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4 Proven ABM Techniques to Maximize Lead Conversion

July 22, 2019/0 Comments/in Lead Generation /by Rebecca Matias

Company A has been working tirelessly on attracting leads to their site using different kinds of strategies and methodologies. Despite their best efforts, however, their lead conversion process hasn’t been successful. They haven’t experienced the conversion they’ve been expecting — no phones ringing, no customers buying the product/service. Instead, there are more frustrations than congratulations.

If this sounds like your story, here are a few account-based marketing tips that will help you improve your lead conversion process.

Understanding the Need is the Key to Conversion

Psychologist Abraham Maslow has enumerated the five basic needs of man — physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. He mentioned that these needs are what motivate people to do the things they do.

The reason why people work hard, do certain hobbies, make friends with a certain group of people, or buy certain things is to fill one of these needs. In other words, if a person thinks one of those areas is not enough, he will do something to fill it up. Until that need is met, the person feels discomfort, even pain.

In the same way, businesses and organizations buy products/services because they believe it answers a specific need they have. By acquiring the product/service, they are able to remove any pain or discomfort in the company/organization.

Therefore, if you want to CONVERT someone, you need to remember these 2 things:

Know what causes them pain or discomfort — research is the key to accurately determining what the pain is.
Provide a solution to ease that pain/discomfort — make sure that what you have to offer is what your prospect needs. If he needs tea, there’s no use offering him coffee, no matter how good your coffee tastes.

At the heart of determining pain and providing a solution is the creation of your buyer persona — your ideal client.

Who are they – are they women or men, young or old, etc?
What is their job – are they sales reps, CEOs, IT officers, etc?
What are their interests – how do they spend their day outside work?
What do they value most – is it price, quality, service, etc?
What are their pain points – what challenges do they face and how can you help them?

The above are just some of the questions when creating your buyer persona. Without a clear target audience, it will be like chasing the wind. On the other hand, having a clear picture of the type of client you want helps you focus your energy and resources where you want them.

Targeted B2B Marketing Handbook: Guide, Checklists and Worksheets

Find, engage and convert the right prospects with the right message.

Creating an Effective Lead Conversion Strategy

Once you have your buyer persona and you have identified their pain points, your next challenge is introducing your product/service to your target audience and eventually, convert them to become paying customers.

Here are 4 surefire techniques that can help you with your lead conversion:

Make Information Easier for Your Prospects to Find

Remember! You are here to make your prospects life easier by helping them solve their pain points. And where to start best than making content that is accessible and engaging to your target audience.

Part of the research when you create your buyer persona is to find out where your target audience usually hangs around and the kind of content they read as well as the path they take when looking for a solution.

Create a content strategy so you can deploy the right kind of content the different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Understand How Group Buying Decisions are Initiated

The buying process, especially in the B2B arena, has greatly changed. The buying decision is not dependent on one person anymore but on several people/stakeholders. Thus, even if you are able to convince the CEO, he has to present it to a number of people who can influence whether the purchase is a go or no-go.

One of our earlier articles, The B2B Buying Process Has Changed: Here’s How Not to Get Left Behind, explains it well. If you want to influence everyone who is involved in the buying process, you need to focus on these seven components:

They believe that you can solve the problem.
You’ve built an emotional connection with them.
They’re convinced that your price equals the value you’re offering.
You have a credible ROI.
They should feel the urgency to make a purchase now.
You have social and logical proofs of what your product/service has achieved.
They should feel that they are heard as well.

Deliver a Consistent Experience Across All Channels

Consistency equals loyalty. A single well-written blog might impress your target audience but if your quality is a hit or miss kind of thing, they will soon tire of it and abandon you.

A good metaphor to a consistent experience is the Avengers/MCU movie series. The audience is left wanting for more every time the end credits roll. So they wait in anticipation no matter how long it takes and before a new movie is released, all tickets are sold out immediately.

Put Every Touchpoint in Context

A touchpoint is when you make contact with your prospect or customer during the buying process. Some of the most common touchpoint strategies to attract and convert clients are content, email, events, phone calls, meetings, and social media. There are more strategies aside from what was mentioned.

No matter how many strategies are available, your GOAL is to convert your prospect using as fewer touchpoints as possible.

To do that, you need to know how to mix and match different touchpoints and use them to every prospect. Careful planning is needed, nothing is left to chance if you want to increase your conversion rate.

When you create a touchpoint plan, you need to consider the following elements:

Responsibilities – who is in charge of each touchpoint?
- What medium are you going to use?
Schedules – how often should you do it?
Message – what’s your key message for each touchpoint?
KPIs – how will you benchmark and measure success?
CTAs – what do you want your prospects to do?

No matter what touchpoint you mix and match, it should always be in line with your customer journey to fully utilize it to attract and encourage your prospect to purchase your product/service.

In Conclusion

We all hope that we have the “holy grail” of lead conversion where one touch causes prospects to convert immediately. But although none exist, getting the conversion and ROI you expect is not unattainable. All you need is a team who will help you devise a strategy that works for your company needs.

Author Bio:

Rebecca Matias is a Business Development Manager at Callbox. She is a proactive marketer who is willing to share her passion, leadership principles and craft in marketing. Follow Rebecca on Twitter and Facebook.

4 Solid B2B Email Campaign Ideas to Market Cloud Solutions

July 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Email Marketing /by Rebecca Matias

Email is still pretty powerful and it is a way of engaging your following whilst utilizing only a fairly small number of resources. In this short article, we will be exploring the different types of email marketing campaign examples for cloud solutions providers.

Marketing to Both Current and Potential Clients

Re-selling or re-marketing to existing clients and customers is much more cost-effective than having to market to new ones. Don’t fall into the trap of missing out on a lot more revenue by not being able to market to your existing base.

On the other hand, for your subscribers base, a well-thought-out email marketing plan not only builds awareness and loyalty to your cloud business, but also allows you to move potential customers through the sales funnel.

1. Weekly Newsletters

The mindset that a weekly newsletter is just a generalized newsletter that you send out to all of the people that are subscribed to it should be changed. The fact of the matter is that people like personalization and you will be able to convert better if you are able to meet different needs – even if you are just working with a general newsletter.

You should be able to customize different versions of your newsletters depending on the buyer personas of your current market. This does not mean that you should create an individual newsletter for each person, but rather split your markets up for general types of buyer personas.

Content also has to be given special consideration. Know that there is content that is intended to bring awareness, some for decision-making, and others for simple consideration. Being able to split these content types up in a singular newsletter allows your email to be optimized for conversion so you’ll be able to attract and maintain interest.

Targeted B2B Marketing Handbook: Guide, Checklists and Worksheets

Find, engage and convert the right prospects with the right message.

2. Holiday Emails

Do not forget to greet your prospects of current clients on special occasions, but also be mindful if they celebrate a particular holiday or not. One email that almost every person loves is the “Happy Birthday” promotional email. It shows that your company truly cares about them. However, you want to position it in a way that doesn’t make the prospect feel like you are being too privy of their information.

For subscribers, holiday promotional emails are not just about holiday sales. Rethink your strategy and make good use of your data so that you can pick the right approach – should you go promotional or transactional? Send or respond?

3. Promo Emails

Oh, how we love these because they are designed to convert!

However, there are a couple of different types of promotions and different ways of going about them.

Product Launches

Product launches could be in collaboration with a physical event and other promotional campaigns such as a free webinar and eBook. You want to be able to provide added value with a product launch and not just launch a product out of nowhere. Marketing is not one-sided but rather a proposition that you should tackle dynamically.

Software Launches

If it’s a software launch, you could even offer a special discount or special beta access (your IT team will love this if it’s SaaS). One way of attracting existing customers to your new software is offering them a special access pass or a free membership for a specific amount of time. Reward loyalty, it always helps.

Limited Sales Offers

If you want to do limited sales offers do not do it all the time because sooner rather than later your customers will notice that you are just trying to pull off the same promo but with a different title to it. You want to be able to offer segmented limited sales offers that are designed for different buyer personas.

If you have a complex product, why don’t you launch a limited sale on the different aspects of that particular product?

4. Other Types

As with everything that is content-related, you can pretty much do anything and everything – this is why content will always be considered king.

Surveys

Don’t just put in a survey for your customers to answer but include a freebie for them doing so. You want to be able to motivate them and add value to the time that they will spend providing you with feedback. Sometimes the best way to pull off a survey is not to market any product to them but ask them real questions about their experience with your company.

Quizzes

Quizzes should be designed for fun. And, what we love about fun is that it is absolutely marketable. You can design them to be informative, challenging, and even funny. This is one type of content marketing that if executed correctly can result in large gains for your company.

Find out how well your favorite music suits your selling style. Take this sales personality quiz and discover which genres match your profile.

Email marketing, whilst a classical form of marketing, does not have to be purely traditional. There is a reason why it is still a great tool to use for your marketing efforts and you should really take advantage of that.

Do not forget to observe best practices when sending emails and try to make sure that your market research is solid beforehand. Try not to forget the basics such as email hygiene and making sure that your segments are at their proper positions in the sales pipeline.

Author Bio:

The Art of Generating Leads with your Landing Page [GUEST POST]

July 12, 2019/0 Comments/in Lead Generation /by Contributor

In digital parlance, a landing page refers to a web page which acts as an entry point for a website. It’s the first impression you give to anyone who visits your site. And with digital marketing, the adage “The first impression is the last impression” rings particularly true.

As a marketer, you could get tons of clicks on your website but still, have a low lead conversion rate. In an environment that’s already hyper-competitive and where sales cycles can extend indefinitely, it’s easy to overlook the tiny details. However, a well-made landing page can do wonders for your website and subsequently business.

A contemporary landing page is aesthetic, informative, and easy to use. A targeted and optimized landing page is one of the most effective lead generation strategies.

However, it’s all easier said than done. Websites are often guilty of ignoring their bounce rates. Sometimes, it’s evident that particular aspects of a landing page are driving customers away. And other times, your landing page may have a great design but doesn’t have enough calls to action (CTA). Missing elements can become the un-called downfall for your business.

There’s no point wearing expensive soccer shoes if you can’t score!

But lead generation on websites and landing pages isn’t rocket science. Optimizing your landing page takes relatively little effort, but pays off huge dividends in the form of new leads.

Here are a few numbers that will convince you otherwise.

52% of companies rely on landing pages to improve conversion rates
Long landing pages generate 220% more leads
More than 75% of businesses find it difficult to curate and optimize their landing pages to suit their preferences
48% of marketers create new landing pages for each of the marketing campaign they run
Even a delay of second in the loading time for the landing page can reduce lead conversions by 7%

Surprising as these numbers might seem, your landing page can work wonders in generating more leads. So, how to achieve the same?

Here has been summarized some of the most convincing methods that can help you generate more leads using your landing page.

Design well

Human brain concocts visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Well-made visuals help take your website to the next level. Ensure that they’re mobile friendly too.

On the internet, poor landing page design is the best way to lose your customers. You’ll need to ensure your design is aesthetically pleasing and straightforward. Content needs to be clear, brief, and informative. To create an impactful design, try to:

Use matching colors that are uniform throughout the landing page
Use white space effectively and let your text ‘breathe’
Keep symmetry in mind while placing CTAs, Banners, etc.
Ensure relevant content stands out.

Colors make a huge difference. Choosing a specific shade of blue over other shades resulted in additional revenues of $80m for search engine giant Bing.

It’s also essential that your landing page is easy to use and navigate. 88% of online customers are unlikely to visit a website they’ve had a poor experience with.

Most importantly, keep in mind that the majority of your leads use a smartphone frequently. Accordingly, ensure your landing page is also mobile-friendly. Check out for dead links and bugs, and check up on your digital security regularly.

Design your landing page well, and generating leads won’t be a headache any longer.

15 Brilliant Web Design Hacks That Convert Traffic into Leads

Check out 15 proven web design ideas you can use to move more visitors into the next stage of your funnel.

Information forms: Less is more

You’ve clicked on a landing page link, the page loads, and the design is lovely. You’re impressed. At the bottom of the page, you see a video that explains everything you were looking to learn. You click ‘play’…

You’re immediately redirected to another webpage that reveals the catch. There’s a long form that asks you for your personal details. You don’t mind sharing them, but you do have a problem with over-sharing. And there are two a many pages to fill…

You decide it isn’t worth it and click to go back. And in the process, you forget why you even visited the website in the first place.

If this experience isn’t familiar to you as a user, it might be happening to you as a marketer. Most visitors don’t like to fill in forms that demand too much information. Ensure that your subscription forms ask for minimal information. And you should limit the numbers as well.

Instead of including too many forms, use drop-ins, checkboxes, and quizzes for these have a proven way to make your forms more appealing. Moreover, it helps in lead generation.

It’s also necessary to ensure that the incentive customers receive for sharing their data is worth it. Without an incentive, it’s difficult to convince anyone to share their personal information. Also, ensure that it’s something they may be looking for, and pitch it like it’s exactly what they need.

Be it a discount coupon or a free trial period, give your audiences something to try out, and they will respond with kindness.

Work on your “Call to Action” (CTAs)

Your CTAs need to be appealing and unique to be effective. There are quite a few things that you can do to make them stand out. CTAs are the gateway to a quicker sales cycle and higher lead generation. These are some ways to create a unique, attractive CTA.

Visuals: Ensure they stand out from the rest of the content on the page. Also, make sure they’re attractive and harmonize well with your website’s color scheme. Contrasting colors can help achieve that. Avoid stock images, and use something original if possible
Wording: Use no longer than seven words. Your proposition needs to be brief but convincing. Always write it keeping your audience in mind
Placement: Ensure that your CTA is placed naturally, and in context with the content near it. Avoid putting it in places where it won’t be seen
Size: Ensure it isn’t too small that it’s overlooked, but also take care to prevent it from taking the focus away from the rest of the content

Bonus Tip: Never use the word ‘spam’ on your CTAs, even if you’re promising visitors you won’t spam them. It’s a proven way to drive traffic away from your website.

Offer free products and create limited period discounts

Nothing grabs eyeballs like the word “free.” Even if you are offering a free trial, they are incredibly helpful in lead generation. By giving your customers a feel of what they’d be paying for, a satisfying experience may mean they buy the full product. If they get to ‘try,’ they might ‘buy.’

Additionally, you also get their details, which you can then use for further B2B lead generation and nurturing. As a result, you can target them even if they discontinue your product/service, keeping you in their minds.

Use a real or fictitious deadline to plan promotional offers for your products. A price discount is a big incentive for most interested visitors. As a result, they can find out more about you and your products, increasing your sales. Limited duration of time forces visitors to make a decision quicker- many will tip towards you.

Discounts and promotional offers are also a great way to get others talking about your product. As a result, more visitors come and interact on your landing page, increasing traffic.

Bonus Tip: Free Template: Easy fix to shorten your sales cycle

Create relevant resources and support systems

Landing pages that stand out are often the most relevant ones. It’s necessary to create content that’s easy to understand and share. While these resources depend on the nature of your business, there are a few common ones across industries and websites, such as:

Videos
Infographics
Whitepapers
Ebooks
Articles & Blogs

Offer these resources for free so that visitors can have a better idea about what your website does and how you can help them. Well curated content and other resources are highly effective in boosting traffic towards your website. The fact that good content can go viral gives you further incentive to upload quality resources on your landing pages.

Give your customers a voice

Visitors want constant reassurance they’re not wasting your time on your site. What’s better than getting feedback from old customers? Ask them to write about their experience with you, and upload it on your landing page. Reassurance and a feeling of familiarity are necessary before a visitor can begin to trust you. Make sure the old ones are valued!

Customer reviews provide your visitors with a benchmark and also help them understand what to expect. The more you post, the more comfortable they feel.

Additionally, take customer engagement a step further by seeking their input. Crowdsourcing, in particular, is a great way to attract attention to your business and your cause. Crowdsourcing names, colors, and ideas are incredibly helpful with publicity, as well as understanding your buyers. They also bring your customers closer to you as a business, improving their perception of you and ultimately helping in lead generation.

Host a webinar

One of the most efficient ways to engage the audience is through webinars. Firstly, only genuinely interested prospects tune in to watch your webinar, helping you with filtering your leads.

Webinars are also crucial in establishing your expertise or subject knowledge in a particular niche or industry. Since webinars are free, it shows your customers that you’re willing to help them at any cost.

Webinars are also critical in establishing yourself or your business as a ‘thought-leader’ in your industry. They’re your best bet at interacting with an audience without the usual hassles of offline publicity.

Encourage your audience to share it in their social circles if they find it useful. Lastly, record and share your webinar videos regularly and upload new content daily.

Conclusion

It’s easy to overlook a landing page, but doing so can turn out to be costly. Looks matter. A poorly designed page will lose you your visitors and money, but a well-designed page is almost magnetic to both. The secret is in ensuring that the customer has a seamless experience on your website. They should not mind sharing their information with you.

Increase your engagement with your audience by regularly reaching out to them for feedback. Make them feel as if they play a role in your business’s operations by encouraging them to share product ideas, names, and future projects.

However, the essential thing about lead generation isn’t about the call to actions and asking visitors to fill out forms. It’s about giving them a reason that’s good enough to make them do so. Find what’s yours and implement it effectively. The results may end up surprising you.

Author Bio:

Kate is the content marketing manager at ReachStream and is responsible for driving more traffic to the website. Her sharp wit, creativity, and extensive knowledge about the industry have allowed her to precede over the content team, turning in more leads and retaining more customers. During the last two years, she has actively participated in strengthening the content team. The Content might be the king, but engagement is the queen, and this lady rules the house. Other than motivating the team, Kate loves to meditate and go for long walks.

6 Growth Hacking Tactics Every IT Security Company Must Exploit

July 10, 2019/0 Comments/in Growth Hacking /by Judy Caroll

There are plenty of lead generation strategies out there, but the most important part of all of this is creating a strategy that will take advantage of multiple channels of acquisition when it comes down to it. In this article, we will be discussing lead generation strategies for IT security providers. Believe it or not, each niche has its own strategies, too!

Content That Educates

People have always told us that content is king, but it is more so the case with IT security providers. Whatever you release will be consumed by your prospective clients because they want to know how legitimate your services are in the industry.

The legitimacy of your security services can further be verified by the type of content that you choose to release and make public for your prospects. Your articles have to be informative and provide insights into real threats in IT security.

Case studies make for great marketable content especially if they have been created by your own team. This indicates that you know what you are doing because you have already done it before. Clients who need IT security have real threats to their platforms and knowing that your company knows what it is doing is a great help to their buying decision.

White papers are great, too, and so are testimonials from previous clients. Your content has to appeal to the people that you are trying to close.

The Website Matters

The website that you have is your storefront and having a great website is helpful in attracting the right type of customers to work with you. However, it isn’t just about having the best looking web property online. It has to resonate well with your target audience.

Consider checking if your website really appeals to your target audience, monitor their behavior through heat mapping, monitor your Google Analytics to see what works in your website and what doesn’t. You need to be able to adapt swiftly to your audience.

Responsiveness and mobile-friendliness will help you as they are believed to be ranking factors, but it does wonders for the user interface and experience. Remember that people like to interact with the information that they see online and most of them will usually check something out on their mobile device the first time around.

Outbound Sales Prospecting

You can never go wrong with outbound sales prospecting. Targeted sales prospecting still remains one of the most essential components that make up a solid IT lead generation strategy. Including it in your B2B marketing arsenal puts your IT security firm in a position to win new customers and repeat buyers.

Outbound lead generation methods such as telemarketing, email marketing, direct SMM lets you seek out potential IT buyers using personalized messaging that moves them through the sales funnel.

There’s a reason why IT companies find great success in outbound sales lead generation, it just works.

Get your FREE Cold Calling Scripts for Key Buyer Personas in Managed IT.

The SEO Matters

There is a term called buyer intent when you’re doing keyword research and these keyword sets are important because they form the trigger to which users find your website on search engines. They signify that a user is interested in acquiring a particular security product or service for their business.

These are just a few of the things that you have to optimize for – there are more than 250 factors that cause websites to rank according to digital marketing experts – and due to this optimizing your website can get difficult at times.

Make sure that you have an expert running your optimization processes so that you get the right organic traffic coming into your website. Sometimes your organic campaign can net you more income than your ads campaign, and having proper optimization will drive sales to come in. (However, have an ad campaign, too. It helps.)

Show the Data

Do you really want to engage your audience? Then, show them the data. Some prospects don’t really believe the situation unless you are able to deliver on the data. This means you should constantly be releasing infographics and other means to showcase data that your potential customer needs to see.

You’ve got to be as Secure as Your Security

One thing you’ve got to be sure of is the security that you provide to yourself before you provide it to other people. Nothing is as bad for business as a security company that cannot secure its own infrastructure.

We’re sure you won’t forget about your own site security as well.

Bonus: Do Free Assessments

Do you really want to attract customers coming into your business? Then, offer something for free. If you can issue free security assessment to prospects before they even ask for it, it shows that you are legitimate with the things that you do and you can go the extra mile when it comes to providing for the client.

A lot of marketing agencies have tried this approach and according to their findings, it really does work in bringing in more customers through the door. There’s no reason for your company not to try it.

As you can see, as an IT security provider there are a lot of things that you can do in order to make sure that you have a consistent flow of leads coming in for your business. However, the key to all of this is allowing yourself to properly strategize multiple channels. Make sure you have it all sorted out!

Author Bio:

Judy Caroll is a marketing executive at Callbox. She is a blogger, online marketer and loves to share with you the best stuff in sales and marketing. Follow Judy on Twitter and Google+.

4 Email Marketing Tactics That Are Not Just About Crafting Emails

July 8, 2019/0 Comments/in Email Marketing /by Rebecca Matias

Some say you should use a lower word count, others say make sure that graphics play a larger role, and the rest might disagree altogether. However, what we never really talk about are tactics that you can use to boost your email campaign that has nothing to do with the email itself!

Yes, you read that right; you can even optimize your email marketing without even focusing on the email itself.

In today’s post, we’ll go over these 4 email marketing tactics – why you should be employing them and how they complement your email lead generation efforts.

#1 Pair It With Your Telemarketing Efforts

So you have already sent your email to your prospect and you’re now left with time on your hands. What do you do?

If you’re using an email tracker you can find out if they’ve already read your message but even if you are, it’s a great idea to follow up on your prospect using other means such as the phone call.

This is effective because it makes the prospect feel like you are providing them with tailor-made services; you are a company that cares, and that you are personal with your approach.

However, you also have to time it right. You can’t send them three emails in one day and follow-up with a phone call before you leave the office. You have to properly space it out in order to make a great follow-up call.

Nurturing your leads through follow-up calls is considered as one of the most effective email marketing tactics.

Get your FREE Cold Calling Scripts for Key Buyer Personas in Managed IT.

#2 Social Media Plan – Retargeting, Engagement, and Exposure

Sometimes persuasion isn’t enough and you have pre-suade someone before you can even get them to a point of opening your emails. In your email list, how many people are you retargeting on platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook?

There are a lot of more platforms where your potential prospects could be lurking in; having their email is already powerful as it is in this digital marketing age. Wherever your prospects are, there, too, should you be. You want to be able to show them that you are active in the platforms that they are in. This makes you relatable.

While you’re at it, engage them on these platforms as well if you can, a “like” can go a long way and a well-thought-out comment can really work wonders in enabling relationships to move forward towards growth.

In short, there’s a reason why social is always present in most email marketing tactics lists – it’s just that effective!

#3 Are Your Landing Pages and Web Properties Built to Convert?

If you send an email with links to your web properties and landing pages, then it’s time to think about how they are built.

One thing that some people forget about is conversion rate optimization. This is the study of how to get your customers to convert utilizing the properties that you have online.

Do you have a proper call-to-action button that is visible? Do you have way too much text that leaves the customer bored? Are you asking for too many forms to fill?

These are all the questions that you should be able to ask yourself when you look at your landing pages. Landing pages have to be able to convert your prospect into doing something.

You have to understand that since your customer is already on your landing page, this already signifies interest in what you have to offer, now that they are already halfway in, what do you do to fully capture their hearts?

#4 List Preparation

The issue with some of the emails that you send is the way your lists are organized. Yes, you may be targeting per industry using two or three different email campaigns to split-test what works and what doesn’t. However, are you looking at your email list from a different perspective?

For example, when you send an email to a point person in one company, is it enough that you just send it to that person? Sometimes you need to be able to target two or three other individuals that you know will talk about what you have to offer. Remember that DMUs (decision making unit) are composed of several members.

If you’ve sent it to someone on the sales team, why don’t you consider making an email addressed to a couple of members on both the sales and marketing teams? In this way, you have created buzz and if one person loses your email, you’re sure that you have a backup plan.

Bonus: Practice List Hygiene

Make sure that non-responsive contacts on your email lists are frequently cleaned and purged. You do not want to risk your emails being flagged as spammy nor do you want to skew your feedback data by reporting a large number of non-responders when the only issue was that you forgot to clean up your list properly.

Marketing is a very holistic science that deals with a variety of different moving parts. If you just focus on one aspect, you tend to forget about the bigger picture. This also halts your creativity and forces you to be one-sided. Make sure you look at the big picture and consider everything – even email marketing – from more than one angle.

Author Bio:

When and How To Break the Fourth Wall with your Customers

July 3, 2019/0 Comments/in Growth Hacking /by Rebecca Matias

When a character in a movie breaks the fourth wall, it is always a sweet treat for the audience. Character favorites from Bugs Bunny, to Kuzco, to Deadpool, have cracked us up one too many times with the art of talking and/or relating to us through the screen. But more than that, it made us viewers feel included and the characters even more relatable. But what actually happens when you break the fourth wall?

Breaking the fourth wall happens when the actor or character starts interacting with the audience. It removes the invisible wall, signaling that there stands nothing between them and the audience. Now, what if I told you that you can do the same thing with your customers? That even in a corporate setting, you can still ensure your customers that there is no wall between you and them?

Instead of putting a distinction between “you” and “me”, it is better to let them feel that there is a “we” instead. Because let’s face it, without our best and loyal customers, our brands are nothing. Having said that, engaging customers is a common practice in the modern world of marketing using various types of social media platforms. These engagements are executed in many ways like contests, surveys, blog posts, infographics, and videos to name a few. Breaking the fourth wall in marketing oftentimes means that you put yourself into your customers’ shoes and see things from their standpoint; including them.

By letting your customers into your world, you not only strengthen your relationship with your customers but also build a better brand reputation for yourself.

Now let’s explore hows to the what.

Targeted B2B Marketing Handbook: Guide, Checklists and Worksheets

Find, engage and convert the right prospects with the right message.

Tag Team

Don’t just serve your customers sneak peeks and appetizers. Let them tag along with you. A good example of this is behind-the-scenes videos such as HBO faithfully kept doing for every episode of Game of Thrones. Giving your customers a deeper insight into what you’re doing or working on, is a show of authenticity and transparency. Like, “Hey, let’s go on an adventure. Come with me so you don’t miss a single thing!”

Rebecca recommends The Best Way to Use Social Media in B2B Sales Lead Generation

Together is Better

Your consumers will always know what they want best. So why not try and co-create something with them? Whether that’s a product or a service. Great innovations always arise when different minds come together.

Yay ̶m̶e̶ We!

Promoting your services and products is great – in fact, it’s a must. But once in a while, it’s also good to step away from the “me” and shift into the “we” perspective. Find other things that you can share your thoughts on and encourage your customers to engage in conversation. You don’t have to compromise with your content. Just choose content that’s still relevant to your brand and talk about it with your audience.

Influencer Interview Series: How Top Marketers Shop for Father’s Day

Everyone’s Got a Story to Tell

Everybody likes to hear a good story, and for a company, there is no story sweeter to the ears than the stories of your customers about you. You don’t have to white-knuckle hold everything in your grasp. Loosen up sometimes and trust your customers and even your own best employees to tell about your brand and how it helped them.

And last but not least…

Community is Everything

Look forward to building a lasting, healthy community with your customers where you advise and help them and they do the same for you in return. Trust is the glue that keeps any relationship. Especially a community together. It’s all about developing a good relationship between your company and your customers and maintaining a good balance in your marketing strategies.

Now the follow-up question is, “Is this really necessary?” and of old-school marketing were to answer you, the answer would be “no”. But we are in a new era of marketing where collaboration and relationships are vital to the success of every business.

Don’t be afraid to embrace change and new things and letting go of old ways that staggered growth and progress.

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5 Signs Your Business Needs Lead Generation [INFOGRAPHIC]

July 1, 2019/0 Comments/in Lead Generation /by Rebecca Matias

Sometimes we get sick. Most of the time it starts small. A headache and sniffles here and there. Oftentimes they go away on their own after a good rest, but other times if we aren’t careful enough, it could escalate to getting extremely sick and then we would ultimately have to go to the doctor. They say that prevention is better than cure and as it is true for our health, so is it with your businesses. If you’re experiencing aches in certain areas of your business, especially in lead generation, we have just the right medicine to ease them.

We’ll diagnose the different “common cold” symptoms of B2B sales and marketing and prescribe you accordingly.

Not Enough Sales Meetings

If your sales calendar is always empty, then it’s high time you do something about it. There’s no better way for you to fill your calendar with sales meetings than appointment setting.

Important tasks such as finding and reaching prospects, pre-qualifying leads, and booking phone or face-to-face meetings are all part of the appointment setting process, so if anything, getting appointment setters for your business is an investment.

Leads Don’t Convert

Why lead qualification so important? Simple. It saves you a lot of time and energy. It doesn’t matter how good you are at sales talk, but if you are selling to the wrong audience, it’s like trying to sell a boat to a pilot when he actually needs an airplane.

We suggest that you segment each account into tiers, ranking them from top to lowest priority. To determine which tier they belong to is to evaluate if they are ready for your solution, willing to explore possible solutions you have to offer to their problem, able to make the needed commitment to implement the change, and their success potential, meaning that there is a high level of fit in terms of technical, functional, resource, competence, experience, and culture.

For a more detailed information on how to select and profile high-value accounts, read here.

Targeted B2B Marketing Handbook: Guide, Checklists and Worksheets

Find, engage and convert the right prospects with the right message.

Lapsed Leads (Prospects Have Moved On)

According to Marketo an average of 50% of the leads in any system are not ready to buy, but nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Since the marketplace today is predominantly buyer-driven, the most effective way to develop leads is by establishing and nurturing buyer relationships. Have a lead scoring system and pair it up with a thorough content marketing plan.

Losing Customers to Competitors

What is the emotion, imagery, and things people associate with when they think about your brand? Your brand is the personality of your business, don’t hide that from your audience. Every company strives for positive associations with their brand and for it to be seen, so they won’t hesitate to spend an extra coin or two to make that happen.

Of course professional brands are a tad different from consumer brands, as you focus more on creating a brand around your expertise rather than a product. However the ways to maintain brand awareness is relatively the same. Here are some ways for you to maintain your visibility in the marketplace.

The power of keywords

When your potential clients scour the internet for possible solutions to their problems yet don’t exactly know who to turn to, you will be their hero. Identify the types of terms your potential clients are looking for and use that to optimize your website.

Ads Shopping Spree

Targeted ads can help improve your visibility such as short-term campaigns for newly repositioned brands. You can find available ads on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter as well as search engine result pages such as Google Adwords. Just make sure that you do your keyword selections carefully and monitor them constantly to ensure success all while staying within your budget.

Social Butterfly

Don’t be afraid to jump onto social media. It’s a powerful tool for your brand to get noticed. Depending on what your company’s niche is, there are always corresponding platforms that will suit your brand. Corporate firms usually use Twitter and LinkedIn, while consumer and “quirkier” brands would use Facebook and Instagram. Determine where your clients are and make sure that your business is represented there.

The Best Way to Use Social Media in B2B Sales Lead Generation

Blogathon

Others may find this tasking, constantly coming up with new ideas to write about, therefore sweeping it under the rug. On the contrary, if you write keyword optimized blog posts, your brand will be showcased when people are browsing the internet in search for possible solutions to their problems. Choose topics that will stay relevant to your brand expertise and soon lead generation will start rolling in.

Can’t Do Lead Gen On Your Own

What keeps a company’s heart pumping is sales, and in order to sell, you have to secure a good lead first. Of course you can choose to generate your own leads in-house, but if you want to save time, money, and effort, we suggest that you look into outsourcing your lead generation. Instead of having to stress over hiring and training new staff, you can focus on growing your company while your outsourcing team will take care of your leads.

The Top 8 Best B2B Lead Generation Companies in 2019

And there you go! Five simple solutions to your common business sales and marketing needs. In the end, it all boils down to one thing: Lead Generation. Don’t wait until you’re in too deep. If your company starts feeling any of these symptoms, try these remedies. They are tested and proven to help you back to your feet in no-time.

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Callbox Updates Pipeline CRM with ABM Features and UI Makeover

June 26, 2019/0 Comments/in Callbox News and Updates /by Judy Caroll

Published on June 27, 2019

Suite of new features and capabilities makes Pipeline CRM a smarter and more streamlined tool for orchestrating Callbox marketing campaigns.

Callbox, an award-winning B2B lead generation company, this week released fresh updates to Pipeline, its proprietary CRM and marketing automation platform. The recently-unveiled updates include the following:

New ABM capabilities
More intuitive dashboard and richer reporting features
Streamlined Lead Nurture interface
Faster and more robust overall performance

The new feature set vastly enhances and extends Pipeline CRM’s user experience and core functionalities for both clients and internal users.

We wanted to go beyond just tweaking Pipeline’s look and feel, says Rebecca Matias, Callbox’s Director of Sales and Marketing.

All these changes were made with the goal of giving users the ability to quickly see the big picture or drill down for a detailed view of things—from the campaign, accounts and contacts, all the way down to individual touches.

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New ABM capabilities

One of these major improvements is the integration of ABM features into Pipeline. Pipeline CRM now enables Callbox campaigns to effectively apply account-based lead generation and sales prospecting strategies.

Users can now choose between Contacts View and Accounts View when looking at leads and prospects. Under Accounts View, contacts are displayed according to the organization they’re connected to. This makes it easy to target accounts and understand which decision makers in a company to engage.

Account View

Contact View

More intuitive dashboard and Richer reporting features

The Callbox team also redesigned the layout and appearance of Pipeline’s main dashboard and other reports pages based on user suggestions and feedback.

Aside from grouping leads by account as the default view, the main dashboard now shows lead scores for each prospect alongside other key details. This gives users a real-time update of each lead’s status at a single glance.

Pipeline Home

Campaign Reports

To provide Pipeline users with a bigger picture of the campaign, the Pipeline Campaign Reports dashboard now highlights the most essential KPIs and metrics – grouped by channels. Users will not only see the individual impact of each channel, but they can also gauge how the channels complement each other.

Streamlined Lead Nurture interface

Pipeline CRM ships with a marketing automation engine called Lead Nurture. Lead Nurture allows users to easily define and execute custom lead nurturing schemes using a drag-and-drop workspace.

This week’s round of updates also focused on improving the Lead Nurture UI. A major change is the addition of a new tab for viewing email templates used in a lead nurturing scheme. This enables users to handily determine which templates are working and which ones aren’t.

The redesigned UI for Lead Nurture now displays scheme performance reports by default. This aligns with the other enriched reporting features included in the new Pipeline updates.

Lead Nurture Reports

Lead Nurture Emails

Faster and more robust overall performance

A huge portion of the new updates were carried out to improve Pipeline CRM’s response and page load times. Better server management and backend optimization have resulted in a significant boost in performance.

It’s a faster and smarter platform, Rebecca adds. The key thing is that it helps produce better results for our customers.

The new and improved Pipeline CRM will go live on July 8, 2019. In the meantime, a beta version of the new and improved Pipeline is now up and running. Current Pipeline users can take it for a spin via this link:

Try Pipeline CRM Beta

IMPORTANT: Pipeline CRM is not compatible with Internet Explorer. Please use an alternate browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Opera.

Author Bio:

Judy Caroll is a marketing executive at Callbox. She is a blogger, online marketer and loves to share with you the best stuff in sales and marketing. Follow Judy on Twitter and Google+.

Multi-channel Lead Generation Tactics for Cloud Providers

June 26, 2019/0 Comments/in Lead Generation /by Judy Caroll

For a company that specializes in cloud products and services, how can you generate leads that will turn into revenues?

Lead generation is always a constant challenge every business faces. But as with every problem, there is always a solution at hand as well. Cloud services are no exception. As always, there are many ways to B2B lead generation, but for today we want to focus on the use of multi-channel lead generation tactics for cloud services.

Multi-channel lead generation is not as difficult or complicated as it may seem and it’s undeniable that it also is the future of B2B marketing. Read on to learn about multi-channel lead generation for your cloud products and services.

Objectives

First things first. You cannot just dive right in head first without clarifying your objectives first. Every company is different when it comes to this. There are two ways in measuring the success of your lead gen activity.

One is the sales-qualified leads (SQLs) which determines the number of probable clients that are ready to talk sales. Another is by the number and the total amount of deals closed, which is the simpler way to measure the success of your lead gen.

Stay somewhere in between to keep a balance. Your marketing should be evaluated by both your number of sales and also keep your lead generation up.

Email Marketing

One of the few online marketing channels that have stood the test of time. Hence why it takes the number one spot in a lead generation for cloud companies. Traditional newsletters and email marketing are still important and so is the ability to capture data on users. As cloud providers, do not overlook this important medium to generate leads.

Social Media

Of course, Social media is not just for liking funny cat videos or tweeting about what you ate today. Many businesses are taking advantage of this channel. By using this channel, just make sure that you just follow the general rule of thumb: build a loyal following, social media is a dialogue and not just a one-way street, and influence connections for content sharing.

As cloud service providers, take full advantage of this. Make sure you choose the right channels that will deem as the most effective for your clients and incorporate special cloud services that they can only find with you and nowhere else.

At the end of the days, it all boils down to having a perfectly healthy balance between your inbound and outbound. In keeping up this marketing strategy, it will do the trick in getting your message across as well as garner you more leads that way.

How to Generate Leads for Cloud Companies

How does lead generation work for cloud companies in general terms? Easy. There are two categories to this which are Inbound and Outbound.

Inbound leads

Perform keyword research and optimize your website for all the on-page factors like title, meta tags, keywords, image tags, etc., and off page link building. Other tools include Keyword Planner, Google Trends and Insight, Alexa.

Don’t forget your content marketing which includes blog post writing on your website and other social media platforms. Some tools to be used for this are BuzzSumo, PitchBox, Buffer, DrumUp.

Outbound leads

There are many software solutions that are available today to help you find leads from LinkedIn, and many more.

The catch is that manually generating tech leads can be quite a time consuming and hectic. This is why most companies opt to use better and faster alternatives like outsourcing the services of a B2B lead generation company. But hey, if you have the extra time, money and patience to generate leads in-house, then knock yourselves out.

Cloud Computing trends in 2019

A rapidly growing technology is Cloud Computing and many companies and businesses are adopting its digital transformation. The cloud tech services market is projected to grow by 17.3% in 2019, and by 2022, 90% of organizations will be using cloud services, according to Gartner report.

That being said, there are quite a few new Cloud Computing trends to look forward to this 2019.

Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Solutions

The dominant business model in the future is going to be the Hybrid Cloud. A simple public cloud cannot be a good fit for all types of solutions as well as shifting everything onto it can be a difficult task due to certain requirements. To make things easier, The Hybrid Cloud model will offer transition solutions that merge your current on-premises infrastructure with open cloud & private cloud services. So, while you are being effective and flexible, your organization will be able to shift to The Cloud technology at their own pace.

No Server Needed

2019 is the year where Serverless Computing becomes more and more popular. Not that it wasn’t before, of course. But with our advancing technology, it sure is gaining more popularity. Your customers won’t have to shell out money or rent services, neither do they need to configure them. Thanks to the Cloud for being responsible for providing the platform, it’s configuration, and a wide range of helpful tools used for designing applications, and working data.

Artificial Intelligence Platforms

AI platforms support a faster, more effective, and more efficient way to work together with data scientists and other team members. In addition, AI platforms can help reduce the costs in various ways, such as turning simple tasks into automated ones, preventing duplication of efforts, and taking over some expensive labor tasks like copying or extraction of data.

Cloud Security

One of the most – if not, the most important aspect of technology. Thankfully, it upgrades and improves with each year. With cloud computing, security is a very serious consideration. 2019 introduces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in which security concerns have risen and are an essential thing to monitor. Since many businesses are shifting to cloud computing, and oftentimes without serious consideration of its security compliance protocols, the GDPR will be of utmost importance this year.

Welcome 5G and Improved Internet Services

We can all agree that there is nothing more irritating that slow internet connection. Especially when working with data that are being generated and stored on cloud-based platforms. As the number increases, so does the need for higher and better internet connection. Thankfully, internet providers are always working and striving to find ways of improving the quality of their services. Taking it a step further, network providers are also working on developing the 5G network

Author Bio:

Judy Caroll is a marketing executive at Callbox. She is a blogger, online marketer and loves to share with you the best stuff in sales and marketing. Follow Judy on Twitter and Google+.

How to Build a Strong Network of Telecom Leads Using Social Media

June 19, 2019/0 Comments/in Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing /by Judy Caroll

Having difficulties generating leads for your telecom company even after following everything in the book to a T? You’ve exhausted all your options and still can’t see any significant results? Maybe it’s time to embrace utilizing your social media platforms to its full potential. How you may ask? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We have compiled and put together tips and strategies on how you can generate B2B telecom leads using social media. Find out more about the importance and relevance of using social media in modern telecom lead generation here.

The way of marketing has changed in all the best ways. It is far from what it used to be 20 to 30 years ago, but the struggle of lead generation was never a stranger to those who have worked in Telecom B2B business long enough. The good news is that Marketing and PR have dramatically changed because the internet has changed and evolved. The internet is no longer constricted to stationary computers anymore and it has evolved to the adoption of smartphones and real-time marketing. And yet, even with all the modern technology at our disposal, many telecoms still use outdated and ineffective means to acquire leads.

As it is with just about anything nowadays, social media plays a big role in B2B lead generation in every market as it is useful for both PR for your telecom industry and for lead generation. Your buyers spend a lot of time immersed in social media and trying to keep up with its changes. You as a business owner, a marketer, or a salesperson should do the same.

To give you more insight, here are 5 ways you can use social media for B2B telecom lead generation.

Who are they?

Using the top social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are highly recommended tools to use for B2B telecom companies to use. To determine who your possible candidates are, start off by creating a profile of your target prospects. Use key indicators which include their company name, job title, location, and shared connections. Once you’ve done that, weigh out those indicators to help you locate your potential clients on social media.

By using LinkedIn, you’ll find quality prospects by locating their company employees in senior buying positions, as well as monitoring professional groups that are industry specific. With Twitter, by configuring paid ads to target users it will make it easier to find your prospects based on their profiles, connections, companies, location, and interests.

This post gives a step-by-step guide on how to generate B2B leads using a combination of phone, email and LinkedIn

Helpful Content

Like we always emphasize with using social media, content is of utmost importance. It’s about more than just pumping out one post after the other. It’s all about offering content that is also helpful and offers your clients advice. Once you’ve been able to identify all your prospects, the next step is to engage with them. It’s very easy. Observe their page, comment on their content, and always answer their questions. You can also engage in discussions with them about the newest technology and share content that’s designed to guide them through their decision-making process.

Connect and Reconnect

While social media is a great way to connect with new people, it’s also a great way to reconnect with and upsell existing customers that you might have. Try to find your top-tier customers on social media and interact with them on a more regular basis. This not only boosts up your relationship with them, but also makes you a more reliable telecom company to work with. An even greater advantage is that through building your customer relationships, it will garner you a higher and steadier lead generation for your brand.

Featured Case Study: IT Telecom Consultancy Adds Over $1.3M in Sales Pipeline Opportunities

Nurture and Follow-up

Compile a list of all your prospects and make sure you keep a tab on them. You don’t want to lose them after the first initial contact. Send them follow-up messages; stay in touch all without having to be disruptive. In cases of promotion, new hire, or sharing of relevant content, you can let your sales team reach out to your prospects, providing them with the information they need.

Targeted B2B Marketing Handbook: Guide, Checklists and Worksheets

Find, engage and convert the right prospects with the right message.

When you do Telecom lead generation, you have to go all-out on it. Like we said, social media plays a big role. In addition to your social media sites, your own website is also of utmost importance. The content that you create and post onto your social media should include links that will take your prospects directly to your website to create more traffic for you, thus, also more leads.

Take your content marketing into consideration as well. It has been shown that it costs 62% less than traditional marketing, generating up to 3 times more leads according to Demandmetric. Stick to sharing relevant content for both you and your prospects on third-party sites and this will help you gain recognition as “thought leaders” in the industry.

It’s important that you build content that speaks to the future as much as it speaks to the present. Your telecom solution may have large and small benefits to your prospective buyer, and your content should also highlight these benefits.

And finally, your content should address the direction your telecom brand wants to take for the future. Strive to inspire your potential buyers by showing them where your brand is headed. Remember that people are more convinced if a brand as a clear vision of where it stands and where it wants to go. If the see the conviction with which you lead your brand, and you won’t even have to do much convincing anymore. They will just naturally gravitate towards you.

Author Bio:

Judy Caroll is a marketing executive at Callbox. She is a blogger, online marketer and loves to share with you the best stuff in sales and marketing. Follow Judy on Twitter and Google+.

The Best Way to Use Social Media in B2B Sales Lead Generation

June 17, 2019/0 Comments/in Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing /by Rebecca Matias

The most critical part of any B2B sales process is lead generation. Without lead generation, there are no sales, and when there are no sales, you will have to kiss your beloved business goodbye at one point or another. It’s necessary that you make use of all the means, especially social media, to keep generating leads.

A common misconception that businesses have about social media is that it is primarily used solely for brand awareness. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fact of the matter is that social media might just be one of your strongest assets in garnering more B2B sales leads. Social media is much more than just a tool you can use to grow and nurture your brand and content with your clients. If you do it right, it will help your brand tremendously.

What’s the Connection?

Let’s get the basics straight first. When we say lead generation, we’re not talking about the same thing as sales, but rather it’s about bringing people into your sales funnel. Think of it as trying to get to know a person more after a date. It’s all about the details. What are your target prospects interested in? Which of your services would fit their needs best? What peaks their interest?

Gone are the days where lead generation solely relied on sending out surveys, filling out forms on magazines or pamphlets. Though they are still used sometimes nowadays, the internet has completely shifted how businesses can generate leads faster and better.

Utilizing social media is more than just keeping with the times. It’s necessary since today’s way of making sales is all about gated content such as video marketing, email opt-ins and paid ad campaigns to reach your targeted at potential clients. Social media makes lead generation easier because information always travels, and all your potential clients’ thumbs are always ready to share information with a tap on their screens. Add to that fact that in this time and age, people spend more time socializing on social media that it makes for the perfect place to find your target market.

Maybe you haven’t used social media for your business yet, or maybe you are still starting to dabble into it. Whichever the case, here are some ways to effectively use social media for lead generation.

Research and Select

There important points to consider before picking the platform you are going to use. You don’t want to be picking just any social media platform or else you will be trying to acquire leads from the wrong platforms. Know your clients first. As big as Facebook is and how almost everyone in the world uses it, one might think that choosing Facebook is a no-brainer. However, that is not always true.

According to studies, only 39% of B2B marketers have gotten lead generation through Facebook while using LinkedIn generated 44% and a whopping 82% of social media leads are garnered from Twitter.

Just because one site is quite popular doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s what’s going to give you the most success. As we’ve reiterated before, it’s all about knowing your audience and where they always are. Once you’ve figured out which platform your prospects spend the most time at, it will be easier for you to build around that.

If you’re still not quite sure which social media platform to use, you can check out this infographic which will give you a better insight as it breaks downs the user bases of all the top social media sites.

Generating leads will greatly depend on which social media site you are focusing on, so here are some tips and ideas on how you can get started based on the 3 granddaddies of social media.

Facebook

If your prospects mostly hang out on Facebook, it will be fairly easy to garner leads here. However, you have to be aware that organic leads on here have become increasingly difficult, so you would have to run paid ads at some point. The good news is that ads are quite budget friendly and will not take much out of you.

Other effective and more importantly, interactive ways to turn your followers into leads are to

Hold Contests

Contests aren’t a stranger to Facebook. They can be fun and draw a lot of attention, therefore, giving your page good traffic. The downside, however, is that not all the leads you get are qualified ones since a lot of them will just seek for freebies. But don’t let that discourage you. It is still a good way to collect emails into your pool of prospects.

Page = Website

Your Facebook page should be more than just a tool to get likes. Treat your page just like you would with your website. Don’t just create it and then let it sit there, forgotten. Think about what content you want to post/share on your page, what kind of ads you run and even the tabs that you set up. Do not be afraid to post landing pages for any of your offers directly to your page. Another important thing is, try to minimize your use of stock images. They can be a bit off-putting to a lot of people. Try to create your own content whether that’s photo or graphics. It will come off more genuine and authentic to your audience than something you just grabbed from google.

Custom Tabs

Custom tabs are a great place to put your contact forms in. Pagemodo and Static HTML are recommended apps you can use to set up your custom tabs. They capture leads without having to send your prospects to an external site which we all know can be quite annoying. To fully maximize them and catch more eyes, be sure to link them in your posts as well as when you’re running your ads.

For B2B leads, LinkedIn is the top social media site to use. It is specially catered towards professionals and networking which makes your leads organic. Here are some ways to help you get started.

Free Samples

Offering free samples is a powerful technique that can result in highly qualified leads. If you go for LinkedIn Premium, it gives businesses the opportunity to find qualified leads based on occupation roles and other essential criteria. After that, they will contact them directly using InMail.

Perfect Combinations

Inbound marketing is the king in generating leads here. It drives in 54% more leads than just normal outbound marketing.

Content marketing is one of the most effective methods of inbound marketing. And with LinkedIn being fast growing publishing platform to show your potential prospects your expertise as a leader, offer information and insights about your business for other business people to see, and also to gain leads while you’re at it.

Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, you want to consider using Twitter Cards. They enrich your tweets with additional content, media, and most importantly call to action. There are many different types of Twitter cards at your disposal but of course, you have to be able to choose the right one for you and your business. Here is a list of different cards that would fit your purpose.

Whichever card you choose to use, always remember to use eye-catching images and graphics and grab client’s attention with your captions. Think out what you have to say very carefully. After all, you only have 140 characters.

Make sure you also keep track of brand mentions. Let your social media team keep track of mentions about your company and/or products. If you don’t, you may as well be missing out on leads.

Lastly, another feature that will help you on Twitter is creating events. The Ask Me Anything and other time-sensitive events on Twitter are very useful and can generate high quality leads for you. In addition to that, there is also a Twitter Live feature that you can use to keep your prospects interested and involved during seminars or conferences that you might hold. This way, you offer them free value and in return, your prospects will want to know more about your company which can translate into new leads for you.

Enlarge your Sphere

To include an honorable mention into your pool of social media choices, Instagram has come a long way for still being a bit of a fairly new platform. It only started in 2010, but just like his other social media friends, it has evolved tremendously and many companies use it to their advantage to build their brand and to generate leads. You can connect it to your Facebook and Twitter, so whatever you share on Instagram will be directly shared to your other platforms as well. It’s more than just a place where you can post pretty pictures and short videos. Use it to its fullest potential to build up your brand and interact with your audience.

Conclusion

Social media has become much more than just a way to communicate with other people and to build up your brand. If used correctly and strategically, it can help generate leads, drive sales and grow your company greatly.

Author Bio:

Influencer Interview Series: How Top Marketers Shop for Father’s Day

June 13, 2019/0 Comments/in Growth Hacking /by Rebecca Matias

Looking for ideas on what to get someone this Father’s Day? Then you came to the right place. The Callbox team recently reached out to a number of top marketing influencers and asked how they choose the perfect Father’s Day gifts. We rounded up their answers in this blog post, and we guarantee you can’t go wrong with the shopping tips they shared.

But besides giving out practical gift-buying suggestions, their responses also gave us a ton of insights on a crucial thing in B2B marketing: understanding what our audience really wants and being able to deliver on these expectations.

Whether it’s mapping content to relevant buyer personas, tailoring your messaging strategy to different segments, or adapting your value proposition to a new target market, most of the things we do as marketers simply boil down to figuring out how to best delight potential customers—which is a lot like picking the perfect Father’s Day present.

So, don’t worry if you haven’t yet started shopping for Father’s Day. Use this influencer roundup as your handy gift-buying guide:

Pam Moore (The Marketing Nutz)

Pam Moore, CEO at social media training and consulting agency The Marketing Nutz, suggests finding two or three things that your dad, husband, or grandpa loves to do as a Father’s Day present. I totally agree with this, since I really think experiences make people happier than material gifts.

Keep it super simple. Think of what they love to eat, drink and do. Pick one or two or three. Here’s an example… buy them a new 32 oz Yeti cup at Sports Authority. While there pick up a gift card for them to use on their favorite sport or hobby. Then, take them out to eat and talk about all the things they are going to eat, drink and do the next year! You’ll be amazed what a fun day your dad, hubby, son or grandpa has!

Mike Allton (The Social Media Hat)

Mike Allton is the founder of The Social Media Hat, a full-service digital marketing agency, and brand evangelist at Agorapulse. Mike makes an excellent point when he says presents that involve “time spent” tend to be the best Father’s Day gifts. Again, experiences make us way happier than objects ever could, and that’s a scientific fact.

I find that the best gifts, particularly for parents, are ones that incorporate the gift of time spent.
It’s fine to buy them an item that they need or want, but that relational gift is usually so much more valuable, particularly as we get older and tend to have less time to spend with our parents.
Why not give them a dinner out with you or a trip to the park or a game night? Think of something they love to do and then incorporate yourself into that plan.

Timothy Hughes (Digital Leadership Associates)

Social selling expert Tim Hughes gives a very touching answer to our influencer roundup. He wants to take his parents out to once again experience an activity they both love when they were still young.

My father is 87 has a dementia and lives in a home. He tells us that he has totally lost all memory but for some strange reason he can still recall his love of classical music. He and my mum were big fans of the Proms, they used to go when they were courting and before they had my brother and myself. I would love to take both my parents to see the Last Night of the Proms one more time.

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Sue Zimmerman (The Insta Expert)

Sue Zimmerman helps women entrepreneurs achieve digital marketing success through visual storytelling using Instagram. Sue shares a very short but very sweet answer. At the end of the day, it’s how much dads value something that makes it a perfect gift.

I think about what he wants and needs then I buy it – this year I got him a subscription to Amazon Prime

Joe Pulizzi (Content Marketing Institute)

As one of the towering figures in marketing today, Joe Pulizzi certainly knows a thing or two about delivering what people want. That’s why his story about choosing the perfect gifts for both his dad and step-dad is simply priceless. His main takeaway for delighting dads: find something that will take them back to the good ole days.

My dad is easy to buy for. He’s like me and loves bourbon. Elijah Craig Small Batch to be exact. But my step-father is a different animal. A few years ago I was pondering what to get him and I remembered he used to have a huge vinyl record collection and a big stereo. Vinyl had made a bit of a comeback and the nostalgia of yesteryear was compelling. So I jumped online and ordered him a Crosby portable case record player and went down to the used record store to buy him 5-6 albums I knew he used to have. You would have thought I bought him front row tickets to Hendrix. He loved it.
So, think about something your Dad used to do that he doesn’t do anymore. And find something that will take him back to the good ole days.

Robert Katai (Bannersnack)

Here’s a very interesting response from Robert Katai, digital marketer and content strategist at Bannersnack. Robert’s answer is certainly something we can all learn from. That’s why we saved it for last.

My insight is this: time is the most important piece today. That’s why on Father’s Day I’m recommending to everybody to give their time: time to listen, time to ask, time to just stay together and create memories from this important present.

Check out: How to Generate Leads Faster with this Proven Outbound Workflow

Conclusion:

I hope that helped narrow down your shopping list. It’s not easy to find the perfect gift for the dads you know, but sometimes all it takes is letting them experience something they really enjoy.

Happy Father’s Day to everyone in the marketing world!

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