Powerful and Easy to Use Marketing Automation Software

Wikipedia defines marketing automation as “software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks. It focuses on moving leads from the top of the marketing funnel through to becoming sales-ready leads at the bottom of the funnel.” Here is a look at some of the significant features of the best of the breed marketing automation software.

·         Powerful and Easy to Use Platform

It allows to easily manage leads database. With its one single dashboard, the users can easily view all leads coming in from their website, marketing campaign form fills, email campaigns, social media and even their offline leads.

·         Actionable Intelligence

It provides complete lead data from company details to decision maker contact information and company level intelligence and buying intent.

·         Seamless integration

It facilitates seamless integration with sales CRM system that ensures a smooth transition of leads from marketing to sales.

·         Qualify and Prioritize Leads

It helps to score, qualify and prioritize leads so that the sales team can focus only on the quality leads for a faster sale. Besides, it helps to set scores for leads based on different types of visitor activities and demographics so that the user can qualify them for further action.

·         Alerts for Quick Action

It helps to set up email alerts so that when a lead crosses a threshold scoring level, the sales team can quickly reach out to the prospect.

·         Lead Nurturing

It helps to carry out lead nurturing either through simple time based trigger where the marketing team reaches out to the leads with their messages at regular intervals or through complex action based trigger where the marketing team reaches out to leads with messages that persuade them to respond.

·         Amazing Lists and Templates

It helps to build amazing lists of all website visitors, dynamic lists based on specific criteria, segmented lists, suppression lists and even upload lists collected from offline sources. It offers a wide range of text and html templates that helps the marketing team to quickly edit the content and visuals.

·         Social Media Campaigns

It helps to generate new leads through social media tracking, share campaigns through email, chat, social networking and bookmarking channels and monitor the effectiveness of all social media campaigns.

·         Landing Pages

It helps to create landing pages on the fly and publish it in minutes.

Thus with the best of the breed marketing automation software, enterprises can increase marketing ROI and align their marketing and sales departments.

 
Read more on – marketing funnel, Lead Generation Process

The New Age Marketing Funnel Changing the B2B Markets

Today’s technological innovations, digitized environment, mobile computing and the dependence on  social media challenges the business world to bring in changes to their marketing strategies. The traditional marketing strategies which included teams working towards individual customers now needs to work on the customer networks to  develop their marketing funnel.

Being one of the earliest and widely adopted theories of marketing, the “marketing funnel” is a model based on the psychological state of mind of the customer and included-

• Awareness of the product or the category
• consideration for purchase
• preference
• action or actual purchase
• Loyalty

With the funnel’s shape narrowing down to last stages indicating a good  lead generation but fewer sales closures. The marketing funnel being  a system that helps  enterprises track the stages the consumers travel through to  a buying decision, also helps them to  understand the changes required in their strategies to ensure positive response from their customers.

Enterprises since ages have been using the traditional tools such as TV advertisements, direct mails and  reward points to take their customers through the marketing funnel. Nevertheless, with consumers being more techno savvy their normal communication channels involve social media networking through smartphones, tablets and new aged devices. Today,  instead of broadcast messages, it is the diversity of digital content available through various networking sites that has had an impact on the purchasing behavior of the consumers. Hence modern day marketing funnel need to include a sixth factor- advocacy as the most ardent and engaged customers not only are loyal, but also  acts as  brand advocates to spread  positive messages and testimony about the products.

Technology have  influenced the buyers journey by facilitating options to conduct their own market research, compare features and benefits of competitive products rather than relying on the  marketing activities to guide them through the funnel stages. This showcases  that despite the  fact that marketing plays a major role in lead generation, it becomes imperative for today’s enterprises  to be update on their websites and other social media with product information and reviews. Since all leads generated may not be sales ready,  use of marketing automation software that will help them differentiate between hot and cold leads.

Further, with most of the enterprises of the B2C and B2B markets entering the e-commerce business mode, the online lead generation drives will help the enterprises in  increasing the revenue flow. The marketing automationplatform from the leading solution providers  along with effective stages of lead nurturing with marketing collaterals will aid purchase decisions.

With marketing automation solutions well placed in the website marketing funnel, the lead nurturing tactics facilitates a  meaningful dialog between the marketer and the prospect customer through the entire sales cycle. Further tactful segregation of marketing activities will  brings about  a major difference to the B2B marketplace ensuring loyal customers.

 

 
Read more on – Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing

Lead Management Systems:Ensuring ROI in the Changing Market

The changing market scenario with its global environment and  technological innovation has transformed the way the customers today buy the products and services. The earlier days had seen buyers collect  the necessary information about the products and service from the brochures  and sales personnel.  The growth of  the internet and the World Wide Web brought in the social media into the marketing fold.  The customers today turn to the social media channels and networking websites to gather information before the buying process.

The buyers having evolved as a  techno savvy customers has brought in a monumental shift in the marketing process. Today’s marketplace with its empowered buyers challenges the enterprises in their lead generation capabilities with a greater stress on both the quality and  quantity of leads. The prospective buyers with all the social media  have an access to a wealth of information from product details, to reviews from existing customers, to service offerings, enterprises stand in the marketplace as well as their competitor details.

The foundation of marketing being clear value proposition, the enterprises need to provide credible and compelling qualities of products and service that makes them stand above their competitors. Today’s global enterprises which faces an fiercely competitive environment  thus need to look   for efficient lead management systemsthat would provide them opportunities to  showcase their value and help them increase their ROI.

Leads are the basis of survival for every market be it B2B or B2C and  through smart management practices every lead  can make  a great difference in the face of competition. Lead Management systemsof an organization is made up of  a number of process and practices that are directed towards acquiring new customers, retaining existing ones and establishing a brand. The complex process  includes lead generation, capturing leads , filtering  and distribution of quality leads to the marketing team. After the process of lead nurturing the  high priority leads are send to sales team for closing deals.

Effective lead management system will facilitate enterprises to  manage the entire lifecycle of leads resulting in  increasing revenue and ROI. As part of the smart lead management  enterprises should store the data and reference of all the leads generated in a centralized location to enable easy access.  With the success of marketing depending on effective lead management,  the leading service providers of marketing automation have worked out lead management software that will facilitate enterprises to communicate with the leads get them into the sales funnel.

The software besides ensuring efficiency in  lead generation, data mining & business intelligence and lead nurturing  facilitates  integration with existing  systems. This paves way for the B2B enterprises to collaborate  with partners, track and  manage the leads till these are  converted into customers.

 
Read more on – Demand Generation, marketing funnel

Significance of Lead Generation

Back in the year 1885 William Lever of Lever Bros said that “Half of the marketing money you spend is wasted—trouble is you don’t know which half.” However, there is a fair chance that substantially more than half of your marketing investments are being squandered.

Today most lead generation activities are not followed up appropriately by sales, for non-intuitive and legitimate reasons. The legitimate reason for no-follow-ups is generally that the leads are unfiltered and low-end. They might be organizations from the wrong verticals that are very small to be in the marketplace. Similarly, they might be students or consultants who responded to any specific offer. The non-intuitive reasons can include situations like where someone called a couple of times but with no response. This means if the lead generated it tough to work out, it is most often dismissed. As less as five percent of the leads are followed up by sales.

There are also cases of long term leads that are mostly ignored by sales as they are not looked upon as helpful in influencing the present period’s quota. There are organizations that are qualified without any immediate interest that are ignored by sales and marketing, which is a huge waste as the cost to recognize those are qualified versus the ones that are not are in turn are frequently duplicated and loses the potential benefit.

Therefore, lead management comprises of the overall business process and practices in an enterprise that is directed towards gathering the new consumers, retaining the old ones and also setting up a positive brand image. It is an intricate process that includes elements like capturing lead intelligence, lead generation, filtering leads and distribution of qualified leads to the marketing team for lead nurturing and also high priority leads to the sales team for transitions. The main aim of an efficient lead management program is to assist, manage and track the overall lead Lifecycle until it results in sales that in turn maximize the revenues and ROI.

Service providers of lead management offer the B2B enterprises with an easy and powerful way to make use of a solution based marketing automation platform that allows the lead management throughout the lead cycle. The software comprises of the following:

• Lead Generation
• Business Intelligence
• Lead Qualification
• Lead Nurturing
• CRM Integration
• Collaboration
• Analytics

Therefore, if you want to attain the best of all your marketing initiatives, optimize the expense and maximize the ROI then it is advised that you resort to the appropriate lead management solution.

Know more on – Lead Management software, Sales Intelligence

The Right Marketing Automation Solution For An ROI Increase

The days of  relying on lead capture forms to gain the necessary information  to be competitive in today’s marketplace, no longer exists. B2B buyers expect instant, pertinent information unique to their situation. Generating quality leads and managing demand generation campaigns can be complex and demanding and businesses need to adopt marketing automation solutions in order to streamline marketing and sales functions. With marketers under increasing pressure to generate more ROI, marketing automation represents a potent opportunity and can be looked upon as the panacea to all the sales and marketing woes.

Although marketing automation by itself are not enough, it is necessary to concentrate on filling the top of the  sales funnel by luring and adding net new contacts to the database while optimizing marketing automation efforts simultaneously. Automation solutions enable marketing teams to enhance efficiency by strengthening their promotions with cost effective and sophisticated tools. Today’s sales teams need to understand much more than the profile of the people they are working with. You need a way to understand and communicate to the sales team the online behavior of the B2B buyers that are coming to your web site. These solutions help companies to effectively respond to shifting strategies in the marketing landscape and aid lead management.

Automating the marketing activities of an organization, marketing automation facilitates business growth by effectively managing all activities involved in marketing and sales starting from generating qualified leads to converting them into customers.

Marketing automation enables companies to systematically nurture and cultivate existing prospects, yielding more opportunities and a better return from marketing programs executed weeks and months earlier. The right marketing automation solution for your organization helps  analyze the campaign data to achieve the best possible ROI. With effective marketing automation solutions ensure that the sales team is getting only better qualified customer leads. It maximizes the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing promotions and campaigns with the added benefit of lower costs.

The value of marketing automation is that it has the potential to impact the top and bottom lines of an organization. It assists in focusing your sales funnel and significantly increasing your ROI. The marketing automation solution must be an effective marketing automation platform that measures visitor activity on web pages to identify sales opportunities. It must also have a sophisticated campaign management facilities to increase marketing ROI and help to align marketing and sales organizations.

Marketing automation is a critical component for every organization and organizations that achieved the highest performance in key metrics like revenue, conversion and return on investments are more likely to use marketing automation technology.

 
Read more on – Lead Generation Software , lead generation

Importance of Social Media Campaigns in Lead Generation

Making the world more transparent and interconnected, Social media is tremendously alluring  for B-to-B marketers. Companies now realize that social media is a great place to attract new customers and it is therefore important to run a campaign that gives you a valuable Return On Investment (ROI).  Recent studies A recent study conducted by IBM Corporation found that while almost 50% of the 1,161 companies surveyed put more money into B2B lead generation through social media in 2012, only about 22% said they were prepared to incorporate social media tools into their day-to-day operations. Creating a buzz within social communities is an effective tactic for social media strategy as social discussion boosts engagement, as a result encouraging traffic, word of mouth, and awareness.

Social Media and Lead Generation
Prospects discuss your business, products and services in social media venues. It is important to find out what they are saying, clarify their needs, and reach out to them with specialized campaigns. Social media sites are excellent tools for lead generation and customers as well as share content and messages about your organization. In B2B marketing,  it is essential to have effective tools for promotional purposes, and make sure that  you are attracting new fans and followers through content and campaigns that will attract the right prospects.

Social media is rated as the top marketing channel for lead generation. You can now track phone calls, web visitors and see which of your marketing streams is most effective and creating ROI. Although it is a great means of increasing a company’s trustworthiness and goodwill, how you behave on social networks will shape how your audience views your organization.

When companies are able to have conversations with their customers, the result is going to be a great amount of credibility.  Social media channels also make it easier and more flexible for companies to engage with its customers, and it certainly gives the organization increased and better branding. Aside from that, when you promote your products through social media channels, this will definitely help you so that you can increase your return over investment or ROI.

Social media campaigns needs to be a growing part of any organization’s’ marketing plan. The technologies help us create a conversation between the brand, customers & prospective customers. To firmly establish your company, it is vitally necessary to connect with your audience.  Interesting articles will make people want to read your posts and answering their comments and questions will help you understand what your audience  really wants. Generate many viable prospective leads by running a good social media marketing campaign.

Read more on – Marketing Automation, Lead Management Software

Streamline & Leverage Your Social Media Campaigns

Social media campaigns have become the order of the day. The online business domain today finds it difficult to carry on business without any social media presence. It is equally important to set up a social media presence to capture the attention of the audience in the modern day competitive business scenario and set up a long lasting communication strategy to establish a positive brand image and trust.

New business ventures must implement effective social media marketing along with lead management strategies to set up awareness amidst the core audience. With every online venture aiming to set up a social media presence the space has become crowded and it’s extremely difficult to capture the attention of the target audience. It is also crucial for establishing communication through a widely accepted medium.

With each passing day social media usage and communication is expanding and making it essential for online businesses to set up a presence and interact with their target audience in a seamless manner. Making use of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon e Commerce ventures can set up active discussions and interactions in order to understand the emerging trends and requirements of the target audience helping them in efficient optimization. Spreading data can be made simple through social media sharing akin to word of mouth publicity.

Service providers of marketing automation solutions have come up with effective programs for social media campaigns that help to convert casual visitors to leads and recognize the website visitors that gather from the social media platforms. It also helps to monitor the online behavior in order to recognize the potential leads. It also helps in making the URL links easy, by converting long page URL’s to shorter links to be used in emails, interactive chats and in social media conversations. Furthermore it helps in measuring and understanding the effectiveness of social media campaigns.

Social media would be helpful for the online businesses by allowing them to understand the changing requirements, demands and interests of the audience at large just by tuning in to the online interactions and tracing the feedback. Making use of certain signals, eCommerce ventures can also diversify in those spaces where there are vast opportunities to explore. Furthermore, an online business can also utilize social media campaigns to create a vast talent pool for any future prospect work to happen. Working with regards to the present audience database in order to set up an industry specific talent pool can be very productive provided one takes a progressive approach.
Read more on – lead generation, Lead Nurturing

Attain Greater Leads With Efficient Lead Management

Lead management has gained prominence in the recent past. Simply put it is the process by which an organization or a start up venture grows and expands. This helps the company to network and build up business associations by using efficient practices and tactics. This is the reason why majority of businesses focus and get all proactive about planning and developing lead management strategies.

When a consumer shows interests on a certain product or service, either by browsing a website, through a telephone call, or a person-to-person conversation the next step of lead management can be initiated. The contact details and other information about the interested potential customer should be recorded by the company. This apart the marketing and sales team should also have access to the information in order to further work lead conversion. Efficient lead management is always the route to have good sales.

Without a proper lead management  system, keeping a record of meetings, details of the potential customers and follow up calls can seem complicated. Similarly, with an organized lead management system the data you will need will be accessible at your reach.

One of the primary aspects of an appropriate lead management is a well organized medium keeping records. Regardless of the company being a MNC, a sole proprietorship firm, or a startup venture effective lead management is the much required element for business expansion and growth. Simultaneously, it is also essential to nurture and capture the consumer’s interest. The primary concern of lead management therefore is to set up a bond with the prospective consumer in a way that their interest in a product or service soon develops into a scope for sales.

Today service providers specializing in marketing automation software have come up with advanced lead development, management and generation programs with unique services. Some of them are discussed below:

• Lead Generation – This helps in acquiring leads that are generated from marketing campaigns leading to website visits and converts unknown website visitors into leads.
• Business Intelligence – This provides unparalleled lead insights making use of advanced data mining processes and business intelligence technologies, such as recognizing website visitor intent leading to enriched leads
• Lead Qualification – This score and prioritizes leads automatically depending on the pre-defined parameters associated with interest, activity and intent.
• Lead Nurturing – This offers customized and intent driven lead nurturing programs targeted at establishing associations and gathering prospects close to the sales-readiness.

The market is huge and competitive. Hence, it is essential to know your target consumers, be perceptive to their behavioral trends and tap into at the right moment to close a sales deal. With efficient lead management techniques this task becomes seamless and easy.

Read more on – social media campaigns , Lead Nurturing

Lead Management In Techno- Centric Business Environment

Technological innovations  over the years has given  information technology  a strong foothold in the enterprise and plays a major role in the operations. This has  also brought in a total makeover of the marketing function of these enterprises leading to global enterprises. Further, with the growth of e-commerce, most of the enterprises head for a strong web presence demanding marketing function in a  faster format.  E-commerce and Internet has greatly helped enterprises in spreading the news about products and services worldwide without actually crossing the geographical boundaries.

Consumers who are interested in the products are the potential customers or leads for the enterprise.  These leads form the heart and soul of every marketing strategy and the success of marketing is dependent on the efficient  lead management. As defined by Wikipedia, Lead Management refers to “the  general business practice that describes methodologies, systems, and practices designed to generate new potential business clientele, generally operated through a variety of marketing techniques.” The process of lead management is  designed to facilitate a business’s connection  between its outgoing consumer advertising and the responses to that advertising and  can be used for both B2B as well as B2C markets.

Similar to business practices such as marketing, brand development, advertising, and sales,  an effective lead management initiative will help enterprises to  generate new business revenue, increase visibility, and improve the general attitudes of potential clients and the public at large leading to  future business development. In other words, lead management is a critical factor for business profitability through the acquisition of new customers, selling to existing customers as well as  creating a  brand  and  is  considered a precursor to sales management and customer relationship management.

With the help of an  ordered structure this process helps enterprises manage large volumes of business inquiries or  leads. The process thus creates an architecture for organizing data that is distributed across the  sales process and  sales force. However, with the advent of technological enhancements, lead management has become techno-centric with enterprises making use of marketing automation tool for automated lead management systems.

A typical lead management process will include  lead generation by engaging  business through  advertising media  and recipients responding to advertisements, capturing information and filtering the same, distributing leads to marketing personnel and lead nurturing through personal and automated follow-up process before they actually sign u the business sales. Leading service providers offer enterprises marketing automation software that facilitate lead nurturing through automated campaigns. This builds on the email marketing strategies and takes the marketing to next level thereby  saving the resources while producing greater results. These powerful lead managementsolutions  enables lead generation through unmatched lead insights from data mining and business intelligence leading to improved performance, optimized cost and increased ROI.

Read more on – Marketing Automation , social media campaigns

Leveraging Inbound Techniques for Online B2B Marketing

In B2B marketing, it is impossible to predict the exact response time of a prospect. What increases the probability of a prospect becoming a customer is the effort put in to project the product in the best possible light, so that the prospect becomes interested in the marketed product or service.

This is where content marketing places a key role. By placing relevant and persuasive content on strategic online locations, marketers can actively engage their prospects. By integrating online PR and social media marketing efforts, marketers can expect to reach out effectively to their target audiences.

Apart from projecting content in external sites, another efficient way of lead generation is by constantly touching base with the prospect and employing creative marketing techniques to engage him. This way, the marketer can ensure that content is made available for the prospect to read, view or download when required.

The top three inbound marketing techniques that could accelerate your marketing efforts are described below.

1. Industry Analysis Report
Industry expert analysis and mentions of the product or its usability in a report has higher visibility and greater outreach for the product.

2. Thought Leadership
A company’s senior management can contribute to popularizing company blogs. Views expressed by industry experts and analysis reports by internal technical experts help prospects to understand the usability and key features better. Thought leadership content can be focused on comparing different products, yearly trends, analysis of latest versions of the product etc. Thought leadership content can be repurposed for SEO purposes as well. Company blogs can also be shared in social media and this can create inbound links to the company website.

3. Company webpage
SEO is one of the driving forces for lead generation and lead nurturing. So, creating a highly optimized web page with few CTAs (Call To Action) is the best way to drive traffic and sustain interest as well. Landing pages that provide relevant content regarding new product updates or releases are also good inbound lead generation techniques. Sharing landing pages on social media helps in driving traffic to company web pages.

The effectiveness of the inbound marketing techniques can be increased by implementing marketing automation tools. By leveraging on the intuitive analysis of website visitor behavior, provided by these automated tools, marketers can be better equipped to cater to prospects with customized content offers. This way, they can be rest assured of effective lead generation and higher ROI in the long run.

Read more on – Lead Management, Marketing Automation software