Why You Need a Steady Stream of Leads?

Leads are the lifeblood of any business. They represent potential customers who have expressed interest in what you offer. Without a continuous influx of leads, your business can stagnate, and growth becomes elusive. A steady stream of leads not only keeps your sales pipeline full but also provides opportunities for expansion, increased revenue, and brand visibility.

How to Manage Those Leads?

Managing leads effectively is the key to turning them into paying customers. Here’s how you can do it:

Lead Capture: Implement tools like contact forms, landing pages, and social media ads to capture leads. Ensure that your website is user-friendly and optimized for lead generation.

Lead Segmentation: Categorize leads based on factors like demographics, behavior, and interests. This allows you to tailor your marketing efforts and messaging for better results.

Lead Scoring: Assign scores to leads to prioritize follow-up efforts. Highly engaged leads should be contacted promptly, while lower-scoring leads may require more nurturing.

CRM Systems: Utilize Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to centralize lead information, track interactions, and streamline communication with leads.

The Importance of Following Up on Leads

The saying “fortune favors the bold” holds true in lead management. Prompt and persistent follow-up is essential. Research indicates that following up within the first hour of lead generation increases conversion chances significantly. Timely responses show potential customers that you value their interest and are ready to meet their needs.

How Long It Generally Takes to Follow Up on a Lead and Convert Them to a Sale

The conversion timeline varies by industry and the complexity of the product or service. However, studies suggest that it takes an average of 6-8 touchpoints with a lead before they are ready to make a purchase decision. Patience is key. Consistent, meaningful interactions with leads can build trust and increase the likelihood of conversion.

Nurturing Your Clients After the Sale Happens

Successful businesses understand that the relationship with a customer doesn’t end with a sale; it evolves. Post-sale nurturing is crucial for customer retention and can lead to valuable referrals. Here’s how to do it effectively:

Personalization: . Continue to provide personalized experiences and offers based on their preferences and purchase history.

Communication: Stay in touch through newsletters, emails, and social media to keep clients informed about updates, new products, and promotions.

Customer Support: Offer exceptional post-sale support to address any issues promptly, building trust and loyalty.

Request Feedback: Encourage customers to share their thoughts and feedback. It not only shows you value their opinions but can also provide insights for improvement.

In conclusion, having the correct inbound lead strategy is paramount to your business’s success. It ensures a continuous flow of potential customers, effective lead management, timely follow-ups, and ongoing client nurturing. With the right strategy in place, your business can thrive in a competitive landscape and forge lasting relationships with your customers, ultimately driving growth and profitability.

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1. Set Clear Goals

There’s nothing that you can achieve without having a pre-planned goal or strategy in place. If your main aim is to save money on internet marketing, then the first thing that you need to do is determine your marketing goals and objectives and prioritise, then set your budget to your immediate needs. Understand what you need to achieve as a business and then see which marketing options will work best. Now that you have everything in front of you, you can easily decide the tools and techniques to use that fall under your budget.

There are many affordable and free online marketing tools that are great for small businesses who are looking to save time and costs. Furthermore, setting goals and developing a digital content marketing strategy before anything else will keep you protected from wasting money on unimportant tools and techniques. A great way to formulate your internet marketing action plan is to study your competitors to see what they are doing. There are free and low-cost tools to gather info on your competitors as well. By setting clear strategies in the beginning, businesses will also be able to save time by taking calculated steps.

2. Take Help From Professionals

Do you have an in-house digital marketing team that can help you achieve success with your internet marketing strategies? If not, then you might benefit from hiring a professional agency to work with you. That’s right. Digital marketing companies consist of professionals who are experts in digital marketing, these individuals are well aware of the tricks of the trades, which in-turn helps businesses make use of their vast experience to achieve their digital marketing goals.

According to research data, 60% of a marketer’s time is spent on digital marketing activities, which means that digital marketing agencies offer great help to small businesses looking to achieve their goals under constrained time and budget.

3. Analyse Emerging Trends

A good way to ensure success in your internet marketing campaign is to constantly analyse and evaluate your online campaigns. If you continue to focus on adopting advanced tools and techniques without looking into what is the best solution for your needs and integrates with your culture and systems, you will be losing a lot of money. This means that if you want your internet marketing campaign to be a success, you need to understand what’s trending and how that relates to your business.

You will get this information by tracking your campaigns using online tracking tools. These tools collect data from your campaign and offers results in such a way that you will be able to find out what works and what doesn’t. It also helps give you a complete idea of what type of content and strategies get users’ attention the most. Another great way to gather relevant information on trending strategies is to spy on competitors online campaigns to gather data to formulate highly targeted and effective marketing strategies that work.

Testing new strategies is a great way to see what should be used for your internet marketing campaigns. You can create two types of campaigns and test them with your audience to see their results. Depending on their popularity, you can choose the one that gets more attention and helps your achieve your goals.

4. Choose Social Networks Wisely

Did you know that 90% of young adults make use of social media networks? Although the numbers might be intriguing, it is important for businesses to target social networks smartly. This again links back to your internet marketing goals. First, you need to see who you are targeting. The reason that it is important to keep tabs on your target audience is that it will help you choose the right platforms for your social media marketing.

Let’s say you are selling cigars that are targeted towards men and women aged 40 to 50. Now, for this target audience, you need to find out which social network they make use of the most. If you are targeting Facebook when most of your audience is on Twitter, then you will only be wasting your time and money. This is why you first need to conduct market research and persona development to understand the platforms they are on, and then formulate a marketing strategy that targets them on those channels.

5. Choose Automation

There are numerous ways to reach out to your audience using online sources. Whether you choose email marketing or social media networks to convey your marketing message, you should always consider automating some of the process. Due to the increasing number of online tools and techniques available to target your market, it has become essential for businesses to streamline everything and prioritise each of these strategies depending on their importance.

In order to reduce costs and save time, businesses should consider investing in online marketing software that performs complex tasks to leave less work on your plate. You can choose to deploy software that automatically responds to emails sent by customers, solves customer queries, and keeps them updated on social networks. You can also choose to invest in analytic tools that make it easy for you to gather information about your internet marketing campaign as well as your competitors’.

If you are looking to save time and money with internet marketing, then make sure you streamline your business objectives with your marketing campaign and make use of precise tools to get the job done. A mind-blowing campaign is the one that is thought-out and helps you achieve your goals without a lot of costs and headaches.

We would love to hear about the ways you have saved time and money with internet marketing. Submit your feedback or request a time to discuss here.

Looking to spread a little good news about your product? Look for positive reviews and the consumers who share them. According to a recent Porter Novelli report, consumers are most likely to rate products and services that they are happy with; not those which under-performed. Although brands need to look for the bad as well as the good, it makes sense to focus on the consumers who are posting good to turn them into loyal consumers.

Porter Novelli’s 2011 Consumer Styles report finds that 60% of Millennials and 56% of Gen Xers are more likely to rate items they like than those they don’t like; similar findings from the older demographics. More than 40% of seniors are more likely to rate liked-items than not liked.

“Customers expect, and are already participating in a two way dialogue,” said Daina Middleton, Performics CEO. “It’s imperative for marketers to listen to customers and adopt strategies that engage them in every channel of their media mix – across all platforms, devices and screens.”

Data from a recent ROI Research/Performics reports underlines the importance of this kind of social media conversation. Their research finds that 74% of entertainment consumers share their experiences on social media, more than half of socnet users ‘follow’ travel brands to learn about deals/offers and just over 40% indulge in car talk before making a new car purchase. More than one-third of survey respondents say they talk about purchases on social media specifically to talk express their satisfaction.

How can you take advantage? One cost-effective measure is to include social media feeds – Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc. – into your website. The new vSites option from vFlyer is one way to revamp a website to include social media. The platform allows businesses to create websites with social media integrations, to add rich media quickly and to manage sites at a low cost.

So someone might ask, why would I bother with all the time and resources needed for SEO when I can just buy my way to the top with PPC? The easiest answer is that PPC can be expensive. Paying for placement at the top of a page, especially in one of a competitive industry, requires a significant budget. Curious what a certain keyword will cost you? Try using  Google’s Keywords tool. SEO is much less expensive, especially for someone who has a significant number of keywords they want to use.

SEO also has the benefit of more permanent results. What I mean by that is the results of a well done SEO campaign take much longer to fade than that of a PPC campaign. Once the money runs out with a PPC campaign, the search rankings are gone, whereas the links and tags involved with an SEO campaign can take years to go away, if they go away at all.

Finally, people and web users are becoming more aware of ads and are ignoring them.  Look at this really cool study done on how people read webpages.  As you see, more people are ignoring the paid sections of results pages and focusing on the actual search results. Do you really want to spend your money to get the top spot on a page if the searcher is just going to ignore you?

It may seem like I’m saying SEO is the only way to go for marketing. While it’s true that SEO may have better long term results, PPC does have its place. PPC campaigns are great for short term sales or for limited time promotions like Cyber Monday. I would also recommend a PPC campaign for a new website in order to get a lot of exposure right away.

PPC and SEO both have their place in the search-marketing world. The key is to figure out which works best for both your short and long term goals. Each strategy has positives and negatives and figuring out which will help generate the most business can be the difference between success and failure in the online world. What do you think? Is PPC worth the investment?

Collecting and storing information about customers is essential to tailoring your customer service program and growing your business. However, there are legal requirements regarding what you can do with the information you have collected.

Privacy

Any customer information that you collect must comply with business privacy laws, whether you use this information or not. The laws also cover how you can store and use the information.

Collecting information

When collecting information about customers, try to find out what your customers are buying, why they are buying, and how often they are buying. Include any potential customers who have made enquiries about your goods or services.

There are many ways to collect information on your customers, including:

• Order forms
• Enquiries
• Complaints
• Warranty cards
• Customer rewards programs
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Feedback cards
• Customer competitions
• Your website.

Order forms

Order forms let customers order a specific product or service that your business is unable to supply immediately, and are a good way to collect customer information.

If your business stocks products with specific ‘release dates’, consider using pre-order forms to collect customer information. By filling out a pre-order form, a customer makes a commitment to buy a product and will often pre-pay for it.

Enquiries

It’s good business practice to record the details of any customer enquiries so you can follow them up. Enquiries also give you an opportunity to collect customer information and mention your website, mailing list or social media pages.

Recording complaints

Use customer complaints as a way to collect customer information. Not only can you record the complaint, but also who made it, why, which staff member heard the complaint and what was done to resolve the problem.

Warranty cards

If your business has products or services that come with a warranty, you can use warranty cards to collect and store your customers’ information.

Customer rewards program

You can collect customer information by implementing a customer rewards program. For example, a customer VIP club could require customers to give you their details – they then receive 10% off purchases over $100.

Learn more about promotional activities and how they can help your business.

Customer satisfaction

To collect information on customer satisfaction, you could use survey cards where customers rate, for example, aspects of your service out of 5. The back of the card can ask for the customer’s personal details.

Feedback

Feedback cards can also be used to collect information. You can ask for feedback on specific aspects of your business or leave it open-ended, like a suggestion box. Again, the back of the card can request personal details. Share any positive or negative feedback you receive with staff.

Customer competitions

Customer competitions are an easy way to collect personal information. For example, have customers place their business cards in a box to go into a monthly draw to win a $20 voucher.

Offline marketing encompasses a number of different avenues, from traditional print advertising to radio and television adverts and networking. It can be a lot easier for a person with a traditional mindset to see the facts and figures related to offline advertising as opposed to online and can also be an effective tool to keep your brand in the limelight.

Print Advertising: This is seen as one of the most traditional ways of attracting new customers. You can purchase adverts in newspapers and magazine’s on a local or national scale, depending on your budgets, and also have the ability to target readers of specific publications related to your industry. Although it can be an expensive operation, especially for a start-up business, if seen in a well-known and trusted publication, you should see a return on your investment.

Direct Mail: Once you have collected a database of information of both customers and potential customers you have the chance to send them direct mail. Direct mail allows you to target individuals with specific messages that are tailored to them, whilst also keeping your company image in their minds on a semi-regular basis, offering discount codes and latest offers. The drawbacks include the cost of mailing potentially thousands of clients and the fact that it can be seen as spam mail and instantly dismissed by the recipient.

Networking & Conferencing: You can’t beat a bit of traditional networking and getting to know people. If you put your name and image to a local or industry networking event or conference you can guarantee that your name will be seen by fellow businesses, local suppliers and potential clients and other start-up businesses. With networking it is more about the long haul and getting your name recognised on a long term basis. By being a guest speaker at a conference you can become a well-known name in your field.

Business Cards & Brochures: With your business cards, leaflets and brochures you have a chance to make an instant impact with your design, logo and company branding. You should look for start-up business packages that supply you with stationary branding and bespoke brochures that can be sent to prospective clients and give you a familiarity and chance to leave an impression when in a business meeting.

Online Marketing Strengths

As much as results from marketing has its roots traditionally in the offline type in recent years the focus has started to shift towards online marketing and making the most of a world where more and more people from all demographics and locations are using the internet.

There are again, a number of different ways in which you can capture a new audience online, from creating a website, blogging, using paid advertising on search engines and utilising the many different social media platforms available, and there are a number of benefits:

Cheaper than Offline: By using online marketing a start-up business can stretch their marketing resources much further than if they solely went down the traditional offline route. Website design and search engine optimisation is not cheap if you want to have long term and in-depth campaigns provided by specialists, but it is instantly more rewarding and takes less of your budget than a traditional marketing campaign. There is also a lot you can do online yourself for free or with a low budget, especially when it comes to social media.

Good question. Why DO you need Internet marketing?

Before we answer that question, let’s answer this one: when was the last time you used a phone book?

*crickets chirping*

Exactly. These days, most people use the yellow pages more for propping up uneven table legs than for finding a local dry cleaner or dentist.

Why is the Internet better than a phone book?

The Internet is a reliable source of contact information because it’s more up-to-date than anything in print. If your company changes its address or phone number, you can update that information online with a few quick edits — meaning potential customers can still contact you or find you right away.

Another major benefit of the Internet is the ability to shop and sell online. Imagine if you told your grandparents that they could simply point to a company in a phone book and immediately have the product shipped to their home. Amazing, right?

But simply having a website isn’t enough.

Setting up a website is a great first step in the right direction. But it’s crucial to have a website that actually works well and looks appealing. If users can’t easily navigate your site and find what they’re looking for, your website might be doing more harm than good.

And even if you have the best website on the Internet, if no one knows about it then it won’t do you any good.

This is where Internet marketing comes in.

The basic goal of Internet marketing is to generate more leads for your business. Simply stated, it puts your company’s website in front of the right audience. From blogging and social media to strategic site design and pay-per-click campaigns, effective Internet marketing drives more quality traffic to your site.

Also called online marketing, it is the process of promoting a brand, products or services over the Internet. Its broad scope includes email marketing, electronic customer relationship management and any promotional activities that are done via wireless media.

It also combines the technical and creative aspects of the World Wide Web such as advertising, designing, development and sales. Moreover, Internet Marketing also deals with creating and placing ads throughout the various stages of customer engagement cycle.

Online marketing is divided into different types:

Affiliate Marketing:

It is a marketing practice wherein a business pays an online retailer, e-commerce site or blog for each visitor or sales that these websites make for their brand.

Display Advertising:

This refers to advertisement banners that are displayed on other websites or blogs to boost traffic for their own content. This, in turn, can increase product awareness.

Email Marketing:

From the name itself, this is a marketing process that involves reaching out to your customers via email.

Inbound Marketing:

This type of Internet marketing involves sharing of free valuable content to your target market to convince them to become your loyal customer; Setting up a business blog could do this.

Search Engine Marketing:

This is a form of marketing that promotes a business through paid advertisement that appears on search engine result pages. This includes paid placement, contextual advertising, paid inclusion or through search engine optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation:

Contrary to SEM, SEO uses the unpaid and natural process of promoting content on SERPs. This includes keyword research and placement, link building and social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing:

Based on its name, social media marketing is the process of promoting a website through various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.

Why Internet Marketing is Important?

The Internet has the power to connect millions of people from around the world. Thus, it also has the capabilities to bring your business to millions of your target market worldwide. What makes this process a best inclusion to your promotional effort is the fact that you don’t need to shell out plenty of money.

In addition, the effectiveness of your campaign can be easily measured using web analytics and cost-volume-profit analysis tools. However, it requires you to learn the many facets of Internet marketing so that you’ll know whether your efforts are giving the return on investment that you want for your business.

Online marketing refers to the techniques available to a business to market, promote and advertise their products, services or brand on the World Wide Web. There are two main sub channels of online marketing that utilise different angles to help a business promote themselves online. Below is an outline of the online marketing channels that businesses may integrate into their marketing campaign.

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Pay per click is a form of inbound marketing where by advertising is used to promote businesses via advertisements alongside organic search results. Each ad is triggered by a search for a particular keyword and the advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked and user visits their website – hence the name, pay per click.
Pay per click advertising is available with all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as with smaller search engines and websites.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation aims to increase the visibility and traffic to your website by achieving higher rankings in search engine results. The process of search engine optimisation refers to making improvements to your website, ensuring that it is attractive to the search engines – both in regards on-site content and coding as well as off-site web presence. The more search engine friendly your website is the more likely it is to appear higher in the organic search results for selected keyword phrases.

Search engines use complex algorithms to determine the order of the results they display for selected search phrases. These algorithms take into account hundreds of different factors, from the way the website is coded, to the relevance of the website content to the search term and how many inbound links there are to the website.

Online marketing is the general term used to describe SEO and PPC together as a single marketing strategy. Many companies will undergo both pay per click advertising for immediate results and search engine optimisation as a long term strategy – this can be considered a completed online marketing campaign.

Regardless of the size, majority of businesses nowadays are practicing Internet marketing. That’s because it is the most inexpensive way for them to reach millions of their target market. But what is Internet marketing really?