7 Ideas To Generate Warm B2B Software Leads

The warmer the leads the better.

They’re more efficient to work with because marketers don’t have to spend time trying to qualify leads and getting them ready for sales.

Here are some ideas that any lead generation expert can use to generate warm B2B software leads.

Provide Value

Nothing screams “we’re the best in the industry” more quietly than providing value.

Prospects love value.

Providing value tells prospects that a company is willing to help them out even before they sign in. It’s a good way of over delivering to the potential client before even getting on the first meeting with them.

There a few ways to provide value:

  • Publish educational content on your company blog
  • Create instructional videos
  • Publish refurbished blog content onto Facebook and LinkedIn
  • Put out case studies
  • Give out tools

However, do note that this is a passive method, so whatever value-added content is released also has to be promoted.

Gatekeeping

Continuing from the previous section on providing content, also look into gatekeeping content.

Gatekeeping content basically means that you put up a barrier, such as a landing page, that collects emails and/or other details before the prospect is taken to the piece of content that they are interested in.

If the lead provides their information, you can immediately qualify them as warmer than other leads because they are highly interested in what you have to offer.

Offer a Free Trial

One of the most effective ways of generating warm leads is still the free trial approach and this is especially true for B2B software.

Marketers have to offer the full version of their software for a long period of time, and it would help if there weren’t any commitments attached to the demo.

This ensures that the user gets to experience the software with its full features.

On the plus side, it’s also a sign that a vendor is confident about what it has to offer.

The payment here is getting the details of the lead that’s decided to try out the software in the first place.

Webinars Still Work

A free webinar is a great way to generate warm B2B software leads because it’s easy to deploy and marketers get to have a real interaction with their prospects.

They also help with B2B sales because most tech buyers usually try their best to get educated before looking for possible candidates for their needs. If the vendor is the first one to educate them or help them by providing value through a webinar, it gives them leverage in nurturing the lead.

Webinars are also a good lead magnet because they require the collection of a couple of details about the prospect. These details can then be run through prospecting tools to get more detailed information about a prospect and thrown into a targeting campaign.

Using Facebook Retargeting

Facebook retargeting shouldn’t just be used to Pixel people coming in from your website.

Lead generation experts can take their email lists and use Facebook Ads to nurture leads, build brand awareness and recognition before the initial touchpoint, and engage in content awareness campaigns.

Facebook is a medium of choice because it has the widest reach compared to all of the social media channels out there. Plus, its business suite and ads manager are great for monitoring campaigns.

LinkedIn Works

Almost every professional out there is on LinkedIn, and this also includes your leads.

The active way to generate leads on LinkedIn is through outreach and outbound networking. You can use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator for active prospecting and then reach out to prospects and nurture them through mail.

The alternative way of lead generation is through thought leadership and bringing in passive leads via content and an optimized LinkedIn profile.

Related: A Hands-on Guide to B2B Social Selling on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Marketing-Ideas-for-Scaling-Tech-Companies

Marketing Ideas for Scaling Tech Companies

Expand to Foreign Territories

Sometimes the problem is not the lead generation itself, but market saturation.

There will come a point in every growing company’s time when they will outgrow their current market and not be able to convert at scale any longer.

This means that it will be time to start expanding to foreign territory.

Expansion is one of the best options that rapidly scaling companies should take advantage of, they can open up new markets and increase revenue.

Some companies will opt to outsource their expansion – more on outsourcing in the next section – so that they can concentrate on their current market and stray too far from focusing on product development.

Expansion also makes sense if the tech company is selling something innovative, they can be first on the scene before another company copies their initiative and they lose their first-mover advantage.

Outsource Your Lead Generation

Lead generation can get taxing, especially for startups.

There’s a steep learning curve, people have to be trained, tools bought, and systems integrated before any outreach campaigns can even be built.

For companies with limited resources or want to focus solely on their product development, outsourcing lead generation is the best thing that they can do to take their growth to the next level.

Lead generation agencies have the specialization and experience necessary to penetrate new markets easily and expand the consumer base of a tech company. By leveraging the services of an agency, a tech firm can save themselves the trouble and overhead of setting up their own lead generation.

There are a lot of things a tech company can outsource from social media preparation, lead generation, optimization, and even content production.

For many, outsourcing is the most efficient and effective choice.

Co-Marketing

SaaS and B2B companies collaborating with each other is nothing new, but it’s a great way to leverage another company’s audience as your own.

The most popular way of exploring co-marketing is partnering up with a company that has complementary goods or services that do not serve as competition to your own.

This presents a win-win solution for both parties as they both get access to each other’s resources and audiences.

Some companies even opt to redesign variations of their products that fit better with the services of the collaborating company or vice versa. This helps streamline the selling process for both offers and gives prospects a better experience.

However, co-marketing is not for everyone as some organizations will have a product that is a “one-size-fits-all” solution.

Explore Other Marketing Channels

Marketers can’t rely on one or two marketing channels any longer. Given that prospects are present in multiple platforms and competition for brand awareness in the tech industry is getting tougher, it helps if organizations can adopt an omnipresent strategy.

Platforms such as LinkedIn are gaining popularity as a great source of leads and some startups are even pursuing mediums such as TikTok for their brand recognition.

Here’s the thing.

Organizations don’t have to run an active outreach campaign on every available platform, they should first assess which platforms their prospects are in, then assign a marketing activity to each.

For example, they could do outreach on email, run a brand awareness campaign on LinkedIn, etc.

By doing this they’ll be present on each platform, without saturating their audience with a lot of pitches.

Run Webinars

Webinars are a great way to educate prospects on different topics while nurturing them at the same time.

Some webinars are even designed to act as purely lead capturing mechanisms, and they’re quite effective at doing that.

They are easy to set up, don’t require a lot of resources, and great at boosting the image of the brand as one that gives out value to people.

Marketers should make sure that they send notes, slides and other resources to their attendees after the event to maintain a conversation with them.

Work With Influencers and Thought Leaders

B2B influencers and thought leaders usually command a wide audience that you can use when marketing your product.

The beauty of working with thought leaders is the fact that they’re celebrities in the professional world and if they’re trusted, the organization who works with them often gets trust by association.

There are different ways of working with a thought leader, one can get them to use a brand’s products for brand awareness, work with them directly via referral codes and plugs, or even create a product that’s branded with them.

Influencer marketing has grown so huge over the past couple of years that people get their accounts optimized to become an influencer.

Whatever method you choose to roll with, make sure that the message you’re releasing is personalized for your target audience. This allows you to create marketing that resonates with your prospects. If you want to save resources or focus on the other aspects of the company, consider using a lead generation agency, they can help outsource the work for you and bring you in leads consistently.

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What to Expect from your Outsourced Lead Generation Agency

Getting an outsourced lead generation agency to help generate leads is one of the best ways to supercharge an organization’s potential for growth.

It allows organizations to focus on product development and their other specializations, while allowing an experienced third-party to bring in the leads.

In this guide, we explore what to expect from an outsourced lead generation agency.

An Initial Round of Meetings

Regardless, if your potential lead generation firm found you or if you found them, the first steps will involve a series of meetings involving high ranking DMUs from both parties.

Your marketing and sales teams will also be present during a couple of these meets.

A lot of things will go on during these meetings:

  • They will assess your organization and its place in the industry
  • Your current product portfolio and your target customers will be analyzed
  • Goals and expectations will be drawn out
  • KPIs will be determined
  • The lead generation system will be explained
  • Pricing will be discussed

This list is nowhere from complete. To add to this, there will be interviews, more meetings, and a lot of phone calls.

During this stage, it’s important that you don’t commit to a single lead generation firm just yet. Keep your options open so that you can pick the right agency for your unique needs.

Contract

After the initial rounds of meetings and interviews, we get to the contract.

The contract is critical. It helps manage expectations between a business and their lead generation agency, sets benchmarks, and puts down the limitations of each party.

It also serves as protection for both parties in the event of any untoward incidents.

Make sure that you get proper legal advice before signing off on any contracts, and that you fully agree to the terms stipulated in the document.

You can always renegotiate should there be any problems.

Schedule of KPIs

This can be in the form of a calendar, a Gantt chart, etc.

It’s basically the list of the objectives in the contract with assigned timeframes.

This differs from one agency to another, but they’re a great way to know what you should be expecting on particular dates.

Building Ideal Customer Profiles

Some lead generation agencies actually take the time to match your products and services with the ideal customer profiles that you should be targeting.

This helps you build your market share and it helps them with personalized and targeted campaigns.

Related: Lead Generation for Startups: Profiling and Engaging Ideal Customers

Funnel and Campaign Creation

After building ideal customer profiles, they can start building out campaigns in collaboration with you and your team.

These campaigns will be built around personalized funnels that help bring in prospects, screen them, and nurture them until they’re ripe for conversion.

Forget simple funnels, expect multiple touchpoints with flowcharts that predict various responses and sub-campaigns that market to those who drop out of the pipeline.

A Steady Supply of Leads

Since you did hire a lead generation agency, you should expect a steady supply of leads coming through to your sales team.

These leads should at least be:

  • Qualified – the prospects should be in the right industry, matching ideal customer profiles with the capacity to pay for the product or service that you offer.
  • Complete – this means that the leads need to have information that helps the sales team close the deal. Things such as demographic details, additional contact information, sales history, unique characteristics, etc.

Different Channels

Depending on the specialization of your lead generation agency, you should also expect leads to come from different channels – that is depending on which channels you want to focus on.

Lead generation agencies can pull leads from:

  • Cold prospecting
  • Email outreach
  • Telemarketing
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Retargeting
  • Display Ads / PPC
  • SEO
  • Content Marketing

They’ll even advise you on which channels you should focus on.

Related: Effective Ways to Generate B2B Leads in Australia

Multi-touch Campaigns

If you’re working on an omnichannel focus with your business, your agency should be able to handle that as well.

They can integrate the various channels that you’ve chosen to work with to help create a unique experience for anyone who’s interested in what you have to offer.

Related: 6 Winning Multi-channel Sales Tactics Examples for Software Companies

Reporting

There are different types of reporting systems with outsourced lead generation agencies.

Some offer a live dashboard available via a unique URL where you can get actual numbers, others opt for a weekly email report, and there are some agencies who do a little bit of everything to make sure clients are informed.

These reports are important because they allow a client to assess how a campaign is being run and what else is needed to move forward.

Performance Meetings

Apart from reports, regular performance meetings are a norm with outsourced lead generation agencies. These can be tied-in with major monthly or periodic reports.

These meetings allow the client to ask questions about the current campaigns that are in place, make any necessary decisions to move the campaign forward, and interact with their lead generation specialists personally.

Campaigns can be assessed in terms of performance and KPIs revisited in case the lead generation team falls short.

Getting an outsourced lead generation agency is one of the best ways to take your company to the next level. It helps minimize costs since you get to benefit from the specialization of the agency, and you get to focus on what you do best.

Lead generation agencies are one of the best ways for a company to scale quickly and efficiently. Find out more about how Callbox can help you bring in qualified leads so that you can grow today!

Effective-Ways-to-Generate-B2B-Leads-in-Australia

Effective Ways to Generate B2B Leads in Australia

Maybe you’re planning to expand your business to Australia or are already operating your business in the land down under. Whichever the case, you have chosen a great place to expand your business at, but once you’ve settled in the new place, the next hurdle is going to be generating leads for your business. 

As daunting as it may feel to do business in a new region, it shouldn’t be as difficult as it seems. The key is to have a solid marketing strategy and all the right tools to bring in sales qualified leads. 

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the most effective ways that you can generate B2B leads for your business here in Australia. 

Invest in Quality Database

No matter which industry you operate in across the globe, the one thing that remains a constant is the necessity to invest in a good quality database. It is what drives critical business initiatives. As you embark on your lead generation journey in Australia, be sure that you build a robust and reliable data quality management strategy that aligns with your organization’s values and needs. 

If you don’t have a sales database that you can trust and use, you won’t be able to make accurate lead generation touchpoints. 

Related: 5 Steps to Update, Validate, and Enrich Your Contact Database

Partner with a Lead Generation Company

What every marketer aims to successfully accomplish is lead generation. Doing it on your own is a little trickier, though, it’s not an entirely bad thing to do inbound lead generation. However, since you’re venturing into a new territory, it’s wiser to partner up with a lead generation company to help you with your campaigns and marketing efforts. By having an outbound lead generation team, your leads will tend to stay warm as they will receive regular and relevant content sent to them. 

Speaking of warm leads, they are just as important as generating hot leads. Your lead generation team will take care of making sure that your funnel is constantly filled with sales qualified leads while you, as a company, can focus your attention on improving your service/product. 

Related: Picking the Right Lead Gen Company for Growing Your Business in Australia

Upgrade your Marketing Stack

They say that the only thing that’s permanent in this world is change, and that’s very true. Our customers’ preferences keep changing faster than the seasons in a year, and in order to keep up with all these changes, you need to be ready to also invest into regularly updating your marketing technology stack. 

You need to obtain new technology in order to support the key marketing functions while also enhancing your team capabilities. Make sure that you regularly review the components of your marketing technology stack so that everything is functioning properly and are at its top performance. 

If you’re thinking about adding some new marketing stacks to your roster, be sure to include HubSpot as they have a myriad of marketing tools that you can choose from that are updated regularly. 

Related: Sales Tools that Will Help You Sell More in 2021

Try Running Webinars

Webinars have grown in popularity in just over the past year and they have proven to be a powerful marketing tool for your B2B lead generation campaigns. When you’re doing it right, you’re sure to achieve great things, even to a point where you can  host webinars more frequently. Some businesses have seen a great increase in leads through their webinars that they conduct one every two weeks, and even a mini webinar every week in between. 

The great thing about hosting webinars is that you can show them a better demonstration of your knowledge and position yourself as an expert in your specific niche which is of utmost importance to your prospects when they’re choosing the right partner for them. 

Related: Drive Sales Growth with Lead Generation and Webinars

Paid Traffic Campaigns

There is a large misconception that paid traffic campaigns are only used for e-commerce websites, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it is actually a highly effective way for websites and companies who are doing online lead generation campaigns. 

Take note that you should always start with your target audience in mind; what they need and what solution you have up your sleeves that will help them. Take time to also analyze your competitors and what they’re doing. When you gain an understanding of how they work and move, you’ll be able to target more effectively and outperform your competitors.

Expand to Foreign Territories

Taking your business globally is quite the complex yet also exhilarating process. Before you expand into foreign territories, you have to gain a deep understanding of your target markets, your competitors, your current local marketing trends, and most importantly, the requirements that would take you to successfully launch and grow your business abroad. 

You’ll be faced with various challenges and hurdles that don’t just pertain to business but language and cultural differences play a huge part in your global expansion. With that being said, don’t let the challenges keep you from expanding. If anything, let these motivate you to push through as it will open up endless opportunities for greater revenue, access to a new pool of skilled workers, and growing your brand awareness.

How-To-Guide-Your-Leads-To-Purchase

Customer Journey: How To Guide Your Leads To Purchase

Any B2B marketer will tell you that the key to a successful lead generation strategy is having insight of your buyer’s journey. 

Each segment of that journey always presents an opportunity. It is your job as a marketer how to capture that opportunity and turn it into revenue. 

But you can only do that if you truly know where your customer is in their decision making process.

You can do that by mapping their journey so you can create experiences that make them buy what you offer.

How and When to Talk to Your Prospects

The buyer’s journey varies from business to business. But it generally consists of the following stages:

  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Decision

Awareness

This is the initial part of the journey – when the buyer becomes aware of your brand. Or when they realized they need something and your product/service might be the solution. 

This stage is like the first date – you’ve just met each other. 

Maybe you’ve been introduced by a common friend. Or maybe you met on a “dating platform.”

Just like any first date, you’re there to impress him or her, so you can score a second date. 

At this point, you don’t hard sell your product or service. In fact, you haven’t thrown a sales pitch yet. Instead, you let them know you more. You set yourself up as a resource – can you solve a pain point or problem they have?

Strategies to adopt:

  • Establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry
  • Improve the SEO of your website and your content
  • Strengthen your social media presence
  • Employ a pay-per-click marketing strategy to promote your content

Related: Growth Strategies To Expand Your Business in Australia

Consideration

At this point, the buyer has decided to go on a second date with you. They know what they are looking for. They have also seen that what you are offering can potentially solve their problem. But they are still undecided – they are still looking for other options. 

The good news is… you are part of the shortlisted candidates.

Some of the things they will be looking for are:

  • Your reputation – are you legitimate; what do others say about you
  • The cost – how do you 
  • The specs of your product. If you are offering a service, they will be looking for the scope of your services.
  • The support – what if something goes wrong during and after the purchase?

You’ve already captured the attention of your buyer. You don’t want them even just to glance at the competition. What you can do at this point is to hold their attention through different types of content like:

  • Videos, eBooks, infographics, white papers, and case studies which further establishes you as a thought leader.
  • Blog posts that give your prospects an insider sneak peek. It will further pique their interest, leading them to make a purchase.
  • Create an email campaign strategy that will keep your prospects and customers on the loop.

Related: Acquiring High-value Customers with ABX

Decision

At this point, the buyer has further narrowed down his choices. It is also clear whether the companies on his shortlist will solve the pain points of his business or fill a need in his business process. 

If you want to increase the likelihood of converting your target, we suggest that you employ the following B2B strategies:

  • Have a contact form that will put your prospect closer to doing business with you. It could either be a “Contact Us” or “Request a Quote” form. 

Your CTA should be simple, easy, and obvious. Don’t get a lot of info – an email will suffice or you will scare them. Make sure that it catches their attention immediately. Don’t let them play the guessing game or they will leave immediately.

  • Some people don’t like to fill out forms. So… give them an option where they can call you. Make your phone number visible all over your website. And when they call, there should be a real person who will answer them.
  • Placing a live chat on your website also increases higher customer engagement. That also increases their likelihood to convert and buy your product.

Closing the Deal

After successfully guiding your prospect through the process, step back and evaluate your efforts. Use it to further improve your lead gen strategy. Which part needs more fine tuning? Which part needs to be eliminated? 

If you want to find out more about each phase of the buyer journey, give us a call. We are happy to assist you in creating an effective lead gen campaign.

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Sales Prospecting Trends Every Sales Manager Should Know

The cycle of time has reached a point where it will step into another grand year. In this post, we are going to discover the trends in the sales industry that every sales manager should know. This post will help you with discovering and using the 2021 sales trends in your favor so that you can start planning and filling up your sales pipeline soon.

Without further ado, let’s unearth these trends for you!

Sales Enablement

Every sales team requires sales enablement with the inclusion of smart sales tools or some occasional training sessions. Sales enablement has seen progress in the past couple of years. Modern business owners are increasingly adopting sales enablement strategies and this trend will certainly continue this year. 

Businesses will be taking a better strategic approach towards sales enablement:

  • Strategy and plan that will have clear objectives with defined steps that must be taken.
  • Better focus on helping salespeople develop top skills for becoming better at their job.
  • Providing an easier way for onboarding new salespeople to help them start selling quickly.
  • Focus on progressing technology for aiding the sales enablement process.

So, How to take advantage of the sales enablement trend? In order to stay on top of this trend, take the time to plan out a sales enablement strategy, from helping to onboard new salespeople as efficiently as possible to consistent coaching to your existing salespeople.

Machine Learning and AI

Machine learning and inclusion of AI has started taking place in various industries. Although it will take time to have your personalized Jarvis, like the famous Tony Stark, this technology will disrupt the industry for good. Many industries are experimenting with AI technology in sales. AI will streamline the sales process and help increase the productivity of your salespeople.

  • Analyzing the mega data with less time usage can ease up your sales strategies and will provide an ample amount of selling time.
  • With the ability to crunch numbers and various data on its own, the AI will provide a recommendation to you based on the user’s data.
  • These possibilities will save your selling time, fasten your follow-up process and help your sales team reach out to the right prospect at the right time.

The major advantage of having AI is its ability to access data, crunch the numbers quickly and help with predicting future trends. AI will simplify the way you look at your sales results.

Customer Experience Matter the Most

This fact made it clear that customer experience will be more focused in the years to come. As more and more businesses are entering the domain, customers have multiple options to take their business somewhere else.

Providing positive experiences to your customers will provide you with a much better opportunity where you can turn your customers into brand promoters. Integrate tools that will help you calculate the loyalty of your customer’s relationship with your business with your favorite CRM and gain valuable insights into various points of your customers’ journey for providing them the experience they deserve.

Access to critical content

Sales content and asset management platforms make it easier for organizing marketing content and collaterals. There is no end to the sales reps’ struggle. The problem derives from the fact that sales reps are storing their content in 3-6 different locations. Modern sales enablement software has understood this issue and has been working on creating a centralized hub. It allows sales reps and their team members to organize and integrate content from a variety of sources seamlessly. This way your sales reps will be able to plan their hours for more selling and better sales productivity.

Conclusion

For this year and the years to come, these will be the top trends in selling. Improving sales productivity and the overall sales process should be your top priority. It is also critical for businesses to implement new technologies and better sales tactics. Having a smart sales intelligence tool allows you to do all these things without missing out on the most important factor that contributes towards your sales revenue.

Outbound-Lead-Generation-Strategies-to-Add-to-Your-Marketing-Mix

Outbound Lead Generation Strategies to Add to Your Marketing Mix

There is no such thing as non-targeted outbound lead generations strategies.

Prospects are looking for companies that understand them, have messages that resonate with the corporate culture, and that provide a personalized experience.

This is why B2B companies are constantly on the lookout to improve their lead generation campaigns. In this guide, we take a look at targeted outbound lead generation strategies that you can try this year.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn remains to be one of the best platforms to conduct lead generation in. It’s one of the biggest platforms that exists for professional connections and it has a handy prospecting tool called LinkedIn Sales Navigator that can help with targeted outbound lead generation.

The reason a lot of marketers love LinkedIn is the fact the people on the platform are there to interact on a professional level. This means that it is seemingly easier to pitch on the platform rather than say, Facebook.

With LinkedIn Sales Navigator lead generation specialists can take their game to a whole new level using the advanced filters that they get access to.

You can narrow down your search by tenure, industry, geographical locale, etc. to find your exact customer profile.

After that you can filter those results even further with keywords that the prospect has been searching for.

It’s even powerful enough to integrate with popular CRMs such as HubSpot.

If you were to combine this with targeted messaging and the clever use of organic LinkedIn posts, it makes for a great lead generation strategy especially now that a majority of your prospects are online.

Referrals

One of the least used methods of outbound lead generation is the referral system.

It’s a pretty robust strategy because you get to use your existing base of customers to market to their own circles, freeing up valuable marketing resources and taking advantage of prospecting using an existing customer’s own filter.

Referrals have to come with a reward for your customer.

If the reward is good enough, they are most likely to pass the offer down to people who have a higher propensity to use your product.

It’s a great add on to any current marketing campaign that you may have.

Using Facebook Custom Audiences for Lead Nurturing and Pre-suasion

Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the world, and although it doesn’t hold the same professional theme as LinkedIn, you can still leverage the platform to reach your prospects.

The question is how do you do it.

Enter Facebook custom audiences.

Facebook custom audiences allow you to upload a list of email addresses and have Facebook target this list with ads of your choosing.

They’re great for organizations who want to do a little bit of lead nurturing or brand recognition campaigns since they can target very specific people with your ads.

However, you can also use them before your initial touchpoint with your prospect.

By creating a pre-suasion campaign, you can get your brand subtly recognized on Facebook before the initial pitching even starts. This makes prospects more agreeable to the products or services that you’re offering because you’re already familiar with them.

It does come at a cost compared to an organic Facebook campaign, but you get to be more efficient with your resources since it’s targeted.

Paid Advertising

Depending on your niche, paid advertising can be a viable medium to generate leads.

Let’s take Google Ad Words for instance, since a lot of DMUs that have purchase intent do research online, it makes sense to try and appear first in search engine results pages with your website.

The only downside is the price.

We often advise that you add paid advertising to your portfolio of your other lead generation strategies and use it to layer your other campaigns.

It’s often blended in with multidimensional marketing campaigns because it ensures that no potential lead slips out from the net that you’ve set up.

Appointment Setting and Cold Calling

Appointment setting is still one of the most effective strategies in the B2B space. 

The problem is it is usually associated with telemarketing which isn’t the case.

There is a form of cold calling that relies on extremely targeted customer profiles and qualified data to make sure that the message that you are sending out resonates with the prospect.

In some cases, depending on the qualified data that you’re using, it could be a more effective alternative to cold emails.

In cold calls, you get to talk and interact with someone rather than emails that could go by unanswered. 

Interacting with a possible prospect makes a pitch more intriguing because you can launch into a sales discovery call or even strategize your pitch to book an appointment with a DMU.

Any of these strategies can help you develop a more concentrated approach to your targeted outbound lead generation, but what can help you the most is layering them together.

You can combine some Facebook targeted advertising to your cold email campaign or even connect with people on LinkedIn after you’ve spoken to them on the phone.

The most critical aspect to targeted outbound lead generation is where your data is coming from. You need to make sure that you have data that has been cleansed and verified before you start building out your funnels.

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The Most Annoying Types of Prospecting Pitches

At some point in time, you’ll eventually have to pitch to your prospects.

There are a lot of tips on how to create the best type of pitch, but we never deal with the ones to avoid.

In this guide, we take a look at the worst type of prospecting pitches out there and what we can do to avoid falling into their trap.

The Generic Pitch

Let’s start off with the most obvious nuisance in all of our inboxes: the generic pitch.

In the world of account-based marketing, specialized lead qualification, and hyper targeting, there is absolutely no excuse for a marketer not to add a little customization to the pitches that they’re sending out.

Nothing annoys prospects more than a pitch that wasn’t designed for their eyes only.

They automatically know that it’s a general pitch that could have been sent out to anyone, and it’s also a gigantic red flag that the organization behind the pitch doesn’t pay attention to detail.

Here’s the other problem with this type of pitch.

It doesn’t just hurt the campaign, but it also hurts the organization’s brand.

How to avoid this type of pitch: make sure that your pitch addresses a prospect’s individual needs or circumstances. Use personalization whenever you can.

The Immediate Pitch

An immediate pitch could still work in an elevator if you’re stuck with a superstar founder or growth hacker, or if you’re desperate for angel investment.

However, if you’re doing B2B lead generation or working with any industry that takes multiple touchpoints in a long sales cycle to convert, you’re only going to hurt your chances.

We see this all the time on social channels, most notoriously on LinkedIn. Someone sends you a connection request, and not even five minutes later, you get a message asking if you’re interested in “changing your industry” or “getting 10,000 leads tomorrow”.

What a lot of marketers forget is that they need to establish a certain level of trust before someone wants to do business with them. Remember that only 3 percent of customers trust their reps.

In B2C or retail, you could probably get away with an immediate pitch and some FOMO, but not in B2B.

You come off as someone who doesn’t want to take the time to understand your needs, is in a rush to make a quick buck, and treats you as a sale rather than a person.

Immediate pitches are frowned upon by any industry, and they can be severely damaging to any B2B campaign.

How to avoid this type of pitch: take your time to get to know a prospect before you even try to sell to them! Use sales discovery calls, do research about them, etc. a sale can happen organically if you plan it right.

The Long Pitch

There’s an unwritten rule in marketing, if you can’t explain in a sentence or less, you’re doing a bad job.

Long sales cycles or funnels are normal, but once you get to the pitch, make sure that you’re clear with what you have to offer and how it will help them.

You don’t have to summarize the contract for them during the pitch or even manage their expectations. But you do, however, have to make sure that they understand what’s in it for them quickly.

Longer pitches leave room for error, the goal is for swift conversion once they’re ready to buy.

How to avoid this type of pitch: keep things simple.

The Bossy Pitch

Nobody likes being told what to do and it’s the same with pitches on email, LinkedIn or any platform for that matter.

If you have wording such as “you should…” then you’re already off to a very bad start.

Nobody likes being told what to do, remember you’re requesting someone else’s time and consideration to spend their hard-earned money on your product or service, you can’t boss them around.

How to avoid this type of pitch: avoid the word “should”.

The Fake Demand Pitch

Although FOMO is acceptable in B2C and ecommerce, you should use it sparingly, especially when dealing with B2B industries that have longer sales cycles.

Fake demand is telling your prospects that something is limited or that they’re missing out on getting something if they talk to you today. The truth is they already know that if they don’t get on the bandwagon, you’ll probably send them another “special offer” in time.

How to avoid this type of pitch: learn to manage the sales cycle. If you’re in the middle of it, recognize that you won’t be able to sell.

The Me Versus You Pitch

People like talking about themselves. That’s normal.

However, you also need to understand that if you spend half the email talking about how your company has changed the lives of millions of people, you might end up boring the prospects

They don’t want to hear about you, they want to hear about themselves.

Marketers have to go beyond the “benefits” of their product and start talking about their clients and the industry.

How to avoid this type of pitch: don’t talk about the benefits of your product or services too much. Talk about solutions to common pain points – that don’t include your product, the industry in general, etc.

Marketers have to remember that a good pitch is the culmination of great lead nurturing. A lot of leads are wasted because of pitches that weren’t executed properly. Lead generation and nurturing all depends on how well you understand your prospects.

Acquiring-High-value-Customers-with-ABX

Acquiring High-value Customers with ABX

Having a solid customer acquisition strategy is an essential component for any business. Without it, you’re going to seriously struggle to grow your business in any kind of meaningful way. That said, one of the most difficult parts of scaling any business is actually figuring out which channel is the most sustainable for bringing through new customers.

ABX focuses on the experience at the account level and the personalized experiences we create will hit home that much more for our customers. With ABX becoming the upgraded version of the ABM strategy, we’re going to look into how you can successfully acquire new high-value customers using ABX.

Understand your current customers

This is arguably the most important step in the customer acquisition process: defining who is suitable for your brand. The most efficient way to see just who those people are is by looking at your existing customers.

In fact, this step is so critical that – if done haphazardly and without careful thought – you will poison your database with low-potential customers. A low-potential customer will either spend just once or spend little with your brand, be discount seekers, and ultimately have little (or worse, negative) ROI.

With major ad networks like Facebook and Google consistently raising their media prices every year, this can put you and your business in a position where you are constantly treading water – just barely getting by churning through one-and-done customers.

Define and acquire the right target

To define and acquire the right target, you must consider four main types of data: Transaction data, Behavioral data, Attitudinal data, Demographic data.

But it’s not enough to simply collect this data. You need a system to combine this data into a single-source database so that you can understand and act on this data for individual prospects or customers.

Furthermore, you must be able to profile and segment these groups using all four data types simultaneously. In turn, whichever tool you use to collect, house, and process this data must also be able to combine different data sources, deduplicate records on an individual level, and provide an easy segmentation and audience generation tool.

Before we actually create our segments, it’s best to first understand why each data type is important.

Build an optimal campaign

With that said, the media cost often only gets the potential new customers entry to your site or the store – it doesn’t guarantee that they will convert. However, once a potential customer has landed on your site, they’ll start leaving behind valuable data about their intent. We can act on this in real-time to increase the probability of conversion – but only if you have a system that actively collects this behavioral data. 

Note that an anonymous site tracking system is insufficient. While it may allow you to collect data on an individual’s browsing behaviors, it does not let you directly deploy retargeting efforts on those individuals in real-time – which will cost you real dollars that you’ve already spent to drive these potential customers to your site in the first place.

With proper site tracking in place, we can now respond to a user’s site interactions to increase the probability of conversion. 

Conclusion

Good customers are out there. By harnessing the power of your employees to broadcast positive messages to their communities, being very specific with your paid advertisement targeting, and promoting self-selection through your funnels, you can improve your odds of not only converting more customers but keeping them around for a long time.

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Sales Tools that Will Help You Sell More in 2021

Sales is continuously evolving.

There are always new tools and resources that are being developed to help organizations get ahead of the competition.

In this guide, we take a look at the top tools and resources to take your sales to the next level and amplify your growth this 2021.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn is the largest professional social network in the world with close to a quarter of a billion active users. It’s a potential goldmine for any B2B organization and it’s a medium that your sales team should be working heavily on.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s own prospecting tool that gives you access to advanced filters when you’re on the hunt for clients.

What we love about Sales Navigator is that you can use it to finetune your prospecting to specific criteria that helps you create more targeted lists.

You get access to prospecting via geographical area, company characteristics, occupation, education, etc.

It’s a pretty powerful way to jumpstart your ABM efforts with a limited budget especially if you’re putting in some work towards improving your LinkedIn conversions.

Zapier

Cutting down on repetitive tasks is one of the best ways to save time and refocus your energy on the growth of an organization. However, it can get difficult if you’re trying to automate tasks from two different apps that depend on each other.

Enter Zapier, this all-in-one automation tool lets you create “Zaps” that allow you to set a trigger on one app that causes another to do something else.

Say you want all your emails coming through to have a record on Google Sheets and Trello, or if your LinkedIn posts are updated every time you post on Facebook. Zapier allows popular applications to trigger actions on different apps to make automation easier.

HubSpot CRM

A CRM tool should be at the heart of every sales and marketing department because it can help streamline operations, track performance, and increase productivity.

HubSpot CRM achieves all of these goals plus more.

It has all your standard CRM features as well as the ability to log every customer interaction that your prospect has with your campaign. This gives sales teams that ability to know how far a customer has been nurtured.

It has integrations with popular applications and, for tracking, its dashboard UI is clean and provides you with the metrics that you need.

They also provide a free version that you can try out.

Calendly

Teams – especially remote ones – often have difficulty with scheduling appointments because of complicated time slots and varying schedules, but tools like Calendly aim to simplify the process.

With Calendly, you can mark off the dates and times where you’re available, and you can quickly send a link with that calendar to a prospect.

Once the prospect clicks on that link, they can choose a time slot that works with their schedule and book it.

What’s great about this is if you’re running a massive outreach campaign, you don’t have to plot individual schedules with each client. Once someone books a slot, it blocks it so that the next people viewing the schedule will only have access to the other times you are free.

It is one of the simplest automation tools that you can use to streamline appointment setting and reduce the mental workload of having to book meetings manually.

Hunter.io

This app is powerful when it comes to looking for verified emails.

All you have to do is to type in the first and last name of a prospect, followed by their company name, and it will pull out their official email.

This is great for lead verification and providing richer leads for sales personnel to go after. One can easily turn a normal prospecting list to an email marketing list using this tool.

There are plenty of alternatives to Hunter.io, but it remains to be one of the more popular choices out there.

Hotjar

We’re all familiar with Google Analytics for tracking behavior across the web properties that we manage, but if you want something more specific, you should consider adding Hotjar to your toolkit.

Hotjar is a heat mapping software that allows you to check which parts of your landing page or web property are getting the most engagement from your prospects.

So wherever the user hovers their cursor on or spends the most time on their page will appear come up in a “hotter” color.

This allows marketers to up their conversion rates on properties that they already own.

There are a lot more tools available out there that will help your sales team bring in more appointments and empower your lead generation. However, the ones here are easily deployable and can be used with any current campaign. On the plus side, they also have a quick learning curve.

So, take your sales to the next level with these tools!

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Social Selling That Actually Works

Social selling is a powerful way to sell.

Platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook can be leveraged to create campaigns that can target prospects because they are non-threatening and easy to work with.

In fact, companies with no social selling are missing out on a wealth of opportunities.

In this guide, we take a look at social selling that actually works.

Your Ideal Audience

The first step in social selling is the same as in other marketing strategies, knowing your audience.

By being able to target ideal customers, marketers can narrow down their searches and be more efficient with the marketing resources that they have.

An ideal customer/audience should be identified using factors such as their industry, geographical locale, age, job title, average income, etc.

However, it doesn’t just stop there.

The next step is to properly segment these lists, to create more personalized messaging that can resonate with the targets.

Ideally, LinkedIn is the best platform for social selling due to it having the largest number of professionals on board. However, social selling is also applicable in other platforms such as Facebook.

On LinkedIn, tools such as their Sales Navigator can be used for targeted prospecting.

However, this shouldn’t stop a marketer from using other third-party prospecting tools or employing a specialized agency to help them out.

Creating Messaging That Converts

Let’s break down messaging into two parts.

  • Outreach Messages – conversations that are started to reach out to targets on a platform
  • Posts and Activity – this can be anything from infographics, white papers, lead magnets, etc.

Creating messaging that converts involves marketers focusing on one main question: “does the message appeal with the intended recipient?”

If it doesn’t, then it’s back to the drawing board for marketers.

Personalization and tracking metrics is what counts, one has to make sure that messages that don’t work are switched out immediately.

Another important note is that messaging shouldn’t be too pushy, one can’t pitch in the first message nor should they immediately overwhelm their clients with offers.

Lead nurturing before and after the pitch matters.

Building Activity

Another aspect of social selling that isn’t frequently discussed is the amount of activity that one should have on any given platform.

The short answer: a lot.

Engagements

Normally, it’s highly recommended to spend at least one hour per working day engaging with potential prospects and posting replies on the platform of choice, whether it be Facebook or LinkedIn.

It works because it “warms up” accounts so they won’t be flagged as spammy by social algorithms, and it also shows potential prospects that a seller is friendly, outgoing and approachable.

In addition, there is the benefit of increasing the surface area of a seller’s campaign by having comments/likes in front of more eyeballs instead of just relying on individual posts or outreach messages.

Actual Posts

The real purpose of posts is to use them to nurture leads that have already been messaged. 

How often should marketers be posting? At least three times a week is a good number, with three posts, there is no way that prospects could miss out on seeing a post after they’ve gotten an initial outreach message.

Creating a Multichannel Workflow

Social selling shouldn’t involve just one channel even if efforts are concentrated on a main one.

Here’s an example.

If LinkedIn is being used as the primary channel, marketers can retarget prospects via Facebook custom audiences, and hit them up with emails afterwards.

Spreading the surface area enhances lead nurturing efforts and allows prospects plenty of avenues to communicate back.

The caveat being that a marketer shouldn’t go overboard or it can oversaturate the prospect.

Converting Social Profiles Into Funnels

Once a prospect becomes interested in what a brand has to offer, there’s a high possibility that they’ll end up on the seller’s profile.

Now the time that they spend on the profile is absolutely critical to converting.

They can either be motivated to continue their interest in the brand or be turned off by the lack of information and appeal.

This makes profile optimization absolutely critical, especially on platforms such as LinkedIn where social selling is the norm.

Now discussing profile optimization varies from one platform to the next, but here’s a quick list of what marketers have to keep in mind:

  • Header images and photos have to be utilized like banner ads to take advantage of visual real estate
  • “About” information has to contain marketing copy, contact information, relevant keywords, and CTAs for maximum conversion
  • Social proof has to exist in the form of engagements from other people – on LinkedIn for instance, people can get recommendations for their work making this process easier

A social profile is a landing page and it should be treated as such.

Social selling is a great addition to any marketing strategy because it doesn’t require a lot of resources to start. It’s cost-effective, easy to deploy, and measurable.

In the new normal, it’s one of the best ways forward to bring in growth to your business.

How-To-Sell-Niche-B2B-Products-with-Content-Marketing

How To Sell Niche B2B Products with Content Marketing

B2B content marketing comes with a host of challenges. The niche technology, long buying cycles, and lack of low-competition, high-volume keywords can make it hard to gain traction. And yet, there are plenty of B2B teams using content to build revenue and strengthen their sales cycles, showing that content marketing can pay dividends for B2B companies.

In this post, we take a deep dive into proven strategies and tactics for creating a successful B2B content marketing campaign, and we’ll cover examples of companies that have successfully applied these methods.

Crucially, B2B content marketing may work with a strong focus on organic traffic generation through blog posts. Organic search is the lifeblood of B2B content marketing. By providing quality content, you can establish your company as a reliable and trustworthy resource. B2B content marketing plays the long game: When your company consistently comes up in searches and provides valuable solutions, people may eventually want to work with you.

Movement-First content to garner attention

One main goal of B2B content is to build credibility with key decision-makers. Movement-first content—thought-leadership—is a great way to get the attention of industry leaders.

Have fun and be creative. Movement first content is where you get to take contrarian perspectives, coin your own keywords, and define your own trends. The goal is to make it known that there is a better way to operate, and you are going to use your expertise to show others the way.

Thought-leadership content also humanizes the company. These pieces generally lean on personal experience and anecdotes, and they can be a perfect way to showcase yourself as a thoughtful and relatable person. Doing so can be a huge boon for hiring.

Nowadays, people don’t just want a paycheck; they also want to work for interesting companies that stand for something. Movement-first content can help you attract top talent and build your brand recognition.

Gated content to generate leads

Gated content—eBooks, downloadable templates, white papers—feeds the B2B sales funnel by capturing leads. Some folks have even started to create gated video content, and they are seeing tremendous results.

Gated content is a great way to identify individual customers’ specific pain points and define your future relationship with them based on that information. By tracking the open rates of the gated content and reaching out to engaged users with an email drip, the sales team can identify hot leads and open a more direct sales process.

Partner with Industry Publications to Reach Relevant Audiences

Top B2B content marketers are always thinking of ways to reach relevant audiences without relying solely on search traffic. One way to reach interested audiences is to target established, industry-accepted channels for distribution. Find out where industry decision-makers go for their information and then build relationships with those distributors.

B2B distribution channels could include the following:

  • Industry publications per sector
  • Industry platforms
  • Niche forums or threads

Don’t underestimate Organic Traffic

While product-focused or innovation-focused keywords may be little searched, related keywords focusing on problems and pain points may still be available for your brand. Often, content marketing is about focusing on the long tail—put in the work now, and it can pay dividends down the road.

Webinars

Webinars are online events or presentations held live on the Internet. They allow organizers to interact remotely with their audience via video. Webinars have extremely high conversion rates and are considered the best content format to drive qualified leads. An average of two to five percent of attendees will commit to purchase during a webinar while between 20 and 40 percent of attendees become leads. 

Research Reports

Research reports are aggregate data and summaries gathered from surveys, market research, market analysis, and qualitative research. It is usually used in STEM and big data-related industries. Research reports help to synthesize a wide array of data into actionable insights and conclusions.

Conclusion

There are thousands of B2B industries that seem too complex or too niche for content marketing. In reality, content can still be used to generate leads and customers—it just requires a different strategy to create and distribute content in the right way.