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10 Ways Lead Management Can Help Your Business Grow

The goal of a good Lead Management program is to nurture and build up a trusted relationship with your leads so that when they are ready to buy they actually reach out to you. Done well, it can help generate many more qualified sales opportunities for your sales team and maximize the ROI of your marketing efforts.

Here are 10 ways Lead Management (LM) can help your business get the most revenue from your marketing-generated leads.

1. LM ensures that all new leads are followed-up with in a timely manner and none fall between the cracks or are (essentially) lost.

2. LM allows you to easily capture all web leads directly into your CRM database and to immediately respond.

3. LM educates and informs leads who might be familiar with your product/service but not ready to buy now.

4. LM saves you time by automating the follow-up process with lead nurturing tracks based on of pre-written email templates.

5. LM helps close more deals by providing your sales team with sales-ready opportunities rather than unqualified leads.

6. LM automatically assigns leads to your sales team so you can track their status/progress and re-assign to someone else if needed.

7. LM grades your leads by monitoring their activity (email opens, downloads, etc.) so you know who to call back first.

8. LM allows you to keep your partners up-to-date on your products so they can easily refer your business (when appropriate).

9. LM can be used to re-engage past customers who have not purchased from you lately.

keeps track of the actual sales revenue from each lead so you can optimize your marketing strategies for the best ROI.

These are just a few of the many benefits of a well-thought-out Lead Management program. Every business should consider implementing an automated Lead Management program to ensure you get the most sales revenue from the leads in your database.

For more information check out the CRM and Sales Management tool from LeadMaster.…

Article Marketing Automation – Can it Really Help You?

Article marketing automation is considered to be the best tool to make money, if you wish to provide publicity for your articles in a restricted period of time to a large group. Most individuals, who are involved in affiliate marketing, use article marketing software so that they can expand their outreach.

In most cases, people using this option are pure crazy about it owing to the manner in which it simplifies a large amount of work and completes it in a record time. However, there are also others who have had frustrating experiences with this tool and decided to never use it again.

A key reason for this is because people fail to realize the perfect situation to make use of an article marketing automation tool.

When should you use this option?

If you wish to boost the page ranking of your site, this tool will work like a charm. A key function of this tool is link building and you can be assured of good results in case you make use of this. It is possible to insert up to three links in the body of the article without much difficulty.

When search engines come across this feature, they are much more likely to push your page ahead in the results as it ensures that your page is actually credible and worth coming up in the list.

When else should you use this tool?

If you are aiming to launch a marketing scheme for your articles, ensure that you are including this tools as a part of your article marketing schemes. This option alone can associate your articles with blogs that have contents, which are in tandem.

Consider the case of an article talking about different diets, when you use an automation tool, your article will be linked to the blogs that talk about losing weight.

When should you avoid using any automation tool?

If your aim is to rewrite original articles, then any marketing software is not for you. People that have tried to do so managed to get thoroughly annoyed and gave it bad reviews in the end. The amount of time that an automation system needs is significantly higher than the time needed by a person to redo the article from scratch. Therefore, avoid using this tool, if you want an article to be rewritten.

When else should you avoid using this option?

There are some people out there who would like to be aware of the location of their article and where it is going to be submitted. This tool can do nothing beneficial for them.

It is next to impossible to track such blogs and find out where essays are being submitted. A common grouse with users of this tool is that articles tend to get submitted to blogs that have not been regularly updated from a long time.…

E-Mail Marketing Surviving Social Media ‘Threat’

Social media is undoubtedly useful for business-to-business (B2B) marketing, with websites such as Facebook and Twitter revolutionising the way that certain advertising methods are undertaken. Despite the rapid rise of social media, e-mail marketing is continuing to prove an effective medium through which small, medium and large size enterprises can advertise their brands.

A recent study carried out by Epsilon that examined no less than 7 billion e-mail messages highlighted the value of e-mail marketing in B2B communications. According to Epsilon, open rates pertaining to e-mail campaigns reached 23.3 per cent by April this year – a success rate of almost one quarter.

Click-through rates, which are critical to B2B lead generation, were also relatively high at 5.9 per cent. Click-to-conversion rates – the holy grail of e-mail – rose by 26.5 per cent from the same period in 2010. As such, it could be argued that, despite the phenomenal rise of social media, e-mail marketing is very much holding its own when it comes to B2B lead generation.

Marketing opportunities in the commercial sphere need not be limited to e-mail, of course, but the web’s most convenient and traditional form of communication should not be overlooked in place of new media. E-mail marketing has a proven track record in delivering results and it is unlikely the medium will suffer a major dip in the near future; indeed, current trends suggest e-mail marketing is set to increase this year and next.

According to the 2011 Digital Marketing Survey, which was undertaken by the Society of Digital Agencies, 70 per cent of marketers intend to increase investment in niche e-mail marketing throughout 2011. At the beginning of the year, a survey carried out by BtoB Magazine found that a massive 63 per cent of marketers hoped to increase spending on direct e-mail campaigns for the next 12 months and beyond.

E-mail is especially useful as marketers can track B2B lead generation using relatively simple methods and technologies. It is also the case that B2B e-mail marketing requires very little cost compared to other forms of advertising.

Although once considered a threat to e-mail, social media is proving to be a useful area in which marketers can promote a brand – but not one that is blind to all other forms of advertising; indeed, social media and e-mail can be utilised in combination to produce strong results for businesses. Ultimately, e-mail marketing is surviving the social media ‘threat’.…

Selling Products and Services Through Article Distribution

Every business owner is looking for the next big secret. Article distribution services would like to share a very valuable secret with you today: article marketing automation. They’re offering the ability to plan your article marketing strategy up to three years in advance in some cases.

Discovering the newest technique people are whispering about in the marketing world before it is widespread is a huge advantage. The secret to selling with article distribution is simple: offer potential customers relevant, valuable information so they will want to continue on to your web site for more.

With article distribution, being an expert in your topic will draw in more readers, and those readers are all potential customers. Having as many articles as possible published with links back to your site will help you increase your readership, which will lead to an increase in sales. Offering up your knowledge to niche consumers means you gain their trust before they even click over to your site to browse your products or services.

Relevant Information

The most vital part of a successful article marketing campaign is information. The articles you write are providing a service to potential customers, instead of making a sale right away you are using your expertise to educate the customer and let them know you’re trustworthy. Every consumer feels more confident in making a purchase from someone who really knows about what they’re selling.

The content you write also allows you to share your voice as well as any enthusiasm and passion you may have for your area of business. Many consumers love knowing that they’re making a purchase from someone who really cares, and the content you create can do a lot to share with them that you do care.

Quality is key when you’re creating your content. Readers are much more likely to click over to your website if they believe that you can provide the solution to their problem.

Marketing with article distribution can be a challenge for some business owners who have experience in marketing because sometimes a shift in thinking is required. The important thing is to concentrate and focus on information instead of selling.

If there is too much specific information about a certain product, consumers will feel like you are just trying to make a sale instead of providing an answer to their question. With your articles, your focus should be demonstrating to consumers that you know your topic like the back of your hand.

Article Distribution

After quality content, the number of articles you submit is a huge part of marketing online. By writing as many articles as possible in your niche, you increase the number of times searching consumers will find you. The more topics you explore, the more you increase your chances of being perceived as an expert in your field. The more sites you are published on, the more likely readers are to find your articles and end up at your website.

Submitting …

Lead Nurturing – Marketing Automation For Small Companies – Perception Can Change

There is a misconception about lead nurturing and marketing automation software tools that it is only for big organizations who have lots of leads to process and a million customers. The real fact is different: lead nurturing is applicable and beneficial to small size businesses, as it is to the big size companies. In the past CRM software solution was also considered expensive investment, only large companies could afford it but the situation have changed, even the smaller and mid size companies have Salesforce and Sugar CRM accounts.

Let us understand the overall process with the help of an example: a local corporate travel service business which provide traveling service, car rental and ticketing to the organizations. The first thing they would consider is to generate a database of prospects and leads form promotional events such as online inquiries off their website or competitions and so on. As in many other businesses, companies have a need to approach them, here lead nurturing technology can be of great help. The important aspect here is to be in front of the organizations when they think about travel service and build a lead nurturing program which will reach out to the companies with messages, updates, and other important content to stay fresh in their memories.

I would like to share an experience with you: I have been receiving email messages from a newly opened business service. I scanned the introductory email for the first time but never took it seriously or explore it further. They followed up with food festivals, discount schemes and other special offers but I didn’t open those. After few weeks a potential client was visiting our office-at that moment that hospitality chain came to my mind. I searched for it in my inbox and browsed through lots of information they have provided. Here, I had a thought in my mind that if this business had a lead nurturing system in place it would have benefited them before i had a chance to look at other options.

It is not at all expensive or complicated to set up a lead nurturing program as it is believed to be. As Salesforce opened the doors for several small and mid size companies with their CRM, we can hope to see lead nurturing and marketing automation taking a similar path.…

Marketing Automation For The Savvy Business Person

Marketing automation is a top notch strategy for the company that is out to improve on its business strategies or increase its market presence. This kind of automation has been around for years and ought to be part and parcel of any company’s marketing campaign. This will ensure that the business in not only at the forefront of the industry, but also that numerous consumers are reached using this particular plan.

In order for the marketing campaign to be a resounding success, there are several things that have got to be taken into consideration. First and foremost, the data that is being sent out has got to be understood by the individual. As such, it should be simplified and straight forward enough so as not to bog the client down with unnecessary information while getting the product or service information across to them.

In order for the information to be considered effective, it has got to be both solid and pertinent to the client in question. As an example, the consumer should have access to the products selling points as opposed to just general information on the pros and cons of the goods or services.

Even though all the content that the customer is being bombarded with might be relevant, it is imperative that the company avoid email fatigue. This is counter productive for both the client and the company in question, but is unfortunately more widely practiced by new and old companies alike. In such situations, the client is bombarded with unnecessary information which works against what the company is trying to achieve because in most instances, the information is sent straight to the spam folder. This can be avoided by sending out emails that are both relevant and to the point. When this is combined with effective conversational marketing, it gives the client the confidence that the information is relevant and can be used to make an informed decision on the products they are about to spend money on.

In as much as marketing automation with an emphasis on conversational marketing makes sense for the modern organization, it has got to be functional in order for the expected results to be achieved. This in turn enables the company to increase and decrease its potential market with ease. Functional marketing could make or break a company and before it is undertaken; the target market should be thoroughly researched in order to make the marketing campaign as impact as possible.

Conversational marketing is an achievable feat regardless of the size of the establishment but as with all other forms of direct or indirect marketing adequate research has got to be done. This is what will ensure that the marketing campaign is a resounding success for all those concerned.

Marketing automation is for the company that is out to reach a wider target audience with a minimum amount of effort for the concerned party.

In conclusion, the savvy business person should look into different …

Article Marketing – 5 Strategies For Maximum Traffic Results!

In the past, article marketing has been used for two things, links and traffic. Distributing articles can get you lots of links pointing in to your web pages, all with great keyword rich anchor text. Lots of links improve your search engine rankings and bring you visitors.

In the past, you could get away with just distributing your articles to lots of article sites, and in doing so your sites would rank well, but now, these directory style links carry a lot less ranking juice. However they do carry some and it is therefore still worth your time to distribute articles for indexing and rankings.

Lots of people start article marketing campaigns, but soon get frustrated that all the effort and time they spend writing is not rewarded with floods of traffic or ranking boosts. So what can be done to ensure the time you put into writing your articles is actually time well spent? Here are 5 tips for boosting your article marketing results.

1. Article Research

How many times do you just sit and write an article off the top of your head and submit it without considering what keywords your targeting, or look to see which articles are proving most popular with readers in your niche? Often I’d guess! If you want a ton of people to see your article, get ideas from articles that are already proving popular in the leading article sites.

2. Article Titles

Always consider your article title very carefully. Going back to the first tip, look to see what titles are proving popular and write similar ones. Secondly try and target your main keyword phrase at the start of the title, and if you can squeeze a second one in after it.

3. Bio Boxes

Make sure you give the reader a compelling reason to click on the link in your bio box. Offer more ‘secrets’ or something for ‘free’.

4. Mass Distribution

If you are going to the time and effort of writing your own articles, make sure you get the most from them by using a distribution service to automate the process of submitting them to all the leading directories and ezines.

5. Blog Networks

Why stop at article directories? Join a blog network and post your article to member blogs, you can quickly get lots of one way targeted links from member blogs that will definitely boost your search engine rankings!

The greater your distribution, the more links you will get from your articles.…

The Publishing Model For Marketing

Publishers use the editorial model. Simply put, publishers are constantly acquiring and thinking about content. The story is their lifeblood. What about your company? Have you struggled recently to get out your latest e-mail blast, scrambled to pull together the material for the webinar you’re hosting in three weeks?

Publishers produce a product every month, every two weeks, often every day. Think of your hometown newspaper, for example. Publishers think of more than just events – they have a continuous process in place to keep important information flowing.

How can you get your message out using the publishing model? You can use a message map – a guide for our structured and targeted communications.

First, you capture the attention of your prospect with relevant and appetizing information.

Second, after you have their attention, you educate them.

Third, you engage them by fulfilling their needs.

And that’s the most important part – fulfilling their needs with the solutions offered by your products and services. You give customers what they really want and, in the process, you’ve educated and enlightened them.

Good messages must be delivered with speed to your customer. Businesses don’t have the luxury of waiting three months to create and deliver content. In today’s speedy world, your message needs to stand out and be sent as soon as it’s needed. Marketing automation, a sales tool that tracks data and allows your marketers to hold meaningful “conversations” with your customers, can help you manage that process.

What if you don’t get your message right in the first place? Publishers don’t worry about that. As they learn more information, the story evolves. You can do the same with your own marketing efforts. Your story may evolve to the point that it’s published in a foreign language – after all you do want to reach a global market.

Publishers also work with templates to solve communication challenges. If your website is fed by a content management system, you’re already doing this. The website becomes the template for the information that’s fed into the management system. In that way, businesses are able to produce and change their messages in a dynamic and often proactive way.

The publishing model may seem radical to businesses that hand out product brochures, contact potential customers through phone banks or send out an occasional e-mail.

But think about how technology has changed our lives and where we’re headed. The world is hungry for instant information and if your business can provide relevant and targeted content, it will be miles ahead of competitors who are still knocking on doors.…

Why Know Your Customers?

Knowing your customers and their preferences is the easiest way to customer retention.

Why know your customers? Initially, the seller-purchaser relationship was tilted in favor of the seller. This was because competition was less and purchasers had fewer choices. However, the last two decades have seen a consistent power shift. With technological advancement and easy availability of information, the buyer now has an upper hand. If your business doesn’t provide what’s required, a competitor is just around the corner to grab the opportunity.

Customers today have become more demanding and expect innovative solutions. Merely meeting customer needs is not enough. The goal is to exceed their expectations so that they return to do more business with you. Studies have shown that about 80% of a company’s business comes from its existing customers. In such scenario, customer retention assumes increased importance. In order to retain customers and ensure that they do not move on to your competitors, it is essential to understand the customer and customize your product/service offering to suit their interests and needs.

How to get to know your customers better? Businesses today don’t function like the corner shops anymore where there’s face-to-face interaction with the customer everyday. Today, customers may be interacting with the business without the business even knowing about it. A visit by the customer sto the business’s website is an example of one such interaction. The key is to capture such interactions, understand the customers and predict their future behavior based on these interactions and use that to anticipate customer needs before they arise. This way the business will be adopting a customer-centric approach to its offering. Knowing the customers will also help your business to make smart decisions that enhance customer experience. Every decision being made can be looked at from the customer’s point of view. However, for this ideal customer-centric approach to become a reality, it is also essential that the commitment towards customer focus is top-down. Only when the CEO and the Board is committed to customer relations will the other employees believe in the concept. Until your business adopts a proactive approach to customer satisfaction, this would not be easy.

What are the benefits of knowing your customers? Knowing your customers better can help you boost is because once you know what could be of potential interest to the customers, you can cross-sell or up-sell relevant product/service offerings. Also, you can save considerably on costs incurred in acquiring/retaining a customer, since your marketing efforts would now be more focused and yield better results. Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty are some other benefits that will arise.

What are the core requirements in this process? To know your customers and be able to understand them, your business needs to adopt an integrated approach to the whole process. All the functions should be well co-ordinated, especially, marketing and sales. Your marketing strategies should be highly customized, running primarily on customer activities that arise as a part of client interaction. The …

Demand Generation Services To Focus on Buyer Requirements

B2B demand generation services should be primarily built around three key components which can be used to develop effective marketing strategy that completely focuses on the buyer. These three ingredients – lead management, marketing automation and content marketing should be integrated and optimized to design efficient demand generation programs that do not merely generate leads but also help in leads conversions.

Lead management framework as an essential constituent of demand generation services

Comprehensive lead management is required to build an effective demand generation plan. The lead management framework defines how the lead will be taken through the different stages of sales cycle from the point of entry into an organization, through marketing nurturing, to hand-off from marketing to sales, through further sales nurturing and finally to close. Lead management is a significant part of the process that defines the important parameters for lead scoring, routing and nurturing. This is critical to finding success with marketing automation and to ensuring that the customers get the information they require to make their own evaluations at various legs of the buying cycle and so that they can move their process forward. Lead management is therefore critical to content marketing and that help devise and deliver buyer centric demand generation services.

Demand generation services focusing on marketing automation

Supported by an efficient lead management process, marketing automation becomes the vehicle for moving the sales process ahead. Marketing automation takes constant signals from lead scores – driven both by buyer demographics and by behavioral cues – as well as segmentation and routing logic, to ensure that the leads are moved forward through the lead management process. And this is an intelligent sorting that is done very rapidly – triggering actions that are beneficial in generating demand.Marketing automation is not just about diminishing manual tasks and enhancing operational efficiency.Rather there is a strategic intention behind using this engine which is to manage buyer-centric, mass one-to-one marketing on a scale basis.

Content marketing is at the heart of demand generation services

Today majority of the buyers do research on their own ahead of speaking with a sales representative. And with easy availability of information that can be accessed with the help of the preferred search engine it has become more important than ever to provide useful content that buyers can use to make their decision fast. The success of these services depends largely on identification of the content buyers need at various buying stages and choosing the right media and channels to convey this content. Basically, content marketing is all about churning out good-quality, pertinent and valuable information to prospects and customers to drive profitable buyer actions. In fact it is not just about providing information but also about using customers’ behavioral cues ( pages accessed and documents downloaded) to find out where a customer is in his/her buying cycle.

Conclusion

Intertwining these three important elements can help tender demand generation services that are focused on buyer needs. Demand …

Benefits of Marketing Automation Software

When you use internet marketing, you have to expect that it will be competitive. As a result, you need to use any tools that will give you an edge over the competition. One of the tools that you can use is marketing automation software. Marketing automation software is often seen as the tool of last resort. But it should not be overlooked that this kind of tool will not only help your company become more effective, but also more profitable.

One of the greatest benefits to using software is that it can help your organization become more effective simply because you naturally become more productive. No longer will you or other employees need to spend time on tedious tasks like sending out mass emails to customers on your mailing list. Neither will you need to spend time doling out marketing and sales leads. Instead, these tasks are performed automatically by the software.

Another benefit to using automating software is that it allows your sales staff to communicate with customers and potential new clients while at the same time tracking leads and how well the sales staff are performing. Client relationship management software, which is an aspect of marketing automation software, helps automate marketing campaigns. As a result, client communication can be better tracked and its effectiveness quickly evaluated.

Marketing automation software also streamlines emails to existing and potential new clients. As a result, you can send out regular emails that inform them of new products or benefits of your products that they might not have thought about. The more information you provide to your clients and potential new clients, the more you improve the likelihood of increased sales. Marketing automation software allows you the ability to schedule email campaigns to bring in new sales.

Software for marketing automation also allows you to improve your business organization. Since the software is a tool that combines several work tasks all in one bundle, you can gain better control over your marketing efforts. Instead of manually scheduling marketing campaigns, you can do this automatically and all business communications with clients are sent out as routine tasks. The marketing campaign goals can be easily built into the marketing campaign, giving you measures to evaluate how effective the campaign is and to generate new sales for your company.

You can also use this software to generate personalized email campaigns that address where potential new clients fall in the sales process. This builds relationships and leads to increased sales. Eventually, if all other aspects of the business is maintained efficiently, success is imminent.

The software allows you to measure the effectiveness of each marketing email campaign and evaluate it for any needed changes for the next marketing campaign. Marketing automation software will help you achieve much higher rates of productivity as a , it will be easier to track and graph any visible changes in the results for reporting purposes.

If you have an internet website and conduct internet marketing campaigns, …

Internet Marketing Is Always Evolving

The online world is constantly changing and evolving, thanks to the advance of technology and the development of various online services, tools and software. Take, for example websites. They are now more interactive than ever, providing users with rich multimedia content that is tailored to their needs. This is in contrast to 15 years ago, where websites were usually static HTML pages that simply contained text, links and images. Web presence has also increased and many businesses in the Boston area have hired the services of a Boston Website Development company to build a site for them.

Search engines have existed in some form ever since the internet has come around. Those who have been online for a while might remember names such as Lycos, Excite and Alta Vista. These names have faded into obscurity, with the majority of search traffic coming from Google, Bing (formerly MSN search) and Yahoo. Not only have the players changed in the search engine arena, but also the way that websites are ranked. Previously, as there wasn’t that many websites around, search engine algorithms were relatively simple. However, with millions of new sites being created, they have increased in complexity, often making it difficult to rank a site well if there are plenty of other websites that are based on the same keywords. A SEO company can help you make sense of search engines and give you valuable advice and services on how to get your website more visible on them, so that it will appear closer to the top of search results for your desired keywords.

The use of the internet as a marketing tool has also gone up. The reasons are simple: with more users, comes greater exposure, which is valuable for anyone who would like to sell something. There are now plenty of online marketing experts, like a Boston Online Marketing Company that provide services to businesses and individuals who want to market something through the internet.

The internet is changing, but where is it going? The current trends seem to point towards an increase of social media sites and applications, where users connect with others to share things that are important to them. Also, the internet is rapidly becoming integrated with other devices as well. You can see this in web enabled smart phones, as well as new televisions that have the ability to connect to the internet to watch movies and videos. If you are using the internet to sell something, then it is important that you stay up to date on new developments in the online world. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a geek who researches new technologies every day, just keep yourself up to date on what is happening online. That way, you will be the first one to take advantages of new developments which could be very profitable for you.…

5 Top Small Business Networking Tips!

Here are 5 tips to ensure that networking becomes an important part in promoting your small business.

1. What is networking?

For any small business networking should be an essential part of your business. My 14 years as a practising solicitor provided me with a network which has been especially invaluable since forming Samson Consulting. Essentially networking is getting out of your office and mixing with people from your same sector, potential referral sources, and any other occasions where you meet new contacts. It should not be confined to thinking that networking only relates to business networking groups although these can be an excellent source.

2. Reasons You Should Network!

There are many reasons that you should network, not just to generate new business. Here are some of the reasons to network:

o Share ideas (see what is working for other people in different business sectors – can you apply this to your business?)

o Get out of your office (running a small business from home or in an office with a few other staff can be lonely. You need to get out of your office to think about your business in a different way. Your best ideas will rarely happen when you are chained to your desk.

o Practise your sales skills on non core targets (before you present to potential clients).

o To win new business (last but often seen as the most important reason).

3. Networking targets? You can only find out if something works by measuring it. What is your networking target? Do you want to meet three new business owners to share ideas or mastermind with or do you want 3 new leads per month? You have to have a goal to score (Sir Alan Sugar) so you must know what you are trying to achieve with your networking.

4. What To Say Or Not To Say?

Networking is essentially a sales and marketing tool. Two of the most important rules of sales are:

o Prospect (i.e. get out there and meet people); and

o Listen.

These are simple rules, yet if they are employed for networking events they will guarantee results.

5. Long Term Gain. We have all been to networking events where we are approached by someone who interrupts our conversation, jumps in with his or her business card, shouts about how brilliant they are and then throws themselves at the next unsuspecting group of people. This is one way to guarantee you will not succeed with your networking approach. The only way you will ever really prosper through networking is to build long term relationships and show a genuine interest in the people you talk to. In the last two years I have brokered deals putting several contacts on my network in touch with each other leading to a benefit for everyone involved. One of these contacts I first made over 8 years ago.

Far too many small business owners run around talking about how great …

Before hiring a water damage restoration company, you should consider several things. These include the following: Immediate removal of water, Drying, Antimicrobials, and Cost. A quality company will consist of these elements in its water damage restoration services. Read on for some of these considerations. Then, make an informed decision based on your budget. If you want to save money on water damage restoration, choose an affordable price company.

Immediate water removal

As soon as a flood or other disaster happens, immediate water removal is essential. Water can cause a large amount of damage in a short period. Luckily, a water damage restoration company can get the job done quickly and efficiently. Calling a water damage restoration service early can help save you time, money, and unnecessary damages. Here’s how to do it. Read on to learn more about water removal and restoration.

Drying

The first step in water damage restoration is drying out the affected area. This process can be noisy and hot, and you should report any loss of power to the damage restoration company. A restoration crew will periodically evaluate the drying progress to keep the affected area dry. This process can take several days. Start the drying process right away if you are working on the carpet yourself. Depending on the severity of the damage, you may have to spend more time on the rug than anticipated.

Antimicrobials

The chemical must be applied according to manufacturer guidelines when using antimicrobials for water damage restoration. Incorrect application may result in injury or ineffectiveness. Water damage restoration professionals should avoid using aerosols and other forms of spray. Both methods are ineffective and dangerous. If you find sewage on a porous surface, an antimicrobial will not work. The sewage must be removed entirely before applying antimicrobials. Water damage specialists must inform you of the potential hazards and rules when using antimicrobials.

Cost

When you’ve experienced flooding or other water damage, you may be wondering: How much does water damage restoration cost? The cost depends on several factors, including the type of water damage, the amount of mold, and other conditions. A professional water damage restoration contractor can give you a good idea of what your specific situation will cost. For example, suppose you’ve experienced flooding due to an appliance. In that case, the cost will be much lower, as the restoration company will only be responsible for drying the affected areas and setting up equipment to prevent mold growth.

Restoring property to pre-loss condition

After water damage, property owners will likely require some reconstruction work to restore their property to a pre-loss condition. These repairs may range from minor repairs to rebuilding entire rooms. To make the process easier for both parties, hiring one company to complete the initial damage mitigation and the subsequent reconstruction is best. The benefits of hiring one company include cost efficiency and convenience. Here are some tips for selecting the right company for the job.

Insurance coverage

The first step in getting insurance coverage …

Creative Ways to Engage Employees and Boost Performance

Every time you hire a new employee, you spend money on the hiring process and lose productivity during training. The most financially sound businesses are those that have low turnover and make infrequent new hires. In order to be this company, you must retain employees, which means keeping them happy and encouraged. Engage employees in a variety of ways to keep them involved in the company and boost their work performances.

Keep Work Fun

A company’s employees are part of a team, but with cubicles keeping them pinned up all day and departments segregated in different areas of the building, it may be difficult to feel that team spirit. Help employees see the bigger picture by getting them together frequently with company activities, like monthly or weekly games or scavenger hunts. Encourage participation by giving prizes to winning groups.

Ask for Advice

To make employees feel like part of the team, prove they are part of the team. The execs may know the ins and outs of the business, but employees often come up with solutions that those locked away in their offices may not see. When changes need to be made to company operations, go to employees for their thoughts. Keep an open-suggestion policy where any new idea is considered. When employees have a say in the running of their own departments, they’ll be looking for ways to improve the process every day, upping employee engagement.

Rewards

Nothing makes employees go above and beyond like rewarding them for that effort. Make the workplace one of recognition by handing out award certificates on an annual, or even monthly, basis. Rewards don’t have to be for common categories, like attendance and sales volume. Think high school yearbook, and consider awards for “best hair” or “best potluck dish.” Do it until every employee has awards peppering their workspaces.

A Word on Bonuses

When you do give out official performance-related rewards, keep them in line with your employee’s purpose. Remember, employees come to work each day to make a living, so rewards that acknowledge that have the most impact. If the company has the funds, immediate rewards like cash bonuses or trips have the most impact on employee engagement. If a company is growing, stock options may be more budget-friendly, and still offer financial incentive. No matter what business you’re in, you must engage employees to keep the workplace from becoming a place of tedium and dread. Create a workplace to which employees don’t mind coming, foster relationships within the company to create loyalty, and reward employees for their hard work to keep them on the team and working for the good of the company for years to come.…

Marketing Automation – Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure With Technology

People buy when they’re ready to buy – not before. 67% of the prospective buyers that tell you no today will be ready to buy in the next year. ~ Gartner Research. So how will you be ready when they are? By following up, that’s how. Sadly many businesses do a poor job of marketing follow up, and in this article you’ll learn the startling facts of just how bad it is, but more importantly you’ll discover just how easy it is to fix your follow up failure and double your sales. 

Why companies don’t follow up:

They forget

They focus ONLY on hot leads

They let unconverted leads languish

They think prospects will call back

They don’t want to be pushy

AND they don’t realize the potential impact follow-up can have on their profits!

While 67% of prospects will be ready to buy within 12 months, 80% will buy within 2 years. Will you still be there when they’re ready to buy?

5 Common follow-up mistakes:

No follow-up at all

Weak follow-up

Irrelevant follow-up

Jumping to a sales pitch

No centralized database

How many touches does it take to close a sale?

2% close on the 1st touch

3% on the 2nd

4% on the 3rd

10% on the 4th touch

81% close on (or after) the 5th touch!!!

When do most companies stop following up?

48% quit on the 1st touch

24% on the 2nd

12% on the 3rd

6% on the 4th

10% quit on the 5th touch

Imagine what would happen if you simply followed up with even 20% more of your leads. Can you see what this would mean to your profits. Remember, there is no additional costs in lead generation, this is merely “harvesting” more of the profits by using follow-up marketing.

Here’s a typical follow-up sequence for new prospects:

Send the info they requested immediately. (email)

Send a letter with more valuable info. (letter)

Call to see if you can answer any questions. (call)

Send a value-added email with tips/education. (email) 

Send a promo offer to stimulate action. (email) 

Follow-up with a limited time promo. (postcard)

Call with a final reminder for promo. (voice broadcast)

Offer subscription to future marketing offers and other value added content. (email)

Of course you can get as creative as you want with your sequences, but the above example should get you started.

Fix Your Follow-Up Failure Plan

Get organized – tag customers and prospects. Segment your data.

Integrate your shopping cart and e-commerce into a follow-up system

Add upsells to the follow-up process

automate process to save human interaction and avoid errors.

Offer free report or other high incentive optin piece

Add an automated affiliate referral program

Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure 

Converts more leads into sales

Gets repeat sales from customers

Grows your business without growing your staff

If you want to learn more about fixing your follow up, I’d encourage you to watch the full video presentation …

Using Social Media to Connect With Customers – Meet Them on Their Turf

It’s not all fun and games when it comes to social media. The intention of social media, initially, was to bring people together in a social environment, allowing friends and family to associate online in a way that gives everyone the opportunity to communicate. However, this type of environment can do a lot more than just let friends chat with each other. It is also a great vehicle for businesses to connect with people on their own ground. Much like taking a business promotion to the general public, using social media to connect with customers is a great way to bring your business to a place where people feel comfortable.

Your business can have a Facebook page or a Twitter page where you can connect with customers on a friendlier and less professional basis. Using social media to connect with customers also gives you a forum to discuss the latest happenings, offer exclusive deals, and let people get to know your business on a personal level instead of always being professional about your operations. People like to know that they’re understood and appreciated, and social media is a great way for your business to show them just that.

It wasn’t long ago that people started noticing the website addresses on the bottom of every TV commercial, at the end of radio ads, and in other business advertisements and marketing campaigns. Today, it’s not uncommon to see a business promoting their Facebook page or their Twitter account, where anyone can become a fan or follow their business activities. A lot of companies even offer special incentives to people who visit their social media websites. This is a way to drive traffic and get people’s attention, and for now it is working.

If your business is looking for a better way to communicate with customers, It is a great alternative to traditional business marketing and communication. It allows you to get on their level, become a real person to them, and show them how great your business is without them feeling like they are even dealing with a business at all. All the benefits of this have made it a great tool for businesses that are looking to create a better relationship with customers. As time goes on and more people depend on this social outlets, businesses will continue to reap the rewards of using this to connect with customers.…

Are You Making The Right Use Of Marketing Automation Solution?

Marketing automation solution is often looked upon as the panacea to all the sales and marketing woes. To most of the marketers it is like a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of solution that can move the leads swiftly through the sales cycle with no extra effort required. But unfortunately what they don’t realize is that using the solution alone will not suffice. In fact most of the organizations fail to realize the full value of the investment made in marketing technology. The truth is that if you are going to depend solely on an automated tool to nurture your contacts and leads, you are in for some big trouble.

Using barely marketing automation solution to grow contacts list

One major disadvantage of using only an automated solution for the purpose of adding new contacts to your database is that you will run out of people you can direct your marketing efforts to in a while. Generally, email marketing lists keep losing its relevance to some degree with every passing year, retaining on average 75% of the members after each year due to overturn at companies. With people swapping jobs and companies undergoing management changes, the current email addresses no longer remain valid after sometime. As a result you end up having a pretty deflated email marketing list that you cannot rely on to generate leads.

Merging marketing automation solution usage with sales efforts

Marketing automation in itself is not bad. But you need to concentrate on filling the top of your sales funnel by luring and adding net new contacts to your database while optimizing marketing automation efforts simultaneously. Practicing inbound marketing is the best way to achieve your target. You can create interesting and search engine friendly content that addresses your prospects’ needs and queries and use social media to promote that content and extend your reach. Convert the visitors into prospects or leads using proper call-to-action and land pages. They will make up for the 25% of members that you lose to list expiration each year.

Using marketing automation solution in all its complexity

Even if you are focused on growing your email marketing list alongside the automated solution usage, unfortunately, most organization fail to make optimum use of marketing automation solution; barely leveraging the complex features like lead intelligence, contacts’ behavioral traits, etc that can be utilized to plan and craft segmented and personalized marketing campaigns. Rather, they go with a one-size-fits-all approach that results in a series of spam mails that lack targeting. And this is mainly due to dearth of integration between their marketing channels.

Conclusion

Marketing automation solution is a crucial element for every organization to grow market share. If the marketing automation solution, marketing database and marketing analytics tools are properly integrated you can easily segment your communication in the best possible way to address your contacts’ needs and interests. So what you need to do is include technology marketing into …

Article Marketing Automation Review

Article Marketing Automation (AMA) is probably the best tool when it comes to getting a bunch of valuable links to your site and boosting your rankings. After years of experience on the internet and possibly testing all the different kinds of links building I came to the conclusion that nothing comes close to what this system has to offer.

So what it comes down to is the fact that Article Marketing Automation does indeed work and it is certainly the best link building tool available on the internet if you use it correctly.

So what is AMA?Well it is a blog network consisting of over 10 000 blogs where you can submit your article, choose your category and your article will then be distributed to the other blogs in the network. These 10 000 blogs are also targeted to your niche as you can choose the categories where your article should be posted.

You can also get other people to submit their content on your site. All you do is enter your blog’s details, choose your category and then you will get content on a daily basis, which you can approve or reject.

But what makes AMA unique?The anchor text is placed in the content and not in a resource box below the article. So that means that you will get a much better click through rate on your articles.

You can send your articles to all the sites in the network. In the old days you would send one article to hundreds of article directories and hope for a lot of back links to your site. But the problem with this is, because of the duplicate content, most of them will fall under Google’s supplemental index so that means only one or two links will actually count. But when you do it via article marketing automation then every link will count as a valuable link as you will get your article published on a site that is relevant to the theme of your site.

The articles are also distributed over time so it looks much more natural to the search engines.

Now for the resultsIn only four months of using the AMA system I’ve seen much more traffic coming into my sites and I already have first page rankings for almost every niche that I enter. And all this has been achieved by using AMA and some other techniques where I basically just build more value to the links that’s coming in from the AMA system. With one of the niches I entered I had 3 results on Google US for my main keyword and that’s only one of the keywords. So this proves that this system works!

So should you sign up for article marketing automation? Most definitely yes! If you don’t then you are probably missing out on the most effective link building tool on the internet.…

Free and Affordable Ways to Market Yourself Or Your Business

In these tough economic times, many people and businesses know they need to market to get visibility that leads to sales, but have little or no extra capital to do so. However, there are many ways one can market themselves or their business with little or no money. Here are some proven effective marketing strategies for people and businesses with little or no money to spend.

1. Create a website: A website will allow you do tell the world about yourself and what you do. There are many services that allow you to build your own website with easy to follow instructions. Therefore you don’t have to worry about the cost of hiring a website developer to build your site. The most important thing is you want to get as many people to know about you and what you do as possible. Having a website will allow you to share yourself and what you do with others, getting the word out.

2. Develop Strategic Relationships: In building strategic relationships, you create referrals, and referrals mean business. You can join and attend organizations, clubs and associations that share your interest. For example: if you are a realtor you can join the Financial Planners Association, where there are so many professionals that come into contact with people that need to sell or buy real estate. You can create relationships, where you agree to refer clients that need financial advice in exchange for referrals of people that need to sell or buy real estate.

3. Create a unique style or logo: You want to allow people to easily identify you as being different and unique from the competition. Every successful business has a logo, from Microsoft with its four colored window representing its famous operation system windows. You want to create a logo that represents what you do in an image.

4. Write Articles or Newsletters: Write articles or newsletters relating to what it is you do. For example, if you are a wedding planner, you can write an article: How to have a superb wedding on a limited budget. You can add your contact information, your website address and the services you offer generating potential leads.

5. Become a Speaker: Many non-profits, universities, organizations, associations and other entities are always looking for people that can offer knowledge and expertise in many different areas to their members. For example, is you provide senior care, you can contact your local senior citizens center and arrange to discuss what to look for in choosing a senior care provider.

6. Get Social with Online Social Networks: There are many free social networks that allow you to connect with others who share your interest and together you can achieve your goals. You can create a profile or business page for free. For example is you are a florist you can connect with wedding planners which could lead to potential sales, or if you are a drummer looking …

How to Become a Really Smart Marketer

Have you ever heard anyone say, “We’re so lucky, we never have to do any marketing and the business keeps coming in”?

We did, and 3 months ago, they told us they had had their worst year ever. The number of businesses who rely on customers picking up the phone themselves or just relying on word of mouth is astounding. If you think like that, not only are you leaving fortunes on the table but you are putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

The trouble is that when someone says “You need to do some marketing,” some people imagine that suddenly an enormous amount of their profit is going to disappear overnight. They start thinking:

“Who exactly am I going to market to?”

“What am I going to say?”

“Who will do it for me?”

We imagine all the horrors associated with hiring a marketing agency that is then going to eat up our budget with fancy artwork and branding ideas. If you insist on hiring an agency, then so be it, but please make sure that they talk to you in terms of ROI (return on investment). If they can’t guarantee their work, then you should be asking them why not. Too many times we see advertisements which essentially have the message “Look at me! I have a business; phone me if you like.” That may seem harsh, but you just look through any business to business magazine for examples of the worst offenders.

So what is Smart Marketing?

It’s marketing where you OFFER something to your customers rather than simply announcing your existence.

It’s also marketing where you start with your existing customers.

It’s also marketing that does not involve a huge amount of expense.

You will have already heard me say that we leave a great deal of hidden money with our customers by not following up with them enough.

Try this with your existing customers:

Send them a sales letter with an offer to buy something from you that is extra to what they would normally buy. It might be a new product or service or an exceptional offer on your usual product or service for a limited time frame.

The letter should have the following:

1 – An attention-grabbing headline which gets them to read on

2 – The offer and the reason why the offer exists in the form of a story

3 – A deadline by which they need to respond

4 – Instructions on what they need to do next

This is direct response marketing that is inexpensive, measurable, and sent to people who already like buying from you.…

The Business Marketing Know-How

As with anything that deals with business, having a successful marketing plan is a very challenging task. It requires careful planning, deliberate application, and evaluation of the entire process. Although some may prove to be lucky and succeed during the first trial, most often, effective business marketing requires experience and training.

Perhaps one of the most effective marketing techniques is increasing the exposure of the business. Most people rely on the World Wide Web as a resource in looking for what options there are in the market. In that regard, here are a few ideas to consider before making a marketing plan.

– Online listings. Like yellow pages, making your website visible over the internet is a great way of kicking off your marketing plan. Most people these days opt to check online for businesses that cater to their services. Taking your business online, whether big or small, can provide good exposure for potential customers to see. There are now free online services offering a safe way of giving your contact information. In fact, there are some which allows businesses to transact online.

– Establishment Structure. The structure of the business establishment greatly affects how customers view the company. Seeing how the owner cares for the looks and appearance of the structure will give the customers an idea on whether the owner is focused and detail-oriented. Here are some of the ideas that can enhance the impression of customers:

– The architecture and design of the establishment is based according to the market it is trying to attract. Like for example, if you are trying to entice a group of teens, seeing a sign for shop front with various bright colors can actually invite them over. However, if the target market is children and the front of the shop shows off a serious vibe, then even parents will not be happy to see their children in such a serious place.

– Furniture in the establishment plays a big role in making the customers comfortable. Keep in mind that if you intend to put up a potentially crowded shop, then you might want to add in more ventilation or air conditioning. Aside from that, chairs never fail to add more convenience and comfort for the customers. Remember that people do not want to line up for long. Adding furniture or organizing other activities that could keep them busy will make their time worthwhile as they wait.

Putting up a business is never easy. On the other hand, being a customer is just as difficult. The bumps on the road during transactions are inevitable and could often lead to misunderstanding and confusion. While business marketing is the core in attracting customers, it is important that tycoons know their limits. Getting loyal clients is one of the main goals in meeting the success of the establishment. This does not involve giving out false and misleading infomercials. Rather, it is all about the services and the products the business is …

Using Attraction Marketing to Succeed in Your MLM Business

You can now become a success at MLM business if you use the right attraction marketing strategy. The conventional methods of growing your MLM network are no longer relevant to these times of technological advancement. With attraction marketing your MLM business can be strategized to be a complete success.

All MLM businesses work the same way, they have to create a network. This is the core strategy to the business. They promote the features and promises that the products will help them earn in thousands. However not all attraction marketing strategies for MLM businesses are the same. If you want to taste success, you will have to however break away from the pack of normal strategies and adapt to newer techniques and methods.

With attraction marketing you can now focus on your niche market to obtain leads that will join in your MLM business network. This method does away with the traditional methods of the business man trying to get in people into his network.

Let’s look at a few strategies that will help you find success in MLM business.

1. In order for your business to succeed you need to think out of the box. Many companies are always trying to sell a product first before the lead can even join the network. No individual would like to shell out money before getting into unknown territory. With attraction marketing you will learn how to attract qualified leads system that will help promote your business.

2. Most company strategies involve selling of a product. However with attraction marketing you will learn how to cash in those leads that refuse to join the programming since it involves buying. It is estimated that 94-97% of individuals will not take up the opportunity if they have to buy something to become a part of a network. With attraction marketing strategies for your MLM business you will learn how to convert those leads into customers who will work for you.

3. Another great attraction marketing strategy involves how you could get thousands of leads everyday. Most MLM businesses suffer or are stagnant because they do not find enough leads to expand their business. With a regular database of leads supplied with the right marketing strategy you can be assured that your business will grow continuously. You can then convert these leads into successful customers who will in turn work for you by generating leads for themselves.

4. With the right marketing methods a businessman will be able to run a business on autopilot. However the first three steps will first have to be successful for the entire business to run on itís on.

There are several strategies that a businessman can adopt. There are several marketing gurus as well who claim to cover gaps that attraction marketing has. However he will have to choose the plan that works best for his type of business so that it yields him results. MLM marketing is one type …

Marketing Automation Software

Today it has been seen that the business world is very competitive and there are many different companies that are looking for the various ways through which they can make marketing campaign more effective. Therefore companies try to avoid investing in the marketing strategies that might not produce effective and satisfactory results. So, most of the companies now are trying to find methods that could help them in managing and tracking of the marketing campaigns so that they can have greater understanding of the customer profitability and profiles.

Marketing automation is considered as the uses of software that can perform automate marketing processes like CDI or customer data integration, customer segmentation, and campaign management. The marketing automation generally makes processes that otherwise need to be performed manually. Moreover the processes are performed in more efficient manner. Today, it is regarded as an integral component of the CRM or customer relationship management. Marketing automation generally involves the utilization of the specially designed software.

This software can be seen as an effective strategy that can be used for keeping the track of the all the campaign strategies that are working and that have failed to acquire the desired results. Advertising automation can make it easier to use crusade results in increasing improved campaigns designed for the future.

Marketing automation software helps all the businesses to automate all their important marketing processes. These kind of software help all the businesses to accomplish varied tasks like defining, tracking and scheduling of the campaign goals and also helps in the creation and implementation of marketing campaigns. Besides this, marketing automation software helps businesses in the area of market segmentation and makes it easy to identify target markets. It also helps in collection of important market information to generate response. This information about response is then fed back in the system.

Choice of a marketing automation by a company is not very important because all of them share a common denominator. Common denominator is basically regarded as the use of some technology so that better communication with all the customers can be ensured and there could be more effective and targeted marketing campaign.

There are many different kinds of the software that makes the task of managing campaigns possible and very easy by encompassing different marketing methods. Such software can be put to use with printing, radio, Internet, email, and television marketing campaigns. However, it has been seen that the capability of the marketing automation software generally depends on the type of software.

Marketing automation software comprises of a particular program or some group of applications. It is treated as a combination of the varied tools that can be used to carry out analysis as well as profiling. These tools include everything like web measurement and personalization of the campaign strategies. Besides this, these tools can also be used to improve the communications with all customers and to obtain a valuable insight into marketing strategy of company.

It is not just a software, …

Article Marketing Automation – Get Traffic, Rise Above the Competition

Do you have an online business? Are you having trouble getting people to find your site? The problem lies in your marketing strategy.

With online business the single most important thing to do is to market your website well. You want your site to be the first choice when searching in search engines. Although this requires perseverance, many very effective techniques have been developed to attain this goal.

Article marketing is one technique developed to market your site and gain exposure. This technique requires you to write an article about a keyword that is related to your website. Although this is an effective step, it also requires a steady submission of articles to a large number of article directories in order to drive continuous traffic. But this is extremely effective for driving traffic to your site over a long period of time.

The easiest and most effect way to do article marketing is to automate it. Article marketing automation is the answer. Instead of submitting articles manually to each article directory, you can automate this entire process. There are hundreds of programs that allow you to submit articles automatically. Some are free and some are paid but all of them will help you market your business.

Article marketing automation makes article submission extremely easy. This works by submitting articles to a hundred of article directories at once. The submitted articles will then give you a boost of traffic to your site.

Although the manual article marketing strategies are still in use, people are gradually finding new alternative methods to boost their internet traffic. The people on the cutting edge of the newest techniques typically have the biggest advantage.

With automated article marketing software you can write an article and with the push of a button you can easily submit your article to thousands of potential customers reading the numerous article directories. Not only does it make the process faster but it also makes it more time efficient and effective.

Within two hours you can easily submit articles to a hundred of sites. Then as often as you want you can post different articles to a hundred of different sites with different keywords. All of these keywords will let people find you and find your business or offer.

With different articles and different keywords you can make sure that you are one of the top searches among millions of people on the internet. When you do article marketing automation you just don’t just gain traffic. You make your business viable in the long run and you soar above the competition and everyone else who doesn’t implement the latest strategies.…

What Is Not Lead Nurturing?

Many marketers around the world have two common question in mind, What is lead nurturing? and how one can define it? Many specialist have tried to define the term in their own way. Here, I will share with you a definition shared by Jon Miller, VP of marketing at Marketo: “Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship by conducting an informative dialog that helps qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready, regardless of budget, authority, or timing – and of ensuring a clean hand-off to sales at the right time”.

It is very easy to mix the objective and believe in everything that comes under the spectrum of lead nurturing or marketing automation technology or software. Their is more to it if you understand the definition, It is possible to acquire a really great lead nurturing application and still miss the point of creating a conversation and touching base with leads through content in a close loop till they are sales ready. Thus, it is very important to understand what is not lead nurturing.

The important factor is to able to differentiate between creating a periodic email marketing campaign and setting up a lead nurturing program. Next, every email should not be an outright attempt to sell or make an offer. Selling is done for the leads which are nurtured and ready to be sold. In nurturing stages, leads are absorbing information and content which can help them to solve their problem and know when they are ready to buy.

Auto responder email programs have gained immense popularity as lead nurturing tools but it works well when used properly. In the same way newsletter programs can be sent using the same technology. So make sure when you are planning your program, stand back and check whether it fits the goal of your program.…

How Email Marketing Can Generate Quality Leads

In some quarters, emailing marketing has a less than optimal reputation. Some see it simply as the refuge of ‘spammers’, a low-rent way for businesses to try and grab the attention of their customers, while generally succeeding only in irritating them. It doesn’t have to be like that. Over the last couple of years email has evolved and progressed through the use of in-depth analytical tools that allow for highly targeted and relevant campaigns. Good quality email campaigns can offer a great ROI and is an excellent opportunity work on customer and B2B lead generation.

Email marketing can easily be outsourced to specialist marketing firms. They will generally be able to offer a full email package designed to help your business win customers in a targeted way. Rather than untargeted campaigns that drive away as many customers as they gain, modern marketing aims to reach the right people and generate real leads. Rather than simply driving traffic to a website, quality email campaigns concentrate on customer and B2B lead generation. They generally do this by tracking and analysing behaviour.

After a marketing email has been sent, a lead generation tool can be used to work out which of the website hits that result from it are likely to be real leads. It can see when people have logged on to the site, how long they spent there, and whether and when they return. A customer who logs on repeatedly and frequently is, naturally, far more likely to be a good lead than one on who logs on once. This kind of information then needs to be used effectively. It could be sent to sales staff, who can then make calls to follow up the leads. It could also be used to trigger an automatic email, creating a kind of targeted email marketing ‘virtuous circle’.

Effective email marketing that is combined with automatic customer and B2B lead generation in this way is intelligent marketing that can build business for the future. As with any kind of marketing campaign, it needs to be well handled in order to work, and the automated side of it is only part of the story. Without good sales people in place to back it up, it will not produce the kind of returns your business needs. However, with commitment and a holistic approach, using automatic lead generation can transform a very ordinary email marketing campaign into a huge success.…

Avoiding Marketing Automation That Breaks the Rules

Did you ever find articles on website marketing with advice that prescribed marketing automation methods for success? Did they seem too good and even too wild to be true? Marketing automation the way these popular articles speak of it, is the use of a piece of software that is designed to automatically post on blogs, create accounts with social networking and other sites, extract e-mails, and in general, to do a lot of legwork for you to push your website up in the popularity ratings in a way it doesn’t deserve. There are lots of these marketing automation software packages out there with names like Extract Master and Extreme Cash Robot that are marketed as great ways by which to quickly promote your website. There’s just one problem with all of this – Google and all of the other major search engines use sophisticated methods to try to judge whether a site uses these illegal marketing automation methods. And they will quickly ban a website when they find evidence. While not all marketing automation is this way, you need to know which ones to avoid, to keep your website safe from any risk of being banned. Let’s look at some examples of unsavory marketing automation to help you stay in the clear.

Your number one implementation of marketing automation software to avoid would be of the e-mail extractor variety. There are many reasons why software of this kind will not really help you at all. To begin with, most websites that require you to sign up and register, have all kinds of hoops they will have the software jump through. Even if the software succeeds at first, it’s only a matter of time before it’s caught and your website is taken off of search engine indexes. In the end, you’ll be left with a bunch of e-mail addresses you generated that will not be of any use.

As for software that is claimed to be able to create accounts on blogs, social networks and forums and to the able to post on them, those are just untruthful claims. Any of these places has tests in place to help tell the real sign-ups apart from the automated ones. The easiest way they have of doing this is with a Captcha image – where they put up an image of a number or a word and ask whoever is signing up, to type in what they see. Marketing automation software is never going to be able to get past this one. And even if these packages do get past all the safeguards that have been in place, you probably won’t get very far posting as much as you need to, to get any mileage out of these activities. These places have rules for how much you are allowed to post.

So there you go – there is a right way and wrong way to automate your marketing. Build ethical link farms, and in general, try …

Building Better Customer Relations With Personalization

Personalization is the number one strategic action your business can take.

Why Personalize?

Marketing today has evolved into something much more than creating advertising collaterals and sending them to everyone in the company database. Marketers can no longer survive with a blindfolded approach to prospecting. This is because the prospect profiles have changed radically. In today’s internet age, prospects are more informed than ever before. They also have a lot of choice when it comes to selecting the right vendor. In order to strike a chord with the prospects in such environment, the marketing team has to focus on establishing a personal, one to one relationship with the prospect. Only building this relationship and cementing it over a period of time will enable the business to gain an edge over competition. In this scenario, Personalization becomes an indispensable tool.

Personalization-The Concept

Personalization involves understanding customers, anticipating their needs and positioning the business’s solutions in a manner so as to add value to the customers. The spectrum of personalization is very wide. At the lowest end lies something as simple as sending out e-mails that address the recipients by their names and further up lie custom landing pages and the ability of the business to anticipate and offer products/services tailored to suit the individual customer needs.

Cases for Personalization

A study conducted by the Aberdeen Group states 87% of retailers believe that personalization will bring about significant changes to their business. 41% of the retailers mentioned that personalization helped their business attain higher levels of customer satisfaction. The study also listed Personalization as the number one strategic action that a business needs to take. The US Banker magazine carried an article in which the chief marketing and innovation officer for AXA Equitable mentioned that the return on investment with respect to dollars spent on personalization was almost 5 times.

Key Ingredients

Personalization requires three key ingredients to be in place. One-Collection of prospect information, Two-Availability of this information in real time, Three-Ability to act upon this information so as to add value to the prospect/customer. Once a business has these three key aspects in place, the only thing left to do is to find a platform that will enable a seamless integration of all these three to enhance customer experience.

Want to create personalized marketing materials such as database-driven flyers, postcards, newsletters, proposals, and other print-quality documents? Try MindMatrix’s inVision-a leading marketing automation software that can bridge the gap between marketing and sales. Whether it is through E-mails, Print, HTML templates, Flash or PowerPoint presentations, MindMatrix offers solutions to suit all your marketing needs.…

How Marketing Automation Software Can Help You Solve Your Demand Generation Challenges?

A well-built Marketing Automation Software can help you get better results from its demand generation efforts by enhancing the various steps in the demand generation process. It streamlines the process and provides marketing with valuable prospect/customer data, which can be used to increase the overall effectiveness of the business’s demand generation strategy. Following are the advantages of automating the demand generation process –

Complete customer view – An ideal marketing automation software provides the business with a holistic view of its prospects. Once the marketing team has a 360A� view of its prospects, it can modify its demand generation campaigns to complement prospect behavior.

Personalized marketing & sales tactics – Research has proven time and again that personalized marketing bears better results than generic, mass-produced efforts. Prospects/customers tend to favor brands that personalize products and solutions to suit their needs. Personalization enhances value from the customer perspective.

Content syndication – As prospects/customers interact with the business on various platforms, there’s a need for the business to utilize these numerous channels to drive home its message. Marketing Automation Software with built-in content syndication mechanism enables a business to consistently deliver the same message across all communication channels.

Staying in touch with prospects – Research indicates that only about 15% of leads are immediately willing to buy. While about 20% are disqualified initially, the remaining 65% are mildly interested in the product/service, but not ready to invest in it right away. The business must stay in touch with such prospects and keep the leads warm, so that when it’s time to make the buying decision, the prospect remembers the brand. By choosing the right marketing automation software a business can communicate with its prospects through various channels including e-mails, web pages, social networking sites, blogs, and information-sharing portals.

Multiple output support – Prospects now have a multitude of ways to reach out to vendors. These include the web, social media and other information sharing sites. Facebook has around 400 million users, while Twitter has around 75 million and LinkedIn is catching up with over 65 million users. That means millions of prospects. Marketing Automation Software allows the business to communicate with its prospects across all these platforms.

Brand management – Managing your brand and keeping marketing materials updated is never going to be a problem once you use a marketing automation software. For example, SpeedWheels, a company manufacturing high-end bicycles. SpeedWheels has presentations and flyers made for each new model. Let’s assume that the price of Model II changes. If a pricing change were made in the presentations, the same would be automatically reflected in the flyers as well.

Understanding prospect/customer behavior – Marketing Automation Software provides business with a 360-degree view of the following question can be answered by deploying the right automation system –

Did the prospects visit the company site?

Which links did they click on? Did they open an e-mail?

How many e-mails did marketing send …

Marketing Automation, How It Works and How to Use It Properly

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a way to collect information, trigger events based on that information and produce workflows to engage the human touch. It has revolutionized the way B2B companies and large purchase B2C companies structure their marketing programs. The online marketing world has made it possible collect large amounts of data about your customer’s interactions, which in return is making it difficult to manage all of this data.

Customer Interaction

An online presence no longer consists of building a website and calling it a day. In order to stay competitive you now have to get a share of your market’s web traffic. Then you need your website to act more like an amusement park then a bridge, meaning you want them to hang out for a while. Not only do you want them to hang out, you want them to be engaged and ultimately converting. In the B2B world, most sales don’t happen in an online shopping cart. They visit your site multiple times reading expert advice, downloading white papers and watching videos before they decide to engage with you. With marketing automation you can track what your customers are doing from their first click to a sale.

Automate Your Process

While your customers are hanging out at your site wouldn’t it be nice to know when a visitor checks out your pricing page? With marketing automation you have the ability to identify who’s been to your pricing page and to ping someone on your sales team. You now have a warm lead and the ability to make certain that the sales team follows up on it. Automating these processes eliminates human error and guarantees that a hard earned lead is being followed up on. You can set up triggers to notify sales, engage managers, escalate untouched leads, nurture them once they go stale, and ultimately anything that can help the sales process.

Beat the Competition

Marketing automation tools have become very powerful and can give you a competitive advantage during this adaption phase. Even companies that have adapted to this tool have not quite harnessed the full power of it. Getting your company on board now can leave your competition in the dust. Make sure you do your research and build a solid program to implement a marketing automation solution to its full capacity.

Marketing Automation Tools

Currently, there are many leading tools for automation. Find a tool that integrates well with your CRM. If you are planning to adopt an automated marketing tool for your company it is recommended that you hire a consultant.…