DIGITAL STRATEGY BLOG

Lead scoring is a topic we touch on often in the marketing world. But unless you know what lead scoring is and how it works, the topic can be confusing and feel unattainable for your marketing team. While there is planning and work that goes into establishing lead scoring on your website assets, it's valuable information that can power your sales and marketing teams can use to close deals, make strategic content, and speak directly to your soon-to-be-customers. Our sales-guru Michael, Business Development Manager at HIVE, covered lead scoring in his latest vlog. Click the video below to take a listen or read the transcript that follows to get started on your lead scoring journey. 

Technology is a competitive industry. As a software company, gaining and holding onto attention online can feel like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. This is a problem when your customers are looking to you to solve their software problems and be a technical thought leader in your field. A software marketing strategy can polish up your digital presence and ensure your customers can trust you as a tech-savvy industry expert. 

Inbound marketing uses digital assets to attract prospects to a website or landing page with the goal of converting visitors into leads that can be nurtured throughout a marketing and sales funnel. Typically, this is achieved through content marketing campaigns focused on educating prospective customers through high value content pieces which are accompanied by landing pages, thank you pages, and calls-to-action. Once a prospect enters their information into a company’s database, the company can nurture them through the various stages of the buyer’s journey with the end goal of a closed sale.

Though they are not in the event management business, Mile Marker Club utilizes in-person events as both a stand alone product to deliver premiere wealth education in the alternative investment realm as well as a means to gain new members into their exclusive club. But with a goal of more symposiums in 2020 they needed high engagement and conversion strategies for their existing database of contacts. 

If you rely on HubSpot for marketing automation or customer relationship management, lifecycle stages are an essential component of the platform. The problem is that they can be really confusing to understand since the concept of each stage is open to interpretation and adaptation, but HubSpot’s current format makes the lifecycle stage implementation pretty rigid and automatic. Developing a clear understanding of the purpose of each stage and how they can work most effectively to motivate leads to become customers will help your sales and marketing teams avoid the need for workarounds in the future. 

HubSpot is one of the best tools in any marketing or sales team's arsenal, but a tool is really only as good as the person using it. Our CAM (Channel Account Manager) at HubSpot, Jacob (@jacobin617), loves to use the analogy of a helicopter. It goes something like this -

If someone asked you if you wanted a helicopter, what would you say? You'd say heck yeah!

Then they'd drop the helicopter off in your backyard and you'd have no idea what to do with it. Where do you get gas for the helicopter? How do you fly it (hint: that's not how!)? Who does helicopter maintenance? There are so many questions to go along with your cool new toy.

We’ve all had the experience of being targeted by a retailer who makes us feel uncomfortable because of their sales tactics. We know about the awkwardness that accompanies those moments when someone is trying to sell us a product we’re not interested in, but the person doesn’t seem to get the hint.

Sales-driven organizations gather leads in a lot of different ways. One organization may focus on pay-per-click advertising and building an exciting e-newsletter, while another thrives on personal referrals and gathering potential customer information at special events.

I've talked a lot about lead nurturing and it's value in helping to grow your business. The fact of the matter is that not everyone is ready to buy the first time they come to your website. In fact 57% of the sales process is actually complete before a customer ever reaches out to a company. In our current world, customers have access to more information than ever before and they use that to their advantage by consuming mass amounts of research before they contact a salesperson. By the time your leads are contacting you, they most likely have thoroughly researched your business and all your competitors businesses and they probably have already decided that they want to work with you. But what about those prospects who come to your site, fill out a form and leave never to be seen again? That's where you're lead nurturing campaign comes into play, helping keep your business name in front of those people anticipating the moment they might finally be ready to make a purchase. 

The mistake most companies make when it comes to their lead nurturing is stopping it once your lead has become a customer. Sure closing a lead into a customer is incredibly important but that doesn't mean that your relationship ends once they've signed a contract or made a purchase! Wouldn't you rather develop a long-term relationship with these people? If your answer to any of these questions is "yes" (and, trust me, it should be), read on.

8 Ideas to Generate More Leads Online Today and 10 Tips to Increasing Your Leads Online seriously and you've started generating leads online, but...now what?

You're not in business to generate leads online, you're in business to generate SALES! So, how do you go about turning those leads that you've generated online into actual paying customers? Let's take a look at four Do's and four Don'ts of lead nurturing to help you start closing more deals!