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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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.
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by Fronetics | Oct 21, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy, Talent
If you watch enough romantic comedies, you’ll start to recognize a pattern. It goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Movie follows antics of girl + boy, winding its way through the (oftentimes hairy) narrative. Throughout the movie we see the main characters discover what’s attractive, appealing, or annoying about the other. Eventually, these main characters end up together at the end – well versed in one another’s attributes, nuances, and idiosyncrasies.
If you think about it, the storyline of our main characters’ isn’t that different from the parallel storyline that could be drawn about lead nurturing activity in B2B marketing. When you first meet your lead, chances are they won’t be ready to purchase right away (a Marketo benchmark survey says that half aren’t). But if you spend time establishing a relationship and building trust, the moment your lead is ready to purchase, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.
As more and more buyers are engaging with brands before they are ready to purchase, an essential function of any marketing department is lead nurturing. That is, moving leads through the sales funnel by leveraging what’s known about their needs and online behavior. Congruently, marketing software company Marketo describes lead nurturing as being “personalized, adaptive, and able to listen and react to buyer behavior in real-time.” Using a true multi-channel approach allows us to accomplish this. In a recent publication, Marketo endorsed the use of this multi-channel strategy:
“A typical buyer moves quickly from email, to social media, to your website and then back to social media, in the blink of an eye. Marketers need to prepare their lead nurturing strategy for multi-channel engagement. Buyers need to see an integrated experience across every single channel.”
Considering the multi-channel digital activity of buyers, building a multi-channel lead nurturing strategy is essential for companies that are looking to create an optimal end-user experience. Here are four tools that will help you deliver a series of targeted messages across multiple touch points and platforms to help move your leads through the buyer’s journey.
Email
Presuming that your B2B leads are derived online, email seems like a natural channel to use to connect with and nurture your leads. And it is. Create opportunities to educate your leads by sending them targeted emails that contain informational content. You’ll have to take it further than that though, or your emails will come across as spammy and annoying. Build trust with your leads by reminding them they’ve met you before – use personalization tokens (contact name, job title, etc.) within your emails. Similarly, don’t just blast the same email to your entire contact database; take the time to segment your leads based on where they stand in the buyer’s journey. A lead nurturing email you send to a lead that has only downloaded a top-level white paper should look vastly different than the email you send to a lead that has downloaded a case study, a product brochure, and a pricing guide. Above all though, make certain that the content you’re sending is valuable, relevant, and of excellent quality.
Phone
“No other interaction is more influential in the path to purchase than a phone call.” – Invoca Call Intelligence Survey
Call intelligence company Invoca has strong feelings for the telephone – and for good reason. Their analysis of 32 million phone calls found that phone calls made after parties had first engaged online had an average conversion rate between 30% and 50%. Sure, a rejection by email is less painful, but when the conversion rates are that high, you can’t afford not to pick up the phone. There are some ways to make it easier, though. Start by promoting your phone number. It sounds simple, but for those of us who work largely in the digital world, it can be easy to forget. Display your phone number in your company’s website header and throughout your site’s landing pages and blogs posts. Ensure simplicity for mobile users by making your phone number clickable on your mobile site.
Social Media
It’s not enough these days to simply post and pray, particularly on social media networks. Social media lead nurturing includes monitoring, listening, and engaging. Give your leads some love. Look for opportunities to favorite, like, or retweet the content of your leads. Monitor LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for mentions of your company, similar products, or industry and then respond with activated content using both social media and a longer form of correspondence, like email. Finally, don’t discount lead nurturing activities that use paid social media ads. These ads can be particularly successful when you are nurturing leads based on specific attributes such as geographic location or company size.
Dynamic Website Content
Displaying personalized web content for visitors helps to keep leads moving forward in their buyer’s journey. Let’s say you’d gotten a great email response from a lead when you shared your product brochure earlier in the week. Displaying complementary web content, like a pricing guide, to your lead the next time he’s on your website assures alignment between your content and your lead’s proximity to purchasing. You can also use dynamic web content to target various verticals, organizations, or buyer personas.
Multi-channel lead nurturing is really about using all the tools at your disposal to meaningfully connect with your leads in order to build trust and establish credibility as you guide them on their journey to becoming a customer. Building a winning strategy does require attention to detail as there are many moving parts, but at the end of the day, if your messaging is credible and consistent it becomes less about channel and more about content. And ultimately, high-converting lead nurturing campaigns are only as good as the content they’re built around.
by Fronetics | Aug 27, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Content marketing has become a key marketing strategy for many businesses. Statistics show that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing methods – and those leads cost an average of 62% less. At Fronetics, we’ve built our content marketing services around one goal – helping our clients grow. We’re harnessing the power of content to help our clients connect and engage with leads and prospects in meaningful ways. And our clients are enjoying faster growth and higher profits because of it.
How do we use content to support our clients in their business growth?
We create quality content that helps our clients connect with leads and customers in a number of ways. First, we appeal to and engage potential customers by creating relevant content that’s aligned with the needs of our client’s target audience. Then, we nurture those leads into customers by proving the value of our clients’ products and services. Even after they become customers, we work to create positive customer experiences that make it easy for them to recommend our clients to others.
Services offerings
Here’s a quick breakdown of some the service offerings included in our comprehensive approach to content marketing:
Content strategy
Research has shown that B2B and B2C companies with a documented content strategy in place are more effective than those without one.
At Fronetics, we work with our clients to create a content strategy individualized for their specific situation and needs. We learn about our client’s business, target customers, industry, and competition. We also conduct an audit of current content and digital assets. All of this information is used to create an effective content strategy.
Content creation
There is a lot of content out there. If you want your content to stand out and drive profitable customer action you need quality content. At Fronetics, we create quality content that is keyword-optimized. Also, unlike other firms, we don’t outsource content creation. By keeping all content creation in-house we are able to ensure a quality product.
Lead generation
Once we’ve helped our clients draw visitors to their website, we work to identify potential customers and manage their leads. We create and couple high-value content like white papers and eBooks, with strategic calls-to-action that direct visitors to landing pages expertly designed to convert website visitors into leads.
Lead nurturing and customer acquisition
We work closely with our clients to develop a lead nurturing strategy to convert leads into paying customers using email and marketing automation. By segmenting leads and sending them targeted content designed to catalyze engagement, we help our clients build relationships – and importantly, trust.
Social media
Social media is an incredible tool; however, for it to be effective it must be driven by strategy, be consistent, and must have someone managing the execution. At Fronetics, our social media strategists distribute content, curate content, engage your target audience, and monitor your social networks. We develop a social media strategy that aligns with your company’s goals. We analyze your competition, classify your target audience & cultural attributes, identify the influencers in your industry, recommend platforms, detail best engagement practices, create social media schedules, and identify specific tactics that deliver results. Through the proper execution of social media, your brand is given a voice and personality, and becomes more accessible to your target audience.
Analytics and reporting
At Fronetics we take a comprehensive data driven approach to marketing. Metrics measure success, drive strategy, and demonstrate ROI. We provide our clients with monthly marketing reports.
In short, our content marketing strategies drive success for our clients. The Fronetics team is comprised of strategists, marketing professionals, writers, designers, and experts in social media. Together we leverage our experience to increase brand awareness, position our clients as thought leaders, and drive meaningful engagement with prospects and customers – all with the goal of helping our clients grow.
Get in touch with us today for a free consultation to find out if our retainer services, full or half day workshops, or a personalized service offering is right for your business. See how Fronetics can help your business grow.
by Fronetics | Jul 29, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
In an interview with the Kitchn, Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten shared her top three secrets to hosting a successful dinner party – plan ahead, use your best stuff, and have fun building and sustaining relationships with those around you. Her focus may be food, but her advice is applicable to marketing and sales professionals. Undeniably, lead nurturing is remarkably similar to hosting a dinner party.
Using the dinner party strategy, let’s take a look at how your business can actively build relationships with prospects and advance the movement of leads through its sales funnel.
Clean house
As the host of an upcoming dinner party, it’s unlikely you’d host people in your home without first getting it in tiptop shape. The same should be true for your website, your company’s online home. As part of your preparation for a lead nurturing campaign, review your website and make any necessary modifications so that it presents the best digital representation of your business. Beyond increasing conversions, having an attractive, modern website that’s free of broken links and out of date contact information serves to establish your company’s website as a trusted resource for information.
Decide what to offer guests
Preparing a dinner party menu for a number of people requires some forethought and planning. For instance, what type of food would your guests enjoy? Do any guests have food allergies or aversions for which you need to plan? Just as you would build the menu for your dinner party, the decision about what content you’ll offer will be guided by the preferences and content needs of your leads. Create content that is relevant to your leads and make sure to identify appropriate channels of distribution in order to extract maximum value from your content.
Determine when and how you’ll serve menu items
Traditional dinner parties start with appetizers and move from one course to the next until after the dessert wine is poured. Similarly, the lead nurturing process is intended to push content to leads in a linear fashion, with the ultimate goal being that they’ll emerge as customers. Once your content “menu” is set, you’ll want to decide how you’ll serve them up to your leads. To do that, align content with where your leads happen to be in the buyer’s journey. Leads will enter and exit your lead nurturing campaign at different points, and that’s okay, just be certain that your content is relevant to leads in their specific stage. Regardless, each nurturing touch should be focused and specific and include a call to action to promote advancement in the buyer’s journey.
Create and sustain dialogue
Beyond sharing a meal, it’s likely that you’ll also take part in spirited conversation with your dinner party guests. While it’s certainly acceptable to offer up topics of discussion, your guests will not enjoy you dominating the conversation. Meaningfully adding to the conversation builds relationships not just by showing expertise, but by showing genuine interest. In other words, don’t view the lead nurturing process as a way to blast your prospects with promotional information or marketing materials; treat it as a dialogue. The best lead nurturing campaigns are designed to learn as much about your leads as you would have them learn about your company.
Say thank you
As host, at the end of the night when guests grab their coats and head toward the door, it’s polite to thank them for attending your dinner party. Extend that same courtesy to your customers and leads. Whether it’s by showing gratitude to current customers for their continued support or showing appreciation to leads for their download, saying thank you goes a long way in building connections and professional relationships.
What’s required to run a successful lead nurturing campaign is building trust and establishing relationships with prospects and leads as you develop them into customers. Most of the effort involved in hosting a dinner party happens before guests arrive, so hosts are free to enjoy interaction and conversation with guests during the party. Lead nurturing can be approached much in the same way you’d plan and execute a dinner party. Developing a thoughtful lead nurturing campaign will almost always ensure meaningful – and memorable – communication.
Want to learn more about lead nurturing? Check out these 30 tricks and tips that will change the way you nurture leads.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. Our firm works with companies to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
Whether it is a wholesale food distributor seeking guidance on how to define and execute corporate strategy; a telematics firm needing high quality content on a consistent basis; a real estate firm looking for a marketing partner; or a supply chain firm in need of interim management, our clients rely on Fronetics to help them navigate through critical junctures, meet their toughest challenges, and take advantage of opportunities. We deliver high-impact results.
We advise and work with companies on their most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, talent acquisition, performance management, and M&A support.
We have deep expertise and a proven track record in a broad range of industries including: supply chain, real estate, software, and logistics.
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).