Dave Evans, of Digital Voodoo, recently focused his ClickZ column on measurements and how they can be used to to tune campaigns.

Dave wrote the following about Be Greeted.

How do you save a potential customer who’s about to abandon ship? Conversion Sciences’ Brian Massey reminded me of Be Greeted, an application that facilitates chat with customers. His clients use BeGreeted to offer a chat with potential customers who’ve spent a longer-than-normal amount of time on a given page. Think of this as the digital equivalent of walking over to a customer and politely asking, “Can I help you?” Want to dig deeper? Take a look at a recent Conversion Rate Experts post on 14 free tools that can help you understand why potential customers abandon your site.

Dave went on to write about Be Greeted customer, Bazaarvoice.

One of my favorite add-on ratings platforms is Bazaarvoice’s Ratings and Reviews platform. Turnkey, comprehensive, and in widespread use across the top 100 online retailers, Ratings and Reviews is a great platform for many applications. Outside of turnkey platforms, there are rating-and-review modules available from Drupal, Joomla, and other frameworks that make it easy to build ratings and reviews into your commerce system. Whatever approach you take, providing on-the-spot, self-directed assurance to your customers that they are about to make a smart choice builds consumer confidence. That means not only superior conversion rates but also an enhanced likelihood that the conversations about the purchase will be favorable because your customer actually purchased the correct product given her specific needs. This social factor pays big dividends when you account for the impact of the social media within your overall marketing program.

We are happy to be in such good company … including our good friend and recent content marketing Webinar speaker, Brian Massey who prompted Dave to take a look at our service.

Randall Rothenberg, made a simple yet powerful observation. He is President & CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and recently wrote in their blog a post titled The “Line” on Internet Display Advertising. He began,

When the Interactive Advertising Bureau Internet Advertising Revenue Report came in for the second quarter of 2008, I took one quick look at the figures compiled by the PriceWaterhouseCoopers accounting firm and immediately said (first to myself, and then to anyone who cared to listen), “It’s a normal recession trend: Above-the-line dollars are moving below-the-line.”

Let me repeat the punch line to emphasize his point:

“It’s a normal recession trend: Above-the-line dollars are moving below-the-line.”

I was compelled to comment. Below is my post on the IAB web site in entirety.

There’s below the line and there’s BELOW the line.

My marketing career began in an era when “the line” also served as a demarcation of class; the glamour of Madison avenue advertising agencies often stood in stark contrast to their less sophisticated counterparts providing in-store merchandising and promotional support for the trade.

For over a decade, we’ve witnessed internet advertising and other forms of online marketing (newsletters, you tube videos, e-books) blur “the line” and today it is imperative that a below the line ethos permeate boardrooms, media plans and creative brainstorming sessions. That is not to say sacrifice the brand for ill conceived campaigns.

Rather, as you so aptly point out, internet advertising is “a medium that does more” than any other. Think of a retail store with all its displays, shelf talkers and on-pack offers. Publishers must help brand marketers and their agencies by offering the online equivalent of visual merchandising and sales promotions techniques that are designed to reinforce brand while contributing to pulling the product through the channel. Said another way, eyeballs and clicks just don’t cut it any longer.

It should come as no surprise that the survivors of The Great Recession of 2008/09 will be businesses who hold their marketing executives, agencies and publishers accountable for delivering results. Call me old fashion, but in my book, that’s called sales promotion and revenue generation.

Joel Granoff, Be Greeted

Of course, IAB is primarily concerned with large brands advertising on major publisher websites. My call to action for publishers to offer “visual merchandising and sales promotions techniques that are designed to reinforce brand while contributing to pulling the product through the channel.” will likely fall on deaf ears on their website.

However, for B2B marketers looking to improve marketing ROI and convert passive web visitors into engaged prospects take note! Your website is a storefront and visual merchandising IS critical to transforming your business website into a dynamic selling environment whether you are capturing leads or selling directly on the site. For that reason alone, I implore you to take a close look at how your below the line dollars are spent and results measured. While you’re at it, give a close look at proactive live chat as a below the line tool to merchandise your brand, engage in real time with your website visitors and capture leads for immediate follow up. ]]> http://www.begreeted.com/blog/proactive-live-chat-the-ultimate-below-the-line-marketing-tool/feed 0 http://www.begreeted.com/blog/the-art-of-the-sale http://www.begreeted.com/blog/the-art-of-the-sale#comments Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:05:23 +0000 admin http://www.begreeted.com/?p=247 We love this video! We came across it at the MarketingProfs B2B Conference when David Meerman Scott presented it in his keynote. It is everything a high performance Sales & Marketing organzation should NOT be.

We hope you get a kick out of it because you understand something the folks in the video don’t get: The power of effective website conversion.

How to do Web Seminars

Webinars, White Papers, E-Mail Marketing and Search are at the top of the food chain when it comes to meat and potatoes lead generation tactics.

Joel Granoff, Be Greeted’s President and CEO recently wrote a Marketing How-To Guide for MarketingProfs.

You may request a copy by leaving a comment to this post.

Mike conducted a short vid interview with me and recently posted it on their blog. We spent most of the time on how to launch successful webinars.

HubSpot is a great example of a company that eats its own dog food … in just a couple of years they now rank in the top 10 for “Internet Marketing.” These same tools are available to marketers and the agencies who support them with SEO and PPC. Check it out … wouldn’t you like your company to be ranked in the top 10 in your industry? In full disclosure, Be Greeted is a HubSpot customer and since we started using the tools, we have risen to top 10 for our industry — “chat lead capture.”

One of the best takeaways:

“MarketingSherpa estimates, in fact, that more than half of the leads in the typical marketing database are viable, qualified leads – even if those prospects aren’t yet ready to buy.”

What that means, as well, is the more data you can gather at the onset in terms of your prospects and what they really need, the more you’ll be able to convert those leads later to success. As I see it, it’s all about engagement. Brian Haven the former Forrester social media analyst put it in perspective in his report Marketing’s New Key Metric: Engagement report:

“Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers’ actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others. Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding. “

With engagement, or especially in light of engagement, the Sherpa article goes on to address the actions taken once that information is gathered. They cite research from from a study by David Elkington of InsideSales.com and Prof. James Oldroyd of MIT. The study looked at the time it takes for a company sales representative to follow up with a lead who completes a contact form form. The chart below illustrates that 44.1% of companies follow up within 24 hours.

The study revealed that the odds of making contact with and qualifying a Web lead decrease dramatically the longer you wait to place that follow-up call. The MarketingSherpa article highlighted the following:

• Calls placed within five minutes of receiving a Web lead have the highest likelihood of making contact.
• The odds of contacting a lead drop 10 times within 30 minutes of that prospect’s online registration.
• The odds of contacting a lead drop another 10 times if you wait one hour.
• Waiting more than 20 hours to call a Web lead actually hurts your chances of qualifying that lead.

The lesson in all of this:

1. Be proactive … engage in a ways that help you gain insights about your site visitors.

2. Use systems to capture and catalog data to guide conversations … on-line and follow up sales calls.

3. Be responsive by following up in a timely manner.

4. Be relevant … use content marketing to address the market needs of your audience … people don’t want to buy your product or service, they want to but your leadership.