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Account-based marketing (ABM) has become a central strategy for market leaders in B2B organizations that work with their sales partners to attract new customers and drive demand from existing customers

ABM is the process of identifying the most likely leads and then marketing them. B2B companies naturally want to focus their marketing investments on accounts with the most significant potential to generate sustainable income. B2B account-based marketing is proven strategy to generate effective b2b leads database.

What Account-based marketing offers?

There are tons of beliefs and diverse implementations that come under account-based marketing. Prospect profiling is the one of the key parameter in account-based marketing, which helps in prioritizing prospects, fetch deep insight, and build brand recognition.

Next comes,

Better relationships and ROI

Marketers who use account-based strategies perform better and more competitively than their peers who sell to individuals. This approach allows marketers to view potential accounts as a target, not as a specific number of people. With ABM, marketing data can drive b2b sales strategies, improve prospecting, and increase conversions with more accurate targeting across the organization.

Data-driven experience

Prospects have different needs because they communicate with companies at different stages in their purchasing cycle. It all begins with awareness and education, as they explore topics that meet their needs. ABM's success includes a complete overview of this route and all channels. With precise data and analysis, marketers are beginning to understand better the individual account and the whole account to craft a dedicated customer journey for each stakeholder in the same company.

Individual and account perspectives

It is essential to understand each individual and their drivers in an account. But it's necessary to bring all account connections together in one view to identify new business opportunities and accelerate them in the sales process. Marketers can use technology to map and understand the group's relationships and perspectives in a segmented account based on hot spots and priorities. This allows marketers to segment individual and account interactions with the right content, at the right time, on the right device.

By measuring, optimizing, and analyzing your results over time, you can continuously optimize your campaigns.

Five Categories of Account-based marketing Metrics

Coverage

This is the most basic of the GAM measures. Coverage is a measure of the quality and integrity of the data, which indicates whether or not the database contains the right people. Where are there gaps in the data to be listed?

Awareness

Analyzing about how deep, contacts know about the company and its service offerings. This measure is notoriously difficult to measure, but two good pointers to start are proprietary web traffic and user interactions.

Commitment

Are the right people on the account spending time with your company, and is this engagement increasing over time. This measures engagement based on the number of minutes a target contact spends with a brand.

Scope of the program

Everyone wants to know what works. To measure this, the team must first define work. For ABM, this also means which marketing programs reach the right target accounts.

Influence

The ABM program earns credits for specified benefits, but it can be challenging to follow long sales cycles in great detail. Influence can be a richer ability. Look for programs that enhance the key metrics that matter to the business, such as pipeline, transaction speed, and net promoter score.

An organization has to have effective and updated strategies to boost sales and bring in more business whenever it comes to B2B demand generation and B2B lead generation. Demand generation creates the required awareness and builds a base for healthy b2b marketing, while lead generation helps in converting the interested target into leads.

However, the organization has to have a well-analyzed strategy leading demand and lead generation processes. Here are a few tips for effective demand generation and lead generation:

Before you start implementing different tactics and tools to boost B2B leads, here are a few tips you should consider:

Setting goals.

Deciding the target audience.

Don’t force the target; simply track the individual process.

Be there whenever the target raises queries.

Feed the right data/solution.

Content marketing:

One of the trending and effective factors boosting online demand and sales is content marketing. Compelling content and well build content marketing strategy would support boost marketing efforts. Well, planned content marketing strategies will save the organization from loss of productivity and poor results.

E-mail Marketing:

Well, planned e-mail marketing would help the business in earning more clicks to the pages. With an updated database, well-written content, subject line, and call to action, you stand a high chance of inviting the reader to the expected website page/image, or document. Professional B2B demand generation services can assist you in conducting an effective e-mail marketing campaign.

On organization can share whitepapers, blogs, webinars, videos, direct mail, case studies, social posts, infographics, e-books/-newsletters, etc.

CRM:

Effective demand generation would provide you with reliable marketing ready leads. However, the marketing team has to have an error-free solution to convert these leads into sales-ready leads. To make this conversion process error-free and smooth, use a CRM solution. CRM also helps in building a customized approach.

Apart from the tips mentioned above, an organization can also think of the following tips to increase demand generation:  

Giving away samples of what you offer the best.

Providing free tools or resources.

Implementing lead scoring solution.

Join hands with leading industry players to sponsor event/webinar, etc.

Display campaigns using managed placements.

Invest in brand building (online & offline), etc.

Here are a few tips for growth in B2B leads:

Using correct data.

Grading the prospects.

Keeping an eye on your competitors.

Use of social media (Social media can be used throughout the sales & marketing funnel; it is a very effective tool in today’s age), etc.

Almost every business organization is after shortening the sales cycle! They are in search of a magic wind that would make their sales cycle perfect, and it will function smoothly, faster, and complete!

However, there are many factors and hurdles that slow down sales cycles and make it impossible to build a fail-proof model. However, if the company pays attention to the causes of sluggish sales cycle, it will find out the significant roles of contact discovery and B2B list building in any sales process.

If you are new to these concepts, you better outsource reliable contact discovery services or hire any agency providing end-to-end B2B list building services.

Let us know how effective list building could help shorten your sales cycle:

How could contact discovery help?

Have you seen your team spending more and more time on finding the accurate details of your target customers? Well, one of the reasons this is happening is because the data your team is using is most probably outdated. You are not only risking the productivity of your team but also losing a lot of money. With each irrelevant or outdated piece of information, you are missing leads. Emails from getting bounced or unanswered!

Updated data would arm your team with the right business contact database, and Contact Discovery will be done accurately.

List building:

Another way of shortening the sales cycle is list building. Effective list building would drive your sales team’s efforts in the right direction. Key elements of every effective list building process are:

Clear goals:

Before you start list building, you must know your objective.

Do you want the target customer to subscribe, purchase, set an appointment, etc.?

Know your customer well:

Make a company contact list. See where these targeted companies are operating and the industry of operations too.

Company size:

You do not want to miss details like company size to make sure you are targeting the company as per the set goals.

Client representative:

Once this is done, know the person who would be representing the client, his/her designation in the respective company, and the department. This would help you to draft a personalized email or tailor-made your sales approach.

Pain points:

One of the ways of making a list building more effective is to research the pain points of the targeted company and understand how your solution would help them.

Repeat all the steps mentioned above for every company from the company contact list.

Now focus on each company and start making lists of the departments that concern your services and their respective decision-makers.

Find the contact details of those decision-makers and list them.

Before you use these contact details for sales, validate them. Check their authenticity, remove the details which are wrong, update the new information.

In this digital age, irrespective of the size of the company, everything runs on data. No matter which sector you deal in, what you offer, or which geographical area you target, business contact database or data is important. If you are a business that wants to thrive faster and smarter, accumulating quality data is a must. And undoubtedly, your data is one of the best assets.

As one of the most critical assets, your data should be as accurate and updated as possible. On average, 20 to 22 percent of your data gradually decays in a year. And rather than piling on more data every year, which can decrease the quality of your database (Plus, it is of no use), B2B data cleansing services, and data verification services help. They keep your data sorted, accurate, and updated.

What is Data Cleansing?

Data cleansing is a simple process of removing unwanted or decayed data from your database. Every year some parts of your data turn into decayed data due to a change in job, location, or position. Along with that, there are always some incorrect, duplicate, or corrupt data which adds to the unwanted data. Adding to the poor quality of your data is the missing information. A name without a number is as useless as a number without a name. In order to increase the quality of your database and keep your database free from all these, you need data cleansing.

What is Data Verification?

Data verification is another tool to solidify your company contact lists or database and increase the quality. Data verification is as important as cleaning the unwanted data. Data verification is the process of verifying your existing data and validating it. One of the biggest culprits of losing your data quality and failing in marketing campaigns is invalid data. There are times when you roll out an email campaign, and most of the emails get bounced back, or your sales team dial-up number and realize that the number is incorrect or changed. Or there are times when the person you are expecting in a specific position is changed. To avoid such scenarios, you need high-quality data that is verified thoroughly. Through data verification, you can not only increase the quality of your database, but it can also guarantee you the desired results.

Importance of data cleansing and data verification:

Data cleansing and data verification leads to sorted, validated, and high-quality data.

It removes inaccuracies, typos, missing information, or outdated information from your database.

Eventually, a high-quality database leads to more successful marketing campaigns.

You not only get desired results from a clean and verified database, but it also saves your time from being wasted on unnecessary hassles.

A high-quality, verified, and clean database yields better business results.

Every marketing activity in every organization begins with identifying the right target audience. Thus, a list needs to be built of all these potential customers. To reach out to each customer, their contact details such as e-mail IDs, phone numbers etc are required. This research takes a lot of time. So, how can you save your time from building these lists of potential customers? You can certainly partner with a B2B Contact Discovery and Data Appending Service provider like KIA Biz.

Why Choose B2B Data Appending Service Provider

In today’s world, it is very difficult to retain customers’ contact details for long time as people tend to change jobs more frequently. Thus, their phone numbers, e-mail IDs become irrelevant. Now, if you wish to connect with these customers, you are not sure if the existing customers’ database you have is still valid or has become obsolete. Researching this data is a time consuming process. You can use your own staff to do this activity or you can partner with an expert on Data Appending. Thus, your staff will be free to focus on closures.

With appended data it is easier for marketers to make effective communication with the right target audience regarding lead generation, business expansion, and customer acquisition

Partner with us for our Data Appending Service

KIA Biz offers a set of B2B List Building and Data Appending services to make any database more effective for you. We have the capability for making data appending faster and quicker for your team. We provide the most relevant leads to help you reap maximum returns from your investments.

Different types of appending services we provide

Phone Appending Service:- Along with switch board numbers it is important to add direct phone numbers to your business list

Email Appending Service:- Customers data such as first name, last name, postal address is matched against vendors’ database to get email addresses

Postal Address Appending Service:- Adding accurate and up to date postal address is important for successful direct mail efforts

What are the Benefits of B2B Data Appending Services

It helps in making your marketing efforts highly effective

It makes it easier to identify the right audiences for a particular product or service

It ensures that all market efforts are headed in the right direction in the first go itself.

It ensure higher ROI on marketing spends

Your staff can focus on activities such as closures.

Since the right people are targeted, sales cycles are shortened.

Contact Us for B2B Data Appending Services

Opportunities have grown exponentially for salespeople, driven by digital innovations, more systematic request for proposals, and extensive use of internal sales to generate leads. And on these grounds, having qualified leads at your side is half the battle. No matter where it comes from; sales or marketing, it most of the time takes you closer to the final closure.

Sales-ready leads in real

SQL (Sales qualified leads also termed as sales-ready leads) often indicate immediate interest in a company's products or services. For example, it is recommended that sales staff acts on SQL within 24 hours of generation.

However, if you have large volumes of leads entering the funnel, you are likely to flood your sales team with huge database of low-quality leads that will end up wasting time with zero productivity. Executions of various marketing strategies pull out large number of leads, but probability of those marketing qualified leads; turning out to be potential customers is believed to be non reliable.

So, if you come across a lead generation dry spell more often, there are some effective ways to mitigate the concern and create a productive b2b sales lead database that is result-driven.

Organize aunified customer experience

Whether through marketing emails, search for products online, or use mobile devices to find the best deal, today's customers are in constant touch with brands as they incline towards finalizing on purchasing decisions. Digital channels can bring this experience together and prevent missed opportunities.

This represents the cumulative effect of driving increased online traffic, effective consumer participation, increased sales conversion rates, and deepening branded sales connections.

Connecting with lead generation companies

This scenario majorly comes into picture when you don’t have effective database or the lack of qualified sales leads in you CRM. However, in the phase of swift advancement in technologies, lead generation companies can give you a saving hand with most refined sales-ready leads.

Outbound calling

No one is needed to explain of how it works and where an efficient outbound calling process might take you. Though the business world is crawling aggressively in World Wide Web, there is always a need to make a call for better clarity; human way of connecting we can say. However, before dialing up your potential client, your call strategy should be defined. An effective outbound campaign is directly proportional to superior call strategy and preparedness.

Emphasizing on enterprise personas

Analyzing the key categories that clearly explain the enterprise personas such as firmographic, technographic, psychographic, business situation, business operating model, and resources. As trust and credibility are two critical ingredients in the process of B2B Lead Generation, staying around your customers would take you closer to qualified customer that is ready for a sales pitch.

Everyone is online

A recent study suggests that around 90% of businesses prefer online research before coming onto a purchasing decision. That’s exactly where we can engage the businesses; right at start of the buying procedure. SEO and digital marketing tactics are creating phenomenal prospects in terms of finding the correct client, with clear details of what exactly is needed.

BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)

This theory of recognizing the lead has been in the picture since long time now. Though somehow its applicability has been reduced due to drastic changes in sales process. Today’s lead generation process are majorly inclined towards quick result and gaining counts on the board. However, BANT strategy is more relevant when authorized spokesperson or client himself/herself is looking for a solution with a set budget to spend on, and timeline. BANT procedure brings more transparency between you and client.

Automate the marketing

Newsletters are making a huge effect, as they land in inboxes directly. Deploying a dedicated tool for marketing automation bridges you with your clients through multiple promotional medium such as email campaigns, social messages, forms, and many more.

Companies strive for success with their new technologies and methods until closing the deal. However, the ability that sets them apart in these spaces relies on the dexterity of obtaining result-driven sales data.

New research from Experian Data Quality states that 88% of companies have a direct impact on their results due to inaccurate data, while an average company loses 12% of its revenue just because they fall short in B2B lead generation. And what keeps them away from generating high-quality leads is the crucial quality data. After all, it’s not just about raising the conversions counts; it is about protecting a business from the risk that may arise due to communication with incorrect contact information. Those who lead their organization to accurately manage data and understand its inherent value will reap the benefit.

Quality data has several beneficial effects on organizations

The better the data quality, the more confidence users will have in the results they produce, reducing the risks of the outcomes, and increasing efficiency. And when results are reliable, uncertainties and risks in decision making can be limited.

Employees can be more productive with quality data. Instead of spending time validating and repairing data errors, they can focus on their core mission. Better data direct to more precise contact discovery and communication, especially in omnichannel environments driven by many organizations.

Incorrect data can, in many ways result in lost revenue in communication that cannot be converted to sales, for example, if the primary customer data is indecent. If your competitors get more information than you, they have the information which you might have missed. This could mean that a company loses a significant chance of developing new products or the need for a customer who can exploit a competitor with a more mature understanding of the data. Companies must view and manage data as a business asset to maintain quality and gain information that can provide a competitive advantage.

Return on equity, the term which entities keep rendering around is an important indicator of a company's growth capacity and is positively influenced by data quality and sales mobility. As sales forces become more mobile, competitiveness demands high-quality data and efficient b2b List building systems that enable rich customer interactions.

Imagine that you have a thorough understanding of your target accounts, which can give you a competitive advantage in marketing and sales. They help you prioritize calls, create personalized messages that attract attention, encourage decision-makers to consider your products, shorten the sales cycle, and close the sale.

Sounds like your sales graph knocking every point towards the peak, right?

There is a big difference between a potential business and a venture that is out of business. Generally, accurate account profiling can fill the gap most effectively and robust your sales which come with an added benefit of knowing which track to look for and where to hunt. The B2B account profiling provides decision-making information for effective communication and tailored solutions that lead to higher and more dynamic conversions for your investment, as well as efforts.

Most strategic accounts are the double-edged swords and it has been seen that these key accounts hold a huge margin in terms of revenue. Leaving these gemstones unturned might turn them into a fallow stone and can be overlooked in spite of considering it as stepping stone for your business objectives.

Obtaining in-depth details of the key accounts is strategically driven by B2B marketing campaigns. And this has a direct link to account-based marketing (ABM). As the adoption of ABM (account-based marketing) has been accelerating since last some years and with its deep penetration in marketing funnel specifically in prospect profiling, it is predicted to have a transformative impact on the B2B sales and marketing.

What can be missed if your process isn’t efficient enough?

Account profiling is the process of acquiring every succinct intel of the target accounts that help in customize and personalize the campaigns. And if things don’t go well, it brings some serious consequences related to sales of the company.

Account profiling help you in,

Engaging with a potential client that suites best for your service offerings

Analyzing their long list of collaborated vendors and suppliers

Providing POCs and decision-makers who are perfect to pitch you proposals

Buying patterns, business & financial activities, and recent news

If you don't know what you're dealing with, you can venture into a maze and wander aimlessly until you reach a dead end. But the account profile offers a master card to crack the maze. It decrypts the people involved in the decision, their role and the problems they face.

What does B2B Lead Mean?

A lead is nothing but a potential client. A B2B lead means a potential business lead. Here, your potential client would be a company, not an individual. B2B leads are generated using different lead generation strategies like email generation, content syndication, appointment setting, content marketing, etc.

What is B2B Lead Generation?

B2B lead generation process accommodates one of the initial steps in any typical marketing or sales funnel. Gathering all the required data about the potential customers - Name, email, job profile, etc. which could be used in future by the sales team. However, it does not happen so quickly and smoothly. Before qualifying for B2B Sales Leads or sales-ready leads, the gathered information goes through multiple filters. The data is sorted based on its status and eligibility into different types of leads.

Two core types of leads are:

Marketing Qualified Lead

Sales Qualified Lead

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL):

A lead can be qualified as an MQL if a prospect is showing interest in the company's offerings/message. Lead generation team finds out quality MQLs after analyzing the database depending upon specific behavior pattern, level of engagement of the prospect in the business offerings. In the lead generation funnel, marketing team comes across the potential B2B sales leads database, which is mixed with other no-so-sales-ready leads. Marketing team takes on these as MQL and try to convert them into the SQL. MQL is a lead which is more likely to become the client.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL):

What SQL means vary from company to company, depending upon the company's nature, client's expectations from the leads, etc. Marketing and sales team sometimes have to sit together and decide the difference between MQL and SQL as per their lead scaling measures.

Sales Qualified Lead is the next stage of MQL. Which means the sales team is the last part of lead generation funnel and has a responsibility of converting SQLs into the potential customers.

As a matter of fact, once the MQLs are worked on by the marketing team and SQLs are provided to the sales team, the received leads enter the buying cycle. As this is the final stage of conversion, more than half of the work is already done, and the sales team just has to identify the expectations and offer deals accordingly.

The sales cycle is the most significant process as the successful ROI depends on this cycle. A crucial factor to consider while qualifying any SQL is demographics. Factors like prospect's pain points and budget should also be considered by the sales department to shorten the sales cycle. A reliable and experienced B2B lead generation company would assist in acquiring quality SQLs. Here is an ideal process of finding the quality SQL:

Understand the target segment

Build lists based on clients' specifications

Start the lead generation process and appointment setting.

In an increasingly customer-focused world, it is crucial to capture customer information and use it to model products, solutions, and the overall shopping experience.

Customer data should be considered strategic

Most large companies have dozens, if not hundreds, of informal contacts, the so-called peer groups, communities, or unspecified boards. These contacts are organized, updated, and expanded through various communication modes according to digital enhancements. More the data expands and deepens, more it provides valuable insights of potential customers.

By integrating B2B List building, rich customer profiles and response rates can be achieved; simultaneously, businesses can precisely analyze of what types of campaign, on which channels and formats have the most impact on key segments and microsegments. Devoid of the organization size, businesses can design and manage new formal structures that increase the value of networks and venture in the targeted audience.

Small or big, all are potential

Going back, around a decade ago, there weren’t dedicated tools available for this. But now they are. Contact discovery services can aid companies to use institutional experience, making expert knowledge more readily available.

From SMEs to big institutions everyone is online, keeping them updated through precise contact medium is the sharpest strategy. List building should be a priority. It doesn't matter how big your empire is or how much customers you have in a month. If you miss out on business contact database, you might be losing already.

Employing a List building services offer

Multichannel marketing campaign support with targeted data

Excellent return on investment

Refined and targeted leads for fruitful output

Speed and accuracy

High response rates

Regular data updates

Tailored Services for your needs

We all know that it takes a long stretch to manually build a list, but similar or more-than-expected results can be gained by consulting with a B2B list provider to target your right client based on the task-specific, region-specific, or industry-specific list within a committed period.

Staying connected is the key to tap the great opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reach their target market, irrespective of the onlookers. By adding contact discovery strategies, companies can improve their reach and brand visibility by enabling them to engage and convert more leads to a targeted market. At the same time, with a combination of B2B list building with email marketing, you get a free hand to customize the message and tailor your offerings in sync to customer actions. B2B list building services help to target your potential groups and make sure the right leads get the most impacting information at the right time.

Gone are the days where salespeople relied on the intuitive instincts to decode customer’s behavior for elevating sales figures and doodling their cold calling data. Thanks to advanced analytics crafted by contact discovery services, interpretation of right people to right solution is just click away.

B2B demand generation Services

Sales Appointment Setting

Event marketing is a type of promotional marketing which involves creating a space where contact between companies and their customers is possible. This is done through events like medical conferences, financial summits etc. The core benefit of this type of marketing is a chance to approach potential consumers while they're in a willing and attentive position.

The event marketing effort is said to be effective when it draws in the intended interest groups. By finding a chance to incorporate with the correct demographic, a brand can build enduring connections. The best, B2B event marketing practices would build interactions that will not just help the brand but create a long-lasting buzz post-event.

So how does one make event marketing more effective? First things first. Identify the profile of potential attendees. Based on this, build a database of the contact details of all these potential attendees. This step is time consuming but very crucial. You can use the services of a B2B List Building (B2B Contact Discovery) company such as KIA Biz for building high quality accurate lists.

Here are a few of the B2B event marketing services which are offered by KIA Biz. These services would help in an effective event promotion by increasing businesses' sales, getting leads, and adding to their brand image:

B2B Event List Building

In every event marketing campaign, what holds importance is finding the right demographic to focus. From all the data available to the company, it has to choose the right contacts and build a list of it in order to use it for various events marketing strategies like email marketing, SMM, etc. An accurate list would direct the marketing campaign in the right direction and boost ROI.

B2B Event Contact Discovery

It is very crucial to find the right contact within the targeted organizations who are responsible for making decisions, and who's consent could affect the purchases of your products and services. KIA does contact discovery using different filters based on the Role and job profile to find out the identify the right professionals for you.  A right contact will always help you to be a step ahead in the competition. Your event stands a higher chance of success if attended by the right person.

KIA takes the responsibility of making a substantial, customized B2B contact discovery for the event to be successful.

Data Cleansing

In today’s world, data becomes stale very easily. Thus, lists need to be cleansed often. When relevant contacts leave a certain organisation, their contact details become invalid. That is when data cleansing becomes important.

Data cleaning would identify and remove/correct inaccurate/irrelevant data from records and then restore. Various advanced tools are used to perform this task. Once this process is completed, the resulting data would be available in a ready-to-use status.

For any marketing campaign, B2B List Building is the most important task. The success of the campaign completely depends on the quality of your list and not just quantity.

An effective marketing list is the key to reaching your exact target customers. That’s the primary reason why list building is so important for your organization. It not only affects the revenue but it also affects the reach of your product and service. B2B List building can help build trust and confidence in your prospects to act on integrated marketing messages. A great email list takes the time to create and grow. Once it is grown, it needs to be nurtured & administered regularly. Data becomes outdated very easily. Thus, it has to be refreshed in regular intervals of time. In this process of list building, you come across various challenges.

Let’s have a look at some of the challenges and how these challenges can be overcome:-

Resistance towards filling the form on website

It is often seen that people visit your website but still they do not fill their details in your form. To resolve this issue, keep your form as short as possible. Make sure you ask for as few details as you need.

In exchange for their details, are you adding any value to them? It’s a great idea to offer your prospects some value adding content when they fill in their details in your form. For e.g. you can send them an eBook or an article that is relevant to them.

Not leveraging your social media traffic

Your company may have several followers on Twitter and Facebook but are you leveraging this data while building your lists for email campaigns? These people follow you organization on these platforms because they are interested in your offerings. So, it makes complete sense to include these people while building lists for your e-mail campaigns.

Your existing clients have not opted in for your email campaigns

It is often seen that the existing clients of an organization have taken the products or services but they yet have not opted to receive e-mails. It is advisable to have a conversation with existing clients and convince them to opt in for e-mails. This shows great benefits in upselling and cross selling.

B2B lead generation is one of the initial stages used in the sales funnel. It includes collecting data of every potential customer- name, email, company, and position in the hierarchy, etc. Companies spend piles of money on this process with the expectation of acquiring the best lead, and hence, they make sure they get the required result of the investment. This result is ROI, which is called Return on Investment!

What the business is getting in return for the money and/or time it has invested in B2B lead generation is called ROI on lead generation! Undoubtedly, the business wants the highest possible ROI, and one of the ways of making this happen is through outbound lead generation!

Here are a few effective ways of acquiring Marketing Ready Leads in B2B and increase ROI:

Contact discovery:

Efficient Contact Discovery helps collect quick and concise data through multiple platforms. Accurate and quality contact discovery would provide a reliable base for the lead generation team. With an effective contact discover, the chances of receiving quality sales-ready leads are more!

Efficient contact discovery can be made after considering the following factors:

Understanding: 

Understanding the needs of the company and its expectations from the lead generation services provider. For that, one must know the company and its market well!

Quality: Contact discovery could be efficient only if it is able to acquire or support acquiring a quality lead. Quality contact could be discovered from quality data only.

The next step would be filtering the data, analyzing it, and matching it with the requirement.

White paper syndication:

Here, sales lead generation services providers promote white papers of the clients through diverse platforms like websites, emails, other free/paid content syndication sites, social media, blogs, and calling. It is a way of reaching potential clients and starts developing relationships with key prospects.

A properly optimized white paper has a compelling call to action.

White paper syndication is done to ensure that the target prospects are reached by including qualifying questions in the download/registration form. It saves the time of your sales team and helps in asserting the company brand and credibility.

Appointment Setting:

One of the most crucial parts of any B2B lead generation process is fixing appointments. It is an opportunity to meet the potential client in person and gaining his/her trust. An effective B2B appointment setting services are crucial for high ROI. With the right attitude and knowledge of the company, appointment setting can be leveraged to convert the prospect.

Smart companies either have an independent department or they hire lead generation team to acquire more business leads and close as many of them as possible. Business development department receives two kinds of leads: Sales Qualified Leads & Marketing Qualified Leads. Sometimes these leads are always called as Marketing Ready Leads & Sales ready leads.

The significance of leads in every expanding business is inevitable and undoubtedly. However, before going ahead and talking about the need or importance of using these leads, let us know what these leads mean:

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a type of lead who has an interest in the company's offerings and does not mind voluntarily sharing contact information. A sales-qualified lead (SQL), on the other hand, is a prospective customer who has been researched and vetted and is considered ready for the sales process.

What makes MQL & SQL so significant?

MQLs and SQLs hold an enormous amount of value as the companies should be focusing on quality than quantity. It is always recommended to have a few quality leads than a number of average leads. Quality leads are those companies/individuals with a high purchasing power and an interest to spend money for the offerings.

Here Are a Needs To Use Sales and Marketing Qualified Leads:

Positive Use of Time:

Classifying acquired leads into SQL and MQL would specify the time, importance, and procedures need to be undertaken to convert every specific lead into a customer. While paying attention to MQLs, you know that some more marketing process needs to be done. While in the case of SQLs, you are ready to hand them over to the sales team. At the same time, both the marketing teams and sales teams are assured that they have received accurate leads and they can work on them.

Workload Management:

The sales team does not want to waste time and resources on leads, which are heading nowhere. Plus, an engaging workforce to do something unproductive would be equal to losing money. Hence, if provided with the quality SQLs, sales team know that their efforts are not going waste and success rate is higher too as teams are using resources on those prospects who stand a great chance of a conversion.

Coordination Between Sales and Marketing Teams:

MQLs plays an important role in building coordination between marketing and sales teams. When there is the proper classification of leads, marketing teams know which leads to passing on to the sales team, which leads to less space for confusion and misunderstanding. Plus, it facilitates 100% utility of resources too.

Assists in Marketing:

Most of the time, the sales team is considered crucial are they are the one converting leads into customers. But, the fact is the sales team gets leads only when the marketing team is able to market accurately. This is a big challenge for the marketing team, and having quality MQLs identification would be of help.

Content Marketing is a Positive Byproduct:

Quality MQLs benefit content marketers too because then they know who their target is they and how to present the content which would improve the ROI of lead.

Prioritize Priorities:

Knowing which leads can stand a chance of conversion helps to fine-tune the marketing and sales priorities.

The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679(GDPR) is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals citizens of the European Union(EU) and the European Economic Area(EEA). The GDPR aims primarily to give control to individuals over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business.

How does GDPR impact B2B email marketing?

After the introduction of GDPR, Companies can no more bombard the inboxes of prospects anymore. One needs permission to even a send an e-mail to a potential customer. This has gravely impacted the landscape of e-mail marketing. But the good news is there are solutions to tackle this mammoth challenge.

Let’s have a look at few of the solutions:-

Increase your pool of prospect– Earlier, marketers used to run opt-in email campaigns to all the contacts in their database that resided in the EU. Generally, the success rate of opt-in campaigns used to be 10 to 50%, which meant the pool of EU prospects in your database would probably be reduced to 50-90%. Now, GDPR has made this a little trickier. E-mails cannot be sent without taking the permission of the recipients. So the list of net recipients drastically reduces down. So, the solution here lies in building a database of prospects.

Regular Data Cleansing – It is a known fact that data becomes stale in no time. People changes jobs with time and their contact details such as e-mail IDs no longer remain active. You may not have a successful opt-in campaign if your emails hit a dead inbox. By cleansing your database, you can merge and remove duplicates, fill in the missing information and increase the odds of securing consents from your EU prospects.

Personalisation of Data – We all are aware that B2B marketing is all about personalisation and the introduction of GDPR has strengthened this fact even more. Successful personalisation of Opt In campaigns begins with data, the more we know about a prospect the easier it is to segment our data, by segmenting the audience, it is more likely to get consent. Personalisation of data helps even more in calling campaigns. The impact is visible right in the first few seconds of the call itself and finally helps in getting the consent.

Marketing campaigns are always a cost and it is very curtail that they yield relevant results. It gets awfully frustrating when a marketing campaign fails Sometimes, the e-mails bounce back. Other times, e-mails do not reach the right person. Ineffectiveness of a marketing campaign is quite a common phenomenon. So, how do we increase the effectiveness of a marketing campaign? The solution lies in high quality data. A campaign can never be successful if it is carried out using bad quality data.

When we try to measure our awareness metrics, we usually opt to rely on the number of followers we have on social media platforms or how many visits our websites have in a day. But the truth is that this information alone is not completely reliable.

Why do we need high quality data?

When it comes to meeting business objectives, wherein generating leads and in turn generating revenues are the goals, the  marketing data required has to be more precise and of higher quality. High quality data ensures better conversion of leads into sales. With the right data, you can focus your efforts on better b2b demand generation , lead generation and finally closures.

Website Analytics and List Building

Through website analytics can always help in defining better marketing strategies. It can help in understanding from which regions more traffic is landing on the website. These regions can be the key markets for you.

Further to this analytics, list building can enhance the marketing efforts. Lists of prospects from these areas can be made and targeted for the next marketing campaigns.

Better lists, better leads

Acquiring a list of prospects once and working on that list constantly campaign after campaign may not be effective. Data becomes stale in no time especially now when people change jobs more frequently than ever. Thus, data needs to be cleansed in regular intervals of time. In fact, it is always a good idea to cleanse the data before every marketing campaign.

How we can help?

At KIA Biz, we help organizations build high quality data lists. With our B2B list building services and data cleansing services, we help marketing teams to carry out highly effective marketing campaigns. We thoroughly understand each project and carry out customized contact discovery efforts. We ensure each project Is delivered well with the timelines defined.

Sales qualified lead (SQL) is a prospective customer that has been researched and vetted - first by an organization's marketing department and then by its sales team – and is ready for the next stage in the sales process. For an SQL already has intent to buy company's products or services and has met an organization's lead qualification criteria. The lead has now crossed the engagement stage and is now ready to be pursued for conversion into a full-fledged customer.

What constitutes an SQL varies from company to company. Marketing and sales team sometimes don’t agree on how to qualify leads. Marketing team often identifies these leads in the beginning of the sales process where the main objective is to foster interest in the prospect. These leads are then shared with the sales team for persuading further and turning them into closures. MQL refers to a lead wherein a prospect has interest. This is tracked from looking at specific behaviors or level of engagement, such as website visits and content offer downloads. Ideally, only certain forms should trigger a lead to the MQL stage, such as direct business offers and other sales-ready CTAs.

Sales Qualified Lead is the next stage. This means that the sales team has qualified this lead as a potential customer. The SQL is in the buying cycle, while the MQL is not ready for that buying stage just yet. Once you know what differentiates the two, you can practice lead scoring, for instance giving higher lead scores to those who visited high-value pages (sales guides), filled out high-value forms (direct sales demo requests) or viewed your site multiple times.

One of the important factors to be considered in SQL is demographics. Keen attention is to be paid towards customer profiling. Information such as a lead's industry, company size and job role are critical in determining how interested and serious they are in purchasing company's products. Other information such as pain points and budget are also to be shared with sales department in order to shorten the sales cycle.