B2B Marketing ROI

More and more, marketers are beginning to embrace quality over quantity and putting in place steps to help the sales team improve their odds of closing the deal. Brian Carroll sheds some light on the issue of cost-per-lead vs. cost-per-opportunity in his post, Why Cost-Per-Lead Budgets Fail and Fewer Leads Are Better. Though it can be hard to accept such a claim - why would any one want fewer leads, isn’t it a pure number game? - Carroll says, “The truth is that sales people care very little about the cost of the leads we generate. What they really care about is how many of those leads will actually become viable sales opportunities.”

For a small sales team, the information being passed in to the CRM system can be overwhelming, making it difficult to efficiently sort through the “noise” and determine which leads to focus on. It’s easy to dedicate too much time to unqualified leads and unknowingly passing by valuable opportunities. One step marketers are taking to improve lead quality is developing a system to triage leads and evaluate them for “sales-readiness.” Instead of dumping huge numbers of leads in to a CRM system, marketers are using this lead qualifying system and keeping the junk out of the sales team’s hands. Management and web automation systems can serve as a great “holding pen” for leads before they are passed in to the CRM, allowing the marketing team to review prospects, assign a grade or score and pass the record to the appropriate sales rep.

If marketers can begin to live by the rule of quality over quantity, they will see a great improvement in their conversion and greatly increase their percentage of qualified opportunities. Not to mention, they will get a big “thank you” from the sales team!

Many marketers I talk with dismiss the benefits of having a Site Search function on their website. This oft overlooked feature offers numerous benefits for both your company and your customer. Let’s look at a few.

Simplify Your Client’s Surfing Experience
Site search not only makes your client’s life simpler, it helps your support staff as well. One of the most popular reasons for current clients to visit is to find answers and support for product related questions. For sites with an extensive Knowledge Base or Help section, navigating through the directories can be time-consuming and frustrating for clients. Often, they feel they are in an emergency situation and need an answer fast. That’s when they pick up the phone and call you (or your support staff), asking for help in a panicked tone. If they were able to search your website for the exact answer they wanted, this call may have been prevented.

Audit Your Website Functionality
Often marketers are so busy building new pages, creating email blasts and tending to every day tasks that they don’t have the time to sit back and evaluate their current website from a visitor’s perspective. If this sounds familiar, a site search can help you gain an overall look at the functionality of your layout and design. It’s not uncommon to take for granted that it’s easy to navigate through your pages when you’re the one who built them, but are your prospects able to find what they need? If you review your site search logs and notice that an overwhelming number of visitors are searching for the same keyword, perhaps it might be worth displaying that information or page link more prominently on your homepage or navigation. This will prevent customers from wandering off if they can’t easily find what they are looking for.

Gain Prospect Insight & Increase Sales
Viewing what your prospects search for can be a very valuable tool during the sales cycle. It’s a no-nonsense way to see what their priorities are in choosing a product. Knowing your prospect’s exact needs in their own words can help the sales team mold future conversations to showcase product features that the lead will find most desirable. They will feel that it’s as if the product was uniquely made for their situation. Nothing shows intent like a search for pricing, letting the sales rep know this is not a casual visitor browsing the site and it may be time to start making a deal.

With the introduction of sophisticated products that can track a lead’s every move, down to their search queries and attempts at giving you an invalid email address, it can be all too tempting for the sales team to pounce on prospects and come on a little too strong. Marketing automation suites can provide worlds of knowledge with minimal effort by displaying recently active prospects, sending daily email digests and alerting the sales and marketing team if a designated form is completed.

If a prospect realizes they are being closely tracked, it can be a real turn-off, completely negating the advantage you had by monitoring their movements. There’s a fine line between knowing your customer’s needs and becoming a prospect stalker.

In an age where we are cookied on most pages we visit and sites posing as social communities are feeding our hobbies and habits to advertising partners, where is the line? The key is to show your prospect you understand their challenges, as they relate to your product, without being as obvious as stating that you observed they visited the Benefits section of your website earlier this afternoon. Though most people are aware of tracking technology, they don’t like to be reminded of it.

This applies to both sales calls and email marketing. For another take on this topic, as it relates to email marketing, visit BeRelevant for Can a campaign be too targeted?.