by Fronetics | Feb 10, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
A good call to action will help potential leads feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’ offers.
If you feel your marketing campaign falls short in generating quality leads, you are not alone. Typically one in 10 marketing professionals questions the effectiveness of their lead generation methods. While you may have some of the components of a strong campaign in place, it is possible that you are leaving out a very important ingredient for success: a call to action (CTA).
CTAs are vital in any tactical marketing campaign. This is where you actually ask for your potential customer or client to take some form of action that moves them one step closer to your objective: connecting them to your company.
Say that you offer potential customers a high-value offer — like an ebook, whitepaper, free consultation, or discount — as a lead nurturing tactic. If you do not include an actual call to action, the customers have no direction for obtaining the offer, and you are probably missing out on a myriad of quality leads.
What makes a good call to action?
Not all CTAs are created equal. You are competing with every other brand in a fight for the attention (and choice) of consumers, so it’s critical that prospects feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’.
- Calls to action are the secret sauce to driving people to your offers. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then no matter how impressive your offer is, it is rendered useless.
- Typically, a good call to action can be used on product pages (non-landing pages), in display ads, email, social media, direct mail, and pretty much anywhere you can market your offer.
There are several tricks of the trade to creating a highly productive CTA:
Location, location, location
Just like with important news, the placement of your call to action should be “above the fold,” or, high enough on the page so the reader will not have to scroll to see it. It is also good to have a second CTA located further down within the offer.
Clarity is key
Do not try to be so clever with your words that your offer gets lost in translation. State the offer very clearly and be specific. Don’t just say “download now,” but rather, “Download you free e-book.”
Make the CTA stand out
Choose contrasting colors for your call to action so that it draws the attention of the eye and does not blend in on the page.
Link to a landing page
Send potential customers to a targeted landing page that is relevant to what they are looking for. Your call to action should send them to a page that will convert them into a lead. Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s research, landing pages are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies.
There are many innovative methods to increasing the number of quality leads a marketing plan generates. The trick is in knowing how. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads to learn the best ways to improve the productivity of your marketing strategies.
Download guide
Related articles:
by Fronetics | Feb 8, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Enticing potential customers with exclusive, high-value offers is an important component of lead nurturing and lead generation.
Your strategic marketing objectives boil down to one basic mission: to generate a high volume of quality leads. This will drive tomorrow’s revenue and an increase in sales and profits. Yet, only one in 10 marketing professionals feel they have an effective lead-generation strategy in place.
Since a productive lead-generation campaign consists of many interconnecting layers, it can be hard to pinpoint what is limiting your success. But, if you are seeking more leads for your business (and who isn’t?), consider these proven tactics for achieving successful lead generation.
First, for tactical reasons, your overall campaign must contain these components:
- Something To Offer. An offer is content that is perceived to be high in value. Offers include ebooks, whitepapers, free consultations, product demonstrations, or discounts.
- A Call to Action. This is either a small paragraph of text, an image, or a button that links the potential customer to a landing page to download what you have to offer.
- An Awesome Landing Page. This is a specific page designed to allow the potential client to download your offer.
- Forms to Gather the Lead Info. Essentially, they get the download; you get their contact information.
These four valuable components set the stage for capturing exponentially more lead information than ever before to grow your business.
Creating the Most Inspiring Offers
Just because you have identified leads does not mean they will convert to customers. Lead nurturing helps build a relationship with your potential customers, gain their trust, and raise their awareness about your business and products. The four steps above are critical to the lead nurturing process. But, unless you offer something that your potential customers want, you will not get past the first one.
So, what entices people to click “yes” to an offer?
The majority of us want anything that is considered exclusive, scarce, or in high demand. Suddenly, something becomes more desirable if it appears like we are getting the scoop on a special deal or valuable information.
The higher the perceived value of your offer, the more irresistible it becomes. So, whether your offer is whitepapers, downloads, free trials, memberships, or sales promotions, these irresistible elements can overcome a lead’s typical friction, doubt, or concern.
The elements to creating a feeling of exclusivity and special value in your offer include:
- Limited-time offers. This creates scarcity to your offer.
- Limited quantities. What you are offering is unique and has exclusive value, and procrastination may mean missing out.
- “X number of people have seized this offer.” Human nature is to follow what others do. State how many people have downloaded your offer or benefited from your information to encourage others to do the same.
- Content that matches current news trends. Content tailored to whatever is trending in the news (or to whatever is in high demand at the moment) is more relevant and relatable to potential customers, who are likely engaged with those trends in other ways as well.
- A title that hooks interest. People actually do judge a book by its cover and will not want to see more if you bore them.
- Several Call to Actions, offered at different stages. Pursue buyers at different levels of readiness with different CTAs. People often do their own research before even engaging with a sales rep, and every prospect is at a different stage of exploration. Develop different offers at different stages in the buying cycle, and include a primary and secondary CTA to these offers on various pages throughout your site.
- Avoid professional jargon. Terms and phrases that have been over-used and abused are meaningless and won’t hook potential buyers. They include: groundbreaking, cutting-edge, scalable, flexible, and robust, just to name a few.
To further ensure enticing more leads, your offer should provide something that is considered of high-value. Not all offers are created equal. Some “formats” perform better than others at converting leads. Here are a few of the top-ranked offers, in order of performance, when it comes to generating leads:
- E-books or guides
- Templates or presentations
- Research and reports (e.g., State of Inbound Marketing)
- Whitepapers
- Kits (multiple offers packaged together)
- Live webinars
- On-demand videos
- Blogs (including offers in the nav or sidebar)
- Blog posts (if there is a CTA in the post)
There are many more ways you can capture successful leads and fine-tune your marketing plans in a way that turns leads into customers. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads, which offers dozens of other techniques marketers should follow to increase leads and revenue.
Download guide
Related articles:
by Fronetics | Jul 28, 2015 | Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
Only 1 in 10 professional marketers describe their lead nurturing efforts as “highly efficient and effective.” For most businesses, that’s simply not good enough. We’ve compiled the 30 greatest lead nurturing lessons into a guide. In it, you’ll learn the secrets of how top companies generate leads and nurture them into customers.
This guide will teach you:
- What makes killer performing landing pages
- The best lead-generating content
- How to create offers that are impossible to ignore
- Secret website optimization tips with A/B testing
- …and more!
This is your guide to start generating more high-quality sales leads today. Learn the tricks and tips you can use to nurture leads. Download it now.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. Our firm works with companies to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
Whether it is a wholesale food distributor seeking guidance on how to define and execute corporate strategy; a telematics firm needing high quality content on a consistent basis; a real estate firm looking for a marketing partner; or a supply chain firm in need of interim management, our clients rely on Fronetics to help them navigate through critical junctures, meet their toughest challenges, and take advantage of opportunities. We deliver high-impact results.
We advise and work with companies on their most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, talent acquisition, performance management, and M&A support.
We have deep expertise and a proven track record in a broad range of industries including: supply chain, real estate, software, and logistics.
by Fronetics | Jul 7, 2015 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
With LinkedIn claiming the top spot for social networking professionals, there’s a good chance you already access the social network regularly. But what you might be missing on LinkedIn could be the key to unlocking more business opportunities.
Allow me to explain. There’s been a lot of talk about the impact social media is having on business sales. And for good reason – last year, the total amount of sales that could be tracked to social networks hit $3.30 billion, up 26% from 2013’s $2.62 billion. A growing number of companies are realizing there’s more opportunity than ever to use social platforms as lead generation and prospecting tools. When it comes to LinkedIn, reports suggest that users who command a deeper understanding of the social network’s capabilities reap far greater benefits than those that still view LinkedIn primarily as a job search tool.
One of LinkedIn’s best features for driving new business leads and opportunities is LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn describes their Group feature as a “place for professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to share content, find answers, post and view jobs, make business contacts, and establish themselves as industry experts.” Essentially, it’s an online community where you can connect with industry peers and like-minded professionals (read: prospects and leads).
Never tried Groups before? Here’s a quick guide to get you up and running so you can start prospecting and finding leads today. As a prerequisite, you should already have an active LinkedIn account. If you don’t, start here.
Find Groups
To start, let’s take Groups out for a spin. From the homepage, navigate to the search bar at the top and click on the tab directly to the left on it. Drag down to “Groups”, then, type in a subject you’re interested in (e.g., marketing, sales, baking, etc.). You might notice that when you do a search, LinkedIn also provides suggestions not only on “Groups” but in several other categories such as “Connections,” “Companies,” “Features” and “Skills.” Once you’ve used your keyword to narrow your search, find a group that best matches what you’re looking for.
Cast a Wide Net
Once you’ve selected your group, join it. You may have to request membership approval if it is a private group. While there’s no limit to the amount of groups you can join, the sweet spot for lead generation is to join groups that are outside your industry or function that might help you grow your business. If you’re a small (and growing) 3PL, for example, don’t just industry groups, expand your network by joining groups for entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Commit to Building Your Network
Set aside some time each week to connect with five current or former business colleagues. LinkedIn makes it easy by providing suggestions based on your current connections and places of employment. More connections equal more opportunities for discussion about your company’s products and services.
Answer like a Pro
Use the Answers section within your groups as a place to showcase your expertise. Set a goal to answer at least two questions per week. After actively participating in a group for at least two weeks, start your own discussion within the group. Engaging industry peers in a rich dialogue is a great way to build trust and confidence among members of your new group. Turning your question and answering activity into leads is a long-term strategy, but one that can prove successful as people will begin to look at you as an expert and leader in your industry.
Practice Consistency
The key to generating leads via LinkedIn is consistency. Steady participation in your groups is the secret is to building relationships that will pay off in the end. Take some time to determine what’s working in your strategy and refocus your efforts as necessary, but always, always be consistent in your participation. In the end, it’s your activity that is going to set you apart from the competition and establish your expertise.
In a recent survey of sales professionals, most reported they were unfamiliar with LinkedIn’s full capabilities, but in the same survey, a little more than a third of respondents reported generating new business opportunities and revenue gains from their use of LinkedIn. It’s clear that the social network holds opportunity for those that recognize – and leverage – the network’s full capabilities.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. Our firm works with companies to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
Whether it is a wholesale food distributor seeking guidance on how to define and execute corporate strategy; a telematics firm needing high quality content on a consistent basis; a real estate firm looking for a marketing partner; or a supply chain firm in need of interim management, our clients rely on Fronetics to help them navigate through critical junctures, meet their toughest challenges, and take advantage of opportunities. We deliver high-impact results.
We advise and work with companies on their most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, talent acquisition, performance management, and M&A support.
We have deep expertise and a proven track record in a broad range of industries including: supply chain, real estate, software, and logistics.
by Fronetics | Jun 8, 2015 | Blog, Manufacturing & Distribution, Strategy, Supply Chain
For many years robots seemed like the brainchild of science fiction writers and directors, meeting the needs of humans as we saw in the Jetsons, or challenging them as we saw in Battlestar Galatica. Occasionally we hear stories on the news of robots being built in basement labs at prestigious universities such as MIT or Stanford. Recently there was a report on NPR about how one of UCal Berkeley’s robots couldn’t easily figure out how to fold laundry, so, one could ask: what are we worried about? If robots can’t fold laundry in under ten minutes, could they take over manufacturing?
There has been a downward trend in manufacturing jobs since 1980 in the U.S. with similar spirals in Japan, Germany, and China. Is there a correlation between the decrease in manufacturing employment and the rise of the robot? According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2014 most industrial robots were operating in the same countries/regions: Japan (306,700 robots), North America (237,400), China (182,300), South Korea (175,600), and Germany (175,200).
In the same WSJ article, a new generation of robots is profiled. These robots are “smarter, more mobile, more collaborative, and more adaptable.” They are also less bulky and less dangerous for humans to work next to. One might say that the newest generation of robots is acquiring many of the positive qualities of human workers, and that that, combined with many skills humans don’t and can’t possess, makes them the ultimate worker. If robots supersede the work humans can physically do, in a faster, safer, more efficient way, then what will come of the human worker?
Many believe that robots will allow for manufacturers to return to the U.S. from their low-paying, cost-saving plants overseas. They also believe that robots won’t take away from jobs, but rather create them. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), robots actually create millions of jobs. The IFR’s reports oppose the idea that manufacturing jobs are waning. In 2011 article Positive Impact of Industrial Robots on Employment, the author, Metra Martech, stated, “The German and Japanese (automotive) manufacturers who have invested heavily in automation and robots have maintained a lead in the quality market. Germany has increased the number of people employed in the automotive sector.”
The IFR also states that there are many other benefits to robots in manufacturing:
- robots carry out work in areas that would be unsafe for humans.
- robots carry out work that would not be economically viable in a high wage economy.
- robots carry out work that would be impossible for humans.
“The Second Economy”, one in which computers have business interactions only with other computers, is upon us. According the to economist, Brian Arthur, who coined the term, things might not look so bright for the future of the American worker. He states, “If the Second Economy does achieve that rate of growth, it will be replacing the work of approximately 100 million workers. To put that number in perspective, the current total employed civilian labor force today is 146 million. A sizeable fraction of those replaced jobs will be made up by new ones in the Second Economy. But not all of them. Left behind may be as many as 40 million citizens of no economic value in the U.S alone. The dislocations will be profound.”
Others, some who are at the forefront of technology, are also very concerned about the rise of robots. Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, is one of the worried. He was recently quoted saying, “Computers are going to take over from humans, no question… Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently.T”
The stuff of sci-fi is becoming a reality. As we humans make the robots that will replace us, only time will tell if that will benefit our race or harm it.
If you feel your marketing campaign falls short in generating quality leads, you are not alone. Typically one in 10 marketing professionals questions the effectiveness of their lead generation methods. While you may have some of the components of a strong campaign in place, it is possible that you are leaving out a very important ingredient for success: a call to action (CTA).