Posts Tagged ‘InsideUp Lead Generation Blogs – quality leads’

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New Iphone App Makes Customer Acquisition Easier

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

If you’re a B2B marketer, by now you have no doubt heard the buzz about the increased use of mobile marketing by B2B companies. One way to take advantage of this new channel for customer acquisition is with B2B iPhone apps such as the Vendor Quotes app, recently released by InsideUp. This innovative app helps marketers take advantage of the ubiquitous nature of mobile media to connect instantly with prospects.

This solution has the potential to greatly increase lead conversion rates. According to an MIT study, the chances of qualifying a lead that is called within five minutes decrease 21 times after just 30 minutes have passed. The key to making that crucial immediate contact lies in eliminating or reducing any processes that can eat into those critical first minutes.

By following a few simple steps outlined in the instruction document for the Vendor Quotes app, marketers will be able to receive leads directly to their Salesforce account. The leads will be posted using a standard Salesforce field, such as name, company, title, industry, phone number, etc. Category-specific questions and answers will then be posted to the “Description” field.

This new app will be an indispensable time-saver for businesses. The immediacy of such a system makes it simple and cost-effective for businesses to receive ready-access to service providers. It allows companies to respond the moment a potential customer submits a request, which makes this a valuable tool for both small and large business owners.

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High Quality, High Volume Leads Top B2B Marketing Challenges

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

If your company has been feeling the strain of increased marketing challenges, you are not alone. New research by MarketingSherpa reveals that generating high quality leads and a high volume of leads continue to be the two chief concerns of B2B companies. This chart represents the growing marketing challenges B2B organizations have faced from 2009 to 2010.

Many companies are still working with restrained marketing budgets and a smaller marketing staff, making the problem of generating a large volume of leads even more difficult. Combined with a lengthening sales cycle, these issues can seem like insurmountable obstacles to creating growth for your company.

Awareness of these trouble spots, however, is the first step toward overcoming them. Here are three key areas worth reviewing, which can be factors in closing the gaps you encounter in your company’s marketing strategy:

  1. Take a critical look at your marketing and sales data and closely track ROI to assess the most cost-effective sources of quality leads. Purchasing leads from an online lead generation company is one solution many companies are using to keep the pipeline filled with warm leads.
  2. Make sure no lead is wasted. Organizations are working harder to bring marketing and sales together to determine what constitutes a high quality lead and when a lead is ready to be turned over to sales. More companies are also employing lead management technology to ensure they are pulling the highest possible return on those leads.
  3. Meet the challenge of a longer B2B sales cycle by refining and strengthening your company’s lead nurturing process. This will enable you to capture sales and boost ROI even when leads don’t close on the initial call. Your lead nurturing efforts will have the added benefit of building trust and creating loyalty on the part of your prospects.
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How Much to Pay for Leads Depends on Lead Quality, Source & Results

Monday, October 4th, 2010

A high number of leads, which are offered at a very low cost per lead, usually result in anemic sales results. Yes, you can buy “leads” in large quantities for as little as $1 each, but these simply represent companies that may — or more likely, may not — be interested in actually purchasing your services. The point is there is an enormous gap in quality between a list of “leads” and real-time leads that represent buyers who are actively seeking your services.

If you’ve been reluctant to purchase leads from a lead generation company (for whatever reason), you could be doing your business a big disservice by missing out on one of the richest sources of leads available. Some marketers hold back simply due to their uncertainty over how much to pay for leads.

What you may not know is that seasoned lead buyers gladly pay more for leads whenever those leads represent pre-qualified and verified prospects who exhibit an active willingness or readiness to buy. It simply makes logical sense.

But before purchasing leads from an online generation company, ensure that it offers filters that allow you to precisely specify the type of leads and associated demographics that are most likely to purchase the services you offer. This increases the relevancy of your leads, which means you get targeted leads based on your lead selection criteria.

The better, more professional lead-gen companies also follow another best practice: They use live human beings to contact every potential lead before offering them for purchase. This ensures that lead buyers receive correct and accurate contact information. This single factor alone greatly increases the speed, ease and profitability of working a lead.

Lead Quality Depends on Lead Source

The source of your leads also affects lead value and, therefore, the price you should be willing to pay. The best lead suppliers offer leads at various value-based pricing levels, allowing you to buy, for example, premium, real-time leads versus slightly older leads offered at bulk rates, or a combination of the two. Many slightly aged leads represent bona fide prospects who simply have a longer time-to-purchase cycle.

Leads generated by your company’s own online marketing efforts may cost less, but the closure rate for leads generated from internal campaigns was less than 20% for two-thirds of business services firms recently surveyed by InsideUp.

Leads from any source should never be evaluated on subjective measures, but tested – and return on investment is the best measurement. Be sure to keep your ROI expectations reasonable, however; don’t expect a $1000 lead spend to turn a $10,000 profit within six months.

When determining ROI for purchased leads, the thing to measure isn’t the initial cost per lead but what your new Customer’s Lifetime Value, or CLV, is over several years. The repeat purchases from each customer can add up to several thousands of dollars over the years of your business relationship. (Check our blog on CLV here.)

Results: Compare, Compare, Compare

One of the best ways to get an accurate picture of how purchased online leads perform versus other lead sources is to create a comparison table or model based on transaction data and campaign results. Include revenue, market share and profits, volume, conversion of leads and direct response metrics. See which ones perform better.

After weighing such factors as lead-to-sale ratio and average profit margin for each sale, many marketers have found that higher priced leads usually have appreciatively higher performance results.

Once you’ve gained a thorough understanding of the cost to value relationship of leads, you’ll find that complementing your own marketing efforts with quality leads from a lead generation company can be a very cost-effective means of reaching your sales goals.

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Using Customer Lifetime Value to Plan Your Lead Generation Budget

Saturday, September 4th, 2010

When it comes to purchasing leads, how do you know how much of your marketing budget to invest? With a few simple calculations, you can be sure you’re on the right track, knowing that your expenditure is more than just a leap of faith.

Marketing executives at business services firms feel frustrated when they don’t see an immediate return on investment from leads, especially if they are evaluating leads from a new source. Sales cycles for most business service companies’ average about three months. And even if the lead is qualified, will it take some time for revenue to be generated from the provider of your new leads.

Furthermore, the marketing metrics being used to measure leads are not necessarily the right ones. For example, if your average sale per customer results in $250 in profit in the first year, and you purchase 10 leads at $25 each, with a ten percent conversion rate to acquire that new customer, you might feel concerned that you essentially broke even on your initial marketing investment.

However, customer lifetime value (CLV) is increasingly being used as an appropriate measure of lead value. CLV reflects the present total value of a customer to the company over his or her lifetime. When we discuss CLV, we typically refer to the value of a single customer, using the average sales of such a customer. The model of CLV can be broken down as a function of these three elements:

  • TP: Total Annual Profit (Total Sales – Cost)
  • TC: Total Customers
  • CL: Average Customer Life (in years)

Using the elements, customer lifetime value is calculated as CLV = TP X CL.

Although CLV could measure the customer’s value over his or her lifetime, most marketers use three years (based on considerations surrounding product life cycle, customer life cycle and profit calculations).

Now when you calculate the CLV of a single customer, you will see just what the true value is of your investment in leads. Plus if you factor in any repeat or additional purchases made by each customer, that $250 profit can turn into several thousands of dollars over the term of their relationship with you.

Companies such as Amazon, whose average customer purchase is about $20, typically spend much more than that in marketing dollars to acquire each customer. Why? Because they look beyond the initial buying cycle to realize that over a period of several years, that customer will likely spend thousands of dollars.

Generating qualified leads can be a complicated process, but a good lead generation company can specifically tailor the lead acquisition process to the needs of your business so you can be assured of receiving quality leads…leads who are actively seeking the services you provide…leads who will most likely convert to longtime, valuable customers.

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Why There is No Such Thing as An Exclusive Lead

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Many B2B marketers still believe in the myth of the exclusive lead and that sales success only comes with exclusive leads. This may have been true in 1980, but in today’s world of online marketing, exclusive leads are virtually nonexistent. The reality is that customers do diligent research before settling on one vendor. And price is not the most important factor for comparing vendors.

If you want to turn your leads into sales, you need to know what your customers are looking for. Are they seeking value, or is it all about the lowest price? Do they compare several vendors or just go with the first one they find?

A recent research study by B2B International found that not only do B2B buyers compare vendors, they also favor quality and reliable delivery over price when choosing a vendor. Of the buyers surveyed, 100 percent said quality was the most important factor in their buying decision. Reliable delivery was ranked second by 84 percent of participants, and pricing took third place for 76 percent.

Key Factors in Choosing
a Vendor		 Percentage of Respondents Overall Ranking
Quality 100 1
Reliable delivery 84 2
Price 76 3
Speedy delivery 42 4
Technical back up 31 5
Sales service 30 6

What prompts potential buyers to search online?

Researchers at Enquiro found that information gathering is the primary objective of potential buyers online search activities. Over 70% of respondents search online to learn more about a product or service or to compare it against alternatives. This demonstrates that search activity precedes purchase decisions in a huge number of cases.

How can these insights help you turn leads into sales?

Knowing that potential buyers are weighing price against quality of service, you can tailor your sales message to emphasize specific ways in which your company delivers quality service. Remember, the large majority are not looking for the cheapest provider, but the one that is the best match in terms of features and service quality.

Of course, this requires that your company actually does offer a level of service that differentiates you from your competitors. Perhaps you will find there is opportunity for improvement in this area. Strengthening the quality of your services in measurable ways will give you a definite advantage when it comes to closing sales.

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InsideUp Lead Generation Blogs – Seven Tips for Effective Lead Management

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Even the best leads will not produce the results you want if they are not managed and nurtured well. A study by Marketo found that only 25 percent of new leads are actually sales-ready. The rest will require a long-term management strategy to bring in results.

An unofficial survey of several lead management companies produced the following best practices.

1. Nurture leads before sending them to sales. ( Unless you have purchased real-time leads from a lead supplier. Sales should contact these leads immediately, and any that do not close should be given to marketing for further nurturing.)

2. Become a recognized authority in your industry. Offer your expertise to help prospects make an informed decision. If you provide guidance without pressure, you will come to be viewed as a trusted source.

3. Work with sales to define a sales-ready lead. Take into account demographics such as company size, yearly revenue, and purchase time-frame. If you have purchased leads from a lead generation company, that work has already been done, and these pre-qualified leads can be sent directly to sales.

4. Keep your sales team informed about which marketing activities each prospect has responded to, so they can tell you which strategies are yielding results.

5. Compile qualifying questions, call scripts, and email templates to help with the initial contact. Using these tools, a rep can refer to specific interests the prospect has demonstrated, such as downloading a white paper on a particular topic. Ask questions that will help you gain new information, rather than what you already know about your prospect.

6. Don’t waste leads. Make sure sales follows up on each one. Reassign leads that aren’t contacted the first time around. Every lead should be valued and cultivated through the often very long B2B sales cycle.

7. Track the results of individual marketing activities to gain a deeper insight than you would by simply tracking the lead source.

If you are working with a lead generation company to supplement your in-house marketing strategies, many of the best practices listed above, such as lead scoring and qualifying to determine which leads are sales-ready, will have already been done by the lead supplier. Using pre-qualified leads can take some of the pressure off your marketing team while keeping the pipeline filled.

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Seven Steps to Increase the Productivity of Your Sales Team

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

A new white paper released by the Sales Lead Management Association offers some insight into the question of why some businesses fail to see a satisfactory ROI, even with high quality, real time leads.

The reason is that the majority of leads are simply wasted. A survey by the SLMA found that 75 to 90 percent of all leads turned over to salespeople are not followed up on. How do you know if this is happening in your company?

  1. Track your ROI. A separate study by the SLMA found that more than 60 percent of businesses do not do this, even though most sales software comes with ROI tracking built into the program.
  2. Identify and isolate issues related to meeting your ROI, and establish a plan to overcome these issues and meet your ROI goals. Include some of the steps below to increase the productivity of your sales team.
  3. Establish a policy that requires 100% follow up on leads.
  4. Observe whether your team is spending too much time between calls. If so, minimizing distractions will help them stay on track—and on the phone with those leads while they’re fresh.
  5. Use progressive dialing, which will automatically start to dial the next number in line as soon as the salesperson ends the current call. (Not to be confused with predictive dialing, which causes a pause when calls are answered; most people will recognize this as an automated call.)
  6. Next best call routing is also an excellent tool. It eliminates the need for the sales rep to stop and analyze which call will be the best one to take, which can eat up a surprising amount of time. The system will select and route the next best calls to each rep, based upon criteria selected by the company owner or manager.
  7. Make certain your leads are properly nurtured. Have a plan in place for following up on leads that do not result in a purchase on the initial call. These are still very valuable leads, but are often ignored by salespeople.

By taking these simple but effective steps, and continually tracking your results using the ROI tracking aspect of your sales program, you should see a higher percentage of your leads turning into customers.

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Inbound Marketing—Why it’s Less Expensive and More Effective

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

imboundIt seems you can’t go online, turn on the television, or even step outside without being bombarded with advertising by companies desperately trying to convince you of their superiority. Most people, however, are so accustomed to these ads, they simply tune them out. Which is bad news for the B2B marketers who are still spending much of their budget on these outbound lead generation methods.

That is exactly why many businesses, especially small and medium sized ones, are gravitating toward inbound marketing methods. Unlike outbound marketing, where companies cast their advertising “net” out on the waters along with every other business, and hope it lands in the right spot, inbound marketing draws customers by offering valuable information, and the opportunity to find out more about your company via online interaction.

Inbound marketing is more effective in establishing a relationship with your prospective customers, giving you the chance to become a reliable resource for business advice in your area of expertise. Once you have established this kind of trust with people, your company will be the natural choice when they need to make a purchase.

Another key reason for this shift in marketing focus is that, according to a new survey by Hubspot, the average cost per lead generated through inbound marketing is sixty percent lower than that of leads obtained through outbound marketing. The survey found that marketers spend an average of $332 on outbound marketing to generate one lead, whereas inbound marketing produces leads at an average cost of $134 each.

Inbound marketing does, however, take a commitment. You will need to not only establish your company’s blogs and other social media channels, but also cultivate and nurture them. But in time, if you consistently serve up information your customers find useful, you will begin to develop a loyal following, and your efforts will be rewarded.

In the meantime, you can jump-start your inbound marketing campaign by purchasing leads from a lead generation company that uses inbound marketing methods and allows you to interact with your prospects, learn about their business needs, and even give quotes for your services. Your cost for these leads will most likely be even less than what you will spend on your own inbound marketing efforts, and will be of the same, or superior quality.

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Four Factors that Separate Real Time Leads from Lead Lists

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

qualified leadAccording to the Direct Marketing Association, 65% of business-to-business marketing is focused on lead generation. In the quest to maintain a constant stream of leads, many companies choose to purchase leads from a lead supplier. This can be an excellent way to boost your sales, provided you are getting high quality leads.

Many “lead” suppliers, however, are really only providing you with a list of contacts at businesses which may or may not have an interest in buying from your company.

When purchasing leads, it’s important to keep in mind what actually defines a lead. According to Business Dictionary.com, a sales lead is an “inquiry, referral, or other information, obtained through advertisements or other means, that identifies a potential customer (prospect).” A true lead will be:

1. Actively Seeking Your Services

A true lead is not just a name on a list, but a person who has demonstrated interest in your services. And a warm lead will have indicated, through their actions, that they are highly motivated and ready to buy now.

2. Verified Contactable at the Time of Your Purchase

List providers typically update lists on a monthly or semi-annual basis, leaving it to the buyer to verify the leads. Quality lead suppliers will provide leads that have been submitted by the source, so the data provided (e.g. employee size) is more accurate than that from any other business data source.

3. Highly Targeted and Matched to Your Business

The quality of your leads is also largely determined by the extent to which you can profile your prospects based on the unique capabilities of your business. In the case of list providers and generic online lead suppliers, the lead provider does not interact with both the buyer and the service provider, which means they cannot target prospects on parameters unique to your business.

4. Rated by a Detailed Scoring System

Lead generation companies that sell fresh, dynamic leads analyze prospects based on web page activity, frequency of visits, and accuracy of information submitted. Such highly targeted leads are simply not possible with a purchased list of potential buyers.

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Can Your Business Get by Without Buying Leads?

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

businessIf the marketing campaigns you have in place are producing a certain amount of leads for your business, you may wonder if it’s really necessary to purchase additional leads from a lead generation company. And if so, what kind of returns can be realized by using such vendors? There are actually several compelling reasons for considering this step.

The first is obvious; what company couldn’t use more leads? But on closer examination, you will see that leads purchased from a lead generation company have some clear advantages. Even companies with their own sophisticated lead-gathering strategies regularly purchase additional leads, for the following reasons:

1. Lead Gen Companies Capture Leads You Would Otherwise Miss

Many of your potential customers simply will not submit their contact information to an individual vendor, finding it more efficient to utilize a service that offers pricing and feature comparisons of several vendors simultaneously. Many such services have a platform that allows seekers to be matched ONLY to vendors that meet their specific needs and business profile, and to receive competitive bids from each vendor.

2. Leads from a Wider Variety of Sources

Lead vendors have a diverse repertoire of lead-gathering methods, and can bring in leads from a broad range of online sources such as opt-in email, video advertising, white paper syndication, social media marketing, and contextual advertising, to complement or exceed your own lead generation tactics.

3. There is No Such Thing as an Exclusive Lead

In fact, the average person will leave contact information with at least two or three other vendors when researching companies. So if you’ve been reluctant to purchase leads, believing that there is more competition for these buyers, you could be missing out on one of the richest sources of leads available.

4. Your Results are Guaranteed

Lead generation companies are the only source of leads that come with a performance guarantee; you will only pay for qualified leads that have verified contact information. No wasting of expensive clicks, or having your sales reps deal with non-qualified leads.

Of course, if your own marketing endeavors are producing a stream of leads for your company, you should definitely continue to develop these, but going a step further and purchasing qualified leads can really push your business forward.

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