Top 5 Sales and Lead Generation Posts of 2016

Here are our 5 most read sales and lead generation posts of 2016.

1. Marketing vs. Sales: Why There Shouldn’t Be a Competition

Sarah Collins, an intern Fronetics and a student at James Madison University, College of Business studying Marketing, writes how aligning sales and marketing helps companies achieve 20% higher annual growth rates and improves deal closings by 67%. Read more.

2. Don’t Let That Lead Die!

Leads are only valuable if they convert into customers. So, generating quality leads is only half the battle. You need a sales team that knows how to resuscitate a lead, nurture it, and, ultimately, turn it into a customer. Read more.

3. Adapting B2B Sales for the Information Age

B2B sales must recognize and accommodate buyers at various levels of self-sufficiency in the purchasing process. Read more.

4. Landing Pages & Forms & More – Oh My! Capturing Leads Effectively

The most efficient lead-generation strategy includes a way to capture potential customers’ information. Read more.

5. A Call to Action is Key to Any Lead Nurturing Campaign

If you feel your marketing campaign falls short in generating quality leads, you are not alone. Typically, one in 10 marketing professionals questions the effectiveness of their lead generation methods. While you may have some of the components of a strong campaign in place, it is possible that you are leaving out a very important ingredient for success: a call to action (CTA). Read more.

Get the Most Out of MODEX: Nurture Leads with Social Media

by Fronetics | Mar 31, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain

Employ a content and social marketing strategy to nurture leads you meet during MODEX.

Hundreds of potential customers will be heading to Atlanta next week for MODEX, and you’re gearing up to gain lots of new business. That is, you and over 800 other exhibitors are hoping to gain lots of new business. So how do you plan to stand out among the competition?

Using content and social marketing to nurture leads surrounding the event will help maximize the benefits of attendance. You can bring more attention to your presence, which will help you find more new potential customers, and then you can increase your chances of converting them if you use these tools properly.

Here are some tips for before, during, and after MODEX for using content and social media to gain new business.

Before the show

1) Define your goals.

A trade show represents an opportunity to spread brand awareness, find new leads, and, of course, make sales. Decide what is most important to your business, and strategize around those goals. For example, if one of your goals is to increase your social following, make sure every handout, landing page, and face-to-face interaction includes a request to like you on Facebook (or elsewhere).

2) Promote your attendance.

With the trade show hashtag (#MODEX2016), use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to let your followers know that you will be attending and when and where they can find you. Engage with other attendees who are using the event hashtag. Offer teasers — such as photos of the freebies you’re bringing — to entice visitors, and provide any longer-form information (e.g., an excerpt from a presentation you’ll be giving) in a blog post, distributing it through your social channels.

3) Set up a landing page/landing pages.

Create an event-specific landing page that includes a call to action (CTA), like reserving a time to speak with you at the conference or downloading a coupon to redeem a free sample. Make sure to ask for some information (such as a name, company, or contact information) in exchange. Monitor traffic and keep a running list of leads who visit and provide their information.

4) Research the attendees.

Perform prospect research using the list of attendees, paying special attention to those who have provided their information on your landing page or connected with you on social media about the event. Check out their social pages to see what they’re saying about the event, and like or follow them. Connect with high-value prospects on LinkedIn and try to arrange a time to meet up during the show.

5) Prepare to nurture.

Draft content that you can distribute during and after the show. Examples include lead-nurturing email templates, slides from presentations you are giving, and other offers you plan to provide visitors. Create another landing page, which includes a special offer or specific information you’ll be providing during the show, to drive attendees to during and after the event.

During the show

6) Keep chatting.

Reach out to the people you meet during the show on their social media handles. A nice-to-meet-you tweet and/or an invitation to connect on LinkedIn shows that you remember and appreciate the potential customer. Send the lead-nurturing emails you prepared in advance.

7) Monitor social media.

Continue using the show’s hashtag to monitor the conversations that are happening online, and see if anyone is talking about your company. Like or reply to anyone who does to show you’re listening.

8) Generate content.

Trade shows are a great place to generate content. Post photos of your booth and attendees from your company, and create videos of product demonstrations, presentations, or customer testimonials. Share your thoughts on the issues being discussed, and keep track of those themes, as well as any recurring questions that attendees ask, for future content.

After the show

9) Plan out your editorial calendar.

Develop posts for your company’s blog over the coming months around the questions and issues that were raised during the show.

10) Keep up the conversations.

Continue to engage the people you met on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Follow and like their pages, and invite them to connect.

11) Offer your leads something of value.

Make event presentation or speaking materials part of your lead nurturing activities by sharing them with prospects using Slideshare or email. Remind leads with whom you shared your special-offer landing page to visit. Make sure to segment your contacts based on their interests and send them only relevant offers.

How do you nurture leads around trade shows? Will you be attending MODEX this year?

A Call to Action is Key to Any Lead Nurturing Campaign

by Fronetics | Feb 10, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

A good call to action will help potential leads feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’ offers.

If you feel your marketing campaign falls short in generating quality leads, you are not alone. Typically one in 10 marketing professionals questions the effectiveness of their lead generation methods. While you may have some of the components of a strong campaign in place, it is possible that you are leaving out a very important ingredient for success: a call to action (CTA).

CTAs are vital in any tactical marketing campaign. This is where you actually ask for your potential customer or client to take some form of action that moves them one step closer to your objective: connecting them to your company.

Say that you offer potential customers a high-value offer — like an ebook, whitepaper, free consultation, or discount — as a lead nurturing tactic. If you do not include an actual call to action, the customers have no direction for obtaining the offer, and you are probably missing out on a myriad of quality leads.

What makes a good call to action?

Not all CTAs are created equal. You are competing with every other brand in a fight for the attention (and choice) of consumers, so it’s critical that prospects feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’.

Calls to action are the secret sauce to driving people to your offers. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then no matter how impressive your offer is, it is rendered useless.
Typically, a good call to action can be used on product pages (non-landing pages), in display ads, email, social media, direct mail, and pretty much anywhere you can market your offer.

There are several tricks of the trade to creating a highly productive CTA:

Location, location, location

Just like with important news, the placement of your call to action should be “above the fold,” or, high enough on the page so the reader will not have to scroll to see it. It is also good to have a second CTA located further down within the offer.

Clarity is key

Do not try to be so clever with your words that your offer gets lost in translation. State the offer very clearly and be specific. Don’t just say “download now,” but rather, “Download you free e-book.”

Make the CTA stand out

Choose contrasting colors for your call to action so that it draws the attention of the eye and does not blend in on the page.

Link to a landing page

Send potential customers to a targeted landing page that is relevant to what they are looking for. Your call to action should send them to a page that will convert them into a lead. Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s research, landing pages are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies.

There are many innovative methods to increasing the number of quality leads a marketing plan generates. The trick is in knowing how. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads to learn the best ways to improve the productivity of your marketing strategies.

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Lead Nurturing through Special Offers

by Fronetics | Feb 8, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

Enticing potential customers with exclusive, high-value offers is an important component of lead nurturing and lead generation.

Your strategic marketing objectives boil down to one basic mission: to generate a high volume of quality leads. This will drive tomorrow’s revenue and an increase in sales and profits. Yet, only one in 10 marketing professionals feel they have an effective lead-generation strategy in place.

Since a productive lead-generation campaign consists of many interconnecting layers, it can be hard to pinpoint what is limiting your success. But, if you are seeking more leads for your business (and who isn’t?), consider these proven tactics for achieving successful lead generation.

First, for tactical reasons, your overall campaign must contain these components:

Something To Offer. An offer is content that is perceived to be high in value. Offers include ebooks, whitepapers, free consultations, product demonstrations, or discounts.
A Call to Action. This is either a small paragraph of text, an image, or a button that links the potential customer to a landing page to download what you have to offer.
An Awesome Landing Page. This is a specific page designed to allow the potential client to download your offer.
Forms to Gather the Lead Info. Essentially, they get the download; you get their contact information.

These four valuable components set the stage for capturing exponentially more lead information than ever before to grow your business.

Creating the Most Inspiring Offers

Just because you have identified leads does not mean they will convert to customers. Lead nurturing helps build a relationship with your potential customers, gain their trust, and raise their awareness about your business and products. The four steps above are critical to the lead nurturing process. But, unless you offer something that your potential customers want, you will not get past the first one.

So, what entices people to click “yes” to an offer?

The majority of us want anything that is considered exclusive, scarce, or in high demand. Suddenly, something becomes more desirable if it appears like we are getting the scoop on a special deal or valuable information.

The higher the perceived value of your offer, the more irresistible it becomes. So, whether your offer is whitepapers, downloads, free trials, memberships, or sales promotions, these irresistible elements can overcome a lead’s typical friction, doubt, or concern.

The elements to creating a feeling of exclusivity and special value in your offer include:

Limited-time offers. This creates scarcity to your offer.
Limited quantities. What you are offering is unique and has exclusive value, and procrastination may mean missing out.
“X number of people have seized this offer.” Human nature is to follow what others do. State how many people have downloaded your offer or benefited from your information to encourage others to do the same.
Content that matches current news trends. Content tailored to whatever is trending in the news (or to whatever is in high demand at the moment) is more relevant and relatable to potential customers, who are likely engaged with those trends in other ways as well.
A title that hooks interest. People actually do judge a book by its cover and will not want to see more if you bore them.
Several Call to Actions, offered at different stages. Pursue buyers at different levels of readiness with different CTAs. People often do their own research before even engaging with a sales rep, and every prospect is at a different stage of exploration. Develop different offers at different stages in the buying cycle, and include a primary and secondary CTA to these offers on various pages throughout your site.
Avoid professional jargon. Terms and phrases that have been over-used and abused are meaningless and won’t hook potential buyers. They include: groundbreaking, cutting-edge, scalable, flexible, and robust, just to name a few.

To further ensure enticing more leads, your offer should provide something that is considered of high-value. Not all offers are created equal. Some “formats” perform better than others at converting leads. Here are a few of the top-ranked offers, in order of performance, when it comes to generating leads:

E-books or guides
Templates or presentations
Research and reports (e.g., State of Inbound Marketing)
Whitepapers
Kits (multiple offers packaged together)
Live webinars
On-demand videos
Blogs (including offers in the nav or sidebar)
Blog posts (if there is a CTA in the post)

There are many more ways you can capture successful leads and fine-tune your marketing plans in a way that turns leads into customers. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads, which offers dozens of other techniques marketers should follow to increase leads and revenue.