MarketingSherpa Blog

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

Lead generation teleprospecting is the art of acquiring sales-ready leads for a sales staff.

When it comes to communicating an organization’s value and credibility, asking the right questions and relieving any anxiety is key to a campaign’s success.

Consequently, wouldn’t it make sense to test and optimize this process?

After all, the knowledge you acquire can be applied to several facets of your marketing efforts, including what you emphasize online.

My goal for today’s B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post is to hopefully influence your approach to lead generation with a few insights that you can use to determine where to find the most improvement in your teleprospecting efforts.

Do you deliver value and mitigate anxiety?

The first thing to consider when launching a lead gen teleprospecting campaign is to make sure that your value and anxiety relief efforts are geared toward your target market.

In fact, a lead generation Research Partner of ours at MECLABS wanted to discover new strategies to increase engagement and encourage deeper conversation. As a result, we ran a test and came away with a discovery and a lift.

Company: A large, well-known insurance carrier.

Goal: To increase the number of lead responses to a scripted voicemail.

Primary Research Question: Which voicemail script will generate the most lead responses?

Approach: A/B single factor split test

In Treatment A, the focus was on building trust by mentioning the size of the company as the fifth largest carrier.

In Treatment B, the focus was on sharing valuable information that is not nationally advertised.

Results

Treatment B was the winner, resulting in a 30.8% lift over Treatment A and in attaining broker information from the decision-maker at an 88% level of confidence.

Although 88% is not ideal compared against the common standard of a 95% level of confidence, you always have to consider the best approach to validity starts with understanding your testing circumstances and using the best option available those circumstances will allow.

So why did we see such an increase from making just a few subtle changes?

One hypothesis is in the value proposition of the script itself. Offering exclusivity at the right time to the right person can help your efforts to move from conversation to conversion.

Test phone calls to learn more about your prospects

If you run a teleprospecting campaign, consider testing your approach to acquiring new leads.

You can determine the specific needs of your client or partner, discover future needs or gain access to third-party vendors that can result in more than just one sales-ready lead.

Testing can also lead to a wide variety of discoveries about your ideal prospects and create multiple opportunities that can benefit your marketing efforts beyond the telephone.

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Marketing Strategy: 3 steps to help optimize website user experience [More from the blogs]

Quick, convenient and cost-efficient are three words some marketers hope customers will find synonymous with the fast-food industry.

Deceptive, unrealistic and way too expensive seems to be where conversation about fast food goes with the family and friends that I’ve asked for their thoughts.

Clearly, there is a Hatfield-McCoy relationship between Marketing’s hope and customer perception, but does it have to be this way?

Absolutely not.

Some fast-food chains have started to step away from tactics perceived as nefarious to build brand equity on unique offerings, transparency and customer testimonials.

Before you start thinking of where to go for your next meal, let’s take a look at three restaurant chains that have embraced a brave new world of marketing and what we can learn from them.

Much more than a burrito, it’s an upsell

As a frequent flyer to Tex-Mex chains, I have grown skeptical of other burrito-related establishments. I’ve tried plenty of them and the experience is often heartache and, at times, heartburn.

However, one Tex-Mex chain has cleverly strategized a way to increase the likelihood of an upsell with its menu design.

Qdoba Mexican Grill has a unique menu presentation. Many competitor menus start with a choice of meat and continue with the ingredients that follow the assembly line.

So what is the difference?

This is a classic example of passive versus active engagement. Offering all of the choices upfront creates a passive experience in that, “I’m just thinking of what I don’t want on my burrito.”

Qdoba, however, starts its menu conversation with signature flavors and customization, which puts my focus on actively experimenting with different combinations to find the burrito of dreams.

I can also choose vegan and gluten-free options, which is a smart move as the paradigm of healthy eating continues to shift toward a lifestyle of calorie consciousness or for those who require vegan or gluten-free menu options for health reasons.

So how does this relate to a Web conversion?

Take it from Qdoba, don’t be afraid to show off something signature with your offering. Your site should display its value in a way that is suggestive and not submissive. Promoting one item more than another only bothers those who believe in symmetry.

Also, don’t be afraid to engage customers for the upsell.

Why yes, I would like fries from Sugar City, Idaho

Another chain that is helping you decide what to have for lunch at 9:30 a.m. is Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

This establishment utilizes a small menu, a variety of condiments, fries made from Idaho’s finest potatoes, and all the free peanuts you can eat.

What Five Guys offers is a lesson in transparency.

Customers can see their food being made and can be rest assured that their order is fresh with all of the right toppings. This can also serve as a piece of wisdom for marketers to clearly show how a product or service will benefit customers.

In the digital age, transparent marketing is the best way to earn a user’s trust and click.

Endorsements are fast track to breaking the mold

In 2012, Subway became the first restaurant in the fast-food industry to receive the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check Meal Certification. 

This was clearly a game changer for the chain in terms of strategy due to the common preconceived notation that fast food directly translates to unhealthy living.

Subway was able to escape that mold of negative perception by receiving a strong source of third-party credibility.

This goes without saying, but having someone else – including an unbiased group in this case – back your product or service screams credibility and validation.

Read more…

“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.”

• Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”

The song was an outlet for bassist Roger Waters to express his dislike for the forceful approach to learning that was popular in the British education system during his youth. This serves as a great analogy for why forcing your customers to register for accounts is not always a good idea.

In today’s MarketingSherpa Blog post, I want to demand that you allow your consumers to have their pudding, even if they don’t eat their meat.

But in some cases, I know that “required” just can’t be avoided, so I’ll also share two methods you can try when your company just won’t budge on “leaving the kids alone,” as the song goes.

Make buying easier for users with low motivation

Unless your brand has the near cult-like following of Apple or Coca-Cola, then it’s likely your website will play host to visitors with low motivation.

Now, what will chase away users – and metaphorical British schoolchildren – with low motivation faster than a 12-inch ruler?

Having to submit their information to yet another website!

If a new visitor – most likely an important demographic to your business’ revenue – is forced to commit to an account before they make a purchase on your site, then you could lose this new customer.

Avoid cart abandonment by keeping new users moving through your checkout

Another reason to avoid a required registration is the dreaded cart abandonment.

Combine a visitor with low motivation and subject them to a rather lengthy checkout process, and you are just adding another brick in the wall.

But sometimes, registered accounts simply can’t be avoided for whatever reason …

What do you do then?

Well, it’s all in how you approach a customer with your demands for their data. While I discourage required accounts, consider these two account registration methods from our research that you can test to hopefully increase your sales and minimize cart abandonment:

Method #1. Front-end option

Provide an optional account registration option at the beginning of the checkout process for users with high motivation or brand loyalty.

However, you may need to provide some incentives to convince that user the registration option is in their best interest.

Method #2. Back-end option

Most businesses still need to ask customers to fill out billing and shipping information during the checkout process.

Why not offer customers an opt-in to a registration after their information has been submitted?

This only requires one action from the visitor (a “yes” or “no” answer) and can be placed before or after the completion of the order.

You may also need some additional value copy to convince users that a registration option is in their best interest, but the beauty here is that you’re not making them jump through the same hoop twice.

No matter which option your pick, the goal here is testing your sales funnel to discover the most strategic place for a required account registration if you can’t avoid it.

  Read more…