What Do You Want From Your B-to-B Lead Generation?

We all have an end game hopefully on both generating and converting leads. What are the critical factors that you’re looking for?

I recently read in MarketingProfs highlights of a recent study by Business.com surveying 500 active pay-per-lead advertisers that identified what’s important to them. Some are obvious while others are nice to haves but almost impossible to get. Here are some highlights of what marketers want:

  • Know the purchasing horizon time line
  • Know the size of their business (# of employees)

Further, here are some things they find useful of leads that are generated from content marketing:

  • Whitepaper leads
  • Webinar leads
  • Sponsored emails
  • Case studies
  • Product feature guides

Are you capitalizing on these types of content marketing? If not, maybe you should consider it.

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What are you Doing to Maintain Customer Relationships?

You’ve worked so hard to close that big account and now that you have, your job is done, right? Maybe your job is, but it should be handed off to someone else to continue to nurture it.

Lets face it, new business is hard to develop and you’ve got a lot invested in both time, talent and promotional dollars to bring the new customer through the doors. Don’t you want to keep them?

Attracting new customers may be the easier of the task. The key lies in being able to keep them engaged and buying from you. Take off your selling hat and think about giving them value they can use in their job. This could be anything from a tip on how to do a process more effectively to sharing industry concerns. You might even want to give them a survey to keep them engaged and find out profile info at the same time.

Granted there are several ways to do that, among them using email. I recently read an article by Kevin Gao, in MarketingProfs, Email best practices for developing and maintaining crucial customer relationships by effectively using email.

Kevin outlines ways you can develop a marketing plan using emails to get the most out of them.

He addresses his 6 life cycle stages of a customer and gives examples of things we all can do leverage each stage.

  1. Prospects – Not-yet customers that need to learn more about your products/services and be persuaded to consider us.
  2. New Customer – Once you have them, you need to start developing and nurturing a relationship with them.
  3. Active customer – Make them feel welcome. Thank them for the business.
  4. Repeat customers – They have already bought into the concept that you and your products are good. Don’t overwhelm them. Keep in communication with them, but make sure they are spaced out and when you do communicate with them you give them something of value.
  5. Lapsed customers – Find out why they aren’t ordering and put a plan together to start up a regular communication with them.
  6. Inactive or abandoned customers – Should be broken into those who should not be contacted and those that might be persuaded to come back.

Do you have a plan in place to maintain key customers?

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Are You Missing out on Mobile Marketing Opportunities to the Professional Tradesman?

We’ve talked many times about the importance of having a mobile strategy when wanting to reach the professional contractors. Their office is a jobsite and they need to be and stay connected. Mobile is changing the way we reach these important people.

A recent article by Bob Oord in marketingprofs outlines the explosion in this market and ways we can maximize our efforts there. An amazing stat is that their usage has doubled in just 1 year! The integration of mobile apps with CRM and business intelligence has changed user expectations.

TOP MOBILE TACTICS TO CONSIDER:

  • Responsive website – so it can be read on any device
  • Mobile-friendly campaigns – optimize landing pages.
  • Mobile advertising – can be tailored by location, time and device so take advantage of them.
  • Mobile email – make sure your HTML can be read properly on these devices.
  • Mobile apps – apps let you secure a prominent presence on your customer’s device.

Please note that a recent report by Forrester, “Don’t Confuse Tablet And Mobile Marketing,” a B2B marketer needs to differentiate between smart phones and tablets. Smart phones have a much smaller screen for content experiences and is used “on the go,” while tablets are used more at home and in the office offering rich content opportunities.

If you liked this article, you might want to read:

Mobile Marketing to the Professional Tradesman: What are you Doing?

Why Mobile Marketing is Important for the Professional Tradesman.

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Customer Service: What Are You Doing to Retain Customers?

customer serviceMost of our efforts are in generating new customers, but what about the current ones that are paying the bills? The number varies but it costs a lot more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Do you know what a customer is worth to you? Think beyond this quarter or even this year. Think about the last 5 years. How much stuff have you sold them? More importantly, if you come out with something new, where are your best chances of selling it? To someone new, or to someone who knows, likes and trusts you?

I recently read a post in MarketingProfs by Rafe Gomez comparing an experience he had when taking his 11-year-old daughter to a rock concert and how the band delivered on the “customer experience.”

Here are some of his insights on how we can make the customer experience better, resulting in better loyalty and ultimately more sales:

  • Deliver outstanding quality – from a great quality product to courteous customer service and user-friendly literature.
  • Understand what your customers want – don’t assume to know what they want – ask them.
  • Connect with them – direct relationships are the most important and the most challenging. Always think WIIFT (What’s In It For Them). Be sincere and upfront with them. When communicating with them, don’t always be selling. Try to help solve a problem even though it might not, in the short-term, result in a sale to you.
  • Under promise and over deliver – exceed your customers’ expectations, then do it again!
  • Don’t sit on your laurels – Yes, you have some neat products, but instead of sitting there and just doing the same old same o, innovate. If you don’t, someone else will.

Now these points probably aren’t a revelation to you, but when was the last time you focused on your customers and said THANK YOU!

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What’s the Proper Way of Developing an Internal Mailing List?

When you start to develop an internal email database for marketing purposes, what are the protocols you should follow? Beyond your existing customer lists, you normally get addresses from trade shows, ad leads or possible contests you are running. Should you just assemble them and start emailing?

A recent article by Karen Talavera in Marketingprofs contends that the “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” might not be the way to go.

There are several reasons she states, among them email addresses go bad, people change jobs and companies change internet providers. Permission is granted to a brand or company, and if they don’t hear from you in a timely manner, they may forget that they gave you permission. Karen suggests you consider the following:

  • Remind people how they got on your list
  • Give them a reason for staying on the list
  • Let them know what types and frequencies they might expect from you.

She also notes that after the first email to get rid of any non deliverables so you don’t get caught in any spam filters.

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