How do you maximize lead acquisition from your budget? Through budget planning.

Capturing leads is an important milestone in your quest to acquire more customers. As a result, it makes sense if you aim to capture as many leads as possible from your website traffic. Unfortunately, generating leads is a big challenge for most businesses. According to the State of Inbound 2018 Report, 61% of marketers believe their top marketing challenge is generating traffic and leads. However, businesses continue to invest more money into lead generation. For instance, 53% of marketers allocate more than half of their budget to lead generation. Consequently, businesses expect to acquire more leads. How do you maximize lead acquisition from your budget? Through budget planning. In this blog post, you'll learn seven vital tips to help you plan your lead acquisition budget. [si_blog_banner_cta]

1. Set…

Chart of the Week: 60% of marketers say personalization is a key strategy for improving the quality of leads being generated

Lead generation is an important part of marketing, especially now that many companies are getting rid of the internal silos and sales and marketing are working more closely together. However, it isn’t just the number of leads you need to consider when measuring success; you also need to take lead generation quality into account. The quality of your leads essentially tells you how likely they are to become customers, with high-quality leads being the most sought after. But exactly how do you attract leads that are more likely to convert? [si_guide_block id="116978" title="Download our Business Resource – Lead scoring and profiling guide" description="This guide will introduce you to the different ways you can score your leads and how you can classify them against your ideal buyer profiles."/] While there are a huge number…

Aligning your sales and marketing teams is one of the easiest ways to grow your business.

In most companies, marketing and sales teams don’t collaborate very efficiently. But that shouldn’t be the case. After all, they’re both trying to help the company grow, right? The only difference is that they try to achieve this goal in different ways. While your marketing team tries to raise awareness about your brand and generate leads, your sales team aims to close deals. [si_guide_block id="79857" title="Download our Business Resource – Sales and marketing integration guide" description="This guide will give you practical recommendations, based on real-world examples, showing how to get your sales and marketing teams working together more effectively."/] In the end, they’re essentially working towards the same thing. This is why getting them to work together can do wonders for your company’s growth. You’ll see: Lowered sales costs. More cost-efficient marketing. Shortened sales cycles. Increased conversions. Here’s how…

The right vendor depends on your own personal requirements

Marketing Automation vendors are not one-size-fits-all. It is important that you choose the right vendor for your specific business requirements as B2B companies have more complex and longer buyer journeys and more people involved in the buying process. Your Marketing Automation platform selection should focus on finding the best fit with your business plans, resources and company culture. There are several ways to navigate the selection process, including a formal RFP (Request for Proposal) for shortlisting vendors to running in depth demonstrations. Here are six steps that will help you in this process.

1. Define Your Business Goals

In order to know what a Marketing Automation vendor should be able to deliver in terms of features and service, it is important to clearly define the business challenges or opportunities that you are facing. Describe the gap between the current situation and the desired state.…

An account-based twist to your experiential planning

In the B2B marketer’s toolkit, events are pretty much stitched into the fabric. For as long as there have been buyers and sellers in a market there have been events that bring the two together with varying degrees of structure in the middle. It’s not all been plain sailing though. Over the past twenty years, it’s had a rocky ride. Digital developments have meant that investment in experiential were put under pressure. The tide is turning though: Bizzabo found that 63% of marketers plan on investing more in live events in the future both in budget and number of events. In my experience, one of the main drivers of this increased focus is ABM. Creative ABMers the world over are turning to tried and tested techniques like events and giving them an extreme account-based makeover (without the Hollywood tears). [si_guide_block id="118739" title="Download our Premium Resource…

Whether it's a large-scale conference designed to set the standards for the next phase of industry growth, or a trade show to give prospective clients a reason to work with you, these events require detailed planning

Annual conferences and trade shows are must-attends for every business. From product launches to thought-leadership from industry insiders, conferences and trade shows are some of the hottest events of any season, and the most defining for the future of business. Whether it's a large-scale conference designed to set the standards for the next phase of industry growth, or a trade show to give prospective clients a reason to work with you, these events require detailed planning. These events are crucial to representing your brand and image and set the stage for business development and growth. They give clients a sneak peek of the unique customer experience that your company and the rest of the industry can provide.…

The many ways technology has transformed our lives can be seen clearly in the ways we live, work, shop and communicate

Customers today are more likely to use online channels to complete their journeys than ever before. Gone are the days when customers were anxious about ordering online. Nowadays, many people are just as confident and trusting of websites as they are of heading into a physical store. This isn’t just for impulsive, cheap purchases like fast fashion or consumer goods either. As online channels continue to become normalized, customers are also increasingly heading online to shop for higher ticket items too, such as cars and high-end electronics. [si_guide_block id="57383" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Website and e-commerce personalization guide" description="This guide is aimed at marketing managers involved with making the business case for personalization, looking to plan a personalization implementation or extend their use of personalization."/] The many ways technology has transformed…

Creativity and resourcefulness may be the best weapons you can use when it comes to lead generation

Lead generation is a crucial marketing activity as it signals the start of what could be a fruitful relationship with future customers. Unfortunately, leads don’t fall on your lap that easily. Not only are you dealing with competition that will try to be first on your prospects’ radar, but you also need to cater to the changing buying behavior and needs of consumers. Faced with these challenges, your creativity and resourcefulness may be the best weapons you can use. This is where infographics come in handy. Infographics have an artistic appeal to content consumers as they are rich in visuals that pique your target market’s interest in learning more about your brand and its unique value offer.

Infographics as blog posts

To generate leads with infographics, you can post them…

How to plan, market and execute an event around communication

Communication is at the heart of everything we do, enabling us to form relationships, carry out work and achieve our goals. It is also at the heart of successful event marketing. Whether speaking in front of an audience, conducting a product demonstration or simply networking, being able to communicate your brand successfully is essential. All event marketing relies on effective communication from the initial event development, marketing and promotions phases, through to the actual event itself. [si_guide_block id="57658" title="Download our Business Resource – Event marketing guide" description="Whatever your business goals, live events can help you achieve them. This guide will give you the strategic advice you need to run successful events."/] To plan a successful event, organizers need to listen to their audiences, understand their needs and plan an event that envisions these desires. Only by effective communication from the organizer can marketers communicate…

Marketing automation is a godsend for digital marketers, but needs to be closely monitored, otherwise your investment may be for naught. The following metrics will help you keep tabs and get the most of your automation software

If you’re a digital marketer, you’re probably using marketing automation software, and for good reason. You may be looking to avoid human error, to be more responsive or to reduce overhead. When creating and managing automations, you most likely use many features, to try and give your users the best possible customer journey.  Whatever be the case, you need to be able to measure how well your automations are panning out. It turns out, however, that for most, this is no simple task. In fact, studies show that 50-60% of those who use marketing automation, find measuring automation performance to be the most challenging part of engaging in automations. [si_guide_block id="58833" title="Managing B2B marketing automation…