According to a recent survey by Gartner, prospects spend 50% of their time seeking information from third-party sources.* Why not study their moves?

What is buyer intent?

Buyer intent looks at aggregated behavioral signals to identify potential prospects in the buying cycle. There are a variety of data points that can represent buying intention.

Intent data can include the following behaviors:

• Web site visits and the frequency of visits
• What specific articles or pages a user is reading
• Which topics seem to interest users most
• Engagement with sales or marketing emails

Essentially, intent data is any type of information that indicates a lead is in the buying phase of their customer journey. The main sources of intent marketing include web traffic, off-site activity, data from your CRM, social media metrics, search intent, and content consumption data.

How is intent data collected?

There are a few types of resources that help businesses capture buyer intent. This includes both internal and external buyer intent tools.

Internal data

Any data that a company collects on its own is considered “internal data.” Also referred to as “first-party” intent data, it is information that is collected in-house using a variety of systems, such as application logs, a marketing automation platform, or customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Most CRMs will display metrics for what visitors are doing on your site. The benefits of collecting internal data include total control of what you capture and how, accuracy, and security.

Additionally, a business can act immediately on internal data and customize exactly what classifies as purchase intent. There’s no waiting for another party to deliver your data. This provides a good way to get started with buyer intent data.

External data

Another way of collecting intent data is through a third-party data collection company. This is typically sourced through cookies or IP lookups on specific websites. Because collected internal data can be complex, external data provides an easier means to the same end.

External data is distinct from internal business intelligence because it is generated by and purchased from outside agencies. This data is used by the purchaser to filter out potential buyers and is even packaged as marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

However, there are some disadvantages to going this route. The company you choose must always be GDPR-compliant. You’ll also need to set up clear expectations and closely monitor the deliverables for consistent accuracy and value of data you purchase.

Data should be sourced from leading industry sites that consumers are using to educate themselves. Research is usually based on search intent, prior buying patterns, and prior buying patterns.

Key indicators of buyer intent

In order to ensure prospects are exclusively a good fit, do your homework. You need to position the segmenting and targeting work around a buyer persona. Otherwise, you could end up with leads who, on the surface, look good, but may never buy a thing.

The first step is deciding what the company values as important and how to score interactions with key decision-makers. You should also account for who is interacting with your brand. There’s no point in spending time tracking and scoring leads that aren’t a good fit.

Key considerations when compiling intent data include:

Recency

How recently has a prospect engaged with the brand? This is super important data. If you wait weeks to contact someone after visiting the site, they probably already made a buying decision.

People waste no time these days and thus, speed matters in sales. The faster you react, the more deals you close.

Frequency

How often are people coming back? The more they return, the more likely they are to buy. If you see a lead frequently viewing pages for pricing or case studies, you can easily assume they are far into the buying cycle. At this point, the sales team needs to reach out.

Engagement

Most lead scoring systems count user engagement. If an individual is engaging with content on your site via chat, email, or other forms of interaction, it’s a good indication they are ready to talk.

How is buyer intent data used?

So, once all of this information is collected, what do you do with it?

You can use buyer intent data in a number of ways. For starters, it’s a key asset for customer acquisition. It works to greatly improve segmenting and targeting of account-based marketing campaigns. Intent data also helps to better align your messaging to buyers’ needs.

Some ways in which you can put buyer intent data to use today include:

Maximize outreach

Intent data gives your sales team a leg up. Sales teams don’t have to wait for buyers to complete an action to identify interest. With simple buyer intent signals, it’s now possible to prioritize outreach based on specific behaviors.

Reduce churn

After the sales team converts a prospect, a business can continue to monitor clients who research the competition. This data points to customers who may need additional support or attention. This usually indicates your product or customer service is failing in some way.

Set up triggers that request buyer feedback to help identify gaps for future product development. Intent data helps to uncover problems before buyers even utter a peep. This reduces the churn rate and adds to overall customer satisfaction.

Guide for messaging

Buyer intent data works to strategically target in-market prospects and convert them to quality leads. This type of data provides insight into prospect research history, including specific products and brands.

Research by Gartner found that “by the end of 2022, more than 70% of B2B marketers will utilize third-party intent data to target prospects or engage groups of buyers in selected accounts.”*

Buyer intent data can be used to better craft unique and specific messaging that speaks to segmented audiences in different ways. Rather than using generic marketing tactics, you can better align your outreach with specific interest signals that buyers leave, such as cookie crumbs across third-party sites.

Pros & cons of buyer intent data

When it comes to using this type of data to conduct business, there are two sides to the coin. Here are some pros and cons:

Pros

Efficient prospecting

For a sales team, closing deals is the top priority. Buyer intent data simplifies prospecting with a layer of business intelligence. Knowing who is looking at what content means you can tailor messaging with more direct targeting.

It also means sales can engage leads as early as possible while collecting information on how and what prospects are researching. Sales will be able to prospect SQLs in a fraction of the time.

Improve outbound sales

This is about working smarter, not harder. The sales cycle can be long. Giving your team direct access to buyer intent data allows them to reach out to the most qualified leads and spend less time on people who aren’t really interested.

It also increases the ROI of your B2B content syndication efforts. See who’s reaching out and target more efficiently.

Sales prioritization

Practice advanced sales prioritization with buyer intent data that lights the way. Traditional lead scoring relies on adding points when certain actions are taken.

Intent data helps to uncover additional avenues a lead takes during the buying cycle. This can be used in a more precise way to predict purchase intent and prioritize contacts.

Personalization & targeting

Intent data helps both the sales and marketing departments to run more accurate account-based campaigns. Successful outreach, including buyer enablement, is built on personalization.

The most effective way to improve B2B campaigns is to provide a continuous stream of relevant content. It allows you to strategically nurture leads by segmenting lists and adjusting the messages accordingly.

Relevancy

When you closely understand consumer problems, you can create more relevant content. Buyer intent data helps to uncover common obstacles and issues people run into that pertain to the product or service you provide.

These insights can be used to better guide content creation and increase inbound leads. Create content that directly reflects exactly what people are interested in and watch the social return on investment skyrocket.

Cons

Accuracy issues

When it comes to purchasing buyer intent data from a third party, there is no true way to confirm the data is accurate. You are simply relying on good faith that the company is giving you correct information.

Leads can be anywhere

Third-party agencies that provide external buyer data include leads that can be anywhere in the funnel. Rather than focus on one buyer stage, most outside sources will send them to you along the entire journey.

That means, purchasing buyer data with the intent of using it for top-of-the-funnel messaging can be risky. Your business is going in directly for the sale when some buyers may just be getting to know you. It comes off as pushy.

Too specific 

Being too specific in targeting can lead a sales team right back to blind targeting. There is such a thing as over-personalization. Zeroing in on super-specific characteristics of a potential buyer can cut out people that are actually willing to buy.

You risk not reaching a wide enough audience and missing out on sales. You should employ critical thinking to determine the fine line between being too general or too specific in your messaging.

Waiting to reach out  

Having sales and marketing wait to respond to buyers reaching out can cost you. Sometimes outbound cold-calling is the best form of gathering new leads.

Non-compliance 

The worst issue a business can run into when purchasing buyer intent data is that it was captured in a way that’s deemed “non-compliant” with the latest data security standards and regulations. Control and management is necessary to ensure the data is being used properly.

If it’s not used correctly, you can face non-compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can lead to some hefty fines.

Is buyer intent data worth it?

It all depends on how a business wants to spend its money. Top-of-the-funnel leads require a lot more time and attention. This means fewer leads for your money.

Perhaps a better option is to purchase buyer intent when prospects are part-way down the funnel and use CRM and internal data before that. You can then allocate resources to more profitable endeavors, such as ad spend, customer engagement campaigns, and content creation.

Buyer intent data is most valuable when a business has a well-crafted buyer persona and has the capacity to follow through with leads in a timely manner. A poorly crafted buyer persona or failure to pay attention to details means wasted money on missed opportunities.

Many businesses start targeting before they have fully segmented the audience. Narrow the focus and build out the value prop with relevant content. Then, it will make more sense to purchase buyer intent data. This establishes buyer confidence that your company can solve their biggest problems.

Sources:

*“Emerging Technology Analysis: Leveraging Intent Data for Marketing and Demand Generation.” Alan Antin. Gartner. February 11, 2020.

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And one way to optimize conversion rates is to use lead scoring best practices.

As a refresher, lead scoring is a methodology where you assign value—often numerical—to different attributes such as visitor interaction with your brand. These points are then used to rank your leads in order to determine which prospects are ready for the next step in your sales process.

Here are seven lead scoring best practices that can help improve your conversion rate.

Lead scoring best practices

Define your buyer persona & journey

Use your existing customer database and research to better understand your market and create a more accurate buyer persona. You can start with customer details, such as age, location, language, occupation, company they work for, interests, and specific goals. Depending on your business, you may need to create more than one buyer persona.

Once you come up with your buyer personas, you’ll have a better grasp on their goals and the journey they take in order to achieve them. You need both buyer personas and customer journey to come up with a personalized marketing strategy tailored to attract your ideal customers.

Increasingly, consumers are only willing to engage with customized marketing messages specific to their interests. So develop personalized content to stand out from your competitors and generate better leads.

Include negative scores

Negative scoring attributes are just as important as positive scoring when deciding who are the qualified prospects in your list. This will not only make your scoring more accurate, but it will help you eliminate those who do not meet your criteria.

For example, you can factor in unrelated job titles (such as “intern” or “college student”) or behaviors such as “unsubscribing from emails” that will remove points from their overall lead score.

There could also be instances where a lead ranks high in your overall matrix, but is not your target customer. For example, a graduate student researching trends in your industry, who has attended all your webinars, signed up for all your lead magnets, etc., but has no intentions of paying for your products or services. This is where negative scores will come in handy.

Align your sales & marketing teams

Lead scoring is a sales and marketing methodology. Therefore, in order for the system to work, both sales and marketing must be in sync. The criteria of what makes up a qualified lead should be relevant to both teams.

Since your sales team are the ones interacting with the customers, they are able to offer unique insights which the marketing team can use to reevaluate and adjust your brand’s lead scoring matrix accordingly.

Without your sales team, your marketing team won’t be able to create a better lead scoring system. And without your marketing team, your sales team will be dealing with many unqualified leads. So be sure these teams operate in sync for most steps of the sales process.

Personalize your emails

Make use of your customer database in personalizing your emails. Information such as their name, location, and their recent transaction with your website might prove useful for your email content. If you are using a unified CRM for sales and marketing, then you have all customer data at your fingertips at all times, with full visibility into prior outreach and interactions.

Improve your response times

Customer response is so crucial, but a Drift study found that 58% of companies never followed up with lead and up to 90% of businesses don’t respond within the first five minutes. Failing to follow up or even respond quickly can immediately lead to lost sales.

In the digital age, where customers have easy access to so many options and can switch brands quickly, it’s crucial to stay in touch with your potential customers while they are researching options and thinking about your brand.

For example, once you’re able to set an appointment for a product demo, follow up with reminders and share relevant and helpful information. You can easily automate these tasks with tools like Insightly and save time for both sales and marketing reps.

Implement a follow-up strategy

As you study your lead scoring system, you will be able to pinpoint cold leads who need a little push or re-engagement with your business, a good follow-up strategy is crucial.

Leads are usually grouped in three categories, based on their attributes and behavior: cold, warm, and hot. A cold lead is someone who has shown any interest in your business, a warm lead has expressed some interest, and a hot lead is someone who matches your ideal profile, and is ready to do business with you.

Use the lead scoring system as a guide when developing a follow-up strategy. Since all leads have different relationships with your brand, you will need to find a different, most appropriate approach for each.

For instance, you can send cold leads basic information about your business, but share more detailed information about the products and services with people who have browsed your website and have specific questions.

Monitor & evaluate your results

If you are new to lead scoring, don’t fret when you are unable to pull it off the first time. Coming up with a lead scoring system is expected to be a series of trials and errors.

Make it a point to always monitor and evaluate your results so that you can continuously improve your lead scoring matrix. The more information you gather about your customers, the better you’ll be able to determine what kind of adjustments you need for a more accurate system.

With a properly implemented lead scoring matrix you’ll start noticing a significant increase in your business’ conversion rate and marketing ROI.

Ready to create a lead scoring matrix and align your sales and marketing all in one place? Request a free consultation and a product demo with an Insightly rep.

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The post 7 lead scoring best practices to improve your conversion rate appeared first on Insightly.

The difference in spending is staggering: 80% of companies spend over 70% of their marketing budget on lead and demand generation. That means less than 30% of those budgets go to customer retention efforts, including upsell and cross-sell.(1)

Lead generation, or lead gen, exists for one purpose: to fill your pipeline with sales-ready prospects, so sales can convert them into customers. Lead gen advocates will tell you a business can’t grow without a steady flow of new leads. This is true, a business can’t grow without new customers. However, nor can a business grow if it loses more customers than it acquires. Let’s take a closer look at both lead generation and customer retention to better understand how each contributes to business growth.

On lead generation

What is lead generation?

Lead generation involves identifying potential customers and convincing them to engage with your brand. In short, lead gen involves turning anonymous consumers into leads in your sales pipeline. It is the first step toward new customer acquisition and should incorporate numerous tactics, outreach channels, and strategies.

Marketing’s wheelhouse

Effective lead generation hinges on tight sales and marketing alignment. Marketing is typically responsible for most aspects of lead generation (excluding cold sales calls and emails). With the help of marketing automation software, marketers capture anonymous consumers’ personal information. They then drive campaigns to nurture leads until they have displayed enough interest to be considered ‘marketing qualified’. Normally, the lead is then passed to sales for further nurturing, depending on a business’s lead disposition process. At that point, the lead generation process is complete and marketing passes the baton to sales to close the deal. To learn more about proper lead management, read up on lead disposition process.

Most of the above can be automated using a unified customer relationship management (CRM) solution that includes marketing automation, CRM, and sales management in one platform. A unified CRM also boosts marketing’s ability to generate and qualify more sales-ready leads. But, that’s not the only benefit provided by effective lead generation tactics.

Benefits of effective lead generation

In addition to identifying and qualifying leads with the greatest propensity to purchase, effective lead generation also:

• Enables sales to convert more leads into paying customers in less time
• Drives business and revenue growth
• Gives you more customers who can provide insight into your target audiences and what they need and want
• Keeps morale high and motivates sales and marketing to continually improve their performance

Tips for effective lead generation

Generating high-quality leads is no walk in the park. You must maintain an up-to-date understanding of effective tactics and emerging trends to effectively generate the right leads. Below are a few tips to guide you toward lead gen success.

Research and know your target audience

You must know who to target with your lead generation campaigns. Create buyer personas so you understand potential customers’ needs, challenges, goals, pain points, etc. That insight allows you to address those needs and objectives in your campaign messaging. Your outreach must be relevant and engaging, otherwise, your emails will be marked as spam and additional tactics will be ignored. The more relevant your outreach is, the more genuine and trustworthy you appear.

Leverage emerging lead generation trends

Tactics that worked last year may not work today. For example, consumers are increasingly intolerant to cold outreach and prefer a personalized, human touch. Unless you maintain a current grasp on effective tactics, your efforts will be made in vain.

Talk about benefits

During your initial interactions with a potential customer, focus on benefits or how your offering will make their life and/or job easier and better. Talk about great product features later in the process, after marketing has qualified a lead. Speaking about benefits allows prospective customers to envision themselves experiencing those same benefits, which is much more engaging.

Automate, automate, automate

Today, it’s close to impossible to remain competitive if you don’t use technology to automate manual tasks. Doing so frees up time that marketers can spend on creative work, competitor research, strategy development, and measuring results. If you use a system that integrates sales and marketing functions, the majority of lead gen administration can be automated, giving your team more time to focus on higher-quality work.

On customer retention

Customer retention advocates know that losing a customer costs more than acquiring a new one. It is much cheaper to retain a customer than to generate and convert a lead. Now let’s cover some customer retention basics.

What is customer retention?

Customer retention is a much simpler concept with more straight-forward tactics than lead generation. Customer retention refers to an organization’s efforts to maintain satisfied, loyal customers who don’t leave for a competitor. In other words, it’s all about retaining a customer over the long-run, ensuring reliable, recurring revenue for a business.

Why customer retention is so important

The importance of customer retention is a broad topic with many nuances. Let’s focus on some major benefits that accurately relay the importance of customer retention:

• Existing customers spend more over time through upsell and cross-sell opportunities
• Long-term customers are satisfied customers who trust and show loyalty to your brand
• Loyal customers promote your brand to friends and colleagues (i.e. free word-of-mouth advertising, referrals)
• Word-of-mouth advertising expands brand awareness and improves your brand’s reputation
• It’s easier to acquire new customers when the market sees you as a reliable leader with a great reputation
• Tenured customers reduce the administrative work generated by high customer churn rates
• Loyal customers represent a reliable source of recurring income, ensuring the future success of your business

A bit more on customer satisfaction and loyalty

When a satisfied customer becomes loyal to your brand, they don’t just stick around longer. Loyal customers actually drive business growth for you. They do this in many ways. But don’t just take our word for it, see what the numbers have to say:

• Satisfied customers are 87% more likely to buy add-ons or extra services than dissatisfied ones.(2)
• 60% of loyal customers promote your brand to friends and family.(3)
• 39% of loyal consumers pay more for your product even when a cheaper alternative is available.(4)

Generating loyal, satisfied customers almost entirely boils down to one common denominator: the customer experience. How do you deliver a great customer experience? With a solid product and great customer service delivered by satisfied employees.

Tips for increasing customer retention

There are countless tactics, large and small, that you and your company can do to generate satisfied customers and increase customer retention.

Improve the customer experience

We already touched on this, but it is extremely important. The customer experience has already overtaken price and product quality as the top driving factor behind consumer purchase decisions. A great customer experience leads to satisfied customers, which leads to long-term loyal customers, which leads to customer retention.

Give your customers a voice

Customers need to feel their voices are being heard. It allows them to feel they are in a partnership with you, not a faceless relationship with a logo. Survey them to see how you could improve, then implement some changes. Form a client advisory board to allow customers to tell you what they need and want. You’ll be surprised how many goodwill points you’ll win from these few tactics as long as you implement changes based on customer feedback.

Make a good first impression

It’s true, first impressions matter. When you sign a new customer, that’s the perfect time to start your customer retention tactics. Don’t just leave them to fend for themselves. Rather, ensure you have a robust onboarding program and free, thorough training. Customers need to be able to effectively use your product or service to the fullest of its capacity. If not, they’ll likely leave for a competitor. Their first day as a new customer is the most important day of their relationship with you.

Offer superior customer support

When a customer runs into a problem, they need it solved quickly. Every minute and hour that they have to wait for a solution to a support ticket, the higher the chances are they will leave you for a competitor. One great way to ensure you’re delivering superior customer support is to measure and continually improve your First Call Resolution rate.

The final word

So, which is more important: lead generation or customer retention? The answer is (drumroll please): there is no definitive answer. Each business is unique and so are its needs. The trick lies in finding the right balance between the two—one which lets you grow sustainably over the long term.

Lead generation is essential for growth. However, if you focus too much on it and neglect your existing customers’ needs, customer churn will overwhelm you. At the same time, you can’t focus 100% of your attention on retaining existing customers. Otherwise, you’d either not grow at all or grow slowly.

That’s why you need to find the right balance between the two. If you’re not sure what that balance looks like for your business, use the tips above and test a few tactics to see what works best.

With a little legwork and self-reflection, you’ll find the right balance between the two. Then, your business growth rate will start to go up, and continue to do so.

Ready to put your lead generation and customer retention tactics to work? Request a free demo with an Insightly rep to see how you can implement, test, and measure performance of all your efforts across sales and marketing.

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Sources:

1. Customer Retention and Renewal Messaging: Mission Critical, But Missing In Action, Corporate Visions, 2017

2. Customer experience: New capabilities, new audiences, new opportunities, McKinsey & Company, 2017

3 & 4. What Do Customers Do For Brands They Love?, Yotpo, 2020

The post Lead generation vs. customer retention appeared first on Insightly.

You may have many non-customer contacts in your customer relationship management (CRM). But those are not leads. You have acquired some of their personal information, but they haven’t engaged with your brand yet.

They become leads when they start to interact with your brand, and sales webinars—if executed properly—are a terrific way to turn those contacts into active leads. Research shows that 76% of marketers say webinars allow them to reach more leads.*

That’s why we created a list of 12 sales webinar tips and best practices to help you strategically plan, execute, and follow up on your webinars to generate new leads.

Webinar basics and best practices

Businesses host many types of free webinars, from sales webinars for lead generation to webinars focused on customer retention.

Below, we focus exclusively on sales and marketing webinars to generate new leads. But first, let’s cover some general tips that apply to any type of webinar.

Start planning weeks in advance

If you decide to throw together a last minute webinar, stop or postpone it for a few weeks to prepare. Why?

First, initial invites should be sent weeks in advance, with subsequent follow-up reminders to increase attendance.

Second, four or five days isn’t enough time to effectively assess the needs of your target audience and plan a webinar that speaks to those needs.

Third, you’d be wasting valuable time rushing to plan and ignoring other priorities, only to end up with seven attendees, none of which ever convert into customers.

Always conduct a trial run

A few days before the webinar, hold a trial run and include everyone who will be involved in the actual webinar. This ensures presenters who are not familiar with your webinar tool are clear on the process. A trial run dramatically reduces the possibility of running into a technical error during the presentation.

Incorporate a behind-the-scenes webinar administrator

Let’s say you do run into a technical issue, despite having completed a trial run, having an administrator behind the scenes allows the presenters to continue while the issue is resolved in the background.

Keep it upbeat

With practice, you’ll be able to set the right pace and tone—keep it upbeat, friendly, but professional. Respect your audience’s time and engage them by packing every sound bite with new and useful information. Tell an interesting story to illustrate your main points.

12 Webinar best practices to generate more qualified leads

Sales webinars should not be salesy. It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you’re talking to contacts who are just starting to engage with you, you should speak to them the way you speak to leads who just entered the funnel.

It’s better to think of it as a marketing webinar to drive sales than a “sales webinar.” Here are 12 best practices to help you find your own recipe for success:

1. Educate readers about a problem they didn’t know they had

This is the hook. Webinar attendees may not realize they are lacking an important tool or are not aware of an important trend. Your objective is to educate them about the prevalence of this problem.

Explain that so many of your customers have struggled with X, Y, or Z. And that it’s a common challenge for many people in their industry. Your webinar attendees will start thinking about how that affects their own organizations. It will create concern and a sense of urgency.

This is not about creating a panic, but rather sharing information that will help them to succeed. Those who don’t stay ahead of emerging trends and technologies get left in the wake of those that ride the wave of the future. We don’t win clients’ loyalty and prospects’ trust by instilling fear into them. We do it by educating, inspiring, and motivating them.

2. Explain the importance of solving that problem

Use real world anecdotes to illustrate the consequences of not solving that problem. Tell a story about a business that had that problem and ignored it. Don’t mention any names yet, because you have their attention now and need to leverage that to continue building suspense and sense of urgency.

3. Tell a true story about a business that experienced the same problem

Storytelling in marketing is a very effective way to capture your target audience’s attention—as long as you can tell an engaging story. No rambling allowed.

Tell a tale of a business you were personally involved with that experienced this problem. Later you’ll let on that that business was one of your clients, but not yet.

Instead, allow your audience to speculate about how that business solved the problem. Which tactics did they use and how did they use them to resolve their challenge?

Stop for a few seconds at the point where the business in question is in trouble and can’t find a solution no matter how hard they try. Let it all sink in.

4. Present a solution to that problem

It’s still too early to mention your brand. You’re still telling your story. But reassure your audience that there is a solution to this problem, which you’ll get to shortly.

First you gave them reason to be concerned. Then you eased their anxiety by reassuring them that there is a solution and you’ve seen it work in real life.

You’re starting to earn their trust at this point.

Reiterate that you personally know the leaders of the business that experienced this problem. Now, you tell the audience what the solution was: using the type of product or service you sell (continue to refrain from mentioning your brand or product).

Finally, share the outcome of solving the problem and the incredibly positive impact it had on that business’s growth.

5. Now… let the cat out of the bag

At this point, you confess that the company in question was—and still is— a client of yours. Explain the role you and your business played in helping the company solve its problem. Now you start discussing your product or service and how it was instrumental in facilitating the solution.

If possible, add a client testimonial to validate your story. Or better still, ask that client if they are comfortable joining the webinar just to say a few words and answer a few questions.

Once attendees hear a peer explain how instrumental your brand and product were in solving their problem, they’ll be hooked. Engagement levels will rise and the attendees will start to see your brand in a more positive light.

6. Make your webinars interactive

Avoid creating a webinar that is nothing more than a slide deck full of busy, distracting slides, with a presenter reading the text on the slides.

Instead, use interactive features offered by your webinar application.

Run polls during your webinar to gain actionable insight into prospects’ needs, challenges, goals, pain points, etc.

Consider allowing attendees to raise their hand and ask questions during the presentation instead of making them wait until the Q&A session after the presentation.

Interaction during webinars increases engagement, delivers a better customer experience, and increases attendees’ desire to learn more about your brand and continue to engage with you.

7. Use strategic tactics to increase engagement

Most of us have sat through a work meeting where someone presents a busy PowerPoint slide deck full of text. The presenter reads the slides to you. They lose your attention faster than Usain Bolt runs the 100-meter dash.

Your goals with a sales webinar are to engage attendees, keep their attention, and deliver valuable takeaways that will help them in their daily life or job.

Here are a few tips to increase sales webinar engagement:

• Minimize the text on each slide. Instead use more imagery like graphs or photos that illustrate your point without distracting the audience. You want attendees to listen to you, not spend their time reading 15 bullet points while your presenter is simultaneously reading them aloud.
• Send the presentation to attendees after the webinar. Tell attendees from the start that they’ll receive the slides or recording after the webinar so they don’t need to take notes and can focus more on what you’re saying.
• Prepare, prepare, prepare. To deliver an engaging sales webinar, you must know the subject matter inside and out. Then you can talk through each slide in a conversational manner rather than reading pre-pared talking points to the audience.
• Ask questions during the presentation. Include running polls, ask a question and encourage views to “raise their hand” (i.e. click the Raise Hand button) to answer. Your backstage admin takes that person off mute so they can answer. If more people start to raise their hand, allow them to chime in one at a time even if it means you have to skip a few slides.

8. Create a killer registration landing page

A sales webinar registration landing page matters more than many people think. It can determine whether or not someone actually registers. To create an awesome registration page, follow these tips:

• Make your webinar title and description engaging, yet clear. You want to simultaneously 1)eliminate any confusion around what the webinar will deliver and 2) generate excitement around what registrants will learn. When someone lands on your page they enter a type of negotiation with you. Are they willing to trade their personal information for what they will receive in return? You have to convince them that the value they will receive is well worth a few bits of information.
• Use concise copy: Say as much as you can in as few words as possible. Use bullets points to describe the benefits they’ll receive from attending. Use plenty of white space and non-distracting imagery. And try to limit the fields on your registration form to just name, company, and email address.

Once you have this information, you can use it in email marketing campaigns which offer more valuable content that is gated behind forms with additional fields, allowing you to build their profile over time.

PRO TIP: Always make it clear that after registering they will receive a confirmation email with all the information needed to log in and attend. This reduces the possibility that they will enter a fake email address.

9. Don’t forget to optimize the confirmation page

The confirmation page is a perfect opportunity to continue engaging prospects. Include a CTA for a piece of valuable content related to the webinar topic. They’ll see it and probably think, “why not?”.

Doing this increases the time they spend on your site and therefore the likelihood they will eventually convert into customers.

10. Send multiple reminder emails

People register for events then forget about them. It happens all the time. So, send reminder emails one week, one day, and/or a few hours before the webinar. Also include calendar files so they can save the event on their work calendar and receive reminders from there as well.

As a bonus tip, send two different reminder emails each time—one to registrants and another one to those you invited but never registered. Many people intend to register but never get around to it.

You’d be surprised how many people register a few hours before the webinar begins. Data from a major webinar application company indicates that on average users see a 20% increase in registration by reminding people to register a few hours before the webinar takes place.**

11. Follow up with everyone you’ve invited

Following up is important because it illustrates that you are genuinely invested in helping your customers succeed. Use these three tactics when following up with attendees, attendees who asked questions that weren’t answered, no-shows, and invitees who didn’t register.

Attendees: Send a follow-up email thanking them for attending and providing them with the presentation slides, as you said you would.

Attendees with unanswered questions: Individually reach out to anyone who asked a question that wasn’t answered. Call or email them directly. Apologize and explain that you ran out of time and couldn’t answer their question. Provide a detailed answer and, if possible, any resources that provide more information on the subject of their question.

No-shows and invitees who didn’t register: For this group, send a follow-up email that includes a recording of the live webinar. This is a great goodwill gesture and may be enough to turn a contact into an active lead.

12. Find the best webinar solution for your needs

Remember to select the best webinar hosting solution for your needs. Make a needs checklist and evaluate various options until you find the one that checks the most boxes on your list.

Just as with any new software solution, do your due diligence, compare various vendors, ask for a free trial so you can test it before purchasing it, and take your time evaluating the pros and cons of each vendor you’re considering.

Ready to start running your own sales webinars?

Use this step-by-step guide to run a successful sales webinar that generates high-quality leads who are more likely to convert into customers.

To explore Insightly’s platform for sales and marketing, request a demo.

Request a demo

Sources:

* Webinar ON24 Benchmarks 2019, ON24, 2019

** Ultimate Webinar Stats for 2020, WorkCast, 2020

The post 12 tips to generate qualified leads from a sales webinar appeared first on Insightly.

Now what?

In this article, the last in the launching digital marketing series, we’ll explore how to convert a solid plan into a successful digital marketing program.

Host a kickoff meeting

For an avid sports fan like me, summer is an awesome time of year. Baseball season is in full swing. Golf is, too. Hockey and basketball seasons have just recently come to an exciting conclusion. And, football season is just around the corner.

Now, you might be asking yourself what my love of sports has to do with your digital marketing. Allow me to explain.

Sporting events can teach us something useful about project management, especially when it comes to kickoffs. Take a football game, for example. Before play can commence, captains from both teams meet at the 50 yard line to shake hands, exchange pleasantries, discuss venue-specific ground rules with officials, and perform the coin toss.

Why do football games begin this way? Wouldn’t it be better to take care of such formalities in the privacy of the clubhouse, thereby saving everyone an extra ten minutes? In truth, the pregame meeting serves several key roles. First, the meeting’s public and ceremonial nature tells everyone in the building — from offensive line coach to hot dog vendor — that something momentous is about to happen (in this case, the start of a game). In a more practical sense, the pregame meeting also provides vital information to players, coaches, and referees, such as which team will kick off and which team will receive the ball.

Bringing all of this back to your digital marketing, the importance of a project kickoff meeting cannot be understated. A well-run kickoff signifies to all contributors that the project is ready to start and is worthy of everyone’s undivided attention. The meeting should iron out any remaining questions and reconfirm your assumptions pertaining to goals, dates, budgets, and tasks. A successful kickoff meeting brings together key stakeholders, clears up any confusion, and gets everyone buzzing about the project.

Implement a daily check-in

Even the best kickoff meeting provides little value without the proper follow-through. After all, most digital marketing projects aren’t begun and completed in a day. Many, if not all, require weeks or months of continuous work, collaboration, and refinement.

Brief daily check-in meetings are an effective way to keep projects on track without creating unnecessary red tape. When I say “brief,” I mean 15 to 20 minutes max. The team leader should use this time to cover three main issues with each team member:

1. Work that has been recently completed
2. Work that is up next
3. Any issues that are preventing work from getting done

Having managed many digital marketing teams over the past decade, I’ve seen daily check-ins occur through a variety of formats, including:

• Chat-only meetings: No spoken words are exchanged. Instead, instant messaging services, such as Skype or Slack, are used to share updates and provide feedback. This type of meeting is particularly helpful when managing teams in different global time zones or for overcoming language barriers. Team members can post updates as they occur rather than trying to coordinate a fixed time for everyone to connect. Chat-only meetings can be very time efficient, except when you’re dealing with complex technical issues that are better resolved through verbal communication and screen sharing.

• Voice and/or video conferences: Daily check-ins can also be hosted as voice or video conferences using online platforms, such as Zoom or GoToMeeting. This type of meeting fosters a greater sense of alignment, especially among remote teams who rarely experience in-person interactions with their colleagues. Unfortunately, in my experience, online conferences tend to run long and consume additional time that could otherwise be used for completing work. It helps to let all participants know that you have a hard stop at a certain time, and unless there is an urgent issue that requires more time and attention, you’ll be wrapping the meeting.
• In-person conferences: Unless your entire team is based in a corporate office, in-person check-ins are increasingly rare. With the advent of online freelancing and virtual teams, even small and midsize companies are embracing a distributed workforce structure. If you’re able to and prefer to hold in-person meetings, then figure out the best place and time and set up a recurring meeting. Having a standing agenda or a meeting format can also help to keep in-person check-ins brief and productive.
• Hybrid: Perhaps part of your team is in a corporate office and everyone else works from home. Or, perhaps most check-ins can be done via chat, but you still like to get everyone together once a week. Taking a hybrid approach to daily check-ins can provide a healthy mix of flexibility and efficiency.

Measure progress with data

Companies large and small are leveraging data to accelerate growth and achieve more goals. If you’re using a data-driven project management system, such as Insightly, you can convert your business data into meaningful insights to ensure digital marketing initiatives stay on track.

Since you’re just getting started with digital marketing, your project-level data may not be very insightful yet. As we discussed in my previous article, however, a project is nothing more than a collection of smaller tasks and milestones that share a common goal. A well-structured project management system should therefore make it easy to monitor progress by presenting task and milestone activity data in a clear and concise manner. See below an example of a project setup and tracking in Insightly CRM.

As tasks and milestones are completed and projects advance toward completion, your project-level data becomes more meaningful — especially if you’re using a tool that offers interactive business intelligence modeling.

Note: No project plan is perfect. As a project progresses, you’re bound to encounter unforeseen tasks, milestones, and changes that cause delays and create frustration for the team. Although some changes are to be expected, a good project leader resists major extensions to the project’s original scope. Anything beyond the original scope should be added to the backlog for future sequencing. This will help to keep existing priorities on track and avoid watering down your in-progress project data.

Document your lessons learned

Closing out a successfully completed project is another great opportunity for the team to connect and grow.

Having tracked all activity and documentation within an online project management system, you have the luxury to compare actual results against your original digital marketing plan. Challenge your team to identify data-driven answers to important questions, such as:

• How accurate was our original timeline and budget?
• What could have made this project even more successful?
• Where did you deviate from the plan?
• What was the main cause of deviation (either positive or negative)?
• Was there a specific task or milestone that caused a delay?
• Did we get sidetracked by a different project?
• Do we need to add new team members in order to build additional capacity?
• What expenses did we incur that were not factored into the plan?
• Did we learn any new facts or acquire new skills?
• What, if any, recurring tasks should be created and assigned moving forward? For example, website maintenance, site backups, etc.
• Do we need to create work instructions for certain processes that have been established?
• Should we recycle this project as a template in order to accelerate similar projects in the future?

Be sure to document all of your lessons learned within your project file. Documentation is not useful unless it’s easily accessible for future reference. Linking your documentation to your project keeps everything nice and tidy.

Celebrate your team’s success

As projects move across the finish line, it’s also time to celebrate your victories. Your team worked hard to achieve their goals and they appreciate your recognition of their efforts. So, when that shiny new website goes live, consider making a big deal by:

• Sharing the news on an internal Slack channel
• Sending a company-wide email
• Giving a shout-out in an upcoming company meeting
• Publishing a blog post that marks the accomplishment
• Boosting the news on social media with an ad or two
• Doing something fun as a team

Showing your appreciation makes your team all the more willing to exceed your future expectations. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do!

Digital marketing success

With the right strategy, team, technology, and resources, almost any company can leverage digital marketing to increase pipeline, accelerate growth, and enhance its bottom line. My hope is that this multi-part series has inspired you take action and make digital marketing a strategic asset for your business.

Here’s to your future success!

Skipped the first two articles in the series or want to revisit the steps to digital marketing success? Here are the articles:

Step-by-step guide to launching digital marketing (Part 1)

Step-by-step guide to launching digital marketing (Part 2)

The post Step-by-step guide to launching digital marketing (part 3) appeared first on Insightly.

At Chanty, we had to learn a lot about lead generation as well as try new things before we found what actually works for us. Today we are sharing the best of our lead generation advice. Some of the hacks work well for us to get the precious sign ups for Chanty, others have proven to work great for well-known SaaS companies.

1. Lead generating content

Content marketing is nothing new. Unfortunately, there are still companies that invest into creating content, but don’t get the outcome they’ve hoped for. The good news is content marketing, if done right, could bring amazing results. Let us share our hack #1 that brings us a steady stream of customers.

Here’s a simple path you should follow:

• Determine your top competitors in the niche
• Make a keyword research for ‘Competitor Name’ alternatives, as well as ‘Competitor X’ vs ‘Competitor Y’
• Choose the keyword phrase with the best balance of monthly search queries and keyword difficulty (could be checked in Ahrefs or SEMrush)
• Write an in-depth article targeting the keyword. Among other alternatives mention your product. Highlight why it’s better than your competitors.
• Acquire some backlinks pointing to an article
• Enjoy the deluge of sign ups

This article on Slack alternatives in our blog is a living proof of this strategy in work. It’s the easiest way to go if you have a prominent competitor in the niche. If you don’t – well, there’s still the traditional inbound marketing for you to try. Determine your buyer persona, learn their pains, solve them with your content, educate, engage and provide value. Create a downloadable asset such as an ebook or a comprehensive guide and offer it in exchange for visitors’ emails. Visit Hubspot Academy to learn how to do it in details.

2. Resonating ads

I can’t help, but mention this tactic, used by Ryver, our competitor. With the obvious leader in the face of Slack, team communication and collaboration niche is pretty hard to enter. You have to explain how you are different from Slack to their millions of fans and fight for your place in the sun. Ryver made a power move and set up the aggressive ad campaign in Twitter confronting their main rival.

Ryver says they’ve seen incredible engagement with these promoted tweets compared to other tweets where they’d speak of their advantages as a team communication app. Eventually, this approach helped them generate buzz around the product, got them noticed by thousands of potential customers and resulted in the long awaited sign ups.

I don’t encourage to go against your competitor with your ad campaigns. The ethical side of this approach is controversial and completely up to you. The bottom line is it works and gets you the precious emails.

3. Referral traffic from Quora

So many marketing channels, so little time. Referral traffic could become a great acquisition channel as well. After spending one week answering questions on Quora, I was surprised to discover its traffic converts at impressive 6%.

Here’s a priceless hack we’ve learnt – wiki answers. Rather than asking friends to upvote your content and fighting desperately to rank higher among other answers, here’s what you should do.

Whenever you find a question related to your niche e.g. it’s something like “What are the best Slack alternatives?” for us, hit the three dots menu and choose ‘Create Answer Wiki’. Once you post it, it’ll be reviewed by Quora staff and, if doesn’t violate their policy, it’ll be approved. Not everyone is aware of this hack so hurry up to make use of it asap.

4. Pricing model matters

Marketing isn’t only about promotion. There are still the three other P’s, remember? It’s hard to overestimate product pricing when it comes to generating leads.

When marketing thinks of leads, business thinks of sales. Not all leads are made equal. There are leads that turn into paying customers. There are also leads that churn after a free trial or remain freemium forever. Freemium, free trial, premium or other models you employ to price your product will result in different levels of lead generation. I’ve written more about various pricing models here. Let me highlight a few points.

I’d recommend to stay away from freemium unless you are a big company backed up by investors. Freemium sounds better than it in fact is. It means customers can use the lite version of your product for free for as long as you want. With all the virality you might get by going with freemium, you should consider the cons carefully.

Think of the number of free users you’ll have to maintain in order to get a handful of paying customers. Although it may look attractive, you can quickly find yourself in a freemium trap – answering support tickets of free users and developing the features that freemium customers request.

The bottom line is price the product wisely and learn about pros and cons of each pricing model. Generating leads is good. Generating leads that eventually become paying clients is even better.

5. Conversion rate optimization

No tactics or hacks will work If your website isn’t optimized for conversion. I’m not going to repeat what’s already written on the other blogs. Let me just share our experience on this.

It is a good idea to encourage those who already signed up to share the love with friends. Offer something in exchange, e.g. we’re offering the early bird access to our app if the potential customers share the word about Chanty in social networks. This helps us increase brand awareness and attract new clients to our team messenger.

I know pop ups are annoying. That’s why I didn’t choose to put up distracting windows that appear when you are in the middle of reading an article. Instead, we’ve opted for an exit pop up. Once the user is about to leave your website, it comes out. The results have exceeded our expectations – it now generates about 10% of our sign ups.

The last, but not the least – signing up at your website should be incredibly easy. It goes without saying, you should remove CAPTCHA and other challenges in the way of your potential customers. Unless you are a well known app like HubSpot, avoid multiple fill in forms at the sign up form. Email is, in fact, all you need. OK, ‘Name’ is another appropriate field to add. Just make sure it’s doesn’t become this:

Source

If you have user-unfriendly forms that still convert, my best guess is you are holding a complete monopoly over the niche.

Conclusion

Marketing a SaaS product is complicated and involves a series of various activities. The bottom line, however, is the number of sign-ups these activities generate. These are the metrics that every founder and CEO will keep in mind when evaluating efforts of a marketing team.

Therefore, try to strike a balance of promotion, price, product and placement to meet the business goals. Staying on the ethical side is equally important. Try the lead generation and conversion optimization hacks we’ve shared in this article to boost the number of sign ups on your website. Feel free to share other tips that worked well for you in the comments below.

The post 5 SaaS lead generation secrets to try in 2018 appeared first on Insightly.