SMB Marketing Blog

Wondering if you’re wasting sales time or marketing budget? Or likely, both?!

In this free companion webinar to the eHow To Guide A Marketing Automation Guide to Lead Scoring, join Paul Uppal, Senior Account Executive at ActiveConversion, as he speaks with  his customer, Tim Lawler – Lead and Demand Generation Consultant at LMG Consulting, on how Tim successfully implemented closed-looped lead scoring systems with Active Conversion for his clients.

“The key is getting the user to click through the email to a landing page with the Active Conversion code.  That starts the lead scoring process (a download is not necessary).  After the first landing page visit, the user web activity is tracked  and scored going forward.”

Tim Lawler

Tue Mar 9, 2010 at 1:00-2:00PM EST, 10:00-11:00AM PST

Learn best practices on how to implement a lead scoring process, automatically manage leads, and focus your time on the best prospects to increase ROI by 30% or more.

Not all leads are created equally. A lead scoring system acknowledges this by assigning values to leads based on objective criteria. The lead score determines the appropriate action for that lead.

See real world tools and examples to help you shorten your sales cycle and make intelligent sales and marketing decisions.

The title of this article from BizReport is “92% SMB owners recommend business-focused online networking“, which is a great stat.  But in my opinion the bigger result from the survey conducted centers on ROI:

59% have won customers or done business as a direct result of online networking sites.

Furthermore, as business networking (the survey definitely shows a divide between “social” networking such as Facebook and “business” networking such as LinkedIn) shows significant ROI, the love is returned:

78% are open to purchasing from contacts made on such sites

While these results are from a survey conducted in the UK, I’m going to say that empirically they are valid for the business environment on this side of the pond.  For those of you who are skeptical of the power of social networking, some powerful numbers are starting to make a pretty strong case, all the more so when you can start measuring the result.  It’s one thing to engage in social networking on a gut call, it’s another to get measurable returns that justify the investment.

Wellesley, Mass. - January 25, 2010. THINKstrategies, Inc., the leading strategic consulting company focused on the business implications of the on-demand services market, announced today that ActiveConversion has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards program was announced in January 2009 by THINKstrategies as an initiative aimed at bringing greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

ActiveConversion recently released another in their popular series of eHow To Guides.  This one deals with using Marketing Automation to leverage B2B Blogging.  From the summary:

Lead nurturing is the process of communicating with prospects who are not yet ready to buy. B2B Blogging enables marketers to contact such prospects on an ongoing basis.

Only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready. A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated are potentially wasted if no appropriate action is taken.

With B2B Blogging marketers can realize significant benefits. Leads that are not sales-ready are not lost and significant online lead generation effort is not wasted. Automation of lead nurturing increases the ROI of all online marketing activities.

To download this whitepaper on why, when, and how to implement an automatic lead nurturing plan for your business, click on the image!

The folks at Forrester Research have updated their Interactive Marketing Forecast out to 2014. 

The table of contents has some predictable headlines:

• Interactive Will Cannibalize Traditional Media
• Interactive Marketing Spend Will Near $55 Billion By 2014
• Search Marketing Still Leads Interactive Spend
• Display Advertising Rebounds
• Email Marketing Continues Healthy Growth
• Social Media Fixes Itself In The Interactive Mix
• Mobile Marketing Matters – Post Recession
• WHAT IT MEANS – Interactive Trends Will Redefine Your Business

It’s a very good read, and a few points jumped out for me.

When faced with budget cuts or the need for immediate sales, these marketers find that interactive tools are less expensive, more measurable, and better for direct response than traditional media.

Empowered consumers today expect a customized, interactive brand experience that goes way beyond a 30-second television spot or two-dimensional print ad. Forty-two percent of online adults and 55% of online youth want to engage with their favorite brands through social applications.

And last, even laggard industries feel that they have enough experience and data to prove interactive marketing’s worth. Online display spending by telecom companies in Q1 2009 grew 50% over Q1 2008.

What was also interesting was the the potential for more growth; interactive marketing ad spend is still under represented and laggard compared to how much of sample media time is spend online.

You can sign up for a copy of the full report here, courtesy of  DemandGen Report. Check it out. Your marketing future may depend on it!

Real-Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords
from the NYTimes Small Business Guide, October 14, 2009

This is a very good background article by the NYTs on Google AdWords, further evidence that Google AdWords are going mainstream.  Maybe I’m too deep into the forest, but I’m still always surprised by how many small and medium sized business managers who don’t know, or know enough about Google AdWords to realize what they are losing out on.

“It used to be that business owners often struggled to afford advertising for their products or services. Google AdWords has changed that by offering an inexpensive way to spread the word. But if you don’t do some careful planning, you can easily find yourself spending thousands of dollars with little to show for it.”

Kudos to them for also identifying that unless done properly, Google AdWords can also be a waste of money.  The truth is, in the same way when someone clicks through on a “natural” search (the unpaid portion of Google) Google is interested in sending searchers to the best quality content, Google has the same goal for click throughs on ads.  This is why having good search engine marketing skills is key to successful AdWords Marketing.  If Google likes your website for certain keywords, it will like your ads and the website it directs searches to because it is relevant. Seems commonsensical, but the popular perception is that you just have to bid the highest and your ads will show up highest.

Double Kudos to the NYTimes for mentioning the wisdom of outsourcing the setting-up and maintenance of AdWords campaigns.  Outsourcing this is low cost, and it far outweighs the opportunity cost of not doing it well.

‘Social Media Revolution’ – some say the biggest thing to impact our world since the industrial revolution, others say just a passing Fad.    You judge …….

I was once asked by a B2B customer that didn’t get many leads from their website even though they got a lot of relevant traffic. A quick investigation led us to the answer — they didn’t have a single form on the website! While they displayed the phone number and email addresses on the contact page, visitors didn’t want to pick up the phone or look for email addresses to contact them. As soon as we setup a proper inquiry form on their website, their online conversion increased more than ten fold.

However, not all online forms are created equal. Here are some tips from our experience that will help you get better success with your online forms to get better conversion to leads.

Make your web forms easy to access
Make the link to your forms very obvious. For instance, put a “Get a Quote” button on key pages to take visitors to the page where they can submit a form for a quote of your service or product.

Only ask for necessary info
How motivated are you completing a form when it feels like filing a tax return?  The less information people have to provide, the more comfortable they will be with completing the form. For example, if you’re promoting an e-newsletter subscription, you probably need only email address and the name on the form.

Limit the mandatory fields
Mandatory fields help to get fully complete registration forms, but too many mandatory fields can frustrate the user. Ask yourself what information is truly essential.

Validate the key fields and provide help
Generally you should ensure the email addresses are in a valid format. If a user has an error, let them know which one it is. It’s frustrating to guess what the error is.

Help users with the answers
Try to pre-fill or pre-select the data for the users. Some browser toolbars like the Google toolbar can also help pre-fill the form fields when using standard fields. You should also use drop-down boxes with pre-defined answers to help users choose.

Display your privacy policy
Many people are concerned about who will have access to their information and how it will be used. Make sure you have a privacy statement available on the online form to reassure the prospect that you will not abuse their information.

Make use of the Thank You page
Consider doing more than just a “Thank you for inquiring” message. Make it feel personal by displaying their first names. Provide links to key information to get them back to your website. Maybe even provide a special offer for users who submit the form.

Online forms are key to lead generation for B2B. The less barriers there are between the user and the form, the more  likely they will complete the forms.

Last week Lynn commented on the strategic merits of interoperability allowing for best-of-breed integration for your Marketing Automation solution, with a notion of ‘why fix what isn’t broken’.   The latter eluding to the point that if you’re already direct marketing through an Email Service Provider (ESP) and you want to move to include Marketing Automation, you can continue to work with your ESP.  As an SMB business you’re probably already taking advantage of one of the many ESP solutions for direct marketing in an effort to attract new customers, or simply to stay in touch with existing customers.  So when should you move to a Marketing Automation solution.

First, ESP’s provide the very basics of analytics with a direct email campaign; bounces, opens, and click-throughs.

Bounces – Hard bounces vs Soft bounces.  Always something you need to pay attention to with your house list.  This probably signals a change/ who is the new person assuming the role of your previous contact? Is the new person someone that is interested in additional services or product from you? Has a previous customer moved onto a similar role in a new company presenting the opportunity for the addition of a new customer?  Change presents opportunity for the sales person.

Opens – An open with your ESP is triggered by the ‘downloading’ of an image.  If you’re working with a marketing automation solution, the open is the point at which you establish a digital connection to the lead.  From this point on any time the lead visits your website you will have the ability to monitor the digital track they follow on your site.

Click through – Significant?  Possibly.  Did they do more than hit the landing page?  Did they navigate your site, did they convey any ‘buy signals’ through their navigation? Having visited the site, did they come back again the same day, a day later, or even weeks later?  Only with a post-click management solution are you able to determine the answers to these questions.  Questions that most would argue are key in prioritizing your lead, and ensuring your sales team are focused where the conversion to ‘qualified’ is the highest.

With post-click management you are able to evolve your ESP direct emailing campaign to the next level and gain more intelligence on your leads and understand in greater detail which of your campaigns are truly providing a return on your investment.

In the “olden days”, a web site was part of an SMB’s collateral; you had one because it equaled credibility, or because everyone said you had to have one.  It was part and parcel of the main “all or nothing” goal of marketing; get them to call your phone number.  You were sceptical of anyone who came near you wanting to talk about Web Marketing because the ROI from your website was terrible.

Since the “olden days” Google has fundamentally changed the landscape.  How many of us recycle the last version of the yellow pages unopened when the new one comes out?

The study found an overwhelming number (85 percent) of business buyers go online during the purchasing process, and 83 percent found the vendor from which they eventually purchased online. Of those using the Internet, over 70 percent start with a search engine.[source]

So the new goal is to get found by Google through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), driving potential customers to your website.  Other tools drive traffic to your site; PPC and banner ads, email campaigns, link referrals, and drip or nurture email campaigns, are all ways to increase the number of visitors and eyeballs looking at your website.

But instead of just pushing these visitors to do what the brochure of old asked them to do (call your business phone number), a new breed of software – Marketing Automation Software -  is letting your website be much more than a brochure.  This new breed of Marketing Automation software, of which ActiveConversion is one example, uses a well designed SaaS based solution as a heart rate monitor, measuring which of your potential customers have a faster pulse.  By faster pulse I mean which ones spend a lot of time on your site and visit a lot of pages vs those that see one page and leave.  Which are so interested that they come back a second time, and execute goal clicks, calls to action, or fill out forms?  Which among your anonymous visitors exhibit the same behaviours, and are worth cold calling?

This class of SaaS based solution keeps a long-term history of the heart rate read-out for your website, they spot trends, show buy signals by showing historical click streams, and announce when a potential customer is worthy of one of your limited sales cycles, worthy of a phone call from you, instead of passively waiting for them to contact you.

Strap a heart rate monitor on your website!