7 Warning Signs Your Business Needs to Hire a Lead Generation Company

7 Warning Signs Your Business Needs to Hire a Lead Generation Company

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Lead generation can get stressful, and at times, a company has to eventually throw in the towel.

This doesn’t mean that the battle is over; there are a lot of lead generation agencies that can actually save a company a lot of time and resources, and provide better leads to grow revenue.

How do you know when it’s time to give your lead generation activities to an agency?

We’ll show you how.

There is a Surge in Low-Quality Leads

Almost all business needs leads to survive, but there is a difference between just anyone’s email address and a qualified lead.

Qualified leads are prospects that have the propensity to buy from your enterprise.

These are people with the need for your products or services, have the money to buy, and are your ideal customers.

The great thing about qualified leads is that they save you the time and energy from going through people that don’t or can’t even purchase from you.

If you’ve found that you’ve just been sifting through a long list of people who can’t even use your products or services, then you probably need to turn over your lead generation to an agency.

You’re Not Getting Enough Leads

If you feel like your business is slowing down, then take a look at the number of leads that are coming through. If you’ve done your market research and you know that the numbers aren’t adding up, then it’s time to take a look at how many leads you’re supposed to be getting in a month.

There is always a reason for a low number of leads, and sometimes it’s enough reason for you to source out lead generation to an expert service.

Lead Generation is Costing Too Much Money

In-house lead generation can get expensive.

You need to hire the right people, have the correct data sets, and have all the tools ready to sift through the data that you are producing.

The great thing about lead generation agencies is their ability to do things in scale, making it cheaper for them to handle multiple lead generation accounts using expensive software and lead generation professionals.

If too much money is being spent on in-house lead generation and you are just not getting the results you need, think about outsourcing it to a lead generation agency. You’ll find that your cost-to-lead ratio will be significantly lower than running it from your own company.

Your Industry is a Niche

Niche industries require specialist marketing and lead generation efforts to keep a steady stream of potential clients coming in. It’s hard to build specialist lead generation teams in-house from scratch in industries such as these.

Your marketing team can handle lead nurturing and customer profiling, but there’s a higher possibility that a lead generation agency will be able to provide better insight into the situation that you have.

Your Company is New

If you have a new company, then chances are your finances will always be stretched for the interim and that you’re still onboarding staff members and new technologies.

Adding lead generation to the mix won’t do you any good since it involves complex systems and other special frameworks to be in place.

If you have a new company, then it’s time that you consider outsourcing your lead generation efforts to an agency. It frees up your time looking for a client and allows you to concentrate on your core competencies.

Your Sales and Marketing Team is Being Stretched Too Far

Sales and marketing teams cannot be pushed too far, or else you’ll end up with less than average work and exhausted staff members. If your company seems like it’s pushing its teams too far, then there is a need for you to outsource lead generation efforts.

You can’t add extra responsibilities to a team that’s already showing signs of maximum capacity.

You Haven’t Had a New Client in a Long Time

Different products have different product sales cycles, but even products with long sales cycles have a steady stream of clients coming in.

One of the best signs that you need to hand over your lead generation to an agency is if you haven’t had any new clients in awhile.

Although some might argue that this could be a sign of a business’ decline, this could also mean that you have less than optimal performance as per your marketing lead generation efforts.

Sometimes, the signs that you need to hand over your lead generation are really subtle, a sudden dip in new orders or your marketing head feeling a little more overwhelmed than usual.

It’s vital that you act when you notice these little signs to ensure that your company maintains its rhythm for growth.

CRM-Data-Cleanup_-Update,-Validate-and-Enrich-your-Contact-Database

CRM Data Cleanup: Update, Validate and Enrich Your Contact Database

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CRM Data cleanup is a tedious task, but it has to be done to keep your funnel going or else you’re going to end up with no new leads, a database full of stale contacts, and missing out on new vital information on your existing customers.

You want to stay on top of it in order to be able to constantly improve and expand your list of leads. So, we have compiled a list of simple tips on how you can do so. 

Updating and Cleaning

Regular updating of your contact database is a must to retain and add relevant information about your customers. However, if you’ve already accumulated a large database, the hardest part is always how and where to begin the updating process, especially with the ones that have become cold contacts or haven’t reached out to you for any services again. So, here are some tips that will help you in updating your contacts.

Don’t forget that Google is your best friend. The first instinct with an existing contact is to just simply call them and follow-up, right? Yes, but before you place that call, make sure that you visit their website first and check out if important information such as their phone number, address, and even the team members are still the same and displayed on the site. Look out for any announcements they may have made in their blog posts, etc. Once you’ve collated enough updated information, then go ahead and ring them up. The company will highly appreciate the fact that you’re up-to-date with them. 

Call Cycling

Elaborating on the vein of calling your contacts, this should also be something that should be done regularly, and that includes all your contacts and not just your favorite ones that also constantly keep in touch with you. Avoid any of your contacts to go cold and distant as that will only make it harder to pick up where you left off with them in the future. If you have some trickier customers, it’s best to make scheduled calls with them at least every six months.

LinkedIn

Just like trusty Google, LinkedIn is also definitely the social media site to turn to aside from their official websites. Since it’s a social media platform for professionals, you will find more information on their LinkedIn profiles such as the kind of team they’re part of, what their office culture is like, current projects they might be working on, behind-the-scenes information, and the list goes on. 

Another advantage of following them on LinkedIn is that you can find out who your contacts directly report to which gives you insight as to who the main decision-maker or key influencer is in the company the next time you reach out to promote your service and/or product.

Overall, make it a priority to connect with your contacts and follow them on LinkedIn so that you stay updated, connected, and build a lasting business relationship with them. 

Email Marketing

The emails that you send through your CRM can supply you with valuable feedback For every campaign that you conduct, it will give you a report on its success which is especially helpful because that way you will know whether your prospects opened the email you sent them or not and also if they opened the attachments inside of it. Another neat thing about CRM is it also tells you which contacts are still active and which ones are not via their bounce report. Once an email bounces back, you instantly know that you have to check through your records to make sure the company is still active or where they may have moved, and from there on you can start forming a new contact at the existing company. 

Expanding

Gaining more customers is something many businesses struggle with. It takes a big strain on time and money to effectively do it. So, if you’re struggling with expanding your database, here are some tips on how to do it on a budget:

Strategic Network

Your plans should always be goal-oriented. That means that you take time to hang out where your customers and prospects usually are whether that may be in person or online. If you want better results, we suggest you do both. This is a very personal approach that serves three main purposes: staying up to date with the latest industry trends, gaining access to people who may be interested in your products and services, and most importantly personal connection. 

Strategic Alliances

Look out for businesses that offer complementary products or services that you could grow your contact reach instantly. Many small-business owners can’t manage to do everything on their own (and it isn’t ideal to do so either), so having a strategic business partner allows you to work together in a more efficient manner and with shared resources.

Referrals

This simple tactic never fails, but it’s also easily the most overlooked one. The key to ask for referrals is the perfect timing, and usually, the perfect time to ask for referrals is after a sale,  receiving good reviews and feedback pertaining to your products and services, and while being in correspondence with your customers and/or prospects.

Regularly create and send out newsletters so as to stay in touch with your current customers and if they enjoy your content and find the information interesting and relevant, they won’t hesitate to share that with others as well. 

Follow-up

If you slack in following-up your leads, they will eventually become stale, and you don’t want that to happen. 

So, the next time when you go to a networking event, try to strike up conversations with new people and when you exchange business cards, write down some details on the back so you can use that information when you do your follow-up.

When calling a referral or a person you met during the networking event, instead of interacting according to a script. Do your research on the people you are going to contact beforehand and just have a bullet point list of the things you want to refer to during the conversation.

And there you have it! We hope that you found these suggestions, albeit simple ones, helpful when you’re due for another contact record updating. Should you have any questions or want to share some of your own tips, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Qualities to Look For in a Lead Generation Company in Australia

Qualities to Look For in a Lead Generation Company in Australia

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Choosing a good B2B lead generation company in Australia can definitely help your company supercharge its growth. But, with so many promising great results, how do you go about choosing the best lead generation company for your needs?

In this definitive guide, we take a look at the factors that you need to consider before picking out a lead generation company.

What’s The Action Plan?

The action plan determines the direction that the lead generation company wants to take, but it has to coincide with your organization’s goals as well.

Ask the lead generation companies that you have on your shortlist what their action plan is for generating the leads that you need. They might not be able to provide you with an exhaustive one, but they should be able to outline the strategies that they wish to take.

Start comparing these different plans and start asking questions; in this way, you’ll find out more about the companies that you have in mind. In a way, it’s how you can spark a discussion with your provider.

Channels

There are several lead generation channels:

  • PPC – refers to pay per click advertising; this is a method of using internet ads to get people to land on a website promoting your goods and services.
  • Organic Leads from SEO – optimizing your web properties to rank higher in search engines so that your results come up first for specific keywords being searched.
  • Social media – using social media platforms to generate leads, think LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. organic and paid campaigns to get a user to contact your company.
  • Phone – this could involve sales discovery, telemarketing, and appointment setting. A practical method because it allows a human to connect with a potential prospect.
  • Email – uses email outreach techniques to generate leads for a company.

Each lead generation company will have its method in deploying these channels, and their use is also dependent on the specific needs that you have. Furthermore, some companies will be better on some channels than others, so it’s useful to take note of that.

Find out what channels your lead generation company wants to use for your organization and how they will go about deploying campaigns to produce leads for you.

You can also request for a mixed method of getting leads; this allows variation in your campaign and increases your exposure to markets.

Lead Qualification and Verification

A large number of leads might appear to be great for any team, but if these leads aren’t qualified, they’re not worth much to your organization. This is why there is an emphasis on the lead qualification and verification method. You have to ask your lead generation company how they are looking to qualify leads for you and what their verification system is.

Technology Used

Lead generation technology has gone a long way, and it’s essential that you find out how the company goes about its lead generation.

Check out how they go about their verification system and what analytics platform they use.

If you are generating leads via social media and landing pages, find out what they use to go about this process.

At the very least, you should find out about what kind of information they will be delivering and if it’s compatible with your CRM. This allows for a smoother transfer of data.

Experience With Your Industry

Lead generation companies that have experience with your industry offer a significant advantage over those that don’t because it is most likely that they can execute more efficiently. They know what works and what doesn’t, and they have already built the necessary systems in place.

Analytics and Reporting

Ask your lead generation company how they wish to go about reporting. It could be on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, but the smaller the increments, the better.

Some lead generation companies also offer their clients with a dashboard to monitor the current work that is being done.

Expectations

Make sure that you know what you’re expecting from the lead generation company that you’re considering. There should be clearly stated goals with specific targets at particular periods.

However, it goes a step further.

They should also tell you what happens if these goals aren’t achieved and what their limitations are.

Communicate your organization’s goals as well so that both parties are clear about their obligations with each other.

A lead generation company can save you a lot of time and effort in getting leads for your organization. You get to take advantage of their specialization and concentrate on what you do best.

Picking out a lead generation company in Australia can be a daunting process, but if you follow our guide, it will be easier to choose wisely and kick start your company’s growth!

Lead Generation Campaign KPIs You Should Be Watching

Lead Generation Campaign KPIs You Should Be Watching

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“If your campaign generated multiple leads, does that automatically make it successful?”

This is a question that a lot of marketers often ask because, in lead generation, there are different parameters for success.

In this short brief, we will show you the proper way of assessing if you’ve hit your KPIs when it comes to lead generation. We will also tell you why it’s essential to measure your lead gen campaign’s success rate.

Conversion Rate

Arguably, your conversion rate is the most important metric because it signifies how many leads have made it to the next stage of your sales pipeline. This is a traditionally a website conversion metric but applies to your sales pipeline.

Take, for example, the number of your leads that you reach and how many make it to the next stage of the cycle. It shows you how successful a specific channel of a campaign is.

Leads to Qualified Leads

Generating leads is easy, but if they are not qualified to buy, then they won’t convert, making them unusable leads to begin with. One way of measuring your lead generation’s success is the quality of leads that you are getting.

It is alright to have a couple of leads that are not qualified to buy, but if a significant number of your leads can’t convert due to their qualifications, then it’s a waste of resources.

The average number of qualified leads should be at the fifty percent mark, and it is lower then the lead generation strategy should be reconsidered or restructured. This is where techniques in B2B such as account-based marketing come into play because they allow for a more targeted approach to lead acquisition.

This is an efficiency ratio; the more efficient you are at getting qualified leads, the more successful the campaign.

Time to Conversion

This particular metric is not only crucial for a product with a longer sales cycle but for everything else, too. For products with longer sales cycles, it measures if a current campaign is still within the benchmarks of a sale. For the latter, it allows you to check for possible pain points, and distractions that could be arising during that makes the sales process longer.

By analyzing the time it takes to convert, you can check on factors to make the sale more accessible to your potential buyers. Reduced time to conversion means that your buyers are less distracted during the sales process and that they are more compelled to buy.

CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

Your CTR is used to analyze how effective your web properties are doing with their call-to-action (CTA) placements. By being able to examine this metric, you can check if your ad copy is working or if you should change out some elements to optimize your conversion rate.

This is a measure of the effectiveness of your digital lead generation strategy. The higher the CTR, the better the ad copy and the elements are in drawing out a conversion.

ROI (Return on Investment) & Cost Per Lead

A campaign is not one-sided, and it will ultimately mean a combination of multiple channels of lead nurturing to garner a sale. Think about telemarketing combined with Facebook retargeting with some LinkedIn work thrown in between. All of these factors will cost effort and fiscal resources, so being able to divide how many leads you got from a multifaceted campaign will determine your ROI.

Another important metric here is your cost per lead. Once you’ve tallied up the leads you’ve gotten from a campaign, you have to divide how much you spent on that number. This allows you to have a more strategic view of success.

Looking for your Explainer Variable

Some of these methods are arguably subjective and won’t paint an accurate picture if taken individually, and this is the reason why you have to look for your explainer variable.

How about if you have the same ROI, but your time to conversion is reduced?

 There has to be something that explains this phenomenon. It could be that your information dissemination campaign is more precise or it could have been that your telemarketing division has been more diligent.

Determining Scalability

Success in lead generation is not just how many people you’ve converted or a higher ROI, but it is also the continuous effort in pushing for the scalability of your efforts. By looking for more efficient ways of handling your lead generation and singling out your explainer variables, you can quickly scale your business model.

Scalability and the potential for growth is a better determinant of lead generation success because you can’t have a stagnant process.

The only surefire way for you to be able to generate more leads is to examine what you are doing today and adapt to the current trends. Remember the lack of a feedback system means the absence of a system that allows you to get better. In lead generation and lead nurturing, you are not permitted to second-best.

Is your feedback system ready to face the challenges of the future?

8 Winning Lead Generation Ideas That Will Help You Crush Q1

8 Winning Lead Generation Ideas That Will Help You Crush Q1

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A constant stream of leads is the answer to a company’s growth.

The first quarter of 2020 is an excellent time for your company to start on the right foot when it comes to lead generation.

Let’s take a look at eight hot new lead generation ideas as we usher in the first quarter of 2020.

  1. Video
  2. LinkedIn Marketing
  3. Warm up old leads
  4. Email Marketing
  5. Remarketing
  6. Influencer Marketing
  7. Repurpose and Update Old Content
  8. Automate

Video

What was once thought of as a way to nurture and sway B2C prospects has now been making waves even in B2B.

In the new decade, videos are the way to go.

Video is technically a type of long-form content that is easier to consume, and people can’t get enough of them.

You can make tutorial videos, explainer videos, hold webinar type videos, and even post your press releases in the form of videos. It makes for a great type of engaging content.

LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn is the social media platform of choice for professionals. It currently has more than 300 million active users making it the most widely used professional social network.

If you want to elevate your organization’s potential for lead generation, then you have to start thinking of using LinkedIn as a distribution channel.

The LinkedIn platform allows you to:

  • Conduct outbound marketing
  • Try social selling
  • Connect with thousands of influencers.

The first quarter is an excellent time to start building better LinkedIn profiles and establishing authority on the platform. During this time, you could also begin reaching out to your connections to ask for referrals.

Start working on these referrals using social selling!

Warm Up Old Leads

The beginning of the year is a good time to start warming up old leads from the year before.

There are several ways to jumpstart cold leads. You could offer a special sale or discount, try to schedule a sales discovery call, or you could just simply check up on them and make them feel that you’re still around.

A lot of companies will also be entering their new fiscal year. This means prospects who were hampered by budgets may now consider your product again.

Email Campaigns

Email is still going to be robust and relevant this 2020.

As the year begins, it’s time to send your current customers your plans for the year and paint the vision that you have.

You can start with an update about the company in 2019 and how the organization intends to build on prior achievements. This email can also include special offers and discounts for subscription renewals at the beginning of the year.

Remarketing

Did you know that it costs more money to sell to new prospects than it takes to sell to sell to your clientele?

The first quarter is a good opportunity to offer special discounts on upsells and cross-sells to your current customers. You can bank on their previous experience with your product to bring them into the other offerings in your portfolio.

You can include some remarketing in your email campaigns this year, just make sure you take advantage of the customer personas you’ve already established to sell the right segment the right product.

Take Advantage of Influencers

Whether you are in B2B or B2C, influencers have made their mark, and harnessing their power should start being a mainstay of nay of your lead generation campaigns.

Start seeking influencers and thought leaders that can get behind your product as early as now. They provide a lot of social proof, and the authority that they have can just give your product the push it needs to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Repurpose and Update Old Content

Content creation can be taxing, but there are a lot of ways to generate new content without having to spend a lot of resources. As an organization kicks off the New Year, it’s probably fine time that old content is updated and repurposed.

Updating old content allows you to take advantage of popular pieces of content and give them a new twist. It could be as simple as updating a list of the “best products of 2019” to 2020. This takes a shorter time to deploy than creating something from scratch.

Great content is always good for inbound marketing, and the first quarter is a great time to release updates from last year’s content calendar.

Start Automating

Marketing automation is the future, and if your organization still hasn’t started automating a part of its process, you are missing out.

There are a lot of things you can automate from your lead nurturing methods to the various touchpoints in the company.

Marketing automation saves countless hours of manpower on menial tasks, it saves money, and it minimizes mistakes. It frees up time for your sales and marketing team to start getting creative.

It allows you to start running campaigns on autopilot.

The New Year is a chance for your company to take its lead generation to the next level. Take advantage of the latest trends in inbound and outbound marketing, and make sure you’re armed for growth with marketing automation.

5 Examples of Brilliant Personalisation from your Favourite Brands

5 Examples of Brilliant Personalisation from your Favourite Brands

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Marketing personalisation is one of the most powerful things that any brand can do to achieve actionable results.

It can single-handedly lead to more interactions from prospects and communicate that a brand truly cares.

Today we explore several ways famous brands have harnessed marketing personalisation to take their business to the next level.

Coca-Cola

Share-a-coke campaign bottles

Coca-Cola is already a largely recognized brand, but it does have its setbacks when it comes to keeping market share, regardless of its size.

However, all of this changed when they saw their sales go up for the first time in a decade with their “Share a Coke” campaign.

They wanted to reach out to a new generation of coke drinkers – millennial – and by merely printing batches of bottles with the most popular first names of their age, they were able to cause enough disruption.

This goes to show the power of using a person’s name when addressing your customer. It shows the best elements of marketing: creativity, personalisation, and even timing.

EasyJet

Easyjet plane taking off

The world of low-cost, budget airlines is a competitive one, and competition usually brings out creativity. This is why EasyJet, in its 20th anniversary, decided to connect with people in the most personal way that they can.

They decided to utilize the travel history of each of the passengers that they’ve had to create stories of their interactions with the airline. This resulted in a campaign where marketing automation met creativity. They used 28 data points and sent millions of unique emails.

What did they get out of this?

The CTR rate was 25 percent higher.

They won the game of metrics while winning the hearts of their passengers.

Amazon

Screenshot of Amazon recommendations

Amazon says on its site directory that it’s got “earth’s biggest selection and with it surpassing Walmart as the world’s largest retailer this year, everyone knows they mean business.

However, did you know that many people agree that one of the reasons its revenue continue to grow is through the use of its recommendation algorithm?

In fact, the conversion rate could be as high as 60 percent.

The algorithm is so sharp that it can harness your likes and dislikes based on your behaviour on their site, and provide recommendations to their customers. You can get them on the site, and they’ll even send you an email encouraging you to buy.

This recommendation system is based on looking for things that customers like and putting these items in front of them. This is one of the most potent methods of personalisation that have launched Amazon to the forefront of retail.

There’s more.

It’s not just Amazon that’s leading the way when it comes to personalisation. Almost every sizeable online company is trying to analyze the behaviour of its users in order to create personalised content for them.

Facebook

Facebook friendship history

While it is true that just like Amazon, Facebook utilizes your behaviour data and launches its own recommendations on what you are going to see on their platform, they still get creative with it.

Facebook’s friendship history videos remind us of the EasyJet campaign; they are all generated from your data, and the company’s algorithms quickly create them.

We might take it for granted, but how many times have we seen a friendship history video just this week alone?

Spotify (and Grammarly)

Screenshot of Spotify custom playlists

Spotify sends out an email detailing listening habits, and these statistics help them connect with their users because who isn’t interested in what song they’ve inadvertently stuck on loop all year.

However, Spotify took it a step further and started creating custom playlists for people based on their music tastes and their preferences.

The result is that customers get to connect with the brand on a more personal level due to this, and it makes for a more customized feel with the application.

However, it isn’t just Spotify who sends emails with statistics, Grammarly is another excellent example.

The people over at Grammarly send you statistics such as how much you fare compared to other people in the world and how many words you’ve written in the entire week.

To come to think of it, people do not even need these statistics, but they’re great because they pique curiosity and increase a company’s CTR.

Say you’re using a free account on Grammarly, and it sends you its statistics on your writing habits; this allows them to tell you about their premium option in the email.

There are a lot of ways that companies are getting the message that personalisation is the way to go, and there are a lot of brilliant examples that support this message. As markets progress into more developed ones, competition is going to start getting stiff. 

Stand out by automating your campaigns utilizing proper personalisation and start yielding real actionable results today.

5 Benefits of B2B Appointment Setting

5 Benefits of B2B Appointment Setting

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Getting appointments is one of the critical goals of B2B lead generation.

Securing meetings means that a marketer has one foot through the door, and all it takes is just a little push from sales to getting the deal sealed.

In this article, we explore the many benefits of B2B appointment setting and why any B2B organization should do it!

Resource Efficient

Every marketer knows that lead generation and nurturing are expensive.

It costs money to acquire new customers, train specialist staff, and to run campaigns. A full-force lead generation campaign can run into the thousands of dollars, and sometimes you won’t even get the results that you need.

The manpower required to launch labor-intensive lead generation operations is also high compared to appointment setting.

By outsourcing B2B appointment setting campaigns, an organization can be more efficient when it comes to both financial and human resources. They can take advantage of the specialization that B2B appointment setting services have, and they do not have to spend as much on training new people to set appointments for them.

Here’s what.

Smaller organizations benefit the most from this; they do not have the money to spend on training new people, nor can they hire a large number of specialist staff immediately.

However, even larger companies can benefit from downsizing their appointment setting operations. They can increase specialization and decrease the amount of money it takes to maintain an appointment setting team.

Helps Develop Your Brand Image

Your brand image is what defines your image to your stakeholders and customers. It correlates with your corporate culture, and it helps with your marketing.

By being able to define your image as a company that sits down and connects with its clients, you come off as an organization that is personal with the connections that they make. From the get-go, you emphasize strong customer service traits and the ability to connect with the people that you deal with.

When you cultivate this manner of dealing with your prospects, you improve your organization’s image, and you appear approachable to others.

This goes a long way in improving your branding.

Companies that are personal when it comes to their clients are held in higher regard. They are seen as an organization with a personal approach to handling things.

Increases Revenue

Appointment setting is an effective way to market the goods and services that you have to your prospects. It allows you to showcase your portfolio correctly, and the humanistic aspect of having a meeting is always preferred compared to sending a marketing email.

Personalized campaigns are the most effective in lead generation, and you can’t get any more personal and relational than appointment setting. It allows you to customize your approach to each prospect since a real person is conducting the meeting.

More clients translate to more revenue. Having a dedicated appointment setting team allows your company to scale further.

It Saves Time

Outsourcing your B2B appointment setting campaign will allow you to save a lot of time. You won’t need to train a lead qualification team, and you don’t need to spend time warming them up to their tasks.

This time saving can be translated into time that can be spent developing parts of your organization that you specialize in. For example, you could establish the closers that you will be sending out to these client meetings.

Time is one of the most valuable currencies that an organization has. By allowing specialists to handle your appointment setting, you can use this time to develop other areas of your business and specialize even further.

Keeps the Pipeline Running

B2B sales require that your pipeline is always churning up new leads and nurturing them into completion. B2B appointment setting allows a constant stream of leads to keep coming in and maintain the flow of business.

Your sales team will always have new leads to follow, and new leads nurture and guide through the pipeline. This does not only result in better revenue for your company, but it also helps in the aspect of morale because there’s always exciting work for them to pursue.

B2B appointment setting is excellent at avoiding dead times in the business cycle that could cause your sales team to experience boredom and lose their sales momentum. Maintaining rhythm and energy is vital in highly interpersonal departments such as sales.

Outsourcing your appointment setting and lead generation is one of the best things that you can do for your business. It allows your team to specialize in closing and the other areas that they are good in. It’s one of the best ways to be efficient, not only with time but also with financial resources.

7 Secrets to Reviving Lost Leads

7 Secrets to Reviving Lost Leads

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You might have created different lead generation strategies over the years and have greatly benefited from them. However, even the most amazing strategies have failures and behind its wake are hundreds of lost or dead leads — those leads who didn’t convert. These dead leads are usually stored in a forgotten folder and left gathering digital dust. 

Marketers don’t care about them anymore. Well, these people already said no, why should you care what happened to them, right? 

What if we tell you that you can also recycle your lost leads. You can even bring dead leads back to life! 

It’s okay if you feel skeptical about it at the beginning, but you won’t lose anything if you re-engage your leads. In fact, you can gain something from it. 

It doesn’t need a mind-boggling miracle to do that, but putting on some extra work and using the best practices in lead generation. 

How to Reconnect with Lost Leads

Before you start re-engaging your lost or dead leads, you need to find out first why you lost them before. Some of the reasons could be: 

  • Losing them to a competitor
  • No budget at that time you talked to them
  • Product lacks the features they need
  • Poor customer service

All of these obstacles can be countered using the following strategies:

Track changes

According to Verloop, companies lose 30 percent of their leads every year because they have also lost track of them. Some of the reasons might be because the leads had changed their email address or phone number. Another is they might have changed their jobs and moved to bigger opportunities.

If this happens, it might look impossible to make a sale because your lead is in a new company. You can use it to your advantage by reconnecting to them. You’ll never know if they need your product or service where they are at right now.

Educate your leads

Use your website to educate your leads; however, avoid doing that with an FAQ. Your website should be like a sales rep — filled with information that engages and educates them, and you cannot do that with an FAQ. According to OptinMonster, 81 percent of companies increased their sales using videos while live chat increases conversion rates by 30 percent. 

Focus on the ROI

Here’s the reality — businesses want the latest technology but they end up scrapping the idea because they either have no budget to purchase it or they cannot see an equitable ROI for the technology. 

To overcome these types of excuses, highlight the ROI your company can provide instead of the price of your product or service. Make sure to include testimonials, case studies, and relevant examples from previous clients. You can also use conceptual pieces that highlight the greater benefit you provide, such as total cost of ownership or reduced downtime. 

For example, if your product costs $1,200 but your prospect only has a $1000 budget, they are likely to buy from a competition that offers a lower price. But if you show them how they can double their revenue by investing in your product, you’ll be able to convince them to reconsider their decision. 

Nurture

 When you lost your leads to a competitor, you can turn these losses into opportunities by creating a nurturing program for them. Start by asking your leads what made them choose the competition. Through that, you’ll be able to get an insight into what your competition is doing, what they’re offering, their strengths and weaknesses, and other important data.

After that, enroll your leads to a nurturing program where they have access to your latest product offerings, special discounts, valuable content, and so much more. 

Create a road map

A road map keeps you and your team on the same page. It also helps you align your business goals and your product design. With all the information in one place, you and your team can clearly see what product features need to be changed or removed. 

Give incentives

Once you have your leads’ attention, you don’t want to lose them again. Keep them engaged and interested by giving them incentives, like free add-ons, extended warranties, or discounted packages when they buy your product within a certain period of time. 

Get feedback

Feedback is necessary for the growth of your company. An effect and non-invasive way to get feedback is through surveys. It is also an effective way of re-engaging lost or dead leads as well as find out the problems they encountered when engaging with your brand for the first time.

Lead Generation Tips for Top Industries in Australia

Lead Generation Tips for Top Industries in Australia

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Constant lead generation is a must for any company, but sometimes it can be daunting for any marketer or sales team.

However, there are a lot of things that one can do to make the process easier, no matter what industry they are in.

From B2B healthcare services to financial lead generation, here are a few tips that can make any lead generation effort much more efficient in producing better results.

Retargeted Ads for People Who Visit Your Website

Did you know that if you retarget your website visitors with display ads, they are more likely to convert to whatever you are promoting at a rate of 70 percent? This is a statistic worth looking at.

Once someone visits your website, it shows you that they are curious about your product or service. A retargeted display ad allows you to reach your prospect again, nurture them, or remind them of your product.

Retargeted display advertising is applicable in almost every industry, and it works great for sending lead nurturing messages to prospective customers.

Creating Content for Non-Technical Members of DMUs

This tip works well for technical industries, such as handling tech leads. It works by the principle that not everyone in the decision-making unit (DMU) is a technician and that you need to simplify some processes.

Take, for example selling complicated cloud solutions. Even if the hallmark of your product is some sort of revolutionary technological breakthrough, you won’t be able to sell it if only your prospect’s IT guys understand it.

You need to create content for everyone in a decision-making unit to understand. Talk about your solutions to the non-technical team, get into the details with their IT, it’s all about being able to inform everyone about the benefits your solution regardless of their position.

Advertise on Facebook

Digital ad spending can get expensive, but if you were to choose a medium, Facebook might be the right choice because almost everyone is on it. There are different ways to utilize Facebook to promote your product.

One of the best ways to use Facebook is to build a custom audience. You can upload a list of emails from a specific customer list and show these select people ads. It’s pretty nifty if you want to retarget a particular group of people.

You can even build on this list by allowing Facebook to make you a lookalike audience based on the email list that you’ve uploaded. In this way, you can have access to more people than you can reach.

Creating Premium Content to Give Away

Whitepapers and case studies are still the best way to establish yourself as an industry leader. If an organization puts in the effort to research their prospects for free, it shows that they are knowledge leaders who are confident in their position.

Creating premium content is not only limited to technical papers. You can create interactive content that resonates with a lot of people in the industries that you are targeting. You can always craft innovative ways of presenting your products and services using technology such as AR and VR.

Video tutorials are great for distributing content for different types of roles and for strengthening the brand image as an information leader.

The Length of the Sale and the Follow-Ups

In industries such as B2B healthcare, the length of the sale usually takes long. This is because of the cyclical nature of their budgets. However, this should not be an excuse not to follow up regularly.

A lot of sales are lost due to poor follow up processes, and a lot of leads become cold because companies fail to remind their prospects about their presence.

High growth organizations report about 16 touchpoints per prospect, putting into perspective how significant following up is.

You need automated marketing that sends follow-ups regularly to make sure that you don’t forget to do so.

Account-Based Marketing is Still the Way to Go

ABM is one of the most powerful methods of lead generation that you can engage in because it allows you to create personalized approaches for different buyer personas.

By customizing the approach, you get to connect with the prospect properly and you get to be personal with them.

ABM is also great for people with limited resources because it utilizes your efforts efficiently. 

Proper appointment setting and lead generation in Australia is achievable, no matter what industry it involves. It’s essential to have the proper systems in place and to be persistent and regular in lead generation efforts.

Procuring leads on a regular basis for B2B companies is one of the most crucial parts of the sales process because it ensures that there is a constant stream of clients coming in.

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5 Reasons Why Prospects Choose Your Competition

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We get your frustration. You have the best product and customer service, but yet your prospects are still picking your competition.

Is it something that you’re doing wrong?

The fact of the matter is, it could be.

In this brief, we take a look at the possible reasons why your potential customers are purchasing from your competitors instead of you. And, we’ll even give you tips on how to move them over to your side!

Your Competitors Provide More Affordable Solutions

 Price remains to be one of the most important considerations that a potential buyer will have when it comes to choosing different solutions. Sometimes your organization will have the edge when it comes to technology, but if the price isn’t right, it could become a barrier to a sale.

The way to go about this is to be able to price competitively.

However, what happens when the price that they’re demanding is just something you won’t be able to afford?

Then, maybe it’s time to create different versions of your packages with limited and extended features to take advantage of different markets that you have. Remember, by being able to fix up your packages; you can make adequately target different market segments.

You Take Too Long to Answer

Here’s something that happens from time-to-time, say a prospect posts a question to you or the sales team and you take too long to respond, as the prospect is waiting for the appropriate response they’re probably already transacting with another provider with faster service.

If another provider can provide solutions to the questions that the prospects’ needs, there is a higher probability that they will go after that provider.

Organizations should be able to provide swift responses to inquiries to provide information. The faster you can provide the information before your competitors, the better your positioning.

This includes being able to have auto messaging functions integrated within your websites, a proper follow-up system for marketing, and dedicated people on hand to answer questions.

They Are Unaware of Your Product

If people don’t know your product exists, then they won’t be able to buy it. 

Now there are a lot of things that you can – and should be doing to maximize your product’s exposure. This includes (but is not limited to):

  • Social media marketing
  • Search engine optimization for your website
  • Event marketing
  • Cross promotional campaigns
  • Guest blogging
  • Advertising
  • Industry partnerships
  • The use of influencers

 Now if you find that people don’t know about your brand, it could be that you’re missing out on a couple of these methods of exposure.

You need to be able to present wherever your competitors are and focus on winning people over not only on the sole basis of quality but also on the added-value that you give them for switching over to your side.

They Are Unaware of Your Product’s Other Features

You might have upgraded the capabilities of your product or service, but if you are unable to communicate these changes to old prospects or new leads, you won’t be able to go far if they are unaware of the new features that they need.

This is especially true if you are known to have a product that hasn’t changed much or if people don’t know that you have updated to a must-have feature that is now present in services that they use daily.

You need to be able to communicate what you offer well. Communicating new features of your product should be treated in the same way as it would be if you were launching something new.

Your Competitors Have Better Customer Service

 One way to step ahead of the competition is to offer excellent customer service. Everyone is expected to provide a good quality product and conventional systems fo delivering their products and services, but sometimes all you need is an excellent human connection, and that lies within your customer service.

Customer service can make or break a company, and more often than not, you can boost your company’s revenue by just investing in excellent customer service.

Remember, the customer is always right, and you need to make sure that they experience the best from your company to win them over. Excellent customer service is something that a lot of people crave because good products are a dime a dozen, but excellent service is rare.

Good customer service is one of the fastest ways that you can improve your offering and lineup without even having to touch your product itself.

By being able to understand your competition, you may be able to strategize your offerings for maximum growth and scalability.

The great thing about markets is that they are dynamic, and you can always disrupt them and work your way towards the top. Remember, with just proper appointment setting and lead nurturing, you can make sure that you’re set for the future!

5 Ways to Fail at B2B Telemarketing and Appointment Setting (Featured Image)

5 Ways to Fail at B2B Telemarketing and Appointment Setting

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Are you calling your leads wrong?

Telemarketing is said to still be one of the most potent methods of lead generation and nurturing. However, regardless of how powerful a technique is, you will never realize its true potential if it’s being used wrong.

Today we take a look at why a telemarketing and appointment setting strategy can miss its mark and how we can avoid these things from happening to our campaigns.

Failing to Segment

You will not be able to qualify prospects or set appointments if you are too busy trying to cold call. The main difference between cold calling and telemarketing and appointment setting is the fact that one utilizes a general approach, while the other is targeted.

We should all take a page from the way account-based marketing (ABM) works.

Instead of trying to call everyone on your list, you should start segmenting people based on their buyer personas. Within these buyer personas, we should be cultivating specific campaigns that are designed just for them. This will enable you to personalize for the prospects that you are trying to reach.

Failing to Test and Adjust

Telemarketing and appointment setting – just like any other form of marketing – has to be a measurable process for it to be an efficient and effective acquisition channel. By failing to record the results of a telemarketing or campaign run, you won’t be able to find which areas you can improve on.

Furthermore, it’s not just the feedback system that you should be working on; you should be able to split-test different variations of the same campaigns on your audiences. This makes the process efficient. You will be able to judge what works and what doesn’t, making your campaigns agile enough to switch.

Failing to Make it Personal & Hard Selling

Telemarketing allows for an avenue for you to make your marketing personal. Apart from “personalizing” for the prospect, you have to make it personal as well. Get to know the client, their pain points, their company culture, etc. In turn, tell them about your company and your products.

Don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation, the more you build rapport, the easier it will be for you to strike a sale. Even if they don’t buy from you, at least you’ll be able to reach out to them in the future for a referral.

Another mistake in this department is hard selling. Engaging in a process where all you are doing is pushing your product makes the whole process of telemarketing extremely impersonal.

Failing to Improvise

Here’s what.

Every client on the phone is going to have different needs, it’s one of the characteristics of a personal marketing approach like telemarketing, and if you cannot improvise to meet their needs, there’s no use in talking to them.

More often than not, telemarketers are bound by a script that they feel like they have to read, but that should not be the case at all. Your prospects will know if you are reading from a prepared script. Reading from a script removes the personality from telemarketing and renders the call process as general as an email blast.

Here are a few points that you can work on:

  • Building rapport with the person that you are speaking to – as we’ve mentioned earlier.
  • Trying to adapt to the company’s needs
  • Making your products or services relevant to their business process.

Failing to Follow-up

One reason that your telemarketing campaign could fail is the failure to follow and we are not talking about following up after they said they’re busy. A good follow up process encompasses several factors including targeting past the telemarketing stage.

If you have a list of their emails you can easily retarget them again using a social media platform like Facebook. By being able to do this, you will be able to subconsciously target them reminding them about the solutions that you have.

This type of follow up is integral in ensuring that they get a form of omnichannel marketing.  However, you still have to design it in a way that doesn’t overload them with information and turns your marketing abrasive.

If you can harness the power of telemarketing, it makes for one of the most effective lead qualification and acquisition channels available in the market today. This not only saves resources but also ensures that a marketing team is more efficient in the way it operates.

Implement smart calling and proper appointment setting and get your telemarketing strategy in order. An efficient telemarketing campaign is an effective one.

Top 6 B2B Lead Generation Trends in Australia for 2020 (Featured Image)

Top 6 B2B Lead Generation Trends in Australia for 2020

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The world of B2B is as dynamic as B2C and sales processes are consistently evolving, from new things to try out to different variations of tested marketing and lead generation strategies.

Today we take a quick look at B2B lead generation trends in Australia in the run-up to 2020 and how we can take advantage of these trends for optimal growth!

ABM

Account-based marketing is still (and will remain) to be one of the most powerful ways of connecting with your prospects in B2B sales. Its core value is proper market segmentation, and its results have been promising in numerous industries.

What everyone loves about ABM is that it is a testament to the power of creating personalized campaigns to engage different buyer personas within a market. Its premise is simple, segment your market, create personalized campaigns, and treat those segments as markets within themselves.

Content… That Engages

Content is still definitely king in 2019, and it will remain to be king in 2020 and the years to come. However, the rules are changing.

Businesses are now concentrating on content that actually brings forth engagement from their customers – it seems as if they got a lesson from B2C – since it is a more effective way of getting personal with potential prospects.

This statement does not mean that we should start saying goodbye to whitepapers and case studies, but it’s time that we turn the content that we release into more visual pieces that can be appreciated by anyone at a glance. Infographics are great, but it shouldn’t just stop there, create content that is worth spending time with, and that doesn’t just aim to convert.

The Use of Influencers in B2B Campaigns

We won’t be seeing famous reality show stars as the faces of new B2B products, but what we will be seeing are industry-specific leaders. They will help pave the way for B2B companies to sell their products and be more relevant.

A lot of industry leaders carry weight with their opinions and the way that they do things – just like in a B2C market – and B2B companies have realized that these influencers’ opinions carry a lot of weight.

Being able to leverage that weight will mean that a B2B company can take advantage of an influencer’s following and translate that into exposure for their company. There are a lot of medium-scale influencers that can go for event marketing slots, sponsorships, and even content creation.

It is exciting to think of how these influencers will revolutionize B2B marketing as a whole.

Personalized Content

The reason personalized content works is that it makes the end user feel as if they are consequential and unique to the company. Almost nobody likes to receive generic replies or email newsletters, your prospects can feel the disconnect, and it is impersonal.

It doesn’t matter where you use personalization. You can use it in your email outreach and lead nurturing campaign, the content that you deliver, and in any form that you can think of. Being able to personalize is the way into the future.

Remember.

Everyone deserves to feel special.

LinkedIn Will Play a Major Role

LinkedIn is sort of like the B2B playground social media playground, and it’s undoubtedly influencing digital marketing in the business world. We all expect LinkedIn to be the more serious social network compared to Instagram and Facebook.  As such, it has remained to be the network of choice when communicating business with businesspeople.

Being able to leverage LinkedIn is going to be vital as you release content for your B2B prospects. A lot of people are now taking advantage of the video features of LinkedIn, and it is now an absolute must that you release something in video form.

Bonus: AR and VR

We have had some significant AR and VR capabilities for quite some time now, but we are still in the infancy stage of being able to utilize them to their full capabilities. Augmented and virtual reality will be able to play a role in the way we deliver content to our prospects. For example, you can create a virtual tour around a factory for your prospects to view without them leaving the comfort of their office.

Harnessing this technology for content creation automatically makes your content engaging, and it is up to your creative team to come up with a strategy to back this up to its fullest.

 

As you can see, there are a lot of key takeaways that you could be doing differently in the Aussie market. All it takes is just a little innovation mixed with some creativity. Always try to push the boundaries further whether it’s strategizing your pipelines or maxing out your appointment setting strategy, there’s always room for growth this coming year!