Category: Lead Generation

Attracting leads to your business isn’t a new concept – every firm that seeks a good B2B campaign requires one. There are literally millions of prospective customers out there – thanks in part due to the massive reach of the internet – but successfully converting them is an art that few businesses have been able to perfect.

The use of technology has somewhat made the process easier. But the core problem remains the same – getting high quality leads takes strategy and not just forcing your way through the use of automated software.

Mindlessly sending in emails only serves to waste both your time and money – there is a strategy to everything, even automation. Every strategy requires the use of an email autoresponder which should store the lead’s credentials such as their email addresses and name. This means you need to purchase the right software which can get the job done. Unfortunate as it is, not every software on the internet will net you perfect results.

Related:
Ways to Use LinkedIn for Lead Generation
21 Successful Ideas for Lead Generation

When you’ve just started your business and need to use the perfect autoresponder , you will likely run into thousands of choices in the market. Your inexperience with the software will lead you into spending hundreds of dollars buying useless software – experimenting with different solutions, ditching them all one by one until you manage to find the perfect solution.

Here are 5 Lead Generation Softwares to steer clear from:

To help you with making a more informed purchase, we’ll by doing short reviews of softwares which we think are not that good and which you should definitely avoid.

1. Infusionsoft

The worst software to choose if you’re a small business that doesn’t have a very large budget to begin with. Starting prices can range from $17 which is pretty good all things considered. The most important feature of any autoresponder is having access to a large number of email campaign templates. Unfortunately, that is something which is very limited in Infusionsoft and you’ll find yourself spending a lot of time designing your own templates. Customer reporting is also minimal at best. Their own marketing campaigns target small businesses with 25 or less employees.

Their one advantage though is that you’ll be able to design useful marketing and email campaigns if you don’t really have any prior experience. Infusionsoft will help you throughout the process and you’ll never feel lost. Their drag and drop widgets can be useful for less tech savvy customers and businesses.

2. ActiveCampaign

Depending on the type of your business, ActiveCampaign can either be your best friend, or well, the most useless friend that is best described as deadweight. ActiveCampaign is best suited towards more experienced and tech savvy businesses because the dashboard is a little cumbersome to navigate through, their email builder design can be described as clunky and feels like it was built way back in the 80s. There really isn’t any native integration with third party tools. Those that are available require you to spend additional cost.

While ActiveCampaign itself has a small fee, those additional costs can quickly overwhelm smaller businesses. There is a 14 day trial version that can let you test it out.

3. Marketo

Quite expensive at the $1700+ starting point, Marketo has poor landing page and form builder and does not really provide you with proper customer data analytics. This is unforgivable given how many free alternatives offer a large number of tools.

4. AWeber

At the time of this article’s writing, AWeber offers quite a useful 30 day free trial for users to try out their services before purchasing for the hefty price of $29 per month for businesses with 2500 contacts. They have zero third party integration, which means you cannot import your contacts directly from Gmail or other such domains. A really annoying feature about AWeber is the extremely tedious process of importing contacts.

It allows you to add 10 contacts via form manually. You can imagine how laborious it can be if your business has hundreds or even thousands of contacts to import. You can automatically enter all your contacts in there, but it would require you to use text files such as CSV and TSV – but who has the time for that?

What we can say about AWeber however is that their Tracking Campaigns are some of the best that we’ve seen in quite a while. So if you can get past the little annoyance of importing emails – it can hands-down be your best means of tracking the success of your email campaign and easily keep track of the click rates and subscribers.

5. SendInBlue

We found SendInBlue to be the most difficult software to get our heads around, and we’ve used some pretty clunky software in the past, so you know it’s bad. What’s good about SendInBlue however is that their paid plan starts from around $7 onwards, very affordable if you’re saving every penny. Templates are also mediocre at best. Campaigner is a better alternative. 

Short of time and looking at a quick checklist to ensure you are on the right track to a successful lead generation campaign? Over the years I have consulted for several startups and also deployed lead generation techniques that work. This is our own checklist of ideas and points we follow to either brainstorm and come up with more ideas with the rest of the team. Use this checklist in cases where you have started several campaigns and noticed the results or conversions are not coming through, or if the leads have suddenly stopped, then look also at ensuring you are up to date with newer strategies or techniques that are coming out to market.

Below are the Ultimate Lead Generation Checklist:

Note, lead generation is not a sit and forget campaign, once you deploy your first one, you will need to innovate and come up with smarter ideas.

1. Improve Your lead generation

You can’t have solid lead generation strategies if you’re not checking up on it regularly. You need to analyze it and adjust along the way, so that you manage to stay on top of things always. Importantly, ensure you understand your audience:

• Persona—industry, title, role, company size, revenues. One of our favourite templates located here and it’s FREE 
• Engagement—the basics such as number of visits, unique page views, repeat visits, form conversions, email opens and clicks.
• Buyer stage—clicks and conversions on specific content indicating a lead lifecycle change, such as revisiting your site or calling your business and then coming to visit you.
• Velocity—recency of engagement, volume and timing of events indicating triggers they will buy from you.
  

Related:
Are You Making These Enterprise B2B Lead Generation Mistakes?
21 Successful Ideas for Lead Generation

2. Repurpose existing content

You should always look to repurpose your content, because it is a great way to catch your customer’s eye. Get your most popular content, and turn it into an eBook or into a webinar, and you have a great way to not only attract clients, but retain interest as well. It is one of the most effective lead generation strategies that is around today. Wordstream has an amazing blog on how to do this.

3. Integrate CTAs into relevant areas

You must have high quality CTAs placed strategically at relevant areas on your website, because there is no other way that you will be able to generate quality leads. CTAs are necessary for high conversion rates, and if you have some placed strategically on the website then you need to check if there are other areas where more can be placed.

4. Generate viral content

While this is probably one of the hardest areas of lead generation, you can easily create high quality premium content that will help you showcase the experience you have in the industry. Viral does not necessarily mean it has to be funny, stupid or witty. Some of the viral content we have seen shared across our customer platforms include highly educating infographics or short videos, amazing offers, provocative webinars and thought leadership events. Kissmetrics has an amazing guide to creating viral content here. Their case studies while several years old still proves relevant today.

5. Optimize landing pages

Among the best lead generation strategies around today, one is optimizing your landing page content. It is important for your business, and will allow your customers to reach your content any time. If your landing pages aren’t optimized, you will lose out on valuable business, which you can’t afford. By optimizing the landing pages, you will be able to generate more leads. Unbounce has a great guide here. Interestingly, I would go straight to Chapter 14 first to understand whether the landing page is right for you or not!

6. Use progressive profiling

One of the least understood and used methods is progressive profiling. Rather than sending potential customers to a static form, ask them relevant questions. For example, if you know their name and email already, now you can ask a leading question to see if they are interested in products or enquiring about a demo, this way, you are asking questions specifically about their timeframe to purchase and understanding their intent. If you’re struggling to generate leads, and are looking for lead generation strategies, you should use progressive profiling. It is very effective, because it helps shorten the forms, and improves landing page conversions for the business. It helps save time for the clients, and that is valuable to them, which is where you will score big on lead generation. Kissmetrics has a great intro into this.

7. Create forums

One of the best lead generation strategies that you can choose to employ is to create forums for your website. This will allow you to capture more leads, because the questions being answered will only help provide you with vital client information. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re from, if your goal is to generate leads, then you can easily do that through forums.

There are no short cuts when it comes to lead generation strategies, and if you’re wondering whether your lead generation strategy is up-to-date, follow some of the leading industry experts in their field, subscribe to their newsletters and test our their ideas on your audience. The strategies change every month! 

Higher buyer expectations and technological advances are largely responsible for the rapid growth of B2B eCommerce – and this boost has been welcomed by the business sphere with open arms. Both business buyers and private consumers are flocking towards the new paradigm of eCommerce, and they in return are demanding the same options and convenience from B2B organizations. By simply providing a business-to-consumer way to buy online, an optimal B2B multichannel selling approach cannot be obtained. Reason being that, B2B selling involves complex processes like promotion based on the needs of the individual business buyer and product offerings.

For B2B Enterprise eCommerce effectiveness, platforms should include these 5 key components:

1. Advanced Configurability

The complexities of B2B online selling translate into customer hierarchies, with differing product configuration and marketing, authorization rules and workflows, product portfolios, purchase authorization rules, contract terms, pricing and multiple payment options. Unique processes and technology capabilities is required for a complicated purchasing environment. The B2B channel to support product configuration and sophisticated pricing requires advanced functionality. To ensure that sales representatives do not spend unnecessary time on internal processes and instead can focus on current and new customer sales, authorized users should have access to the system and be empowered to set business rules, by segment and channels, without the need for IT involvement.

2. Single, Global Platform

B2B enterprises that target multiple markets will likely have sales and marketing strategies that are tailored to local market conditions. This includes pricing and offers that vary by market segments or market segments. A centralized platform should be deployed by organizations that allows for global control of customer order and product information, offering the flexibility to adapt order processes, product information and customer orders according to the preferences of customers in a targeted market.

See also: Are You Making These Enterprise B2B Lead Generation Mistakes?

3. Analytics and Segmentation

A number of B2B organizations dedicate resources to analyzing customer, product and sales data; this enables the B2B seller to develop strategies personalized to each customer’s needs offering product mix and optimal pricing. Conversely, numerous B2B organizations find out that their eCommerce platforms are not fully capable of displaying products and updated prices. If such information is not added in, then all the segmentation efforts and analytics go to waste. To enable guided selling through online channels, an effective B2B eCommerce platform ought to include tools that can execute rules and strategies based on advanced analytics.

4. Sophisticated Workflows

To provide insights into all aspects of the order across channels including automatic notifications to customers regarding their order status, delivery dates for products and services and monitoring of order processes, an effective B2B platform must have capabilities. The eCommerce platform should provide consistent product and order information and should be the single source of truth across divisions, brands and business units.

5. B2C Best Practices

B2C online shopping have changed the expectations of the buyers, and B2B eCommerce platforms thus need to include better product content, dynamic on-site searching, mobile sites and apps, social integration, personalization, user reviews and video. Best practices from the B2C landscape need to be integrated within the rapidly evolving B2B sphere for it to remain effective. This can mean configuring product displays and prices according to a client company’s business rules, permitting the company’s buyers to choose only among approved products and make purchases within spending limits.

B2B organizations have special needs when purchasing online, and these needs should be taken care of apart from the five key components of B2B eCommerce platform.

To many marketers, B2B lead generation is a complex labyrinth. It can be due to two reasons- firstly, people fail to comprehend that successful B2B lead generation comprises of activities that are hard to pin down and quantify, and secondly, everyone is seeking out for one that killer lead tactic that will right all wrongs. 

Here are the ways on how Maximize Lead Generation efforts

Here, we are going to talk about few B2B lead generation practices that ought to be used in some combination to enable marketers to effectively build highly qualified leads.

1. Seminars and Webinars

The most effective B2B lead generation tactic involves events like webinars and seminars. Instant magic occurs when a prospective client sees that you seem nice enough, offer valuable advice and have answers for the difficulties they are facing at the moment. The content created in your webinars and seminars can also be turned into trust building asset.

2. Direct Email Marketing

We all want to achieve larger number of leads however, the more personal you get the better it is. Targeting 100 prospects a month by reaching out to them with a personalized letter outlining a plan of action will give you far better results than any other form of mass communication.

Related: 
21 Successful Ideas for Lead Generation

2. Paid Traffic

Advertising becomes all the more effective when you use other lead generation in tandem to supplement your primary efforts. Anyone can spend a little money and throw some ads and maybe generate some leads with minimal efforts. However, these leads are often unqualified and uneducated. Invest in teaching how to identify and draw the right clients in order to create the highest quality leads.

3. Sponsors

The best form of lead generation is the right kind of referrals thrown your way. However, only a few people proactively partake in this form of lead generation, it happens accidentally mostly. Sponsorship brings brand-awareness, leads and traction in a targeted way that is hard to achieve for many other marketing-channels.

4. Blogging

Blog minus intention leads to immediate blogging burnout. Answer the questions that your prospective clients are asking or thinking while considering your product and services as a solution. You need to start answering questions in order to make blogging pay as a lead generation source. You can turn series of relevant posts into eBooks or videos once you get good at it.

5. Social Relationship Building

To build and nurture relationships, social media as a lead generation tool is really powerful. Think about influencing and adding value around 50 prospects instead of using it as a broadcast tool. Go to LinkedIn and find out few groups where your prospects hang out and look for advice. Using Linkedin’s Sales Navigator tool start building prospect lists in these groups.

6. Networking

See networking as a tool to for connecting others rather than getting connected if you want networking to pay. Reach into your existing network and find a handful of people that need to meet some shining stars in your network. You become a lead magnet when you view networking as an opportunity to help others by building bridges.

In order to create lead momentum, you have to employ a number of lead generation tactics working together.

Cynics do not believe in using social media as an effective lead generation tool and choose to invest their time and energy at advertising and trade shows in trade publications. However, social media, particularly LinkedIn, is an effective tool to drive traffic to your website.

To attract new people to your website, using LinkedIn as a marketing tool helps you pique the prospect clients’ interest with great content and subsequently generating a sales lead.

Here are the ways on how to use Linkedin to generate leads

1. Try LinkedIn Mobile

If you have not already downloaded the Linkedin mobile app on your smartphone, do so now; it’s free after all. This app is best suited for an event like a trade show where you are interacting with contacts on a one-on-one basis. Ask your prospect during a conversation to turn on LinkedIn on their smartphone. Bump your phones together lightly. If they have an iPhone and their settings are correct, then LinkedIn will transfer contact information between phones using Bluetooth. Instant transfer of information, and a lead.

2. Join LinkedIn Groups

Join several groups on LinkedIn. The trick is joining other groups outside your industry other than joining the obvious groups in your industry. It might help grow your business. You are expanding your reach by stretching out a little bit, which is always good for business and helpful in lead generation.

See also: The Secret Sauce for a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy

3. Experiment with LinkedIn Direct Ads

To drive new prospects to your landing pages or LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn has an advertising program. You simply write a headline, add relevant copy, and create a destination link; the ads work the same way Google paid search ads work. Then you bid on how much you will pay LinkedIn every time someone clicks on the ad. If your product sells for $500 each, investing $50 to generate $500 is not a bad return on investment.

4. Participate in LinkedIn Answers

It is one the most under-utilized tools on LinkedIn- a section where people ask for advice and industry specific questions. You are the one giving advice here and answering questions. Regularly engaging in answering the questions can help you establish yourself as a thought leader. If you have blog posts or other content that provides helpful information about another user’s question, make sure it’s optimized for lead gen (with a call-to-action), and link to it in your answer.

5. Conduct a LinkedIn People Search

For people looking for jobs or business-to-business owners, this is a terrific tool. Using the upper right hand search box, do a people search for your target company. Use the refining options on the left when you generate results to view your direct connections and your second connections. Just ask your friends to introduce you via LinkedIn to the people at that target company with which you want to connect.

6. Add LinkedIn Applications

Application section can improve the experience people have on your LinkedIn page by adding new and interesting apps. You can even set up simple polls to find out what’s on the minds of your customers and prospects. Add an app that pulls your recent blog posts on your page for lead generation.

Are you using LinkedIn to generate leads? Know of more effective ways to generate leads not mentioned here? Do tell!

With the lead generation techniques which keep emerging in the corporate world, companies, businesses and organizations across the globe are using new and improved techniques for their promotion and to increase their sales. Businesses tend to try their hand at new strategies to find out which one works best to increase the profit and revenue which is being generated. The importance of digital channels for businesses in today’s day and age cannot be ignored.

Businesses and companies throughout the world are increasingly making use of new and improved digital channels for lead generation and marketing with the intention of promoting a product or service so that potential customers are convinced about purchasing what was being promoted.

While digital channels do come in handy for most businesses, it is often seen that customers are confused due to the amount of information that is available–online and otherwise—making it extremely difficult for a business to come out on top. This is where Woveon comes into the picture. One of the leading customer service platforms, Woveon focuses on everything that’s important to retain customers and keep them coming back for more.

The platform helps prioritize inquiries which are received from customers, along with identifying those customers who are valuable and likely to be retained and come back for future transactions. Since all businesses and companies throughout the world are also focusing on personalization these days, the platform can be used to personalize messages and responses for customers to ensure that they remain loyal.

Here are 7 Handy Tips for Compiling a Lead Generation Strategy using Woveon

1. Target the right customers with machine learning and artificial intelligence

While most companies in Australia and throughout the world resort to manual trial and error techniques to target the right audiences and markets, Woveon takes things a notch further. Using advanced programs for machine learning and artificial intelligence, Woveon is guaranteed to make your lead generation strategy successful by identifying customers who are valuable. This feature does not only allow you to leverage on the latest breakthroughs in the world of information technology for your advantage but also eases the lead generation process to a great extent.

2. Tailor your business solutions according to your requirements

Don’t like the way things have been going for your business? Think your business has more potential? Need to revamp a few lead generation processes and activities to boost sales? Woveon has got you covered.

As one of the most elaborate and comprehensive tools, Woveon allows you to tweak your lead generation process as much as you like. This means that whether you are interested in modifying things a bit to make them more suited to the requirements of the business, or even if you wish to customize a process or two according to your own liking, Woveon allows it all!

3. Create a centralized strategy

Woveon is not only extremely easy to use, but it also offers a centralized solution to ensure that you always have access to a holistic view of your processes and can see how well your lead generation strategy is performing. The tool, therefore, allows users to create and manage several different customer channels including social media and use them effectively to boost profits.

4. Prioritize

Every business owner knows the importance of prioritization. As harsh as it may sound, the fact of the matter is that no two customers are the same, and not all customer requests are prioritized the same way. More often than not, companies and businesses prioritize the inquiries, responses, and requests based on how important or relevant they are. With Woveon, you, too, can prioritize based on your own metrics and factors and ensure that you always provide your customers with service which they keep coming back for.

5. Engage

Engaging with customers—both current and potential ones—is something that cannot be overemphasized. With up to seventy-nine percent of Australians being active on social media, it only makes sense for customer engagement to be a major part of all lead generation strategies. Through social listening, Woveon cannot only identify which customers are valuable but also use analytics to provide accurate information regarding customer engagement.

6. Personalize

Another great benefit of the machine learning feature of Woveon is that it can be used in lead generation strategies to ensure that customers are being provided with personalized content based on their preferences and at times when they are likely to be active.

7. Provide unmatched customer service

Gone are the days when you needed scores of customer representatives to address questions and queries of your customers only to find out that they are unhappy with the customer service being provided. With Woveon, you can reach out to your consumers without a hassle and build a promising customer base. The features of the tool do not only make your lead generation strategies more efficient by identifying valuable customers beforehand, but the tool also allows you to boost your online presence and find new customers with ease.

Use these seven tips and tricks for your next lead generation strategy and boost your sales like never before!

Today, many businesses are using innovative online marketing strategies to generate leads. With new strategies being reported each day, it becomes difficult to determine which strategy will help you the most to generate leads for your business. In fact, the biggest challenge faced by businesses is generating good leads. There are marketing strategies that have proven to generate quality leads for businesses over and over again and I am sharing them with you below.

Learn how to manage customer conversation and increase Leads! Request for a FREE Conversation Software demo today!

Below are the Top 6 Successful Lead Generation Strategy

Disclaimer: A lead generating strategy for one business may not always work for your particular industry or audience. It is important to quickly run tests to overcome this dilemma.

1. Use the Correct Data to Target the Right Person at The Right Time

The key to meeting customers’ expectations is having the correct data. The more you know about your customers, the better you can personalize. Businesses that offer a personalized experience are more likely to garner the attention of the prospects and generate leads. So, use a marketing strategy that allows you to communicate with prospects in the right tone and at the right time. Start with ensuring your digital assets are all connected on Google Analytics and you are tracking the types of customers who are coming to your business.

Google has a very comprehensive overview, however if you are after something more practical Penn State has a great article. 

2. Fix the Bucket

Metaphorically speaking, many marketers spend a considerable amount of time pouring water into leaky buckets. What this means is your business is already attracting many quality leads however the system or processes you have tried to automate are not capturing them. Rather than fixing the bucket, they try to keep it full by pouring more water into it. Here, the bucket refers to the marketing funnel while water is used as a metaphor for traffic. By doing the above, marketers inflate acquisition costs and in return, get below average results. Hence, pouring water into leaky buckets is a disaster for recipe.

Related: 
21 Successful Ideas for Lead Generation

Landing pages, in particular, your forms, are the biggest culprit here. The purpose of forms is to separate leads from non-leads. For this reason, they are crucial to your conversion rates and overall lead generation tactics results. To ensure that you’re not leaving leads behind from your marketing campaigns, optimize your forms. Let’s suppose you get a thousand visits to your landing page at a cost of $4 per visit. Now, if your form converts at 1%, you’ll get ten leads at a cost per lead of $400.

By optimizing your form, you can increase this conversion rate to 3 or 4%. So, if your form converts at 4%, you’ll get 40 leads at a cost per lead of $100. So, just by optimizing your form, you get three times more leads for one-third of the cost per leads. Moz created the definitive guide for optimizing landing pages.

3. Profile Your Target Audience

Just like innovations in technology, user behavior evolves quickly. For this reason, studying your target audience and creating potent buyer personas to get a better understanding of the goals, challenges, pain points and buying behavior of your users is crucial. If last year, you were able to fulfill the needs and wants of your users then maybe this year you can focus on other challenges faced by them. Is there anything that you can address with an innovative content or product offer to serve your users better? Remember, a buyer persona is what’ll shape your marketing strategy.

4. Use Search Marketing

Organic search marketing is probably one of the most effective lead generation strategies out there. Search marketing strategies such as an SEO campaign are proven ways to generate leads for your business. Though getting to the top of the page in search engine results is a lot harder today than it was 5 or 10 years ago, SEO is still an extremely effective way of generating quality leads for your business.

5. Combine SMS With Your Email Marketing Efforts

A great way to build relationships, email marketing helps you to stay connected to your audience. Most people regularly check their emails but almost everyone reads their text messages. In fact, more than 90% of texts get read within 3 minutes of delivery. So, take advantage of this and integrate your email marketing efforts with SMS.

6. Host a Webinar

One of the best ways to engage your audience is webinars. A webinar is a great opportunity for you to generate leads online. By hosting a webinar, you reach out to a new audience of people who are interested in what you have to say. Often, this results in the generation of new leads and if you are lost on how to start here, this is an amazing FREE course by leadpages.