Cold calling. Email marketing. Referrals. LinkedIn. Facebook Ads. Content Marketing. SEO. You see where we’re going? 

There are many ways you can generate leads for your business. But that doesn’t mean lead generation is easy! In fact, according to a recent HubSpot report, 61% of marketers rank lead generation as their biggest challenge.

So, it’s no wonder you’re considering outsourced lead generation as a way to grow your business. Outsourcing can save you time and provide you with a consistent stream of leads ready to convert.

But… that doesn’t mean you can hire just any lead provider and expect amazing results. It’s, unfortunately, not that easy either! But we’ve put together this quick guide to help simplify the process.

Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll learn:

• The value of lead generation outsourcing
• The pros and cons of outsourcing lead generation 
• When you should consider outsourcing 
• How to choose a lead generation company 
• The best platform to generate leads above the funnel
• The benefit of using exegraphic data for outsourced lead generation

But, first, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what outsourced lead generation means!

 

What is outsourced lead generation?

Outsourced lead generation is the process of hiring a third-party lead generation service to find leads for your business. Outsourced lead generation service providers also guide prospects through the initial stages of your funnel, priming them for conversion for your sales team. 

Most B2B lead generation companies begin by creating your ideal customer profile (ICP), identifying companies that share characteristics with that profile and then doing common lead generation tasks like:

• Cold calling and emailing
• Cold messaging on social media platforms 
• Running content syndication campaigns 
• Using outbound and inbound marketing techniques to promote your product or service
• Following up with prospects to schedule demos and appointments with your sales team 

Of course, if you have the resources, you could take care of all those tasks in-house. So, you’re right to wonder: what’s the value of outsourcing lead generation?

 

Is it better to outsource lead generation?

Outsourcing lead generation can be a great option for businesses of all sizes. The following sections will help you thoughtfully decide whether it’s better to outsource your lead generation or commit to keeping it in-house.

 

Pros and cons of outsourcing lead generation

Pros

• Time saved. Lead generation can be a time-consuming process. And by outsourcing, you can free up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
• Cost-effective. Hiring a full-time employee or team for in-house lead generation can be costly. And if that person or team doesn’t have enough marketing and sales experience, you may not get the results you want.
• A team focused exclusively on lead generation. When you outsource lead generation, you work with a team of professionals who are focused exclusively on the task of finding qualified leads. This means they’re likely to have processes in place to generate leads effectively.
• More leads, more often. A lead generation service provider will likely have more manpower to dedicate to providing leads frequently. They’ll also likely have access to a database of potential leads, which they can tap into quickly.
• AI technology to find and manage the most qualified leads. The best lead generation services will use AI-powered automation to identify and manage the most qualified leads.
• Shorter sales process. By hiring a lead generation service, your sales team can focus on selling, rather than spend time cold calling and scheduling demos. This can help to shorten the sales cycle and increase close rates.

Cons

• Potential for low ROI. If outsourced lead generation is not done correctly (i.e. quantity of leads is valued more than the quality of leads), it can be very costly with little to show for it in terms of new customers. This is why it’s so important to do your research and choose a reputable service provider.
• Less control. By outsourcing, you give up some control of your sales process. If you’re not actively involved, it can be difficult to track the results of your outsourced lead generation and make changes as needed.
• Requires an investment. The cost of lead generation service can range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per month.

 

Questions to determine if it’s better to outsource lead generation

Pros and cons may help give you a general idea. But, eventually, you’ll need to think about the specifics of your business to determine if outsourcing is a good option. Here are some guiding questions to help: 

1. Do you have the resources to staff an entire team of experienced marketers and sales reps to generate leads?
2. Do you have a method of consistently getting leads that match your ideal customer profile?
3. Are you happy with your business’s current cost per lead? What about the quality of leads?
4. Are you generating enough leads to support your sales team’s quota?
5. Do you have the internal infrastructure to support a successful lead generation program? 
6. Does your marketing team have the capacity to focus on outbound AND inbound lead generation? 

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, outsourcing to a B2B lead generation company is worth considering. Your efforts in-house can only take you so far. Outsourcing could allow you to skyrocket your growth by establishing a system of regularly sourcing leads that are likely to convert.

 

How do you choose a lead generation service?

Unfortunately, outsourcing lead generation doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed results. There’s no shortage of lead generation companies that are more than happy to charge you a high price for a list of leads that aren’t a good fit for your business. 

So, what should you look for when choosing a lead generation service? How do you make sure you’re working with a company that won’t waste your money? Here are a few recommendations:

 

Check credentials

Make sure the company you’re considering has experience in lead generation and a proven track record with companies in your industry. You might also check to see what professional certifications their team has. 

 

Read online reviews

When you’re considering outsourcing lead generation, you should read online reviews to get a sense of what other companies have experienced. You can look at Google reviews or Clutch.co to read reviews of companies.

 

Look at previous clients and case studies

Case studies are one of the best ways to see if a company can actually deliver the results they promise. Any good lead generation company will have case studies on their website that you can review. If possible, try to find case studies for businesses in your industry.

 

Request a demo

Whether you’re looking at a lead generation agency or software, you should always get a demo before making a decision. This will allow you to see the product or service in action and ask any questions.

 

Ask these essential questions

Lastly, you should speak to one of the company’s sales reps and ask these questions:

What processes do you use for lead generation? Some companies focus only on a specific lead generation activity. So, you need to make sure the company can provide you with the service that best fits your company’s needs. 

How do you know that your process is effective? You want to know how they measure results and determine their success rate. It should always focus on lead quality rather than quantity. 

What criteria would you use to qualify a lead for my business? Lead generation service providers use data to match companies to your ICP. You want to make sure the data used will share reliable characteristics for determining what can be considered a qualified lead for your business.

Which software platform(s) do you use to generate leads? If your service provider doesn’t use software that collects the type of data and generates results in the way you need, the whole process easily becomes a waste of time and money.

 

Which platform is best to generate leads?

Lead generation teams have many software platforms to choose from. Some platforms help manage a particular part of lead generation while others provide tools to manage and generate leads at every stage of the sales process. 

Here are a few examples of tools used to generate leads: 

• Customer Relationship Management Platforms (CRMs) help sales reps manage their interactions with leads and customers
• Account-Based Marketing Platforms (ABM) help sales and marketing teams target key accounts and orchestrate account-based campaigns 
• Sales Engagement Platforms automate repetitive sales tasks, like emailing and prospecting, to help sales reps sell more efficiently 
• Demand Generation Platforms (DGPs) help sales and marketing teams generate demand for their products or services 
• Sales Development Platforms (SDPs) help sales and marketing teams build prioritize target accounts lists—backed by data—for each channel

Which one’s best? Well, it depends on what your business needs and your budget. But, if you’re outsourcing lead generation because you want help with one of the most difficult parts of lead generation—finding leads above the funnel, before they’ve heard of you or your competitors and that match your ideal customer profile—make sure that your lead provider uses exegraphic data.

What’s that? If you’re unfamiliar with the term, exegraphic data refers to data that shows how companies operate and behave. For example, you can learn how quickly a company tends to adopt new technology by looking at exegraphic differences between companies. And it’s these types of insights that make it one of the most powerful resources for lead generation.

 

The power of exegraphics for lead generation

They might not want to admit it. But if you analyzed the typical sales development reps’ (SDR) methods for prospecting, you’d quickly realize one thing: there’s a lot of guessing going on. 

How so? Well, SDRs usually spend hours searching for companies that meet certain criteria, usually detailed in a company’s formal ICP doc. But more often than not, they’re guessing at which companies really “fit” the profile. 

Guessing, really? Yep! They’re guessing based on superficial data on things like employee demographics, company revenue and technologies currently being used by the company. 

But does any of that information really signal whether a prospect really “fits” the ICP or is showing signs of “readiness”’ to purchase? Not really. So, many SDRs fall into the trap of wasting even more time and resources trying to chase down prospects that will never close and leads that end up “clogging” their funnel.

Does any of this sound familiar? This inefficient lead generation strategy could be one of the reasons you’re looking to outsource in the first place. But why outsource to a company that’s just going to run into the same problem, providing you with an expensive list of lackluster leads? You shouldn’t and you don’t have to.

Rev helps sales reps avoid all of that guesswork, making it one of the best platforms for outsourced lead generation. Yes, that’s us. Yes, we’re slightly biased. But here’s why we say it with confidence: 

With Rev, any company can upload a list of their best customers, and AI analyzes that list and produces reports, based on exegraphic data, that essentially say, “here are the behavioral characteristics of your best customers—and, oh by the way, here’s a prioritized list of other companies that look and act like them too!” 

With that information, you gain a better sense of who your best customers are, how they behave and how to best reach them–enabling sales teams to meet prospecting and revenue goals faster and with more predictability.

 

Final thoughts

Lead generation is one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks for sales and marketing teams. But it doesn’t have to be.

By making sure Rev’s Sales Development Platform is part of your outsource lead generation strategy (and even your outbound prospecting strategy), you can grow your pipeline with high-quality and high-volume leads. Using AI technology and exegraphic data, Rev shows you the fastest route to your revenue goals by listing out the companies you should target next, even before they show intent! 

Curious to learn more about exegraphics and how they can improve your lead gen strategy? Contact us, and we’ll give you a sample list of accounts that look and act like your best customers.

Many marketing teams use a funnel to grow their business and build their customer base. They know most prospects aren’t ready to purchase the moment they hear about their product or service, and the funnel nurtures and moves leads along. Marketing funnels come in all sizes, and often become more complex as your team and customer base grows. The key to streamlining your funnel, making the best use of your team’s time and giving your prospects the smoothest experience as you scale is automation. So, let’s dive into all things marketing automation funnel.

 

The basics of the marketing automation funnel

Before we can talk about how to automate your marketing funnel, let’s first cover the basics of this experience so we’re all on the same page.

 

What is a marketing funnel?

We’ve covered marketing and sales funnels at length. (You can check out our articles on demand funnels and B2B sales funnels for an in-depth dive into this concept.) In short, a funnel helps you turn prospects into customers.

1. First, prospects must learn about your product/service or become aware of your brand.
2. Once they’re in the market for what you offer, they evaluate you. During this process, you may be pitted against several solutions, including products they already use.
3. After a prospect has connected with your sales team and built confidence in your solution, they convert into customers. They implement your solution and introduce it to their business during this time.
4. If all goes well, you create a loyal customer and you retain their business. These are the kinds of customers that tell all their friends and colleagues about your solution, driving more prospects to the top of your funnel. 

Marketing, as you can imagine, is primarily responsible for the top pieces of the funnel—everything from awareness to the moment a lead enters the sales process. Taking a closer look, you’ll see that the marketing funnel (again, which varies from company to company) includes:

• Awareness
• Lead capture
• Prospect
• Marketing qualified lead

 

What is marketing automation?

As organizations grow, it becomes harder for you and your team to do everything manually. Marketing automation is a strategy that companies can use to scale their efforts and systemize their work. Companies use many automation tools to handle tasks that are repetitive and/or need to be handled at scale, like sending emails, building landing pages, etc.

According to data from Ascend2, 80% of marketing professionals think marketing automation is important for their lead nurturing performance. Furthermore, a recent study from HubSpot revealed, “43% of marketers agree that automation and AI have been the most effective trends for their organization’s growth.” 

 

What is a marketing automation funnel?

A marketing automation funnel is, then, bringing automation to the top half of the traditional “funnel” we outlined above. By automating a lot of the work that would otherwise create a drag on your time (and the customer experience), you’re able to move prospects through the funnel and to sales faster. 

 

The benefits of a marketing automation funnel

Do you need a bit more convincing on the merits of automation? Let’s review some of the major benefits of investing time and energy into automating your company’s funnel.

 

Increase your funnel conversion rate

Adobe Digital Index published a 2020 report on consumer electronics. Their report looked at various industries like electronics, gifts, sports, apparel, etc., and found that the average conversion rate for industries was 3%. According to Chili Piper, the average conversion rate for B2B is 2.23% 

McKinsey has shared at length how automation can improve marketing and sales efficiency. When your team can work more effectively, you can close more deals every time.

 

Improve your data and analytics

When you add marketing automation tools to the mix, they’ll automatically start collecting data that your company will find valuable. Automated tools collect several data points and may even track things you didn’t think to consider. As a result, you’ll find even more value in your marketing and sales strategy as you include these tools in your day-to-day life.

 

Hire when you want to, not when you need to

You may know a company that was forced to hire before they were ready due to a sales boom. Hiring more marketers or salespeople is impressive, but not if you are forced to make the decision. So before you add another person to your company roster, think about the consequences of that decision. Is your business ready to take on the next hire?

Investing in automation software is typically cheaper than adding a new employee. Investing in technology can ensure that you take your time with all personnel additions.

 

When is the best time to introduce automation to your marketing funnel?

As you consider automating your funnel, you probably have thoughts on how this could work for your specific business. At what stage should you consider automating? Are there any particular circumstances that might help you automate earlier? 

Here are a few critical times where automating your marketing funnel makes sense:

 

You have a solid process for engaging leads

There’s a famous quote from Adam Stone, the CEO of D-Tools, “Anything that you do more than twice has to be automated.” Taking such a hard stance in business can be challenging, but automation can save your company time and money. If you’ve built out a solid lead engagement process, it may be time to bring automation into the mix.

 

You want to increase the number of leads coming in

Next, you’ll likely want to invest in an automated marketing funnel if you need to increase the number of leads coming into your funnel. Automated lead generation can be a great way to improve the number of leads your sales team has to follow up on. Rev has a best-in-class Sales Development Platform that can give your company a consistent stream of quality leads that your team can connect with. When you use our platform, our artificial intelligence can surface interesting traits and find companies that are fit and ready to hear your pitch.

 

You need to make it easier for leads to exit the funnel

If you’re like many companies, you struggle with getting customers to exit the funnel. As we’ve established, you don’t have customers until a contract is signed, so getting to the delight phase of the funnel is critical. If prospects are consistently getting stuck in one aspect of the funnel, it may be time to tap into automation.

It’s important to remember that automation is not a fix-all cure. If a part of your funnel isn’t working, you should address that instead of automating immediately. If you don’t fix the underlying issues with your funnel, it will continue to leak customers over time. Automate the parts of your funnel that work so you can focus on what doesn’t.

 

You are working with a lean operation of sales/marketing personnel

Whether you’re short-staffed or ramping up your smarketing team, it can be challenging to do everything with a lean operation. Many companies look for ways to automate and use tools to run their business effectively.

Tools don’t do everything for you. If you work in a high-touch industry, seeing a friendly face will help you close more deals. If your team is small, find ways to make their lives easier. How can automation help them do more with less?

 

How to set your marketing automation funnel up for success 

Understanding marketing automation and funnels separately is a significant first step for any marketing or demand generation team. It gives you the foundation you need to start exploring the areas within marketing that could benefit from automation. It gives you a nudge toward exploring the tools you can put into place to help streamline and scale your funnel. As you start looking into automating your funnel, consider a few things that will be critical to your success.

 

Start above the funnel

You need to engage with the right prospects. Otherwise, every step you take after is wasted. But, how do you know if you’re targeting the right ones?

Most companies today have created and rely on a one-sheet that details their ideal customer. This ideal customer profile (ICP) often relies on firmographic data, like industry, company size, geography, etc. and guides demand gen teams on whom to target. But, that’s not enough. Take a page from the B2C marketing book and make sure your ICP also includes behaviors.

 

Solve the first-mile problem

Many companies aren’t aware of what really makes their prospects a fit for their product or ready to buy. As a result, poor fit opportunities enter the funnel and both marketing and sales teams spend ample time working companies that will never close.

At Rev, we can help you understand what makes your best customers your best—and help you find others that look and act just like them. Using our Sales Development Platform, we can analyze a list of your best customers and tell you the traits (exegraphics) that make those customers great. Those exegraphics are then compiled to create a deep, working aiCP (AI-powered customer profile) and is used as a blueprint to find, create and prioritize a list of similar companies you can target.

 

Give prospects immediate value

One of the most complex parts of marketing is getting on people’s radar. After all, they can’t purchase from you if they don’t know you exist—or what you offer. In a sea of competitors, getting the recognition you want can be challenging.

One of the ways to gain that recognition is to help your prospects solve a problem, no strings attached. What do we mean by this? Share content that will help your target audience solve a problem or level up their skills, regardless of whether they use your product or service. (And now that you have more insight about your audience via exegraphics, you’re better positioned to deliver content that matters to them.) Creating and distributing free content that is actionable and helps the reader overcome an obstacle positions your company as a trusted thought leader.

Let’s talk about distribution for a minute. This can be tricky. Which channels should you use? Should you gate or ungate your content? The answer is always, it depends. Where does your audience gravitate? What are your goals? These are some questions you should ask yourself. However, consider a mix of channels and ungated content. 

There are benefits of gating content, like immediately capturing an email you can start working. There are also benefits of ungating it. When you ungate content, you make it easier for your audience to find—and easier for them to share. This is a great way for you to fuel brand exposure and start building trust. Once they come to love your content, the barrier to entering an email for a gated piece of content won’t seem like a steep price to pay.

 

Get their contact info

When you’ve identified content pieces to gate (and make sure they’re extremely high quality!), you need to think about the experience and workflow you’re creating with each landing page you build. Building lead capture pages may not seem like a big lift if you’re only putting up a couple of pages a year. But, chances are, if you’re looking to grow your business, you need something more scalable, sophisticated and automated.

That’s where tools like Marketo and HubSpot come in handy. Whether you use their templates or design your own layout, you can quickly spin up a page that aligns with your brand, includes the form fields you need and routes the collected content to your CRM. You can also assign each content piece a different score, and that interaction is tracked and recorded for each lead.

But, don’t stop there. If a prospect doesn’t engage with a piece of content that automatically MQLs them, you’ll want to nurture them by continuing to give them more value.

 

Stay top of mind 

After potential customers become aware of your company, it’s essential to keep your company top of mind. They may not be ready to purchase when they first hear about you, so work on building mindshare so they think of you when they’re looking for a solution to the problem you solve.

Nurture programs can help—and automating them can help you scale. HubSpot and Marketo both include email automation that manage all of this for you. Using email automation, you can set up nurture sequences that not only send your list new content, it will also track engagement that can be used for lead scoring or triggering another series of events. If, for example, a prospect engaged with a specific type of content piece, you could set up a flow into another track of content to give them a more tailored experience. This automated, custom-feeling experience will warm your lead and move them closer to the purchasing stage.

 

How do I know if my marketing automation funnel is working?

We’ve all been there. Implementing a new product is challenging because it’s not always easy to know if it’s working. Thankfully, there is a step-by-step process you can follow to ensure that your new automation is actually working for you and your team.

 

1. Start with your baseline measurement

Every good experiment starts with a baseline measurement. If you don’t take the time to establish where you start, there is no way to ensure that automation is working for your company.

For example, if you are automating your emails, look at past email data. What was the average time it took to get the emails sent out and to collect reporting on their performance? Once you know that number, testing the automation will be easy.

 

2. Create a check-in system

Next, you want to create a check-in system. Automation won’t change your numbers overnight. It’s vital to give this experiment adequate time to work. It’s not all about the first check-in, either. You can’t give up on an automated system after one negative check-in.

Create a spreadsheet for your automation experiment. In the first column, add your baseline measurements. Pick an interval for check-ins, and put those dates in the remaining columns. Check-ins every 30 days should work for most automation programs.

 

3. Compare and contrast

Once you have a few check-ins, you can begin to compare the numbers. Are you doing better? Worse? Are your numbers waffling between good and bad? Talk with your team (both sales and marketing) about their experience with automation. Have these months been easier or harder? You need to grab quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (personal experiences) data around automation.

 

4. Tweak as needed

Once you have the data, you can tweak it as needed or know that your marketing automation funnel is working for your business.

 

Conclusion: Your guide to the marketing automation funnel

Marketing automation is becoming more popular. Investing in automation makes sense as companies move to be more efficient and effective. Whether your organization is big or small, automation can help you build your funnel and close more deals.

If you’re ready to see how marketing automation can help your marketing efforts—starting with the right targets and leads, you need Rev. Contact us and we’ll show you the exegraphics behind your best customers.

You probably spend an excessive amount of time chasing leads down. Lead generation is a never ending necessity for businesses, especially for companies trying to grow. (And, what company isn’t?) Because of this, you might feel like you’re starting at ground zero month after month.

As your organization grows, you need to  find ways to bring in more leads while reducing the workload of finding them. It’s all about efficiency and scale. Lead generation becomes unsustainable if you don’t invest in the right technology. That’s where automated lead generation comes in.

Let’s dive into what automated lead generation is, the benefits your organization will receive and tips on making it work for you.

 

What is automated lead generation?

To understand what automated lead generation is, let’s first go back to basics. What is lead generation? Lead generation is the process of finding new prospective customers and markets to sell your products or services to..

Automated lead generation often uses AI technology to give you more relevant leads. Automation doesn’t have to use AI technology, though. Automated lead generation can also  be finding ways to save time and grab attention. For example, you might use an automation tool to send emails or messages on your behalf.

 

What are some of the benefits of automated lead generation services?

Before we dive into some automated lead generation strategies, let’s cover a few benefits of automation. The thought of using artificial intelligence or automation can feel overwhelming. Some teams may worry that AI will replace sales and marketing teams, but typically the benefits of automation outweigh the negatives.

 

Automation saves time

When companies use automation, one of their main reasons is to save time. Lead generation can be a time-consuming process that involves several steps.

First, companies need to do the math to understand how many leads they must bring in during a given month. Once the number of leads is determined, sales and marketing typically ideate the campaigns and strategies they will use to reach that number. Then, they start executing on their plan, turning targets into leads.

Sales and marketing teams pour over prospects on sites like LinkedIn and inside company databases. Finding people to reach out to can be exhausting, and it doesn’t always lead to success. Sometimes teams can spend hours getting a list of targets together, only to be hit with dead ends, wrong numbers or people who aren’t ready to purchase.

When companies can automate some aspects of this process, whether that’s finding or reaching out to contacts, they save time and money.

 

Automation frees sales and marketing teams up for less repetitive work

Besides saving time, automation also frees sales and marketing up to work on valuable projects. If a task or process  is repetitive, it can most likely be automated. When sales and marketing teams can farm out repetitive tasks, they can focus on the one-on-one work that turns prospects into customers.

Automation can help your company with tasks like:

• Finding potential customers to reach out to
• Sending out the initial messages to prospects
• Booking meetings
• Meeting preparation
• Post meeting follow-up

 

Automation frees up sales and marketing expenses

Lead generation is expensive for many companies. Most of your marketing budget might even be going to lead generation. When funds are tied up in lead generation, it leaves little room for other activities like sales and marketing development or brand building. Companies need to get out of the expensive lead generation race and make better use of the smarketing budget.

When you automate certain aspects of the lead generation process, you’ll undoubtedly free up hours from sales and marketing, saving money.

 

Automation can spot trends early

One of the best parts of using automated lead generation tools is their trendspotting ability. Automated tools use a wide array of information to make business decisions and understand whom to connect with.

In a recent episode of The AI For Sales Podcast, our CEO Jonathan Spier discussed how our sales development platform helps companies, “​​The opportunity of AI is to see more really good patterns early. In our case, it’s seeing who’s a good person to purchase before they even know to show intent yet. That’s where AI is just super exciting for the sales process.”

 

10 helpful automated lead generation tips

So, you’re interested in automating your lead generation activities. How do you go from thinking about it to automating your lead gen process? Let’s dive into ten strategies that will help you get started.

 

1. Build a reliable lead source tracker

Before diving into automated lead generation, you must ensure that leads are tracked appropriately. Your client relationship manager or CRM should track where leads are coming from, but your tool may struggle as lead sources become more complex.

For example, sometimes a client is in your CRM, but automation may help reenergize that lead. What will show up in your CRM as a lead source if this happens?

There are many strategies to understand attribution. Most often, companies use first or last touch attribution. These simple strategies say the credit goes to whatever added the lead or whatever last helped the lead turn into a sale. Many companies use a multi-touch attribution model, which strives to share attribution across as many channels or people who played a role in the sale’s success.

Whichever model you choose, it’s essential to be consistent and ensure your CRM can handle everything. Keeping up with attribution will help you understand the impact that automated lead generation has (or doesn’t have) on your sales journey.

 

2. Create multiple opt-in opportunities

One of the best ways to convert leads is to send them a relevant content piece. Opt-ins are typically sent behind a gate, encouraging a prospect to enter their email address to get the information.

When someone gives you an email address (or any other details about them), they’re putting their trust in you. While email opt-ins or freebies can make it easier to get leads, they have to be worth it. Prospects are particular about what they sign up for and stay subscribed to. Therefore, your opt-in should have a stellar landing page. When someone starts to read it, they should be just as impressed.

Here are some relevant opt-ins that will make prospects want to give you their email address:

• Consultative calls to solve a specific industry problem
• Courses that cover a hot-button industry topic
• eBooks with insights from industry influencers
• Webinars or panels with leading experts
• Industry reports with proprietary data

 

3. Optimize the landing pages you send leads to

Before you send leads to any landing page, you must consider the experience prospects will have when they get there. When your automated systems send prospects to landing pages, your sales team may not always be able to drop things and assist if things go awry. Take your time and review your landing page before sending it out.

Here are some steps you can take to optimize your landing pages:

• Pare down your landing page so that prospects can focus on your call-to-action
• Ensure the landing page copy matches the copy you use to attract visitors to avoid confusion
• Create a focused lead form by asking for the bare necessities and supplementing data with artificial intelligence after opt-in
• Test your landing page on desktops, mobile devices and tablets to ensure everyone has a smooth viewing experience
• Proofread the copy one last time to make sure everything is clear and free of spelling errors

 

4. Always test your copy

A/B testing is an integral part of automated lead generation. Small things can make an enormous difference, and you want to ensure your organization uses the best copy available.

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when A/B testing is changing too much at once. Split testing only works when you can understand what improvement made a difference. Tweak a photo, headline or call to action. Keep it simple.

You can test landing pages, email/outreach copy, advertising copy and more. Anything you use to bring in new leads can likely be tweaked with A/B testing.

 

5. Consider your automated persona

When you automate your lead generation process, you often have to use a persona to do it. Sometimes you use your general brand persona, but usually, you are using your marketing or sales team to be the face of your brand. What will potential customers see when they look at an email signature or check out a social media profile? Most potential customers will want to learn more about the company or the salesperson they are speaking with.

You should work with your website and social media team to ensure that your website and social media profiles are active if you plan to use those during the automation process. You should also work with specific team members to ensure their social media profiles and web presence look professional and well-utilized.

 

6. Use relevant messaging in your campaigns

When connecting with prospects, you want to focus on what you are saying. Conversion is more than a number. Conversion is about building a deep connection with potential customers. If your message isn’t relevant to what your potential customers are dealing with, they’ll move on to a company that gets it.

Wrapping your mind around relevant messaging can be daunting, but it starts with connecting with prospects and current customers.

• Talk to your customers and prospects to see what language they use
• Survey your audience to understand the trends and issues they are dealing with
• Create a Facebook, LinkedIn or Slack group so you can hang out with your customers and people in your ideal audience
• Check out sites like Reddit or Twitter, where your ideal audience already hangs out and has conversations
• Listen to sales calls to understand why prospects decide to reach out and learn more about your brand

Doing this research should give you a clear idea of what your message should look like. By researching what is most often said or discussed, you’ll be better positioned to understand what your audience needs from you.

 

7. Focus resources and attention on remarketing

Remarketing or retargeting is one of the best advertising tools companies can use. According to a survey by Ascend, 34% of marketers use paid advertising/retargeting during the lead nurturing process. Companies use remarketing to get back in front of their ideal customers.

The remarketing process is simple. Companies like Google and Facebook allow you to install tracking pixels on your website. From there, you can retarget people who have visited certain pages or performed specific actions on your website. Pixels are often used in B2C marketing to reduce cart abandonment, but these strategies can also be used in B2B marketing.

Prospects may not respond to your automated outreach right away, but over time they might. Retargeting lets your company stay top of mind while potential customers consider how they can use your product or service.

 

8. Use the right tools

Automated lead generation is a challenge for companies. If you don’t use the right tools, you risk creating an uncanny valley for prospects, especially if you use artificial intelligence. You need to utilize tools that feel like a helpful addition to a prospect’s life, not a burden.

We’ve previously shared some of our favorite AI tools for lead generation. When picking an AI or automation tool, you must consider which areas of the process you and your clients are comfortable automating. For example, you might not want to automate outreach, but you may feel comfortable automating the research process.

Automation is still relatively new, so you don’t have to push the envelope. Instead, understand where the boundaries are for your company and stick to them.

 

9. Build a cadence for connecting with automated leads

If you plan to use an AI tool for outreach, connecting with automated leads can get complicated. With your automation tool taking center stage, you might add too many cooks in the kitchen when sales reps get involved.

Creating a communication cadence for the automation tool and your employees is crucial to building a successful lead generation process.

Here are some questions you might want to ask your sales team:

• How often does the automation tool reach out to prospects? What does it say?
• When you get a response from a human, when should a sales team member step in and take over the conversation?
• Once the sales team takes over, when does the automation tool get shut off?
• If the sales team loses contact, does the automation tool get turned on again?
• When is it time to stop connecting if there isn’t a response?

 

10. Don’t abandon other lead sources

Automation is a tool in your box, but it’s not the only way to gather leads. Other sources like inbound leads can be just as powerful. Consider how you can beef up other lead sources as you use automated strategies.

Here are a few lead sources that you can try:

• Create content to boost your organic results on search engines
• Send regular monthly newsletters to engage people in your database
• Hold webinars and events with other companies in your industry
• Go to industry conferences and tradeshows to meet potential clients
• Build an organic presence on social media sites like LinkedIn
• Invest in a referral program to encourage current customers to share your business
• Work with influencers in your niche to promote your brand

Bottom line: Automated lead generation with Rev

Today, we took an in-depth look at automated lead generation and what it can do for your business. There are many reasons why your team might be interested in automation. Maybe your sales team is struggling to keep up with lead generation goals, or perhaps you want to use your marketing budget better. Automation is the perfect way to future-proof your business, ensuring you can get in front of the right people every month.

 

If you are ready to start automating your lead generation process, consider Rev. We have all the tools you need to transform prospecting from a manual, random and frustrating experience to a scientific and precise process. We’ve built a database of 6 million companies and counting. Our strategic approach helps you understand the exegraphics behind your best customers. From there, we can help you find your next best leads to grow your pipeline efficiently. If this sounds like a process you need, request a demo today.

As organizations invest in demand generation, the use of the demand funnel becomes a clear way to organize and move prospects into buyers. Implementing a clear demand generation funnel can be challenging because it requires clear sales and marketing alignment.

 

What is a demand funnel?

First, let’s cover what a demand funnel is. Demand generation funnels are a system of steps that takes someone from a lead to a customer. Some demand funnels extend and capture how to retain your customers. Overall, the funnel represents how leads, prospects and customers fit into your sales process.

 

How many stages are there in a demand funnel?

Defining the number of steps in a demand generation funnel is tricky. There can be as few as three stages, but depending on how your organization defines the funnel, it can get complicated. Ultimately, there can be as many stages as you need. Some organizations enjoy the simplicity of simpler funnels, while others require a more detailed funnel to make this concept relevant for their team. 

Here are a few examples of demand funnel stages to get your brain turning:

1. Top, middle and bottom of funnel

One of the most straightforward demand generation funnels relies on defining the top, middle and bottom of the funnel

• Top of funnel (TOFU)
• Middle of funnel (MOFU)
• Bottom of funnel (BOFU)

While this funnel seems simple, it gives context into how to bring someone from awareness to consideration to purchase of your product. Setting up your funnel this way can be a great way to begin your demand generation journey.

 

2. Awareness to retention

If you like the TOFU, MOFU and BOFU model, there is a similar funnel that adds intent and retention.

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Intent
• Purchase
• Retention

Intent is an integral part of the funnel because it provides depth to the buying process. Consideration is when users have shown interest in your product, but intent is interest in purchasing your product.

Further, retention is an essential part of demand generation. When you keep your current customers on board, you create a strong base from which to focus on company growth. As a bonus, the loyal customer base you built often provides referrals to your business or purchases from you again when they make a move to a new company.

 

3. Unique users to closed-won

Lastly, you can look at the funnel as a way to convert unique website users and visitors into closed-won. 

• Users
• Leads
• Prospects
• Opportunities
• Closed-won

With this funnel it’s easy to see how sales and marketing work together to drive demand. Everything starts by driving more users to your marketing website. Eventually, you should be able to convert users to leads through form fills on your website. After that, sales takes over to convert leads into prospects, opportunities and closed-won.

 

Demand funnel terms you need to know

Demand generation funnels can be complicated because there is a lot of jargon to understand. Here are a few terms that can help:

• Lead: Leads have expressed interest in your product or service. They are hand raisers who have shared that you can contact them with more information.
• Prospect: A prospect goes one step further. Prospects meet your business criteria as a potential customer. Leads become prospects after sales have done some due diligence to look into their needs/wants in a product or service.
• Marketing qualified lead: MQLs are leads that marketing has qualified by gathering data on your company’s marketing website. These people have typically requested a demo, downloaded a resource or connected with your company’s marketing chatbot. Based on lead scoring, sales typically have knowledge of which leads to go after first.
• Sales qualified lead: After sales connects and discovers a potential need, potential customers convert into SQLs.
• Sales qualified opportunity: Once sales has worked with a potential customer and put together a potential deal SQLs become SQOs.
• Closed-won deal: If everything goes according to plan, deals are closed-won, which means that your organization has a new customer. You might also track closed-lost deals based on any contracts you couldn’t win.
• Advocate: After a customer has worked with your organization and found value in what you offer, hopefully, they become an advocate who continues to purchase your products while recommending your product to others.

 

How to use (and improve) the demand generation funnel to grow your business

Now that you have a basic understanding of how to create a demand funnel, let’s dive into ways organizations can use the funnel to improve sales.

 

1. Align sales/marketing to the use of the demand generation funnel

Demand funnels can often feel like a theory instead of something that can help marketers and sales professionals. Companies use funnels to ensure that they are meeting the needs of potential and current customers.

If you want to make it tangible, provide context. The funnel helps marketers and sales professionals understand where prospects are in their sales journey and what strategies are working to move them through the funnel.

 

2. Update prospect progress regularly to get an accurate look at the funnel

When it comes to the later stages of the funnel, it’s easy to get off track. A prospect can stay in an earlier stage of the sales process for too long, which has a ripple effect. Sales and marketing leaders want to see how quickly prospects are moving down the funnel, but this only works if sales professionals keep accurate data. Encourage your sales team to check their funnel regularly and move potential customers to the right stage.

 

3. Use AI to increase leads in the demand funnel

The demand generation funnel thrives on consistent lead generation. AI can be a fantastic tool for generating leads at scale.  Artificial intelligence can often spot trends and potential customers we don’t see. Our Sales Development Platform, for example, uses AI to reveal the characteristics that make your best customers your best. Then, it uses that exegraphic data to create a prioritized list of companies that look and act like your best accounts. 

 

4. Create content for every stage of the funnel

One way that marketing can have a hand in the funnel is through content creation. Many marketers focus on the top of funnel pieces to build awareness like listicles, how-to guides and social media posts. Sales professionals need more middle and bottom of funnel pieces like case studies, one-pagers, pre-recorded demonstrations, explainer videos and thought leadership articles. With extended content for later funnel stages, sales can use more marketing content in outreach and follow-up.

 

5. Make the funnel easy for end users

Is your funnel making it harder for potential customers to get the service they need? While the demand generation funnel makes it easy for companies to denote where prospects are, it can add additional steps to the sales process. Sometimes, you’ll find that potential customers have done a lot of research before reaching out to a sales professional. Is your sales team ready to move quickly to meet the demands of potential customers? If not, your funnel could do end users a disservice.

 

6. Understand trends to improve your demand funnel

Your organization and industry have trends that change how your demand funnel works. If you sell flowers, you’ll likely see an uptick in orders during special holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. As a result, you can expect the sales process to speed up during those times. Look at any spikes in sales over the past few years. Are there any trends you can spot from this data? If so, let those trends inform how you connect with prospects during those periods.

 

7. Address leaks in your funnel

Occasionally, there are leaks in your funnel. For instance, you may find sales can overlook leads, or they may take too long to do the initial outreach. As people enter your funnel, sales needs to stay on top of new opportunities. Inspect the different areas of your funnel to ensure no leads or prospects are left behind. 

 

8. Invest in new sales strategies to make the best use of the demand funnel

Sales is a dynamic field. There are many sales models and pricing strategies that can inform how you do business. You can start by testing new systems to improve your demand funnel playbook. Each sales person on your team will likely have a sales strategy that works best for them. Experimenting will allow your organization to make more sales. 

 

9. Consider how changes to the funnel impact the entire process

Every change you make to a part of your demand gen funnel has a greater effect on the whole system. For example, many organizations invest heavily in top-of-funnel content/experience without wondering how potential prospects will feel as they continue down the funnel. Are there enough reps? Will prospects be contacted promptly? Investing heavily in one part can create a lackluster experience in others.

 

10. Spend more time than you think on the retention phase

Retention is better than selling.

Often, companies spend a lot of money on new opportunities and forget their current customers. If your current paying customers leave, you have to make up for that in new business. On top of that, you must make a certain amount of new sales to grow your company. No one wants to be stagnant, but it’s often the only option if you’re bleeding current customers.

Retention through contract renewals and upsells is essential to the demand generation funnel. Invest in account executives to connect and sell to your existing client base.

 

Conclusion: Improve the demand generation funnel through simple tweaks

Whether you pick a simple or more complex demand gen funnel structure for your organization, remember that it’s not a “set and forget” decision. Your funnel needs regular maintenance and adjustments, and it needs to be giving sales and marketing cues on how to improve the entire experience—for your company and for your customers. By making small modifications over time, you give your funnel an opportunity to evolve with your business and optimize your bottom line.

 

Looking for more ways to improve your funnel? Schedule a call with us to see how our AI-powered Sales Development Platform can help you get better leads.

Demand generation is exhaustive.

To create a profitable business, demand gen leaders need to consistently bring in high-quality leads at a high volume. You want to bring in enough leads to fill your entire sales pipeline, but traditional lead generation methods can be expensive and time-consuming.

You may have even Googled, “Can you automate lead generation?”

With AI lead generation, you can offload some of the stress of generating sales leads and increase the velocity of your pipeline. 

Let’s dive into what AI lead generation is and how you can use it in your organization.

 

What is AI lead generation?

If you are new to AI leads, it’s easy to be wary of using them in your business.

AI, artificial intelligence, refers to systems and technology that can perform tasks and solve problems that often require human intelligence. The beauty of AI is that it can complete tasks and solve problems faster than humans—and it learns along the way, so its outputs and outcomes are always improving.  

Before AI can take action, it needs to be fed data to evaluate. This is also true for AI lead gen tools.  These tools require users to share specific inputs  so the AI can produce the desired output. When it comes to lead gen, AI often helps you find the fastest route to new leads and new revenue.

 

How to use AI at different stages of the lead creation process

Creating leads for your sales team takes effort. After generating new leads, you typically have to score those leads and help sales nurture them into profitable opportunities. Thankfully, AI can help you at these different stages of the process.

Generation

AI lead generation is the obvious way that artificial intelligence can help you bring in new customers. You can feed an AI lead generation tool a list of your best customers or customers you’d like to have and get a new target list sent your way quickly and efficiently. 

Scoring

Prioritizing which targets and leads to go after first can be challenging for sales professionals. Your sales team wants to make the biggest impact on their pipeline first, but getting a huge list of targets and leads can be overwhelming. AI lead generation tools can help you score them to determine which opportunities are worth chasing first. When your organization invests in the right tools, you’ll always know where to begin.

Nurture

Once you have leads in your pipeline, how do you keep them excited and engaged in the buying process? AI can help you deliver timely and relevant messaging to your leads to ensure they are ready to take meetings and purchase when the time is right.

 

Where traditional AI leads fall short

When thinking about AI lead lists, something is often missing from the results you get. 

Most AI lead generation tools work with firmographic data to determine which companies would fit your organization. Data like industry, workforce size, geography, etc., all make a significant difference in your ideal customer profile. But what’s more telling beyond the superficial characteristics are how those companies behave..

Companies need their AI tools to focus on exegraphics, the characteristics that define  how organizations execute their mission. For example, is a company an early adopter of technology? If your software is new, but you are working on a contract with a company that is often the last to adopt new technology, you’re spending your energy in the wrong place.

Exegraphic data includes information such as:

• Early adopter
• Growth rate
• Tech centrity
• Compliance focus
• Customer care investment
• Employee retention
• and much more!

All of these signals can help you make better decisions on whom to target and what to say during your outreach.

 

6 AI lead generation tools you need to know

Now that you understand the value of AI lead generation, it’s important to have the tools you need to make AI lead generation a reality for your organization. Here are six helpful tools you can use at your organization:

1. Rev

Your organization has built a target market based on the current customers on your roster. With Rev, you can dive deeper into the exegraphics of your existing customers and identify new targets with your new aiCP (AI customer profile).

To take advantage of Rev, customers upload a list of their best accounts into our Sales Development Platform. Our AI reviews that seed list and creates a mathematical model of your best customer. We call that your aiCP. The aiCP surfaces the  exegraphics for your best customers, revealing deep insights into what makes your best customers your best.  Once the aiCP is created, Rev’s Sales Development Platform generates a prioritized target account list of all the other companies that match your aiCP—so you know who to target next..

Companies like Splunk have seen significant sales growth by using Rev in their business.

Rev seamlessly integrates with the tools your sales team already uses, making it easy to implement at your organization.

If you are trying to accomplish wins like 50% growth in net-new accounts, you need to add Rev to your sales technology stack.

2. Collective[i]

Once you know what companies to target, you need to understand who to contact at those organizations. Finding clean contact information is one of the most important parts of the lead generation process. Without clear ways to communicate with prospective customers, sales teams cannot book demos and create additional pipeline.

Collective[i] exists to help sales professionals with their contact problems. You can use Collective[i] to uncover issues in your legacy data and create better data for new leads. By investing in a tool like this, your organization will be off to a great start with prospects.

3. Seamless.ai

Another company you can use to gather contact information is Seamless.ai. Seamless.ai works across the web to find the contacts sales professionals need to do their job. It’s easy to find contact information based on the titles you’re looking for. For example, you can look for marketing directors at a certain company.

Seamless.ai has a Chrome extension that allows you to find contact information based on social media profiles quickly.

Lastly, Seamless.ai can pull up helpful information about prospects and their companies, making it easier to find details when you’re ready to pitch a new organization.

4. Kronologic

If you’ve worked in sales, you know how stressful booking time on a prospect’s calendar can be. Even sending someone a link to a calendar scheduling tool can be complicated for some prospects. Kronologic takes the guesswork out of setting up meetings by helping your sales team connect with prospects at the height of their engagement with the organization.

Potential customers can one-click accept proposed meeting times, and your sales team gets more revenue-driven meetings on their busy calendars.

5. Drift

One of the best things that has come out of AI are advances in conversational marketing. Drift is a popular AI-driven tool for marketers, sales professionals, and customer service leaders. Drift embeds in websites and applications to make connecting with prospects and customers easier.

Current and potential customers can interact with Drift to be routed to appropriate live chats and premade chatbots. When your prospects need to connect with a sales representative, they can use your organization’s Drift bot to send requests and get information about your organization.

6. Conversica

Another option for companies wanting to invest in conversational marketing, sales and customer success is Conversica. Conversica is an assistant that’s powered by AI and ready to help you close more deals. With Conversica, you can easily understand who your hottest prospects are while saving sales time during the conversation period.

Conversica can connect with your potential customers to create more hand raisers. Once sales professionals are ready to be more involved in the process, they know who to contact first using Conversica’s suite of tools.

 

Conclusion: Lead generation AI strategies you can use

To meet aggressive revenue goals, your organization needs to optimize its lead generation strategy. Relying on sales development teams to fill the pipeline or hoping that demand generation professionals can do the work independently isn’t helpful. You need high-quality, high volume leads, and that requires technology to streamline the experience. If you’ve been struggling to consistently provide the quantity and quality of leads to help you predictively grow your pipeline, it’s time to invest in a new process. AI lead generation can feel scary, but it doesn’t have to be. Having the right AI tools integrated into your strategy can create sales success.

Never-ending waves of technology innovation wash across marketing departments every day. They’re shifting how marketing teams operate—and opening new opportunities. You might adopt some and ignore others. Regardless of how you decide to build your tech stack, one technological strategy you need to develop is your Digital Center of Excellence (DCoE).

Many of our employees participated in one of these digital journeys, and it’s an exciting adventure for anybody who hasn’t yet tried building a Center of Excellence (CoE). These centers deliver an enormous amount of value to upper-middle and large-scale businesses if done correctly.

To find out the best ways to set up a Digital CoE and to learn more about the benefits of the Center of Excellence methodology, we talked to Siara Nazir, Head of Digital Marketing at Autodesk.

Siara’s knowledge of the digital landscape is immense. She spent nearly a decade as Director of Online Acquisition and Global Paid Media at Symantec and has won awards for excellence in media and the Equality Impact Award for breaking industry barriers. She has also planted many new digital marketing approaches that have been covered in publications like DM News and Forrester. In addition, she has spoken about artificial intelligence (AI) and marketing at industry conferences.

Siara has a decade of experience building digital centers of excellence and has hard-won knowledge to share with other people embarking on a similar journey.
What is a Center of Excellence?
A Center of Excellence is a team of specialists deploying and managing customer-facing technologies, with marketing often at the forefront. The goal is often to improve the customer experience and use digital to gain a competitive advantage.

With a Center of Excellence framework, you create a plan that helps you understand what you need to reach your goal. That plan usually includes building a team and assigning objectives central to that goal as milestones to measure success.

 

Why are companies setting up Digital Centers of Excellence?

Siara points out that as more and more customers learn about and transact with brands online, those connections intertwine with various channels, including:

• Social media
• Search marketing
• Email marketing
• Chatbots
• Programmatic advertising retargeting
• And other technological innovations

Companies have to adapt to a consumer journey paradigm shift.

As those companies adapt, their marketing teams find that the traditional marketing generalist lacks the knowledge to meet all of customers’ growing expectations.

Instead, Digital Centers of Excellence assemble teams with deep expertise in key technologies to assist the rest of the organization with capitalizing on digital. Each person has a specific focus area that they bring to the table. Digital Center of Excellence teams analyze data about customers, conduct A/B split tests and follow UX/UI best practices. These actions help improve the customer experience.

Using an assistance structure like a Digital Center of Excellence is also a matter of keeping up with or surpassing the competition. Siara says, “It comes out of a need to grow your business and to have a deeper understanding of your consumer. A lot of it is also rooted in competition. Your competitors may understand their customers a lot more deeply and, as a result, they’re growing double digits while you’re lagging behind.”

 

Why do you need a Digital Center of Excellence?

Siara notes, “It’s becoming critical for companies to understand the digital space and ensure that their businesses are built up to offer services and values of any kind in this space. Companies also need to ensure that platforms and processes exist to not only garner insights from those journeys but also to track and expose analytics that help inform our spending and strategy.”

According to Siara, a Digital Marketing Center of Excellence helps marketing operations understand the consumer journey and how the company needs to assist that journey.

 

How to create a Center of Excellence: The critical steps

Martech Today recommends a Digital Center of Excellence that is “centered around core organizational needs—business models and sales objectives” and that it should contain “specialist subgroups —digital creative, website development, SEM, content production, display, media buying, email and social media.”

That enterprise model won’t work for smaller teams, of course. For tiny teams who want to lay the preliminary groundwork, begin by hiring focus area specialists in roughly this sequence:

• Head of digital marketing
• Marketing operations
• Specialists by marketing channel (e.g., web, email, social, search and so on)
• Augment skill gaps with agencies and outside consultants as possible

And always think about the sequence of marketing technologies you want to deploy and what you need to do to improve the customer experience and make that experience scalable. A successful CoE model starts with the end goal, so it’s important to ask yourself this: What quantifiable business results are you looking for?

 

1. Evaluate your market and identify your target demographics

Siara says that what they’re seeing lately at Autodesk is that the purchasing demographic is getting younger. The age of customers purchasing media and entertainment products is set to drop from the 24-35-year-old range to the 18-23-year-old range.

Once you understand the target demographic for your objective, you have critical business intelligence for creating a strategy and acquiring technology in a logical sequence.

Siara says, “Understanding this (demographic) shift is the first realization that a whole new generation of up-and-coming buyers will be interacting with your brand and consuming related information in a wholly different way. Understanding how they are doing so is a critical part of understanding what tools and platforms you need and how to evolve your processes and infrastructure to expose that.”

 

2. Do an internal data audit

An internal audit will show you how clean your company’s data is. Siara shares, “I think data cleanliness is important. Can your infrastructures and data warehouses absorb more tracking data? Do you need a more robust data warehouse?” When you understand and then mitigate any issues discovered in your audit, you can add more tools and platforms that can further reveal customer insights, improve the customer experience and better support operational excellence.

 

3. Pre-plan each business process

Now that you know who you’re targeting, start thinking about what processes you need to assist those customers through the B2B funnel.

Siara says to ask yourself, “What infrastructure do you need? What do you need to watch out for? How do you need to alter your data warehouses to accommodate the inclusion of new tracking parameters or new data sources?”

Keep an eye on the future horizon for what’s coming up and how you can impact it today.

 

4. Acquire the right digital tools

Siara gives this example of why correct tools are imperative: “Social media is very much a big part of a consumer’s journey today. If you don’t have the tools to monitor social chatter or the journey that comes in and out of social media channels, you miss a whole part of how a customer interacts, and so your strategy will as well.”

 

5. Curate your DCoE stakeholders

Speed and agility are critical to a Digital Center of Excellence. You don’t want to slow it down with too many stakeholders. Customer experience should be your guiding design principle. Don’t allow stakeholders leverage at random—make considered choices.

Siara says, “The involvement of too many people and the shift from a directive approach to a consensus approach can slow progress when too many people are involved in decision making.”

Siara recommends implementing a process like DACI:

• Driver: Runs the Digital Center of Excellence
• Approver: Approves or vetoes decisions
• Contributors: Experts in assigned areas of the Digital Center of Excellence model
• Informed: People that need to know the decisions that are being made

“I think everyone has their own expertise, and they bring something to the table that makes the project whole. There would definitely be gaps without that. But, you have to introduce things like a DACI process to outline upfront what role everyone is going to play.” Siara adds.

 

Know your focus area

As Siara says, marketing organizational design included lots of “marketing generalists.” Now, no marketing generalist, however seasoned, can understand and capitalize on all the technologies.

As companies start to scale, they need to quickly step away from the marketing generalist roles and look at marketing specialization. An enormous amount of knowledge and expertise is required to take advantage of emerging technologies. Marketing operations should know exactly how to respond to the evolution of social media, email and many other channels, especially with new technologies like Artificial Intelligence marketing solutions.

Siara talked about the importance of matching skill sets to initiatives. “When you onboard these processes and this infrastructure you create a center. A lot of times, what happens is the skillsets of people in your organization don’t end up matching your future state. You have to understand the skill set gap to know what new talent you need to pull in.”

Keep international workforces in mind as well. While marketing teams in the US are becoming highly skilled in specific technologies, global teams are behind in pursuing granular expertise. The international workforce can have strong skillsets and localized knowledge of culture and language. Siara says, “If you have an international brand or are selling internationally, it is important to know how skillsets evolve within those countries and how that shapes your workforce.”

Consider add-on technologies as well. Be aware of what tech you might need to purchase beyond the standardized norms. Siara continues, “A critical aspect is being sure you can leverage and use the technologies you’re spending so much time onboarding. You need to keep an eye on the workforce as well as the hardware and software.”

 

When’s the best time to start a Digital Center of Excellence?

You’re probably already noticing the signs leading you toward building a Digital Center of Excellence. As more of your customers begin expecting online transactions or services to be available online and your competition is offering that convenience, you will have to address that shift across all lines of business. It will become even more apparent as Siara points out, “When AI comes up, or blockchain becomes a large part of your marketing strategy.”

Siara cautions, however, that you should start building your Digital Center of Excellence before any of that happens. “The best counsel I can give executives and company leaders is to understand technology and how it can be applied in the future—two, three or four years down the line in your business.”

Siara advises that if you can apply a Digital Center of Excellence methodology to your business unit in any way, you should flag it today. “Begin by understanding how you change your processes, what tools you need to absorb that technology, and what skill sets you need to create in your team to have the experts to run that technology and help inform spending and strategy.”

Be aware that the climax of your efforts are in the future. Siara says, “There are a lot of misconceptions about how long a process like this takes. Leadership may or may not be familiar with digital marketing and feel that it is a quick process. It’s a process that can’t happen overnight which is contrary to their perception of online in which everything is fast, and you can do everything very quickly.”

According to Siara, creating and onboarding all that goes into a Marketing Center of Excellence is an experience that is unique to each company. Therein lies the complication of integrating standardized tools and platforms into a company’s unique structure.

Siara says that creating a Digital Center of Excellence can take a long time. “In my experience, I would honestly give it a year and a half to get a really strong foundation in place. Be cautious about the timelines involved and understand the importance of auditing data and having specialized skill sets.”

Companies want to be fast to market and provide the best experiences for their customers by using the most innovative techniques. However, Siara says, “I think organizations have to balance all of this with agility.”

 

Final thoughts

Creating a Center of Excellence is a journey that any viable business that gets into any kind of scale will be embarking on all over the world. We are going to be learning a lot about Digital Centers of Excellence—and what it takes to create a truly successful CoE, over the next half-decade as more and more companies embark on this path.

Your organization may already be investing in B2B digital marketing, but are you getting a decent return on investment? Companies must understand how to generate consistent sales using the marketing dollars spent. Throwing more money at your next B2B campaign can only take your organization so far. Thankfully, there are eight simple things your organization can do when investing in B2B online marketing to reach your target customers and close deals.

 

1. Embrace new technology for your next marketing campaign

Is your marketing collateral boring? Are you reaching the right audience? Do you understand what customers are looking for? When marketing B2B organizations, consider:

• Targeting mobile devices like smartphones and tablets
• Meeting customers where they are online (or offline)
• Creating visualizations and infographics to convey statistics

You shouldn’t adopt every new trend, but consider what will work for your company. Companies have seen proven results using technology like live-streaming and videos. You need to start adding visuals to your sales process.

 

2. Use PPC to nab B2B buyers

As you build B2B digital marketing strategies, you realize that businesses use social channels as much as consumers do.

Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns provide useful data for B2B sales teams to analyze conversion success by looking at data provided by social media companies. There are many options for how to run a successful social media PPC campaign, but here are a few examples to try:

• Invitations to innovative industry webinars
• Short video product announcements
• Presentations regarding why a product/service is valuable to a business

Investing in PPC marketing through an Instagram or LinkedIn profile produces higher conversion rates. If you don’t have a presence on a platform, you can buy social PPC ads without one, but we don’t recommend it. Potential customers want the social proof provided by a genuine, active profile. Consumers will skip by if you’re not making at least a minimum effort.

 

3. Maximize ad retargeting

One thing that many B2B marketers neglect to do is retarget advertisements. Retargeting gives your organization a simple way to stay top of mind with users who have shown interest in your product.

You can also use retargeting to test and tweak your messaging to see what marketing B2B ads work best. In the digital marketing B2B world, making simple changes to the text, removing background music or changing statistics takes only a few minutes.

B2B marketers can be proactive right from the start by creating multiple campaign versions. You can start this process by tweaking your messaging to market to specific industries and audiences.

 

4. Upgrade your lead and target account lists

Without a good number of leads, your B2B sales numbers may drop. Luckily many services can help you boost leads so you can talk to the right companies.

Consider using an online lead generation service to boost your potential client pool. When you use a service like this, they can provide you with a list of relevant leads that your sales reps have the opportunity to convert. Your sales team will love the excess leads they can cold call to convert to standing agreements.

As an alternative, consider using a Sales Development Platform (SDP) to help you build a strong target list of accounts that look and act like your best customers. It’s a great way to identify prospects with a high propensity to buy from you—before they’ve heard of you (or your competitors).

 

5. Launch an affiliate marketing program

Affiliate marketing is a great way to build your B2B pipeline, but it can be tricky for companies to understand. When selling to businesses, you need to carefully select the partners or affiliates you work with. Working with a trusted voice can provide opportunities and leads that often convert to sales and referrals. Affiliate marketing is worth including as another sales channel in your overall strategy, especially since you only pay on conversion.

 

6. Pay for extra promotion on social media

Social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram, offer an advertisement boosting option for a small fee. Boosting displays your marketing advertisements to a wider variety of users. You can—and should—customize the audience that will see your content. You can often do this by drilling into several detailed characteristics such as the ad viewer’s age, education and work.

The small fee increases your audience and increases B2B leads. Digital advertisements should tell business leaders exactly why your product or service will enhance their bottom line.

 

7. Impress through technology

Brands tend to try to keep up with one another on technology. One way to impress customers is to use technology to help show off your product.

Forget sending printed packets of material in advance. Instead, send a link to an introduction video or short webinar. Buyers want a personalized experience. Using tools like Loom can help you make a great first impression and create something that potential customers will find valuable.

Asynchronous communication is more convenient and forward-thinking, especially when considering the future of B2B marketing and sales.

 

8. Automate email marketing campaigns

Automation is essential when you are a B2B marketer or salesperson. According to a recent survey by HubSpot, 76% of companies use automation in their business.

A simple email autoresponder indicating receipt of an email and an ETA for response is better than an announcement on a webpage stating that there is a delay in email responses.

If 20 email inquiries come in after releasing a B2B digital marketing campaign and there is no brand acknowledgment, it leaves a bad taste in your buyers’ mouths. Make optimizing your automation software a priority.

This software will provide deeper insights into your B2B emails, so you know if people are:

• Opening them
• Clicking on your call to action
• Resonating with short or long messages

Experiment with different styles, subject lines and send times to determine the best practices for your particular audience.

 

Closing thoughts

Invite businesses to engage with you through your digital channels—and provide timely responses to inquiries. Reach out to companies within your sector with digital campaigns rather than lengthy written reports. These measures will entice more brands to inquire about your brand’s product or service, leading to more direct B2B sales.

B2B digital marketing is as crucial as mobile and content marketing in your overall strategy. Disregarding one area leaves the door open for other B2B sales teams to swoop in and lock down contracts before you can.