Best practice: Using Sales Intelligence Tools To Boost Conversion

Sales intelligence is known to be a software which enables sales professionals who use technology to increase their number of sales, which will in turn maximise revenue. 

This can be done by collecting company and contact data. It is a tool that you can rely on because it never stops working!

The intelligence allows you to measure your conversion by the number of visitors you have. You can also increase lead generation by looking at your key metrics.

Guide:

Lead generation

Does your website header prompt engagement and conversion?

How do you grab visitors’ attention immediately with headers?

Do you know how many sales platforms you use?

What are Sales Intelligence Tools and how can they help you?

Sales Intelligence tools

SEO

Google Ads

Lead generation is expensive when you need to accelerate your growth quickly and we all know optimisation is a pain.

But why is a low click-through rate a good thing for a B2B lead generation ad?

I know this might sound surprising initially, but hear me out.

Lead generation ads target people who are close to making the decision to buy something.

The B2B purchasing cycle often spans over months, sometimes years.

So when someone clicks on your lead generation ad, the likelihood is that they're pretty close to buying.

If a lead generation ad gets a lot of clicks, something is wrong.

Either the ad might be better placed working to influence brand awareness due to its high engagement score, or it's generating low-qualified clicks.

So the next time you come to evaluate your lead generation ad performance, pause for a moment to reconsider the meaning of the click-through rate.

HubSpot cites research by Lawless Research LLC sponsored by Factual Inc that shows how Facebook dominates advertising budgets in the mid-market.

Here is the HubSpot article by Pamela Bump, M.S. about alternatives to online Ads :https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/online-ad-alternatives

Elder Digital Marketing help these growth businesses optimise their Facebook and Google Ads, as well as LinkedIn Ads if their focus is B2B.

HubSpot supports many forms of lead generation starting with organic, content marketing - but still though, for many of our clients, main sources of leads are:

• Telesales

• Email

Advertising is a top up acceleration.

It might be time to think about what form of lead generation is working for you and what needs optimising.

Why? because you need your business to grow and to do this you need to capture your audience's interest with the product you're selling. Let's take a look at how you can do this...

Does your website header prompt engagement and conversion?

Headers set the tone for your website and convince visitors to browse your pages, review service offerings, sign up to the community or newsletter, etc. But fail to strike a chord and visitors will leave, finding another brand.

How do you grab visitors’ attention immediately with headers?

• Identify who is visiting most often, why and where they’re coming from e.g. Google Search
• Appeal to them in that moment. Are they looking for an answer to a question or a particular service?
• Keep copy to a minimum. You have seconds to make an impression, so focus on what’s top of mind for your visitors right there and then...
• Add a compelling and relevant Call-to-Action (CTA)
• Add context to help new visitors understand your product, service, business, etc
  
  Visitors want to find what they’re looking for immediately, so branding and ease of navigation are also key to good engagement. So, how do you grab visitor's attention immediately with branding and design?

• Include your logo on the header page to help visitors form associations with your brand
• Add navigation to useful pages. Consider a search bar
• Keep design simple, impactful and stand out from the competition

Do you know how many sales platforms you use?

A sales engagement platform is meant to be a single interface to plan, execute, track, measure, and optimise interactions between sales and customers across multiple touches and channels.

As a segment, sales engagement platforms have seen the fastest growth rates as a category over the last few years.

An old TOPO Research and Advisory Sales Development Technology Benchmark Report highlights the importance of sales engagement platforms

87% of sales development organisations had adopted a sales engagement platform.

Sales engagement platforms are top-rated technology in terms of positive ROI.

What are Sales Intelligence Tools and how can they help you?

Sales Intelligence is a software which allows sales professionals who rely on technology to increase their number of sales and maximise revenue. It is a tool that never stops working, collecting company data and contact data. This will therefore give you information such as; business objectives, purchase history, current contacts and their digital footprints. By having this tool, you can have the ability to find companies and leads that match your criteria easily.

Sales Intelligence tools:  

•  ZoomInfo
•  InsideView Technologies, Inc.
•  Dun & Bradstreet Hoover
•  Adapt.io
•  Clearbit
•  Datanyze Inc.
•  DataFox
•  UpLead
•  Lead411
•  LeadIQ
•  Cognism

LinkedIn has a Sales Intelligence Tool which measures performance in key areas, but how important is the Social Selling Index (SSI) Score? LinkedIn say that as a salesperson's SSI rises, so does their sales success:


"Social selling leaders are 51% more likely to reach quota".

The picture above represents the statistics of Social Selling leaders getting better results through LinkedIn's Sales Intelligence Tools.

The SSI measures performance in four key areas:


1. Establish your brand - publishing articles and posts that gain you followers and views, receiving endorsements, completing your professional profile


2. Find the right people - the acceptance rate of your connection requests


3. Engage with insights - shares, likes and comments on your posts, and the response rate of your messages


4. Build relationships - expanding your network to reach others who aren't prospects (e.g. industry influencers)


There's a lot of debate on the importance of the SSI.


Is it a way to promote Sales Navigator?


Or a good way to track progress?


I think it's a good way to track salespeople's activity, but it isn't always a useful measure of how influential they are in their network.

If you're connected to lots of influential people, it's hard to get a response from them on LinkedIn.

And of course social selling should be measured alongside other activities.

Have you noticed any changes in your search history in the past few weeks/month?...

PageTraffic Web Tech released some statistics, along with useful infographics, on recent impacts on SEO.

Here’s a selection of stats that you might find interesting:

• Travel website traffic is down 46%
  
• News sites are up 34%
  
• Food and recipe websites are up by 22%
  
• Health and Wellness is up by 17%

Most industries have seen a drop in organic traffic, leaving businesses to think about how to market in an era where there is no short-term personal contact.

What should you be doing right now? I’d suggest the following:

• Focus on customer support and building relationships
  
• Up your content marketing
  
• Utilise webinars & online meetings

What have you been searching for more than usual lately? Or, what haven’t you found yourself looking at recently?

Google Ads

You can also look into Google Ads for growing your B2B business if you need to attract more customers from Pay Per Click. This can be done by advertising your solution when potential customers are searching for the product.

These prospects are almost ready to buy.

But how do they find you?

This is where your keyword strategy comes in. What you want is to choose keywords that have enough search volume AND are specific enough to define your solution.

And of course, ultimately enable you to improve Cost Per Click. These Sales Intelligence tools help you to boost your conversion.

Google Ads landing page conversion rate is 11%. I have read that some advertisers are converting at 2-3% above average for their industries.

With the top 10% of landing pages converting at an average rate of 11.45% or higher,

in a study by WordStream, who recently analysed thousands of Google Ads accounts with a combined $3 billion in annual spend.

What's so great about the top performers?
What have they got that others haven't?

1) Unique offers, differentiated from the competition

2) No barriers to conversion - a good 'flow'

3) Use remarketing

4) Test different landing pages

5) Focus on higher quality lead generation

(Image from WordStream).