Maximizing Your Sales Leads - Part II

Three more components for developing a lead-scoring marix:

4. Score Decay: If your lead hasn't been active within a certain time period (maybe two or three weeks), you may want to deduct from their score to indicate lack of engagement. At this point, your lead nurturing should include targeted email marketing pieces that engage leads by asking if they're still interested or need more information.

5. Sales Ready Lead: After collaborating with sales and learning what type of behavior a sales ready lead displays, you should have an accurate view of what qualifies as a "hot" score. Leads with these numbers should automatically be routed to sales or resellers for follow-up. However, if one lead carries a high score but still isn't far along the sales cycle, it may be time to revamp the criteria that you've applied. Perhaps you've assigned too high a score to certain behaviors.

6. Recycled: If a lead has graduated through the cycle and received sales follow-up, but still isn't ready to buy, a strong lead nurturing campaign will keep them from dropping out. It may be the changes at a lead's company (such as budget cuts or personnel changes) have caused their progress to stall. A smooth transition back to marketing for further nurturing may then be effective.

Maximizing Your Sales Leads

Perhaps you already have a basic sales lead management program in place. But to take lead management to the next level, you need to go beyond the foundation when you determined your ideal target and which activities you'll use for qualification with a scoring matrix. Consider six components to develop a robust lead-scoring matrix.

1. Individual Lead Score: This is the sum of the various scores combined for each prospect. The higher the number, the hotter the lead. Scoring tallies should reflect demographics and behavior such as:

• Clicking on email links
• Completing web forms
• Visiting your website's product pages
• Reading your blog or other company social media

2. Company Score: A good indicator of interest is the number of prospects at a company that have indicated interest in your product(s). When you have multiple leads from one company, you can bump all those leads' scores or you can establish a company score from the total of all the leads. Tracking buyer roles within the company will affect scores too. For example, you may want to rate "influencers" differently than "decision-makers".

3. Product Score: To get a more granular view of your leads' interest, assign a specific score to each product line. This can help you better understand buyer behavior and manage campaigns more effectively for separate products. Some situations may call for multiple scoring when leads show interest in more than one of your products.

Next blog: 4-6 components to complete a lead-scoring matrix.

Apple Proves ROI For Branding - Part II

Mobile apps, social media, webinars, videos, virtual trade shows, e-newsletters and, of course, print and trade shows, all have a place in your marketing mix. The best marketing employs an integrated media approach appropriate to your marketing goals. However, you should consider where each media fits in the marketing process.

Here is brief summary of each marketing purpose:

Print: The foundation for all other marketing. It's still the best way to brand and drives traffic to your web site.

Internet: Provides information in the selection process (driven by good branding).

Social Media: Creates opportunity to build momentum.

Mobile: Timely information when done right, always on.

Trade Shows and Events: Face to face impact, easier to close, works best when branded.

Being associated with a great brand gives you credibility at all stages of the buying cycle...just like with Apple and those customers that bought iPhones, iPads and iPods.

Reference: Kathi Simonsen, Simonsen Sales & Marketing

Apple Proves ROI For Branding

If you think leads and click-throughs are the Holy Grail of marketing, you may want to consider Apple's success. According to Millard Brown Research for the top 100 global brands, Apple is the most valued brand in the world, worth $153B, up 84% since 2010.

How did Apple do it? By creating a brand. Remember when Apple had only 10% of the computer market? What changed? Apple tuned into the needs and wants of their target audience and built excellent products that gave them what they wanted. Then, they branded, branded, branded and branded! Apple has never been concerned about leads and clicks in their marketing. Instead, they focus on creating a spectacular brand that everyone respects.

Would you like to take over your #1 competitor? Would you like to be a leader, revered and respected as #1 in your market? If so, you need to know the needs of your prospects, produce excellent products and then brand, brand, brand.

And what is still the best marketing vehicle for branding? Print! All electronic media is useful of course but print still leads for branding. Branding should still be the number one focus in a marketing campaign.

Reference: Kathi Simonsen, Simonsen Sales & Marketing

Sales Lead List Building

Let's assume you continually build and maintain a list to target prospects with email and more promotion on an ongoing basis. This process is automated, it's fast, but it's not a success. Drowning under a large and growing list, you have nothing to do but send out a generic pitch email to all. The dreaded email blast.

Your messages reach people who are at various stages in the buying process or, worse yet, are not true prospects for you product(s). This approach does nothing more than clutter in boxes and perhaps upset recipients that aren't far enough along to want email or other sales promotion. Management might be impressed with the sheer numbers, but they will eventually begin to wonder when they'll actually see results.

Once you understand the inherent limitations of putting quantity ahead of quality, you may want to whittle down your massive list to create multiple, granular lists ranked by "qualification." Ranking by qualified hierarchy can help you determine where and when to push your limited resources and focus with prospects at different stages in the buying cycle. This will set you apart to generate the results your management expects.

Data Doesn't Always Include Intelligence

I didn't come up with this commentary, but I think you'll like it.

With many marketers, they're busy collecting an abundance of data. From social media monitoring, traditional media monitoring and Google alerts -- new tools are popping up each day to help marketers collect data. As a result, marketers may be swimming in data, but that data doesn't always translate to insight, nor intelligence, let alone tracking to sales conversion.

In many areas of market research, there are growing disconnects between data gathering, data analysis, and action. There's little doubt that media lists, large datasets, and cool charts are important to understanding the media landscape. But, frankly, in the era of Google and social search, data has become a commodity.

Truly successful marketers can't just collect data. They need to learn something they don't already know by putting the information into a meaningful context and then creating a strategic plan based on that data. In short, data is only as good as the strategic mind that does something with it. Understanding that is one thing. Being able to do something about it in day-to-day business is another.

More with my next blog.

By Gary Lee, Marketingprofs

Your Web Site Needs A Headline

In direct response marketing, the headline is always the most important part of the ad. This is what gets more or fewer people to actually read your offer. The headline has to be as strong as possible and it makes all the difference.

Like any direct response ad (an ad that wants someone to do something), the headline on your web home page is key. You want your web visitor to stop surfing, stay on your site, read about your company and take action by giving you their email address. When a prospect lands on your home page, the pretty design isn't what captures their attention. It's the headline. All the web sites that don't even have one are simply wrong. And don't make the mistake of using a label instead of a headline. A headline isn't just a "heading" that tells the name of your company or describes your product or says, "Welcome to our web site."

A headline is an overt benefit statement that tells your visitor what's in it for them without platitudes, generalities or mere features. Your headline should be a statement of he unique benefits that only your company can say -- your unique selling proposition.

Why Most Web Sites Don't Work - Part II

The good news is that prospects are using your web site to research your company and products. But they're likely to be early in their buying cycle. There's no guarantee they will ever be back. Most of them won't remember your web site at all a few days later.

Your challenge is to capture their contact information (especially their email address) while they are on your web site for the first time--to get permission to send more information. Don't make them leave your web site to get it. You can then implement an automated process to follow periodically by email, providing more information and building a relationship over time--until they're ready to buy.

Your web designer should work to create a direct response model that focuses solely on capturing leads. More prospects will buy after they visit your site--if you capture their information while you have the first chance.