2014 Netmantis.com Arshad Hasnain [LEAD MANAGEMENT PRIMER] Lead generation is the process of reaching out to prospects by variety of marketing campaigns or programs like online or offline advertising. While the lead conversion process entails bringing these leads in and converting them into long lasting customers or clients.
Lead Management Primer - Optimizing your entire lead generation and conversion process There are essentially just two parts in Lead Management. 1. Lead Generation 2. Lead Conversion By: U.S. Army Lead generation is the process of reaching out to prospects by variety of marketing campaigns or programs like online or offline advertising. While the lead conversion process entails bringing these leads in and converting them into long lasting customers or clients. While that might sound simple, it is actually easier said than done. Most of the businesses allocate half of their marketing budget to demand generation and yet most of them remain unsure of what actually came through such campaigns. Let alone how effectively the leads generated where actually utilized. What does every business want? Online Lead Generation and conversion 1. Recognition, awareness, and communication - Customers need to recognize what you have to offer, get interested in your product or service, and inquisitively explore the solutions you provide. These require a clear communication and connect. 2. Qualified leads - Every business wants qualified leads and that means we want to avoid timewasters that cost us money and time. We want customers who shall value our service and stay with us for a long lasting relationship. 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 2 of 11
By: Edson Walker 3. High conversion rate - Business want leads that convert. Conversion is dependent on your quality of leads and quality of leads depends on how leads are generated and nurtured. With advent of new insights in inbound marketing and changes in the search engines algorithms, it s evident that usability and value attract more leads. By targeted qualification in your lead generation funnel, you can generate more and more qualified leads that are looking for solutions you provide with curiosity and money in hand. Key Challenges Lead Generation Lead generation is the part of business to gain attention and getting people interested in your product or service. A typical process of lead generation includes various campaigns running around direct marketing, tradeshows, email campaigns, web forms, and cold calling. The effort is to engage with audience and convert them into a lead. This brings us to an obvious question. What is a lead and Lead Generation? Well lead is a contact (detail) which represents an actual person who might be willing to buy our product or services. A good lead is characterized by a person who is genuinely interested in what we have to offer; now this shall depend on let of things most importantly how the lead generation 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 3 of 11
process was executed. Some of the aspects worth mentioning include- Target Audience Best targeting is suggested to achieve 6 times the response than a badly targeted audience. Making an offer Making a good offer is critical and can generate 3 times the bad offer. Timing When did you pitch? Particularly, in case, of direct marketing or email campaigns, it is of utmost importance to ensure right audience take note of our pitch, open and read their emails, and take action. Ease of response It is important to give an easy option to the customers to respond and this is known to double up the response, when done the right way. Media employed The medium used to deliver a message is important and has significant impact on responses. Success in lead generation process depends on choosing right combination of above parameters. What is Lead Conversion Lead conversion management has some typical challenges and businesses-big or small encounter them on a daily basis. Quality of Leads Leads generated need to be acceptable leads which we may qualify and convert into customers. More than often, we may find that leads generated need to be rejected or disqualified at a very initial stage. Conversion of Leads Proof of the pudding is not the lead generation part, but lead conversion, resulting in sales. Time taken to convert leads Leads do have a conversion time wherein they need to be qualified, but we would definitely want to optimize that time. By: Epic Fireworks 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 4 of 11
Lead management lifecycle Lead management lifecycle is best represented by a Funnel By Carla Gates Let s quickly understand what makes a sales funnel with reference to the above diagram. A. Content We have different ways to reach our customers. Businesses are increasingly relying on content marketing along with other traditional ways of advertising to pull in a steady stream of customers interested in our product and services. A study by hub spot established that the B2B companies that posted 9-15 blogs per month saw a 200% increase in website traffic. While B2C companies saw a 450% increase compared to not posting blogs earlier. Some of the Internet - enabled content that add up to content marketing include social media pages and posts, video content, audio content, info-graphics, whitepapers, and ebooks. 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 5 of 11
B. Landing pages or Squeeze pages Landing pages are pages specially designed to squeeze in a lead hence also called squeeze pages. These pages promote specific offer and are optimized for terms in search engines. When a search result is clicked, these are the pages people land on to details about offers and are prompted to enter their name and email address to become a lead. Lead is then exposed to a focused marketing effort and is no more an anonymous visitor. This allows us to pursue the lead and ultimately convert it by making a sale. C. Lead Nurturing Once necessary details have been captured, leads are moved down further in the sales funnel. This is the middle part of the funnel and essentially means that the lead is looking at meaningful information to finalize on the buying process. We, knowing that, can then come up with relevant and beneficial inputs helping a lead to become a customer. The process of providing meaningful and focused information and boosting the confidence to purchase is referred to as lead nurturing. D. Sales Interaction Once the lead is nurtured, it may take initiative to ask for an initial sales discussion (Pull method). This is the best thing to happen as the lead has finally made up the mind, in principle, to purchase the product or service. This is helpful for the sales team as these leads are really worthy of discussion with a sales person. Sales team takes the charge and gets into discussion with the lead potentially converting them into customers. E. Retention For any responsible business, sale is not the end of the story. We want the customer to be loyal and spread the word of mouth and act like our ambassador in the market. One cannot achieve this without retention efforts through continuously providing more information and possibly enhancing current offerings and even upwelling products, in ways, that are completely nonintrusive and fun. This entails building of communities of loyal and passionate customers on various social platforms. These groups of customers are actually in a position to improve and contribute the design and development of new product or services. Their critiques can actually help us reach new heights of customer satisfaction and explosive growth in sales. 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 6 of 11
The top, middle, and bottom of the funnel The sales funnel consists of 3 main parts and referred to as Top of the funnel, Middle of the funnel and Bottom of the funnel. Top of the Funnel The top of the funnel consists of general information and works on initial awareness or education of the matter. This may include blog posts, how to videos, mentions of latest developments or relevant curated content. Middle of the Funnel The middle of the funnel is the place where anonymous visitors or target audience recognize the value added and entrust you to provide more information to solve a problem or add further value and, in fact, interested to see what more information is available before they make a final choice. This stage enables them to fill up a form and get access to segmented information relevant to the lead. As the lead accesses more and more meatier information he or she is becoming more and more qualified lead. This step helps us establish ourselves as thought leaders and greatly differentiate ourselves from the competitors. Middle of the funnel may include things like case studies, company assessments, improvisation documentation, or earlier releases of product or services. Bottom of the Funnel The bottom of the sales funnel is where actual action happens and demands for actual human interaction, in case, of high involvement products. Leads are aware of your products and services and recognize you as an authority or a competitive body. This is the stage wherein lead may actually buy the product or say request for a demo or an initial sales discussion. This is the place where leads become customers. All right, that s great! You say now, what I can do to get a quick handle on how my business is equipped for lead generation and conversion. There is an easy way to get started, and I will tell you how, right here:- Website is considered a very important part of the funnel system, and I won t be surprised if you have not looked at your own website for ages or still unsure as to what your website really delivers. Maybe, it serves the purpose of internet presence and you did try creating a funnel, and it does bring in some leads, but you won t be reading this, if you 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 7 of 11
were satisfied with that right? The reason you have downloaded this report is that you want to actually give a hard push to your lead management efforts, and boost your offline efforts to multiply sales and profitability. Trust me you are at the right place. By: David Morris A quick website self audit. Use this checklist below to assess your website quickly and arrive at some priorities. This exercise, though simple, will open up a new window on what initiatives you might want to take to develop a good lead management system. 1. Content Last date content was updated (Fresh, Relevant, and Unique content) 2. Information What is my website about? Am I providing a good narrative of my product or services? 3. Utility Is the information provided, usable. Are product and services provided with necessary detail (Catalogue, Specification etc.) 4. The problem solved or value added is clearly stated from my product or services 5. Do I link up with social media pages and provide a platform to network like-minded people? 6. Do I provide additional and informational resources that visitors might be looking for? 7. Does the website structure look clean, uncluttered, and professional 8. Does the website use adequate white space and avoids unnecessary graphics, animations, colors, flashing lights, or distracting music. 9. What is the loading speed of your website (Would suggest not to exceed 7 seconds) 10. Layout and navigation (may Just visit http://www.nike.com and compare your website) 11. Font and Readability Is your content easily readable (Check this out for a sample on readability https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/web-metrics) 12. Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation. 13. Total number of landing pages with opt in 14. Is lead qualification segmented? 15. How many leads are currently generated per month 16. How many leads are converted per month 17. How much time does it take on average to convert the leads 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 8 of 11
What next? If you completely used the form above you might broadly have three outcomes. By: Alejandro Peters a. Need to work on my website to make it more user and search engine friendly (Resolve fundamental aspects on Content, Design, and Structure) b. My website is, on average, meeting the requirements and meets a bit of both worlds (Carries useful content, does generate some leads, but can be significantly improved. c. My site is well optimized on these measures but produces leads which are of low quality or have a very low conversion rate. Result category b and c would not necessarily mean that they have all set with respect to content and design. Remember that all these things go together in churning meaningful and relevant leads. All the aspects of lead management require consistent and careful tweaking until they start producing the results expected. For the start just ask yourself these two questions. 1. Do you have Google analytics configured? 2. Are you tracking your goals? If you cover this much, there must be some glaring ideas to work on. The idea of this exercise was to generate enough food for thought. Many of the challenges faced or inflexibilities that might have encountered in reviewing above items may be eased by moving to a Content Management System (CMS) like Wordpress. Although there are many other CMS in the market, Wordpress remains on the forefront, and I feel proud recommending it. (more on that some time later) Coming back to Google analytics, I would have loved to talk about many other things here but want to remain focused so that we move step by step and derive maximum value for the things we have covered so far. 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 9 of 11
Websites are made for a purpose and so are the funnels We need to continuously monitor our traffic and conversions through lead generation funnel. Google analytics, of many other things, is a free and powerful tool to get started on goal analytics for your website. I am making things even easier for you I am offering fantastic videos explaining all the aspects from Google analytics setup to Goal setting free of cost once you sign up with Netmantis.com. By: jen Here s what the video tutorial includes 1. Google Analytics Account Setup Running Time: 6:42 2. Google Analytics UI Tour Running Time: 5:05 3. Google Analytics Customize Dashboard Running Time: 7:05 4. Google Analytics Add Users Running Time: 2:22 5. Google Analytics Creating Goals Running Time: 10:12 Bonus for every signup! Subscribers to Netmantis.com get access to free and discounted resources that address latest breakthroughs in the area of internet marketing and online success. 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 10 of 11
About Netmantis.com Netmantis.com offers Individuals and business proven methodologies to grow more leads and convert them effectively, both online and offline. It also provides a la carte services to address entire funnel activities resulting in more leads and enhanced opportunities to conversion. Beyond that, it also provides automation and backward systemization, integration and solutions, utilizing CMS, web and open source tools that can make your business highly customer centric, effective, flexible, and scalable. Reducing costs and increasing profits. For more information, visit http://www.netmantis.com Netmantis.com Bangalore, India Phone: +91 994-550-3583 email: info@netmantis.com Web: www.netmantis.com 2014 Netmantis.com. All rights reserved. Disclaimer Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on Netmantis.com. Netmantis.com is not liable for any errors contained in this document or for incidental or consequential damages in connection with furnishing or use of this material. 2014 Netmantis.com P a g e 11 of 11