HiveMind Marketing - Intelligent Lead Generation

How to Double Your Leads

Marketing departments at most companies today have been hit hard with cutbacks in staff, resources, and budget. Often one person now is doing the work of three. Most of the attention and work centers on maintaining existing processes for lead generation. But what if you could double the number of leads your were generating? Wouldn’t that be worth it?

Engagement marketing can do just that. It starts simply with defining a lead. I know that sounds like going back to kindergarten, but in truth, this is where it all begins.

We’re all in the business of generating traffic to our website first and foremost. But we also all realize that not all traffic is equal — even if a web visitor clicked an ad, searched on one of our keywords, or even downloaded a whitepaper. Some of these people represent hot leads that our sales team would be interested in. But many are just not ready to engage. So the first trick is to find a way to segment and separate the bona fide leads from the tire-kickers.

1. Define Segments Based on Interest
If you can define segments based on interest, then you can create relevant offers and specific campaigns targeted at each segment.

You’ve already been told not to ask too many questions on your forms and landing pages, but this is different. If you need to shorten your form, give up on collecting their mailing address, zipcode, and fax number, and instead include a question that qualifies them based on their level of interest.
For example, you might come right out and ask them “What is your interest in our product or company?” Then have a drop down list of 3-5 segments mapped to your purchase cycle. These could be a) Ready to buy, please contact me, b) Evaluating solutions from multiple vendors, c) Looking for products that might solve my problem, and d) General researching.

Now, of course, only the visitors that check “a” are sales leads. You have to nurture the others.

2. Track and Test Everything
Once you have defined your leads, and your segments, use analytics to measure all results from your campaigns. You’re trying to determine which offers, tactics, media, and creative delivered which segments, how many of each, and at what cost.

As with any analytics strategy, the more you track and test, the better. You can use A-B testing, multivariate testing — whatever you’re set up to do.

Gradually, one or more offers will rise to the top. One or more media will excel. And one or more creative ideas will be the winner. But don’t stop there. Remember, your audience is a hivemind, which means it’s constantly moving and changing. So you need to continue testing.

A good lead automation program can really help here. Look at Marqui and Active Conversion for strong value solutions and Silverpop B2B Engage, Marketo, and LeadGenesys for even more power. (of course, there are tons more)

3. Sustain Your Efforts
If you make a concerted, sustained effort on lead generation with this engagement mentality, you can determine:

• Which campaign respondents are true leads – the ones most likely to turn into paying customers
• How many leads it takes to create a sale
• Your true cost per lead

And in the end, you can literally double your number of leads for the same marketing investment.

Biggest resistance to social media marketing is from companies who haven't yet done a good job with email marketing, web design, positioning, SEO and other traditional marcom venues.

Implementing Business Catalyst websites now.

After Blogging: What Next?

According to Steve Rubel, the author of the Micropersuasion Blog, blogging feels old.

New sites like Posterous feel more like flow and where the web is going. Blogging begins to feel too slow and methodical in a world where apps like Tweetdeck bring real-time Twitter conversations right to our doorstep.

At the same time, however, it's important for people (and businesses) to create their own hubs and then control how they connect to the spokes.

But here's what might change:

Blogs could get shorter and more visual.

Blogs could connect automatically to social network hubs – without a lot of widgets.

These new lifestream blogs might focus more on daily links, observations and insights – rather than long-winded pseudo-magazine articles.

And they can serve as a primary launching point for how content is sent into social networks, with new items auto-posted on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook.

Everything about this is more alive, more vibrant, less pedantic. That's where Steve Rubel has already headed. And for the rest of us, I think it's the way things will evolve in 2010.

Effective Landing Pages: Top 10 Best Practices

Everyone follows some best practices, but with landing pages, it’s more important than ever, since you can increase effectiveness and ROI from PPC, SEO, Email, Blogs, Public Relations, and more. Here’s the way we think about it at HiveMind Marketing:

1. Reinforce continuity. Landing pages perform best when the content is promotion-based. If you want prospects to respond to your banners, emails and clicks, keep the content concise and focused on one appealing message. Reinforce the exact messaging in the search, in the hit, and on the landing page for best results.
2. Visually engage the user. Tell a story or sell a product using imagery with impact, rather than simply explaining the purpose with lengthy copy.
3. Keep it crisp. With today’s media-induced attention deficit disorder, it’s easy for people to lose interest and stray.  Use a Direct Headline and make certain that this is the first thing a web visitor notices when viewing the page.
4. Deliver a clear value proposition. Think of your landing page as your online salesperson. It should answer any potential “whys.” Limit the value proposition to three or four compelling bullet points and don’t mince words.
5. Don’t let visitors slip away. The vast majority of people will exit from a landing page in a few seconds. To combat this, embrace the idea of simplicity and resist the urge to include navigation to other pages on your website or multiple offers. Instead make your information easy to follow:
   • Keep the main message above the fold
   • Create clean navigation and succinct calls to action.
   • Use plenty of whitespace
   • Use bulleted text, with straightforward language
6. Don’t ask for too much. It’s common practice these days to trade information, that is, to ask for information before providing information. You tell web visitors a little something about your company and its products, they tell you a little something about themselves — and over time, you create a mutually beneficial learning relationship. If this is your first contact with someone, you should probably only ask for the essentials, like name and email address.
7. Tailor your offering. Make sure that what you are offering is tailored to fit the exact needs of your target audience. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. Most companies offer whatever whitepaper they have on hand. But if the topic is not timely, if the writing is not crisp, and if the title is not compelling, it simply won’t work.
8. Don’t ask for big commitment. Direct words like “Buy,” “Add to Cart” or “Subscribe” indicate a commitment that the visitor may not be ready to make and can lower conversion rates. If you use a softer call to action like "Try it Now" you can increase conversions.
9. Don’t settle for thank you. Once you’ve delivered the goods, redirect your prospects to a page that does more than offer a simple thank you. Ask yourself, what would this person possibly like to see next? Then provide links to that information on your thank-you page.
10. Understand your analytics. It’s easy to see how many people clicked through to your landing page, but analytics can tell you much more if you pay attention. For example, if 75% of visitors leave without filling out your form, that’s a danger sign. Is your form too long? Is your call to action to vague, or too big of a commitment? Is the title of your whitepaper too generic? Use analytics to point you in the right direction. Then test alternatives.

4 Steps to Avoid Marketing Analysis Paralysis

At HiveMind Marketing, we believe that every marketing program should be tied to a metric from the outset. But it’s also important not to emphasize measurement so much that it gets in the way of moving forward. Too much detail and complexity often leads to analysis paralysis, where you spend too much time analyzing the data and too little time using it to evaluate and improve programs. If you’re feeling overwhelmed lately by marketing metrics, here’s a simple approach to measurement that can help.

1. Establish specific measurable advertising and communications objectives.

If you define specific, measurable objectives on the front end, you can determine whether a particular program has been successful or not. Keep in mind that the more specific the objective, the easier it is to measure and the more meaningful the measurement. For example, here are two possible advertising objectives for a new product offering:

1. Introduce the new SaaS digital stream management solution.


2. Generate 135 requests for on-site demonstration of the new SaaS digital stream management solution from targeted decision makers during the first three months of the introduction campaign.

The first objective is difficult to measure or relate to sales or revenues. As a result, you can’t tell whether it worked or not. However, the second objective is highly measurable in the form of several pieces of information: total number of inquiries, a definition of qualified decision makers, the total number of demos, and the total number of sales that come from those demos. And it sets a specific time frame for achieving the objective — all of which adds up to a very effective measure of effectiveness.

2. Specify the key elements to measure and track and identify appropriate measurement criteria

With objectives established and prioritized, your next step is to decide which elements of your marketing program you want to measure: budget, creative strategy, media, or sales impact of the entire campaign.

If you are beginning a multi-phase campaign, you may want to measure such elements as media selection and creative strategy in order to improve the effectiveness of succeeding phases. Or you might want to know which offer worked best. Or which landing-page converted more online orders.

Or, you may want to determine the effectiveness of the entire campaign. What impact did the campaign have on total sales? What was the ROI?
In addition to determining the elements to measure, you also need to identify the appropriate measurement criteria. This might be number of inquiries, hits on the web site, or conversions to sales.

3. Select the measurement tools.

Once you know what to measure, you can select the right measurement tools and techniques. For inquiries, you could use a good lead management system to provide raw totals, qualified leads, follow-up actions taken, and sales tracking. Web analytics might help you evaluate the effectiveness of different landing pages. Sales could come from your own order department, field sales reporting, or CRM tools.

4. Implement, report, use.

As you collect information, you need to prepare and submit reports to management that specify succinctly what is being measured and why. You can back it up with detailed data and procedures for those people who want to study the results further.

Conclusion

Don’t get caught in analysis paralysis. If you follow the four guidelines presented here, you can simplify your measurement process, concentrate on more meaningful measurements and provide answers to management’s perpetual questions about the effectiveness of your marketing programs.