Brand and Capture

Call to Action, the Key to Lead Capture and Conversion

Call to action buttons are graphics are essential elements in an effective business website. A call to action is the graphic or copy that persuades website visitors to take a desired action, whether it's leaving their email address, subscribing to a newsletter or RSS feed or purchasing a product. It doesn't matter how great your offer is or how well-designed your landing page is if you don't convince people to click through. An effective call to action is goal driven and should measurably increase conversion of site traffic to leads and customers.

Steps to Create a Successful Call to Action

1. Clearly define your goal. Is your primary purpose to generate leads or increase product sales or improve brand recognition? Each call to action should have a single goal.
2. Determine what specific action website visitors must take to meet your goal. Your call-to-action should clearly indicate the precise action desired. Do you want visitors to click a link, download an ebook, input their email address? Design your landing page to further entice
3. To measure its success, your call-to-action must be quantifiable. Specifically, you need to know how many click throughs you get from each call to action and how many of those converted (signed up) on the target landing page. From there, you want to quantify how many of those leads ultimately converted into customers.

There are tricks to creating an effective call-to-action that will catch site visitors' attention and compel them to take the desired action. Try these best practices to create powerful calls to action to maximize results:

• Use easily understood graphics in combination with short, simple commands to tell the site visitor what to do. For example, a large button that says "download."
• Use images to capture and direct attention. For example, a bold arrow pointing to what you want the site visitor to do. Photos of people can also be used to direct attention. Make certain the person in the photograph is looking at what you want site visitors to do. Photos in which a person is looking directly at the visitor are less likely to encourage site visitors to act. 
• Use numbers; they're quickly understood and elicit specific actions. If there is a date for a specific event, make sure you include that. If an offer is free, make sure you highlight FREE. This is often the difference maker between a click and no-click.
• Make your call to action clickable to a landing page that is consistent with the call to action offer. For more tips on landing pages, you can review this blog.
• Reinforce your call to action by separating the call from the click. Tell site visitors what you want them to do, then provide a clickable button or link.
• Use bold, contrasting colors to draw the site visitor's eye to the action you want him to take.
• Position call to actions on the first viewable screen and above the fold for best performance. The sooner a visitor's eye encounters your call to action, the more likely they will click through.
• Test a variety of offers, calls to action, page positions and landing pages. Use a scientific approach, like A/B testing, where you try one variation versus another. Measure lead conversions and optimize your calls to action on the based on the most successful combination.

How well do your call to actions perform? Can you measure leads captured by them? We can help with HubSpot software and our call to action design service.

Social Media Marketing - Is That All You Got?

I was inspired to write this post by a HubSpot webinar by Pete Caputa (aka @pc4media) in which he (nicely) flogged marketing agencies for "lite" services that no CEO needs. Primary culprit, social media marketing. Pretty much all marketing and PR agencies are either offering SMM as a service or are planning to. The question is, what's in it for the client?

Sell Value, Provide Value

That headline's almost a direct quote from Pete, and it rings home with me. Most companies hire marketing agencies because they want to make more money, not less. How? By generating more sales. How do we do that? By bringing in more qualified leads and delivering them to our clients' sales team in a nice pretty box. Social media marketing in the absence of a comprehensive lead generation strategy is fluff, in my humble opinion. I don't care how many uber-fans you have in Twitter and Facebook. If they aren't handing you their phone numbers and asking you to call, you have accomplished exactly "nada".

Where Does Social Media Marketing Fit In?

In the grand scheme of inbound marketing, social media is more of a means than an end. It's an important tool in increasing brand awareness and building retention. It can help drive people to the site to sign up. BUT social media is not a task you can check off on a list. It's not a goal, and it's not a deliverable. It's a way to help you get there. If you want to sell (and deliver) value, you have to capture leads and convert them to customers. Let's review how that's done:

1. Be the #1 source of valuable information, products and services in your field or industry
2. Convince everybody the #1 is true by virtue of your blogs, webinars, videos, social media etc. Just be awesome, and people will think you are awesome.
3. Think of your website as your office. That's where everybody goes to do business with you. Is there a sign on the door (that tells people what you do). Is the door open? When people come to talk to you, do you take down their name, address and phone? Of course you do - so start doing that on your website.
4. Tell people what you want them to do. That's what your call to actions do. Want them to sign-up for a free pumpkin? Tell them in your CTA and point them to your landing page.
5. Don't assume everyone wants a free pumpkin. People are curious and they will check out your free pumpkin landing page. You have their attention. Convince them to sign up.
6. Free pumpkins deliver $0 to the bottom line. All you have now is a lead, but that's a lot better than no lead. Yes, you are filling the funnel now. Work it. If you have a phone number, call. If not, set up a lead nurturing campaign to further interest them. The more time they invest coming back for your stuff, the more likely they will convert. Use the technology that's out there - HubSpot, Salesforce, whatever you have - use it to track and work your leads.
7. Deliver value. Measure your leads and sources. Analyze, adjust and keep fighting the good fight. Build on success and discard the stupid ideas. Show the CEO how you are delivering dollars and driving ROI.

Ok, so you're a marketing company, and yes you need to follow these steps for your own lead generation and sales. More importantly, you need to do the same thing for your clients. And, oh yes, don't forget to tell people that you do this stuff. It's not social media marketing, folks. It's lead generation and conversion marketing - it's inbound marketing.

Any questions? How did I do, Pete?

Photo Credit: Stefson

5 Steps for Improving Your Inbound Marketing Lead Conversion

Most businesses devote a significant portion of their inbound marketing budget to lead generation. The prodigious outlay of time and effort is considered vital to company sales. Qualified leads should convert into paying customers. Yet, research shows that less than 20% of online leads are actually converted into sales. Fully 80% of online customer leads are lost, discarded, ignored or poorly pursued by sales personnel.

If your sales staff is converting fewer than 20% of online sales leads into paying customers, we recommend following these 5 steps to improve your online lead conversion rates and boost your sales volume:

1. Commit. Successful online lead management requires a commitment from the executive level down. Lead analysis and development should be a joint marketing-sales undertaking and an integral part of your business culture. You should consider one of the many salesforce automation and customer relationship management (CRM) programs available to make your salesforce more productive. We recommend the HubSpot platform, since it integrates inbound marketing with a variety of CRM systems.
   
2. Analyze. If your company has a robust inbound marketing program supplied by multiple social media, a process for handling, grading and responding to different types of online leads must be implemented. A Twitter tweet should generate a different response than an email query. Analysis should tell you which approaches are the most effective so that you can concentrate on those.
3. Respond. Online marketing contacts require instant response. People expect turn-around responses to tweets and emails. Ideally, you should respond to inbound marketing leads from social media campaigns like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn within 5 minutes and certainly within an hour or two. Leads that submit your online forms should also receive a friendly automatic response right away, and a live phone call within hours.
   
4. Repeat. Online leads are often casual, requiring repeat contact to convert responders into paying customers. It may take 7 to 10 contacts using different inbound marketing tools, such as lead nurturing campaigns, to leverage casual interest into purchasing power. You'll need to use different inbound marketing tools to keep your name in front of potential customers as you entice them to become purchasers.
5. Measure. To effectively manage online leads and gauge the success of different inbound marketing tools, you'll need to track and measure every aspect of your inbound marketing campaign. A host of web analytics, including those from HubSpot, are available that measure everything from keyword use and search engine optimization to number of unique site visitors and page click-throughs. Choosing the most useful analytics for your business can be challenging. Expert inbound marketing assistance can ensure that you're using the most effective programs to track the right metrics.

How well are you converting leads into customers? We can help you with your lead generation and conversion strategy.

Photo credit: jovike.

Tips for Turning Your Blog Into a Lead Capture Engine

Business blogging can be a dynamic way to generate sales leads and a powerful inbound marketing tool, but many companies are not making the most effective use of their blogs. Offering interesting, well-written content that's pertinent to potential customers and presenting that content in a pleasing manner are certainly important. However, if such altruistic externals are the only goals driving your blog; you're missing the key purpose of maintaining a business blog. Certainly, blogs have to attract site visitors and be interesting enough to ensure their return; but the core value of a business blog as an inbound marketing tool lies in its ability to capture sales leads. If your blog exhibits good site traffic but fails to convert that traffic into useful sales leads; you're wasting the time, money and effort that you're investing in your business blog.

How do you use your blog to generate sales leads? By taking a commercial view of your website, blog and other inbound marketing tools. Consider every item available through your website and associated social marketing platforms (blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as something for sale in your virtual store. Assign each item a "price tag" based on its value to the consumer. Every time a potential customer "buys" an item, whether it's submitting a response to a blog post, downloading a white paper, viewing a podcast, printing out a coupon or signing up for your company newsletter, he "pays" for the information by providing his contact information. Obviously your "prices" will vary. For example, a visitor will be more apt to provide his mailing address, phone number and email address if he wants to download a buyer's guide or white paper from your website. To respond to a blog post or sign up for your newsletter, he may only be willing to provide his email address.

The point is to entice potential customers to move from a passive to an active relationship with your inbound marketing tools and, by extension, your business. You want your business blog posts to motivate readers to take an action -- click on a white paper link to your website, print a coupon, enter a contest, take a one-question survey -- and in the process divulge their contact information, providing you with useful customer leads.

Does Your Blog Generate Qualified Sales Leads? We can help!

Photo Credit: Kristina B

How to Close the Loop Using HubSpot and Salesforce

We often talk about (and promote) inbound marketing as an effective means of generating qualified sales leads via content creation, social media and lead capture strategies. But that's only half the battle. Once you have qualified leads, you want to convert them to customers, hopefully loyal, repeat customers over time. Inbound marketing by itself doesn't do that. "Closing the loop" refers to exchanging information back and forth between sales and marketing, however that's defined in your company, in order to optimize lead-to-customer conversions. Here's how we accomplish closed loop marketing using HubSpot and Salesforce.com.

HubSpot/Salesforce Integration

In case you're not familiar with HubSpot and Salesforce, HubSpot is the leading inbound marketing platform that incorporates content marketing, social media marketing, seo, lead generation and analytics under one roof. Salesforce.com is the leading online customer relationship management system (CRM). HubSpot has built-in integration with Salesforce, available in the Medium and Large packages. The first step is integrating the two platforms. Here is a step-by-step guide. You should become proficient at using both platforms using their excellent tutorials. Our sales and marketing team is already integrated, but if you have separate teams or departments, make sure that they are trained in using both platforms. This step will help your sales team understand the inbound marketing process and your marketing team will gain direct knowledge of the downstream sales process and the status of leads as they proceed through the sales funnel. Now that you've handled the nuts and bolts let's look at how we roll in closing the loop.

Closed Loop Marketing Workflow

1. Lead Response - We have set up protocols so that when a lead comes into our Salesforce.com account from HubSpot, a designated member of our team always responds within one hour of notification. This gives the lead a great first impression and sets a time for a follow-up phone call.
2. Lead Assignment and Classification - Each lead gets assigned to a sales person, who then becomes responsible for the account going forward. The sales person will review the lead information supplied by HubSpot landing pages and viewable from within Salesforce and update their status as having been contacted. A phone meeting is set up through Salesforce as an event, which appears on the sales person's calendar. All lead activities, opportunities and events are available to the entire team via reports that appear on each team member's Salesforce home page.
3. Account Creation and Closing Steps - Following the initial sales call, unless it turns out to be a dud, we convert each lead into an Account, update any contact information need, and create an opportunity for the sale. If a demonstration or formal presentation is warranted, we set that up as a new event. In most cases we succeed in interesting the lead enough to request a sales proposal, which we create and store under the Notes & Attachments section, and we send them an e-mail with the proposal attached. We then set up a follow up call as an event within a few days of sending the proposal. During the follow up call we review the proposal and ask for the sale. More often than not, we succeed.
4. Monthly Review - While we are constantly monitoring our lead, account and sales reports via Salesforce and HubSpot, we also schedule a monthly review with our team to address any problem accounts, training issues and to provide feedback for our inbound marketing efforts. Our goal is to have 1-2 new advanced content publications (such as webinars, e-books or social media promotions) running each month, so we evaluate the effectiveness of each in generating new, qualified leads that turn into customers.

Benefits of Closed Loop Marketing

We have already seen tremendous benefits from integrating our sales and marketing process via HubSpot and Salesforce. In general we are seeing:

1. Improved response time to leads
2. Higher lead-customer conversion rates
3. Fewer lost opportunities due to inaction or lost information
4. Higher productivity for our sales team (less time wasted looking for information)
5. Improved customer relations due to sales force automation
6. Improved inbound marketing content and social media marketing due to feedback from the sales team

We will quantify these results in a future post as we gather more data.

What tools do you use to close the loop between sales and marketing?

We can help you with your closed-loop marketing via HubSpot and Salesforce.

 

There is an I (and a Me) in Inbound Marketing

In putting together a solid inbound marketing strategy, we usually focus on building relationships with potential customers by giving away valuable information and offers. We put ourselves in our customers' shoes and ask "what's in it for me?" Then we give them what they want, convert them to leads and nurture them into customers.  But when we put our own shoes back on, the same question applies. What's in it for me, the inbound marketer, and my company?

Direct Impact on the Bottom Line

Assuming that you follow the inbound marketing mantra of consistently publishing great content, engaging in social media, optimizing for search and nurturing leads you should see:

1. Increased volume of qualified sales leads
2. Increased conversion rates from lead to customer
3. Increased direct sales via e-commerce (if available)
4. Improved customer retention rates
5. Increased repeat sales from current customers

Performance metrics depend on the amount, frequency and quality of the content you create and the use of social media channels for communication and support. Much depends on how committed your organization is to inbound marketing as a strategy and using social media as a natural tool to communicate with customers and co-workers.

Brand Awareness

Inbound Marketing will have the most immediate effect on brand awareness. Every time someone visits your website, reads your blogs, subscribes to your feeds, signs up for your free downloads and webinars or follows you on one of your social network venues, you have helped to cement your brand in their subconscious. Each time that happens, you are one step closer to gaining a new customer. You can monitor brand awareness over time via:

1. Website traffic
2. Search engine optimization and analysis
3. Real-time search metrics
   
4. Social media monitoring
   

Brand Reputation

Brand awareness is just half the battle. As your footprint becomes larger, you will get more feedback. That's what you want, to start a conversation and build a relationship with potential and existing customers. These conversations will happen with or without your presence. Successful companies monitor social media channels and respond to all kinds of questions and comments. Many of them use tools such as Twitter for customer service, which helps to funnel customer feedback into a single channel. Benefits of participation in social media include:

1. Improved customer satisfaction and retention rate
2. Quick and pervasive response to positive and negative feedback
3. Building a community of brand supporters (and virtual sales reps)
4. Competitive edge over companies that are less involved

So, next time your boss, your investors or your co-workers express their doubts about the value of inbound marketing and social media, rattle off these bullet points. Then, show them your data.

Any questions?

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Is Your Lead Conversion Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

The biggest frustration many of our clients have is that their sales leads have dwindled within the past year. Their marketing efforts aren't producing enough good qualified leads, so why bother? Some are even doing inbound marketing with all that entails - blogging, social media, seo, landing pages, the works. Still, the leads aren't rolling in yet. What's the problem? In many cases the root cause is simple - there isn't any real incentive for a visitor to sign up and become a lead.

Why Isn't My Offer Attractive Enough to Convert Leads?

1. It's just a discount for something really expensive. If it's for a meal out on the town, sure, discounts work great. Do any of us buy cars because there's a $1500 cash back discount?
2. It requires me to talk to you. Doesn't work. Give me something useful to read about your widget and how it saves peoples lives or lifestyles. Show me great examples of how my neighbors are making money or having fun using it.
3. It's boring. Yeah, I know we all love spec sheets and sales brochures. Come on, you can do better than that. Show me something I haven't seen. Something creative. And don't just do a rap video about your product - that's been done.
4. I don't speak techno. The perfect wrong approach is to cram a ton of detailed info into a download with lots of techno jargon, abbreviations and buzzwords. Into the trash bucket.

OK Then What Does Work?

1. Something With Tangible Value. You might argue that free coffee mugs and T shirts are useless, but a lot of people would disagree with you. Creativity goes a long way here. If you're a computer company, give away a computer. If you're a restaurant, a free meal. Travel company... You get the idea.
2. Not Easy to Get Elsewhere. Give away your secrets to business success or recipes or travel tips. Find out what people want to know and give it to them in a well-crafted download. Don't make it a big advertisement, but it can still be branded.
   
3. Make it Timely - for example create a list of the best gifts guys like just before Christmas.
4. Make it Entertaining. No rap videos for products - I said that already! Do something personal and invite people into your business home. An example might be a walking tour through your business (if that's interesting), or interviews with your employees about how they perceive your industry and clients. Or do the same thing with your clients. The people who may well want to become your clients want to know about you in advance.

The Cornerstone of Your Lead Generation Strategy

Build your lead generation strategy around your offers, not your tools. You hear the word "compelling" used in many marketing blogs for good reason. Think about what compels you to fill out a form and click the submit button. Then create an offer that would work on you, people like you, and people you want as customers.

What offers work best for your lead generation strategy?
 

Conversion Rate Optimization Using HubSpot Lead Generation Tools

The general goal of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is to maximize lead conversion rates for landing pages by means of testing and analysis. In layman terms, we are trying to find the best strategy, design, layout and content to grab visitors' attention and convert them to leads. There are two main approaches, (1) pre-publication research, such as focus groups, and (2) post-publication testing, such as A/B or multivariate testing of landing pages. We will focus on the second approach using the HubSpot inbound marketing system.

Lead Conversion Strategy

Regardless of your chosen approach to CRO, you should start with a coherent lead conversion strategy. What are you trying to accomplish with your landing page? What's your offer, and why should your visitors be interested? What's in it for them? No one will convert unless there is a clear value proposition. You can't assume that they are predisposed to buy your products and services. Instead, think about what they want or need and how you can satisfy those desires to attract them into your sales funnel. This is often where companies will conduct market research to pinpoint those desires.

Landing Page Optimization

Once you have chosen a strategy, the next step is to create one or more effective landing pages. Each landing page design must convey the offer. What is the offer? What's in it for the visitor? How do they get it? From a landing page design perspective, you must remove all possible barriers or sources of distraction and focus the visitor's eye (and will) on the offer and the button that commits them to it. Common errors include having the offer and conversion button below the fold (off the screen) and having other calls-to-action or links on the  landing page that may cause your visitor to leave prematurely. In the HubSpot system you can easily create landing pages using the Create > Landing Pages wizard. The wizard guides you through the process of building an effective landing page and advises you on where and how to include your offer. HubSpot also offers tutorials and on landing page and lead conversion best practices.

One of the foundations of CRO is testing. By creating and publishing multiple versions of a landing page with different layouts, text and designs you can directly measure conversion rates. For example, you can try an A/B test by creating two different versions of a landing page, then marketing them separately by e-mail or pay-per-click campaigns. Assuming that the markets being tested by your campaigns are identical, you can directly measure the effectiveness of one landing page compared to the second. You can monitor progress in HubSpot by viewing the Convert > Landing Pages report. If a more sophisticated analysis is desired, you can submit your landing pages to the Google Website Optimizer, a free tool that analyzes landing pages in A/B or multivariate tests. In the case of multivariate testing, you are trying different combinations of content on a single landing page to find the best mix.

The Lead Generation Campaign

Getting people to your optimized landing page is also a crucial part of your  CRO strategy.  On your website and blog, you need clear, well-designed, well-positioned calls-to-action that catch a visitor's eye and compell them to click through to your landing page. Your call-to-action could be a graphic (button) or a link. In either case, it must be consistent with the offer on the landing page and convey a sense of urgency. The same strategy applies to your e-mail marketing, pay-per-click or social media campaigns. Testing is useful here as well. Try different calls-to-action versions on the same page (leading to the same landing page) and run them for periods of time in which you accumulate the same number of page views. Such an A/B test will tell you which call-to-action is most effective. You can also do multivariate testing here to optimize the positioning and selection of multiple calls-to-action on one page.

Advanced Testing and Analysis

If you have the nice problem of large amounts of traffic and leads on your site, you may want to consider more sophisticated CRO solutions. In this case you may be able to afford the cost of professional CRO services and high-end CRO software solutions used by large brands and e-commerce companies. Some of the players on the software side include Omniture, Maxymiser, SiteSpect, Vertster, Autonomy, Marketo and Ion Interactive.

What are your strategies for conversion rate optimization?

 

Lead Conversion is Both an Art and a Science

Let's say we're getting ready to hire someone to jumpstart our lead conversions. What skills and talents does this person need? Should we find a data cruncher or someone who can talk you into surrendering your wallet? Should we blend in some designer skills and season it with some SEO? Maybe all of these ought to go on our job description. After all, lead conversion is both an art and a science.

The Art

Think about what we're trying to do here. We're trying to convince someone who couldn't care less about your products or services to sign up for something, maybe even buy something. No small feat, even for a well-known brand. We'll need someone with a functioning right brain to:

1. Understand what the customers want. You'll need to get inside their heads and hearts for this one. Must love dogs - that kind of thing.
2. Come up with an offer that will appeal to them. Sure, you can give away snuggies and magnets 'til the cows come home, but how does that keep your visitors coming back for more and opening their wallets?
3. Design a great landing page that converts every time. Yes, these challenges get tougher. Your page has got to grab them every time and convince them within seconds that if they don't sign up now, surely the sky will fall.
4. Follow up and close the deal. No, people don't like snake oil salesmen anymore.You have to find the right mix of lead nurturing e-mails, phone calls and face-to-face meetings to get it done. It helps if you have a personality and maybe you learned a few manners in 2nd grade too.

The Science

Ok, good for you. You closed a sale using your artsy-fartsy side. Is that it? Sorry dude, your job is to replicate that over and over, and it helps to understand what worked and what didn't. For that we'll need to crunch some numbers.

1. Campaign statistics - what worked best and why? Were there unique circumstances associated with the campaign or can you lather, rinse and repeat?
2. Channel statistics - what's the best pipeline or combo or channels? Was it radio and billboards or blogs and social media, or all of the above?
3. Demographics - who bought your stuff and why? Was it 65 year-olds living in Miami or teens from Schenectady?
4. Focus groups - did you run some formal testing to see what would work? How do your results compare to the actual campaign?
5. Analysis - somebody's got to go present this to the CMO and either blush with pride or duck and cover. What can you do better, assuming you have a second chance?  What's the plan for steadily increasing lead conversions (as you promised during the interview).

Now you're a bonafide lead converter, since you married your art and science into one righteous skillset. Of course you had some serious help, like the inbound marketing software, but we'll give you credit. After all, what's a grand piano without its Vladimir Horowitz?

5 Tips for an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign

One of the most effective ways to convert leads into customers is creating a  lead nurturing campaign. Basically, you're following up after a visitor signs up for one of your offers on a landing page. More often than not they have signed up for a free download or event, and you still want to convert them into a paying customer for one of your products or services. Here are 5 tips for building an effective lead nurturing campaign and getting results.

1.  Set up three lead nurturing e-mails to automatically go out to a lead the day he/she signs up, two or three days following that and five to ten days thereafter. Make sure you include an opt-out link in your e-mails.
2. Design your e-mails to be attractive but not cluttered. Make sure your brand is well displayed in a header banner along with the topic of the e-mail. Make sure any graphics or links use the full url path to your website. Keep it short and to the point.
   
3. In each e-mail offer them something new but related to the original lead capture offer. For example, if they downloaded a whitepaper from the original landing page, invite them to a webinar on the same subject. Don't assume that they will be interested in something entirely different.
4. Mix it up. In ensuing e-mails offer them new opportunities to learn more about your products or services, but don't make it too "salesy". Instead, you're offering them a chance to learn something new and valuable. Most of all, you're trying to engage them in a conversation - that's when you can build a relationship and ultimately sell them your wares.
5. Just because they don't click through on your lead nurturing campaign, don't assume your visitors are not interested. If they haven't opted out, they're probably still willing to receive your information. Include them in monthly e-mail newsletters and announcements. Things change, budgets change. Your rejection today can be your best customer tomorrow.
   

Finally, one of the very best ways to convert is to talk to your leads. If they leave a phone number, chances are they want to talk. If they don't, you can probably find it on their website. In either case, your strategy is to listen, find out how you can help. Don't be a salesman. Be a resource.