If you are generating and sourcing leads, you should have heard about DocStoc, SlideShare, and Scribd and probably using one or more of these as your web 2.0 marketing tools. You documents, whitepapers, presentations, templates and case studies can shared with the web visitors. I have been using these sites for quite some time and see great benefits. Now SlideShare has come up with their LeadShare solution for collection and capture of leads for reasonable cost ($1 per lead). If you have been wondering why you are not getting the information of people who downloaded your documents from SlideShare, now you know!
You may take a look at my SlideShare portal on LeadPro247 Lead Capture, Distribution, Tracking and Survey Management. I am yet to test out the LeadShare feature. Please let me know if you folks have tested the same.
If you are a B2B organization, reaching your sales reps immediately and connecting with the prospects with least delay will help increase the lead conversion rates significantly. If your rep is the first person to contact the prospect, the chances of winning the deal is much higher assuming that you have suitable product to service the lead.
Lead Delivery
It is a fact that B2B sales reps are spread all over the geography and delivering the leads captured via the landing pages almost instantaneously is a critical requirement. This is generally achieved by email alerts and SMS text messages.
However pushing the message with lead information may not lead to the immediate prospect contact, as the sales reps have to proactively read the lead alert messages and dial the potential prospect. With the plethora of devices in hand, juggling of schedules and driving around town, it may not be easy for them to react immediately.
Lead Delivery via Voice
The reason why several large CRM system implementations ended in mere hype and no visible sales increases is well known. All of us know why the sales reps hate CRM systems! Well, these system increases their work load instead of helping them sell more and close more deals. At the same time, they would be glad to listen to their lead administrators and back office secretaries for the simple reason that they speak with them and provide relevant information!
If we can take a leaf out of this practice, and help the sales reps with voice delivery of prospect information received from the internet / marketing center, they would be glad to listen to the message and motivated to take action.
Lead Capture, Distribution and Tracking systems such as LeadPro247 leverages this fact and helps deliver the lead profile information to the sales force using highly advanced text to speech technology.
Voice Delivery Process
In the first step, the lead profile details collected from the sign-up forms, registration sites, and landing pages are converted to voice instructions using sophisticated text conversion algorithms.
Then the system automatically dials the sales rep’s cell phone and reads out the lead information when the picks up the phone.
The system can use round robin or specific lead assignment rules to choose the sale representative to dial out.
If a round robin process is used to make the automatic calls, the rep can choose to accept the lead or push it back to the queue, so that the lead delivery system can dial out to the next rep.
Auto Dialing the Prospect
When the sales rep accepts the lead information, the auto dialer built into the system can also automatically dial the prospect and connect to the next available rep.
This process significantly reduces the efforts on the part of the sales reps and helps them reach more prospects and sell to more customers.
Cost Benefit
Since an internet generated lead can cost from a few dollars to tens of dollars, the incremental voice delivery cost (around $1) is more than offset by increased prospect reach and sales conversion ratio. The voice delivery mechanism, generally provided as a value added service can also be leveraged by B2C customers.
Following sales lead tracking best practices using Lead Tracking Software solutions such as LeadPro247 significantly increases the chance of converting the Lead into a Sale. It is a known fact that over 70% of the prospects are never followed up in time. While employing a lead management software helps to reduce this rate to some extent, using the lead tracking best practices results in high lead conversion rates and increased prospect satisfaction.
Lead Tracking Process
Lead Tracking is nothing but the methodical way of following up with the prospects and recording the lead follow-up activities in the lead management database.
If the sales personnel are not in a position to log the follow-up actions and the results, especially in the case of small businesses, a lead administrator or lead coordinator can update the same in the central database. This practice helps the sale representative in getting an unified view of the lead during the next call or on site visit. Once the sales personnel realize the benefits of of centralized lead tracking, they will start following the process for their own betterment.
Tracking Log
The sales lead tracking log will include the following components, among others:
- Lead Origination / Capture Info
- Lead Assignment Info
- Drip Emails sent to the prospect
- Lead Reassignment or Transfer to another sales rep, if any
- Demo Requests from prospects
- Onsite Visits
- Telephone calls made and received
- Call Back reminders
- Gist of Email communications
- Snail Mails sent
- Marketing Literature fulfillment, if any
- Samples delivered, if applicable
- Movement of Sales Tracking Stage
Visibility to all this tracking information will save considerable time for the sales personnel. The sales support staff (at the back office) can also alert the sales reps based on follow-up triggers.
While many marketers and businesses have started realizing the importance of contacting the prospect at the quickest possible time from the point of lead capture, further follow-up activities have not caught up as required. Deploying a suitable lead management system and adopting simple best practices for lead tracking is imperative in today’s internet centric marketing era.
Lead Nurturing for Internet Leads
Lead Nurturing is the process of developing leads and converting them to customers using long term marketing, engagement and follow-up strategies. With the wide use of Internet by the consumers and businesses to locate, research and purchase goods and services, Lead Nurturing has gained a much wider and critical importance among marketing professionals.
While most of the time the prospects need immediate response from the sellers, it is also true that many prospective buyers look for information right at the early stages of buying process. Hence keeping those future customers engaged, educated, gaining their confidence and finally converting the leads to customers is a key part of today’s marketing process. Lead Nurturing Software helps to nurture the internet leads using automated software systems and processes.
Lead Nurturing Software Tools
Leads generated from Internet and online media such as social networking sites and web 2.0 tools, who are not looking for immediate purchase, can be nurtured using lead nurturing software programs with built-in Autoresponder Services, event triggered sequential drip email marketing automation programs, and lead tracking systems.
The nurturing process takes various cues depending on your nature of business. For example, if the telephone contact information of the prospect is available, it can also be put through a contact center (not focused on sales but nurturing). If the physical address is available, even a traditional snail mail can be sent in a suitable time interval. However, these traditional nurturing methods are loosing relevance, as there is remote possibility of having contact information other then email addresses. Over 80% of leads generated on the internet, especially using social networking media sites, will have only email address as the contact information.
Many integrated Lead Management Software solutions such as LeadPro247 marketing automation suite, come with relevant lead nurturing tools. These are generally web based systems and easy to use. Typically the following components can be used to develop and nurture the leads:
- Auto Responder Service: This tool is nothing but Email Marketing Automation service with built-in drip email marketing broadcast feature. Drip email messages are automatically triggered by the system by predefined events such as times lines, bahavioral actions, and online activities.
- News Letters: Electronic newsletters are great nurturing tools for educating and engaging the prospective customers. Email marketing service will be used to design, deliver and track email newsletters with marketing information.
- Online Surveys: The biggest benefit of using online survey software is that you can read the prospects’ minds. This will provide an insight into the thoughts of the prospect and your services can be tuned accordingly.
- Lead Tracking: When you are nurturing a lead online, tracking the behavior is the most important aspect. Unless you know how they are behaving and what they are responding to your marketing communications, you can not deliver meaningful messages or take corrective actions. Again, the integrated Lead Tracking software such as LeadPro247 could be leveraged to track the email message opens, clicks, site visits, survey responses, and whitepaper / document downloads.
Usage, Relevancy and Frequency
While there are several tools and systems available for internet generated leads, it is the the user who decides when and how to use the features available. As an online marketing professional, you must choose the right business rules, timing and frequency for delivering nurturing messages. Using a lead nurturing software tool itself is a not a panacea for all ills! It depends on how you use it.
For example, sending too many email messages might trigger the prospect to unsubscribe from your email list. Similarly, if you do not mail frequently enough, they prospect might forget about their research and your relevany product / service and might report your email message as a SPAM or Unsubscribe from the list.
The messages have to be relevant to the prospect’s needs and requirements. Use the segmentation features available in your email marketing or autoresponder service to deliver right messages to the right target audience.
Review the nurturing programs and business rules settings on a regular basis and tweak and improve the same on a continuous basis. What is right and relevant today may not be relevant tomorrow, especially in the online world. If you are dealing with B2B sales leads, you may also employ lead ranking or scoring techniques to improve the lead nurturing and follow-up process.
Twitter populated by bots
24% of tweets are by bots: What does this mean?
Social media networks like Twitter have become and indispensable part of Internet Marketing. Giant Corporations use Twitter to reach out to their customers and get valuable feedback. A recent Sysomos study has revealed that 24% of tweets are by bots. Sounds cold, uncaring and not very social?? Probably but not actually so. There are a lot of situations when bots are useful.Tweeting of blog updates,collecting tweets on a specific topic from twitter users etc. Take a look at this Mashable article for more examples.
Most internet marketers automatically post their blog updates to Twitter. Although these are automatic updates, it does not mean that they don’t care (as long as the blogs contain relevant material). This is like drip- emails or newsletters; they are sent automatically but the content is original every time. Bots spell doom only if the tweets are from various sources and not very original most of the time.
A company using bots to follow keywords may still seem ‘social’ if it replies to people with appropriate comments. Just following all customers based on keywords and automatically tweeting pages is not going to make anyone happy. Auto-reply bots; Not very cool!!
So the conclusion: Use bots wisely and only when needed. They cannot replace the human connection!!The whole point of Social media is to be social. Bots can only make it easier in part.
