Optimize Your Website

Transcription

1 Optimize Your Website for the New Buyer Journey

2 Book Content 2 Defining Modern Marketing 4 Marketing Automation 5 How Marketing Automation Will Benefit Your Website 6 Role of Marketing Automation to Capture Customers 7 Web Visitor Tracking 8 Lead Scoring 10 Lead Capture 11 Digital Experiences 14 Conclusion In this ebook, we will be evaluating ways that you can optimize your website experience with marketing automation to best understand what influences your customers and encourages them buy more. 1

3 Defining Modern Marketing Misunderstanding the term marketing or failing to grasp marketing s role with respect to a business produces dire consequences for the ill-informed executive. Defining Modern Marketing Businesses live and die by something as essential as defining, and then implementing the term marketing within their business plan. Misunderstanding the term marketing or failing to grasp marketing s role with respect to a business produces dire consequences for the illinformed executive. Failing to have or implement proper marketing strategies is the same as a business owner running his or her ship on the rocks because they chartered a business course without consulting a compass for direction. Ignorance is a fool s best friend! Old school textbooks defined marketing as the act of buying or selling in a market. In some cases, what worked 50 years ago still works today. For example, branding of a product like Coke has relied heavily on the product s reputation for quality and the fact that it tastes good. However, we live in a fast-paced technological world. As technology created opportunities to engage and influence more buyers, this old school definition became lost. Marketing became more complicated. 2

4 Defining Modern Marketing Marketers started measuring success based on impressions and average rates. The formula was simple: bundle the right message to the right people at the right time. However, this formula was failing because prospects began to ignore preprocessed marketing messages that did not specifically speak to their immediate interests. Marketing key performance indicators were falling at an alarming rate. A new approach was necessary, and marketers responded by returning to their roots. Before mass advertising, a business owner would pack up a buggy with all of their merchandise and head to the market. They found their little corner of the street and set up shop. Prospects would come and go. Each would be greeted individually and presented with an authentic buying experience that was catered specifically to their interests. In today s age of communication, this approach to sales would fail due to the sheer number of prospect buyers patrolling our storefronts, websites, and social networks. Furthermore, buyers are now more apt to research their buying decisions without your influence. These circumstances have presented a new challenge to marketers. How can they approach their prospects with a unique and authentic message that speaks directly to their interests? When should they approach their buyers, and how can we influence their buying decisions when they are clearly ignoring our mass marketing message? Is hope lost for the modern marketer? 3

5 Marketing Automation Marketing Automation With the help of marketing automation and an interactive website experience, marketers have responded. Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as , social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks. This software has empowered marketers to simulate the personal approach of the past while still operating with the efficiencies needed in today s age of communication. Much like the shopkeeper over 100 years ago, today s marketers can watch their prospects travel through their websites collecting valuable information on the products, services, or features that are most important to their buying decision. Powerful analytics and website visitor tracking solutions allow us to look into the buyer s journey. Lead scoring has dramatically improved the influx of leads resulting from inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Sophisticated digital experiences are having a significant, measurable impact on brand perception and revenue growth. Consumers love to buy but hate to be sold. They want to dictate the circumstances around their buying decision. Hijacking and strangling this buying process will result in the feeling of immediate buyers remorse. Marketing automation empowers marketers to engineer a personal digital experience that presents prospects with the knowledge to make confident buying decisions, and then funnels ready-to-buy consumers to a sales representative who understands every detail of their buying journey. 4

6 Marketing Automation How Marketing Automation Will Benefit Your Website True marketing automation platforms combine all key functions that marketers use on a day-in and day-out basis. Leads are generally moved through a pre-qualification cycle until they are considered sales-ready in which case, the lead and associated marketing history is passed to sales directly or via CRM integration. Key functions of marketing automation: Integrated campaigns Lead capture landing pages, forms, surveys Website visitor tracking Web analytics Lead scoring Many companies today leverage disconnected point solutions to accomplish their marketing needs usually utilizing marketing tools. The competitive landscape and the buying process in business has changed dramatically and companies are quickly learning that to remain competitive, they must leverage their website to ensure they are in a position to capture market share. The adoption of marketing automation platforms is increasing dramatically because smart marketers realize the value of having a single database from which to manage campaigns and capture and analyze lead data. The Highway To Success Relies On The Internet For Customer Traffic Customers are more likely to research a business before they engage in or commit to commerce. As a result, having an online presence is imperative to any growing business. Your website will build brand identity, provide clear answers to your customers concerns, and actively market and promote your products and services. 5

7 Marketing Automation Role of Marketing Automation to Capture Customers However, can your website sell a customer? Today consumers require more than an online brochure to convince them to make a buying decision. They require a digital experience that allows them to control their own buying process. Their control of this experience can be immediately compromised when aggressive sales people interrupt their discovery process by engaging in a generic pitch or pushing solutions that do not speak to their interests. Once the buyer has arrived at a solution to their problem, they can be further put off when their dedicated rep has no information on their buyers journey. Now the prospect is forced to take valuable time to bring the sales rep up to speed, and the opportunity to further educate the buyer is lost. Benefits of Marketing Automation Marketing automation serves as the ultimate middleman between your consumer facing website and your sales facing CRM. Insights on each and every visitor are relayed back to CRM to provide in-depth knowledge into their buying experience. Lead scoring gives the prospect time to research possible solutions while being subtly influenced by your brand. Lead forms can be utilized to collect valuable prospect information in return for educational collateral that will influence their buying decision. 6

8 Web Visitor Tracking Web analytics will transform your marketing insights into the intimate relationships that buyers and sellers once had. WebForensics: Powerful analytics and website visitor tracking solutions are a critical function of any marketing automation platform. This feature compresses valuable information regarding companies and individual visitors who have visited your website into data that can be connected to your CRM. This feature enables you to drive critical marketing processes such as: Lead Scoring Sales Lead Alerts Nurture Marketing Campaigns In order to rediscover the successes of past marketing engagements, a sales representative would need to have a deeper level of insight into website visitor behavior and performance. From high-level dashboards to automated reports, web analytics will transform your marketing insights into the intimate relationships that buyers and sellers once had. The age of communication and the web brought all of the power of obtaining knowledge to anyone anywhere. As a result, buyers are now less pressed to make an impulsive decision. Understanding this challenge makes the timing of a sales engagement critical. Marketing automation provides an alert to your sales team when high-value prospects visit and browse your website. These alerts illustrate the nature of the visit down to the page level details. This allows your sales team to provide more information and insight to the buyer in order for them to feel more confident about their purchase. 7

9 Lead Scoring Think back over 100 years ago. Consider you re walking down Main Street perusing the marketplace for fresh produce or perhaps a new plow to help cultivate and grow fresh vegetables from your own farm. One shop has an aggressive owner shouting out the benefits of his/her new shovels and buckets. The second store has been organized to exhibit healthy produce along the entrance of the store. In addition, the owner stands patiently waiting to help answer any questions or comments you may have. What business would you feel more comfortable engaging? Where would you want to spend your money? As a consumer, I see more value in the second option. They have what I want and they are NOT eliciting behaviors that would lead me to believe that they are going to attempt to sell me anything. Buyers need an opportunity to research and explore their choices. Prospects are most likely to engage in business with you and continue to buy from you if they feel educated about their options, their choices. In essence, the sole purpose of a business s website is to provide education and featured benefits that promote a particular product or service. As a sales representative, it is crucial to allow the website and marketing process to bring insight and knowledge to a buyer. Once they have this information, the sales process will move faster and smoother. Most importantly, sales will have the opportunity to close the deal and keep it closed for a long time. 8

10 Lead Scoring Lead scoring will dramatically improve how you manage your influx of leads resulting from inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Lead scoring is a critical process that many companies are implementing as part of their standard marketing, demand generation, and lead generation practice. Based on the concept of applying point values to actions taken by leads, lead scoring will dramatically improve how you manage your influx of leads resulting from inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Your marketing automation platform should provide a simple, powerful, and flexible lead scoring solution. Key data points such as campaign response, web activity, and demographics are scored with arbitrary point values that, when added up, enroll leads into scoring groups. In turn, these groups drive a series of interconnected actions such as lead assignment, nurture campaigns enrollment, or opportunity creation. Furthermore, a healthy lead scoring strategy will shelter your prospects from your eager-to-close sales team. This allows marketing to make an impact on the prospect before scaring them away, like the aggressive shop owner. Allowing marketing to nurture a relationship and educate a buyer, prior to sales first engagement, will lead to an improved first-call interaction between that prospect and your sales personnel. In addition, this feature will help differentiate to your sales team which, among the thousands of website visitors, are best served by one-on-one sales assistance. 9

11 Lead Capture You may have existing web forms lodged into your Contact Us page that relay messages to your inbox. How is that information getting to your sales team? How long does it take for that information to be received? Earlier we discussed the challenge of time in each opportunity. How important can a question or comment be to the prospect? Would an immediate response be received more positively than one that has been delayed over time? More than likely, a thoughtful answer delivered in the least amount of time would prove helpful in our quest to create a relationship with the buyer. Today s buyers are disoriented by a wide variety of distractions. Try to avoid competing with those distractions. Your marketing automation tool should provide the ability to trigger an automatic response notifying the buyer that their message has been received and is currently being evaluated. That question or comment is being fed through a platform that will route the data to the individual who could be best suited to address those concerns. Aside from traditional web forms, one can enhance a user s experience by changing how your website uses forms to help educate your prospect buyers. Practical sales training tells us that we can control a conversion by asking questions. If you re locked into an engagement and find yourself preaching to your buyer; that same buyer is likely tuning you out. Websites by nature are interactive. They require a user to click on links, buttons, and images to access more information. However, traditional websites will not take the interactive experience beyond its basics. 10

12 Lead Capture The creation and use of digital experiences can provide upstart brands with the ability to build awareness and equity at light speed, instead of years or even decades. Digital Experiences: Sophisticated digital experiences are having a significant, measurable impact on brand perception and revenue growth. Organizations that have been slow to adopt digital experiences as a part of their marketing strategy must recognize how quickly their competitors can grab the spotlight by creating advanced experiences. The creation and use of these experiences can provide upstart brands with the ability to build awareness and equity at light speed, instead of years or even decades. For this reason, brand awareness and perception is more vulnerable because of the powerful influence of these experiences. The market will reward excellence when it comes to digital experiences. Think about that shopkeeper 100 years ago. Create an authentic experience starting with who you re looking to influence, how best to reach them, and what they need to experience. As this pertains to your website, what kinds of lead forms can you manipulate into an authentic and original experience? 11

13 Lead Capture Surveys Online surveys are a great option for businesses that would like to conduct their own research. Online research tools make it possible for these businesses to perform market research at a fraction of the usual costs. Using CSS and html, you can manipulate your survey into a beautiful interactive experience that would simulate a one-on-one engagement with a shopkeeper. Imagine being able to click on a variety of graphics that best describe the features of your business offerings. Using marketing automation technology, you could help determine business trends and insights while triggering the results back to each survey taker to describe the meaning behind each answer. Online Quiz or Assessment This is a process used to measure certain aspects of information for a set purpose. Most often these assessments are some kind of educational test. The same experience can be built into your website. As previously mentioned, these assessments can be used to measure your level of experience or knowledge as it pertains to a specific subject. If your organization has invested in a white paper from a notable research firm, consider evaluating your prospects knowledge of the subject prior to their download of the paper. At the conclusion, you will demonstrate where their answers were correct or incorrect -- leading the prospect to have a greater interest in the study. When you politely inform someone about what they don t know, they will be more driven to fill out a form to download the inbound content that has all of the answers. Newsletter Sign-Up marketing is an essential component of marketing and a key feature of marketing automation. Regulations prevent marketers from enrolling individuals into campaigns without their consent. Your website is the perfect staging ground to add value, create value, and communicate value around your company newsletter. Traditional newsletters have taken on a variety of names such as The Edge, The Messenger, Trends, Company Buzz, or Marketing Directions. Be original when naming your newsletter, and be sure that the name closely defines the type of content that they ll be receiving. Once you have a newsletter sign-up form, be sure to place it in a location that would be best suited for conversion. If your website has a blog, and it should, make sure that the sign-up form is populated in the same place on every article. Be sure that the form is as simple as possible. If is all you need to enroll a new recipient, then keep it at that. Prospects are less likely to fill out long forms that would force them to reveal more information than they are comfortable sharing. Also, make sure to display your privacy policy. This way a visitor will feel more confident that their information will not be distributed to spammers. 12

14 Lead Capture Polls Many websites feature online polls. These polls typically ask site visitors about their opinions, such as whether they favor or oppose a new policy or who they think is likely to win an upcoming election. Polls can be entertaining for site visitors, and can increase site visits and the time spent on a page. Using marketing automation, these polls can be directed back to CRM and provide valuable data to best illustrate the opinions of the prospect buyer. Contact Forms Contact forms have become such a common part of the website that it is easy to overlook them and their importance. Most contact form leads go unanswered, because there is a communication breakdown between the website admin in charge of the contact form and the sales/marketing teams. Marketing automation will automatically pass the lead directly to your customer relationship management solution (CRM) for qualification and handover. Gated Content Over the past 10 years, content marketing has rendered distinctly higher returns on investment than traditional marketing methods. Content marketing is a broad term and includes a lot of different types of marketing tools. Videos, webinars, s, ebooks, white papers, presentations, infographics, podcasts, and other vehicles all fall into the content marketing bucket. Your website s role is to facilitate the distribution of your content marketing. Create a resources repository to house and organize all of your gateable content. Display these forms on other content pages on your website that discuss similar topics. Using this methodology, you can convert on information pages that traditionally would never collect information from a prospect. 13

15 Conclusion Conclusion: Successful websites are no longer digital brochures. They are a unique interactive experience. Using forms creatively in a wide variety of ways will help improve visitor traffic duration on the website and conversion rates. More importantly, this approach will put your website in control of the digital conversation while better serving the needs of your customers. As a prospect completes their assessment of your products or services, marketing automation will map all of the important details of their experience back to the customer relationship management (CRM) solution. These details will allow sales to pick up the digital conversation from the website and sell to prospects that are ready to buy. Marketing automation is the keystone that brings together your website with your CRM solution, subsequently bridging your marketing and sales efforts. With broader, richer sources of information, you can create a highly targeted, personalized approach to customer engagements as you nurture leads throughout the buying cycle. You will truly be able to provide the right information to the right audience at the right time fulfilling their needs and keeping them engaged with your brand. Like the shopkeeper over 100 years ago, using marketing automation will empower you to simulate the personal approach of the past while still operating with the efficiencies needed in today s age of communication. We re entering a new data-driven era where information will play an increasingly central and critical role in helping businesses achieve a competitive advantage and succeed. Garner 14

16 Salesfusion is a leading provider of marketing automation software that is designed for B2B companies who are committed to driving more revenue by aligning marketing and sales. Salesfusion is unique because of native integration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Salesfusion anchors around the belief that a well integrated CRM and Marketing Automation pair is the foundation of all B2B marketing. Request a Demo Contact Information: sales@salesfusion.com facebook.com/salesfusion plus.google.com/+salesfusion linkedin.com/company/salesfusion twitter.com/salesfusion youtube.com/user/salesfusionmarketing pinterest.com/salesfusion 2018 Salesfusion Inc.