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The Top 10 Digital Demand Best Practices for Lead Generation

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Digital marketing and online lead generation is growing rapidly and is therefore rapidly becoming a recognized discipline within the digital marketing arena.

Studies show the proportion of companies who are generating leads online with the intention of converting them offline has increased. Many marketers who were thrown into the digital ecosystem without a net, however, have questions and concerns about the best approaches for their digital lead generation efforts and the strategies that will have the most impact.

As companies’ digital channels deepen, now is the time to established process and guidelines to help organizations continue this growth. We offer these 10 recommendations for marketers and sales organizations to help create a transparent, successful lead generation campaign.

1. Adopt Multi-Device Targeting Capabilities

The shift to mobile and tablet is changing the game. If you are considering using multiple retargeting partners, it is recommended to tag everything with a third-party tag and a partners tag so that retargeting can be tracked. Ensure that all partners are analyzed and held to a goal or objective. Make it a point to figure out what attribution model works best. Also, make sure that partners can remove a user or customer from the retargeting pool if they have already made a purchase.

2. Connect the Cross-Channel Data

Cross-channel integration ensures that campaigns are well integrated, the strategy is successfully deployed across those chan­nels, and ROI is directly measured across each channel. By optimizing lead-generation programs across all available channels and devices, campaigns achieve better quality lead results.

3. Adopt Next-Generation SEO

The power of search will only become stronger in the coming years. It’s already evolving beyond the traditional search engine format and extending to voice, as more customers use their mobile devices to carry out voice-prompted searches. Companies typically have search strategies and data strategies, but rarely combine the two data sets to build a more complete picture. However, revenue potential easily grows when search is added to the data strategy mix. Search is taking a more prominent role. More evolved and accessible search capabilities available on digital media provide both customers and organizations with a plethora of data that was previously unavailable to sales and marketing departments.

4. Measure Campaigns Based on ROI, Not Just Rankings

The growth of digital has dramatically expanded the number of channels and customer touchpoints that require marketing atten­tion, and it isn’t just a question of a number. Measuring the value of campaigns is valuable, but requires going beyond SEO rankings and combining digital creative results with traditional media buy­ing. Innovators need a measurement and review process in place for each channel, as well as a media mix and attribution modeling frame­work in place to understand concise spending ROI.

5. Drop Keyword Frequency as an Optimization Technique

Measure the entire funnel, from email con­versions, to site activity, and test landing pages. Online demand generation should not just be measured on its ability to gener­ate a lead or an initial sale, but also on its ability to drive high value customers which requires a more robust suite of tracking. For a sales funnel to be effective and efficient, it needs to be carefully tracked and measured. In fact, tracking and measuring is the most important thing you’ll do in your entire sales process. When you monitor each part of your sales funnel, you can see exactly what’s working and what isn’t, and what areas of the funnel need to be tightened up.

6. Build Robust Customer Profiles

A robust customer profile that includes search infor­mation gives organizations insight that can help them determine and predict customers’ future needs. For example, a customer who has just booked a vacation to an exotic destination may need a prompt to realize he should also purchase travel insurance. By personalizing the message and explaining why that particular destination might need travel insurance, the company is more likely to close a sale.

7. Map Out Customers’ Buying Journeys

The average user engages more than 10 times before purchasing in both online and offline; mapping that journey ensures he has the ability to connect in the most relevant way. Successful digital marketers understand how visitors are interacting with search and display, where a pros­pect initially became interested in their brand, and what terms caused them to convert. This is all critical information to track the navigational path.

8. Align Marketing and Sales

The single most important initiative to help CSOs achieve their #1 goal of improving lead generation is sales and marketing alignment. An opportunity for big returns exists when sales and marketing are aligned on lead generation tactics. Lead nurturing is an important task for marketers. Its ultimate goal is, of course, to convert prospects and suspects into customers. In other words: sales. And, even though the borders between sales and marketing are getting thinner and both must work together more than ever, those borders still do exist. Real success will happen when com­panies break up these barriers and create true alignment between marketing and sales.

9. Look beyond the Last Click 

Last click is so last century. Instead brands must embrace custom attribution models to grow their business and get better ROI. Proper attribution—assigning value to all ele­ments in the mix that had an impact on acquiring a given customer—allows digital marketers to push the envelope and truly understand what combination of factors drives a sale, which level of engagement leads to conversion, and the elements in a media mix that deliver superior ROI.

10. Leverage Content Campaigns

Information has put customers in the driving seat. Now they are able to conduct research about businesses, products, and services, sometimes even before they are certain what they’re looking for. Because of this, business leaders have rec­ognized that they need to engage customers on their terms by understanding their behavior and reaching out with information that is targeted to that individual customer’s needs. A one-size-fits-all approach has long stopped working, and customers themselves are demanding a tailored and custom conversation that is based on their needs, takes into consideration information they have already pro­vided, and complements it.