Integrated Marketing

Using customer intelligence and buyer behavior to your advantage directly drives brand value. Are you using integrated marketing to generate leads and brand awareness across multiple mediums? It becomes easier to increase customer interactions with your brand and influence behavior in different situations of the life cycle curve if you’re swimming in different content streams so to speak.

Nurturing, qualification and decision-making all occurs at very different stages in the buying process. You can drive value to your audience by using a multiple tactic approach, even when your content strategy is similar or messaging stays consistent. Inbound mediums like pay-per-click and SEO can help move your audience from the status quo phase into considering alternatives. Then use brand building mediums like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to guide your audience through the decision making stages.

Research can help close the feedback loop in the ROI phase and translate customer intelligence into actionable tactics. This help define the journey a customer goes through to become a passionate promoter of who you are. Ask your marketing team this question: are your tactics cooperating with or impeding the progress your brand?

Content for Search Engine Optimization

Google, Bing and Yahoo are all focused on creating a great user experience. To climb the search rankings, you need to keep in mind how relevant your content is and where you land in the rankings. The process of creating original, quality content is essential to being found organically by your target audience.

White papers and web copy should be optimized for SEO. Make sure your copy includes the highest traffic short tail keywords generating many search inquiries correlated with your solutions. Then reposition your content to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any social site to help aid your reputation as thought leader. Blogs help increase conversions by playing a crucial role in walking your audience through the customer journey.

Pay-per-click links are wonderful for increasing traffic with audiences closer to the bottom of the funnel. Keep in mind there is a game to be played between increasing impact and keywords that propel site interaction. Watch your bounce and click through rate to determine if content is compelling and keeps visitors on your website. The Return in Influence can be measured by an increase in page views, time on page, new likes or followers, or e-commerce conversions.

SEO Keyword Analysis

Your marketing team should understand realize a website must satisfy both humans and Google’s algorithm. Increase your search engine optimization success by adding anchor text weblinks into your body copy. This can simultaneously increase your page clicks per site visit and enhance the overall user experience.  Keep in mind that marketing and branding can only go so far.  By adding content links in your body copy, your website will better support unique information useful to the reader.  Your metrics should specifically measure how your audience engagement is growing through an increase in number of site pages per visitor.

Always conduct market research on the best search engine optimization keywords for your body copy.  One of the most important aspects of search engine marketing is including in your content these phrases that users are actively searching for on Google. Long tail keywords can provide high quality, low volume search conversions specific to your marketing strategy. Short tail keywords increase the frequency of being found in search results, but are more difficult to win in general based on high competition. Add a mix of both to increase your success with local results and support with incremental pay per click campaigns that augment traffic.

Increasing Campaign ROI

When companies consider measuring campaign ROI, they almost always jump to how they’re going to measure the hard costs associated with implementing the campaign. While marketing automation and CRM software does that, it’s also valuable for companies to see that there are actually phases in ROI measurement that lead up to determining the returns in terms of dollars spent/dollars received.

There are many factors rolled up into these phases and your lead management solution should help you pinpoint and track those factors. It should help you determine where prospects are in the marketing sales funnel. It should guide you in tracking behavioral trends, responses to dynamic content and what tactics elicit both. Your lead management program should include a lead scoring mechanism that takes all of these factors into consideration and lets both the marketing and sales teams know where the individual is in the buying cycle so individuals can be delivered content that is unique to their current position. All of these concepts show how a lead is progressing through your marketing sales process so that the ROI can be measured at each phase.

1. The first phase of campaign ROI defines cost-per-inquiry and the value you bring to a prospect’s world. The best lead generation programs measure drivers that increase phase one traffic acquisition.  This may include pull tactics such as blogging and search engine optimization, or push tactics such as press releases or co-branded email campaigns to a co-sponsored opt-in list.  Measure hard costs, such as press release syndication services and email transmission fees, as well as soft costs, such as employee time or social media share-of-voice relative to content.  The success of these tactics should be measured by how effective they are in pushing leads to phase two of the process.

2. The second phase of campaign ROI defines inquiry-to-lead drivers and the lead nurturing tactics that increase participation. Lead definition in phase two directly determines costs associated with prospects who are sales ready and should be contacted by your sales team.  Configure your lead management technology to measure cost per tactic for each vertical, then compare response rates and consumer feedback surveys to understand if your dialogue is building an emotional connection.  Consumer surveying can help profile your ideal customer and understand if your lead management process is successfully qualifying your inquiries.

Training seminars to improve your team’s phone skills are worthwhile inquiry-to-lead costs that drive sales if your channel management strategy is accurately executed.  Direct mail executions to pre-qualified audiences are effective and can move prospects through the marketing sales funnel.

3. The third phase of campaign ROI measurement determines lead-to-close rate. Finally, your campaign management software should calculate lead-to-sales close metrics.  This final phase includes tactical costs, but also engagement metrics that can help you predict time-to-close.  This maximizes your sales marketing plan and return on marketing investment.  Create a lead scoring report in your campaign management system that measures stages of funnel prospect.  Three simple levels may include nurturing, qualifying and proposing.  Eliminate opportunities that have expired through lead filtering tactics or continued thought leader content per opt-in consent.

Reasons to Measure Social Media

Social media utilizes resources – Just because your Facebook account is free, that doesn’t mean your available time to do business is.  Your lead management program should be focused and strategic, allocating resources wisely to lead management tools that identify the greatest number of leads.  If your CEO is paying attention, they will recognize inefficiencies that affect the relationship between marketing and sales.  Be prepared in advance to discuss your social media marketing ROI and individual campaign ROI.

Social media analytics are quickly becoming more available – Understanding where you are making marketing mistakes is just as important as creating successful programs.  Campaign management software like NitroMojo can help you measure user engagement, demand creation and social lead nurturing programs at the click of a button.  Lead nurturing programs can quickly be modified through buyer behavior analysis and participating in conversations in real time.

Social media continues to gain momentum – Smaller companies are embracing tactics like blogging and video at a greater rate than larger firms, more than likely due to less legal and logistical hassles with the process.  Competitive advantages can be gained if you build your sales marketing plan with the lead management tools to effectively go head-to-head with the larger companies in your channel.

Social media changes by the minute – The best channel management strategy recognizes what is popular today may not be tomorrow.  Rely on consumer marketing research and customer surveying to predict where your ideal customer is spending their time online.  If you are a retail outlet and you recognize FourSquare is growing rapidly, add incentives into your sales marketing plan for consistent shoppers who become the mayor of your retail locations.  Measure campaign ROI by specific social incentives to compare responsiveness to your everyday walk in traffic.

Four lead nurturing best practices

Lead nurturing is a powerful conversation that builds comfort and confidence between brands and prospects. The best lead generation strategies consistently convert inquiries into leads qualified through lead scoring. Here are four lead nurturing best practices that can aid your lead management process, solidify your distribution channel management strategy and define how your team is measuring marketing ROI.

1. Consistent dialogue is essential to increasing sales performance. Relevant content is more than just a message: it is the essential nutrients a prospect needs to grow a relationship with your brand. Your lead nurturing content must contain engagement solutions that amplify demand creation. Without proper dialogue, a prospect will tune out your message quickly and your lead management process in general.

2. Lead nurturing content strategy should focus on articulating your value proposition. An extended selling process necessitates patience while prospects are evaluating their marketing sales process. Your messaging must resonate to the strengths of your value proposition and how it specifically applies to the needs of the decision maker.

3. Recognize online buying signals during the lead management process. Your web analytics software must provide information on how a lead nurturing prospect interacts with your brand. Identify prospects that connect the dots between your marketing events multiple times, such as attending a webinar after an email invitation is sent. This will increase your prospect’s lead scoring rank and help determine solutions that guide your strategy in a meaningful, solution-based tone.

4. Personalization is a powerful lead management solution during the lead nurturing conversation. Using dynamic content, such as sending variable image emails that includes the prospect’s name in the image, can double landing page conversions. Add the first name of your prospect in the salutation line of the content for incremental value.

Finally, choosing the best marketing software is vital to keeping your best salesmen in front of more customers who are ready to buy. Adding a campaign management system like Salesforce can significantly impact your return on marketing investment. Detailed reporting functionality aids the marketing measurement your executive team needs to implement an effective sales channel management strategy.

Four lead nurturing tips based on purchase involvement

Understanding how a consumer evaluates alternatives is critical to building a lead nurturing strategy.  Many consumer decisions that have a low level of purchase involvement focus on the emotional connection a user has with a brand.  By contrast, a complex purchase with high consumer involvement will include many more product attributes and consideration of choices before a decision is made.

Here are four lead nurturing tips to aid your marketing tactics based on consumer purchase involvement:

1. Decision making is a temporary state of mind – many marketers get caught up in the idea that lead nurturing is a lengthy and drawn out process.  If your brand decision is based on a low level of consumer involvement, develop marketing programs that enhance brand loyalty and repeat purchase behavior to increase your lead conversions.  For example, the simple decision “where am I going to each lunch today?” is a low involvement purchase that is typically not planned years in advance.  A lead nurturing campaign for a marketing manager of a restaurant might include a high frequency of radio spots during the noon hour to lead a brand loyal consumer back to their establishment.  Advertising a special offering at a reduced price targets the repeat purchase consumer who might not have a brand loyal option in mind but is going to make a lunch purchase that day.

2. Information search can be influenced by impulse marketing – if your brand decision is based on a slightly higher level of involvement, create a lead nurturing campaign that helps increase your brand visibility closer to the purchase decision.  Point of purchase displays and live product sampling are a great medium of information search that can influence short-term preference.  For example, a grocery marketing manager may recognize that foot traffic is heavier in retail stores on a Saturday than a Wednesday.  A product sampling station at the end of a retail aisle on the weekend engages shoppers to compare product attributes first hand.  This can quickly enter a high profit brand into a set of value-based consumer alternatives near the moment of decision making.

3. Risk plays a critical role in benefit assessment – higher involvement purchase decisions assess many unique product attributes during the risk-reward scenario.  Do you recognize the lead nurturing content you must communicate to reduce fears and trade-offs that influence a purchase decision?  Concisely illustrate the positive effects your brand will have after the purchase decision is made.  Solution based content can reduce risk and ease the fear of consequences that help delay purchase decision.  Write your lead nurturing copy based on the circle of influence and level of adopters who have influence on the purchase decision.  Innovators and early adopters typically make up 15% of any market and will be more likely to take a calculated risk based on feature benefits and success potential.  Laggards and late majority consumers will need more success documentation of your product and endorsements by thought leaders or third-party brands.

4. Co-branding has a positive effect on adoption – creating a joint alliance between your brand and another brand can have a noticeable effect on your lead nurturing campaign.  Co-branding helps you increase the positive sentiments of your brand simply due to association with another trusted brand.  Choose a partner that fits into your identity profile, resonates with your value proposition and can bring immediate value added to the lead nurturing campaign.  For example, American Express and Delta Airlines have had tremendous success opening new accounts with business travelers who are also luxury consumers.  The powerful combination of each brand identity speaks to a very specific demographic that has tremendous purchase influence.  Examine marketing relationships that will offer an incremental solution to your customer’s life and simultaneously enhance your brand equity.

Finally, using lead management software can directly amplify the success of each lead nurturing campaign.  Easy to use SaaS platforms like NitroMojo (http://www.nitromojo.com) have real-time dashboards that cross analyze market-based responses to each lead nurturing event.  This will allow your management team to understand lead nurturing successes as they happen and make strategic changes much more quickly, allowing your marketing team to create the right communication that influences purchase decision.

Five success factors to increasing lead conversions

Leveraging your campaign inquiry list is an essential best practice to successfully converting leads into sales.  Not only does it convey you are interested in quickly satisfying a target prospect’s needs, it positions your team to close more sales-ready prospects who are further along in the decision-making process.  Measuring your progress over time can help you focus internal resources toward the core of your marketing efforts, but only if you truly understand what motivated a customer to inquire and how you can maximize the opportunity.

Here are five success factors that can directly increase your campaign lead conversions:

1. The most recent prospect inquiries tend to be the most valuable and viable to lead nurturing campaigns. As time passes, content becomes less valid in general due to changes in prospect responsibilities and demographics.  A dialogue that was once important to a prospect may no longer be fitting or a purchase decision may have already been made.  Stay on top of who has recently requested information about your brand!  Consistently reach out to these prospects during the first three-to-six months after inquiry.

2. Use lead scoring methods to qualify the level of influencer your prospect is. By keeping your best salespeople in front of more customers who are closest to purchase decision, your marketing department will enhance lead conversion potential dramatically.  Ask both behavior and demographic questions in your inquiry form and scorecard respondents based on decision-making drivers (e.g. resources, authority, need, and timeframe).  Cross measure the mediums that generate the most inquiry activity and analyze your tactics to create an efficient, ROI driven marketing engine.

3. Recognize that messaging relevance directly enhances lead conversion. Are you communicating what problem your brand will solve in the prospect’s life?  Many prospects stop listening to your message because they believe you do not understand what their needs are.  Create a message map by professional role for email nurturing campaigns!  For example, a CEO who responds to your campaign will have a very different company-wide strategic focus than a Marketing Manager entrenched in the day-to-day tactical programs of a specific vertical.  If an inquiry hasn’t responded over time, check if your content is properly segmented by audience to provide clear value at first glance.

4. Make sure you effectively promote to the nature and the source of your leads. For example, if a lead came from a trade show where a target prospect realized your brand offering first-hand, consider sending a product sample and a limited time purchase offer in your first lead nurturing campaign.  Not only does this re-engage the prospect to what they experienced in your booth, it allows you to measure the effectiveness of your promotional offer across multiple events and test which tactics generated the greatest number of lead conversions.

5. Calibrate your lead generation process so that it closes the feedback loop. Many leads go cold simply because a prospect did not quickly receive the attention necessary to aid in the purchase decision process.  Set a predetermined timeframe to reach out to your prospect after the first inquiry to understand how long it took for your team to make contact and if they were satisfied with the service received.  Asking follow up questions can make sure your internal team did everything possible to maximize the opportunity while it was in progress.

Finally, using lead management software can directly amplify the success of each campaign.  Cloud-based SaaS platforms like Salesforce have real-time dashboards that cross analyze market-based responses to each marketing event.  This will allow your management team to understand successes as they happen and make strategic changes much more quickly, keeping your team ahead of the competition searching for the same valuable conversion opportunities.

Lead scoring increases sales conversions

Lead scoring is the methodology of ranking an incoming consumer inquiry from a marketing event based on critical success factors to closing the sale.  The rules of engagement may change from company to company based on the voice-of-the-customer but they have the same common essence: to best identify where a prospect is in the purchase life cycle, and create urgency for sales teams to contact prospects in order of those who have the most urgent decision making needs.

There are many benefits to scoring incoming leads from customer centric criteria.  First, sales associates have a limited amount of resources and time available at their disposal.  By aiding the sales team’s ability to analyze the best opportunities that are the most likely to result in a sale, marketing management increases positive collaboration between all teams.  In short, when a sales associate believes marketing understands how to drive their business, there is more likelihood they will buy in at a greater rate of speed, directly influencing the success of the program.

Second, a marketing team must maximize their potential to create events that consistently get the best sales associates in front of more customers who are qualified as sales-ready.  This scenario presents the greatest likelihood of growth: leverage the most efficient use of company resources that generates the greatest marketing contribution to sales revenue.  The sales team is a critical asset to marketing resource management: are you helping your team to accurately qualify prospects so they can maximize their time spent selling?

Finally, the initial conversion rate of an incoming lead plays a critical role in determining the potential for customer lifetime value.  If a customer views your company as responsive to their needs, there is more likelihood they will purchase from you and have a greater loyalty response to future marketing events.  This directly increases your channel pricing power and allows you to promote at a consistently higher price point instead of using heavy discount programs that reduce margin.  The ability to reduce follow-up marketing costs in retention programs is critical in building customer lifetime value.

When creating your rules, assess purchase decision drivers into a measurable scorecard.  Recognize the sphere of influence the prospect resides in through campaign landing page questions.  Simple behavior questions can also help in the scoring process, such as questions that involve product motives and patronage motives. Anticipate the needs of your target customer and the positive feelings your value proposition must resonate inside of them to initiate a response.  Have a clear call to action that encourages a passive user to inquire about how you solve problems in their world.

Retention marketing: developing consumer preference into partiality

Developing a consistent dialogue between your brand and consumer is essential to long-term market share growth.  While lead nurturing campaigns create awareness to the market problem your product/service offering can solve, retention programs communicate to existing customers that you are willing to go to any lengths to keep their business.

Strategy efforts that truly enhance customer partiality focus on eliminating available customers from the market, not necessarily eliminating competitors from the marketplace.  Customers are the “air flow” that every business needs: when your tactics eliminate the air your competitor needs to breathe, you end their potential for growth.  How are you using retention marketing to develop preference into partiality?

The main goal of retention research is clear: what kind of marketing programs would it take to make your customer voluntarily take themselves “off the market” and only buy from you?  An effective medium of confirming this connection is to conduct satisfaction outreach with your existing customer database and listen closely to the voice-of-the-customer responses.  Survey responses can help you understand the relevance your value proposition resonates with your existing customers and the consistency your messaging must maintain to hold their attention.

Use a research professional to write your survey questions so that skip patterns are determined in advance to guide the user experience.  Data collected from respondents will give you a clear perspective of the issues you need to resolve before departure occurs.  Promoter customers will confirm core competitive advantages that connect your value proposition to the messaging that develops the greatest potential for success.

Build your strategy by understanding the emotional connection between the research data that connects buyer behavior and purchase intent.  Realize quickly that if your company does not give a comprehensive brand experience that highly exceeds customer expectations, there is minimal potential for creating partiality.  Dialogue with your customer needs to be clear and consistent, and must connect fresh and compelling content in line with the evolving needs of the customer.  Determine the most profitable characteristics of existing customers, including how sync your resources in alignment of when to pursue a customer and when to walk away.

Never lose sight of the perception that how you sell a customer determines how you will serve your customers.  When positioned correctly, loyalty programs offer an influential incentive for the customer to continue participating in your brand experience after first purchase.  This type of tactic can be highly successful when you need to differentiate your product/service offering without sacrificing quality or price.  Consider the highly profitable business traveler: hotel loyalty programs offer an incentive to show partiality for their favorite hotel chain without specifically giving revenue back at the time of purchase.  Traveler incentives are given only after buyer behavior confirms partiality through a revenue stream of earlier purchases.  Airline frequent flyer miles are an example of how status and service is translated into partiality: the illusion of premium beverages at no cost, focused attention on all the details and a brand experience that exceeds expectations goes over very well with millions of travelers.