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During F8 2019 – Facebook Promotes the Future of Lead Generation through Messenger

Messenger has become one of the world’s most popular messaging tools by offering a platform that brings people and businesses closer together. Currently, there are approximately 300,000 developers building on the Messenger Platform, and people and businesses are exchanging over 20 billion messages on Messenger each month.¹

Today at F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, we introduced two new ways we’re making it easier for brands to connect with people and get business done on Messenger.

Businesses use Messenger in many different ways, but generating leads is one of the most common use cases we’ve seen on the platform. So we’re making it even easier for businesses to connect with potential customers by adding lead generation templates directly into Ads Manager. Businesses can create an ad that drives people to an automated question and answer flow in Messenger to learn more about what their potential customer is looking for. General Motors, one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers, teamed up with a developer partner, Smarters, to build a Messenger lead generation experience that created 3,000 leads in eight weeks at a 30% higher conversion rate compared to other digital marketing channels. See what a lead generation experience could look like for your business below.

People are also using Messenger to book appointments with businesses. To make the booking process seamless, we created an appointment booking interface in the Messenger Platform API which can be integrated with a business’ calendaring system, so people can see the most up-to-date appointment availabilities. Sephora worked with a developer partner, Assist, to build an appointment booking experience on the Messenger Platform which led to a 60% increase in in-store bookings compared to other channels. Appointment booking through Messenger can be used across industries from restaurant reservations to haircut appointments, test drives and more.

Both appointment booking and lead generation in Messenger are still in beta testing, but will be available later this year.

This article was originally posted on – https://www.facebook.com/business/news/f8-2019-making-it-easier-for-businesses-to-connect-with-customers-on-messenger

4 Lead Generation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

One of the trickiest parts of growing your business is creating a lead generation strategy that works for you. Here are four lead generation mistakes to stay away from and how to avoid them if you want your business to excel.

One of the trickiest parts of growing your business is creating a lead generation strategy that works for you. It’s hard to get the traffic you want without a proper plan in place, but it’s essential if you’re going to succeed.

According to HubSpot, 63% of marketers say that lead generation is their business’s greatest marketing challenge. Tons of brands struggle to figure out how they can better cater to their audience in order to grow their platform.

Leads are important because these are potential customers who have a genuine interest in your brand and its content. You already know they’re interested in learning more, so all you have to do is give them a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Here are four common lead generation mistakes and how to avoid them if you want your business to excel.

1. Disregarding CTAs

Your call to action (CTA) is the most valuable part of your content marketing. New visitors don’t know what the next step to take is and have to guess on their own. CTAs exist to help you lead your traffic where you want them to go, which may then turn into conversions. Whether the goal is to capture email addresses or increase engagement, a well-crafted CTA can help you accomplish that.

The fix: Strategically place CTAs on your website and throughout your content where it makes sense. For blog posts, a CTA is commonly placed near the end, once the user is more informed about the topic they were researching. It’s also common to sprinkle one or two CTAs throughout lengthy blog posts.

If you have a lead magnet to offer, you can place options on different parts of your website, such as the homepage, sidebar or header. Give commands to users through your CTAs using actionable, exciting language rather than the boring “Submit” or “Sign up now.”

There are more than 2 billion social media users across the globe, a huge percentage of which talks about their favorite brands and products online. Social media is a great way for users to tell brands exactly what they think about their services and content. It opens a gateway of communication that allows you to optimize your brand to fit your target audience’s needs.

The fix: Choose two or three platforms to grow your business on. That way, you can work on building a solid following on just a few channels, rather than trying to manage numerous outlets. Optimize your social media accounts to match the brand image and tone of your business so that everything’s cohesive and true to your brand’s representation.

Follow popular hashtags within your industry so you’re up to date on trends and hot topics. This will give you great ideas for future content your audience will love. Are there questions your audience is asking that you’d be able to help them out with? Reply to them to start the conversation. Once that trust is built, lead them back to your best-performing content. It’s a great way for them to receive a solution and for you to build your lead generation.

3. Having a complicated contact form

It’s a turnoff when you want to get that juicy lead magnet, but what’s staring you in the face is a contact form with 12 fields. It’s easy to bet that a majority of users don’t have the patience for that and will quickly pass on your incentive and move on to something else.

The less complicated you make it for users to connect with your brand, the better your lead generation will be. HubSpot found that 49.7% of marketers consider forms their highest-converting lead generation tool.

The fix: Create simple contact forms with a responsive design that won’t frustrate users. Refrain from trying to obtain their name, email, address, phone number and other information you don’t need right away. That comes further down the conversion funnel.

For now, your focus is on acquiring customers in an easy way, and a simple form will help you achieve that. Ask for no more than three things from users when they first sign up.

4. Failing to nurture leads

The point of lead generation is that you aren’t just acquiring leads. You also must nurture them so they become repeat customers. Repeat customers are responsible for generating 40% of a business’s revenue. You are doing something wrong if you aren’t focusing on how to cater to existing customers.

The fix: Once you acquire leads, nurture them like newborn puppies. Continue catering to their needs by figuring out how your brand can further provide for them and present a solution to their problems. Set up an automated email campaign specifically for existing customers so that they hear from you periodically and their interest in your business lasts. Offer them exclusive discounts, promo codes or content to show them their loyalty is appreciated.

It can be difficult to come up with substantial leads and traffic when there is so much competition and content already out there. However, if you know what mistakes to avoid, you’ll be on your way to an optimized strategy that constantly brings in new leads and guides them to the content you want.

This article was originally posted on – https://www.business.com/articles/lead-generation-mistakes/

What Type of Content is Best for Lead Generation?

You need more leads to fill your pipeline. After all, you need a certain volume of leads to ensure that your marketing machine churns out sales-ready buyers.

But what kind of content do you need to draw in leads and ensure they convert?

First, you need to make sure that your content is accessible to those at the top of the funnel. It’s tempting to use content that you already have, but is it a good fit for lead generation?

What does that entail?

Avoid Nitty-Gritty Jargon

Content at this level should be easy-to-read and not loaded down with industry-specific terminology and acronyms.

Keep the reading level low, so that just about anyone can read it. Obviously, your readers will have a certain level of education and knowledge. Write at that level, but for early lead gen, keep the language simple and accessible.

Avoid Product-Pushing

In early-stage lead generation, nobody wants to hear about your product. When I work on HIP B2B’s production side, I notice that often brands send us assets that are frankly too pushy to work at the top of the funnel.

Early lead generation content shouldn’t even mention your product. Maybe, at the very end of the asset, you can mention that you have a product that can help. But a passing mention should be the extent of it.

Inform Them, Don’t Try to Sell Them

That being said, what are you supposed to tell them if you can’t sell them your product?

You want to teach them about the problem they’re having.

You either want to inform them of the problem or inform them about the problem. You can start by helping them define the issue they’re having, then start them down the path of potential solutions.

What forms can this come in? We asked our VP of Sales and Client Success, Zach Klinger. He recommends:

Infographics – these visual aids are a perfect fit for lead generation. They are perfect for sending out on both social media and in emails. They are easy to digest, visually oriented, and perfectly poised to attract new leads to your brand.
On-demand webinars – webinars are another good tool for top-of-funnel leads generation. They establish your brand as a thought leader and give potential leads information and tools to help solve their problem.
High-level ebooks and whitepapers – Because you are working at the top of the funnel, make sure that any ebooks you create are high-level. That means create how-tos and introductory content that provides value no matter where potential leads are in the funnel.

At risk of repeating myself, DO NOT use content that pushes your product. The leads you are gathering here are not sales-ready.

Maybe a few of them are close but pushing them towards a sale so soon is akin to walking up to someone, introducing yourself and immediately trying to get them to buy some skincare products from you.

Familiarize them with your brand and get them used to the idea of your brand helping guide them in solving their issues.

Save In-Depth Content for Later

I know you just wrote an amazing piece of content that really gets into the meat of an important topic in your industry.

Not only that, it positions your brand and offering perfectly within that lens.

Why shouldn’t you send it out?

Brand new leads aren’t ready for that depth yet. They will be ready for it later when they’ve learned more about their problem and are closer to finding a solution.

Wait to serve them that meaty piece of content. You risk alienating potential leads early on if you give them something too specific. Save middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel content for those who have shown they want/are ready for it.

Variety is the spice of lead generation. Strategic use of this variety will make it that much easier for you to fill your pipeline with leads that will convert. Keep in mind who you are talking to, how much they know about your brand, and what questions they are asking in these early stages.

From there, choose content that is easily accessible to a wider audience. This ensures you net everyone who is qualified without risk of alienating some of them with overly specific content. Give it a shot.

This article was originally posted on Martechseries.com

How Blockchain Allows For Targeted Marketing While Monetizing End Users

For companies of all sizes, there are fine lines and many overlaps between marketing and advertising campaigns.

One of the biggest conversations that regularly take place revolve around whether it would be more strategic to conduct campaigns at mass, or in a more targeted fashion. Both methods are highly effective when done right, and can drive leads and sales for businesses – all in their own unique ways:

Mass Marketing – The goal is to reach as many people as possible, which can get expensive. In an effort to have broad appeal, all messages must be stated in a basic form, which may ultimately lead to diluted messaging. However it’s the best way to attract a lot of attention in a short period of time. It’s usually done by big brands with fitting budgets.

Targeted Marketing – The goal of targeted marketing and advertising is to reach specifically defined and profiled audiences. It allows greater flexibility, and can potentially help save time and money on lead generation expenses. This also allows marketers and advertisers to define unique value points to target audiences in a more personal and effective way. However, the opportunity and exposure are much smaller and drive less attention.

Achieving the right balance between mass and targeted outreach efforts can get a little tricky. Many brands are naturally drawn to the benefits of targeted advertising, but the question becomes – at what long-term cost? The objectives to drive both short-term performance and long-term outcomes require marketers and advertisers to get smarter in their approaches without targeting too much.

Traditionally, the best balanced approach is one that acknowledges the benefits of quantitatively data-driven targeting approaches without losing sight of mass-reach approaches that brands have relied on for decades- approaches which are in need for disruption.

Marketers and advertisers must also bear in mind that content production and delivery is being disrupted on several fronts. For instance, how and where people consume content is very different compared to just a handful of years ago. Thanks to the mobile-first approach, Internet-connected smart devices can deliver targeted content at the fingertips of users. Podcasts and immersive digital experiences are disrupting the way marketing is delivered as well.

With these technological advances came changing consumer behaviors and expectations. Unsolicited commercial emails, more commonly referred to as spam and junk mail, is universally seen as an annoyance. It is worth noting that emails in general were devised to establish a simple communications system for the free exchange of ideas – it was never meant to be used for commercial interests. But that isn’t stopping influxes of marketers and advertisers from sending the unsolicited messages, despite having the best intentions. At that point, the greatest offense committed by companies is the lack of tact which resulted in wasting the time of their prospects.

On the flip side, when brands demonstrate real interest in their prospects by going the extra mile, the prospects themselves will follow along. An example that exists thanks to the blockchain technology is paying users as seen with email service BitBounce. Once contacts are synced, a price can be set for emails to be sent to the inbox. The filter automatically intercepts every email not on the whitelist, and the sender receives an autoresponder in return. The email asks them to pay a small cryptocurrency fee if they want the message to reach the inbox.

Their Ad platform pays cryptocurrency to end users for every advertisement delivered to them, allowing them to be compensated in Credo for their attention. The CredoEx cryptocurrency exchange currently supports 12 other currencies.

In additional to email marketing campaigns, cryptocurrencies can also be used to ensure the quality of results coming from any form of online advertising, whether it’s reactions from social media, or clicks onto websites. After all, it’s no secret that it is possible for people to pay for bots or hired “clickers” to artificially pump up numbers. With that in mind, AdChain uses its own native token to establish a trusted ad space where users benefit from campaign auditing and cryptographically secure impression tracking. In layman’s terms: companies can make sure they get the advertising they pay for.

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology serve to be the disruption that has been overdue for digital marketers and advertisers that are looking to take their targeted campaigns to the next level.

This article was originally posted on Forbes.com