Month: June 2016

10 Lead Generation Ideas To Ramp Up Your Next Marketing Campaign

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sales-lead-generationThe ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to generate leads that will eventually lead to a sale. We all know that all too often generating leads is a difficult task. Here are 10 ideas to inject new life into your lead gen efforts.

  1. Make your landing pages work much harder for you

Customized landing pages are crucial to lead generation. What you include on them is equally important. 65 percent of us are visual learners, according to the Social Science Research Network. Why not take advantage of this fact by including visual elements on your landing pages. Include things like videos and infographics that communicate the message visually.

 

  1. Choose your words carefully

When conducting an e-mail marketing campaign, spam is always at top of mind for most marketers. But, whatever you do don’t mention the word “spam” in your e-mail. Doing so can reduce your conversions by a full 18%, according to a case study by Video Website Optimizer.

  1. Let them know what you want

Make sure your e-mails have a clear call to action (CTA). Your CTA should stand out in your e-mail. If it’s not the first thing you see when you open your e-mail, make changes so it is.

  1. Don’t be afraid to use videos

Your prospects will love connecting with you through videos. Your videos should convey useful information in a friendly format – like you’re sitting down with your prospect and chatting. It’s smart to include a verbal CTA.

  1. Give a little and get a lot

Make your blog posts, e-books, white papers, etc., downloadable in exchange for an e-mail address. This enables you to create a list of interested leads you can begin to nurture.

  1. Take advantage of your about page

If you have an about page on your website, your prospects are going there to learn more about your company. This is an important stop on your prospects’ journey. It’s wise to include a compelling CTA on this page as well.

  1. SlideShare is a great lead generator

If you’ve ever used SlideShare to post a presentation or document, then you know how convenient it is. But, it’s also a good way to get leads. Their Pro Plan enables you to collect leads directly from their platform. You can send these leads to your landing page. It’s worth checking this option out.

  1. Use LinkedIn’s social network to your advantage

LinkedIn offers a publishing platform that enables you to create content and reach a broad audience. Make sure your blogs are engaging and helpful and have an offer.

  1. Share what you know

A great way to emerge as a leader in your vertical is to be a speaker at an event. This is the fastest way to lend credibility to you and your brand. It also opens doors for new opportunities, connections, and leads.

  1. Form strategic partnerships

Seek out other companies that need what you provide and approach them to form an alliance. Be willing to give so you can get. Have a plan beforehand of how you’d like the partnership to develop but be willing to bend to make things happen.

By following these 10 tips, you create a sales funnel that is actively helping you generate leads and nurture your prospects. This will lead to more sales.

 

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6 BTB Marketing Moves You Must Make Now For A Killer Second Half Of 2016

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Lead NurturingWe’ve officially hit the halfway mark. As we welcome summer, time must also be spent on our marketing strategy. I know, not much fun, but it likely needs some tweaking to make the remainder of 2016 successful. Here are six moves you can make right now to ensure a strong finish to 2016.

  1. Map Your Prospects’ Sales Journey

You know where you want your prospects to end up: buying your product or service. But, how can you get them there if you don’t know where they are coming from? You can’t. That’s why you have to map out their sales journey. You will want to look at things like what do they already know about your company, how do they prefer to learn more about you, what social platforms work best, what messages pull stronger, how many communications does it take to get to the sale? By looking at your data, you can best answer these questions, which will make your marketing so much more effective, enabling you to drive demand.

  1. Develop Impactful Content

Now that you have mapped your prospects’ journey, it’s time to address your content. Think about each stage of their journey and the message that you want to convey to them at that particular point and which platform you want to use to best reach them. It may be an offer, it could be a testimonial, or maybe a white paper would be best. The point is to connect these two elements – where they are in the sales journey and how and what you communicate to them. It’s important to make sure your content is appropriate for the platform you have chosen. For example, a LinkedIn post is far different from Twitter. Use social platforms wisely; they give you great exposure. Don’t create one generic message, blast it out on all platforms and expect it to work. Your content must be designed to work on the selected platform.

  1. Implement A Strategic Editorial Calendar

This is an important step in your marketing plan. I like to work my editorial calendar one month at a time because this allows me to respond to market changes and adapt my approach and message accordingly. When making your editorial calendar, keep in mind your prospects’ sales journey, promotions you plan to run, tradeshows, and anything else relevant to your business vertical. Making your editorial calendar is hard enough, but you must also make sure it is implemented if you want to see results.

  1. Start Writing A Blog

Blogging is the single best driver of SEO to your website, so if you don’t already have one, now is the time. A word of caution, make sure your blog brings value to your readers. It’s not a platform just to talk about how great your product or service is. Show your readers why they should want to do business with you – explain helpful market information, feature interviews with industry experts, share market trends, give them content that has interest and value to them.

  1. Analyze Your Data

Yes, I said it. It’s not enough to capture data, you must actually look at it and interpret what it’s telling you about your prospects and about your efforts to communicate to them. Now is the time to fix what isn’t working. See what you can do to nurture your sluggish prospects, tweak your underperforming subject lines, run some A/B tests. By analyzing your data you’re better able to breathe new life into your marketing efforts and develop content and strategy that hits the mark.

  1. Make A Splash In Q3 

Start planning and working now to develop a piece that will inject some energy into your marketing. Take advantage of year-end reports and use their information to make an e-book, white paper, infographic, or special report. Then, use this momentum to start the new year strong.

By spending some quality time on your marketing now, it will enable you to finish the year strong. But, maybe even more importantly, it gives you a big push for January. A strong finish and a solid start? There’s nothing wrong with that!

What Are You Getting Wrong With Your E-mail Marketing?

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E-Mail ImageE-mail marketing works – if you do it right. Unfortunately, there are lots of opportunities to get off track. Here are five of the most common e-mail marketing mistakes. See which ones you’re making and take the necessary steps to make changes that will make your e-mail marketing more effective.

  1. Having No Patience For The Process

Maybe it’s because e-mail marketing works so well that businesses expect it to be a one-and-done magic bullet. It isn’t. If you want to reap the rewards of e-mail marketing, you have to do the time. E-mail is both a nurturing tool and a lead generator. Because e-mails can easily be shared, those leads you’re nurturing can forward your e-mail on to others. This means your e-mails serve double duty, helping you build qualified leads as well as getting new ones, but it is a process.

  1. Failure To Choose Your Words Wisely

With e-mail marketing, if you don’t choose your words very carefully, you’ll end up identified as a spammer. Not what you’re going for. Spam filters have gotten very sophisticated, looking at subject lines, the sender’s e-mail address, and the content of the e-mail. Avoid using spam triggering words like “free,” “cash,” “quote,” “visit our website,” and “save” in your subject lines like the plague. Trigger words like these cause problems and increase the chances of your e-mail getting caught in a SPAM trap. By avoiding these words in your e-mail subject lines, you increase your chances of making it past SPAM filters.

  1. Over Designing Your E-mails

When you put a lot of design into your e-mails, you could cause viewing problems for your prospects because of the size of the file(s). Also, if an e-mail is too busy, your prospects may miss your message. Believe it or not, plain text works really well. However, if you are going to implement some design into your e-mail campaign, make sure you keep it fairly simple. You can always test plain text versus a designed e-mail and see which works best for you.

  1. Not Maintaining Your Mailing List

You have built your e-mail list of prospects who have chosen to opt-in. That means they want to hear from you. (Of course, those who don’t will opt-out and should be removed from your list. This is an effective way to remove prospects who aren’t going to result in a sale, allowing you to focus more time and energy on those who are.) A big mistake here is to just leave your list as is and continue to send the same message to everyone on your list. Take a look at your list and see who has been engaged – clicking through, filling out forms, etc. – and which people on your list have just been holding a place on your list. Those “seat holders” need some special attention in the form of a targeted campaign from you to get them re-engaged in your product or service. Analytics is your friend and can really help you work your list to your best advantage, but you have to be paying attention to make it work.

  1. Disregarding Analytics

One of the best things about e-mail marketing is that you can get really insightful feedback directly from your prospects almost instantly. If you study your analytics, the results will tell you what’s working and what isn’t. For example, just looking at your e-mail open rates is a very helpful comparative metric. It shows you which subject line your prospects responded to best and which ones were bombs. Just this one simple thing allows you to better construct your messages to more effectively speak to your prospects.

These are just five common mistakes that are easy to make. Thankfully, they are also pretty easy to fix. Address these five areas of your e-mail marketing and you’re sure to develop successful campaigns.