Posts Tagged ‘InsideUp Lead Generation Blogs – sales leads’

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Get to Know Your Prospects Through Progressive Profiling

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

If you haven’t been getting to know your customers through progressive profiling, you could be missing out on one of the most powerful strategies in B2B marketing. Progressive profiling allows you to gradually engage prospects while learning more about their needs on each visit to your company’s website.

For example, a prospect who initially downloads a technical whitepaper and later returns seeking detailed product data sheets or a free trial is likely getting closer to making a buying decision.

Each subsequent visit gives you the opportunity to gather additional detail such as company size, purchasing budget and details regarding their company’s needs and interests. To do this effectively you will need to have a “smart” form on your website. This application saves each bit of data gathered during a prospect’s visits to your site.

One of the key advantages of this method of customer profiling and lead gathering is that it avoids the use of lengthy forms. Often, persons seeking business services will have already visited several sites by the time they encounter yours, and may have tired of filling out forms.

Progressive profiling can become an indispensable part of your marketing strategy, but it does require time to effectively plan the process and manage the data you gather.

If your site does not initially produce enough qualified needs, you may want to complement your efforts with pre-qualified leads from a lead generation company. Many businesses find that purchasing at least some of their leads helps keep the pipeline full and compensates for any lack of qualified leads gained through the company website.

To be certain you’re getting leads of the highest possible quality—ones that would be equivalent to those you gather through progressively profiling visitors to your site—make sure the lead gen company utilizes this methodology in their own lead-gathering process.

The ones who do are very adept at collecting information about your prospects and categorizing leads according to detailed demographics. Some have a highly refined scoring system that will rate leads by their online activity during each visit to the lead gen company’s site. This type of system delivers warm leads in real time, ones that will bring an excellent return on your investment.

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Two Cost-Effective Alternatives to In-House Email Marketing

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

Email marketing is without doubt one of the best ways for B2B companies to acquire new leads. That’s why a recent study by BtoB Magazine found that 80 percent of the companies surveyed plan to increase their online marketing budget and of those, 68.6 percent intend to invest more in their email marketing campaigns.

To produce high quality leads, however, email marketing must be well planned and executed, with proper attention given to segmenting and targeting your audience. To optimize the results of your campaigns, you must determine your most crucial and actionable key performance indicators and test the results of each campaign accordingly.

Many companies report that the most challenging aspect of successful email marketing lies in finding employees with the expertise to properly develop and implement an email strategy. A recent survey by InsideUp found that for 70 percent of B2B companies, lack of expertise within their firm and difficulty finding qualified people to do the work were the biggest obstacles to successful online marketing.

Additionally, in-house email marketing can drain your budget and resources and make your marketing department more dependant on IT. It will also require a substantial investment  in customized software and server technology.

If this scenario rings true for your company, there are two excellent options that will allow you to reap the benefits of email marketing without the expense and hassle involved with hiring an in-house staff.

1. Outsource Your Email Marketing – Finding a quality email marketing company to take care of your needs can save your company considerable expense, not only in regard to hiring an in-house staff, but also in terms of email server processing power and internal bandwidth. You will have the advantage of the email provider’s expertise in all aspects of email marketing, such as list management, customized content, deliverability, testing and tracking, and regulatory compliance.

2. Purchase Quality, Pre-Qualified Leads – The crème of online lead generation companies have turned the process of generating quality, real-time warm leads into a veritable science. By diverting a portion of your online marketing budget toward purchasing leads that have been verified and scored using a detailed scoring process, you gain immediate access to prospects who are actively seeking your services–at a fraction of what it would cost to pull leads of similar quality from your own email marketing campaigns.

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InsideUp Lead Generation Blogs – Could Your Company Use Leads with 125% ROI?

Monday, January 31st, 2011

Any company considering purchasing leads from an online lead supplier will naturally want to know what type of results to expect. Will the leads you receive prove to be worth the investment? One of the best ways to answer this question is to research the results other companies have achieved while using a third party lead supplier.

One such firm, TeleDirect, is a call center services firm employing more than 100 professional CSRs. The Sacramento Business Journal has listed the company as one of its “Fastest Growing Companies” in each of the past six years.

The company recently needed a continuous pipeline of qualified, high-ROI leads that would be sales-ready within a few weeks’ time. However, the company’s marketing executives had learned from experience to be selective when choosing third-party lead suppliers. Some vendors, they found, employ unrefined, generic lead-gathering methods, resulting in low-quality, unqualified leads.

Supplying their sales team with a continuous flow of fresh leads had been a key to company success, allowing TeleDirect’s sales force to concentrate on the sales process and conversions rather than spending too much time and resources on prospecting or qualifying potential leads. However, call center executives felt that they were using too many external lead sources and needed to bring efficiencies into their lead-gen program.

Knowing that call center service buyers rarely submit their contact information to an individual vendor, and that most prospects prefer comparison shopping, TeleDirect chose to purchase leads from InsideUp, where prospects enjoy the efficiency of using an online service to evaluate the pricing and features of several vendors simultaneously.

The results? TeleDirect Call Centers received an average 125% return-on-investment within the first 30 days of signing up new call center customers. This means that the total revenue it generated from customers within just 30 days of signup is 125% of the total cost of generating those leads using InsideUp’s platform.

On average, 80% of InsideUp’s lead prospects requested custom proposals from TeleDirect, permitting TeleDirect’s sales team to work with interested and engaged potential new customers. By using InsideUp leads, TeleDirect was also able to reduce its external sources of sales leads by 50 percent.

InsideUp’s lead verification process ensures that leads provided to TeleDirect have a high response rate. InsideUp remains one of the company’s core lead sources. TeleDirect’s CEO, Tom Coshow, put it this way, “InsideUp far exceeded our expectations. InsideUp leads were not only qualified and verified..they were either warm or hot to the touch! Plus they were exactly the prospects that hit our sweet spot. Thanks to InsideUp, our business has grown significantly.”

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Twelve Key Ways Marketing Automation Can Benefit Your Business

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

According to a new report by DemandGen, the number of companies that have adopted marketing automation solutions in 2010 is double that of the previous year. Several giants such as IBM and Oracle were among them.

With marketing automation’s capacity to help companies maximize their return on investment, manage revenue cycles, and create brand awareness, the number of B2B companies taking advantage of this technology is expected to continue to grow. But you don’t have to be a mega organization to reap the benefits of CRM and other forms of marketing automation software. So what, exactly, is marketing automation and how can it help your business grow?

According to SearchCRM, marketing automation software is used to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI), and campaign management. Its use makes processes, which had been performed manually, much more efficient. It also provides new features and capabilities that companies have yet to exploit. Marketing automation is an integral component of customer relationship management (CRM).

Marketo further defines marketing automation as a tool for increasing operational efficiency and driving revenue. It automates the routine and repeatable tasks involved in lead management, lead nurturing and lead scoring. It will also build and maintain your company’s marketing lead database. It can also be integrated with your company’s existing sales force automation systems.

Automation software enables marketing departments to measure what works and demonstrate the impact of specific marketing and lead nurturing campaigns on company revenue. Used effectively, it can foster collaboration between marketing and sales teams and increase productivity.

The two main functions of marketing automation are campaign management and customer segmentation. Organizations use factors such as gender, age, and education to separate and categorize customer data. This helps marketers create campaigns targeted to particular demographics and measure the effectiveness of advertising and lead nurturing strategies.

Within these two main functions, marketing automation programs perform a multitude of tasks. Some of these will vary by provider, but most will help increase the effectiveness of your marketing in these 12 ways:

  1. Increase productivity by replacing repetitive manual tasks with automated systems.
  2. Help to manage your company’s revenue cycles.
  3. Automate lead generation and lead nurturing processes.
  4. Create marketing work-flow systems, budget plans and organizational calendars.
  5. Manage organization-wide marketing campaigns
  6. Manage mailing lists based on existing lead, account and contact data.
  7. Assist on campaign asset creation.
  8. Analyze campaign effectiveness based on customer data.
  9. Use information captured in lead details to qualify leads to next stage.
  10. Deploy mass email campaigns to targeted mailing lists.
  11. Import leads from external sources, such as lead suppliers and Web downloads.
  12. Create, automate and deliver multi-channel promotional messaging.

If you’re planning to purchase marketing automation software tools, it’s important to realize that your initial purchase is only the beginning. When companies express disappointment with their marketing automation system, this is often because they have not taken the time to learn how to use it fully. To get the most benefit from your software, you will need to integrate it with the right resources, people, and processes.

Think of marketing automation as one component of your complete marketing solution. When used effectively, it can help you build brand awareness and realize a higher return on your sales leads.

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Strong Social Media Growth Presents Challenges…Benefits to B2B Marketers

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

The big news for B2B companies for 2011 is the undeniable trend toward social media marketing. In fact, Forrester Research predicts that B2B companies will increase budgets for interactive marketing spend to $54 million by 2014, double the amount spent in 2009. And for good reason: according to SiriusDecisions, by 2015 as much as 75 percent of B2B demand will come from the Internet.

Clearly there is great potential for B2B social marketing as prospects regularly go online to research business services and vendors. Social media can — and should — be used to engage prospects and interact with them throughout the buying cycle. Many companies are already immersing themselves in the social media marketing scene, with excellent results. A recent report by Mashable cited a study in which the vast majority — 86 percent — of B2B companies said they use social media for marketing.

Yet according to Marketing Sherpa’s recent social media benchmark survey, shown in the chart below, 48 percent of participants stated that social media was only “somewhat effective” at generating leads.

This is likely due to the fact that many companies lack well-defined strategies for capturing online prospects through social media, as well as the resources to develop and implement such strategies. A study by White Horse Marketing reported that 60 percent of B2B firms have no staff dedicated to social media and a mere 10 percent use outside agencies or consultants.

Successful social media marketing does require a substantial commitment in terms of time and budget. B2B online marketing is always evolving — and becoming more fragmented. It is no longer a simple matter of mastering search marketing. Companies must now become adept at effectively leveraging video, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and a plethora of other tools. Finding out where your prospects are and what type of online media they are using involves constant, diligent research followed by continual fine-tuning of your social media strategy based on your research results.

Consider using the expertise and experience of an outside company that both understands B2B marketing and knows how to effectively use social media to generate quality leads as part of an overall lead generation platform. Using a third-party source for leads could help your organization save countless labor hours and other resources that might otherwise be swallowed up in the social media vortex.

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New Study: Salespeople Spend Excess Time Prospecting for New Leads

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

How is your sales team spending their time? Recent findings by CSO Insights reveal key areas where B2B companies can enhance their marketing efforts and increase sales. In a survey for CSO’s Sales Performance Optimization Report, 1,800 companies reported that their sales representatives spend nearly 20 percent of their time generating leads.

Obviously this is not the most effective use of a sales agent’s valuable time and skills. Unfortunately, however, this has become standard practice in many businesses. This is not surprising in light of the findings in Marketing Sherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report.
Out of 935 respondents, an astonishing 80 percent admitted to sending unqualified leads on to their sales team.

Still, customer acquisition was found to be an even higher priority this year than in previous years, with over 90 percent of marketers in the CSO report stating that acquiring new customers has become their top priority. (Click image to enlarge.)

Other activities that typically consume a sales agent’s time include attending meetings and handling administrative tasks (18%),  account service calls, (15.2%) and other activities such as travel and training (36.6%), leaving only 11.5 percent of the average salesperson’s workday for closing sales.

How can businesses dealing with these challenges keep their pipelines filled with qualified leads? Many companies are creating a balance by purchasing pre-qualified leads so that their sales team can spend more time closing and less time trying to generate and qualify new leads. Even if such a move produced a conservative 10 percent increase in sales productivity, the potential for much greater revenue is obvious.

Supplementing your marketing strategy by purchasing qualified leads will also free your sales team to spend more time nurturing those leads that fail to close on the first call. When you consider that for every 100 raw leads, only 4 to 7 are ready to buy, it’s easy to see how businesses can further improve ROI by shifting their sales teams’ focus toward nurturing the other 93 to 96 percent of leads throughout the buying cycle.

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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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InsideUp Lead Generation Blogs – Strengthen Your Sales Message to Boost Sales

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

When you receive pre-qualified leads who are ready to buy, they will still need compelling reasons to buy from you rather than from your competitor. You can increase sales up to 30 percent by creating a sales message that is relevant to your buyers’ questions.

A 2008 survey by International Data Group found that the chance of closing a sale was reduced by 45 percent when the content of the sales message was not relevant to buyers’ most pressing questions. The study also found that 42 percent of the time, sales teams had not been provided with adequate training and tools to help them answer these questions persuasively. Although the survey participants were IT buyers, the same principles of effective and relevant sales messaging applies to virtually all types of marketing.

Sales messaging is defined as offering a persuasive and compelling answer to a buyer’s primary questions regarding the services you offer. The three basic questions buyers have are:

  1. Why should I meet with you? (If an initial appointment is the next step in your sales process.)
  2. Why should I replace my current solution with your company’s services?
  3. Why buy this solution from your company and not from your competitor?

According to a recent poll by BtoB Magazine, 70 percent of marketers graded themselves at “D” or an “F” level in regard to how well they prepared sales messaging and supporting materials for their sales team. If you feel you fall into this category, the good news is that you have the opportunity to increase sales by analyzing and strengthening your sales messaging.

The first step toward stronger sales messaging is to know your target market well. This will enable you to replace weak generalities such as “great customer service” with specific information about how your company is uniquely positioned to fill a buyer’s needs.

A future post will go into further detail about how you can create a compelling sales message.

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InsideUp Lead Generation Blogs – Seven Tips for Effective Lead Management

Saturday, October 30th, 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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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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