by Ekaterina | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized |
Marketing Strategies for SAAS Companies Lead Generation
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a popular implementation of business management software and is widely used by consumers. SASS model represents lower month-to-month costs, which allow organizations to have access to powerful software without a large up-front investment. Prospect Solutions’ Vtiger CRM is a good example of SAAS.
Without ROI focused marketing and lead generation strategy this model can be an accounting nightmare for growing SaaS companies. Because of huge up-front investments, support and maintenance the early trickle of revenue can be not enough to sustain operating costs.
In order to get past first growing pains and continue to scale, SaaS companies need a healthy supply of new customers. The biggest metric for determining how healthy the supply is not monthly sales, but lead generation and sales pipeline monitoring. In fact, lead generation for software companies is the single most important facet of helping SaaS companies grow and prosper. (more…)
by sekaterina | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
Lead Generation Activities and ROI: Why it is missing?
“Across the industry spectrum, salespeople are frustrated, failing and earning far less than they should because they do not know how to prospect… they spin their wheels chasing flavor-of-the-day magic pills and ‘easy buttons’ that frustratingly never seem to make a difference”
Mark Hunter, High-Profit Prospecting:Powerful Strategies to Find Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.
Website and SEO Are Not Enough for Lead Generation Activity
In the age of lead generation and SEO marketing many business owners and marketing professionals overlook the importance of integrated marketing. Companies are cutting their marketing budgets hoping to achieve their revenue objectives with the sole help of SEO. Although, web site content and SEO lead generation activity is important, it is not enough to sustain sufficient marketing ROI; for a number of reasons.
1.It is hard to get your website to the first page of Google: Good Content Matters:
Google requires that new content be consistently added to your site. Google wants people to use their search engine and to deliver best of the best quality websites to their customers. It is very hard to persuade Google that your site is “worth it” with low quality blog content. Cheap content produced only for Google to read will not be ranked highly and can even cause your site to be penalized. Smart marketers invest in high quality content and distribute it through social media and email marketing. High quality articles and info graphics will be noticed and appreciated, shared and liked. This will improve online trust and ranking for the website.
2. SEO only is not enough:
Regardless of how carefully you select your keywords, you cannot choose who visits your site. Most SEO-inclined marketers are investing in keywords that produce a higher number of visitors. Yes, this strategy generates web site views, but it may not result in the best customers’ prospects. As a result, your lead generation team will spend a lot of time and effort chasing after bad leads. This time and effort could have been better invested in other activities such as prospecting and business networking.
3. Human Interactions matter:
Online marketing cannot replace direct human-to-human interaction like introductions, “touch base” and ongoing conversations. This can only be achieved by effective use of social media prospecting and telemarketing. Social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter allow us to select, connect, and follow our best prospects and future customers. Social media allows us to connect and build better relationships with our target customers in a friendly and non-sales manner. Subsequent follow-up with telemarketing will give voice to our profiles and create an invaluable human connection with our connections.
The good news is that there are many outbound lead generation channels available in the arsenal of modern marketing. Modern prospecting must be executed across multiple marketing channels, such as telemarketing, social media, email and business networking. Tune up and motivate your sales team to learn, plan, execute and measure successful lead generation campaigns. Or consider hiring a knowledgeable, experienced and motivated marketing department outsourcing provider.
by sekaterina | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
Five Essential B2B Lead Generation Channels For Small Business Companies.
When it comes to B2B lead generation channels, it’s important to get the fundamentals right. Here are 5 essential B2B lead generation strategies to help you capture and convert a large percentage of leads from your marketing campaigns.
Use Forms on Your Landing Pages
Using forms on your landing pages makes a huge impact on overall lead generation results and on your conversion rates. Optimize your forms to ensure you’re not leaving leads behind. By improving your lead generation form, you can generate three times more leads at no additional cost.
After your landing pages are well-optimized and you’re sure there’s nothing more you can do to improve them, the next step is to draw traffic to them.
Lead Generation Strategies that Work
The online strategies that consistently work are:
The strategy or strategies you choose will play a large role in how effective your lead generation is.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the oldest strategies in online marketing. It’s a method that has stood the test of time after 23 years and it’s still the best method for lead generation.
Marketing automation has become a big trend in email marketing that produces great results. Marketing automation tools are hybrid email marketing tools that automatically connect with your CRM to let you send highly targeted emails to leads personalized specifically for them.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is one of the most valuable long-term strategies for generating B2B leads. At its simplest, this means getting your website to show up on the first page of search results. You help to ensure that you’ll be found online by optimizing your website for the search engines. Choosing the right keywords is the first and most important part of optimizing your website for search engines.
Social Media Marketing
You can use social media to generate leads by posting updates to your company’s blogs, infographics and website. Social media, such as LinkedIn, is an essential part of content marketing and, to some extent, search engine optimization.
Content Marketing
A good content marketing strategy requires a degree of diversity and experimentation to discover where the biggest potentials for growth are. Experiment with common and uncommon tactics. Some things to try:
- Microsites
- Blogging
- Research reports
- Infographics
Test to see what does and doesn’t work and gradually refine your lead generation methods over time.
Conclusion
Great lead generation results come from a willingness to experiment with different strategies and use them across multiple channels. Once you know what works, you can use your time and budget more effectively to generate better lead generation results.
by Ekaterina | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
How Remote Marketing Can Help Your Company
A creative, proactive and efficient marketing department is an important part of any company. Because of the complexity of modern marketing, employers often lack workers with the job skills, work experience and education required in marketing departments. Perhaps you also lack the space at your current location to locate the extra employees. We can help you identify your remote marketing needs and supply you with right temporary workers to work for your company from home.
Remote Workers Perform Well
Being able to hire a potential marketing employee, allows you to find the best employee for the position, regardless of their location.
According to a study by the University of Illinois, remote workers performed as well as their in-office co-workers. That’s because temps need to work harder in order to justify their flexible working conditions.
We can help you to identify your challenges and supply you with trained remote marketing workers to work for your company.
Remote workers are also better equipped and do not need to waste time travelling to and from an office. Due to less travel time, employees have more time for work, instead of being stuck in traffic.
A Stanford professor conducted a survey to evaluate the benefits of hiring remote workers. As a result, he found workers got more work complete and worked longer hours. That’s because temps took fewer breaks and used less sick time, compared to employees working in an office
Home Office Set Up is Easy
To be able to work effectively as a member of your marketing team, a remote marketing temp needs a set of tools and software applications. We have over 14 years of managing work-from-home employees, teams and the best solutions and tools, both online and offline.
The tools we offer include:
- Customer Relationships Management (CRM) – An effective CRM system is essential for data management, analytics, integration and communication with your work from home employees
- Time Management Systems – A time management system ensures accountability and higher productivity for your marketing employees working from home
Conclusion
A company can benefit greatly from hiring remote employees. Remote work can limit absences, increase productivity and save money. Remote employees pay for their own computer, electricity and other utilities. That all adds up to significant savings and helps you grow the bottom line. Let us show you how!
by sekaterina | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.
Stephen Covey
Having been the owner of a Vancouver-based integrated marketing and lead generation company, I see a lot of confusion among small and medium sized business owners about what marketing and lead generation really mean. Most of my clients can’t get their heads around how to allocate their marketing budget to generate the highest and quickest return on investment (ROI).
First, I would like to clarify what ROI means in modern marketing. The old approach, where $1000 invested in marketing was expected to generate $3000 in sales the following month is long outdated and unrealistic. Unfortunately, many business owners stubbornly demand that their sales and marketing people to deliver on this strategy… or else.
What is modern marketing then? Shall we cold call prospects randomly, or spam them through email and social media? Shall we break our budgets with Adwords and Display ads? Or maybe the trade show? The answer is that none of those will do it, but all of it combined with smart long-term and short-term activities will. And nothing else. Sorry.
As a marketing consultant with over 25 years experience in sales and marketing, I keep suggesting the famous “80/20” approach is the best solution for lead generation and marketing: invest 80% of your money in long term strategies and 20% in short term activities.
The obvious question is: What is the meaning of long term and short term for marketing and lead generation ROI?
I suggest that long term activities include:
Sounds clear and simple, right? But in reality, business people are doing the complete opposite: Distribution of marketing funds and efforts, which is 80%, to short term efforts and 20% (or often nothing) to long term strategies. And the result is… disappointment. The expectations are not met, marketing and sales people are fired, and eventually business downsizes and collapses.
So, do the right thing: Make an effort to understand and learn what modern marketing is about. Do not believe service providers and sales people who are promising a miracle in the form of a simple one campaign solution. Whether it be cold calling, email, advertising or SEO, it is not going to result in consistent growth for your business. Visit Prospect Solutions to learn about our 80/20 Outsourced Marketing Agency integrated marketing approach and request your Free Consultation.
We look forward to speaking with you and thanks for reading!
Ekaterina Sytcheva
by sekaterina | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
Why Your Organization Needs CRM System?
To function successfully every organization needs to generate leads for their sales people. A constant intake of new prospects and customers ensures stability and profitability of the business enterprise.
However, lead generation and obtaining new prospects is not simple and it is not cheap. It includes multiple activities such as; identifying, connecting, contacting, monitoring, engaging and converting suspects to qualified leads and qualified leads to customers.
Let’s explore the effectiveness on this process in relation to your CRM system:
Step 1: Develop strategy, budgets, timelines and goals:
Suppose that your company decided to implement a modern lead generation process by hiring a lead generator or employing a lead generation company: We always suggest you hire professionals or get a marketing consultant to build and monitor your lead generation strategy and implementation.
Step 2: Market Research and Identifying your target market:
Locate suspects, individuals or businesses which may be in need of your products or services.
Step 3: Database, Database and Database:
Obtaining, or building the database of suspects: You can purchase a list of prospects which meets criteria of your target market or build it by using LinkedIn and other social media, business networking, and referral networks. This is where the importance of your CRM system comes into place. A CRM system will allow you to classify prospects based on certain criteria which you would like to keep track of over time.
Here are some examples: First name, last name, company, phone, email, first contact, next step, uses the product, LinkedIn connection accepted, introduction message delivered (email, LinkedIn, Google Plus, telephone call), initial response, lead status, etc.
The ability of your company to track and manipulate these fields of information will insure transparency and the success of your marketing process.
Assume that you start this process in Excel or Google Docs. It may be sufficient at the beginning, but very soon the spreadsheets will become unmanageable and ineffective. You will feel buried in the of information you are collecting.
But wait, here it comes: Step 3: Converting and monitoring:
In sales, being in the right place at the right time is critical; you missed it? You lost it. Without an effective CRM system you WILL be constantly losing this point in time and your investment in generating leads, social media, telemarketing and other activities will go wasted.
CRM technology may seem complex, expensive and hard to implement and learn, but it is essential you invest in this technology for your business to succeed. With open source technology there are many products which are affordable, customizable and very effective. Products such as Vtiger CRM do not require individual licensing fees and are easy to implement and use. Do your research and hire a local CRM company to implement a CRM that suits your needs and budget.
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