RULE #1: What Doesn’t Get Measured, Doesn’t Get Done

Regardless of how much you may think of your latest great idea, outreach plan or marketing campaign, if you can’t measure it, it shouldn’t be done. It’s that simple. So, take stock of your data and ensure that it’s properly aligned with your end goals. That means you must clearly define – and limit – the metrics you’re going to measure. Then, set clear goals and write down the questions you want answered by your analysis. Don’t try to capture or report on everything. Instead, measure just the essentials. For example, make sure that you’re measuring:

• Metrics that are actionable (don’t pull data for the sake of having data)
  • Now that I know “X,” I can increase my PPC budget for region “Y” 
  • Now that I know “X,” I know which page on my website needs to be refreshed for better user experience 
  • Now that I know “X,” I will change my email call-to-action to improve results in my next campaign

• Metrics that measure success
  • How many leads/conversions/new customers did my campaign generate?
  • What is my search engine rank?
  • How many blog views did I receive last month?
  • How much revenue did my marketing activities generate last quarter?

RULE #2: Automate. Automate. Automate

Automation is essential. If you don’t automate, analytics quickly becomes a dreaded chore. Automation doesn’t have to be overly complex or sophisticated – and you don’t have to do it all at once. Start with something as simple as scheduling reports to run automatically, then work toward fully automating marketing analysis.

• Schedule your reports to run automatically and be delivered to your email inbox instead of setting calendar reminders and manually logging into Salesforce to pull a specific report.
• Stop rebuilding the same charts and graphs in Excel week after week. You can build your workbook once, then simply update the raw data each week. Structure your workbooks with hidden tabs for raw data and formulas.
• Leverage built-in analytics available within your Channel Marketing and Management (CMM) Platform or CRM, SFA or MA system. Spend a few extra minutes to build your custom reporting to spec, then schedule your reports to deliver to you or your recipients automatically. 
• Connect your data sources to a Business Intelligence platform to fully automate your marketing reporting.

RULE #3: Pull Data from a Breadth of Sources

Pull and examine data from a variety of sources. That’s the only way to see, show and tell the full story from a marketing analytics perspective. Just as reporting on an email click-through rate doesn’t provide the complete picture of a campaign, pulling and reporting on data from one source won’t deliver the overarching view of your marketing efforts and impact.  

To get a more holistic view, draw data from a variety of sources, including Google Analytics, your internal CMM, CRM and SFA Platform, HubSpot, Pardot and more. Many of these systems work together to provide deeper insight. Are you measuring Facebook shares in Hootsuite? Then you should also measure website traffic from Facebook in Google Analytics. Of course, don’t get carried away. You’ll want to be sure that the data you’re collecting is actionable. (See Rule #1)

RULE #4: Set a Cadence

Not all of your marketing metrics demand the same amount of attention. Set a cadence and stick to it to avoid wasting time analyzing, or overanalyzing, your data. You can usually prioritize data to determine which metrics should be analyzed:

• Daily: Visits to your website, total number of leads, leads generated by marketing channel
• Weekly: Campaigns, inbound links, calls-to-action (CTA) click-through rates, overall blog views
• Monthly: Search engine ranking based on campaigns, costs per lead, average email click-through rates, social media metrics
• End of Quarterly or Annual Sales Cycle: Lead to customer conversion rate, revenue generated by marketing activities

Our friends at HubSpot published a great blog that provides more detailed insight on When to Check on Your Marketing Metrics: A Simple Guide.

RULE #5: Make Data Meaningful via Visualization

Raw numbers on a sheet of paper or spreadsheet are difficult to digest and understand. Use visualizations, not numbers, to tell your story. Whenever you’re sharing data with an audience, find a way to make it more meaningful by using charts, color, etc. as much as possible. Using visualization makes your data more accessible and easier to understand, thus enabling your audience to see patterns and trends, make faster, more effective decisions, and ultimately derive value from the data you’re presenting.

RULE #6: Find the Right Tools and Optimize Them

To analyze data and create those visualizations, you’ll need to find the right tools and optimize them. Old standby’s like Excel and PowerPoint coupled with newer, leading-edge Business Intelligence tools like IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, Roambi, or Chart.io can help you take your data analysis and visualizations to the next level.

• Master the essentials of industry standards such as Excel and PowerPoint. Taking a few minutes to brush up on the basics and even learn some tips, tricks and shortcuts will help you make more informed marketing decisions in less time.
• Leverage built-in analytics tools within your marketing automation platform, CRM, CMM platform, etc.
• Consider using a Business Intelligence tool like IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, Roambi, or Chart.io to explore and visualize data, connect multiple data sources, and publish reports.

By following these six simple rules, you and your stakeholders can transition from being overwhelmed by data to effectively using data to drive your business and marketing efforts forward much faster and more effectively.   

The post A Manifesto for Marvelous Marketing Analytics Reporting appeared first on Zift Solutions.

If you have since decided to take the plunge and are now a proud owner of a CRM system, congratulations! You are probably very excited, but also possibly a bit overwhelmed. Working with new systems or technology can be a bit daunting if you aren’t exactly sure of all the tips, tricks and best practices.

To make sure that you are able to take full advantage of this investment (and not become increasingly overwhelmed in the process), there are a few things to keep in mind.

If you’re a CRM rookie or even a long-time user looking for a refresher, here are some ways that you can make the most of your CRM:

1. Get Buy-in from your Sales Team

Make sure that your team is ready to tear themselves away from their sticky notes, spreadsheets, stacks of business cards, etc. that they are currently using to keep track of their sales leads. If your CRM is going to be a success, your whole team must be ready to get on board.

2. Get Proper Training

Most CRM companies, depending on the level of service you have purchased, give you access to a CRM training representative. Make sure that you avail yourself of this resource and get proper training for your team members. If training is not readily available from a CRM representative, make sure you have a designated in-house expert who can train the rest of your team (and by expert, I mean someone who is handy with Google and willing to take time to do some research).

3. Take Advantage of Integrations

One of the great things about new technology is the ability to integrate with systems you already use. Most CRM systems will give you the opportunity to sync with your email, calendars and dozens of others apps or services that you are already using as a part of your sales process.

4. Automate

Take routine tasks, like follow-up calls and emails, and automate them through your CRM. You can set up your activities to fall on a certain cadence so that you do not have to worry about knowing when to follow up on an account. This eliminates human error and allows your sales team to focus more on the sales process and less about the details.

5. Customize

Most CRM systems will give you the ability to customize your experience within the CRM to fit your business needs. This will allow you to use your own industry jargon that relates to your business, create structures that make sense for your sales cycle and more.

6. Reporting

Do some research into the reporting capabilities that your CRM system has available. There is a wealth of information that you can take from your sales process, and with all of your data in this centralized hub, you can capture valuable metrics on your sales performance. Use reporting to prove value to your stakeholders, improve the sales process or look into other ways to help your business grow.

7. Continue to Learn

Once you have trained, set up your automation rules and made your customizations to your CRM system, your journey isn’t over just yet. Make sure that you continue to learn more about your CRM capabilities through your CRM sales representative, online forums, help centers or through blogs and webinars. As is the case with most things in life, the more effort you put in, the more you get out.

Your Turn…

What tips and tricks have you been using to make the most of your CRM?

The post How to Make the Most of Your Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Tool appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Any business that has seen a significant amount of growth will tell you that for all of its perks, it did not come without the inevitable growing pains. As your business grows, you will quickly discover that you need to find a better, more scalable way to interact with your customers to compensate for your growth.

But, how do you know when you’re ready?

The good news is that if you pay attention to a few clear signals, it can help save your company from some of the pain. Adding a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage your growing business is a great first step in building out more efficient processes that grow with you.

Here are seven tell-tale signs that indicate it’s time for you to get serious about CRM:

1. No centralized source for information

If you find that you or your sales team are using Google sheets, spreadsheets, post-it notes on your computer, stacks of business cards on your desk, etc. to keep track of your sales leads, you just might benefit from CRM.

If you have multiple places where you keep your sales information, you are not alone. Research has shown that 61% of employees say that they have to search through four or more different systems to retrieve information.

CRM allows you to have a single view into all information relating to your sales process and keep it in one central database that is updated in real time.

2. Little or no visibility into the sales process

Even the most seasoned sales reps can find themselves missing appointments or forgetting to follow up with prospects without the proper systems in place. Without a centralized place to gather this information, your management team will be in the dark about these types of issues (that is until they start seeing it affect their sales numbers).

Don’t let your company’s sales leads fall through the cracks. CRM can give you insight into every step of the sales process, keep salespeople accountable and provide valuable details about the attainability of your sales targets and goals.

3. Tedious, manual reporting

Manual reporting is time-consuming and not scalable. If you are spending a great deal of time creating manual reports and finding that it takes more time than it is worth – chances are you could benefit from some automation.

CRM can allow you to run customizable reports based on the information that is relevant to your business in only a few steps. Automating this will give you more time to focus on the most important part of reporting – analyzing the data.

4. Loss of Data

Keeping information outside of a centralized location can make it very easy to lose valuable data that should be shared with your team.

One area where data loss can have a big impact on your business is through employee turnover. If you have a salesperson leave the company, and you don’t have a CRM system, your leads could walk right out the door with them. Having all of your leads data in one place helps to ensure they belong to the company, and not the outgoing salesperson.

5. All customers receive the same experience

Your customers expect you to understand their business needs as well as they do. They have also come to expect personalized service.

If your prospect/customers are having to repeat themselves every time they call your business, they will not feel a great deal of trust in your ability to handle their needs.

Customer-facing employees should have easy access to all prospect/customer information: past calls, emails, meetings and other activities, etc. to inform their interactions.

Having the ability to personalize and tailor the sales process to the prospect’s specific needs can also make for a much better relationship with that prospect.

A CRM system can give you the ability to target prospects based on their interests, needs, concerns, location in the sales process, geography, industry and more. This will allow you to give your salespeople the best opportunity to sell to these prospects, while giving your prospects a better, more personalized experience.

6. Inconsistent Sales Process

An occasional trap that many companies find themselves in is an inconsistent sales process. If each person on your sales team has a different process, with different messaging or follow-up timing, it becomes a bit of a mess.

A recent study by CSO Insights, found that salespeople spend only 25-30% of their time selling, with the rest spent on administrative work. Standardizing your sales process can make it so that your sales team can focus on what brings in the money.

Now, let me warn you, this is not as clear cut as just getting a CRM for this one. Of course, creating a consistent sales process takes more effort than just implementing CRM. But to really achieve consistency, you will need everything CRM provides to automate your follow-up activities. You can also use CRM to house templates and messaging for your sales team to send for initial follow-up.

7. Lack of Scalability

It’s safe to assume that your business is interested in growing and making a profit. If you are still using spreadsheets and post-it notes as your methods of organization, there is a definitive limit to the amount that your company can grow. If you do not have an organized method to look into your sales pipeline, how can you accurately assess your growth strategy? A post-it note is not going to give you that insight.

Without this centralized method of sales information, you are at risk of not allocating appropriate resources to the correct places, making it difficult to grow your business in a scalable, efficient way.

Your Turn!

How has CRM helped your company to make the next step in continued growth?

The post 7 Signs You Desperately Need a CRM System appeared first on Zift Solutions.

These are questions that every email marketer has, at one point or another, asked themselves. If you find yourself asking these questions on a frequent basis, this post is for you.

Before you get started on your next campaign, overcome the email marketing blues and check out a few best practices for lead generation-based email campaigns:

1. Content

Before you start crafting the content of your email, there are a few questions that you should ask yourself:

• Do I have a message to share with my readers that is: interesting, valuable, helpful or newsworthy?
• If I received this email in my inbox, would I actually open and read it? Or would I delete it like the other 30 marketing emails that I receive in the day?
• Is this overtly self-promotional? If so, take a deep breath and start over again, because no end user will engage in a positive way with your email (in fact, it might have the opposite effect).

If, after you have asked yourself these questions, you feel as though your content idea passes the test, you are able to proceed with crafting your email content.

In crafting your message, it is imperative that you are writing for your reader. This seems simple enough, but it might be a bit more difficult than you might think.

If you are familiar with the contacts in your database, and their interests and pain points, then it should be fairly easy to ascertain what topics would appeal to them. If you are not as familiar with your database’s interests, a great place to start would be your past email performance, your website analytics and social media metrics. Using this reporting will allow you insight into what your target audience is interested in, based on the pieces of marketing they interact with the most.

Once you have decided on content that you believe would interest your readers, you must decide on your email format.

Will all this content be placed within the email? Or will additional steps be necessary for the user to obtain this information? If you would like to use your email to create leads, consider linking to a webinar, white paper, PDF, etc. that is located outside of the email. You can have these items of value be ‘gated,’ which means that users must complete a registration form to receive the rest of your content.

You may think that having this additional step will seem inconvenient to your audience and cause them to lose interest in your content. Research has shown evidence to the contrary, indicating that readers will perceive this content as more valuable than they would if it were available to them without registration.

This creates a win-win situation for you. Not only have you collected this contact’s information, and turned them into a lead, you have also helped them to become a more educated, qualified lead. A more educated, qualified lead is, more than likely, better able to make purchasing decisions that can lead to a conversion for your sales team.

2. Create compelling subject lines

The old adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” doesn’t necessarily ring true when it comes to email marketing. With 64% of people saying that they open an email based on the subject line, your ‘cover’ (in this case, subject line) better make your email worth reading.

So how do you ensure that your subject line entices your end users to open your email?

• Length: Make sure you avoid the dreaded ellipses! Your subject line will be cut off at 80 characters for most email service providers, making around 50 characters the best performing sweet spot for length.
• Verbiage: Skip words that convey a sense of urgency or any spammy words like “FREE” “magic” “secret” etc. Using these types of words in your subject line can turn people off, and research has shown that just the appearance of spammy words like these can decrease click-through rate up to 59%.

3. Calls-to-action

Getting your email opened is only half the battle. Now you have to get engagement! A call-to-action (CTA) is a button, link or line of text that gets readers to perform a specified action (which in our current case is to engage with more content).

CTAs are used in emails where an additional step of engagement is required from the reader to gain access to more information. This will then lead to a landing page that has more information to complete or access to an offer.

One of the biggest mistakes that email marketers make is having more than one CTA within an email. Having multiple CTAs makes it difficult for the end user to know exactly what path they should take, and can end up being confusing. Don’t let your message get muddled. Having one CTA per email will ensure that your users are following the path that you would like them to take.

This does not mean that you can’t put a few different ways to reach that designated action within your email. An example of this would be putting the same CTA three times in an email, but putting it in different places or forms, such as:

• A button in the header
• A link in the body copy
• A button at the end of the body copy

As long as they take the reader to the same place, a few different types of CTAs are not only acceptable but commonplace.

4. Landing Pages

Once your reader has clicked on your CTA, they will usually be directed to a landing page. Your landing page should provide a way for your reader to register or sign up for the content in your CTA. Your goal is to make it as simple as possible for them to get what they expect to receive.

Having your reader complete this registration form is a very important step for your email marketing success, so ensuring that there are no obstacles is vital.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Re-explain the value of the offer you are providing in a clear, concise way.
• Remove all distractions – this page should be solely dedicated to getting readers to complete the CTA.
• Make sure that the landing page mirrors the offer presented in the email.

5. Say Thank You

One of the last components of the transaction is the “Thank You” page. After the user has filled out the CTA form with their contact information (which is now a lead), they will come to your Thank You page. This is where they receive what they came to you for in the first place. Now that they have traded you their information for the offer, they expect to receive this item to complete the transaction.

This page should provide a clear path on how to retrieve the offer, an explicit time frame in which they will receive it and clear next steps. Once this is done, their interaction with your email is complete and you’re all done….right? Not so fast!

Now you have them right where you want them – on your site! Your Thank You page should give them a few additional things to interact with so that they continue engaging. An example would be another similar offer from a past campaign or a related blog post. The more time that they spend with your site, the more qualified they become to make a purchasing decision.

6. Analyze

Last, but certainly not least, you will need to analyze the results of your campaign and gauge your success. A big mistake that email marketers make is thinking that once the campaign is sent that their job is complete. Checking back on your email performance a week or so after the email has been sent will allow you to understand the way that your audience are interacting with your campaigns. This data will allow you to continue to create more engaging and compelling emails in the future.

Now you are all set to begin your next email marketing campaign! In the comments below, let me know if there are any email marketing tips or tricks you would like to see in future blog posts.

The post 6 Email Marketing Best Practices to Generate More Leads appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Earth Day. A day to think about reducing waste, recycling and thinking of new creative ways to make your world a better place. These practices aren’t just great for our planet, but they are also helpful when it comes to thinking about your marketing content strategy.

If you’re anything like the 58% of marketers who feel that they struggle to create good content, you can understand how time-consuming it can be to keep up with a robust content calendar.

But what if there’s a way to reuse all that content that you worked hard to make, without feeling like you’re pulling a Groundhog Day (wait… wrong holiday).

Here are a few ways to ‘Reduce, Reuse & Recycle’ your marketing content:

Reduce:

Make it Green. Evergreen that is. Create blog posts, e-books, social posts etc. that are evergreen, meaning they are always relevant and not time sensitive. Have these types of content on hand for whenever you’re bogged down with other projects.

Crowdsource. Take any feedback that your followers or readers give you in your comments section and expand upon them. Or you can go a step further and ask your followers what they want to read about next. This will not only reduce the amount of time your team spends on coming up with new ideas, but will also make your audience feel heard.

Reuse:

Out with the Old, In with the New. Refresh old content that made a lot of great points, but could be a bit out-dated in terms of facts and figures. Pop in some new, relevant data and voila you have yourself a new piece of content.

Best of the Best. Although we’d like to believe that your audience is on the edge of their seats waiting for your new content to be delivered to them, chances are they’ve missed some of your content. Offer a “Best of” blog post that can highlight different blogs you have done on similar topics, most popular blog posts or a yearly or quarterly review. This is not only an easy way to reuse content, it’s the perfect way to drum up interest in older blog posts and encourage people to click around your site.

Recycle:

A Rose by Any Other Name. Let’s say you have a really successful webinar that you got great feedback on – cool, now what? You can say:

A) “Awesome, on to the next one!” OR
B) “What else can I do with this?”

All of you over-achievers out there are probably really pushing for Option A. However, I’d suggest that you don’t join the ranks of those 58% of marketers who are stressing about content and pick Option B. (And I know all of you SUPER over-achievers are looking for the “C) All the above” option.)

In this scenario, you can find other ways to use this webinar:

• Put the pertinent facts into an infographic
• Post a few highlights on your blog. *Bonus points for you over-achievers: you can then have a CTA at the end of this post to gain access to the recorded webinar. Can you say lead opportunity?
• Make it into an eBook

That’s the same content three ways. Now how’s that for getting the most out of one webinar?

Get it Twisted. One last fun way to recycle your content is by taking old posts and giving them a new twist. There are a few ways that you can do this. One would be to find an old post and provide new insights that have become available since that piece of content was published (such as a new piece of technology, tool or app that makes a process simpler). Another way would be letting a different author take a stab at the same topic and provide their own unique insight (also driving people to look back at your previous post as well, two-for-one!). Lastly, if you have a long-standing content library, a “#tbt” could be fun – and an interesting look at how your company has progressed. If you need an example of what that would look like…here’s a real throwback for you:

Your turn!

Do you have any creative ways to recycle content?

The post Earth Day: Reduce, Reuse & Recycle Your Marketing Content appeared first on Zift Solutions.

A colleague knowing that you were interested in a certain subject and surprising you by bringing a book from home for you to borrow – helpful.

A co-worker looking through your Facebook page and seeing that you “liked” Gillian Flynn and surprising you with a copy of her latest book – creepy.

You’re probably thinking, ‘Yeah, you’re right, that is creepy, but what does that have to do with sales leads?” Don’t worry, I’m getting there, I promise.

When it comes to your digital marketing efforts, you have the ability to track a large majority of the things that your leads and prospects engage in: from email marketing opens, to asset registrations, to the length of time someone spends on a specific page. This is great and very helpful information for your sales teams, and can assist in building rapport, and ultimately, making a sale.

But how do you toe that fine line between helpful and creepy? When it comes to following up with leads, you want to ensure that you are armed with all of the necessary information about their interactions with your site. It helps you to get insight into the lead and their interests before you even get on the phone with them.

However, and here’s where we get to that helpful vs. creepy vibe, how much information is too much information?

If your lead is receiving a phone call at 1:30 from a sales representative saying, “Hi, I’m Mr. Salesman from XYZ Co. Nice to meet you. I saw you were looking at this white paper for 11 minutes and this eBook for 7 minutes at 1 PM today. Are you ready to learn more? I’m here to help.” You just might have found that line.

Now hopefully this is an extreme exaggeration, but if you engage with your leads in the wrong way, it can make them extremely uncomfortable and ruin the relationship before it even begins.

So how do you use all of the information that you have collected on your lead in a way that is perceived as helpful and definitely not creepy? Also, while we are on the subject, when should you be contacting your leads? Here are a few tips on sales lead interaction:

Do your homework:

So you got an email saying that you have a new lead – congratulations! Now, what? First thing is first, do some research! Work with your marketing team to gather some information about this lead. Who are they? What else have they engaged in with regards to marketing campaigns, assets they have signed up for, etc. This should be information that you are collecting from your marketing team in order to have a basic idea of the best ways to engage with them once you get in touch.

In the above hypothetical phone call, Mr. Salesman used his information in all of the wrong ways. Information that you gather on your leads should be for your eyes only. You have the inside scoop, use it to your advantage to build up that relationship – not creep them out!

Moral of the story: Use the lead information that you receive from your reporting or from marketing for your own personal research, not something that you start with when following up with your lead. Knowing that they signed up for an eBook 35 minutes ago does not impress them, it just makes them feel like you’re spying on them.

How being helpful can make sales:

Now that you have done your research, it’s time to talk to this lead. You can go one of two routes: you can tell them all about YOUR product and YOUR company and about why YOU are so awesome or you could listen to THEIR problems and learn more about THEIR company and hear what pain points THEIR company is currently having. Based on the way our conversation is going today, what would you guess is best?

When you’re first starting to build a relationship with your lead, you need to let them know that you are there to:

• Listen: know all of their pain points before you even begin making any suggestions. You wouldn’t want a doctor who tells you what medicine you should be taking before you even tell them your symptoms. Why would you want a salesman who tells you what you need to buy before you even detail any pain points you are having?
• Help: once you have listened to their concerns and needs, let them know that you are there to help. Not just in giving them product or service recommendations, but with helpful, expert advice and information. This will go a long way in building trust and rapport.
• Educate: educate these leads by giving them industry insights and pointing them in the direction of information that your company has available. This will not only indicate your company as thought leaders in the industry but will keep them engaging in more and more of your marketing materials. This will lead to a better engaged, and informed lead, which will make them better equipped to make a purchasing decision.

Timing

Following up with leads in an appropriate time frame is vital to furthering them toward a purchasing decision. But how important is timing? Well according to Harvard Business Review, it’s pretty important.

HBR tracked 1.25 million sales leads received by B2C and B2B companies in the US to see how important timing was in contacting leads. Companies that contacted the lead within one hour of receiving the query were seven times more likely to qualify the lead (defined as a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those who contacted leads even just one hour later. This number goes all the way up to sixty times more likely to qualify the lead than those who wait for 24 hours or longer.

So judging from this study, it looks like we might have an answer on that ‘when to contact your leads’ question from earlier. It looks like that hot spot is right within that hour. If you can reach out to them while your company is still very fresh on their mind, they will be more receptive to learning more about your product/solution.

Now you’re ready to contact those leads! Remember, do your homework and make sure that you know what your lead is interested in, be helpful and make sure you get in touch within a reasonable time frame. Now go and be helpful!

Your turn! Any sales horror stories? Or any successes to share?

The post When and How Should You Contact Your Sales Leads? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

You are not alone. The relationship between these two teams can easily become strained when they must depend on one another to meet their goals.

A recent study by the Corporate Executive Board perfectly illustrates this issue, finding that 87% of the terms that marketing and sales professionals use for one another are negative.

But why are these two teams in constant turmoil when they are dependent upon one another for their mutual success?

Companies that are not addressing this issue saw a 4% decrease in annual revenue, while those that found a way to overcome the rift saw a 20% annual revenue growth, according to the Aberdeen Group.

So don’t you want to be one of those companies seeing 20% annual growth? Well, aligning these two teams isn’t as hard as you would think!

Here are four ways to strengthen the relationship between sales and marketing teams to produce your company’s best results yet:

1. Speak the same language

There is an abundance of over-used corporate jargon, with sales and marketing as some of the biggest offenders.

Making sure that your team is on the same page with the terminology it uses sounds like a relatively simple task, but it might prove to be a bit more intricate than you would think.

There are a great deal of terms that occur within the buyer’s journey that need to be defined: from when someone first visits your website until they become a customer.

Some key terms for the top of the funnel that are commonly used and can be confused are:

• Contact: commonly defined as a person who exists within the funnel but their exact stage in the sales process is unknown
• Prospect: commonly defined as a website visitor who has either signed up to receive blog updates or company newsletters/emails.
• Lead: this is a person who has submitted a registration form in return for an offer of an asset such as a white paper, case study, data sheet, etc.

The middle of the funnel can provide even more confusion for sales and marketing when it comes to terminology, especially since most companies have marketing and sales sharing responsibility of this stage. Being on the same page for these two key terms is crucial:

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL): commonly defined as a prospect who has become a lead by filling out marketing offers that indicate a high-level of interest in the company’s products or services. These should be defined and agreed upon by marketing and sales teams.
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQL): commonly defined as a marketing qualified lead that is deemed by the sales team to be ready for contact after thorough research and investigation. Again, the sales and marketing team need to work together to identify which triggers should be put in place to identify the transition between MQL and SQL.

Lastly, the bottom of the funnel, usually held by the sales team, has a term that should also be defined:

• Opportunity: commonly defined as a sales qualified lead that a sales representative has communicated with and believes has a legitimate chance at becoming a customer.

Please note that these are commonly held definitions for these terms, and not definitions that every company must use. If your teams already have terminology that works for them, that’s great! There is no reason to further complicate things and change terminology that is working – just make sure that everyone is using those terms the same way.

2. Have clearly defined goals and expectations

In a recent study, 55% of sales teams said that they wanted better quality leads from marketing, while 34% of marketing teams were interested in better lead follow up. So how are these two goals attained? As with most other parts of a business, clearly defining these goals and expectations play a huge part in ensuring successful partnerships. Sales and marketing should create a service level agreement that enables the two teams to have specific expectations for quality of leads, number of leads and follow-up timing.

One of the number one reasons that sales and marketing can get onto each other’s bad side is because of a ‘feeling’ of under-deliverability. Ensuring that expectations are in writing and quantifiable helps teams to avoid subjective evaluations of one another’s performance.

When it comes to service level agreements, the terms should be quantifiable and realistic. Some expectations that should be put in place on the marketing side are:

• The amount of marketing qualified leads the marketing team must provide for the sales team to reach their revenue goal.
• The quality of leads that are delivered to sales – are these leads ‘sales-ready’?
• With that said, what exactly qualifies as a sales qualified lead? This should be spelled out in the service level agreement.

Some expectations that should be in the sales service level agreement include:

• The sales team should commit to a specific number of marketing qualified lead follow-ups they perform once the hand-off comes from marketing.
• The sales team should commit to a specified time frame that they are obligated to contact leads in once sent from marketing.

These should be tracked on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to ensure that goals on both sides are met. This can be achieved through closed loop reporting.

3. Closed loop reporting

One common mistake that companies make is that once a sales qualified lead gets contacted and nurtured by sales, other teams lose all visibility into what happened to the lead.

There is so much valuable information that comes from the bottom of the funnel that is not communicated once a lead either falls out of the sales process or a sale has been made. If it didn’t work out, then why? If a sale was made – great, what helped you make the sale?

It seems like this would be a no-brainer, but it can be difficult if you do not have closed loop reporting structures in place. Closed loop reporting allows for companies to keep track of leads from the beginning of the sales process to the end.

Closed loop reporting can help marketing teams a great deal by:

• Providing a person’s most up-to-date contact information for future nurturing campaigns.
• Sharing how specific leads end up becoming a sale – were there particular marketing pieces that helped nudge them in the right direction? Reporting these experiences helps to inform future campaigns and, in turn, makes for more conversions over time.
• Sharing why certain leads did not close and fell out of the sales process – were they not educated enough to make a sale? Were they not ready to make purchasing decisions yet?

There are also a couple of ways that closed loop reporting can help the sales team to perform their job more effectively by:

• Giving them insight into what their current leads are engaging in on their site. If marketing is aware of a specific lead that a sales representative is working on, they can send them up-to-date information on actions that they are taking in terms of different marketing materials they are viewing.
• Keeping marketing informed on what kind of content produces more informed and educated leads. Better educated leads usually make for easier sales.

Closed loop reporting allows for increased visibility into the sales process for everyone involved, and creates enhanced ability to show the full story of story of lead interaction.

4. Rely on data for decision-making

Marketing and sales teams should operate and make decisions based on shared data and reporting.

To set your teams up for success, both teams must have reporting that is visible to BOTH teams, which includes:

• Daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly updates as to how the two teams are performing with regards to their service level agreements and goals.
• Measurement of key performance indicators, such as: website visitors, leads, customers, campaign performance, lead conversion, etc.
• Reporting of leads passed on to the sales team from marketing, and the interactions that occurred.

These are just a few examples of what you can be measuring, and can continue even further depending on what is important to you and your business. Mapping out data that is important to both groups will allow both teams insight into each other’s pain points, current obstacles and areas for improvement. Being able to have visibility and insight into possible challenges on a day-to-day basis contributes to less surprises down the road.

When sales and marketing teams are able to have open, frequent conversation, measurable goals and reasonable expectations of one another, it is much easier to have a positive relationship. Once both teams are able to get on the same page, they will be able to build a relationship of collaboration, as opposed to finger pointing and resentment.

What about you? Do you have experience with sales and marketing relationships that have gone sour? Or maybe experience with turning a sales and marketing relationship around?

The post 4 Ways to Align your Sales and Marketing Teams appeared first on Zift Solutions.

But what are we doing with all of these fantastic, in-depth reporting features that we have? Last year was deemed the “Year of Digital Marketing Analytics,” by Forbes, yet only 37% of companies surveyed felt that they had the necessary resources to avail themselves of in-depth reporting and analytics.

So what does this mean for you? How do you make sure that you are able to use the data you are collecting instead of hoarding it and saving it for when you ‘have time to deal with it?’

If you feel lost in a sea of metrics overload, have no fear! Before you dive into email marketing metrics, social media, digital ads, etc., let’s start with the basics: your website.

Getting Started: Choosing your Analytics Method

Contrary to some other types of marketing, your website is one of the most specific and measurable channels that you have available. The good news is that installing analytics measurement is relatively easy and inexpensive.

First, you should start by looking into analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Yahoo Web Analytics, or Zift123. Also, be sure to check what is included in your website provider’s plan as well. Some content management systems, such as Squarespace, include metrics as a part of their website services.

Ask your web developer if they can assist you with getting started by implementing the necessary tracking code onto your website.

Make a Plan

Ideally, every endeavor you take on as a company should come with a plan. A written plan. This will allow you to have a better understanding of questions such as, “Who will be responsible for which tasks?” “What tools will we be using to collect metrics?” “Who will be analyzing these metrics?” “What are we doing once we receive metrics?”

Being able to correctly set expectations at the beginning allows for less confusion down the road. And helps you avoid that overwhelming, data-overload feeling.

Track Data that Matters for your business

No matter what the newest trend in analytics, make sure that you are actively tracking information that is helpful for your business. Have you seen a great deal of traction from an insightful blog post? Or possibly awesome engagement from a white paper or eBook offer? Use this information to fuel your sales process and understand how to best engage with your audience.

Build reporting that tells a story

One of the biggest opportunities you have as a marketer in the digital age is seeing how your marketing messages are reaching your target audience on a very granular level. Being able to track your users’ interest in various different marketing strategies on your website, such as through different white papers, eBooks, free trial offers, etc. will allow you to get a feel for your customers’ interests.

Identify data analytics that will impact your ROI

Are there any specific portions of your marketing strategy that are leading to cross-sell or upsell opportunities?

Example:
One of your current customers has filled out 2 registration forms, one for an eBook and another one for a white paper. Both of these assets discussed a specific product that is not currently a part of his/her current buying history.

How to Capitalize:

1. First you will need to ensure that you have a method in place to track web form submissions – do they come to a leads email address from your website? Do they go into a specific report?
2. Once you have gotten this information, ensure that you have someone on your team who is trained to analyze the data and see trends in how the user is interacting with your website.
3. After this information is fully dissected, it can be dispersed to your sales team for further follow up.
4. Did you think that was the last step? Guess again! One of the most important steps is getting feedback from the sales team – what was the outcome? This will enable you to get the full story, not just part of it. This will also allow you to show the return on investment from your inbound marketing strategy.

Test, Try, Repeat

Continue testing different types of content and don’t let yourself become complacent! Although it’s always great to stick with what produces positive results, there’s always a way to improve your marketing strategy.

Now that you have all of these tools at your disposal, feel free to jump right in! The water feels just fine.

Your turn! What were some successes you had from using your website analytics to fuel the sales process? Do you find keeping track of your website metrics overwhelming?

The post What Are Your Website Analytics Telling You? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Social media is sometimes seen as only a supplementary piece to your marketing strategy, something that your company does because they ‘know they should be doing it’. However, social media marketing can be a very powerful and worthwhile way to interact with your past, present and future clients.

Proving the success of your campaigns to your internal stakeholders can be daunting, especially when you don’t know what to report.

Check out these relatively simple tips that will help you show the value of your social media strategy to your internal stakeholders, and have an impact on creating future marketing strategies for your business.

1. Engagement Rate:

Seeing what your social audience engages in is one of the most important benefits that social media can bring to your business. At times, companies can be overzealous and create large-scale, expensive marketing campaigns before researching the areas that their audience is interested in learning more about.

Social media provides a way to combat blind spending by allowing your company to easily collect information on your potential customer’s interests, based on the reactions they have to your posts. A high engagement rate on a collection of posts with similar subject matter is a great indicator of where you should be spending your marketing money.

Collecting this information and creating a cohesive story can be done through basic reporting available in most of your social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have made it relatively easy for you to gain access to your metrics and export them into a spreadsheet. Below you will find instructions on how to pull these reports for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin:

Facebook:

• Engagement Rate is calculated as the percentage of people who interacted with your post based on the amount of people who saw your post.
  • To get this information from your company’s Facebook page into a spreadsheet, go to Insights > Posts > Export.
• After you have successfully downloaded your report, you will see a workbook with a few different tabs. Make sure to take a look at Lifetime Talking About This and Lifetime Post Consumers by Type. Lifetime Talking About This shows all visible interactions, such as comments, likes and shares. Lifetime Post Consumers by Type shows ‘invisible’ interactions such as link clicks, other clicks, photo views and video views.

Twitter:

Twitter has a similar reporting structure that allows you to collect your metrics.

• First, ensure that your Twitter Analytics Dashboard is turned on.
• Once you have done this, simply export the data to a report, choosing the date range of your choice. This report has a lot of columns associated, so be sure that you pick and choose only the data that is important to your business.

LinkedIn:

To find your LinkedIn Company page metrics, simply follow these steps:

• Navigate to Social > LinkedIn Metrics
• Select a Company from the listing of Company Pages
• Collect your valuable metrics

Don’t feel like you have the time or resources available to build out a collection of social media posts? A social media syndication solution, like Zift’s, can empower channel partners to promote your solutions and services.

2. Trust Factor – The Amplification Effect:

According to a Nielson report, 92% of consumers trust the recommendations of their friends. When your audience is sharing your social content with their friends or colleagues, you are not only able to reach just your current customer base, but beyond to their colleagues’ or friends’ social audience as well.

This is not only increasing the reach, but also the reception of your post. Because people are more inclined to trust a message if it is from a friend or colleague, they will be more likely to react favorably to your messaging. This amplification effect can be measured by seeing how many times your message has been shared per social post.

3. Bolster Engagement Across Mediums:

Social media provides a relatively inexpensive way to expand upon your company’s messaging from other portions of your marketing strategy. Social posts can be used to drive traffic to your website or blog, and also funnel users into your email marketing campaigns, newsletters, videos, etc. This will allow you to take your audience, who is active in your social channels, and convert them into active participants across all parts of your marketing, creating a peak audience.

This peak audience will have exposure to all of your marketing efforts across channels, making them more likely to have a strong affinity for your brand. This same engagement will also allow you to hold onto your existing clients by continuing to show your company’s value. You can track this by running reports using your company’s website analytics provider, such as Google Analytics, to determine which social content contributes to web traffic that results in a conversion.

Looking for an easier way to collect your social media metrics? A platform with social analytics capabilities, such as Zift’s, offers an insider view of the efficacy of your social media campaigns, making it easy to measure and adjust social media efforts.

You’re Ready to Go!

Knowing where to go and how to gain valuable information about your social media’s performance is important, but knowing what to do with that information once you have attained it is just as crucial. Use these metrics in a way that allows you to create a narrative about your engagement and how this engagement will end up being beneficial to your business.

What are your thoughts?

What would you add?

The post How to Prove the Value of Social Media Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.