Marcu Taylor's Blog, page 13

B2B Inbound Marketing: 7 Examples of How to do it Well

Finding the right mix of B2B inbound marketing strategies can be challenging and most articles covering this topic are only going to tell you the same obvious things. Generate leads from organic search, make the most of social media and don’t forget about paid advertising – that kind of rubbish.

Yeah, thanks for that.

In this article, we’re not going to state the obvious or repeat the same old stuff you’ve read 100 times before. Instead, we’ve got seven examples of killer B2B inbound marketing strategies that have gotten proven results with us here at Venture Harbour and other B2B brands.

#1: Automated webinars

According to InsideSales’ Optimal Lead Generation Methods report, 73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the most effective way to generate high-quality leads – and we fully agree with that sentiment here at Venture Harbour.

We want to take this one step further and say that automated webinar marketing is the most effective way to generate high-quality B2B leads.

Instead of (or as well as) hosting regular live webinars you can record them and schedule them to play at repeated intervals, meaning you’ve always got something ready for new leads to sign up for and watch.

The best part is, once you set this up, it generates a regular stream of leads without you having to do anything and you can even automate your email responses to get people watching again and remind those who forget to watch the first time around.

You’ll find this drastically increases your viewership rates and the quality of your leads without you doing any extra work at all. You can find out more about setting up your own automated strategy by reading our in-depth guide.

#2: Speaking at small industry events

Our main man Marcus Taylor spent a lot of effort speaking at events between 2012 and 2015 – anything from small meetups in London to a TED conference in Melbourne – and this is what he found out:

 

“Speaking at big marketing conferences is mostly ineffective.”

 

While the bigger marketing events were great for building credibility, they just weren’t doing much for us when it came to generating leads.

 

First of all, there are too many competitors pitching for the prospect’s attention. It’s like trying to promote your book in a book store: Unless you have something truly exceptional to say, you’re soon forgotten.

The bigger problem, though, is that most of the audience assumes that you’ll be busy after your talk – so relatively few people come up to speak to you.

Venture Harbour CEO, Marcus Taylor

 

Instead, speaking at the smaller industry-specific events yield much better results. In a smaller event with 50-100 people, you can have deeper conversations with people and you can make your presentation more specific to their industry, rather than giving the generic marketing spiel.

Crucially, you’re also seen as more approachable and people are going to be keen to find out more from you.

#3: Low-frequency content marketing

In 2016, Hubspot’s Valerie Levin addressed one of the biggest problems in content marketing: brands are producing more content but engagement is down. Content marketing built a name for itself as the Mecca of all inbound marketing strategies and everyone wants some of the action, but too many brands focus on producing a certain quantity of content.

There isn’t enough focus on quality.

The problem is low-quality content doesn’t get results and producing more duff content only gets more of the same: no results. If we apply the 80/20 principle to content marketing, this means 80% of your leads should come from 20% of your content – so why not identify what that 20% is and only produce that?

This is the principle behind low-frequency content marketing, which we employ here at Venture Harbour. Essentially, we produce less content and put more time into it. So we’re only producing high-quality content and constantly improving it to get better results.

#4: Data journalism and data storytelling

Spotify Insights: Spotify turns its user data into rich stories and experiences

One of the biggest challenges in B2B marketing is convincing people that what you say has genuine value. Every company says their products/services are special but there’s a shortage of convincing arguments when businesses are expected to prove it.

Sales speech and buzzwords aren’t going to save you here; people want to see cold, hard facts and figures backing up your claims.

People trust numbers, not opinions and this is where the best B2B brands use data journalism and data storytelling to craft compelling arguments that are strengthened by those vital figures.

The best part is, you can create 100% unique and valuable content in minutes by sourcing the right data. Every modern brand is collecting data and there are tonnes of third-party sources from government agencies, search engines and all kinds of public platforms where you can turn data into compelling stories.

#5: Connect your audience with their audience

Something marketers often forget is that their target audiences have a target audience of their own. We’re all trying to find the best way to identify leads, capture them and turn them into paying customers – and anything you can do to help your target audience to do this is going to attract attention.

This lends itself very well to data journalism, too. All you have to do is reach out to the people your target audiences are interested in or collect data from existing studies.

This is precisely what Jason Miller has done with this post for LinkedIn’s marketing solutions blog. He’s telling B2B businesses minds (his target audience) what B2B buyers (their target audience) want from their content marketing efforts.

All of the insights in his article are based on findings from this year’s Demand Gen Report on content preferences and he’s turned this into a piece of his own content that really connects with the needs of his target audience.

#6: Spice up the boring stuff

Let’s be honest here, B2B topics can be, well… pretty dull. The idea that business folk are happier to put up with boring content than consumers is a dangerous misconception. The people making buying decisions at your target companies are people, too, with all the same emotions and sometimes it pays to spice up the boring stuff.

This is what SEO and content marketing solutions provider Conductor aims to do with its cheeky take on the SEO vs content marketing debate. The company aims to make it easier for content marketers and SEOs to get their jobs done and highlighting some of the classic areas of conflict between the two in an interesting way beats any 500-word blog post on why SEO and content are the perfect couple.

#7: Ditch the uninspiring web forms

Your B2B inbound marketing strategies are only ever going to be as good as your ability to turn interest into solid leads. When it comes to web traffic, this means getting them to fill out one of your forms and hand over the data you need – at the very least, their name and email address.

The problem is most web forms underperform and this is going to undermine all of your inbound marketing efforts.

This is why we use Leadformly to replace traditional form designs with highly-optimised multi-step forms that encourage more people to complete our web forms. We’ve seen conversion rates increase by as much as 300% and we also use Leadformly with ActiveCampaign and other tools to create some of our most effective automated lead gen strategies – including the webinar strategy mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Don’t put up with forms that kill your conversion rates. Make the most of every lead with forms that are optimised to seal the deal and generate the highest ROI on your B2B inbound marketing efforts.

Now, it’s your turn

All of the strategies we’ve explained in this article are being used by ourselves at Venture Harbour and major B2B brands with great effect. So, now it’s your turn to take your B2B inbound marketing results to the next level by implementing them in your own strategy.

The post B2B Inbound Marketing: 7 Examples of How to do it Well appeared first on Venture Harbour.

30+ Sales Automation Tools to Skyrocket Your Sales

If you’re not automating your sales process in 2018, you’re getting left behind. With today’s range of tools, businesses of all sizes are turning automation into bigger results. Which means it’s not only the leading brands in your industry you need to try and catch up but also the smaller enterprises who now have the tools to leapfrog you – unless you make the jump first.

In this article, we’ve got more than 30 automation tools that you can use to generate more leads and turn more of them into paying customers. We’ve categorised the automation tools in this article into the following categories:

Automation tools for identifying new prospects
Sales & PPC automation
Convert more leads with these automation tools
Sales & lead nurturing automation
Automating technical SEO and conversion optimisation
Streamline your design and development processes

You can jump right ahead to each of those categories by clicking on them in the list above. Otherwise, let’s get started by looking at automation tool that’ll help you identify new prospects to target.

Automation tools for identifying new prospects
#1: Datanyze

First up, we’ve got Datanyze and this tool helps you pinpoint businesses that need your technology products/services by telling you which kind of technologies they’re already using. Developing a new WordPress plugin? Then Datanyze will help you build a list of companies using the CMS rather than wasting time with companies using Drupal or Wix.

#2: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo also helps you find and refine your list of new prospects by searching for companies based on industry, location, company size, company revenue, job title, job function and all kinds of other data points.

#3: Socedo

If you’re after a B2B lead generation hack for Twitter, Socedo provides a platform to find qualified prospects on the social network and automate your first interaction with them.

#4: LeadFuze

LeadFuze powers your LinkedIn prospecting efforts by searching for leads in specific roles and industries, plus a range of data points such as location, software choices, Google Ads spend and plenty more. With LeadFuze, you don’t need to do all of this manually for each individual contact – you can do it all at scale.

Social & PPC automation
#5: Hootsuite

Managing one social media account is time-consuming enough, let alone having to manage multiple. Hootsuite allows you to manage all of them from one place, get insights for your entire social marketing strategy and – most importantly – schedule and automate your posts.

#6: CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a pretty good alternative to Hootsuite (although its automation and analytics features aren’t so good) but it really shines as a social media calendar for teams. You get a bird’s-eye view of who’s publishing what on which day and you can use it to automatically publish your WordPress posts to each social account.

#7: Mentionlytics

Mentionalytics shows you what people are saying about your brand across social media, online news, blogs and just about any website. If you’re being mentioned, this platform will tell you about it and this is a vital tool for gauging the impact of your brand awareness campaigns – not to mention a powerful lead generation tool.

#8: Google Ads scripts

Google Ads scripts (previously AdWords scripts) allows you to automate all kinds of advertising actions, such as bid adjustments based on specific parameters. For example, you can create a script that automatically pauses your ads if they drop below a certain return on ad spend (ROAS) or other KPI for a week – so you’re not wasting money on ads that aren’t performing.

#9: AdScale

If scripts aren’t for you but you still want to automate your PPC strategy (and you do, btw) then you might want to take a look at AdScale. This platform makes Google Ads automation easy, even if it comes at the expense of being less flexible.

Convert more leads with these automation tools

Once you’ve identified your new prospects and got them on your website, you need to convert them into valuable leads. In most cases, this means getting your hands on their email address or engaging them with some kind of meaningful interaction.

#10: Optinmonster

Popups are always a controversial topic in marketing. Implement them effectively and they can get results but you always have to deal with the fact you’re interrupting the user experience. Optinmonster’s exit-intent popups are a great compromise as they only trigger when it appears a user is about to leave your site.

#11: Botsify

Botsify recently made it onto our list of the best chatbot builders in 2018 and the fact it’s one of the most flexible builders on the market right now is precisely why it’s getting our recommendation in this article as well.

#12: Leadformly

Leadformly is an advanced form design and analytics platform that maximises your email signups. We’ve used this tool to increase conversion rates for our clients by up to 300% and the platform’s multi-step uses conditional logic to automatically segment your leads as they complete your forms.

So, aside from increasing your conversion rates, Leadformly also increases the quality of your leads without your sales team needing to do any extra work.

#13: Everwebinar

Everwebinar allows you to automate your webinar marketing strategy to get the most out of every event you host. Instead of holding live events, you create your webinars and schedule them to play at fixed times (eg: every 30 mins) so users are always a matter of minutes away from being able to watch your webinar.

We combine Everwebinar with Leadformly to create a fully automated webinar strategy that generates a constant stream of leads for us. You can find out how we do this in more detail by reading our ultimate guide to automated evergreen webinars.

#14: WordPress Content Personalisation Plugin

The key to increasing the quality of your leads is to create more engaging, personalised experiences. This is precisely what we do with conditional logic using Leadformly and we’ve decided to take this even further with our WordPress content personalisation plugin.

Let’s say you have an article on the best hosting providers that’s performing well in search. The plugin allows you to create sections for different audiences (eg: business size, business type, budget, etc.) and ask readers to choose which applies to them so they only see the content you created with their specific needs in mind.

#15: Optimizely Web Personalisation

Optimizely takes content personalisation to another level entirely, allowing you to show different messages to users based on the ad they’ve clicked, the channels they’ve come from and how many times they’ve visited your site before.

Sales & lead nurturing automation

With your lead generation strategy automated and maximising results, it’s time to start thinking about how to nurture these leads and make sure more of them turn into paying customers.

#16: ActiveCampaign

The first thing you’re going to need for this is a customer relationship management (CMS) platform that packs some might automation features. It’s hard to find a more complete package than ActiveCampaign without paying heavy monthly fees and automation is one area where the platform really shines – especially on the email marketing side of things.

#17: GrowLabs

GrowLabs calls itself an all-in-one marketing and sales automation platform but it doesn’t quite do enough to fit into this category for us. However, it does do two things particularly well: lead generation and automation. It all starts with lead prospecting (like the first batch of tools we looked at) and then moves into email automation, powered by machine learning.

#18: Autopilot

If you’ve already got a CRM but it doesn’t offer enough in terms of automation, then a tool like Autopilot is the kind of platform you want to integrate. Its visual automation builder makes it incredibly easy to create your own workflows and the list of platforms it integrates with is only growing – so take a look.

#19: Bitly

Bitly assigns unique links to users so you can identify and track them across devices. This helps you create more relevant experiences as people move along the buying journey, regardless of which devices they switch between.

#20: Assistant.to

With Assitnant.io your sales reps can schedule meetings by selecting several open slots on their calendar. An email is automatically composed which shows the prospect the available slots and lets them select one and schedule if the rep is still available.

#21: TenFold

TenFold captures incoming and outgoing calls to and from your sales team and ensures the rep has all the relevant information on a prospect right in front of them during the call.

#22: Pandadoc

One of the most time-consuming tasks for B2B businesses is creating proposals and quotes for prospective clients. The problem is, the more leads you deal with, the more of these quotes and proposals you have to create, which results in a kind of negative process.

To prevent your team from getting bogged down with quotes and proposals, you want to automate as much of this process as possible. Pandadoc is a great tool for this and we use it ourselves with Leadformly to automate the majority of our quotes and proposals.

You can find out more about how we do this by reading our guide to automating quotes and proposals.

#23: Helpscout

Helpscout is all about providing the best possible customers service for the people who matter most to your business. It gives you an integrated system for email and live chat support, allowing you to respond quickly to every customer query and keep track of progress.

#24: Ambition

Ambition is a sales performance management system designed to help you build more productive sales teams and motivate them to achieve better results. It’s a data-orientated platform where you can set goals, create scorecards, run sales contests and inspire your sales reps to reach new levels.

Automating technical SEO and conversion optimisation

One first marketing tasks to benefit from automation was technical SEO and this is still one of the best use cases for the technology, allowing your team to focus on the more creative side of search optimisation while knowing the more technical stuff is still being taken care of.

#25: AHrefs for checking backlinks

We know that backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors in Google (pretty much the most important). It’s not only good links Google is looking out for though and one of the most damaging things to your search ranking is low-quality links. Sadly, these are often the most common links you’re going to get and you need to keep on top of the sites pointing towards your domain.

This is where automated link audits are essential and this feature alone makes Ahrefs an invaluable tool.

#26: SEMrush for site audits

While Ahrefs’s automated backlink checker is the best in the businesses (as far as we’re concerned), SEMrush’s on-site auditing tools are incredible. With these two platforms you almost don’t need to run any manual audits and you know you’re going to get an alert when any technical issues crop up.

#27: Hotjar

Hotjar reveals user behaviour on your website with heatmaps, conversion funnel reports and you can even record user sessions to see what they’re up to. These insights help you improve the user experience and remove conversion barriers that stop visitors moving along your sales funnels.

Streamline your design and development processes
#28: InVision

InVision is a project management tool for design teams that takes the pain out of collaboration with a bunch of productivity features. One of our favourites is the interactive build mode, which means your designers can turn their static mockups into interactive demos, allowing others to click on elements and see what actions take place.

#29: Retrace by Stackify

Retrace improves the quality of your developers’ code by finding bugs and identifying opportunities to improve performance while they write their code. This also helps you implement coding style guides and internal best practices for better consistency.

#30: Ghost Inspector

Ghost Inspector automates post-development tests and it’s especially good for tracking down regression bugs caused by updates or technical issues. We currently run about 150 automated tests per day using this tool, which we simply wouldn’t be able to do manually.

Are you completely new to sales and marketing automation?
#31: Zapier

If you’re new to automation, this is the first tool you want to get your hands on. While it’s very basic in terms of what you can do, Zapier will give you the best introduction to automation you could hope for and help you get into the problem-solving mindset that’s so important for automating tasks.

Automating success starts with the right tools

Automation tools are starting to mature at an exciting time for marketers and new businesses. With the tools now available, even the smallest of ventures can do sales and marketing like a major brand, as long as you know which tools to choose for your needs.

The post 30+ Sales Automation Tools to Skyrocket Your Sales appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Best Free (or Cheap) All-in-One Marketing & Sales CRM Platforms

If you’re on the hunt for an all-in-one customer relationship management (CRM) platform but you’re not yet ready to pay up for enterprise software, then you’ll want to keep reading.

Maybe you’re not sure exactly what you need from a CRM or you simply don’t have the budget to go all-in at this stage.

Whatever your reasons, we’ve got you covered in this article. Today, we’re looking at the best free (or cheap) all-in-one marketing and sales CRM platforms available right now.

#1: ActiveCampaign

We’ve written about ActiveCampaign on this blog a few times and you can find out why this is still our CRM of choice here at Venture Harbour by reading our in-depth review, which we wrote after having used it for four years.

To sum up, ActiveCampaign offers one of the most comprehensive sets of email marketing, marketing automation and sales CRM features at pretty unbeatable prices.

You can get started for as little as $9 per month and one of the key things about ActiveCampaign is that prices increase steadily as your business and contact list grows, unlike many providers who hike up their fees once you start dealing with a high volume of contacts.

Five years later and ActiveCampaign still handles the vast majority of our email marketing, marketing automation and sale CRM tasks – because we simply don’t need much else.

#2: Hubspot

As far as CRM platforms go, it’s hard to beat Hubspot and the best part is you don’t have to pay a thing to use it either. So, if you’re looking for a first CRM to get a feel for things and you’re not too worried about things like automation features, then you might want to give Hubspot a try.

The problem with Hubspot is price creep – precisely the problem alluded to in the previous section. As soon as you add any automation features or get serious about lead nurturing, you can quickly end up paying thousands per month.

#3: SuiteCRM

SuiteCRM is an open source CRM platform that offers a serious collection of powerful, highly-customisable features and processes. This gives you all kinds of freedom to create your own templates, pipeline models and automated actions – and you can get started for free.

You do have to pay for certain customisation options but it’s impressive how much you can do with SuiteCRM before paying a thing. The downside to all of this customisability is that SuiteCRM can be tricky to work with at first. On the plus side, the company takes good care of its customers and you’re also joining an open source community where you can exchange ideas and get advice from businesses in the same position as you.

#4: AgileCRM

Agile CRM is free for up to 10 users and 1,000 contacts, which gives you plenty of room to test drive the platform and see how it suits your business. This version is quite limited in terms of features, though – especially on the automation side of things – so you’ll need to see how the core features work for you and then do your research on the automation options available with the paid versions.

Regardless, Agile CRM works out as a cost-effective option, even if you end up using the enterprise version of its platform. The key question is going to be whether you get the features you need and there are a few gripes – like the fact you can’t remove branding from your emails, no matter which version you’re paying for.

#5: Insightly

Insightly is a favourite choice among small businesses, combining powerful features and reporting with very reasonable prices. You can try it for free although paid versions start from $29/month, making it more expensive to get started with than the other options we’ve looked at so far. That said, Insightly’s Professional and Enterprise versions are highly competitive at $49/m and $99/m respectively.

You get access to most of Insightly’s features on all of its plans, so you can get a good idea of what it can do for your businesses before deciding which version to go for. Automation is the one area where features are pretty much reserved for the Enterprise version and we consider these to be businesses essentials in the modern age.

#6: MailChimp

MailChimp gives you very basic CRM functionality for free with a heavy emphasis on email marketing. Paid versions start at $10/m but you’ll need to pay $199 to unlock the platform’s automation and segmentation features. This isn’t unusual in the CRM businesses but the bigger problem is that MailChimp never really competes with the likes of ActiveCampaign and Hubspot when it comes to serious automation and lead nurturing.

If you’re on the tightest of budgets or only need very modest CRM features, then the free or $10/m versions of MailChimp will be worth looking at.

As soon as you start considering the Pro version of MailChimp, though, we suggest you look elsewhere for a more comprehensive email marketing, automation and CRM package.

#7: Zoho

Zoho offers a free version of its CRM platform and paid versions start at $12/month. You get a solid set of email marketing, user tracking, customer feedback and social media features but you don’t get much in the way of automation without upgrading to Professional ($20/mo) or Enterprise ($35/mo).

Even then, you’re limited by the number of automations and workflows you can create. So, if you need more than that, you’ll have to look at Zoho CRM Plus and this is going to cost you more like $50/month per user.

#8: Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM aims to make customer relations simpler for small businesses and this starts with a free version for up to two users and 250 contacts. There’s only one paid version of Capsule and this will cost you $18/month per user for up to 50,000 contacts.

Features are broken up into four categories: Contact management; tasks & calendar; Sales pipeline; tracking users. There’s no throttling of features for free users, which is great to see and there’s also a decent offering of customisation options and a mobile app to help you manage things on the go.

It’s a pretty good offering at this price point but there isn’t a lot of room for expansion. Essentially, you’re looking at a relatively simple CRM platform with an equally simple pricing structure. So, if your demands are modest, Capsule CRM could be all you need but it’s not a great option if growth is one of your core businesses goals.

#9: OnePageCRM

OnePageCRM takes a different approach to customer management by turning “the complexity of CRM into a to-do list” so your team can simply work their way down and tick off each success. There’s no free version but OnePage also has a simple pricing structure that means you’ll pay $12/month per user and that’s all it takes.

For that, you get unlimited contacts but you won’t find any of the more advanced marketing and automation features available on some of the other options we’ve looked at. The to-do list design works well for a basic CRM platform and you can integrate with other platforms but these integrations are pretty limited.

Once again, only really an option if your needs are very basic and you don’t expect this to change.

#10: Apptivo

Apptivo slots somewhere in between the very basic CRM platforms and the more serious offerings such as ActiveCampaign and Hubspot. The free version is good for up to three users although features are heavily restricted, but paid versions start at just $8/month per user and the feature offerings are pretty reasonable at each price point.

Apptivo is essentially a collection of CRM apps that provide extensive features to a single platform that you can customise to your liking. It’s really knocking on the door of more advanced (and expensive) platforms but it’s let down by a lack of key integrations and some frustrating performance bugs.

There are a few relatively basic features missing, too, like the ability to schedule re-occurring tasks and events, which should be a standard feature for any CRM of this kind.

Verdict

The point of this article is to prove you don’t need to cough up serious amounts of money for a CRM platform. There are plenty of free or cheap options that don’t tie you down to a contract, which gives you plenty of room to try things out and discover what you need (and don’t).

The only thing I will say is that every CRM you try out requires a certain amount of time and resource investment, which you won’t get back. You also have to start again from a data perspective every time you try out a new platform. So, while you’ve got plenty of options to try out, you’ll want to try and find the right CRM platform for you sooner, rather than later, so you can start making the most of its data and contact management features.

One final piece of advice: Make sure you end up with a CRM platform that provides enough room for your business to grow. You don’t want to find out in five years time that your CRM can’t handle the number of contacts you’re now dealing with or lack certain features that could hold you back.

The post 10 Best Free (or Cheap) All-in-One Marketing & Sales CRM Platforms appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Ways to Use Twitter for B2B Lead Generation

Did you know Twitter is the most popular social marketing channel for organisations in the UK? According to CMI research, 95% of UK marketers choose Twitter as a content marketing platform for lead generation, beating LinkedIn (92%) and Facebook (74%).

If that comes as a surprise, it probably shouldn’t because Twitter has proven itself as one of the most powerful platforms for generating B2B leads and perhaps the only network (aside from LinkedIn) that you can use to capture leads organically.

In this article, we’re going to share with you 10 proven strategies for Twitter B2B lead generation with a combination of organic and paid advertising methods.

#1: Automate your lead gen posts

Your first Twitter strategy is going to be automating all of your lead generations posts, using a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite. You’re not going to automate all of your Twitter marketing efforts because you want to keep that human element alive and strong but pretty much every lead generation post you publish is going to need to go out multiple times.

These posts are also going to be more effective at certain times, depending on the kind of content, the locations you’re targeting and the audiences you’re working with. You want to determine the best times to tweet (and retweet) these posts and social automation is your best friend here.

Once you have these insights, automate your lead gen posts and let the magic happen while you focus on other things.

#2: Turn your most successful posts into ad campaigns to max performance

With your lead gen posts automating and going out at the most effective times, your next step is pinpoint which posts are generating the most leads, the highest quality of leads or meeting whichever goals you’ve set out.

These are the posts that are getting the best results and you want them to be seen by the widest, most relevant audience possible.

So turn these into Twitter engagement ad campaigns and get these posts seen by more of the same kind of people who are already engaging with them.

#3: Create newsworthy content

According to research from Journalism.org, 74% of Twitter users rely on the network as a primary source of news. This gives you a crucial indication of the user intent behind people on Twitter and the kind of content you need to be publishing to capture their attention.

On Twitter, newsworthy content rules and B2B marketers need to stop going in with the heavy sales pitches.

Instead, publish statistics, findings, news roundups and insights. Better yet, run your own research campaigns, use your in-house data and the vast array of third-party data sources to create original content, packed with unique insight. present this content as newsworthy stories, get people talking and run series to engage your leads over an extended period of time.

If you’re not familiar with data journalism, now is the time get familiar with it.

#4: The community engagement tactic

If Twitter acts as a key source of news for its reader the only bigger role it plays is providing a community where people can engage with their favourite content, exchange ideas and connect with experts, brands and other figures of interest.

Community is the key word here and this is essentially the basis of your Twitter B2B lead generation strategy.

This is precisely why you don’t want to rely entirely on automation for your Twitter marketing efforts. Being part of a community requires genuine interaction and this is where the human element I referenced earlier is so important. You’re going to need this to achieve a number of your B2B lead generation goals:

Engaging with industry leaders and tapping into their audiences
Solving user problems as they happen
Answering questions related to your industry
Showcasing how you deal with customer issues

All of these and various other human interactions provide vital lead generation opportunities and you need to become an established part of the community (or create your own) for your intentions to appear genuine.

#5: Search your keywords, answer questions

Expanding on the previous point, let’s look at one of these community strategies in more detail. One of the most powerful ways to generate leads on Twitter is to solve user problems as they happen and all you need to do is search your keywords and look for questions being asked by people who could make valuable leads.

Let’s say you offer a cloud-based accounting software platform, for example. Type in something like “what is the best accounting software?” into Twitter search and then click the Latest tab at the top of the results page to bring up the most recent results.

Next, pick out all of the questions asked by people looking for a new piece of accounting software and there you have it – hot leads fresh off the press.

You can be more nuanced with your efforts too by searching for keywords like “tax returns,” “late payments” and other common problems related to finances and accounting, which give you the opportunity to reach out with advice.

#6: Promote downloads and evergreen content with website click campaigns

Evergreen content and downloads are a staple of B2B marketing strategies and Twitter is a great place to promote these resources. You can get started with automating your organic posts to get some early progress but you’ll want to use Twitter’s website clicks or conversions campaigns to get maximum reach and drive more traffic to your landing pages.

You can expand this reach even further by creating Tailored Audiences from your existing CRM data and then expand your reach by targeting similar users, which shows your ads to new users with similar behaviour and interests as those on your audience lists.

#7: Run video ads featuring clips of your B2B webinar

Another crucial strategy for B2B brands is webinar marketing and maximising your number of attendees is always high on your list of objectives.

Read our ultimate guide to automated evergreen webinars for all the details you need to create a killer webinar strategy.

Once you’re done, put together some clips and run ads promoting your webinar to drive more signups. With an automated webinar strategy, you can keep this campaign running and keep the leads coming in on a monthly basis.

All you need to do after that is optimise your campaign for performance to hit the right balance between ad spend and lead generation.

#8: Use follower targeting to pinch leads from your competitors

One tactic I don’t see enough B2B marketers use is Twitter’s follower targeting to pinch leads form their competitors.

You’re not just going to bombard your rivals’ users with ads, though. You can be a little more sophisticated than that.

Research your competitors and pinpoint their weaknesses – especially any highly publicised complaints. Then create campaigns that position your brand as a better alternative and target people following your competitors.

For example, if your closest competitor is known for poor customer service, create campaigns that tell people your customer service is as good as your products. If next biggest rival is known to have performance issues (think iPhone battery issues), create campaigns that focus around performance or even battery performance specifically.

You don’t need to make it obvious you’re trying to steal leads from your rivals by calling out your competitors; you can create messages that simply turn their weaknesses into your strengths.

Of course, you can call out your rivals if you’re feeling brave enough – Samsung has had more than a few goes at Apple in the past, even if it’s not the sophisticated approach I’m alluding to.

#9: Target events to reach decision-makers

If industry events aren’t a major source of leads for you, you’re doing something wrong. Luckily, Twitter makes it incredibly easy to generate more leads from industry events – all you need to do is target people who are following the right events.

Which events are the right one? Well, the events the decision-makers in your target audiences are attending or aren’t attending but closely following.

Just a few of the business events taking place in London in Nov 2018; Eventbrite.co.uk

People attend these events because they’re after something: products, connections, business opportunities, expert insights and a range of other things. For example, you know that people interested in the next entrepreneur and startup event in London probably have a vested interest in topics like alternative finance, growth hacking and new software products that help them achieve more with limited resources.

That’s a very broad niche and audience type as well but you can get much more specific. No matter what kind of audience you want to target, there will be numerous events every month that can use to get your content seen by the right people.

#10: Influencer nurturing

This is another one many B2B marketers ignore (in fact, all markers) and the only reason seems to be it takes a while to pull off. However, the rewards are more than worth the effort it takes and your rivals will be kicking themselves when you beat them to the mark.

It all comes down to engaging with influencers over time and then tapping into their massive audiences.

This starts with choosing the right influencers of course – those who have large followings of the people you want to turn into customers. Identifying these is stage one and creating a list of targets in order of priority is always a good idea.

Now, take that list and flip it upside down. Okay, not literally – just start from the bottom up because these influencers will probably be easier to engage with initially and you can work your way up the list as your own following and authority grow.

The process is relatively simple and the key once again is that all-important human touch. Forget the sales pitches and genuinely engage with the influential people you want to connect with. Follow them, read their content, ask questions, share their stuff, add something valuable to the comments sections.

Once you’ve broken the ice, start recommending content to them, reach out and ask them to feature in your own content as an expert and continue building those relationships. It won’t happen overnight but it also won’t take as long as you might think to be connected with key influencers, their influencer peers and a significantly larger audience.

Now, it’s your turn

Hopefully, this article has at least given you a few ideas of how to improve your Twitter B2B lead generation efforts and I’m always interested to hear new suggestions – so be sure to add any recommended strategies in the comment section if you have something to add.

The post 10 Ways to Use Twitter for B2B Lead Generation appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Ways to Improve Your Salesforce/Marketo/Hubspot Web Forms

Marketing automation and CRM platforms are great for lead nurturing, but first you’ve got to be able to generate those leads to begin with. This is where your web forms come in and optimising your forms for lead generation will help you unlock the full potential of your customer relationship management (CRM) software.

In this article, we’re looking at five ways you can improve your forms for three of the most popular CRM tools: Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot. That said, regardless of which platform you’re using, these techniques will help you improve results by generating a higher quality of lead and setting up your CRM tool with more to work with.

#1: Integrate a form builder with advanced analytics

While Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot all come with form builders of some description, neither of them really prioritises form design or analytics. So the first thing you’ll want to do is get yourself a dedicated form builder that integrates with your CRM – one with advanced form analytics features so you can optimise your forms and make a real difference to conversion rates and the quality of leads you’re generating.

Take a look at our blog post on the best form builders for 2018 to see which builder is most suitable for your needs.

Also, take a look at the form templates each builder has to offer and assess how well they’re optimised for conversions. While you’re going to optimise for performance over time, the whole point of a form builder is to help you build high-converting forms quickly.

You want to get your forms off to the best possible start and minimise your optimisation workload by choosing a builder with quality templates and the analytics features you need to fine-tune performance to suit your users.

#2: Optimise troublesome fields to increase conversion rates

The reason you need a form builder with advanced analytics reporting is so you can pinpoint the specific fields that are holding back performance and optimise them to improve results.

As you’ll see in our ultimate guide to web form optimisation, a quality form analytics will help you identify where users are experiencing problems with your forms and what’s stopping them from successfully completing the submission. While you’ll get basic form reporting for metrics like conversion rates in your CRM or Google Analytics, a dedicated form analytics tool will give you detailed insights and help you spot specific user problems, such as:

Low start rates: Very few users are even starting to fill out your form.
Low completion rates: A low percentage of users who start filling out your forms successfully complete them.
Field abandonment: If a lot of users are quitting the session after hitting a specific field, you know this is causing problems.
Time in fields: Users spending a lot of time in fields that should be quick to fill out.
Corrections: Fields where users are regularly having to correct their entries.
Multiple corrections: When users need to correct the same field more than once.
Unsuccessful submissions: When a user hits the send button but your validation blocks the submission.
Missing data: When a user hits the send button but they haven’t entered a piece of required data and the submission is blocked.
Validation drop-offs: Where users quit the session instead of correcting entries flagged by validation.
Format issues: Where users enter the correct format but your validation doesn’t accept the format – eg: dates and phone numbers.
Creating account details: Where users have problems creating usernames and/or passwords that are available and pass your validation requirements.
Problems entering card details: One of the most common causes of cart abandonment.

From here, you can decide whether you need to remove certain fields, optimise your field labels or reduce the potential for user errors. For example, a high number of corrections in a specific field suggests you might want to reduce the need for users to type, perhaps by using selectable images, adding auto-complete suggestions or simply using a placeholder to explain what users need to do.

Test your variations and keep track of key metrics such as completion rates and the number of corrections for the field you’re testing. You’ll soon find your forms are starting to maximise their potential – you just need the right tools.

#3: Deal with spam the smart way

Form spam is one of the most frustrating issues for lead gen marketers, clogging up data feeds and CRMs with bogus entries. Of course, you want to put a stop to form spam but, as Hubspot itself says, don’t use CAPTCHAs on your forms to prevent bot spam.

CAPTCHAs add crazy amounts of friction and punish users for your spam problems.

However, Hubspot recommends trying the reCAPTCHA alternative, which asks users to check a box that says “I’m not a robot” – a slight improvement, but still causing unnecessary problems for people filling out your forms.

There’s a better alternative known as the honeypot method, which adds an empty field to your form and essentially hides it from users and screenreaders, using display: none; in your CSS. This means bots will fill out this field and humans won’t so you can set a condition in your validation that only submits the data if your honeypot field is left blank.

Combine this method with suitable in-line form validation and you should have a robust way of dealing with spam that helps users complete your forms, not make it more difficult.

#4: Use conditional logic to segment your form leads

A major breakthrough for us here at Venture Harbour was figuring out how to segment our leads while they fill out our forms. It’s easy to get caught up in only optimising forms for conversions but what about the quality of the leads you’re generating?

Sure, 1,000 leads per day might look good but if you’re only turning 2% of those into customers, performance suddenly starts to look very average.

What if you focus on generating 500 leads that have a higher chance of making the final purchase? Your conversion rates have dropped by 50% but you’re converting a smaller number of higher quality leads and turning more of them into paying customers, increasing sales by 25% in the same process.

When it comes to lead generation, less really can be more.

This is precisely what we did with our main lead gen form by using something called conditional logic. This refines the list of questions on our forms as users fill them out, based on the information they type in along the way. Which allows us to determine why people are filling out our forms, how serious they are about doing business with us, what kind of budget they’ve got to work with and how suitable their project is for us.

We use a tool called Leadformly to build forms using conditional logic and grade our leads.

So, instead of getting everyone to fill out the same form and responding with generic follow-up messages, we can segment our leads while they fill out our form, order them in terms of priority and respond to them with targeted messages, based on the data they provide.

#5: Automate your responses with targeted messages

Segmenting your leads in-from gives you far more control over the types of lead you generate and optimise more but the real magic happens when you import this data into your CRM. We actually use ActiveCampaign as our CRM but you can essentially do the same with Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot (Leadformly integrates with all four, among others).

Set up your CRM to create segmented contact lists based on the data you import from your web form and then create follow-up strategies for each type of lead. This allows you to create highly targeted and personalised email responses and you can automate these so users always get the message most relevant to them.

We’ve written about how quickly leads can turn cold on this blog before and you really need to send out your responses within the first 24 hours or risk losing that lead for good. Another major benefit of this automated strategy is that responses are automatically sent out for you, no matter how many leads you’ve got to handle.

This means you’ve got a lead gen strategy that automatically segments your contacts and sends out highly-optimised response messages without breaking a sweat. You’re now generating higher quality leads, segmenting your email lists and targeting them with personalised messages, based on their needs – all of which happens automatically.

Unlock the full potential of your CRM

You can do amazing things with a quality piece of CRM software but you have to feed it right kind of data to begin with and this all starts with optimised web forms that generate high-quality leads. So don’t overlook this crucial first stage in your lead gen and nurturing strategy – it makes all the difference.

The post 5 Ways to Improve Your Salesforce/Marketo/Hubspot Web Forms appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Best Chatbot Builders in 2019

In the age of personalised marketing, chatbots emerge as one of the few channels that can offer a genuine one-to-one experience between brands and users. Sadly, the hype that surrounded chatbots throughout 2016 and an unfounded focus on human-like conversations detracted from the true potential of chatbots.

As far as lead generation tools, chatbots can do things no other channel is capable of.

However, most of the marketing industry was too busy drooling over the fictional idea of AI being able to fool people into thinking they were talking to a person, when they should have been asking themselves what problems can chatbots solve that other solutions can’t/can’t do as well?

If these are the kind of questions you’ve been answering over the past couple of years and you think now is the time to build your first bot, then you’ve come to the right place. Here are the best chatbot builders in 2018 in an article 100% free of any unfounded hype or hyperbole.

#1: Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a bot builder for Facebook Messenger that aims to make bot building easy. You don’t need any coding skills to use Chatfuel and the free version of the platform gives you access to almost every feature for up to 5,000 subscribers, although users will see the Chatfuel branding on your bot.

While it’s not as easy to get started with Chatfuel as it is with some of the Messenger bot builders we’ll be looking at in this article, it does make managing and reusing messages easier than most – something you’ll appreciate later on.

Paid versions start from $15/month and this gets you more subscribers, audience insights, priority support and some extra data management features.

#2: ManyChat

ManyChat is probably the closest competitor to Chatfuel and the two platforms have a lot of things in common. Once again, no coding skills are required and ManyChat is actually easier to use than Chatfuel but it lacks some of the flexibility when it comes to managing and reusing messages later on. ManyChat also limits the features on its free version a lot more than Chatfuel and you only get 500 subscribers to work with.

Once again, paid versions start at $15/month but this only gets you 1,000 subscribers and you have to pay $45/month to match the 5k limit Chatfuel gives you for free. On the plus side, ManyChat has by far the better set of data insights features and built-in tools (as long as you pay for them).

Then again, Chatfuel does a better job of conditional logic, which means you should be able to create more immersive, personalised experiences.

#3: Flow XO

Flow XO is a complete solution for building chatbots, hosting them and deploying them across platforms, which means you’re not only limited to Facebook Messenger. You can also build chatbot widgets for your website or integrate them with suitable third-party platforms and users can also share your bot with others.

The interface is incredibly easy to use and there’s a free version that you can try out to get a feel for things. You get access to all of the features on the free version but you’re limited to 500 interactions – although you can build up to five different bots.

Paid versions start at $19/month, which gets you 5,000 interactions and you can add 25,000 by paying an extra $25/month (50,000 for £50/month, 75,000 for $75/month, etc.) and add five more bots for an extra $10/month.

#4: Botsify

Botsify is a simple builder that lets you create bots for your website or Facebook Messenger easily. It also comes with some great integration features you won’t find with other builders. For example, you can integrate with Shopify, WordPress and Alexa; create conversion forms in your bot or allow human staff to take over the conversation.

You can get started with Botsify for free or sign up to a paid plan, which start from $10/month.

#5: ChatterOn

ChatterOn aims to be the fastest bot builder in the business, promising to have you building bots in under five minutes. This starts with more than 20 pre-built bots for you to choose from and customise using its simple builder. ChatterOn’s Ai and machine learning algos are pretty solid and it supports a wide range of rich content, including carousels, buttons, photos, gifs and videos.

You can also monetise your bot with contextual ads from Radbots but this isn’t particularly helpful from a lead generation perspective. You can use ChatterOn for free with access to all of the features, unlimited chatbots and your only restriction is 15,000 messages per month. After that, you simply pay $0.0010 per message once you pass the 15,000 mark – incredibly cost-effective.

#6: Sequel

Sequel also gets you started off with chatbot templates, which you can then customise using its drag-and-drop editor. Sequel really aims to get you building chatbots that engage with users on a conversational level and this incorporates two key elements: Sequel’s Natural Language Processing technology for the conversation side of things and interactive content.

There’s a template for publishers, a personal assistant, a StoryBot, GameBot and other templates built for different engagement purposes. The aim isn’t so much lead generation in this case but more about keeping your audience engaged with your brand and its content.

You can publish your Sequel bots on Messenger, Kik, Telegram and Viber.

#7: Pandorabots

Pandorabots is a great platform for building and experimenting, but it’s one that requires some decent coding skills. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility, allowing you to build basically anything you want (or have the skills to).

Definitely not for beginners but a solid interface that speeds up the development process for experienced bot engineers.

You get up to 1,000 messages per month for free and you can build up to two bots. If you’re handling more than 1,000 messages, you’ll be looking at $0.0025 per message for up to 100,000 messages and as many as 10 bots. Anything more than that and you’ll need to contact Pandorabots for pricing.

#8: TARS

TARS is another drag-and-drop bot builder that you can use to create Messenger bots or conversational interfaces for your website. It’s very straightforward to use, even with zero coding or development skills and there are various templates you can use to edit and customise. TARS puts all the focus on building bots that generate leads and add ROI to your marketing efforts – something some bot builders neglect.

The biggest problem with TARS is there’s no free version and it’s significantly more expensive than any of the other builders in this list. Prices start at $499/mo but this gets you the most advanced set of analytics and marketing tools available among the builders in this article.

#9: Wit.ai

Wit.ai helps developers build bots that understand human commands, comments and questions. This one is definitely for the advanced and experienced bot builders who are trying to create bots with the best possible understanding of their users’ intended meaning. That’s not to Wit.ai always gets things right but it strives to improve its own understanding and allows you to add your own training data to improve results.

Oh yead, and it’s completely free.

#10: Botkit

Botkit isn’t just a bot builder; it’s an entire community of more than 7,000 developers from around the world. However, it is also an impressive bot builder that includes a visual conversation builder, open source libraries, built-in stats and metrics, plus rigorously tested code from some of the best bot builder around, which you can use to power your own bots.

There is a free version and paid versions start from $5/month, depending on how many bots and active users you need.

Let the bot building begin!

With these bot builders on your side, programming skills are no barrier to building chatbots. if you can pinpoint a genuine use case where bots can solve a consumer problem or manage leads better than your existing channels, at least one of these tools is going to help you make it a reality.

The post 10 Best Chatbot Builders in 2019 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Best Chatbot Builders in 2018

In the age of personalised marketing, chatbots emerge as one of the few channels that can offer a genuine one-to-one experience between brands and users. Sadly, the hype that surrounded chatbots throughout 2016 and an unfounded focus on human-like conversations detracted from the true potential of chatbots.

As far as lead generation tools, chatbots can do things no other channel is capable of.

However, most of the marketing industry was too busy drooling over the fictional idea of AI being able to fool people into thinking they were talking to a person, when they should have been asking themselves what problems can chatbots solve that other solutions can’t/can’t do as well?

If these are the kind of questions you’ve been answering over the past couple of years and you think now is the time to build your first bot, then you’ve come to the right place. Here are the best chatbot builders in 2018 in an article 100% free of any unfounded hype or hyperbole.

#1: Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a bot builder for Facebook Messenger that aims to make bot building easy. You don’t need any coding skills to use Chatfuel and the free version of the platform gives you access to almost every feature for up to 5,000 subscribers, although users will see the Chatfuel branding on your bot.

While it’s not as easy to get started with Chatfuel as it is with some of the Messenger bot builders we’ll be looking at in this article, it does make managing and reusing messages easier than most – something you’ll appreciate later on.

Paid versions start from $15/month and this gets you more subscribers, audience insights, priority support and some extra data management features.

#2: ManyChat

ManyChat is probably the closest competitor to Chatfuel and the two platforms have a lot of things in common. Once again, no coding skills are required and ManyChat is actually easier to use than Chatfuel but it lacks some of the flexibility when it comes to managing and reusing messages later on. ManyChat also limits the features on its free version a lot more than Chatfuel and you only get 500 subscribers to work with.

Once again, paid versions start at $15/month but this only gets you 1,000 subscribers and you have to pay $45/month to match the 5k limit Chatfuel gives you for free. On the plus side, ManyChat has by far the better set of data insights features and built-in tools (as long as you pay for them).

Then again, Chatfuel does a better job of conditional logic, which means you should be able to create more immersive, personalised experiences.

#3: Flow XO

Flow XO is a complete solution for building chatbots, hosting them and deploying them across platforms, which means you’re not only limited to Facebook Messenger. You can also build chatbot widgets for your website or integrate them with suitable third-party platforms and users can also share your bot with others.

The interface is incredibly easy to use and there’s a free version that you can try out to get a feel for things. You get access to all of the features on the free version but you’re limited to 500 interactions – although you can build up to five different bots.

Paid versions start at $19/month, which gets you 5,000 interactions and you can add 25,000 by paying an extra $25/month (50,000 for £50/month, 75,000 for $75/month, etc.) and add five more bots for an extra $10/month.

#4: Botsify

Botsify is a simple builder that lets you create bots for your website or Facebook Messenger easily. It also comes with some great integration features you won’t find with other builders. For example, you can integrate with Shopify, WordPress and Alexa; create conversion forms in your bot or allow human staff to take over the conversation.

You can get started with Botsify for free or sign up to a paid plan, which start from $10/month.

#5: ChatterOn

ChatterOn aims to be the fastest bot builder in the business, promising to have you building bots in under five minutes. This starts with more than 20 pre-built bots for you to choose from and customise using its simple builder. ChatterOn’s Ai and machine learning algos are pretty solid and it supports a wide range of rich content, including carousels, buttons, photos, gifs and videos.

You can also monetise your bot with contextual ads from Radbots but this isn’t particularly helpful from a lead generation perspective. You can use ChatterOn for free with access to all of the features, unlimited chatbots and your only restriction is 15,000 messages per month. After that, you simply pay $0.0010 per message once you pass the 15,000 mark – incredibly cost-effective.

#6: Sequel

Sequel also gets you started off with chatbot templates, which you can then customise using its drag-and-drop editor. Sequel really aims to get you building chatbots that engage with users on a conversational level and this incorporates two key elements: Sequel’s Natural Language Processing technology for the conversation side of things and interactive content.

There’s a template for publishers, a personal assistant, a StoryBot, GameBot and other templates built for different engagement purposes. The aim isn’t so much lead generation in this case but more about keeping your audience engaged with your brand and its content.

You can publish your Sequel bots on Messenger, Kik, Telegram and Viber.

#7: Pandorabots

Pandorabots is a great platform for building and experimenting, but it’s one that requires some decent coding skills. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility, allowing you to build basically anything you want (or have the skills to).

Definitely not for beginners but a solid interface that speeds up the development process for experienced bot engineers.

You get up to 1,000 messages per month for free and you can build up to two bots. If you’re handling more than 1,000 messages, you’ll be looking at $0.0025 per message for up to 100,000 messages and as many as 10 bots. Anything more than that and you’ll need to contact Pandorabots for pricing.

#8: TARS

TARS is another drag-and-drop bot builder that you can use to create Messenger bots or conversational interfaces for your website. It’s very straightforward to use, even with zero coding or development skills and there are various templates you can use to edit and customise. TARS puts all the focus on building bots that generate leads and add ROI to your marketing efforts – something some bot builders neglect.

The biggest problem with TARS is there’s no free version and it’s significantly more expensive than any of the other builders in this list. Prices start at $499/mo but this gets you the most advanced set of analytics and marketing tools available among the builders in this article.

#9: Wit.ai

Wit.ai helps developers build bots that understand human commands, comments and questions. This one is definitely for the advanced and experienced bot builders who are trying to create bots with the best possible understanding of their users’ intended meaning. That’s not to Wit.ai always gets things right but it strives to improve its own understanding and allows you to add your own training data to improve results.

Oh yead, and it’s completely free.

#10: Botkit

Botkit isn’t just a bot builder; it’s an entire community of more than 7,000 developers from around the world. However, it is also an impressive bot builder that includes a visual conversation builder, open source libraries, built-in stats and metrics, plus rigorously tested code from some of the best bot builder around, which you can use to power your own bots.

There is a free version and paid versions start from $5/month, depending on how many bots and active users you need.

Let the bot building begin!

With these bot builders on your side, programming skills are no barrier to building chatbots. if you can pinpoint a genuine use case where bots can solve a consumer problem or manage leads better than your existing channels, at least one of these tools is going to help you make it a reality.

The post 10 Best Chatbot Builders in 2018 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Ways to use Facebook Ads for B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn is understandably the first social network that comes to mind when most people think about B2B marketing. There’s good reason for this; after all, LinkedIn is built from the ground up for engaging with professionals and there aren’t any social rivals that can really say this.

However, any decent B2B marketer will tell you LinkedIn is merely one of the channels you should be using to target business decision-makers and targeting is the key word here.

According to findings from CMI, 86% of B2B marketers consider Facebook to be a crucial part of their marketing efforts and 87% use Twitter as a key marketing tool.

If you’re not sure why so many B2B marketers turn to Facebook, then this is the article for you. Here, we’ve got 10 ways you can use the network to generate B2B leads and you may end up kicking yourself for not making more of the platform sooner.

#1: Brand awareness campaigns

The first thing you need to get your head around with Facebook is campaign goals. There are four types that you’re going to use on a regular basis as a B2B marketer: Brand Awareness, Traffic, Lead Generation and Conversions.

Brand awareness campaigns are where you’re going to reach a wider audience and introduce them to your brand. These are users at the very start of the buying process (they may not even know they’re in the market for your product/services) but your aim is to get them on board and nudge them along the purchasing journey.

The key thing with brand awareness campaigns is to get your messages and targeting spot on. The good news is B2B buyers are always in the market for something that’s going to save them time, money or help them transform their business in some way – so this will help you with the messaging part.

As for targeting…, well, Facebook has by far the best targeting options in the industry and this what makes it such a powerful advertising channel (more on targeting later).

#2: Lead generation campaigns

That’s right, Facebook has a dedicated campaign type designed to help you generate more leads. These are for the soft conversions that get prospects on your lead nurturing strategy: newsletter signups, event registrations, contests, coupon/deal signups, quotes, free trials, etc.

Facebook lead ads are unlike other formats on the network, allowing you to convert users on the network without even sending them through to your site. As soon as users click your CTA button, a form pops up in the Facebook app or site and the data you need from them is already filled out and ready for them to send – no typing needed, just s simple tap of the send button.

No more conversion friction; just quick, valuable leads directly from Facebook.

#3: Set up Facebook Pixel and drive visitors with Traffic campaigns

Converting leads directly in the Facebook app is great but there are some conversion goals where you definitely want traffic landing on our site. This is where Traffic campaigns take the lead and there are two places you can send this traffic: your website or your Facebook page.

Don’t bother sending traffic to your Facebook page, though – it’s a waste of money and defeats the entire purpose of using traffic campaigns. You want these users on our site, clicking through to specific landing pages so you can convert them or get them on your remarketing lists.

For remarketing and tracking user behaviour on your site, make sure you install Facebook Pixel on your site. This gives you access to all kinds of on-site behavioural data that will help you optimise your campaigns for better results and gives you everything you need to run Facebook remarketing campaigns.

#4: Create Lookalike Audiences based on your CRM data

Facebook Lookalike Audiences help you generate new leads form your existing customers/leads. Basically, you give Facebook access to your user data and the network finds other users who display similar online behaviours to your existing leads, which you can then target with dedicated ads.

You can do this from three different data sources:

Custom Audiences: Upload a list of your existing customers using Custom Audiences. Then use Lookalike Audiences to find people who resemble that audience.


Website visitors: Install a Facebook Pixel on your site. Then create Lookalike Audiences based on people who’ve visited specific pages on your website.


Page fans: Use Lookalike Audiences to create an audience based on people who like your Page.

So you can create custom audiences based on your contact lists in your CRM and then use these to create Lookalike Audiences and Facebook will find a bunch of users who display the same online behaviour as your existing leads of contacts.

Combine your segmented CRM lists with Lookalike Audiences and you can generate a huge amount of new – but highly-targeted – leads that you’d probably never encounter otherwise.

#5: Feature clips of your webinar to drive signups

When 73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the most effective way of generating high-quality leads, you better take note. Here at VentureHarbour, our automated webinar marketing strategy is one of the most profitable lead generation tactics we’ve used and we fully recommend every B2B marketer takes a serious look at this method.

You can use Facebook to enhance your webinar marketing efforts to by featuring snippets of your webinar in video ads.

This is a great way to generate signups and you might want to test it across lead generation ads and traffic ads. Remember, lead generation ads will aim to convert users in Facebook while traffic ads will send them to your chosen landing page.

#6: Use multi-step forms to maximise lead conversions

While Facebook lead ads can help you convert more leads by removing friction, converting on your site always gives you more control.

Wherever possible, we recommend sending users to your site and increasing conversion rates on your pages, unless you’re getting significantly better results with lead gen ads or you don’t need the on-page data for your CRM, retargeting or other strategies.

In our tests, we’ve found multistep forms significantly increase on-page conversions and open up a whole bunch of new options in terms of data handling and lead segmentation. For example, we use Leadformly to segment leads in our forms and create lists in ActiveCampaign, which automatically sends out targeted responses based on their data.

Aside from increasing conversion rates, this saves us from sending out generic responses and allows us to send relevant messages to users from the very first email response.

#7: Know your Facebook targeting options

As I said earlier, Facebook’s targeting options are incredible – far more sophisticated than anything you’ll find on LinkedIn or Twitter and a good sight more advanced than the targeting options available on Google Ads. Of course, Google Ads doesn’t need to match Facebook in this regard because you can target users who are actively searching for your keywords while LinkedIn directly connects you to business decision-makers.

Facebook needs to work a little hard because people aren’t on the platform searching/researching purchases or actively looking to connect professionally. Facebook users are casually scrolling through their feeds and engaging with content, which means your ads are essentially interrupting the user experience and this is why targeting is so important with Facebook advertising.

At the most basic level, you can target people based on their location, age, gender and demographic details – plus the following work criteria:

Job title
Employer
Industry
Office type

That gets you off to a pretty good start but you can do a lot better than that by combining other targeting options. The key to mastering Facebook targeting is understanding the interests and behaviours of your target audiences. For example, you can target people working in certain industries and following specific publications, industry events, rival companies and related services.

You can even target B2B leads based on the device they use, the operating system and all kinds of other behavioural data points. If you want you can go as far as targeting working professionals while their away on holiday and away from the usual work distractions, promising to make their life easier when they land back in the office.

#8: Put more focus on mobile, millennials

Did you know that more than 40% of B2B buyers use mobile during the purchase process yet B2b marketers only dedicated 3% of their budget to mobile marketing? That’s a crazy kind of disparity you don’t want to see in your own B2B marketing efforts so now is the time to put more emphasis on mobile.

Of course, it’s not a question of mobile vs desktop but how B2B buyers move between both devices throughout the purchasing process.

As eMarketer sums up its own research, “B2B buyers believe their journey from one device to another should be seamless,” and Facebook is off to a good start with this because people are logged into the app, whichever device they use.

Another misconception is that baby boomers are your core B2B target audience. Actually, the majority of business decision-makers have been millennials for a number of years already – and by quite a margin. Millennials are making more B2B purchase decisions than any other age bracket and Google research shows marketers have been slow to respond to this.

Don’t make the same mistake.

#9: Facebook conversion campaigns

The final campaign types I want to suggest for you today is conversion campaigns and these are designed to do exactly what the name suggests. The downside with conversion campaigns is they tend to be expensive and you really need to get your targeting spot-on – so make sure you’ve mastered targeting before you go heavy on the conversion campaigns.

The good news is, once your conversion campaigns are up and running effectively (generally 25+ conversions), Facebook will automatically refine your targeting to pinpoint new users who are more likely to convert and make sure they see your ads.

Fresh leads!

To get to this point, you’ll want to choose your conversion goal, create highly optimised landing pages and focused messages for your conversion ads. You can tests ad variations in Facebook to improve results and make sure you test your landing pages to maximise the number of traffic you turn into conversions – you’re paying good money for this traffic, remember.

#10: Use your Facebook data to personalise content and drive more leads

Finally, to make the most of your new Facebook leads, sync your social data with a content personalisation platform such as Adobe Target to create one-to-one messages for people who land on your site. Don’t get creepy with personal data but make the most of the interests and behaviour data you have access to and use it to create more relevant messages.

For example, tell Windows users your software platform is the best options available for Windows or welcome back return visitors with a special offer, encouraging them to pull the trigger this time around.

Unlock Facebook’s B2B potential

If you’re not using Facebook to generate highly-qualified B2B leads then your social marketing strategy isn’t performing as well as it could. This network may not be designed to connect you with working professionals specifically but its excellent range of targeting options and ad formats make it an incredible marketing platform for just about every industry.

There’s a reason Facebook is the only tech giant giving Google a run for the online advertising crown; it’s up to you to unlock the network’s potential.

The post 10 Ways to use Facebook Ads for B2B Lead Generation appeared first on Venture Harbour.

7 Sales Funnel Tools to Capture More Leads & Prospects

According to data from Statista, the biggest challenge for business is in the UK is attracting customers with 80% of business owners citing this as their top concern.

It seems British businesses have a lead generation problem but this is nothing new – attracting customers has always been a challenge. The good news is there are more opportunities within reach than ever, thanks to the latest marketing technologies.

Generating a higher volume of leads starts with knowing which tools to use and how to use them. We’re going to help you with this first part and give you a few vital hints on the second in this article.

Here are seven tools that are going to help you generate more leads at each stage of your sales funnel – from those early brand awareness leads, all the way to customers itching to pull the trigger on that next purchase.

The three stages of your sales funnels

Generally speaking, there are three levels to every sales funnel: top, middle and bottom. Check out this article from Samuel J. Woods for a comprehensive breakdown of what a good sales funnel, which includes this graphic that does a great job of describing how the three stages of a sales funnel function.

If you’re at all hazy on the topic of sales funnels, bookmark that article and keep it as a resource for reference.

The reason I’m mentioning Samuel’s article is because this post looks at tools for each of these three stages. It takes a different approach to attract leads at each level and this is why understanding the strengths/weaknesses of your marketing tools and channels is so important.

First, let’s start with tools to generate leads at the top of your sales funnel.

Capturing leads at the top of your sales funnel
#1: Google Search

Love it or hate it (can’t it be a love-hate relationship?), Google is the single biggest lead generation tool in the business and organic search is where most marketing strategies begin.

Essentially, this is SEO we’re talking about and there are various tools within Google Search that you can use to generate traffic and casual leads:

Google Search: People head to Google, type in a query and your content pops up.
Google Maps: Local searches have become huge in the mobile age and this is a crucial lead generation channel for local businesses.
Google Travel: Flights and hotel searches are a big part of the Google experience now and travel brands have a major lead gen tool from the world’s biggest search engine.
Google Shopping: Shoppers now turn to Google to browse and buy all kinds of products.
Google Reviews: Customer reviews left on Google,  and partner sites such as Trustpilot, can show in Google Maps, Google Shopping, search listings and ads.
AMP: While Google denies this is a Google product, we all know different. More importantly, AMP has become a huge lead gen tool for publishers and content marketers.

The point is: there’s far more to generating leads from Google in 2018 than traditional SEO. You need to know all of the Google products available to you (eg: Google Flights vs Google Shopping) and which of these can generate valuable leads for you.

#2: Social media & automation

The other key driver for leads at the top of your sales funnel is social media (search and social are by far the two biggest channels for organic referral traffic).

First, you need to know which networks are most important to your brand and target audiences but to maximise your lead generation from social you’re going to need to automate a few things.

Above all, you’ll want to automate your posts so you don’t have to do everything manually. Start with a plugin like

Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite are great for automating your posts so you can discover when the best time to send out your message is, repost at the crucial times and help you manage comments from your audience.

The first thing you’ll want to do is automate your blog posts so they’re scheduled and ready to post on all of your social channels, as soon as you hit the publish button.

Once you know when your posts are most effective, use these insights to enhance your social advertising efforts by scheduling your ads to run at the most crucial moments.

Capturing leads mid-funnel

With traffic landing on your site, your next task is to turn these visitors into solid leads and this means getting hold of some all-important data.

We’re talking about conversions now and this is the target with each of these mid-tier lead gen tools.

#3: Landing page builder

There are plenty of great landing page builders out there now with Unbounce, Leadpages and Instapage just a few of the options at your disposal.

Whichever tool you go for, the important thing is that you’re able to quickly create high-converting landing pages for a range of different campaign types (product releases, organic SEO campaigns, paid advertising, webinars, etc.) and then test them for better performance.

These are the pages that are going to generate some of your most valuable leads so don’t be afraid to invest in a high-quality landing page tool.

#4: Leadformly

Whether it’s your landing pages, product pages or lead gen pages, web forms stand in the way of users and every conversion in your marketing strategy.

The problem is form conversion rates are abysmally low (roughly 2.5%) and this simply isn’t acceptable in our books. We spent many years researching, designing and testing new approaches to form design and we’re now consistently getting way higher conversion rates from our forms and the one we create for our clients.

We took all of these insights and built them into Leadformly, a form design, analytics and optimisation tool that will have you turning more of your existing traffic into qualified leads.

#5:  Everwebinar

Did you know that 73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the most effective method of lead generation? We’re not surprised one bit because our webinar lead gen strategy remains one of the most crucial elements of our business strategy although we’ve refined ours a lot to get the best results over the years.

We now use a combination of Everwebinar, Leadformly and ActiveCampaign to automate our webinar strategy so that it’s generating leads around the clock and nurturing them on our behalf.

We’ve essentially got a fully-fledged lead gen strategy that does everything for us and our sales team only needs to step in at the final moment.

To find out how you can do the same, take a look at our ultimate guide to automated evergreen webinars. This is one marketing strategy you don’t want to be missing out on.

Capturing leads at the bottom of your sales funnel

Now we’re getting to the real nitty-gritty. This is where you’re generating leads from people who are itching to hit the buy button; people who are about to make the purchase – and you want to make sure it’s you they buy from.

#6: Google Ads

We said earlier that Google is the undisputed lead generation king and a lot of this comes down to the mighty Google Ads.

There is no other channel where you can pinpoint users who are literally searching for products and services to buy – the online equivalent of someone running towards you with their wallet open.

This is assuming you know how to target the keywords that show the highest purchase intent (eg: “buy…”, “free delivery”, “in my area”) and are willing to pay for your ad to be seen when it counts most.

Google Ads isn’t only about lead generation, though. It’s also one of the most important lead nurturing tools, thanks to remarketing. As soon as that traffic lands on your site, you’ve got a channel to keep reaching out to them, even if they don’t convert first time around.

#7: Facebook lead ads

When people turn to Google, they’re actively searching for things and this is the real power behind Google Ads. You can target users who are literally searching for your products/services.

Magical stuff.

Social media doesn’t have this benefit because people aren’t searching – they’re scrolling through their feeds. They’re not in shopping mode; they’re in content consumption mode and this changes everything.

Facebook’s answer to this has been creating one of the most advanced targeting systems in modern marketing, where you can pinpoint specific audiences such as men in their 40s who are about to get married and could be ready to overspend on a luxurious honeymoon before their chance slips away.

It’s a different kind of magic but it’s equally as powerful and this is precisely why Facebook is giving Google a serious run for its money in the online advertising space.

Combine these targeting options with Facebook lead generation ads and you’re looking at one of the most powerful lead generation tools in the industry, whether people realise they’re in the market to make a purchase or not.

Capture and nurture at every stage of your funnels

Each of the tools we’ve looked at in this article can help you capture more leads but they specialise at capturing different types of leads and at different stages of your sales funnel. Understanding what these tools/channels are good at and understanding how to make the most of them is crucial if you want to generate a high volume of valuable leads.

If you think any tools need to be added to this list, I’m all ears – so be sure to chip in with any suggestions.

The post 7 Sales Funnel Tools to Capture More Leads & Prospects appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Ways to Get Form Consent Without Killing Conversions

With GDPR now in full effect, you’ve probably noticed the truly awful consent forms and nasty popups doing the rounds – you know, the ones asking you to hand over all your personal details and sell half your soul to continue using a website that clearly doesn’t put user experience high on the list of its priorities.

That’s right, GDPR doesn’t kill conversion rates; designers do.

During the build-up to May 25 earlier this year, it wasn’t the impending GDPR doom that was worrying me – mostly because GDPR doesn’t need to be a big deal. The more serious concern was how poor a job the majority of brands were going to do when it comes to designing consent that doesn’t turn half the internet into an unusable mess.

GDPR compliance doesn’t mean you need to throw a page full of checkboxes at users and give them every possible reason to bounce right back to search. In this article, I’m going to show you five ways you can design form consent without killing conversions.

Note: We are not legal experts and you shouldn’t take anything in this article as the gospel truth on GDPR – get the necessary legal advice if you’re in doubt.

Compliance doesn’t need to be a pain in the…

My favourite response to GDPR (sarcasm warning) so far has been a bunch of websites in the US simply blocking users in the EU from accessing their site – a pretty hilarious overreaction. That said, when you look at some of the consent forms brands are throwing at users in the EU now, I’m starting to think that blocking them would be an improvement on the current state of post-GDPR user experience.

This is the kind of thing you want to avoid:

Nobody likes checkbox lists and throwing a bunch of them at users is only going to advertise how much of their data you’re taking from them.

The good news is designing form consent is much easier than cookies because users are choosing to hand over their data and this involves an element of understanding that you’re going to use their data in certain ways.

For example, when uses your contact form, they know you’re going to use their email address to reply to them – there’s nothing to get consent for here. Likewise, if you state clearly that your form is for newsletter signups, you don’t need consent from people to use their email address for sending your newsletter.

This is why they signed up in the first place.

Where you do need to get consent is when you’re going to collect data that isn’t absolutely essential for the action a user chooses to complete or you plan to use this data for something else (eg: add their email address to a Google Ads remarketing list).

Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at how you can get this kind of consent without killing conversions.

#1: Rework your form copy

This suggestion comes from the guys over at Thrive Themes and it’s probably the most straightforward approach to dealing with GDPR that I’ve come across.

As explained in the previous section, when users explicitly understand how their data is going to be used, you don’t need to add any consent process because they already know everything they need to.

Thrive Themes’ example looks at a simple email subscription form and the copy above doesn’t make it clear that users are signing up to a newsletter in exchange for getting the free PDF guide promoted in the heading.

By simply telling users they need to subscribe in order to receive the PDF, you’re giving them all the info they need to understand you’re going to use this email to send them newsletter emails after they get their PDF guide.

There’s no need to ask for consent on top of this because it’s explicitly stated that users receive the PDF as part of signing up to the newsletter and they can choose to either sign up or not.

And, if your existing copy is so damn good you don’t want to change it, you can test additional copy to provide all the crucial info.

Not a checkbox in sight.

#2: Use multistep forms

If your web forms are a little more complex and you need to get active opt-in consent from users, go for multistep form designs. This allows you to stagger consent opt-ins across multiple stages of the form or create a final consent step at the end of your forms.

Generally speaking, it’s best to get consent for individual pieces of data on the step you request it but general opt-in can be saved for the end of your form.

By doing this, you’ll reduce the friction of requesting consent and users will have a higher incentive to choose their settings and complete your form when consent is saved for the final stage.

#3: Use selectable images to get consent

For simple yes/no consent requests, we’ve found that selectable images achieve the best engagement rate and highest rate of positive responses.

We’ve been using selectable images for a long time at Venture Harbour now and we built them into Leadformly because they consistently get the best performance in terms of engagement and completion.

It turns out they’re also a great tool for GDPR compliance and adding them to your multistep forms couldn’t be easier. Simply choose Image selector in the Question type drop-down box when you create a new question and add the images you want to use.

Simple and powerful – just the way we like it.

#4: Use toggle switches for multiple consent options

Image selectors are great if you’re only asking a single consent question but they’re not ideal if you’ve got multiple questions, which is often the case under GDPR guidelines.

This is where things can start to get ugly but you don’t need to throw a bunch of checkboxes all over your forms. Instead, you can use toggle switches, which not only look far more pleasing but also perform better in all of our tests against multiple checkboxes.

Essentially, it’s exactly the same function as checkboxes but they’re presented in a more visually engaging way and they’re perfectly optimised for multiple devices.

Okay, at this point I’m going to stop trash talking checkboxes. The truth is there’s nothing wrong with them – it’s how you use them that makes or breaks them and there are times when checkboxes are the simplest approach.

In most cases, I recommend using only one checkbox wherever possible and remember you can combine them with image selectors and toggles for different types of consent queries.

#5: Get consent after the conversion

Another solution worth testing is a post-conversion consent process where you ask users to provide additional data and give their consent in your follow-up emails.

The important thing here is to make sure you don’t use any data until you’ve got the necessary consent. Like the Hive Themes example we looked at earlier, make it clear you’re going to respond to users with a follow-up email or get consent for this single action initially and then give users incentive to provide additional data later on.

You don’t need to get everything from the first conversion.

Get form consent without killing conversions

Let’s face it, there’s nothing wrong with GDPR except for the fact there are too many grey areas that can make it tricky to know exactly what your requirements are. The best thing, in this case, it to keep things simple and remember there’s no need to panic – which has been the most popular reaction to GDPR.

People have a right to know how their data is being used and being honest with them shouldn’t be a problem for your marketing strategies or conversion rates. Just be honest and do everything you can to design smooth experiences. You’ll find people appreciate it, especially when most brands are doing a miserable job of making GDPR compliance usable.

The post 5 Ways to Get Form Consent Without Killing Conversions appeared first on Venture Harbour.