by Fronetics | Mar 18, 2014 | Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
Rather than focus sales efforts on seeking out prospects and making cold calls re-focus your efforts so that the emphasis is on demand generation. Why? Demand generation shortens the sales cycle and increases sales opportunities by nurturing and engaging potential customers. Moreover, demand generation is a commitment to long-term customer relationships.
Demand generation builds and nurtures prospect and customer relationships for the long-term. To do this effectively, companies need to do things like host webinars, create a blog, and promote blog posts through social media. Companies need to create and disseminate content-driven resources that establish themselves as a thought leader and as an industry influencer, and which engage prospects and customers alike.
Demand generation is not a sprint. It takes time to build and implement a successful strategy. However, once a strategy is in place and is consistently and continuously implemented, there will be positive results. Specifically, website traffic will increase and, by extension, so will the number of prospects. These prospects are warm leads. These prospects are ones which your sales team should focus on as they are more likely to convert to customers than the cold call prospect. In fact, prospects that come to you via a successful demand generation strategy are five times more likely to become your customers.
To grow sales through demand generation it is important to identify your target customers and their needs. In short, get to know your target customer and identify how your company can anticipate and respond to their needs. Furthermore, take the time to choose the right content and choose the right place to disseminate content.
Shorten your sales cycles and increase your sales opportunities by focusing time and effort on creating and implementing a demand generation strategy instead of on cold calls.
If you’d like to learn more about demand generation and what it can do for your business, get in touch. Fronetics Strategic Advisors works with companies in the logistics and supply chain industries to develop and implement a demand generation strategies.
A version of this post appeared on DC Velocity.
by Fronetics | Feb 3, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media
Getting 10,000 hits a week on your website may be huge accomplishment for your business (and it is), but if at the end of the week none of those hits turn into a lead how do you measure your business’ success?
Knowing which metrics you need to be paying attention to is a crucial task for your marketing team. Whether you’re using Google Analytics or another custom web application, the data that you can learn about your customers – based on their actions online – is priceless. This data will help you create the kind of content that will convert your website visitors into customers, all in good time, of course.
Here are five metrics you should be looking for and measuring in 2014:
1. Customer Engagement
How do your customers interact with the content you digitally share? Do your customers frequently engage with your company’s LinkedIn page, respond to or retweet your tweets, or comment on your blog? If the answer is yes, you have a high level of customer engagement. It’s important to stay engaged with your customers (and potential ones) through these different types of media. The more your customers are engaging with you, the better.
Ignoring negative feedback on your Facebook page, Twitter or blog can be greatly detrimental to your engagement, however. Use these platforms as a customer service tool in order to leverage them to take full advantage of the power of your channels.
2. Conversions
Driving a high volume of traffic to your site is a great way to improve your SEO ranking, build brand awareness, and most importantly, sell your product. Create a definitive way to measure your website analytics and traffic in order to track conversions from your website. If you’re not seeing as many conversions, you may need to take a step back and reevaluate your website. Keep in mind that 55 percent of customers commit to a company because of the ability to find the information or help they need. Are there calls to action on your homepage? Is there easy to find content for consumers to download? And most importantly – how prominent are these calls to action for the untrained eye of your customer to locate?
3. Profit vs Revenue
Many companies generate a significant amount of revenue over the course of a fiscal year but still find themselves coming up short and often times operating at a loss. Expenses over the course of a year may outweigh the actual net profit the company earns. Throwing money at improperly used marketing tools and signing contracts can ultimately be a waste of money. Measure the ROI of these tools to make better buying decisions and save some money.
4. Customer Satisfaction
While this may be a difficult metric to gauge, there are several ways to measure customer satisfaction, both organically and through paid tools. Customer satisfaction is also one of the most important metrics businesses need to consider in order to promote a successful business. Create surveys for customers to provide qualitative and quantitative feedback. Follow product reviews and utilize your social media channels to keep an on what your customers are saying. The value of this type of data is priceless and will help your business plan for future product launches and train customer service representatives.
5. Returning Customers
The success of your business lies on the shoulders of your customers. If your customers are happy, they will keep coming back for more. But how do you ensure that your customers remain in your sales funnel until they are ready to make a purchasing decision again? Keep in touch with them! Send special offers, newsletters and create and distribute content that will keep your customers informed about your products and your industry in order to maintain a level of engagement with them, even when they are not interested in buying something. Businesses with a high number of returning customers will ultimately experience success and growth.
by Fronetics | Feb 3, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media
Getting 10,000 hits a week on your website may be huge accomplishment for your business (and it is), but if at the end of the week none of those hits turn into a lead how do you measure your business’ success?
Knowing which metrics you need to be paying attention to is a crucial task for your marketing team. Whether you’re using Google Analytics or another custom web application, the data that you can learn about your customers – based on their actions online – is priceless. This data will help you create the kind of content that will convert your website visitors into customers, all in good time, of course.
Here are five metrics you should be looking for and measuring in 2014:
1. Customer Engagement
How do your customers interact with the content you digitally share? Do your customers frequently engage with your company’s LinkedIn page, respond to or retweet your tweets, or comment on your blog? If the answer is yes, you have a high level of customer engagement. It’s important to stay engaged with your customers (and potential ones) through these different types of media. The more your customers are engaging with you, the better.
Ignoring negative feedback on your Facebook page, Twitter or blog can be greatly detrimental to your engagement, however. Use these platforms as a customer service tool in order to leverage them to take full advantage of the power of your channels.
2. Conversions
Driving a high volume of traffic to your site is a great way to improve your SEO ranking, build brand awareness, and most importantly, sell your product. Create a definitive way to measure your website analytics and traffic in order to track conversions from your website. If you’re not seeing as many conversions, you may need to take a step back and reevaluate your website. Keep in mind that 55 percent of customers commit to a company because of the ability to find the information or help they need. Are there calls to action on your homepage? Is there easy to find content for consumers to download? And most importantly – how prominent are these calls to action for the untrained eye of your customer to locate?
3. Profit vs Revenue
Many companies generate a significant amount of revenue over the course of a fiscal year but still find themselves coming up short and often times operating at a loss. Expenses over the course of a year may outweigh the actual net profit the company earns. Throwing money at improperly used marketing tools and signing contracts can ultimately be a waste of money. Measure the ROI of these tools to make better buying decisions and save some money.
4. Customer Satisfaction
While this may be a difficult metric to gauge, there are several ways to measure customer satisfaction, both organically and through paid tools. Customer satisfaction is also one of the most important metrics businesses need to consider in order to promote a successful business. Create surveys for customers to provide qualitative and quantitative feedback. Follow product reviews and utilize your social media channels to keep an on what your customers are saying. The value of this type of data is priceless and will help your business plan for future product launches and train customer service representatives.
5. Returning Customers
The success of your business lies on the shoulders of your customers. If your customers are happy, they will keep coming back for more. But how do you ensure that your customers remain in your sales funnel until they are ready to make a purchasing decision again? Keep in touch with them! Send special offers, newsletters and create and distribute content that will keep your customers informed about your products and your industry in order to maintain a level of engagement with them, even when they are not interested in buying something. Businesses with a high number of returning customers will ultimately experience success and growth.
by Elizabeth Hines | Oct 17, 2012 | Blog
During the fall quarter, most companies start focusing on how they will close their year (in terms of revenue and gross profit) as well as beginning the process of updating their sales (revenue) targets for the following year. It’s also the time that management drops the “stretch-goals” bomb or what one mentor of mine used to like to call “BHAG” sales target (Big-Hairy-Audacious-Goal). Although I am in favor of pushing the limits of my team, these stretch-goal methodologies rarely work as designed and because they are structured as “win big or lose big”, in most cases have a real demotivating effect on your teams and organization. Focusing on these four areas will lead you to better results, more consistent targeting, and a team that is motivated for the long run.
- Once you have abandoned your stretch goal mentality, look at the current state of your business and define your desired sales/revenue outcome based on this knowledge. Yes, this is much harder than saying, “my boss says to grow by 30%”, but the deep understanding of you current state will lead your organization stop focusing on the numbers to achieve and start focusing on the process of achievement. This is the hardest and most detailed step.
- Once you have established the current state and desired outcome; break up these revenue/sales numbers and the process to get them into small chunks. By doing this, you establish a pattern of smaller wins / process goal attainment. In the end, you will have developed a culture of winning and/or adjustment instead of an “all or nothing” mentality.
- Now build in a system that rewards superior behavior and discourages falling short. I am not talking out of both sides of my mouth here and this is why. You will still have the over-achievers….they need to feel fairly treated for being better than average. You will have folks who fall short…they need redirection and course correction (maybe even managed out of the business). Remembering that since these are “small chunks” your team never gets too far behind before a correction can occur and your top performers are still treated as stars.
- Lastly, develop a culture of “adjustment”, both up and down. Most teams are used to a big target at the beginning of the year that never adjusts….you win or you lose….and so does your company. I think we all know the reality is that in the current economic environment, it’s not that simple. Having the ability to adjust as your “knowledge of the current state” becomes definite allows you to throttle up when you can and down when you have to.
One word of caution, if you try this approach you need to commit all the way. A half attempt at this would be disastrous. You need to commit to change in order to change your culture and to get the results that you want. One last thing, if you are like me, you are now saying to yourself, “that’s all well and good, but my external stakeholders (lenders, principles, shareholders, managers, etc.) aren’t sympathetic to this type of curved lined forecasting”. I get that too. The answer is simple. Once have your current state defined and your desired outcomes articulated, take a conservative approach to this forecast and decide whether it is good enough for your external stakeholders. If it is, you have your worst case scenario that should only be effected by upside surprises. If it’s not, no hoping or praying for you to achieve your stretch goals is going to make it any prettier in the long run. Make the strategic adjustments now and be better off at the end of the year.
