stand out from your competitors.
Successful marketers build long-term relationships with B2B prospects, generate qualified leads, and help convert those leads into paying buyers. Throughout the buyer’s journey, there are opportunities to meet these marketing goals through content. Your content needs to build prospect trust, establish and reinforce brand authority, and resolve lead queries and concerns.
Your marketing content should provide valuable information to the right prospects, at the right time. The alignment of your marketing message should be adopted by your sales team when they interact with leads. Knowledge of the sales process will help form marketing content for each stage of the sales funnel.
Here are things to keep in mind when building relationships with B2B leads through content marketing:
Create a content library to guide prospects through the buyer journey
Share the content library with your sales department
Your content is for informing and educating, not selling
Keep the buyer at the center of your messaging
Use a variety of content pieces
To attract buyers, there must be sales and marketing alignment. Your market alignment messaging needs to be buyer-centered. There are many opportunities throughout the sales funnel to effectively use content marketing to reach prospects along the buyer’s journey.
Without a cohesive B2B lead strategy and sales and marketing alignment, you risk losing prospects. When your messaging is off, you may get unqualified leads.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Source
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Imagine knowing your leads’ level of engagement with your brand, the likelihood that they’ll buy your product, and even the best strategies for communicating with them. With that kind of information, you could increase the effectiveness of your prospecting and win more deals. Lead intelligence is what makes it possible.
But what is lead intelligence, and how do you start using it in your business? This guide covers the basics, including the most useful types of lead intelligence and the best tools available today. Once you learn how to leverage lead intelligence, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to make sales without it.
Lead intelligence is a form of data that significantly elevates your understanding of your prospects. So you can better address their pain points, communicate effectively with them, and win their business. When it comes to B2B sales, lead intelligence is invaluable.
Given how effective lead intelligence is for prospecting, chances are that if your competitor isn’t already taking advantage of this sales strategy, they will be soon. All the more reason why you should start incorporating this form of data into your company’s sales process today.
There are several different types of lead intelligence. Which ones you should focus on depends on the needs of your business.
Types of Lead Intelligence
Knowing your lead’s name, email address, and phone number is just the beginning of lead intelligence. The following data points tell you just how interested prospects are in your product, what their pain points are, and how you can better connect with them.
Site visitors
Who’s visiting your website that isn’t already on your radar? Some lead intelligence software can unveil a visitor’s name, contact information, and company before they ever fill out a form.
If you know your lead’s name and company but don’t know how to reach them, there are tools available that can dig up and verify their email address or phone number for you.
A Chrome extension such as this one from Lusha or a contact database like ZoomInfo both make it simple to find up-to-date info for all of your prospects.
Company details
If a company has recently received a big investment or has launched a new project, you should know about it. This information can give you insight into whether or not now is the right time to reach out with your offer. Updates about new hires or job changes also let you know if you’re contacting the right person.
Demographics
Study your company’s ideal customer profile, then make sure your lead intelligence software is gathering any details you need about a prospect’s age, job role, and geographic location. Knowing that a prospect has the essential characteristics of your ideal customer ensures that you spend time reaching out to the best leads.
Social media profiles
There are more ways than ever to connect with prospects. Knowing their LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle, or other social media profiles gives you more opportunities to engage with prospects outside their inbox and earn their trust. It also helps you come up with talking points based on the content they’ve recently posted.
Pages visited
Knowing the number of pages a prospect visited on your site can help you gauge their level of interest in your product. Lead intelligence can take it one step further and show you exactly which pages they’ve visited. And how long they spent on that page, shedding light on what problems they need help solving.
Emails opened
Ideally, you also want lead intelligence software that can integrate with your email marketing platform. To show you which emails a prospect opened, how long they spent reading the email, and if they clicked through on any links.
Site revisits
Does a prospect often return to your site? This can signal a greater level of interest in your product. Some lead intelligence software will alert you at the moment of a site revisit. So that you can reach out while your at the top of a prospect’s mind.
Personality characteristics
Knowing if a prospect prefers to communicate by email or phone is sometimes the difference between making or losing a sale. Some lead intelligence software can also clue you into their negotiation style, mannerisms, and questions that are most likely to prompt a desirable response.
Lead Score
Now that you have all this lead intelligence, how do you make sense of it quickly enough to take action? A lead score takes all the data you’ve gathered on a prospect and turns it into a number. This number indicates the likelihood that they’ll buy. There are formulas out there for calculating this yourself, but it can be a tedious process. Luckily, some lead intelligence software will make this calculation for you.
The Best Lead Intelligence Software
There are several different types of lead intelligence tools available that can find and help you interpret the best data on your prospects.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a solid all-in-one lead intelligence option that integrates with your CRM and marketing tools of choice. Not only does it help you identify and track website visitors and email behavior, but it also assigns them a leadscore based on their engagement with your brand across multiple channels and mediums. With LeadBoxer, not only do you know what kind of content prospects are most interested in, but you immediately know which prospects are most worth pursuing.
CRM heavyweight HubSpot offers sales tools that anyone can start using for free. The paid version of the platform comes equipped with features that identify prospective companies and their level of engagement. It can also track page views, pages visited, and the number of visitors from each company. However, HubSpot Sales doesn’t identify individual or anonymous visitors to the degree that LeadBoxer does.
In addition to identifying and tracking anonymous website visitors, VisitorTrack offers intent data about a business. Intent data indicates that a prospect has been actively researching topics relevant to your business at other locations around the web. For instance, if you sell a marketing automation solution and a visitor to your site has been researching similar tools or topics on other websites, VisitorTrack will let you know.
Like HubSpot Sales, Albacross identifies companies that are visiting your website and shows you how engaged they are. It also goes into stats like the company’s revenue, the number of employees, exactly which pages they visited, and how long they spent on the site.
Albacross doesn’t identify individual visitors, but it does offer a list of GDPR compliant email addresses for decision-makers at the companies visiting your site. With this tool, you can have a better idea of whether or not the person you’re contacting has the authority to make a purchase.
Buzz from LeadSift tracks what’s going on at a prospective company, such as if they found new sources of funding or launched a new product, eliminating the need to do that research yourself. In addition to curating all this news for you, Buzz offers guidance about what to do with that information, taking the guesswork out of conversation starters or talking points.
Crystal sets itself apart from other tools in this list by focusing on intelligence about a lead’s personality. This is especially useful for when you’re ready to contact a lead, deliver a proposal, or negotiate a contract. Few other tools can offer the same level of insight about a lead’s personality that Crystal can, but it doesn’t track their level of engagement with your brand or tell you how likely they are to buy.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator leverages a platform that both you and your prospects are already using. Sales Navigator comes with advanced search functions that make it easier than ever to find leads that match your ideal customer profile and can even recommend leads that you wouldn’t have thought of.
Lusha is one of the highest-ranked lead intelligence tools on G2. Its Chrome extension provides B2B contact enrichment based on profiles from places like LinkedIn or Twitter, making it easy to build up your list of prospects while you browse.
Use Lead Intelligence to Find and Engage With Qualified Prospects
If you’ve ever felt like you’re engaging with too many prospects and have not enough to show for your efforts, it’s time to integrate lead intelligence into your sales process. With lead intelligence, you’ll know exactly which prospects you should focus your attention on, plus which talking points you should use with them and how to engage with them in a way that earns their trust.
When it comes to choosing a lead intelligence tool, you can’t go wrong with an option that gathers data about anonymous visitors from a variety of sites and platforms, then interprets it into an actionable lead score. That way, you’ll spend more time on prospects who intend to buy and win more deals.
Email tracking has become a popular feature on a variety of platforms, and for very good reasons. Tracking B2B emails can help sales reps stay close to their most interested leads, automate follow-up messages, and close more deals faster. But of the hundreds of email tracking apps out there, how do you know which one is best for you?
We’ve compiled this list of 25+ email tracking apps and multi-functional tools with email tracking abilities, many of which work with Gmail, Outlook, and your CRM of choice. These include:
By the end, you should know which is the best email tracking app for your team’s needs and be well on your way to speeding up your sales cycle and help you to reduce cost per lead.
Email Tracking Apps with Web tracking combined
Email tracking alone will tell you a lot about the recipients behaviour in their mail client. But what about their behaviour across your company’s website, your lead capture pages, social media, and newsletter emails? There are tools or platforms that combine all this, and these will give you the best results:
1. LeadBoxer
Description: LeadBoxer is a lead & customer data platform that allows you to track the behaviour of your complete online audience: see who visits your website, reads your emails, and what company they work for, etc. It also identifies anonymous website visitors, and gives leads a score to gauge how engaged they are with your company.
Best Used For: Sales reps who want to spend time focusing on their most promising leads to help them make more sales.
Compatible Platforms: LeadBoxer works with Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: The complete LeadBoxer Platform starts at $195 per month and includes 5 seats.
UPDATE: LeadBoxer now also offers a standalone version of their Outlook plugin. Get a 30 day free trial straight from the Microsoft App Source:
Description:Freshsales is a CRM that shows users exactly what actions a lead has taken across platforms, then uses that information to create a lead score. Freshsales has a strong focus on email tracking and leverages the data to prioritize leads and give sales reps relevant talking points to guide their next call or meeting.
Best Used For: Companies that are looking for a powerful but compact CRM with email tracking apps capabilities built-in.
Compatible Platforms: Freshsales can sync with your email client of choice so that all of your emails are synced within the CRM and your inbox.
Pricing: Freshsales starts at $12 per user per month for small teams.
Email Tracking Extensions for Gmail
If you’re looking for a simple and straightforward tool that works with your Gmail to identify what emails have been opened, these are the email tracking apps for you.
3. Boomerang
Description:Boomerang is an email tracking app that can also schedule messages to be sent at a later time. It also returns messages to your inbox at a later date that you set. This allows you to get back to an email when you’re ready for it and clean up your inbox in the process.
Best Used For: Whether you’re in sales or HR, everyone will love Boomerang’s follow-up reminders to help them stay in touch with people who haven’t yet replied to their emails, this makes sales follow-up process much easier.
Compatible Platforms: Boomerang works with Gmail/G Suite.
Pricing: Track up to ten emails per month for free. Plans with unlimited tracking but limited additional features start at $5 per month. Unlock all of Boomerang’s features for $50 per month.
Description:Gmelius installs via an extension and tracks email activity such as opens and clicks. Gmelius also includes functionality for scheduling emails, calendar scheduling, creating to-do lists, saving email templates, and more.
Best Used For: Teams who want to work together without leaving their inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: Gmelius works with Gmail only. It can be used with Chrome, Opera, and Safari internet browsers.
Pricing: Gmelius’ email tracking can be used for free. Other features are limited in the free plan. Paid plans range from $9 per user per month to $49 per user per month.
5. Mailtrack
Description:Mailtrack adds a series of checkmarks next to an email in your inbox. When someone has opened your email, the checkmark next to the corresponding email will turn green. This makes it easy to look through your inbox and see who has opened your emails at a glance. A popup notification also lets you know when your email has been opened.
Best Used For: Users who want to track emails at a glance with the help of visuals.
Compatible Platforms: Mailtrack works with Gmail via a browser extension for Chrome.
Pricing: The app is free to use for an unlimited number of emails. However, an email signature that says “Sent with Mailtrack” will be added to all of your emails. Paid plans range from $5 per month to $10 per month.
6. MailTracker
Description:Mailtracker is another simple app that provides email tracking only. The tool provides information on when your email is opened, how many times, and where the email was opened. The app is part of Hunter.io’s offering of products (Hunter.io is a popular tool for finding a person’s email address).
Best Used For: Users who want a lightweight and unobtrusive email tracking tool in their Gmail inbox.
Compatible Platforms: Mailtracker works with Gmail only and installs via a Google Chrome extension. Other internet browsers are not supported.
Pricing: Mailtracker is free to use.
7. Mixmax
Description:Mixmax offers email tracking, saved templates, calendar scheduling, in-email polls, and automated email follow-ups. A notification will appear in your inbox or Slack (if you use it) when someone has opened your email.
Best Used For:Teams who work in Slack and want to receive notifications without jumping between platforms and email tracking apps.
Compatible Platforms: Mixmax email tracking only works with Gmail. The tool integrates with Salesforce, Slack, and a few other platforms.
Pricing: Mixmax allows you to track 100 emails per month for free. However, an email signature will be added to any email you send. Paid plans, which include premium features and remove the email signature, range from $9 per user per month to $49 per user per month.
Description:Vocus includes features for email tracking, email reminders, email scheduling, and automated email follow-ups. It sets itself apart from competitors by specifying who engaged with an email when there are multiple recipients. It can also help you find the contact details of someone within a target organization.
Best Used For: Teams who need help finding a lead’s contact info without having to leave their Gmail inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: The tool works with Gmail only and installs via a Chrome extension.
Pricing: Vocus is available only via a paid plan. However, a 30-day free trial is available to demo the tool. Paid plans range from $5 per month to $20 per month.
Description:MailTag.io will let you know exactly when recipients open your emails with real-time desktop alerts. It also tracks the performance of your open rates, click rates, and more. MailTag allows you to schedule follow-up sequences or schedule personalized messages to send later.
Best Used For: Teams who want a lightweight email tracking tool with some automation capabilities.
Compatible Platforms: MailTag works with Gmail only.
Pricing: You can try MailTag for free, but paid plans start at $10 per user per month.
10. Checker Plus for Gmail
Description:Checker Plus for Gmail is simply a Google Chrome extension that enables you to track emails. Information such as who and when someone has opened your email is displayed as a popup notification. Features like email scheduling and email reminders are not available.
Best Used For: Users who want to add some functionality to their Gmail inbox without committing to a bloated or expensive app.
Compatible Platforms: The extension only works with Gmail.
Pricing: This extension is free to use.
Sales CRMs with Email Tracking Capabilities
If you’re in the market for a fully-fledged CRM, consider getting one that includes email tracking as a feature.
11. Hubspot Sales
Description:Hubspot Sales is a sales CRM offered by Hubspot. The email tracking extension shows who has opened your emails and who hasn’t. A notification will also popup when the recipient has opened your email.
Best Used For: Teams who need an all-in-one sales CRM that can also track email opens.
Compatible Platforms: With Hubspot Sales, you can track emails straight from your Gmail or Outlook inbox. Setup with Gmail will require you to allow Hubspot to integrate with your inbox. This is done by installing an extension to Google Chrome.
Pricing: Hubspot Sales is free to track up to 200 email opens. Paid plans start at $50 per month for one user.
12. Accelo
Description:Accelo is one part sales CRM and one part team task manager. It offers the ability to schedule and track emails for your leads, then assign related tasks and projects to team members based upon their future workloads.
Best Used For: With its team inbox, Accelo is a solid choice for sales teams that work closely together to make more deals.
Compatible Platforms: Accelo integrates with G Suite, Office 365, Salesforce, and several other leading platforms.
Pricing: Accelo for sales starts at $39 per user per month.
13. PhoneBurner
Description:PhoneBurner is a power dialer that helps streamline the post-call workflow so that sales reps can spend more time on the phone and less on manual data entry or email follow-ups. Based on the call result, PhoneBurner can suggest personalized emails to send with one click.
Best Used For: Phone-focused sales reps that are looking for a tool that brings their calls and emails closer together.
Compatible Platforms: PhoneBurner is a CRM that can work with Gmail, Outlook, and a few other email servers.
Pricing: Unlimited dialing with PhoneBurner starts at $149 per user per month.
14. Streak
Description:Streak is a CRM that works in tandem with your Gmail inbox. The tool includes email tracking, scheduling emails, and email reminders. Team members can share emails, notes, and call logs to help tackle leads together.
Best Used For: Teams who want a lightweight CRM that meshes beautifully with their Gmail inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: Streak is a Chrome extension for Gmail only.
Pricing: Streak is free for personal use but has limited features. Paid plans start at $49 per user per month.
Sales Communication Automation Platforms with Email Tracking Capabilities
Perhaps the best way to handle your sales pipeline efficiently is with a platform that can automate much of your sales communication – like sales prospecting tools. Email tracking is an essential part of knowing when to trigger certain actions, such as a follow-up call.
Description:SalesHandy includes functionality for tracking emails, saving templates, scheduling emails, and creating automated email follow-ups. It’s free to use to track an unlimited number of emails. However, other features are not available in the free plan.
Best Used For: Users who are looking for a simple, free tool to track their emails without any frills.
Compatible Platforms: SalesHandy works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: Paid plans range from $7 per user per month to $40 per user month.
Description:Autoklose draws from a huge database of B2B leads to help prospectors connect with the right person every time. Schedule email sequences, track opens and clicks, and fine-tune the process at any time to continually boost engagement with leads. Reps can also choose to check in on leads who have ignored emails and try to re-engage with them.
Best Used For: Autoklose works well with any size for any sized companies, but solopreneurs may especially like its functionality for the price.
Compatible Platforms: Autoklose supports Gmail/G Suite and Outlook/Office 365.
Pricing: Autoklose starts at $50 per user per month.
17. Yesware
Description: On top of email tracking, Yesware includes email scheduling, saved templates, calendar scheduling, and automated follow-ups. It syncs with Salesforce to make sure that all of your data is saved across platforms.
Best Used For: Sales reps who want email automation assistance that lives right in their inbox.
Compatible Platforms: Yesware works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: The tool is only available via a paid plan. However, a free trial is available. Paid plans range from $12 per user per month to $55 per user per month.
Description:SalesLoft specializes in automating email cadences that nurture leads. Use email tracking to see how individual leads are engaging with the process, then use at-a-glance email analytics to find ways to improve the open and click rates of your automated messages. The email tracking feature also helps informs sales reps about the best time to reach out by phone.
Best Used For: Salespeople who want to automate their emails, improve their messaging, and make their phone and digital outreach work better together.
Compatible Platforms: SalesLoft works with Gmail, Outlook, or your CRM.
Pricing: Contact SalesLoft to learn about current pricing.
Description: Outreach is the platform for automating sales touchpoints and personalizing emails at scale so sales reps have more time to book meetings and close deals. Email tracking allows you to categorize and prioritize prospects according to who opened and responded to a message, giving you a better understanding of the sales cycle.
Best Used For: Sales teams that want to quickly know who is most engaged with their emails so they can schedule more meetings with the right prospects.
Compatible Platforms: Outreach works with Gmail, Outlook, or your CRM.
Pricing: Contact Outreach to learn about current pricing.
Description:Cirrus Insights lets sales reps schedule drip campaigns, track email and attachment opens, set follow-up reminders, and schedule more meetings with the most engaged and promising leads. With Cirrus Insights, you can even update or take back attachments after you’ve sent them, which means no more embarrassing follow-up emails with the correct document.
Best Used For: Salesforce clients that are looking for a simple but highly useful add-on to their Gmail or Outlook inbox.
Compatible Platforms: Cirrus Insights works with both Gmail and Outlook. It also integrates with Salesforce and a few other CRMs so you don’t have to jump between platforms.
Pricing: Cirrus Insights starts at $27 per user per month for both Gmail and Outlook.
Description:Reply automates email outreach so that sales reps can focus on calls, meetings, and closing. It uses AI to track emails, then sorts leads by their level of interest. The program can even suggest email copy that is most likely to convert. There are optional plugins that make it easy to find contact information for new leads.
Best Used For: Single-person businesses might forgo a bulky CRM and instead rely on Reply as their main prospecting platform.
Compatible Platforms: Reply can be installed for Gmail and Outlook/Exchange accounts.
Pricing: Reply starts at $70 per month for an individual user and $200 per month for a team of three users.
22. InsideSales.com Predictive Playbooks
Description:InsideSales.com Predictive Playbooks uses AI to create outreach cadences based on the previous behaviors of individual leads. Playbooks can suggest better email addresses or phone numbers for contacting leads than what sales reps already have on file. Email tracking allows reps to always be connected to their leads and follow-up at the right time.
Best Used For: Sales reps that want to let AI do all the heavy lifting and drastically increase the efficiency of their outreach.
Compatible Platforms: Predictive Playbooks can integrate with your email client and CRM of choice.
Pricing: Get in touch with InsideSales.com to learn about the pricing of Predictive Playbooks.
Description: PersistIQ has a lot of the features you’ve come to expect from a sales engagement tool, including email templates, multiple touchpoint scheduling, and open and click tracking. What sets PersistIQ apart is its clean, intuitive design that teams can use intuitively and adopt immediately.
Best Used For: Sales teams that are looking to augment their existing CRM or Gmail inboxes with personalized sales emails at scale.
Compatible Platforms: PersistIQ integrates with many CRMs. It also has a plugin so you can access its templates within Gmail, then log emails to Salesforce.
Pricing: PersistIQ starts at $40 per user per month.
Description:SmartCloud Connect is a tool that appears as a sidebar within your Gmail or Outlook account. The sidebar can pull data about a lead from Salesforce, show email open and click tracking, and supply message templates from Salesforce. With SmartCloud, it’s easy to log emails to Salesforce and set reminders that keep you on task.
Best Used For: Sales teams that want a tool that can maximize productivity within their inbox and reduce the amount of time they spend switching over to Salesforce.
Compatible Platforms: SmartCloud integrates with Outlook, Gmail, and Salesforce to keep everything synced across platforms.
Pricing: SmartCloud starts at $15 per user per month.
Email Tracking Apps with Unique Features and Use Cases
Looking for something with specific functionality? These email tracking apps work well for internal communications,
Description:Bananatag is an email design and tracking app specifically for internal communications. With Bananatag, you can create beautiful company memos and newsletters within your email client, get feedback from employees, and measure open and click rates.
Best Used For: Managers who want to make sure that employees are opening and engaging with important company messages.
Compatible Platforms: Bananatag works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: Get in touch with Bananatag to learn more about their custom pricing.
26. Contact Monkey
Description: Contact Monkey is an app that can work for internal communications or sales. The app features email tracking, email scheduling, and saved email templates.
Best Used For: Teams who want a sidebar within their inbox to help compose, schedule, and track emails.
Compatible Platforms: Contact Monkey works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: Contact Monkey is available via a paid plan only. However, a free trial is available. Paid plans for sales range from $10 per user per month to $25 per user per month. Get in touch with Contact Monkey to learn the price of their internal communications product.
Description:Nimble is true to its name and organizes events, tasks, your pipeline, and email tracking into one clean, easy-to-understand dashboard. Sales reps can quickly see where they stand and make smart decisions about their next action. Reps can also get more detailed views of their leads, including their history of activity and the upcoming activities scheduled for them.
Best Used For: Sales teams looking for an intuitive dashboard should look to Nimble. Office 365 users in particular will love Nimble’s CRM solution.
Compatible Platforms: Nimble is designed to work Office 365 and G Suite.
Description:Groove frees up hours of employee productivity by syncing Salesforce, Gmail, and Google Calendar data. It also offers email open and click tracking, as well as the option to schedule a message to send later. Plan automated email sequences and let Groove take care of the rest.
Best Used For: Groove works best for teams that are already using Salesforce and want to have their emails, calendars, and CRM data automatically synced.
Compatible Platforms: Groove works with Salesforce and Gmail.
Pricing: Get in touch with Groove to discuss the best pricing for your business.
Description:ClearSlide is a content creation and management platform teams can use to help engage their leads. With ClearSlide, not only do sales reps get alerts about email opens and clicks, but they also get detailed reports about how leads are engaging with their content. Users can see what parts of their content are working and what needs to be improved to maximize engagement.
Best Used For: Teams that need help making email content, then analyzing it to see what needs to be tweaked.
Compatible Platforms: ClearSlide integrates with Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Pricing: ClearSlide starts at $35 per user per month.
Description: Tellwise has a ton of features that make it a natural addition to your inbox. The tool alerts you when a lead is reading your content, then gives you the option to immediately engage with them via a chatbox. Know when leads read a proposal and shared it with a colleague. Tellwise even offers one-click calling to help you get prospects on the phone faster.
Best Used For: Sales teams that want a lightweight but effective tool to supplement their Gmail or Outlook inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: You can use Tellwise from within Gmail, Outlook, or Salesforce.
Pricing: Get in touch with Tellwise to learn about current pricing.
Use Email Tracking Apps to Speed Up Your Sales Cycle
For a complete look at how to get started with email tracking apps, how it can benefit you or your business, and best practices for success, we recommend you take a look at our email tracking guide.
If you want to up your game and track your lead’s entire customer journey map (including email activity, website activity, and more), take a look at LeadBoxer and request your free trial today.
Not seeing the sort of close rates you want? If your primary marketing strategy has been to “cast a wide net”, consider only going after your white whales – your ideal accounts – instead, use account based marketing tactics. Known as account-based marketing (ABM), companies that treat individual prospects like an entire market can generate 208% more revenue than those who don’t according to MarketingProfs.
In this article, you’ll learn 20 of the best ABM techniques, from how to choose which accounts to focus on, to mapping out their personalized marketing experience. You’ll also discover 7 ABM software solutions; since there are more moving parts in an account based marketing tactics versus a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, you’ll need the right tools to keep everything running smoothly.
What is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy of making marketing decisions based on the characteristics of target accounts and prospects. It involves creating a highly specific list of potential accounts, then creating personalized marketing experiences to engage those prospects.
This account based marketing tactics require that a business’s sales and marketing teams work more closely together. Sales reps in charge of those accounts can give crucial insight to their marketing peers, who can then develop custom content, targeted ads, and other unique methods of engaging with prospects.
Depending on the needs and resources of an organization, ABM can take either a one-to-one approach or a segmented approach, where a few or many accounts with common traits are targeted with similar content.
Account Based Marketing Tactics & Techniques
Since ABM is a more holistic marketing strategy, plan to incorporate at least a few of these techniques into your final marketing plan with sales enablement on board.
1. Market to current customers
Before filling your target account list with companies you don’t yet work with, take a look at your list of current customers. Upselling to current customers is proven to have greater ROI than converting new customers; SaaS companies on average spend just $0.28 to earn a dollar of revenue from an existing customer, whereas they’ll spend $1.18 on a new customer.
To market to these existing customers, make content that will help them get more out of your product. Blog posts are just the beginning. Consider offering free training sessions or reports that analyze how effectively they’re using your product.
Another way to market to this group is to target them with ads for discounts or special offers on additional products that are relevant to them.
2. Define target accounts with look-alike modeling
You should also look at your current customers to see who is the most valuable, in other words, which existing accounts have the highest ROI or send the most referrals your way. Highlight what attributes these customers have in common, then use them to build a look-alike model to help you identify the best prospective accounts.
Once you have your look-alike model defined, search for companies with similar characteristics in places like LinkedIn. A data vendor like D&B Hoovers can also help you zero in on accounts that fit your look-alike model.
3. Identify accounts using intent data
These days, the average B2B buyer is 67% of the way through the buying journey before seeking out a salesperson. That’s a long time to wait before engaging with a prospect. Intent data can tell you who is researching topics that are relevant to your product before those accounts ever land on your website, helping you target them sooner.
Vendors like Bombora and Aberdeen can identify companies who are expressing intent but haven’t yet interacted with your site. However, they can’t give you details about the individuals doing the research. A solution like LeadBoxer can provide the contact information of individuals who are engaging with your site but haven’t yet reached out to your sales team.
4. Build a list of role-based contacts
While building a list of target accounts, you’ll also want to build a list of contacts within those companies. Researching people based on their job title can be tricky, especially if they’re part of a small company and tend to wear many hats. Instead, focus on what roles people have within a company.
This isn’t easy to do manually, but some vendors exist that can help compile lists for you, including ReachForce. ReachForce can enrich your contact data and validate it for you, so your CRM will never be clogged with defunct contacts.
5. Map an account’s decision-making structure
It’s imperative to know exactly who is responsible for making purchasing decisions, as well as how they work with or answer to other people within the organization. Says Scott Albro, founder, and CEO of TOPO, research, and advisory firm:
“Detailed account profiles that focus on the organizational structure can be effective tools….but the holy grail is understanding how things like power structures, personalities, and coalitions impact purchasing decisions.”
6. Engage with target accounts on social media
Once you have your list of target accounts, it’s time to engage with them. One of the most immediate (and free) ways you can do that is by following them on social media, then interacting with them. Here are a few tips for keeping engagement authentic and effective:
Comment on their content only when you have something of value to say
Reshare their content to your feed when it makes sense for your audience
Join groups they’re in and establish your expertise by answering questions or offering free resources
For more ways to generate leads through a channel like LinkedIn, check out this guide.
7. Pay attention to current events
What’s going on at a company can play a big role in the kind of messaging you incorporate into their marketing. Follow their Twitter or LinkedIn and keep an eye open for any press releases, announcements, or other news that they’re putting out.
You can also set up a Google Alert, which will scan the web for certain content and inform you of any relevant article. If something significant changes with the company, you’ll be able to pivot your marketing strategy or rework the messaging.
8. Segment and personalize email campaigns
Evidence abounds to support the idea that one-size-fits-all email marketing is going the way of the dinosaur. According to Experian, personalized subject lines are to thank for a 26% increase in open rates, while DMA claims that marketers who use segmentation have seen a whopping 760% increase in revenue.
If you’re not already taking advantage of this tactic, here are some tips to get started:
Segment email lists by job role and where prospects are in the buyer’s journey
Adjust messaging of emails to reflect segments
Personalize the subject line and content with dynamic tags, such as the ones above used in HubSpot’s platform
9. Create custom content for individual prospects
Though you might groan at the thought of creating even more content, this is a strategy that’s proven to get people’s attention. A survey from CEB shows that prospects who received content personalized to their specific needs were 40% more likely to buy from that supplier.
Custom content also doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Take the video above. Kyle Jepsen, a HubSpot Academy Sales Professor, received this personalized video from Cole, a representative at Vidyard.
Cole doesn’t stick to a script but instead mentions Jepsen’s colleagues and the interactions he’s had with them. Not only is this guaranteed to grab someone’s attention, but it comes across as a more natural and genuine attempt at forging a connection. It also took Cole only a few seconds to make and is on-brand with Vidyard, a video making and hosting solution.
10. Mention target accounts in content
One way to get on an account’s radar is to feature them in your published content. By giving them free publicity, you’re benefiting the prospect as well as opening the door for further contact.
Featuring target accounts in content is just one of nine different account based marketing tactics employed by Thomson Reuters Legal Professionals, a company that offers legal management solutions. Including the tactic in their holistic approach contributed to their astonishing 95% win rate.
11. Target individuals with custom ads
The ability to target particular demographics through PPC ads has never been more sophisticated. However, you can get even more specific by uploading a list of email addresses or phone numbers of individuals you want to target, then serving them a custom ad.
With Facebook, this works if the person has their Facebook account registered to that email address or phone number. This isn’t always going to be the case, especially if they’re meticulous about keeping their work life separate from their social life.
Google Ads offers a similar targeting option in the form of Customer Match.
12. Create custom ads for retargeting
Retargeting is placing an ad in front of someone who has already interacted with your website. This is crucial for nurturing leads over time and keeping your business top of mind.
Creating a custom retargeting ad is a good first step, but even better is having an ad that’s tailored to an account’s previous behavior on your site.
Demandbase is one ABM solution that has made exciting innovations in ad retargeting. By placing carefully targeted and personalized ads on a network of properties, Demandbase can cut past the clutter and get clicks only from your key accounts.
13. Create personalized landing pages for ads
If you’re going to be investing the time, effort, and money into creating personalized PPC ads, then you’ll want the messaging of your landing page to match the messaging in the ad. This means building personalized landing pages tailored to different audiences.
Luckily, there are plenty of solutions to make this a painless process. Instapage is a drag-and-drop style landing page builder that simplifies the personalization process. They also have a product called AdMap, which makes it easy to visualize the flow of ads to landing pages, then connect them.
14. Send a personalized gift
A sure way to grab someone’s attention is through a physical gift. This doesn’t mean you should send a box of branded thermoses or pens that will get shoved to the back of an office cupboard. The key is to send something fun, unique, and charming.
Influitive, makers of advocacy and engagement software, experimented with three types of personalized gifts for their ABM campaign. The most notable were pinatas shipped directly to companies. The pinatas contained positive online reviews of the account, social proof about Influitive, and candy (of course). The pinatas received a 36% response rate and a 3.4% sales-qualified opportunity rate, making it their most successful gift-giving tactic.
15. Build one-on-one, c-level relationships
Some accounts will require multiple relationships across different levels of the organization. This ensures that all the decision-makers or people with influence over the buying process are on the same page.
Rather than have one sales agent connect with multiple contacts at the same company, pair employees from different hierarchy levels and divisions with their counterpart at the account. For example, pair a CMO at your organization with a CMO at the prospective company. The CMO should lead with an email or direct mail about the reasons for connecting, then follow up with a phone call and an invitation for a meeting.
16. Send direct mail to executives
Executives have plenty on their plate. They’re not known for promptly answering unsolicited emails or spending a lot of time engaging with other businesses on social media, and rightfully so. Initiating a meaningful connection may take old fashioned direct mail and a little creativity.
Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing relayed an anecdote about using this tactic to Craig Rosenberg at TOPO:
“We sent two-day packages to executives in advance of a big conference. The package was an empty iPad box. We wrote in the direct mail to come by our booth to pick up the iPad. Most executives came by just to compliment us. It worked.” (Source)
17. Look for an “in” elsewhere in the account
It’s not just your sales reps, marketing managers, or c-level executives that you should be tapping for connections. Reach out to the rest of your organization to see if there are employees in other, seemingly unrelated departments that might have a relationship with a contact at the target account.
Still struggling to find a way in? The TeamLink function through LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a handy tool for unearthing unthought-of connections between organizations.
18. Offer a free, in-person evaluation
Despite the rise of digital communication, meeting in-person is still critical for business success. One study claims that face-to-face meetings are what it takes to convert 40% of prospects to customers.
One way to tweak meetings to fit your account based marketing tactics is to offer free, in-person evaluations of a target account’s current situation. For example, if you’re an advertising agency, offer a session where you compare the account’s current advertising efforts to their competitors’.
Even if you have to travel to the prospect to hold the meeting, take heart: for every dollar spent on travel, businesses on average reap $12.50 in revenue.
19. Plan ahead for conferences
Conferences are jam-packed with opportunities to meet contacts face-to-face, and that level of familiarity is sometimes what’s needed to push an account over the finish line. Here are some tips to plan ahead and make the most of those few days:
Research sponsors and cross-check it with your list of target accounts
Monitor accounts’ social media activity for mentions about conference attendance
Reach out to known contacts and invite them to your booth
Set aside personalized gifts or swag for contacts that swing by
20. Host a local event for prospects
Whether you’re organizing a thought leadership session or something as simple as a mix and mingle during happy hour, in-person events are prime places to invite contacts from target accounts. This gets you valuable facetime while also offering the prospect a free resource or experience.
Inviting accounts to events is another one of the account based marketing tactics that Thomson Reuters used in their journey to achieving a 95% win rate.
Software Solutions for Account Based Marketing Tactics
ABM can be more complex than traditional marketing strategies, but the right tools can help you find the data you need and use it to create customized marketing experiences from start to finish.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a lead generation solution that can assist your ABM strategy by identifying anonymous or partially identified visitors on your site and automatically populating the rest of their contact information.
This helps you flesh out your list of target accounts. It also allows you to find and engage with qualified prospects on social media, send them custom content, target them with custom ads, send direct mail or gifts, or invite them to in-person events.
LeadBoxer also gives your prospects a leadscore, which tells you which accounts are most qualified and worth pursuing.
Marketo
Marketo is one of the heavy hitters of the ABM industry. Its products can help you identify ideal target accounts, discover contacts, and engage with accounts across channels with personalized content.
While certainly a powerful product, Marketo’s solutions come in the hundreds of dollars per month to the thousands of dollars range, making it a serious (or unrealistic) investment for small businesses.
Terminus
Terminus is an ABM solution used by customers like Thomson Reuters, the case study from the previous section who used tactics such as inviting contacts to in-person events and creating content that featured accounts’ expertise.
Terminus comes with features such as the account breakdown above, which shows how engaged accounts are and how much you’ve spent nurturing each one.
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is a vendor of intent data, so it can help you identify accounts that are expressing interest in topics relevant to your product. This can help you add target accounts to your list that you might not have thought of otherwise.
Aberdeen integrates with Salesforce, so team members can immediately see which target accounts are expressing intent. Use this as a cue to start targeting those accounts with custom ads and content as soon as they’re ready for it.
ReachForce
Never worry about old or inaccurate contact data again. ReachForce can help you flesh out a list of contacts within an account, show you who is responsible for what, and continually validates and cleans old data.
If you’re trying to keep track of and engage with multiple contacts within one account, ReachForce is an invaluable source of information and automation.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the platform’s solution for helping businesses find, understand, and engage with accounts on the social media channel.
Not only does Sales Navigator come with advanced search options for finding leads, but it also integrates with your CRM and can notify you of significant shifts within a company, such as job changes.
Instapage
Instapage takes the stress out of making personalized landing pages. Its big draw is a drag-and-drop landing page builder built for collaboration. If you’re a small business cranking out your own personalized advertising and web content, this tool is worth looking into.
Instapage also has ad mapping solutions, so you’ll never lose track of which ads match which landing pages. Plus, Instapage’s affordable pricing tiers makes personalization accessible to any size business.
Take Advantage of Account Based Marketing Tactics and Grow Your Business
Given the level of research and personalization of content involved, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed by the idea of ABM. Supplementing your existing inbound marketing strategy with ABM is a process that can take years, but the payoff is well worth it. The first step is to gather together your teams and begin discussing which tactics and tools best suit your company’s needs and don’t forget about implementing the cross-domain tracking too.
LeadBoxer can help you zero in on the right target accounts, find their contact information, and show you what content they engage with most so you can create better marketing experiences. Start your free trial today.
Integrating different platforms within your sales and marketing stack not only saves you time and headaches, but it also helps you close more deals and make more sales. These 30 Mailchimp integrations for marketing and sales teams leverage the power of email at every step of the buyer’s journey, turning business growth into an all but automatic process. Mailchimp has integrations that work at almost every step of the sales pipeline and marketing process, including:
By integrating Mailchimp with your preferred sales and marketing tools, you’ll be able to run otherwise tedious processes on autopilot, gain valuable insights about prospects and customers, and make more informed decisions about your business.
Integrations for Capturing Leads
The first step to increasing sales is to capture more leads. With these Mailchimp integrations, finding and recording potential customers can happen in your sleep.
Typeform is a tool for creating surveys, quizzes, and forms, making it easy to keep in touch with current customers or learn more about potential ones. Don’t worry about aesthetics. With Typeform, it’s easy to build content that’s beautiful and on-brand. With the Mailchimp integration, you can map any field in a Typeform survey to a field in a Mailchimp list. Not only does this negate the need to export and import data to build email lists, but it can create tags and flesh out data for more effective list segmentation.
OptinMonster offers pop-ups, floating bars, and more that helps convert visitors into email list subscribers. The designer lets you create website elements that feel on-brand and make it possible to add discounts, value offers, and countdown clocks that spur visitors to action. The program also shows you stats on which forms or pop-ups are performing best. The Mailchimp integration instantly adds captured email addresses to lists. You can create unique lists based on what form or popup visitors subscribed from. OptinMonster offers multiple account support, a big plus if you’re managing several different businesses or brands.
Unbounce helps businesses craft landing pages that are primed to capture more leads with no coding required. With Unbounce you can also create pop-ups and floating bars to attract more subscribers. There are even templates to help get you started if you don’t have a designer on staff. The Mailchimp integration streamlines the process, funneling email addresses from the point of capture on an Unbounce page straight to your email list on Mailchimp. Say goodbye to the days of manually exporting and importing lists of email addresses between platforms.
Instapage is similar to Unbounce in that it builds landing pages with a drag and drop interface. Instapage takes it to the next level by specializing in advertising personalization and post-click optimization. With Instapage, you can easily duplicate and alter landing pages to match the messaging of the ads you link them to. The Mailchimp integration then saves all leads captured on those pages to the email list of your choice. There are several different options for saving those contacts, such as adding them to groups. You can also create new email lists from within Instapage.
Whether your business has a Facebook page with scores of followers or you’re just starting out, it’s important to try and get as many of those followers as possible on your email list. With email, your content will make its way straight to subscribers’ inboxes instead of having to fight its way past Facebook’s news feed algorithm. Mailchimp can add an email list sign-up bar to your page, turning those followers into email list subscribers. Even if you don’t yet have a big audience, it’s worthwhile to set up the form to capture traffic as your business gains attention.
Businesses that host their site on WordPress may want to make use of the Mailchimp integration. This integration adds a simple sign-up form to any post or page, giving site visitors plenty of opportunities to subscribe to your email list. Any sites operating on Jetpack version 7.1 or higher already have the Mailchimp integration installed, so adding a sign-up form is as easy as clicking a button. The option will appear as a drag and drop block that you can place anywhere you want on a post or a page.
Integrations for Nurturing Leads
Now that you’ve grown your email list, it’s time to nurture prospects into happy customers. These integrations make it easy and automatic to send the right email at the right time.
Pipedrive is a lightweight and agile CRM solution for sales teams. It’s rated one of the easiest sales tools to use on G2. It’s functional right out of the box and doesn’t require days of training before you start using it. The Mailchimp integration makes closing deals even easier by allowing you to send the right email to the right lead at the right time. It works by getting granular about the criteria for creating a list of prospects within Pipedrive, then exporting those contacts to a Mailchimp list with a single click of a button.
BigCommerce, a popular platform for e-commerce and point of sale businesses, already collects customer data when someone places an order. The Mailchimp integration makes use of that data with marketing automation solutions that follows up with customers after a purchase, collects feedback, and re-engages with potential customers who abandoned their cart.
Fresh Relevance makes marketing automation a breeze for e-commerce companies. It generates personalized and contextually relevant email marketing for potential and current customers, helping to increase conversion rates and revenue per visitor. The tool integrates with Mailchimp to send triggered messages after cart or browser abandonment and can also create detailed reports in real-time.
Outgrow lets you build calculators, quizzes, and other interactive content to help you better engage with customers. In addition to gathering data about content users, Outgrow’s products can generate referrals and help segment leads. The Outgrow-Mailchimp integration works by importing all the data gathered by Outgrow into your Mailchimp lists. You can also design different list segments, allowing you to send more precisely targeted emails.
Smile.io is the secret weapon for turning customers into loyal fans. It works by creating loyalty programs around points, VIP tiers, or referrals, incentivizing customers to keep engaging with the brand in return for perks. The Mailchimp integration simplifies the process of creating personalized emails for rewards program members and building segmented lists. With Smile.io and Mailchimp, you can let customers know when they’re close to earning a reward, send referral links, let program members know when they’ve earned points and more.
Hippo Video leverages the power of video to increase email opens and engagement among your email list. By the company’s estimates, video emails have open rates upwards of 19%, while personalized email content has open rates of at least 29%. With Hippo Video and Mailchimp working together, you can quickly create personalized videos by using text or image merge fields. You can then tweak the video thumbnail, giving you greater control over how you hook and engage with customers. Any leads captured through Hippo Video are automatically synced with your Mailchimp lists.
Integrations for Qualifying Leads
Lead scoring is the key to qualifying prospects and knowing where sales teams should focus their energy. These integrations with Mailchimp ensure that all leads’ email activity is captured and quantified.
LeadBoxer is vital for businesses who want to increase the efficiency of their sales process. Using a lead scoring system, the tool tells sales reps exactly which leads are most worth pursuing and which to pass on for now. LeadBoxer does this by tracking a lead’s activity and engagement across websites, social media, and emails. It can even identify visitors who otherwise would have remained anonymous. The Mailchimp integration tracks when a lead opens an email, clicks through a link, and how much time they spend reading an email–all data points that you can use to adjust a prospect’s lead score.
With Autopilot, understanding and designing every facet of your sales and marketing process has never been simpler. Autopilot lets you visualize and map customer journeys with a drag and drop style interface. Autopilot comes with additional lead scoring integrations that can take data from places like Salesforce, Hubspot, or Typeform and change a prospect’s lead score. It also integrates with Mailchimp, so actions prospects take with your email further influence their lead score.
SalesWings tracks visitor activity such as videos watched on YouTube, reviews read on Capterra, or (you guessed it) Mailchimp emails clicked and read. It then uses that data to calculate a lead score for that prospect. The Mailchimp integration can curate a list of email subscribers who click through to your website after receiving an email campaign. SalesWings then identifies the top 5 to 15% of prospects as the hottest leads to invest your time and energy in reaching out to.
Leadfeeder leverages the power of Google Analytics to help you identify who exactly is visiting your website. It scores leads based on their activity and places them at the top of your list, so you know exactly who you should reach out to at that moment. Integrating Leadfeeder with Mailchimp lifts the veil on even more of your website visitors. The integration lets you see what email list subscribers are doing on your website, giving you extra insight into who is visiting your site and why. You can also check out what email campaigns they’re visiting from.
Lead Forensics gives companies insight into anonymous website visitors in real-time. The program provides contact information, demographic details, activity history, and more. It can also generate a lead score and help you prioritize who to focus on. Lead Forensics doesn’t yet offer a proprietary integration between them and Mailchimp. In the meantime, a tool like Blendr.io can create an integration that shares some information between the two platforms, such as contact details. For more information about the differences between LeadBoxer, Leadfeeder, and Lead Forensics, check out this comprehensive guide.
Velocify is intended to help sales teams make sense of large volumes of prospects and increases sales efficiency by automatically scheduling contact reminders. It scores leads based on their attributes, such as company, job title, and location, but it’s not built to track visitors’ activity on a website. Like Lead Forensics, Velocify doesn’t yet have an official integration with Mailchimp. Tray.io can create a working integration for you, but it’s unclear how much this can contribute to the accuracy of lead scores generated by Velocify.
CRM Integrations
Stop wasting time syncing contacts across multiple platforms. These CRM and Mailchimp integrations keep contact lists up to date no matter what program you’re in.
Nutshell is a CRM and sales pipeline management tool. GetApp named it as one of the best Mailchimp integrations, citing the software’s “timely communication and follow-up with prospects” as a key feature. This integration automatically subscribes and unsubscribes prospects based upon where they are in the sales process, reducing every sales rep’s worst nightmare of entering contact information across multiple platforms.
Salesforce, one of the most popular and robust CRMs available, works with Mailchimp in a couple of ways. The most notable is that the integration automatically syncs contacts between the two platforms. Mailchimp can also send information about a subscriber’s activity back to the contact’s page within Salesforce, updating the Notes and Attachments pages of that contact. It’s an extremely useful tool for sales reps who want to know how engaged prospects are with emails.
If you use Hubspot as your CRM platform, then you’re hopefully already taking advantage of the Mailchimp integration. The integration automatically imports contacts from Hubspot into Mailchimp so that you can instantly engage with prospects. The real selling point is Hubspot’s Intelligent Error Handling, which promises to identify and resolve any sync errors with minimum fuss. Instead of scratching your head wondering why your apps aren’t working together, you can get back to connecting with contacts.
Insightly is a CRM that promises total control of the customer experience, from how you market and sell to them to even the projects you deliver. It’s no surprise to see it integrated with Mailchimp, where it goes above and beyond to help you get the most out of both platforms. With the Insightly-Mailchimp integration, you of course get the basic function of syncing contacts across both platforms. The real draw is the informational display about each subscriber, including their activity and a lead rating out of five stars.
Capsule is the ultimate in user-friendly CRM tools. Businesses can install and start using Capsule intuitively, so there’s no painful learning curve like there is with more intricate programs. As such, the Mailchimp integration is similarly straightforward. After integrating with Mailchimp, you’ll be able to subscribe and unsubscribe contacts from email lists from directly within Capsule. No more switching back and forth between platform doing duplicate data entry. It’s a dream come true for small teams already stretched thin on time.
Zoho CRM is a robust tool that can automate many facets of your business while still being intuitive enough to use out of the box. Over 150,000 businesses around the world use Zoho, so it’s only natural that it integrates with Mailchimp. The Mailchimp integration does the standard duty of syncing contacts between both platforms. However, you can also sync it so that all campaigns created within Mailchimp get saved with Zoho’s campaign modules.
Analytics Integrations
To make data-driven decisions about marketing or sales processes, you need access to website, social media, and email analytics. These integrations with Mailchimp ensure that you’re covering all your bases.
Google Analytics is perhaps the analytics platform that most businesses are familiar with using. It offers data on almost every facet of your website’s activity, down to even being able to identify the company that visitors are coming from. Its integration with Mailchimp brings that same level of thoroughness to tracking stats for your email marketing. The integration can pass data both ways, sending Google data to your campaign reports and vice versa. This helps give you a more complete picture of conversions, as Google will be able to follow visitors from email clicks to the final purchase. If you create campaign pages hosted on Mailchimp, Google can track the metrics for those as well.
Power BI is Microsoft’s answer to the need for analytics and insights. It’s much more sophisticated and customizable than something like Google Analytics, as it’s able to help enterprises like Heathrow Airport run more smoothly. Still, no job is too small for Power BI. It integrates with Mailchimp to bring that same enterprise-level of detail to analyzing your email marketing. With the Mailchimp integration, Power BI hones in on the most engaged subscribers, which campaigns get opened the most, and other trends that can help you get more out of your email efforts.
Dasheroo lets you compile all of your business KPIs and metrics into one dashboard. No more switching back and forth between Google Analytics and the sales reporting tab of your CRM to find trends or problems with marketing. Dasheroo integrates with dozens of platforms and Mailchimp is no exception. With the integration, you can see overall list health, campaign details, engagement, bounces and unsubscribes, and more all within the Dasheroo platform.
Geckoboard is a close competitor to Dasheroo, letting you create customizable dashboards that teams can see in real-time. Geckoboard is specifically meant to be projected on TVs around the office. This keeps business health at top of mind so everyone is clear on what needs to be done to move forward. The Mailchimp integration can take key email campaign metrics and incorporate them onto the TV dashboard. Whatever data is most important to you and your team, you can select from Mailchimp and project onto the TV for a constant reminder of how your performance is stacking up.
Klipfolio is another real-time performance dashboard for business. Trusted by brands like IKEA and GrubHub, Klipfolio allows you to compile dashboards from apps, spreadsheets, databases, and more. There are over 100 different services available for connection. The Mailchimp integration does everything you’d expect from a product like Klipfolio. It can pull the standard metrics from Mailchimp and import it into Klipfolio’s dashboard, giving your team access to data at a glance. However, with Klipfolio you can also create custom queries to specify unique data sets and time periods to pull from Mailchimp.
Marketing or advertising agencies may be interested in integrations to help streamline their client reporting process. AgencyAnalytics helps agencies create analytics reports for clients about SEO, PPC ads, social media, email, reviews, and more. The software integrates with Mailchimp to automatically generate white-label reports about a client’s email performance. Instead of wasting hours each period creating reports about Mailchimp campaigns from scratch, AgencyAnalytics does it for you and sends them to clients with a click of a button.
Automate Your Sales and Marketing Process With the Right Mailchimp Integration
From capturing leads to measuring email marketing performance, there are Mailchimp integrations that can help automate almost every step of your marketing, sales, and analytics process. The only question is, which of these integrations will you take advantage of? For sales teams that are trying to get a more complete picture of who their leads are and which ones they can best help, an airtight lead qualification tool is key. Lead qualification sorts through the hundreds or thousands of people who visit your site after clicking through a Mailchimp email and tells you which ones are most poised to buy. LeadBoxer integrates with Mailchimp in seconds to accomplish this very thing. Request a free trial today.
According to research, the average B2B buyer is already 67% of the way through the buying journey before having extended contact with a salesperson. By that time, they’ve likely formulated some ideas about possible solutions to their pain point. And might even be leaning toward buying from your competitor.
Intent data is the key to identifying those leads sooner, nurturing them earlier in their buying journey, and making more sales. This comprehensive guide will outline the fundamentals of intent data, including:
By the end, you should know exactly how intent data fits into your marketing and sales processes. You’ll also learn how to pick the right intent data supplier for your needs. So you don’t end up with the wrong strategy for your business.
What is Intent Data?
Intent data shows the likelihood that a person or company is in the market to purchase a solution for a pain point. It’s derived from information about the online research contact or account is conducting about a particular topic. As well as context clues that might signal their purchasing intention. Topic and context data are the two main types of intent data. Both rely on tracking cookies, cross-domain tracking and IP addresses to form a complete picture.
Topic Data
If a hiker needs to buy new hiking boots, she may scout online reviews of top brands. Before she ever goes to the store and tries on a pair. Anyone looking at her search history might assume she’s interested in the topic of “hiking boots”. The same is true of B2B leads and target accounts. Forrester claims that 68% of B2B buyers research by themselves, a significant increase from 53% in 2015.
In addition, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before connecting with someone in sales. Even before signing up for a free trial of the software that might solve their problem, your lead is probably researching their pain point and weighing multiple options. Topic data tells you what they’re researching. There are four types of topic data available.
Anonymous First-Party Behavioral
These are unknown visitors to your company’s site and the actions they take while there. They haven’t yet filled out a form or explicitly revealed information about themselves. However, it’s possible to identify their company by tracking their IP address. A lead generation tool like LeadBoxer can help fill in the gaps and show more contact information about these otherwise anonymous visitors. Consequently giving a more complete picture of who they are and what they’re researching on your site.
Known First-Party Behavioral
These visitors to your company’s site have provided their contact information by filling out a form, therefore they are “known” individuals. Lead generation or marketing automation software can track what pages they visit and other ways they engage with the site.
Anonymous Third-Party Behavioral
These are unknown visitors to sites you don’t own but that might still be relevant to your business. You can track different topics over a network of sites and see what’s most popular.
If you’re a supplier of project management solutions, and someone from a company that fits your ideal customer profile is reading articles about “project management” on Business Insider, you can access that information through intent data suppliers. A few of which we’ll review in a future section.
Known Third-Party Behavioral
These are visitors to sites you don’t own that have shared some of their contact information. Like with anonymous third-party behavioral, you can access their information and the topics they’re researching through the right supplier.
Context Data
Context data tells you whose intent data is valuable and who only has a passing interest in a topic. There are a few details that are especially useful for establishing context.
Job Title
If a sales professional is researching “sales pipeline management”, it’s possible they’re looking for a CRM tool that can help manage leads. If a marketing professional or content creator is researching the same topic, it may be more likely that they’re putting together a blog, video, or another piece of content on the subject.
Job Postings or Leadership Changes
Job postings and leadership changes can tell you whether or not to reach out to a lead. If you sell advertising services but the target account is in the process of looking for a new marketing director, now might not be the best time to approach them. And if the account has announced the recent hire of a marketing director, it’s a better opportunity to pounce and offer a better option than what the predecessor left behind.
New Funding
A new round of funding is another indicator that a company could be open to new solutions, both because they have a bigger budget and because they may be growing their operation and need more sophisticated tools to manage their company.
New Legislation
Did new legislation just pass that requires an account to operate their company in a certain way, or opens them up to new business? If you have the solution they need in response to these changes, this context lets you know if you should act.
Press
Keep a close eye on accounts that make the news. Press about an expansion of operations or increase in earnings might indicate that they need new solutions, while bad press may mean that they need some space to do damage control before focusing on other things. However, not all bad press is a sign to stay away. If an account makes the news for poor customer service, maybe now is the time to reach out and offer information about your CRM software.
What to Use Intent Data For
There are several uses for intent data, but before diving into the specifics, know that if your competitor isn’t already using intent data, they might soon. Polls show that nearly a quarter of B2B companies are already using intent data, while another 35% plan to use it within the next 12 months. Using intent data in some capacity will become increasingly necessary to stay competitive. These are the main ways that it can benefit your business.
Reaching Leads Early
The most obvious use of intent data is to establish contact with leads earlier in the buying journey. Getting in touch with leads before other salespeople do is one of the biggest ways to get a leg up on the competition; research shows that in 70% of cases, the first salesperson to connect with a lead is ultimately who they give their business to.
Lead Prioritization
Context data can help make a distinction between who is actively researching a pain point and who is just reading about a certain topic without any intention of making a purchase. This information illuminates whether or not a lead fits your ideal customer profile. A tool like LeadBoxer quickly shows you the highest priority leads by allowing you to search by filters such as location, industry, and company size.
Automated Outreach
First-party leads that give off certain signals can trigger automatic marketing or sales processes, such as an email series, that can instantly start nurturing them when it matters most.
Account-Based Marketing
Hone in on what content works best at engaging first-party leads, and what needs more refining.
Personalization of Outreach
By knowing what topics and articles leads are researching, sales agents can personalize how they make contact and develop a relationship with them. They can mention specific topics and establish relevance quickly to capture and hold a lead’s attention.
Targeted Advertising
Get even more granular with your advertising strategy by honing in on leads who give off certain signals. That way, you’re not wasting any of your advertising dollars on people who only have a passing interest but have no intention of buying your product.
Targeted Account List
Develop a list of accounts who are engaging with third-party sites about relevant topics but aren’t yet engaging with your company. You’ll be able to connect with leads who your sales team might have otherwise never considered.
Analyze and Retain Customers
Intent data works with existing customers, too. Monitoring what current clients are researching so you know if they’re thinking about switching to a competitor or if there’s something you can upsell them on. With intent data in your toolbox, you can continue to anticipate and solve problems long after the initial purchase has been made.
How to Obtain Intent Data
There are several intent data vendors out there who can help you access intent data on your site or data available on third-party sites.
First-Party Intent Data Vendors
First-party intent data is nothing new. You may already have access to some thanks to free tools such as Google Analytics. Other vendors can provide you more details about who is visiting your site and turn anonymous visitors into known visitors.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that monitors the activity on a site, such as page views and how visitors arrived at the site. While it can’t identify individuals, it can hone in on IP addresses and show you what accounts are active on the site.
In the example above, several businesses use branded aliases, making it possible to identify which accounts are visiting a site. However, Google Analytics can’t provide any further context than that. It also can’t go into detail about what the visitors’ unique actions were on the site.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer catalogs all known visitors to your website. If a visitor fills out a form, the information they provide automatically populates their profile within the software. LeadBoxer can then calculate a lead score for that person using other data points such as what pages they visited, what topics they seem most interested in, and how engaged they are with the site.
With this information, you’ll know exactly when to act on a lead. LeadBoxer takes it one step further and can help identify previously unknown visitors. For example, if the visitor didn’t fill out a form but arrived at the site via LinkedIn, LeadBoxer can trace back to that person’s LinkedIn profile and use the information to populate the visitor’s information within the software.
BounceX
Like LeadBoxer, BounceX can identify many website visitors (40-70%) who would otherwise remain anonymous. It then creates personalized marketing experiences – similar to account-based marketing – for these visitors based on their engagement.
BounceX can automatically engage with visitors who have not yet filled out a form or appear that they’re about to leave the site. In a way, it identifies users who are displaying intent and then begins to nurture them before a sales agent ever steps in.
While sophisticated, BounceX is said to have nearly a $4,000/month price tag, making it a serious investment for most businesses. It also doesn’t prioritize showing you accounts who express high intent but instead tries to let the AI nurture users through website personalization.
Third-Party Intent Data Vendors
If an account is researching topics around the web that are relevant to your product or service, these solutions will help you find them.
Bombora
Bombora can tell you what companies are expressing active intent to purchase your products or services long before someone from that company ever lands on your site. This tool does this by monitoring 6,000 intent topics across 3,800+ publisher websites.
Bombora only tracks IP addresses, cookie IDs, and company domains provided by the publishers’ registration data. They can tell you what companies are expressing intent, but they can’t tell you exactly which employee is doing the research or who your sales team should engage with. In short, there’s no context data with this vendor.
Aberdeen
Aberdeen bought The Big Willow, and intent data supplier, back in 2018. They offer a lot of the same value that Bombora does but take it a step further by integrating their solutions into Salesforce.
Companies expressing active intent pop up in the Salesforce dashboard so sales teams know exactly which accounts to jump on. You can also see how those accounts will impact the pipeline. You can also choose to integrate Aberdeen Marketscape, a product that shows all the topic keywords researched by each account showing intent.
This helps establish more context. If you’re not already using Salesforce, getting started with Aberdeen’s intent data (and then Marketscape) might be a little too complicated and cost-prohibitive.
How to Select an Intent Data Vendor
There are several different suppliers of intent data out there. It’s important to work with the one that best fits the needs and size of your company, or else you risk losing time and money. Here are a few considerations to keep at the top of mind when screening vendors.
How many sites are in the vendor’s network?
Ask this question if you’re considering third-party data vendors. The network refers to the websites they monitor, which tend to be publisher sites like Forbes. The larger the network, the better, as this gives them a bigger pool of data to draw from.
How many topics does the vendor monitor?
Third-party data vendors monitor a finite amount of topics. At the time of this writing, Bombora claims to have nearly 6,000 topics in their system, while Aberdeen claims to have hundreds of thousands of keywords at their disposal.
Can the vendor give context?
On its own, a list of names and topics they’re researching isn’t very useful. You need context to know if their company fits your ideal customer profile, as well as what their job title is and if they have any purchasing authority. Third-party data vendors can’t give much context at this time, but some solutions for first-party intent data can.
How to Use Intent Data
Trying to make use of intent data in its raw form is inefficient. Intent data works best when used to calculate a lead score. A lead score is a concise, visual way to describe how promising the lead is and therefore how much it’s worth pursuing them.
Some solutions, like LeadBoxer, will not only capture intent data but will automatically input it into a lead score. You can adjust what data points to use for calculating a lead score based on the needs of your company.
Here are three of the most important factors to keep in mind when adjusting what data points to use for a lead score.
Fit
This is as simple as asking the question: does this lead fit our ideal customer profile? Are they the right size company, in a certain location, etc.? If an account showing active intent doesn’t fit the mold of your ideal customer, then their lead score will go down.
Intent
Take into consideration not only the topics researched by that account but the frequency and recency of the research.
Engagement
Has this account not only engaged with relevant third-party pages, but with your site or social media profiles? A solid first-party data vendor will be able to track and show you individual actions. Use that information to increase their lead score. The more specific the data points used to calculate a lead score, the more accurate and useful the lead score will be. This will help weed out accounts that aren’t the right fit or are researching topics without having any intent to buy a product or service.
When Intent Data Isn’t Enough
Intent data isn’t a magic bullet for identifying leads earlier. There are limitations to this technology that will hopefully improve as time goes on. Be aware of the following when incorporating intent data into your marketing and sales processes.
When a Visitor is Registered Under the Wrong IP Address
If an unknown visitor to your site or a third-party site is registered under the wrong IP address, you won’t be able to tell what company they work for. This often happens by accident but nevertheless makes it impossible to identify the correct account.
When a Buyer is Conducting Research Out-of-Network
Third-party intent data vendors like Bombora and Aberdeen don’t aggregate data from every corner of the internet. They only draw information from sites within their networks. If a buyer is researching on sites not covered by that network, then you’ll never know.
Decay Rate of Third-Party Data
Given the amount of content people consume regularly, you shouldn’t expect sales agents to always be able to reach out to a lead and reference content they read a week or two earlier.
Third-Party Data Lists Account But No Contacts
Bombora and Aberdeen only list the account, not the contact information of the individual who was searching.
While it’s certainly useful to know which accounts have an interest, you’re still limited by not knowing who to reach out to.
When Used At the Expense of a Sustainable Sales Pipeline
Relying on intent data is no reason not to have robust marketing strategies that help draw new leads into your sales pipeline. Like most sales tactics, it’s best used in tandem with other processes.
Get an Edge Over the Competition With Intent Data
Intent data is a hot technology that more and more businesses are using to gain an edge over their competitors. By seeing what topics leads are researching, you can reach out to them sooner and have a better chance at closing the deal. While it’s not the end-all, be-all way to keep your sales pipeline full, it is a valuable tool to have at hand.
Third-party intent data still isn’t as precise as some would hope it to be. Vendors can only provide accounts, not individual contacts, and don’t offer much in the way of context data. Third-party data also decays more quickly than first-party data.
Some first-party data is free and already at your fingertips via Google Analytics. A tool like LeadBoxer can keep you apprised of who exactly is visiting your site whether or not they’ve filled out a form. It’s also easy to get context data and use each data point to calculate a lead score, showing you exactly which leads to act upon at that moment.
If you haven’t already started taking advantage of the intent data laying untapped on your site, now is a great time to start. Try a free trial of LeadBoxer today.
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You know that a full sales pipeline is imperative for business growth. Without an airtight system for B2B lead generation in place, you’re sure to slow down your already hard-working sales team.
At first, B2B lead generation might seem like a complex process, but don’t let that discourage you. In this article, you’ll learn the three essential components you must have for an effective system of B2B lead generation:
Strategy – the digital channels you use to attract your clients
Best practices – the details you must include to make sure those channels work well
Tools – the software that will ensure your system is optimized and automated
With these components in mind, you’ll be able to craft a system that appeals to your ideal buyers and starts generating leads quickly and with less effort.
Assessing that information to determine which are the highest quality leads
An optimized lead generation strategy can deliver increased ROI for your marketing budget by filling a sales pipeline on autopilot. It saves your sales team the frustration of cold calling or cold emailing, helping keep productivity and morale high.
The Top Strategies for B2B Lead Generation
There are several different strategies for gaining prospects’ attention. Which of the following or combination of the following you should use will depend upon the online behavior of your ideal buyer.
Social Media
If the user is interested in learning more about the product or service, they click the ad and a form appears. Facebook pre-populates the form with their information so there are only a few taps between you and a newly qualified lead.
Secret Entourage, a mentorship service for entrepreneurs, reportedly restructured and streamlined their ad strategy by focusing on Lead Ads. Compared to their original campaign, the new one led to 40% more purchases with 88% fewer ad sets. They were also able to lower their cost per purchase by 10%.
While this case study shows promise, the average click-through rate (CTR) of Facebook ads for B2B companies is 0.78%. While the average CTR across all industries is 0.9%.
LinkedIn
A more effective platform for social media ads may be LinkedIn. Source
Although similar in form and function to Facebook image ads, LinkedIn ads are proven to generate more leads for B2B companies. According to the company’s content marketing blog, 80% of B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn.
It makes sense why. A sizable chunk of LinkedIn users are in the position to make purchasing decisions for their companies. Of its 500 million members, 61 million are senior-level influencers and 40 million are decision makers.
Several case studies back up the claim that LinkedIn is the king of B2B marketing on social media. Simplus, a Salesforce partner, saw 70% of their website form fills come directly from LinkedIn. As a result, they’re shifting most of their ad spend to the platform.
HubSpot took a look at their customer’s results with LinkedIn Sponsored Content and found similarly promising results:
While LinkedIn has a higher cost per click (CPC) than Google Ads, the conversion rate is twice as high. This leads to a lower cost per lead overall.
PPC Ads
Don’t write off Google Ads or other pay-per-click (PPC) ads just yet. These are some of the most popular channels for lead generation. And there are benefits to having them as a part of your lead generation strategy.
The average conversion rate for B2B industries is 3.04% in the search network and 0.8% in the display network.
While both the CTR and conversion rate for B2B ads is lower than most other industry averages, there are countless case studies out there that demonstrate the effectiveness of PPC ads for B2B businesses.
Digital marketing agency SevenAtoms executed a campaign that included Google Ads for Imperva Incapsula, a cyber security SaaS company. The results speak for themselves:
Mn this case, it definitely paid for Imperva Incapsula to have an experienced agency on their team to get the most out of their PPC ad budget.
If you’re interested in other PPC ad options, consider review directories such as FinancesOnline, G2, or Capterra. These platforms can have lead conversion rates as high as 24%. Making them solid alternatives for companies who are more concerned about their budget.
Capterra is a review directory dedicated to software, making it the perfect choice for SaaS companies. In Capterra, companies can pay to be a sponsored post so they rank at the top of a search:
The “Visit Website” button in this example takes visitors to a landing page tailor-made for that ad. Leads acquired through this channel are clearly searching for a software solution, making them highly qualified.
Blogging
Blogging is a popular method of content marketing for B2B companies, and for good reason. It gives businesses a chance to:
Answer prospects’ questions
Demonstrate their expertise
Show what makes them unique in a sea of competitors
Provide excellent service before any money has ever changed hands
To a potential customer, all these qualities can help increase their trust in your business. Provided you give them an opportunity to fill out a form for more information somewhere within the blog post or on the page, blogging can be an effective way of collecting leads.
They were also able to increase organic traffic by 182%, ensuring that their visibility on search engines would continue to grow.
HubSpot also knows that blogging is a major asset for their business. 90% of their leads each month come from posts on HubSpot that were published months or years ago.
Email
No matter the changing trends in social media or content marketing, email and email tracking pixel continue to be a valuable form of lead generation and nurturing. For every dollar spent on email marketing, businesses can earn $43.
In order to stand out, it pays to be thoughtful about the quality of emails you’re sending. There’s no sense in flooding a subscriber’s already crowded inbox.
Hammock, a B2B content marketing agency, thought creatively about its newsletter. It came up with the !dea Email, or one “bright idea” in a single email. Each email includes a single landscape image accompanied by about 350 words of copy.
By focusing on a simple, interesting concept sent every two weeks, Hammock was able to boost their open rates by 48%. They cut through the clutter of subscribers’ inboxes by adhering to the principle of more is less.
The 8 Best Practices for B2B Lead Generation
Now that you know the strategies of lead generation, it’s time to hone in on the details. These best practices will make sure your system for lead generation is airtight.
Tailor Marketing to Different Buyer Personas
Your business should have at least one buyer persona so that you know exactly how to structure your marketing and lead generation efforts. Knowing your ideal buyer will help you know where you should direct your ad spend. And also what kind of content you should be creating to attract them.
Not all prospects with decision-making or purchasing power will have the same online behaviors. For example, Pew research found that Twitter usage among U.S. adults drops as age increases. On the other hand, 61% of LinkedIn users are in the 30 to 64-year-old age range. You may be able to reach some mid-level decision makers on Twitter, as well as some senior-level influencers on LinkedIn.
Be Mobile-Friendly
If there’s only one best practice to follow, let it be this one.
In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated by mobile users. That means there’s a good possibility that over half of the visitors to your site could be viewing it on their phone.
If your site isn’t built to be mobile-friendly, then chances are you’re losing a devastating amount of leads – and sales.
Optimize Your Website
Even if your site has a professional design and is mobile-friendly, you still might be losing visitors before they have a chance to become viable leads. Use Google Analytics to view an overview of behavior flow so you can see exactly where and how much traffic is dropping off.
This will help you hone in on what pages are attracting and retaining visitors, and what pages still need some work. You can then use tools like Hotjar (discussed in a later section) to get even more specific and discover exactly what elements on a page are working well and what needs to be updated.
Use Video Content
There are a few powerful statistics that suggest that video content can drive significant traffic for your website. A white paper from Cisco states that internet video traffic made up 69% of all global consumer internet traffic in 2017.
Meanwhile, a report from HubSpot showed that when given the choice to skim or consume thoroughly, 55% of users will pay close attention to video – more than any other type of content analyzed.
Create Long-Form Blog Content Consistently
Just because video is a powerful content marketing tool doesn’t mean that you should ignore blogging. Long-form content is still king when it comes to generating traffic from search engine results. In fact, posts with at least 2,000 words are more likely to rise to the top of search engines than any other article length.
Keywords alone won’t ensure the top spot on search engines. To increase your ranking, create high-quality articles and guides on a regular basis so that Google knows your site is relevant and engaging. This also increases your brand awareness and credibility with leads.
Capture Leads on Every Site Page
Your blog and video content gives visitors a reason to come to your site, so be sure to give them an opportunity to stay. At least one newsletter sign-up form, comment form, trial sign-up button, or other lead capturing form should be available on each page of your site.
To make capturing leads through forms even more effective, structure your content so that it naturally segues into the sign-up form. Be sure to test and analyze how well each page or post is at capturing leads, then adjust accordingly
Use Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are offers such as white papers, ebooks, or other free resources that are used to entice visitors into giving you their information. These resources also help you qualify leads, as they can help indicate the lead’s needs and pain points.
To create an irresistible lead magnet, follow these examples and come up with a resource that solves a problem, is specific, easy to digest, and has high actual and perceived value.
Score Captured Leads
Not all leads are created equal. Lead scoring is the process of generating a number, typically between one and 100, that shows just how qualified that lead is. The process can be done manually with a formula, although this is time-consuming and has a lot of variables.
Luckily, there are some options for automating the lead scoring process, as you’ll see in the next section.
The 8 Best Tools for Optimizing B2B Lead Generation
All these strategies and best practices might seem overwhelming, but there are several tools to help you automate, execute, and optimize your lead generation strategy. Best of all, many of these tools are free or free to get started.
Best Lead Scorer: LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer doesn’t just score leads captured through forms or lead magnets on your site. It’s able to identify 50% of site visitors who would otherwise remain anonymous. Not only that, it can populate data such as contact information, the prospect’s industry, and their specialty.
LeadBoxer also tracks visitors’ online behavior while they engage with your brand (website visits, social media engagement, email opens, ad clicks, etc.) It uses this information to automatically calculate a lead score, which tells your sales team who is most likely to convert.a
This saves your team time, increases sales, boosts morale, and ultimately saves you money.
Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month
Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan
What it’s all about: LimeLeads is a great tool for sales prospecting as it doesn’t cooperate with fake data.
The tool was built by a bunch of B2B marketing veterans that were sick of a lack of credible data being available. Its main goal is getting you prospect lists that are accurate.
The tool integrates with CRMs and will enable sales teams to put together a list of prospects in 30 seconds or less.
Thanks to an intuitive interface and a slew of features, Instapage is the perfect tool for building landing pages that integrate seamlessly with your PPC advertising campaign.
You can easily optimize pages for lead generation by using features like heatmaps, A/B testing, mobile-responsive pages, and drop-in pixel tracking for easy remarketing. Best of all, Instapage’s drag-and-drop interface is user-friendly, negating the need for a web designer to get your campaign started.
With Instapage, you can create several landing pages that are individually tailored to target unique buyer personas, all with a few clicks of the mouse.
While Instapage has several features that help you create optimized landing pages, you need to make sure the rest of your website is working just as hard for your business. A well-optimized website is an essential part of the user experience and can generate more leads, regardless of whether or not they discovered your brand through a landing page.
Hotjar tracks users’ journeys through your site and shows you exactly where they’re dropping off and why. Powerful tools like heatmaps, visitor recordings, form analysis, and feedback polls eliminate all the guesswork about why certain visitor behavior is happening and what can be done to improve their journey.
A robust social media presence helps your business establish credibility and trust. Luckily, you don’t need an overly complex strategy or need to devote a lot of time and manpower to sustaining your social presence.
A tool like Buffer keeps all your posts organized and automated. Use it to schedule posts in advance, then review the analytics to see how well posts are performing.
Buffer also collects conversations from your followers in one inbox, making it easy to respond to questions or comments about your business.
Best Content Planner: Google Analytics and Keyword Planner
Creating high-quality blog content that visitors will find extremely useful and interesting is one of the best ways to attract new leads. Free tools like Google Analytics and Keyword Planner can help you pick article topics that are sure to perform well.
Keyword Planner is actually a function of Google Ads, but it can help you pick blog topics, too. Use it to check out average monthly searches and competition for a potential keyword and its variations. You can quickly see if there’s an interested audience, room to rise to the top of the search page, or a keyword variation where your future content might perform better.
With Google Analytics, you can observe user behavior on your site and see what content you’ve previously published is performing the best. With this insight, you can plan follow-up content to build on the success you’ve already had.
One of the best ways to nurture leads and keep your brand top-of-mind is through email campaigns.
Mailchimp makes it easy to visualize, create, and test welcome email sequences designed with conversions in mind. It also collects and analyzes information about how subscribers are interacting with your emails. Helping you optimize and create more effective campaigns.
Mailchimp integrations with most of the tools in the average B2B marketing stack. For example, data about your subscribers’ email behavior can automatically sync with lead scoring software like LeadBoxer. By this giving you even more insights about leads.
A customer relationship management (CRM) tool is necessary for tracking potential prospects and keeping a record of all their details.
HubSpot’s sales software is an extremely powerful tool that starts at $0/month. It’s able to track lead behavior on your website, then send personalized email sequences based on their actions.
HubSpot also tracks where leads are in their buyer journey, helping you visualize your pipeline at a glance. Integrate HubSpot with some of your other tools, such as LeadBoxer, to get an even better idea of who’s ready to convert and who needs a little more nurturing.
It’s time to turn your leads into clients. Take all the guesswork out of how to pitch to them by using a tool like Crystal.
Crystal analyzes a prospect’s LinkedIn profile, then provides actionable insights about their personality based on what kinds of posts they’re writing and engaging with. It also collects the feedback of people who have previously interacted with that person, increasing the accuracy of the assessment.
Use Crystal to decide the best ways for communicating with a prospect, that way you’re never flying blind when entering a sales meeting.
Grow Your Sales with Strategic B2B Lead Generation
Automatically generating leads for startups and others is the key to closing more deals and growing your business. There are several different strategies you can take. But the ones you choose will ultimately hinge upon the online behavior of your ideal buyers.
By following the best practices and using some of the tools outlined in this article, you’ll soon have an optimized, automatic system for generating and scoring leads that keeps working even when you’re not. Sales enablement tools can help you make this process even better.
The next time you log back on, there’ll already be several prospects with high lead scores ready for you to reach out to.
Your company has a website up and running, the blog is full of valuable content, and your sign-up forms are ready to go. But without lead identification and generation tools, you don’t actually know who is visiting your site. As a result you have no idea what they are interested in, or how to push them down your sales funnel. Lead identification software enables your team to convert visitors into leads, and leads into customers. And LeadBoxer is a powerful lead identification tool — but it is not the only one. Certainly it can be time-consuming to look through different lead generation tools to know which solution to invest in. So we’re here to make it easier for you. In this article, we’ll cover three popular options for lead identification software: Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics, and LeadBoxer.
In other words, we will break down the features, pricing, and unique qualities of all three. After that you’ll have a clear picture of what these solutions can do for you.
LeadBoxer 101: Meet Your Visitors, Capture Leads, and Boost Sales
LeadBoxer is a lead and customer identification tool that automatically identifies your website visitors and their companies. It can measure visitor traffic engagement with your site and emails — whether they are new visitors or logins. Most importantly, LeadBoxer gives you automatic insight on their companies, their company contact information, details on their industry, their LinkedIn profile. And then calculates a leadscore. All of this before they have filled out a form.
Moreover, all identified leads, including those who have been identified by email or submitted their information on a form, are automatically ranked with a leadscore. And with LeadBoxer, you can track all interactions with your online and email touchpoints.
What Else LeadBoxer Has Got to Offer
You can see leads’ interactions with pages, email opens and clicks, contact forms, sign-ups, PPC click-throughs, and downloads. In addition, when the lead information is ready to be passed on to your other tools, LeadBoxer exports the information to your CRM, sales software, collaboration tools, or task management tools.
Most importantly LeadBoxer can be set up in a matter of minutes. All you have to do is sign-up for the free trial, receive your Lead Pixel, and insert that Lead Pixel into your site. And then you will get immediate, real-time results on your leadboard. So once you are signed-in, you will see your leadboard. This leadboard lists all your leads, their leadscore, and all relevant information:
.And if you want to continue after your free trial, all you have to do is sign up for a subscription plan.
However, LeadBoxer is not the only lead identification software on the market which you can use for sales enablement purposes. Leadfeeder and Lead Forensics are two alternatives that marketers and sales reps consider before making their decision. Here is a comparison of the three solutions broken down by features, pricing, and unique sales propositions.
Key Features of Lead Identification Software
In short, there are some key features of any lead identification software to keep your eyes out for. And before jumping into each software, it will be good to have an understanding of what the key features are and what they do.
Automatic visitor identification: identify your site visitors by name, company, and links to social profiles.
Lead Scoring: rank visitors and/or leads based on activity and other information.
Email Alerts: be notified about dream customers or lead updates.
Page Tracking: track how long leads are on certain pages, where they came from, where they go to next, what they click on, etc.
Integrations: different software integrate with tools you already use like Google Analytics, CRM solutions, Sales Solutions, Email Management Platforms (Mailchimp Integrations), Collaboration Tools, etc.
Compliance: is up to date with the latest regulations, like the GDPR.
Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer Features
LeadBoxer Features
LeadBoxer features work together to bring a holistic picture of leads to both your sales and marketing teams. And this helps you to work on lowering the cost per lead too. These include:
Automatic visitor information and lead scoring.LeadBoxer ranks visitors and automatically updates rankings when visitors fill out forms.
It captures leads and integrates them into the viewing platform.
Leadboxer tracks their customer journey and data. This solution tracks all their web and email behavior.
LeadBoxer sends you notifications for when a lead is ready-to-buy.
So companies can set custom scheduling based on custom segments. To then route this information to relevant team members. Most importantly, team members will be notified when data shows that it is the prime time to talk to the email leads.
Other LeadBoxer Features Include
Email & Newsletter tracking.
Full Data Search.
Auto Form Tracking.
Campaign Tracking.
Traffic Dashboard.
GDPR Compliance.
Share and Assign Leads.
Lead Tags or Labels.
Channel Groupings and Source.
LeadBoxer integrates with 25 business solutions that you probably already use. This includes popular CMS, communication, CRM, marketing automation, and other business solutions:
Leadfeeder is a website visitor tracking software platform. To clarify, it tells you who your visitors are, where they come from, and what they are interested in. Moreover Leadfeeder offers alerts when your target companies visit your site. And then software breaks their features down into four action areas: identify visitors, see what they look at, get email alerts for when they visit, and send leads to your CRM.
Above all this software integrates with Google Analytics to identify the companies that visit your site and how they engage with your pages. Most importantly, Leadfeeder provides company contact information and shows if your users have LinkedIn connections with any of their company representatives. And this solution is also GDPR compliant. Teams have unlimited amount of users on this solution, no matter the plan.
Leadfeeder integrates with twelve other business solutions, including MailChimp, various CRM solutions, Pipedrive, Slack and more.
This solution features lead scoring, auto-assigning of leads, notifications, labeling dream customers, and a customizable portal. And it helps sites convert visiting traffic into leads, track them from their first click to sale, and measure digital ROI.
Lead Forensics integrates with Salesforce, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Workbooks, and Infusionsoft.
Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer: Comparing Pricing
LeadBoxer Pricing
LeadBoxer offers a two-week free trial. After that, pricing is based on monthly or annual subscription plans. The Starter plan starts at $79 per month (billed annually). Business Plan is $199 per month (billed annually). The Corporate Plan is $399 per month (billed annually).
Leadfeeder Pricing
Leadfeeder offers a free “Lite” plan that only shows 7 days worth of leads. Premium pricing is based on the number of leads you have:
Lead Forensics offers a free week-long trial. Based on this trial, Lead Forensics will understand how much traffic your site receives and will determine pricing for a future contract based on your volume of visitors. To learn more, you must contact Lead Forensics directly.
What Makes LeadBoxer, Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics Unique?
After delving into the research, it can be hard to determine what features differentiate these solutions. And even though there is significant overlap in use cases, each tool is different in some way.
LeadBoxer: Bringing Sales and Marketing Together with Data
LeadBoxer stands out from competitors because it acts as a bridge between marketing and sales teams. For example, it stores all visitor, lead, and customer information in one platform. Unlike other lead identifying tools. LeadBoxer doesn’t just track online visitors. For instance it also keeps tabs on all email activity of the companies on your newsletter list. And knows when leads are signaling that they are ready to buy or are up for contract renewal.
So your sales team will know exactly when to reach out to them and have the details they need to make the right pitch. Not only that, but LeadBoxer informs your sales reps of when to push up-sell opportunities, which other solutions of its type don’t do.
The LeadBoxer team has more than a decade of analytics and software development experience. And for this reason, this solution uses its own algorithm to boil all the data down to a simple view for clients. Ask the search tool any data question, and you will find the answers you need.
Leadfeeder: Putting GA to Use
Leadfeeder does not have its own algorithm. But uses Google Analytics data. So customers don’t have to install a pixel — they only need access to their Google Analytics account.
Leadfeeder offers a unique tool that filters out leads that aren’t that interesting or valuable for your team. As a result you don’t have to sift through visiting bots or visitors who certainly won’t buy your product.
Lead Forensics: Dedicated to Customer Success
Lead Forensics offers many of the features that LeadBoxer and Leadfeeder do. But it’s unique because their solution comes with a customer success manager for each client.
Most importantly, they offer consultation and proactive support to marketing and sales teams on how to use this tool to generate the most ROI.
LeadBoxer vs Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics Takeaway: Keep Your Goals in Mind
Capturing qualified leads doesn’t happen overnight. To sum up, your website, online content, chat bots, social media campaigns, email newsletters, email tracking pixel and advertising efforts all work together to attract clients.
But once your prospects visit your site, it is up to you to use the most powerful tools. Which can identify visitors, capture leads, and track the success of your content. And lead identification and generation software provide a path for visitors to become customers but you’ll need s lead strategy too. It’s up to you to determine which software will work best with this goal in mind.
The key to giving your customers a great experience is to walk in their shoes. And by empathizing with your clientele and understanding their motivations, your company will be able to drive product design and service based on what customers need most. As Kevin Stirtz says, “Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.” And a customer journey map is one tool that can help you look into customer behavior, motivations, and needs. Most importantly, this knowledge will help improve your relationship with customers, boost sales, and help you accomplish your business’s goals. So in this article, we’ll cover the following questions you may have about customer journey maps:
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the stages a customer takes before accomplishing a certain goal a company has for them. To clarify, it takes into consideration a customer’s pain points, emotional needs, and actions. So this type of map illustrates the customer narrative as they engage with a brand.
Most customer journey maps look at the entire customer lifecycle. Starting with the introduction to the brand and continuing to post-sale support services – with all the steps in between.
Often, these stages are displayed in a linear fashion. However, a customer’s engagement with a business is not always so simple. And graphs can display cyclical customer journeys or journeys through multiple channels.
Source
Companies can take this opportunity to creatively communicate analogies about how different leads interact with the brand, such as through a tornado analogy:
Common Elements
Though customer journey maps can vary, they have shared essential components. Here are the following elements that the diagrams will have in common:
Persona: A profile of the brand’s clients, offering demographic and psychographic information. Companies usually have diverse client groups. So each customer journey map should be catered to each unique persona that the company wants to learn more about.
Designated Touchpoints:Important moments when clients interact with the brand. (Paid advertisement, sign up form, social media engagement, a purchase, etc.).
Moments of Truth:Touchpoints that can make or break it for a customer.
Performance Indicators: Evaluative factors that measure how customers are responding at certain touchpoints. To clarify, these often measure the customer’s emotional state or satisfaction levels along their path.
Visuals: The visual element of the journey map displays the path the customer takes on their journey. In many cases, this can be a linear illustration. In other cases, it makes more sense to show the cyclical nature of the customer cycle.
These diagrams are not internal pipelines, sales processes, or any other funnel your business might create from a developer point of view. These are purely focused on the customer experience. And visual demonstration needs to make sense for your company, product, and most importantly, your customers’ perspective.
Looking for more qualified leads?
We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
As Sam Walton wisely said, “There is only one boss. The customer.”
And with that in mind, companies know the importance of understanding their customers. There is no use in designing a product without understanding those who will potentially use the product. In other words, what their needs are, what their communication style is, and how they feel about the product in their life.
Companies that take time to study and analyze real data on those they serve yield better results. And brands that strategically map the customer’s journey showed a 24% increase in return on marketing investments and reduced service costs by 21%.
On the other hand, assumptions about a customer base can be the downfall of a company. Take Shyp for example.
Shyp had a great idea for easy and cheap package delivery services for individuals. But neglected the fact that people don’t actually ship personal products very often. Building a financial model around what could’ve been, rather than the customer’s reality, led to the ruin of a startup with high potential.
What can we gather from this information?
So assumptions lead to failure, or at the very least, large loss of opportunity. Data and real customer insight can lead to significant returns.
Certainly, journey maps are critical in knowing customer realities. And this is the most important information to have when running a business. Other benefits of journey maps include:
Provide framework for assessing customer experience ROI.
Types of Customer Journey Maps
There are several different types of customer journey maps. Here are four main frameworks to consider when organizing a potential diagram.
Current State
Current state maps are an honest assessment of the present experience users have when interacting with your brand. And this is not a graph showing the ideal way a customer would move through the pipeline. But rather the current reality. In other words, the journey map shows how certain touchpoints are succeeding or failing.
Are clients falling through the cracks on social media? Are they dissatisfied with customer service? How are email campaigns performing? Current state diagrams can give you the answers you need to improve the customer experience.
Future State maps are what you would like the customer process to be. This type of mapping is helpful for communicating to different departments the ideal process for achieving customer goals.
Future state maps are not primarily based on current data. Instead, designers use their imagination and customer empathy to anticipate what users will experience after certain decisions are put into practice or marketing material is produced.
The goal of this type of map is to show what the daily life is of specific personas. These maps dig into the pain points of customers, their motivations, their emotions, and what they need from a product throughout their normal daily routine.
They are also helpful in understanding specific demographics and their behavior at certain points during the day.
Marketers can learn when personas are distractedly browsing on social media and likely to make a purchase or when they are stressed trying to get kids to school. Knowing the timing of a particular email or message can make all the difference.
Blueprint graphs are based on another current or future state map. They also include systems, processes, and tools that are used to bring all elements of the customer experience together.
They give a more detailed picture of how the customer is actually engaging with the company, allowing for deeper insights into pain points and the necessary support needed.
Businesses have different strategies, different demographics, and different products. Each company will have to determine which touchpoints and associated factors they want to understand. Different factors can include:
B2B vs B2C business models
Subscription-based vs transactional services
Size of scale
Types of personas
Because journey maps are tailored to the specific needs of each individual company or department within that company, we are going to take a look at three case studies that provide insight into how these maps can allow business people to walk with their clients.
The YMCA
The large YMCA branch in the Greater Twin Cities undertook the process of customer journey mapping in order to improve member wellbeing and loyalty. This business model is based on subscription services. Customer journey mapping was a valuable tool to grow customer retention rates.
After leaders met and agreed that putting the customer first was a top priority in their organization, they put their heads together to make hypotheses about their customers and to determine which personas they were going to study and within which parameters.
Research led to the development of different personas and richer understanding of their motivations, pain points, and moments of truth.
After gathering and organizing customer insights, the Y was able to put their new knowledge into action. This has lead members to greater trust in the Y and a greater user experience.
A Health Insurance Provider
An anonymous health insurance provider needed to conduct customer mapping with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This company was interested to see how certain personas were choosing health coverage and their behaviors before deciding.
This image is not the exact customer journey map used but is a close hypothetical example:
The insurance company found that different personas could not be treated equally.
Some groups wanted to do most of their research online, whereas others wanted human interaction with a support specialist before committing to this insurance company.
The company was better able to field questions that each persona asked and understand what channels to use when communicating with potential clients.
Amadeus ePower
Amadeus ePower is an online travel booking engine. When this company prioritized understanding their customers’ journeys, they saw great change in their organization.
When starting the mapping process, Amadeus aimed to learn more about their website usage across the customer journey, unmet customer needs, and to generate ideas based on these findings.
Their customer mapping project took place over five weeks. The process started with determining personas, which included travelers and travel agents, and doing interviews with real customers. They also used previous research they had already collected.
Secondly, they conducted a workshop with stakeholders where they identified key elements of their map and created potential illustrations. After this, consultants and their creative team used these ideas to create the final customer journey maps.
In this case, the company had two specific personas so they made two separate customer journey maps.
According to Tran Dzien Nguyen, Head of Amadeus’s Online Solutions, “Customer journey mapping has changed the way we perceive unmet needs and approach the development process…it’s a game changer for us.”
These three businesses serve different customers with varying needs. Going through the process of customer mapping allowed these companies to organize their customer data into an easy-to-understand, big-picture diagram.
These clear illustrations enabled the businesses to know the different types of clients they serve and how to cater to their needs.
Steps to Create a Customer Journey Map
Designing an easy-to-read and informative map can be a daunting process. The key to yielding a successful result is to develop the map one step at a time. Here are seven necessary steps to build your map:
Prepwork
Setting Objectives
Discovering and Defining your Personas
Determining Touchpoints
Identifying Performance Indicators
Do the Research
Put your Map to Use
1. Prepwork
First things first. Executives have to come together and show buy in. Stakeholders need to believe that customer journey mapping is important enough to warrant company time and resources.
Once all key players have agreed that understanding their customers through this process is necessary, they will need to have specific conversations to direct the rest of the project.
Some key topics stakeholders need to discuss include:
Why is this project important?
How many resources will be allocated to the journey map?
Does our company need advice from professional consultants?
What time frame will be given to this development?
What conflicts or challenges might arise with this project?
Which type of map will be most useful for our company?
2. Setting Objectives
Once your team is committed to understanding the customer journey, leaders will need to determine what the goals are for the map.
The objectives chosen will be influenced by where the business is struggling or experiencing change, what research and pre-existing assumptions they have and the vision they have for the future of their company.
3. Discovering and Defining Your Personas
Companies often think they have a good idea of their customer base, but when they take a closer look, they find surprises.
A critical part in the mapping process is doing research on the types of customers a company has. Once they have determined the different segments of their client base, they can determine which personas they want to narrow their journey map on.
Not all personas will experience one company in the same way. To yield the most benefit of a customer journey map, each map needs to be tailored to a specific customer profile.
4. Determining Touchpoints
Working in groups to brainstorm all the different touchpoints a customer experiences can be helpful. In this day and age, customers are being funneled to companies through multiple channels and each channel needs to be noted and later measured.
Sign up forms, social media engagement, emails, call centers, and organic traffic online, all need to be considered and evaluated. During your research, it will be clear which of these touchpoints are often moments of truths.
Understanding how touchpoints are working or where inefficiencies lie is key to understanding why retention rates are down, why customers abandon their carts at the last moment, or any other common experience that is trending within your company.
5. Identifying Performance Indicators
As a team, leaders need to put their heads together and determine what they want to measure when a customer engages with the brand. Usually, these factors include:
Customer Actions
Thoughts
Customer Emotions
Motivations
Points of Frictions
6. Do the Research
Once you have decided which touchpoints and customer factors you want to chart, it is time for the legwork of the project: research.
For compiling an effective map, there is a place for both quantitative and qualitative research.
This solution has the ability to capture visitors’ contact information before they make contact. This allows sales teams to track their journey whether or not the visitor has signed a form.
Qualitative research consists of interviews with smaller groups of people (or “Focus Groups”). This research can be useful for getting a deeper look into the emotional state, needs, and thoughts of clients that quantitative data has a hard time capturing.
7. Put Your Map to Use
Journey maps should be actionable and relevant to different stakeholders. Find a simple way to illustrate multiple factors that will compel leaders with different perspectives to action.
This journey map focuses on one persona, has quantitative and qualitative feedback displayed, includes various performance indicators, and has a section with opportunities listed:
With all the research and data organized in a clear way, it will be easier to convince stakeholders why certain actions need to be taken and what opportunities the organization needs to take advantage of.
Another good idea to convince fellow stakeholders to make change is to take the customer journey yourself when possible.
Teams that go through all of the customer journey themselves will have an enhanced understanding and empathy towards the customer every step of the way. After all, we are all human and have some shared expectations of modern technology, customer service, and other business practices.
Once actions are put into place, your team will need to decide when and how to evaluate the changes. Customer journey maps will need to be updated periodically to show how changes have impacted the customer.
Customer Journey Map Templates
As we saw in the case studies, every company has a different path when building their customer journey maps. There is no one size fits all approach with this process. Though different companies will have to shape their diagrams uniquely, looking at different templates can be helpful when designing your own map.
When deciding on a template, be sure to keep these considerations in the back of your mind:
The template must be persona based
The type of journey map must make sense for the goals of your organization
Design can incorporate the customer phases specific to your brand
There is space for the touchpoints and evaluative indicators your team determined
Both qualitative and quantitative data is incorporated
Actionable items are displayed
With these factors in mind, continue reading to get a sence of the templates that could be modified for your business.
Current State and Future Map Templates
Current and Future Map templates will appear similar. The only difference is that the information your business puts in will represent the present reality or what your business expects to see in the future.
A Day in the Life Template will include customer insights from their daily life. Here is a simple template to get started:
Service Blueprint Template
A service blueprint can be a good graph to have alongside a current or future state map. These diagrams show what physical evidence is used to give the customer their experience.
For example, this would include staff, product, physical tools, or any other tangible tool that is along the customer path. Service blueprints usually include front-stage interactions, back-stage interactions, support processes, physical evidence, and customer actions.
At the end of the day, it is the customer who determines if your product is worth spending money on or not.
Some products, like B2B services, take an entire team of people and extensive research to agree on a subscription. Other business models rely heavily on impulsive buyers. No matter what type of business you are in, what matters most is happy customers.
Knowing what customers want, need, and feel is the most essential part in ensuring their happiness. A customer journey map will help you get a lot further down that road
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We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
Identifying who visits your website provides important data your sales team can leverage to scale your business. People visit your website because they are interested in what you offer. Not all website user data is equal and the more detailed information you get, the better.
As great as your website is, only 2% of your visitors will contact you. That means 98% of your website traffic will visit, browse and leave without heading a call to action. Additionally, you don’t know much about these passive website visitors, which makes it difficult to develop a strategy for convincing them to return.
In this article, you’ll learn what website visitor information is available, how to access it, and why it’s important. You can go further and learn how to contact those visitors and make them more likely to become customers. That way, you and your sales team can keep your pipeline filled with high-quality leads.
Continue reading or use the links below to “jump” to topics:
Why is it so important that you know who visits your website? What is the value of using technological tools to identify them? Gathering and properly analyzing this information or data is crucial to your sales success for a number of reasons:
For one, there’s no telling why 98% of visitors are leaving without taking the next step in the buyer’s journey.
Are they outside your target market?
Is there an issue with the landing page?
Identifying visitors to your site will help you find the answers to all these questions.
The major problem is that by not having an understanding of who is coming to your site, you are missing out on huge opportunities! There is no way to measure who among that 98% of visitors might convert and become a loyal customer provided the right user experience and proper nurturing. Knowing your visitors can make a big difference to your bottom line.
What Website Visitor Information is Available
Google Analytics does a great job at showing a snapshot of a website’s overall performance. It breaks down a website’s audience, their demographics, behavior, how they were acquired, and what the conversion rates are. Best of all, it’s completely free.
Some key performance indicators and reports to keep in mind when looking at Google Analytics are:
Demographics – The age and gender of site visitors will let you know if who’s visiting aligns with your ideal client profile.
Location – Like demographics, knowing the geographic location of visitors is useful for understanding if your digital marketing strategy is attracting ideal clients.
Device – This shows whether visitors are using a desktop or mobile device.
Acquisition – Knowing how a visitor arrived at the site can show you how well your marketing strategies are working and help identify potential areas for improvement.
Behavior Flow – This shows the journey from popular landing pages to other pages on the site, highlighting where traffic drops off and visitors leave.
Session Length – Knowing how long visitors are staying on a site provides insight into how useful and engaging it is.
Bounce Rate – If there’s a high bounce rate associated with a site, you may need to look into the time it takes to load pages or the overall site design.
Popularity – Knowing which pages are most and least popular can help you decide which are best suited to connect to paid advertising.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics has long been the gold standard for collecting and analyzing website visitor data. The platform provides information such as the number of users, the type of device used and the user’s source. Google Analytics 4 is a great starting point for learning about the type of people who visit your site.
Google Analytics offers a variety of reports that highlight different website traffic data. Here is how to use the new Google Analytics 4 platform to identify website visitors:
Log into your Google Analytics account (or create an account)
Create a property (the website you want to track traffic for) and add a tracking code
Go to Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels
For more detailed analysis, go to the Source/Medium Report under All Traffic
For step two, here is how you add the tracking code to your property (website):
Under Admin, select the right account in the account column.
Go to the Property column and select create a property
Enter a name for the property and select your time zone and currency.
Click on show advanced options
Turn on Create a Universal Analytics property
Enter the website URL and select either the HTTP or HTTPS protocol
Create both a Google Analytics and Universal Analytics property (code tags).
Accept the terms of service and data processing amendment and hit finish
You can further identify website visitors with the Network Report which looks into acquisition data, behavior and conversion rates. This is found under the Audience category and the Technology sub-category in the Google Analytics menu. The Network Report bundles visitors into the service provider they’re using to access the site.
However, when it comes to gathering and qualifying leads, Google Analytics falls short. The Network Report doesn’t show the name of individual visitors, their role within a company, their contact information or their unique behavior.
Not all website visitor identification tools are created equal. Some are bare-bones but budget-friendly, able to identify visitors and nothing more. Others can turn that data into action, showing you which of those visitors are worth pursuing as a possible client.
New Tools Available to Identify Website Visitors
Tools that analyze website visitors have been around for years. However, the online lead generation landscape has changed since 2020 with the Coronavirus pandemic. More people are browsing the web and shopping online than before the pandemic, which increases the importance of website visitor tracking.
With the ease and speed of online shopping, you’ll get more website visitors. The increased importance of website conversion means you can’t rely on people merely finding your site. Below are tools that help you take advantage of increased web traffic and land more conversions:
LeadBoxer
Cost: $195/month for the basic plan and $505/month for the premium plan. There is also a free trial.
LeadBoxer not only identifies website visitors, it turns that information into actionable data that accelerates your sales pipeline. This is done by capturing around 50% of visitors that would otherwise remain anonymous.
You can track your users’ online behavior including website visits, email opens, newsletter clicks, advertising and social media use. This offers a comprehensive view of website visitor engagement. LeadBoxer can also provide visitor details such as the prospect’s industry and specialty.
Based on the criteria set by the organization, LeadBoxer calculates a lead score for each prospect. The higher the lead score, the more promising that prospect is. Sales reps know instantly who is most likely to convert and who isn’t.
Cost: Free for individual salespeople. There is also a $50/month option and a $1200/month enterprise option that utilizes all HubSpot features.
Hubspot Sales Hub is a tool for managing a sales pipeline with visitor identification and lead qualification tools built in. Hubspot shows what companies are visiting a site in real-time and how many visitors there are from each company. You’ll see what pages they’re visiting and the number of page views they’ve made.
Hubspot collects information like company size and geography, then turns them into filter options. Using filters helps sales reps hone in on only those prospects that meet specific ideal client criteria.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Cost: Has four pricing tiers ranging from $25/month/user to $300/month/user. There is also a free trial.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a pipeline management system with added features that identify website visitors. It highlights what marketing campaign generated a lead and what effects that campaign has on the pipeline. This allows organizations to make informed decisions about where to invest their marketing budget.
There are also functions like lead scoring that help sales reps follow up with only the most engaged prospects. With Salesforce Sales Cloud, it’s easy to route and assign leads to the right rep.
Overall, Salesforce best accumulates data on existing customers. It combines a customer’s social content, the deals they’re involved in and what they’re saying about a product or service.
Visitor Queue
Cost: Ranges from $16 to $160 per month. The basic plan identifies up to 100 company visitors per month and the top-level plan identifies up to 1,000 visitors per month.
Visitor Queue is a user-friendly, simple visitor identification tool that tracks company contact and visit information. It also tracks visitors’ social media accounts. It displays the name, contact information and user data of visiting businesses.
Cost: $149/month. This plan identifies up to 3,000 visitors per month.
Leady is unique in that it helps you better invest in the right marketing campaigns. Leady automates your marketing process, enriches Google Adwords and creates highly relevant content campaigns for your ideal buyers. This helps you develop a list of prospects to fill your sales pipeline.
Happierleads
Cost:$69-$129 per month. Plans range from 100 lead identifications per month up to 1,000 leads per month.
Happierleads offers information on website visitors including contact information, the number of visits, length of visit and pages viewed. Features include:
Company-level visitor identification
IP and network data
Firmographic data of companies
Behavioral and demographic filters
Automated lead scoring
Real-time phone and email information verification
IPinfo.io
Cost: $99/month to $499/month
IPinfo allows you to find out who visits your website through IP data. This IP provider specializes in IP to geolocation, company and carrier, ASN, VPN detection, IP ranges and hosted domain data. IPinfo is simple, scalable, user-friendly and handles 420 billion API requests per year.
Cost: Starts at $249 per month and goes up to $1349 per month
User.com is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that boosts website engagement and improves conversion. This is done using a single data source for your customers. User.com allows you to reach clients through email, live chat, chatbot, push notifications, dynamic page content and more.
ExactVisitor
Cost: There is a limited, free tier available and a $50/month basic tier where you’ll have up to 100 lead identifications per month.
ExactVisitor is a B2B lead generation software that identifies the real person and companies visiting your website. It analyzes how they got there, their behavior and their purchasing intent.
With ExactVisitor, you’ll get alerts when key accounts visit your site, insights into technologies visiting companies use and website personalization.
LeadRebel
Cost: $19 to $305 per month depending on the plan.
With LeadRebel, you can get daily email summary reports, employee contact details and support for multiple websites. This software uses company-level reverse IP lookup for its data so you can get visitor information even if they work remotely.
Visitor Insights
Cost: You must call for a quote.
Visitor Insights offers a front-end funnel builder that uses information on buyer intent. It also allows customers to outsource marketing programs. Visitor Insights is not GDPR compliant in the EU.
Visitor Insights feature tracking pixels, user identification data sources, Identity Graph, user contact information and buyer intent details. Visitor Insights is not reliant on website visitors already in your CRM.
WatcherMe
Cost: $80/month to $299/month across three pricing plans. Some of the unique features of WatcherMe include:
Real-time email alerts
Website activity tracking and basic lead scoring
Smart filtering on good leads
LinkedIn company contact discovery
Visitor reports
Steps to Identify Website Visitors
Identifying website visitors with the right tool couldn’t be easier. LeadBoxer, for example, comes with a pixel that automatically starts collecting data as soon as the code is installed. There are also several third-party integrations you can use with your existing marketing stack and CRM platform.
If you want to try this out without committing to anything, LeadBoxer offers a free trial account. Setting up LeadBoxer with your site requires just a few steps. Best of all, you don’t need to have any coding experience to get it done.
After you start your trial account, follow the steps below to identify your website visitors:
1. Install the Pixel
LeadBoxer comes with a Lead Pixel, a snippet of JavaScript code that needs to be dropped into the backend of your site. To track incoming traffic on the entire site, install the Lead Pixel into the footer. For specific landing pages, install the pixel into the code for those pages.
If you have a WordPress site and you don’t want to code, LeadBoxer created a user-friendly WordPress plug-in. Once the pixel has been installed, all incoming visitors are automatically tracked.
LeadBoxer seamlessly integrates with many third-party tools, such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Slack and Pipedrive. When it comes to enriching visitor profiles and qualifying prospects, start by focusing on LinkedIn, MailChimp and website contact forms.
Capturing a visitor’s LinkedIn information is a quick and easy way to populate their profile. You can easily connect to their LinkedIn page and reward them with a white paper when they provide their information.
Identifying and qualifying leads from your MailChimp newsletters is even easier. To track who is clicking newsletter links, add the “?email=*|EMAIL|*” merge tag to any links you want to track. To track email opens and reads, install the email tracking pixel into your email template code.
3. Establish Leadscore Criteria
LeadBoxer automatically calculates a lead score that will indicate how likely a prospect is to convert. This helps sales reps know which leads they should prioritize over others.
You can adjust how LeadBoxer calculates a lead score by establishing unique criteria. What criteria you set will depend upon the organization’s ideal client profile. Consider the following for lead scoring:
Buyer Profile
It’s important to have a thorough understanding of your organization’s ideal client profile. Include fields on contact forms to help gather information so you’ll have data to use when calculating the lead score. You can give points for answers that align with the profile and take away for those that don’t.
Company Information
More than likely, you want to know the size of the prospect’s company and how to reach them. Therefore, it’s a good idea to add points to the lead score for this kind of information.
Online Behavior
High levels of engagement with your site are a likely indicator that a prospect is interested in your product or service. Toggle points for page views, visit length, downloads and visit frequency over a 30, 60 or 90 day period.
Email Engagement
This doesn’t just mean that you should add to the lead score if someone is on your email list. Instead, prioritize high open rates and click-through rates. These are more meaningful indications of interest.
Social Media Engagement
The more a prospect interacts with you on social media, the higher their lead score should be. LeadBoxer can help track Facebook or Twitter likes, retweets, shares and click-through rates from your posts.
Spam Detection
Sometimes bots fill out contact forms and interact with your site. Things to look for include using all lowercase letters when filling out forms or using Gmail or Yahoo email addresses.
After establishing lead score criteria, you can automatically see which of your website visitors are worth following up with. You can then have LeadBoxer send alerts the next time ideal prospects engage with your site. That way you or the assigned sales rep can contact them while your company is still fresh in their minds.
Start to Identify Website Visitors and Increase Sales Leads
There are several reasons why it’s vital to know who is visiting your site and how they’re interacting with it. You’ll know if your marketing campaigns are working or if your ideal buyers are noticing your product or service. It also shows if there are weak points where visitors are dropping off and navigating away from your site.
But that’s not all website visitor identification is good for. With this data, you’ll be able to optimize campaigns and site design. Knowing your site visitors increases the number of prospects available to you, keeping your sales pipeline filled.
A solid website visitor identification tool automates this process and enables you to invest in the best prospects. Using the data collected about your visitors is the first step toward a highly productive pipeline.
It’s a commonly cited statistic that only 2% of sales are made during the first meeting. That’s about a one in fifty chance that your initial pitch will result in a done deal. A strategic and optimized sales follow-up process is your best bet for getting the results you want.
In this article, you’ll learn how to set up your sales follow-up process from start to finish so that it’s primed for success. While setting up the process may seem daunting, the right CRM tool or email tracking app can help you automate many parts of the process. This allows you to focus on the steps that require a personal touch so your leads feel valued and more willing to buy.
To set up your sales follow-up process for success, start by automating the process from the beginning of your pipeline. This is the point where you collect data on potential leads, pinpoint high-quality contacts, and make your initial outreach. Automating this process will help you invest time in only the most promising leads.
1. Capture Leads
The first step of your pipeline is to gather information on potential leads. Common ways of doing this include contact forms on your website, email list sign-ups and activity, or even simply interacting with certain pages and social media profiles.
To set up your sales follow-up process for success, start by automating the process from the beginning of your pipeline. This is the point where you collect data on potential leads, pinpoint high-quality contacts, and make your initial outreach. Automating this process will help you invest time in only the most promising leads.
1. Capture Leads
The first step of your pipeline is to gather information on potential leads. Common ways of doing this include contact forms on your website, email list sign-ups and activity, or even simply interacting with certain pages and social media profiles.
Not all leads are created equal. Some will be worth your effort more than others. A leadscore is a single number that helps you quickly identify who is most likely to buy.
Many CRM tools and lead scoring software calculate the leadscore by tracking a lead’s website visits, newsletter opens, website clicks, social media engagement, and more.
Using a leadscore offers numerous benefits for your sales process, including increased measurable ROI, conversion rates, and sales productivity. The infographic below takes a look at a few of these benefits in more detail:
Kentico’s 2014 survey showed that over 60% of companies already used or planned to use lead scoring techniques. If you’re not already taking advantage of this tool, you could be missing out on benefits that your competitors aren’t.
A tool like LeadBoxer can generate the most accurate leadscore possible by comparing the criteria for your ideal buyer to the online behavior of your potential lead. From there, you can use this information to decide whether or not to continue the sales process with this particular contact.
3. Create an Alert
After setting the criteria for a promising lead, you can create an alert with your CRM tool for when that lead next engages with your website, emails, advertising, or social media. By calling a lead immediately after they express interest in your brand, you increase your chances of establishing contact with them significantly.
Source
According to a study by LeadResponseManagement.org, the odds of contacting a lead if called in five minutes versus 30 minutes after that lead expresses interest drop 100 times, therefore it’s essential to make contact as soon as possible after lead activity.
4. Initiate Contact with Leads
When it comes to reaching out to leads, the email versus cold calling debate rages on. With so many studies, statistics, and lists out there touting the benefits of one method over the other, it can be difficult to decide whether or not you should initiate contact with an email or a phone call.
Your CRM tool can help you decide.
Take a look at what you know about the lead. Is this person higher up in the organization and likely to have a packed schedule? Email might be the way to go.
Are they older or seem like they might prefer a more personal touch? Consider picking up the phone. However, if you call and leave a voicemail, it’s good form to immediately follow up with an email recapping the purpose of your call.
Whether reaching out by email or phone, follow this formula for a message that gets noticed:
Open with a clear reason for connecting. Skip the bland and overdone openers like “I just wanted to touch base about…”. Get straight to the point by introducing yourself, then defining how your product or service can solve your lead’s potential problem.
Add value. This initial contact is not actually the time to make your pitch unless you want to risk turning some leads off. Warm up and nurture leads by offering them something of value for nothing, such as a free resource, whitepaper, or consultation.
End on a clear call-to-action. Give leads a reason to get back in touch. Offer to schedule a meeting so you can explain how they can make the most of the free resource you just sent them.
By beginning your lead qualifying process with this automated and strategic method, you’ll be able to easily book meetings where you can make your actual pitch.
Sales Follow-Up Timeline: When to Send Follow-Up Emails
You’ve made initial contact, had a formal meeting where you made your pitch, and feel confident about your lead. But remember that only 2% of first meetings end in a sale. More than likely, you need a consistent sales follow-up process to bring the deal home.
However, if your initial email (or even your post-pitch follow-up) receives a “no” response, don’t give up just yet. A popular statistic confirmed by multiple studies reveals that 80% of leads will say “no” to an offer five times before they eventually say “yes.” Sending follow-up emails at strategic times is therefore a necessary and common part of the process.
If you aren’t already using one, you should use a CRM tool or email tracking app to help you complete the next steps. Knowing whether or not your emails remain unopened or not will influence when you send a follow-up message, as well as what kind of message to send. This list of 10+ best email tracking apps for Gmail and Outlook can help get you started.
Free E-Book: Click here to download LeadBoxer’s free E-Book, “7 Things to Consider in an Email Tracking App”
Here’s a list of the kinds of follow-up messages to send and when to send them:
After You’ve Formally Met and Made Your Pitch
By now, you’ve hopefully had a meeting where you formally made your pitch and the lead was qualified enough to continue the sales process. You’ll then need to send a post-pitch follow-up in order to carry you to the next stage. Follow up 1-2 days later with a message like this:
Show your appreciation. Quickly thank the lead for meeting or speaking with you.
Review their pain point. Restate any of the lead’s pain points that arose during the meeting and how your product or service can solve those problems.
Answer any questions raised during the meeting. If you promised to look into a lead’s problem or question during the meeting, review your findings now. This is also a good time to attach a particular resource, such as a whitepaper, that would address the lead’s question or pain point.
End on a call-to-action. Don’t let a good thing go to waste. Be direct in asking the lead how they would like to move forward.
When the Lead Needs to Consult with Their Supervisor
Sometimes the lead you pitched may need to consult a supervisor before making the final decision to buy. In this scenario, you’d want to follow up 4-5 days after making the pitch. This gives the lead enough time to speak with their team. Use this structure to reach out:
Show your appreciation. As with the first follow-up email, quickly thank the lead for meeting or speaking with you.
Reference the boss. Ask what their colleague or higher-up thought of your proposal.
Make a clear call-to-action. Ask for a quick follow-up meeting to discuss the next steps.
When the Lead Opened Your Email But Didn’t Respond
Your CRM tool or email tracking app shows that the lead opened your email or clicked a link or attachment inside but didn’t respond. This might happen when you try to make initial contact, or if you send along an additional resource after making your pitch. Contact them soon (within 1-2 days) with the following message:
Ask how they liked the resource
A simple “How are you enjoying XYZ whitepaper?” will do.
Offer to walk them through it. Mention how you can help them get the most out of the resource in order to solve their business problem.
End on a call-to-action. Offer a time and date when you can talk them through their questions.
When You Need to Follow Up the Unanswered Follow-Up
If after a few more days your follow-up remains unanswered, try engaging them with more valuable content. For businesses that create blog posts or whitepapers as part of their content marketing strategy, this is a fairly pain-free step. Use this template for composing your email:
Ask again if they’ve taken a look at your resource. Even if they haven’t responded to your first follow-up, remind them of the valuable asset you originally offered them.
Offer another resource. A second article or piece of content from your company’s website may be a better fit for answering this lead’s questions.
Ask how to move forward. As always, end on a clear call-to-action, in this case by asking if they’re still interested in your product or service and would like to discuss how to move forward.
When It’s Time to Break Things Off
It’s a bummer, but it happens. After several unanswered and unopened emails, it’s probably time to break things off. However, some sales reps report that this email gets as much as a 76% response rate. Consider the following structure to make the most of a graceful exit:
Mention that you haven’t been able to get in touch. Keep this light and non-judgemental, or you risk putting off the lead. Things happen, and maybe they’ve just been really busy.
Ask if there’s a better time to connect. Fiscal years, budget planning, or waiting on additional sources of funding can play a huge role in whether or not your offer can even be considered at present.
Ask to close their file. If timing doesn’t play a role in their decision, ask the lead if you can close their file. This final call-to-action is sometimes enough to elicit the response of an interested lead who has simply been too busy.
With any of these follow-up emails, a CRM tool or email productivity app will allow you to compose your messages in advance. You can then schedule them to send at the desired time or in the event that one of your previous follow-ups is unopened or unanswered.
Sales Follow-Up Tips & Techniques
The following tips and techniques can help optimize your sales follow-up process, no matter where you are in the pipeline.
Schedule and Automate Follow-Ups…
Scheduling your responses to send according to the timeline above is essential for keeping your sales process moving. Many CRM or email productivity tools will allow you to compose and schedule emails to send at a later date, or in the event that a previous email went unanswered.
…But Don’t Automate Email Content
While it’s a good idea to consult email templates for how to structure your responses, avoid leaning too heavily on the same template and language for every lead. People know when they’re receiving a formulaic response and may opt to pass on your offer. Taking the time to craft a personalized response shows how much you value their potential partnership.
Keep Emails Brief
In a world where inboxes are becoming increasingly cluttered and attention spans increasingly short, it’s best to keep your emails to the point. Boomerang, a provider of email productivity software, did a study on over 40 million emails to find out what the response rates were for different email lengths:
Boomerang’s results show that there’s a bell curve to response for email lengths. Write an email that’s too short or too long and you decrease your chances of getting a response. The sweet spot for email length is between 50 and 125 words, which earn response rates of 50% or more.
Avoid Bland Statements
Opening statements like “I wanted to circle back…” are tired and signal that you don’t have a clear reason for getting in touch. Be direct instead, often by referencing the lead’s previously established pain point and how you can solve it.
Back Up Your Claims
It’s not enough to claim that you can solve a lead’s pain point. Back up your statement with a compelling result, metric, or customer testimonial. This helps establish trust between you and your lead at every stage of the sales process.
Stay Human
This long-standing advice is as true as ever: remember that you’re a human first and a salesperson second. The same goes for your lead.
Approach them with the same respect and understanding that you would afford a friend, colleague, or acquaintance. Not only will you see better results, but you may also see an increase in your own personal job satisfaction.
While the sales follow-up process is relatively straightforward, you quickly learn that there are a lot of moving parts. The right tools will help you automate and optimize the process for better results and better account expansion. While there are countless options out there, here are a five to get your search started:
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer features automated solutions for many of the steps covered in this article. The tool collects and populates contact information for leads that visit your site, open your newsletters, or exhibit other online behaviors.
It then assigns leads a score to help you decide if you want to continue the sales process with them. There’s also an alert function so you know the best time to reach out and make initial contact. Once you do, LeadBoxer’s Gmail extension makes it easy to track and analyze all the emails you send.
HubSpot
HubSpot’s CRM has much of the functionality you need to automate your sales follow-up process. The interface features a kanban-style board so you can quickly see which stage of the sales pipeline each lead is in.
You can also schedule personalized emails, track opens and downloads so you can respond immediately, measure the performance of email templates, and show availability for easy scheduling.
Agile CRM
Like HubSpot, Agile CRM allows you to track which phase of the sales process each lead is in.
It records each interaction with the lead and creates events for calls, meetings, follow-ups, and more. On top of that, it analyzes lead behavior and calculates a leadscore so you can decide when and how to proceed.
Gmelius
Gmelius is a free solution for someone who wants a lightweight tool seamlessly integrated with their Gmail inbox. The tool tracks emails and delivers instant feedback so you can send the right follow-up.
You can even see which templates are most effective, then personalize and schedule them easily. Leadscores and contact overviews are not a feature, but Gmelius can be integrated with a more full-service CRM to cover all your bases.
Pipedrive
Like Gmelius, Pipedrive focuses on a few core strengths for sales teams that prefer a lightweight tool. Its key features include tracking emails and calls, an interface that provides a streamlined overview of where everyone is in the sales process, and prioritized follow-up tasks that automatically shuffle to the top of your to-do list.
However, emails cannot be composed and scheduled to send automatically and there’s little insight into how likely your contact is to buy.
Each sales team will have different needs and considerations. No matter how much or how little automation and functionality you want, there’s likely a reasonably priced (or free) tool that will optimize your sales follow-up process.
What to Do After Closing a Sale
You did it. With the help of the right tool, you were able to successfully nurture your lead and close the sale. However, the sales follow-up process doesn’t end there. Here are a few tips for making the most of the deal and laying the groundwork for a second sale:
Send a Thank You Note
While this step is hopefully common sense, it’s important enough to warrant repeating. Send a quick but heartfelt thank you note immediately after finalizing the deal. By thanking your customer for doing business together, you ensure a lasting partnership (ie. a repeat customer).
Check-In
After your new customer has had time to get to know your product or service, reach out to see how they’re enjoying it. Soliciting feedback is also useful for improving your product and your customer experience. This step establishes trust and grows the relationship in preparation for the next step.
Make a Second Sale
By developing a relationship with your customer, you will have hopefully primed them to resign their contract automatically. If they don’t need to resign a contract but there’s an opportunity to make an additional sale, now is the time to start that process. The work you’ve done to create your first follow-up process will help you do it.
Start Building Your Automated Sales Follow-Up Process
Reaching out to leads at the right time and with the right message can make or break your sales process.
From capturing and qualifying leads to making contact and setting meetings, a high-converting sales follow-up process can have a lot of steps and moving parts. It can quickly become too much to manage on your own, unless you like inputting data into spreadsheets and setting countless reminders on your calendar.
Luckily, the right tool for your needs can streamline much of the process. Setting alerts, tracking unanswered emails, and sending previously composed emails at scheduled times can simplify your job and allow you to focus on what matters, aka communicating in a compelling, meaningful, and human way.
A MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is a lead that matches with one of your customer personas and, most importantly, has engaged with your business and shown interest in your product. Hence, such leads can be termed Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
A SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) is a lead ready to become your prospective customer and who has been vetted by the marketing team. In short, this is lead who is prepared to make a purchase. Hence, such leads are Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).
Difference between an MQL and an SQL is the lead’s intent to buy. Regardless of your business, both types of leads are essential to your pipeline. Still, it’s important to differentiate between those two to know where to allocate your time and what sort marketing efforts to implement to keep your leads flowing.
In this blog post, we will go through mql and sql definitions, mql vs sql differences, and talk about lead transition of how mql becomes an sql.
What is MQL?
The acronym MQL stands for “Marketing Qualified Lead”
In the shortest definition we could find, courtesy of Hubspot, an MQL is a person who is more likely to become a customer when compared to a typical person.
Think of it this way: Many people may connect with your company. They may visit your website, attend your webinars, or chat with you at a trade show.
For some of these people, the products and services you offer are exactly what they’re looking for. But for others, your product or service may not be a good fit. They may never be in the position to buy anything from you at all.
The people in that first group — those who are interested and have the potential to buy your product — are considered as MQLs.
Separating MQLs from unqualified leads typically involves using a lead-scoring program. LeadBoxer assigns a score based on lead interactions and behavior with your business, between 1- 100.
This score can be efficient for ranking a lead’s sales readiness in your pipeline.
What is SQL?
The acronym SQL stands for “Sales Qualified Lead.”
This person has not only shown a deep interest in your products and services, but they have also shown some intent to purchase. They not only like what you offer but also need to buy what you sell. They also may need to make that purchase soon.
While defining an MQL can be done through automated software that assigns scores, defining an SQL is a little trickier. To move leads to sales, this involves a conversation between someone in sales and the potential lead.
An SQL is someone in the marketing funnel:-
Who may has some specific questions about how your product works or how much it costs.
Who may not understand how your product fits into their other products.
Who may not be entirely sure the solution is right for them.
Who may be unable to find the answers they need in the marketing materials they’ve seen.
At the end of that discussion, if the salesperson senses a real opportunity, this he pass leads to sales hence moving mql to an sql.
MQL vs SQL: What’s The Difference
Difference between MQLs and SQLs is essential because it ensures sales team to spend time on right qualified leads for sales, that can lead to more efficient sales processes and better conversion rates.
Also, at the same time, it helps the marketing team to understand which marketing channels and what type of marketing angle can bring in more qualified leads for their business goals. Hence they become more efficient in nurturing every lead.
Therefore understanding the difference between mql and sql helps a business drive both marketing and sales efforts in the right direction.
1) Decision-Making Stage
As you should know, there are various stages of the funnel that leads goes through before a lead becomes an MQL and later an SQL.
MQLs are typically at an earlier stage of the decision-making process. They are aware of their problem and know there are solutions out there in the market to help them.
Hence, you can say MQLs are in a sales funnel’s ‘awareness’ stage. They are more in a ‘consideration’ stage because they are interested in your company’s products or services but not ready for sales yet. Also, they have engaged with your marketing content, such as downloading an e-book, signing up for a webinar, or subscribing to a newsletter.
However, they have not yet clearly intended to purchase or enter a sales conversation. Most of your MQLs are open to options and might not be interested in a purchase right away. Basically they are in a lead nurturing phase.
Whereas SQLs are in the bottom stage of the sales funnel, they are in the ‘Decision Making’ stage. They might not even engaged with marketing content but have also taken actions that indicate a readiness to consider a purchase, such as requesting a product demonstration, filling out a contact form with specific inquiries, or engaging directly with sales material.
Their decision-making is more focused on selecting a vendor or product, comparing different offerings, and making a final purchasing decision.
2) Top of Funnel vs Bottom of Funnel
Another great way to differentiate MQL vs SQL is the type of marketing content they interact with.
MQLs are more about seeking information and educating themselves, they are trying to understand their problem better and are looking for potential solutions. They interact with top of the marketing funnel lead magnets and content like:-
Reading your blog post on ‘Best X Tools for lead generation’
Signing up for your lead magnet, which said ‘Generate Leads on Automation’
Signing up for your newsletter
Following you on social media
On the other side, SQLs are more focused on consuming content that targets the bottom of the bottom-of-the-funnel audience. The content can be relevant to selecting a vendor or product, comparing different offerings, and making a final purchasing decision. For example:-
Reading your blog posts on ‘Your Tool vs Competitor Tool’ or ‘X Alternatives For Competitor 1’
Requesting for a demo call on your website
Enquiring for your product features on social media (or) through contact form
Engaging and interacting with sales materials, which are more precise and designed for a bottom-of-funnel audience, indicates and differentiates the lead as an SQL.
3) BANT Qualified
BANT is a system (or) framework for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. It’s a B2B framework used by sales reps to qualify leads and prospects during their journey, and it can be applied while assessing MQLs vs SQLs.
It’s another great way to distinguish between lead as an MQL (or) SQL
If a lead is BANT qualified, it’s an SQL rather than an MQL.
In the following, let’s see how the BANT looks different for MQLs and SQLs.
For MQL’s:-
Budget:- At the MQL stage, the potential customer may not have a defined budget yet. Maybe they are still exploring solutions and may not know how much they should spend on their answer.
Authority:- If a mid-size business’s junior or senior executive employee interacts with your business, they might not have the authority to make a final purchasing decision for their organization.
Need:- The need for leads to purchase your product depends on their pain points and how your product (or) service can help them solve them. Also, it is majorly important for your marketing strategy to define their pain points and educate them. For an MQL, some might not be aware of these pain points; hence, there is a long way to go to educate them.
Timeline:- MQLs typically do not have a set timeline for making a purchase and are not under pressure to make an immediate decision.
For SQL’s:-
Budget:- SQLs are expected to have a clearer picture of their budget or at least have a range in mind. Most importantly, they can afford your product or service. It’s just that sales teams have to negotiate with them on pricing.
Authority:- SQLs are usually the stakeholders of the company or someone from an organization responsible for their final purchasing decision. Hence, they have the authority to buy from you.
Need:- SQL’s know their problems and what are the existing solutions for their issues in the market. Their pain points are clear, and often, it nails down to what specific features and benefits your product offers to help them feel the need to choose you over your competitors.
Timeline:- SQLs have a defined timeline to make the purchase. By offering them discounts and any other benefits with their purchase, they are more likely to buy immediately.
Transitioning a Lead from MQL to SQL
Transitioning an MQL to SQL in your pipeline isn’t something that will happen on your own. Your marketing and sales teams must communicate and coordinate to make this happen.
If you’re using software like LeadBoxer to track leads, it becomes easier to note down the MQLs with a higher probability of becoming a sales lead through lead scoring.
However, lead scoring is a critical process most businesses use while transitioning a lead from MQL to SQL.
Now, this involves:-
Setting Up a Scoring System: As you identify the lead actions and lead behavior, you assign points/scores to each interaction. For example, downloading an e-book might score lower than requesting a product demo.
Demographic Information: As we discussed earlier, not every lead has the authority to purchase even though they match your ideal customer profile. Factors like job title, industry, company size, and location can significantly determine the lead’s potential to buy.
Engagement Scoring: Track how leads interact with your emails, social media, and blog posts. Repetitive and frequent interactions tell you that leads in your system are MQLs, and some might be ready to be SQL.
Lead Score Thresholds: Establishing a threshold score is essential to help sales teams understand when a lead is ready to move to SQL. This threshold should be based on previous data of information with your business and marketing content.
Regular Review: Sometimes, SQLs who get on a call with you are not ready to purchase. Hence, do not fill your pipelines with leads with improper attribution. It’s essential to review and adjust your scoring criteria continuously. The best way to make it happen is to arrange regular meetings with both sales and marketing teams to help them understand better lead qualifications to help your business grow.
How LeadBoxer can help you transition MQL to SQL:-
One-time visitors to your website are most likely not a lead for your product (or) service. Those returning visitors who interact with your content are the ones who can termed as leads. Using LeadBoxer’s lead identification feature, you can specify what is a lead for you, and it identifies such specific visitors.
As these leads interact increasingly with your business, they can later be qualified as an MQL or SQL. Hence, using a leads scoring system and enriching those leads are great ways to qualify and differentiate leads.
For example, you know that leads interacting with Top-of-funnel marketing content (Reading your blogs) can be termed MQL, and leads interacting with Bottom-of-funnel content (Requesting demos) can be termed SQL.
Both MQLs and SQLs need to be in a lead management cycle where, with workflow automation, you retarget MQL leads with your marketing (It can be through emails or retargeted ads), whereas SQLs are given to the sales team to contact. Integrating your lead management tool with your existing CRM makes it more accessible.
As MQLs are being retargeted, potential buyers in your MQL segment will start to interact more with your business, like reading your email and asking questions with your marketing teams.
Once these MQLs are warmed up, Lead scoring suggests they are ready to move to SQL. Then, you move those leads and ask your sales teams to contact them.
Remember, not all SQLs will convert. The ones who didn’t convert should be moved to MQLs again so that the marketing team can nurture them with more marketing material.
Conclusion
We knew from the start that the distinction between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) is crucial for the efficiency of your sales funnel and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
Differentiation MQL vs SQL doesn’t mean you need to neglect one set of leads, both are important for a b2b lead generation. Thus, both marketing and sales teams need to identify these leads and not get stuck up with the thought that ‘I am not gonna handle their lead’
Effective communication and coordination are essential between the sales and marketing teams to identify, nurture, and pitch their leads. Here, tools LeadBoxer are going to help them successfully.
Have leads and customers opened your email? If so, when, and what links they click? This is valuable information for Sales teams. With this information, you can find out if your emails are actually being read, and pinpoint the optimal for a follow-up.
Tracking emails is nothing new. Popular email marketing platforms like MailChimp and Constant Contact have been providing statistics on open and click rates for years. What these platforms lack however, is the crucial ability to track a lead’s email interaction history over the entire course of their customer journey.
This is where email tracking software can provide Sales teams a much-needed edge in closing deals
With the right email tracking software, you’ll be able to identify when, exactly, a lead has opened your email, who opened it, and what pages they viewed since opening that email.
To help introduce you to email tracking software, we’ve put together this in-depth guide to cover what information you can learn from email tracking, how you can use that information, email tracking software options, how to setup email tracking, and a few tips for success.
What Can You Find Out Using Email Tracking & How You Can Use This Information?
With email tracking, you can find out the following information:
If Someone Has Opened Your Email
The first thing you can learn is if someone has opened your email.
This tells you if you’re sending to the correct email address and if the email subject your using is capturing the recipient’s attention. If they don’t open your email, try to follow up and/or use a different subject line in the future.
You can also identify how many times a person has opened an email and which people have opened the most emails. This allows you to identify the warmest leads and pinpoint which people you should follow up with first/spend the most time contacting or calling. Best kept secret: do not waste time on people who aren’t interested.
Who Opened Your Email
As a salesperson, you often have to navigate through a few different positions at a company before finding the person who can actually make a purchasing decision (DMU or decision-making-unit). With email tracking, you can identify other people that may be opening the email and reach out to them directly.
What Time They Opened Your Email
If you find that a specific person opens your email in the morning, sending to them again at that time will increase your chance of capturing their attention.
If you find most of your list opens your emails at a specific time, send future emails at the time to increase engagement.
Additionally, you can pinpoint exactly when your emails are being opened and decide if now is the right time to follow up. In many cases, it’s best to reach out right away when the person is already thinking about you versus interrupting them when they’re focused on something else. Extensive statistics tell us that “pizza is best eaten hot”. In other words, people at work are making decisions, and their interest is the most valuable during that decision-making process.
Where They Opened Your Email
If someone opens your email in say Hawaii or some other tropical resort, you can probably guarantee they’re on vacation. It might be best to follow up a week or two in advance when they return from vacation and will have the time to respond to your email.
Additionally, some email tracking platforms will track the following:
What Pages the Person Has Visited on Your Website After Clicking via Your Email
Software such as LeadBoxer and SharpSpring (which we’ll discuss in further detail below) take tracking a step further and identify which pages the person visits after clicking a link in your email.
For example, in the email, the person may click on any link to your latest blog post. But from there, they then navigate to your features page and pricing page. This is all tracked and it can allow you to identify when to follow up, and on what subject.
Email Tracking Software Options
Now, let’s cover a few email tracking platforms that will enable you to track emails at a deeper level than most email marketing services.
This article doesn’t cover every single option out there. But, it does list some of the major players and a few different options based on how in-depth you’d like to go with your tracking.
A few of these options will integrate with Gmail or Outlook only, while a few others can be used with any email client or service you are using.
LeadBoxer
We’ll start this list of software with an introduction to ourselves and our email tracking tool so you know who we are and what LeadBoxer does. LeadBoxer is a lead analytics platform that allows you to see who visits your website, what company they work for, lists that person’s contact information and more.
All of this information is then organized into your “LeadBoard” and each of your different leads are given a score to gauge how engaged they are with your company:
Additionally, email opens and click-throughs can also be tracked. From there, any visits to other pages on your website can be tracked and each action is shown in the history for that lead:
This allows you to see every action that the person has taken since first opening your email.
You can use this information to identify when will be the best time to follow up (for example, if that person has visited your pricing page). You can also identify what emails work, which ones don’t, and where your visitors tend to go after clicking through via your email.
LeadBoxer tracks all of this activity via a tracking pixel (which we’ll discuss how to implement further below)
Therefore, LeadBoxer can be used with any email client or email marketing platform you are using. All you have to is add the tracking pixel link to any links inside your email that you like to track.
This allows you to track activity and identify leads at scale. Pricing starts at $250/month for SMEs. Custom packages are available for larger organizations.
SharpSpring is a full CRM and email marketing platform. With the tool, you can manage contacts, customer relationships, create a content calendar, and send out emails all from the same tool.
In addition to tracking email opens and link clicks, SharpSpring will also track website activity. Therefore, you can see which leads have opened your email and which pages they may have visited directly after viewing your email (or at a later time).
This is all organized into what’s called the “Life of the Lead”. This page shows the entire history of the lead’s interaction with your company. It lists what emails the person has opened, what pages they’ve visited, and so on.
All of this information is then used to create a Lead Score that can be used to identify how engaged that person is and whether or not you should reach out to them.
SharpSpring will be great for teams that want to scale their sales follow up efforts and would like a tool that combines CRM and email automation. However, that amount of power won’t come cheap.
SharpSpring’s plans start at $450/month (for up to 1,500 contacts). Pricing goes up from there based on the number of contacts you have.
Hubspot Sales
Hubspot Sales’ email tracking allows you to track email opens straight from your Gmail or Outlook account. Setup with Gmail will require you to allow Hubspot to integrate with your inbox. This is done by installing an extension to Google Chrome.
This extension can be clicked to see who has opened your emails and who hasn’t. A notification will also popup when the recipient has opened the email:
You can also check the history of a lead in the Hubspot dashboard:
Hubspot’s email tracking feature is free to use to track up to 200 email opens. From there, paid plans for Hubspot Sales start at $50/month.
Hubspot is great for sales people who need a simple approach and want to track opens in Gmail or Outlook. However, it lacks the in-depth details of a platform such as LeadBoxer or SharpSpring.
Additionally, it can only be used with Gmail or Outlook. It can not be used with an email service such as MailChimp.
Yet Another Mail Merge
If you send a lot of emails from Gmail and want to track opens, Yet Another Mail Merge can help speed up your process.
Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM for short) integrates with Google Sheets. To use the add-on, you would create a Google Sheet with information for each person you want to reach out to (separated by row). You would include their email, but you can also include any custom information (such as their name, company, role, etc.).
Then, you can send out an email and use YAMM’s tags to insert that information. For example, you might say “Hey <>” in your email. YAMM will insert the name that you set for that email. This works similar to MailChimp’s “Merge Tags”.
Additionally, the tool will track who has opened your email, who hasn’t, and who has responded. This is all documented right in the Google Sheet you’re working in. You can then create a follow up directly in that Google Sheet and send from a template you create in Gmail.
The tool is great for speeding up your process if you currently use Gmail to reach out to leads. However, it will only work with Gmail and it won’t track information on the life of the lead. Thus, it will be difficult for teams to use to scale.
Yesware
Yesware is a tool that will work with Gmail and Outlook only. It is a paid application that starts at $12/month and is installed via a Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox extension.
The tool is similar to Hubspot’s email tracker. Email tracking can be turned on for a specific email by checking the Track box when using the email composer. However, Yesware does take over your inbox and change the look and layout:
From your email inbox, you can check tracking, templates, and create follow up drip campaigns. Additionally, you can also set reminders for email (much like the way Boomerang works).
The tool is powerful but is a bit intrusive. Some people may not like the fact that it will change their inbox interface. Additionally, the tool can’t be used with email marketing platforms such as MailChimp to track emails at scale.
Mixmax
Mixmax is another email tracker that installs via a Chrome Extension. It is not available via Mozilla Firefox or Safari, however.
One of the unique features of Mixmax is the “Enhance” feature inside the email composer of Gmail. Clicking this button will bring up a list of options that will allow you to share calendar availability, create a calendar invite, add a poll, add a custom CTA button, and more directly from the email composer.
Again, just like Hubspot and Yesware, email tracking can be enabled on a per-email basis. With Mixmax, you can do this by clicking the “Track” icon when composing an email. By default, this will stay enabled until you disable it for a particular email.
Mixmax can be used for free. However, a link will be placed at the end of each email that says “Sent by Mixmax”:
You can remove this link, but you will have to do so everytime you create a new email. Paid plans start at $12/month.
Mixmax will be good for anyone that uses Gmail and likes the features of a tool like Yesware but doesn’t want the intrusive interface that Yesware adds to Gmail. Again, Mixmax will only work with Gmail and can’t be used with email marketing platforms such as MailChimp to track leads at scale.
How to Setup Email Tracking (with an Email Tracking Pixel)
Setting up email tracking is different with each email tracking software. Some companies, such as Hubspot, have a Chrome Extension that will set this up for you if you track emails via Gmail. But as we mentioned above, tools like Hubspot can be a bit limited.
So we want to briefly cover how to setup email tracking with LeadBoxer so that you can track leads over the course of a person’s entire customer journey.
In order to track email opens, LeadBoxer uses a tracking pixel
This tracking pixel is a transparent image with the size of 1×1 pixels that can be embedded in an email. Then, once someone opens that email, the image is downloaded. This is how email tracking can identify when an email has been opened.
From this download, it’s also possible to tell the time and date the email was opened, how many times the email has been opened, and from what type of device the email was opened on.
From with LeadBoxer, this pixel can be generated and needs to be added to the source code of your emails (example below):
There are 3 parameters within this snippet of code that can to be set: the dataset ID, Campaign Name, and the email of the recipient. The recipient’s email can be added using a Merge tag. This tag will dynamically add a person’s email from your list to this link so that their activity can be tracked. Our generator can be used to easily create your tracking pixel.
For more information on these parameters, Merge tags and using the generator, please visit this article.
Tracking email clicks
The tracking pixel will take care of tracking email opens and reads. From there, to track link clicks and identify customers with it, parameters with merge needs to be added to any link in your email that you’d like to track.
Here’s how the URL will look once the code has been added and a person clicks on that link:
Once the code is added, LeadBoxer will be able to begin collecting data. For example, when a person opens that specific email, this action will be added to the person’s existing customer journey.
This way, you will know exactly when a person has clicked your email and you’ll be able to see their entire history. Also, once this person clicks through via email, they are then identified for all past, present, and future behavior.
Email Tracking Limitations
Of course, there are limitations when it comes to email tracking. The main ones include:
Images Need to be Enabled
With any email tracking software that relies on a tracking pixel to identify opens, in order for email tracking to work, image loading must be enabled by the person’s email client.
Some email clients block external images by default or can be set by the user to not load when opening an email. If this is the case, the pixel will not be loaded and there will be no way to identify whether or not that email was opened (or any other information that can be gather using email tracking).
Your Pixel Could Be Blocked
Just as there is email tracking software, there is also software to prevent email tracking. Pixel Block and Ugly Email will both prevent the email tracking pixel from being loaded. Ugly Email will also let the recipient know if you are using email tracking software and can even identify which software the sender is using.
While it may be rare that your recipients will use an application like this, it’s something to be aware of.
Email Tracking Tips & Best Practices
Lastly, we want to cover a few tips to make email tracking easier for you and hopefully, more successful:
Use Email Templates
Using email templates can help save time when adding tracking links to your email and help you follow up to leads quicker.
For one, having a few email templates that you can edit will save you time having to insert the tracking pixel code to links within the email that never change (for example, a CTA at the bottom of your email).
Additionally, having a few emails ready to go when you need to follow up with a lead will allow you to touch base quicker versus having to waste time trying to think of what to say.
Test Thoroughly
Before sending any tracked emails, make sure to test that everything is working correctly. First, send a tracked email to yourself or other members on your team to ensure that email opens and other track information is being identified.
Encourage Recipient’s to Whitelist Your Email
Whitelisting is an action that can be completed in a person’s inbox to ensure that emails from a specific email address are received and that images are downloaded.
By encouraging your recipient’s to whitelist your email address, you can ensure your emails are being delivered and that images are being download. Therefore, the tracking pixel will also be download, allowing you to track the recipient’s email and web activity.
Develop a Follow Up Strategy
Decide on a follow up strategy before you even send an email to any of your “hot” leads. That way, when someone opens your email or completes another specific action, you’ll already know what to do next.
Decide when will be the best time to follow up. For example, how many times do you want the recipient to open the email before following up? Or, how much time do you want to wait after they’ve opened the email?
Additionally, have some follow up emails already created and ready to go. This will help to save time and allow you to follow up quickly.
LeadBoxer now officially integrates with Zapier, meaning you can now connect it to 1,000 other web tools.
With workflow automation tool Zapier, you can set up your own codeless integrations called “Zaps”. Zaps will automatically send information from one tool to another, so you’ll spend less time manually transferring data between your business tools and can dedicate more focus to creative, big picture tasks.
LeadBoxer offers a Zapier integration so that you can use LeadBoxer data with almost any of your favorite software and sales tools without being a developer.
What does that look like in practice?
It means you can setup a LeadBoxer account, collect leads, and send them where they need to go. For example; integration with SalesForce. LeadBoxer will work to identify leads on your site and feed them into your SalesForce CRM, so that they are visible to your sales team.
Try Out Our Pre-Made Integrations
No matter what other apps you use, chances are LeadBoxer integrates with them via Zapier. Here are some of the most popular integrations that LeadBoxer users already use to be more productive.
How To Automate LeadBoxer with Zapier
Sign up for a LeadBoxer account, and make sure you have a Zapier account
GDPR compliant lead generation means collecting, processing, and storing leads according to the GDPR. This means putting lead qualification materials in place. These materials, consist of relevant content, and touch-points. Touchpoints range from downloads, trial sign-ups, contact forms and logins through newsletters, emails, and social media. A third element is data-processing, which consists of CRM (customer relation management) software and audience segmentation, which allows you to monitor sales cycles, and identify upsell opportunities. Click here to read an in-depth treatment of touchpoints for sales and marketing purposes.
GDPR Compliance
In May 2018 GDRP compliance arrives. What this essentially means is
1. you need to have your data secured properly and 2. the (general) Privacy disclaimers most websites currently use will no longer be sufficient.
What do I actually need to do?
1. Perform a serious audit on how your data is stored/ secured/ encrypted, and improve where necessary 2. Customize your Privacy statement – which should not be generic boilerplate, but needs to be tailor-made for your business. 3. Assign a person responsible for communications
What is the GDPR?
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation
In this article we try to explain and what it is, and how to comply.
The GDPR regulation was adopted in April 2016, and takes effect in May 2018. It replaces the previous Directive, covers all EU member-countries, and does not require individual countries to implement, interpret, etc.
The GDPR applies to the collection and storage of data regarding people residing in the EU, even if your organisation is outside of the EU
Definitions / roles
Any tool or service that collects and stores data from your online customers, leads, prospects, visitors, etc (on your behalf) is called the data processor, and your organisation is defined as the data controller.
What Does It All Come Down To?
In terms of communication with people in your database, two things:
As a company that collects data from your online users, you are the Data Controller. As such you have the following main responsibilities;
Make it clear what you are collecting and why. According to the European Commission “personal data is any information that can be used to identify an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information”, or even a computer’s IP address, if it can be used to identify an individual.
Grant the person rights to control their personal data Give people the opportunity to file a complaint, have their data removed (deleted), stop tracking this person and provide a point of contact to a real person who can be contacted through your company website. In other words: the public now has the right to ask you – what information do you have about me?, and to request that you delete the information. Therefore, you need to appoint people to communicate with the public (within 72 hours) and process “right to forget” requests. The public may ask or communicate things such as –
what information do you have about me?
i want you to delete me from your system(s)
i don’t want you to store my data – going forward
Secure your data Additional (important) aspects: encrypt personal data, and have data in a format that can be exported. Put consent documentation in place, and ensure that you are able to quickly announce breaches.
GDPR in Depth
The General Data Protection Regulation is a regulation by which the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. Click here to read about GDRP in wikipedia.
Informing the Public What Data Is Collected
Article 13 of the GDPR specifies what information must be provided to the public when their personal data is collected. Similarly, Article 12 states that you need to provide:
an “easily visible, intelligible and clearly legible….and meaningful overview of the intended processing”. In other words, as we mentioned above, no blanket Privacy principles. Everybody has to be able to read and understand your Privacy statement.
In short, The GDPR increases the scope of information required in your Privacy notice while demanding that the notice be “concise” (detailed).
Telling the Public How & Why the Data Is Collected and Processed
The question you are expected to answer on your website is: what are the purposes and legal basis for the processing data (for example, for purposes of lead generation). You (also) need to explain why the data is processed. For example, the purpose is to improve communication with customers. There needs to be some legal basis meaning, for example, that the processing is based on legitimate interests, details of which should be explained.
To repeat; this needs to be present in you publicly visible privacy statement
You will need to appoint (identify) a person in your organization who can be contacted directly by a member of the public, and who can provide and delete personal data upon request. This is called ‘right to forget’ – it is the right for consumers to have their data erased.
you need to provide the identity and the contact details of the controller (your company) and
the (contact) details of the data processor – being LeadBoxer if you are a client of ours
The point is you need to provide details of persons whom the public can contact.
Data Protection
A key element in being GDPR compliant, is making sure your data is protected properly. This includes but is not limited to:
The transfer of this data between servers, computers, browsers, etc.
The encryption of this data
How long will the data be stored for
Where is the data stored (geograpically)
How customers can obtain the data.
etc.
You don’t have to publish these in the policy, but make sure they are being taken care of.
Conclusion – Plan Well and Avoid Stiff Fines
As a company specialized in B2B lead qualification for Sales and Marketing, we take the GDRP very seriously. We recommend that you plan well do not underestimate the amount of time / resources needed to properly assess and implement your responsibilities. In terms of time – you will probably need 40 hours to completely research and document your tasks and requirements. Do not wait – begin planning as soon as possible.
Fines for GDRP non-compliancy are serious, from a lower level of €10 million and 2% of last year’s annual revenue, to an upper limit of €20 and 4% of last year’s annual revenue.What Does It All Come Down To?
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Lead generation, like almost everything in the business world, is a fluid and ever-changing paradigm. Sticking doggedly to strategies that worked in 2015 may result in a business seeing a depressing decline in lead generation numbers in 2017. Staying ahead of the game is crucial to quality lead generation in a competitive marketplace, and in order to do so, it stands to reason that a business should be constantly analysing the range of lead generation strategies that are available to them, in order to ascertain which are the most successful, and which will suit their business model most comfortably.
In order to analyse which lead generation strategies are going to be the most useful and profitable for a given business, it is necessary to break down which strategies tend to be the most successful. There are numerous channels used by B2B marketers to generate leads, including online directories, re-targeted adverts, rented lists, live events and affiliate marketing, but there are four channels which stand out as being the most efficacious. A number of different surveys have been undertaken,and top spot tends to differ based upon which institution organised the poll, but there are four channels which consistently register as the strongest: Email Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Marketing and Content Marketing.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing has been a mainstay of lead generation for two decades now, but the proliferation of email sign ups and heavy spamming means that there are diminishing returns for traditional email marketing techniques. However, new advances in marketing automation mean that many businesses have had great success in using this refined version of an old technique. Marketing automation software allows email marketing to be both automated and, crucially, targeted and personalised to each potential client, by using data from the business’s CRM and metadata from their website and landing page. Instead of ‘spamming’ thousands of emails to every person who has ‘signed up’, i.e. entered their email address into your system, each person will receive a marketing email that seems to anticipate their needs. A fine example of this is the case of Paper Style, a business that sells wedding cards and invitations. They created a dual marketing sequence, split by whether the potential customer was buying for their own wedding, or for a friend’s. Each sequence had its own order, which was devised based on an analysis of their previous sales data. Brides-to-be, for example, would require different products than Maids-of-Honour; the former purchasing wedding invitations, for example, and the latter bridal shower invitations. The order in which they purchase products also tended to be sequential, with, for example, wedding invitations first and ‘Thank You’ cards last. By devising these two parallel marketing sequences, every potential customer who had entered their details could be, by way of an initial email, sorted into the appropriate marketing sequence. This then allowed the automated marketing system to send personalised marketing emails which seemed, to the customer, to anticipate their needs every step of the way. The results for Paper Style spoke for themselves, with, among others, an impressive 330 % uptick in revenue-per-mail.
Search Marketing
Search marketing is a product of the paradigm shift in marketing and sales that has occurred over the last two decades due to the monolithic growth of the Internet, and in particular Google. The fact of the matter is that, for many people, the first point of call when looking for a new service or product is a Google search. This being the case, achieving and maintaining optimum organicSEO rankings on Google is one of the key channels for generating leads. The ever-evolving complexity of Google’s ranking algorithms means that it is a great deal more difficult to achieve high organic rankings than it was a decade ago, however, that can also be a plus point: it is much more difficult for businesses to ‘game’ the algorithms, which means that a well-conceived and executed SEO strategy can pay dividends. The reality of search marketing now is that it is inextricably linked with our next topic: content marketing. The SEO strategies of a business need to be aligned with their content strategy, and achieving a symbiosis between the two is crucial to achieving the first-page ranking that isconten needed to deliver good quality business leads.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is increasingly important in an age when people are used to being on the receiving end of a great deal of information. Whether B2B or B2C, potential clients and customers expect it. This presents its own problems, but also its own opportunities: with so much information and content out there, much of it becomes, at worst spam, and at best nothing more than background noise. However, this creates a space for companies that can make their content stand out from the crowd, and deliver information that is both targeted and, most importantly, helpful to the prospective customer. This dichotomy of problem-and-opportunity is a theme within Content Marketing, as the sheer range of possible content means that is possible to waste time and money on creating content that will have no demonstrable impact upon ROI rates, but likewise the opposite is true; a judicious choice and deployment of content can generate a huge amount of interest. Content can also act as what is known as a ‘lead magnet’, in as much as they can offer an incentive for potential customers to provide their email address. Many people are wary of doing so because of the proliferation of spam messages and mailing lists, and are much more inclined to enter a company’s email system if they ‘get’ something before they ‘give’. Content can be deployed in such a way with superb results: offering a free E-book, or webinar, access to interviews or even a free trial are often very successful in generating leads, as well as beginning a process of engagement between the potential customer and the business. Furthermore, content such as blogs can perform a dual function: working in tandem with Search Marketing strategies to improve Search Engine Optimisation, while also engaging the potential customer in a personal way, leaving them feeling like they have tangibly benefited from their experience.
Social Marketing
Social Marketing is a slightly different animal, in that it can be broadly seen as an off-shoot of both Search Marketing and Content Marketing. Of course, there are leads to be generated by using a business networking site such as LinkedIn, particularly because, aside from networking, it can also provide a lot of data. EKA, a risk management software firm,used LinkedIn in this way – profiling network prospects, mining data to provide both market analysis and individual data profiles for companies, and mapping networks to identify viable connections- and created a $2 million sales pipeline in a matter of a few weeks. However, it is more common that a company’s social marketing amounts to little more than spamming promotional announcements on Twitter. In the case of social media platforms such as Twitter, it is more strategically useful to utilise Social Marketing as a tool of Content and Search Marketing, in so far as it can be a useful medium for directing people towards the high-quality content that will boost SEO rankings and engage the potential customer, both of which will, if done correctly, be effective lead generation strategies. It can also be a useful tool for establishing and promoting business brand identity, something that is crucial to standing out in a crowded marketplace. If your brand identity is established then it can make generating leads that bit easier, as potential customers can already be at a certain level of engagement before they have even hit a business’s landing page or explored their content.
Integrated and Reactive Approaches
In essence, successful lead generation strategies have to be flexible, reactive to customer-habits and realistic about changes in those habits. Flexibility means the innovative combination of aspects of each of the four major lead generation channels discussed, using data driven analysis to discover what works best for a given business. Being reactive to customer-habits is also a data-driven practice: for example, customers today, whether in the B2B or B2C sectors, are distrustful of what can be termed ‘traditional advertising’, and this can be seen by the fact that up to 80% of potential customers ignore paid ads on Google. They’re just not interested. As the old sales adage goes, people don’t like being sold to but they like to buy. This is why moving away from ‘traditional’ advertising or marketing methods, and into an integrated method that seeks to promote customer engagement and personalised promotional marketing emails is proving to be a more successful model. This is why a channel such as Content Marketing is so important –80% of decision-makers surveyed, from a wide range of businesses, preferred to imbibe information about a company through articles and other content, as opposed to ‘traditional’ adverts. Adverts, in that sense, have lost their power to engage, and offering people content which they feel educates them and allows them to make an informed choice is now a far more successful model. This may not always be the case – re-activeness, remember, is crucial to successful lead generation strategies, but it is certainly the case in 2017.
Another aspect of this reactive approach, for example, is creating a scoring system for leads, such as awarding a numerical points score for acts of engagement, such as opting-in to an email system or downloading an E-book, and subtracting a numerical points score for acts of disengagement, such as unsubscribing from an email list. A system that scores and ranks leads allows a company to respond in real-time to the reaction of customers and potential customers to their marketing strategies, as well as identifying potential customers who are primed to take that step into becoming actual customers. This streamlining of lead analysis can also help to save time and money by efficiently deploying their lead follow-up resources.
Invest in Strategy
Effective lead generation strategies require just that; strategy. Throwing money at out-dated models of marketing and lead generation is only going to waste both the initial marketing investment and the time and effort of the staff who are responsible for turning cold leads warm. For lead generation success in 2017, willingness to be adaptive, flexible, analytical and innovative will give a business a far greater chance of staying ahead of the game.
A lead generation tool like 
A tool like LeadBoxer quickly shows you the highest priority leads by allowing you to search by filters such as location, industry, and company size.
The more specific the data points used to calculate a lead score, the more accurate and useful the lead score will be. This will help weed out accounts that aren’t the right fit or are researching topics without having any intent to buy a product or service.
