How To Drive Inbound Leads With Facebook Lead Ads For Your Manufacturing Company

Facebook and Hubspot are partnering up this week to bring users live stream video content about the changing landscape of social media and how businesses should react to it. We attended the first session which included a panel of experts talking about major trends in social media and how you can adapt your marketing strategy to take advantage of them.

Did you know that every month over 2 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses on Facebook? It's becoming a more natural, and maybe even preferred, way of communicating with businesses for many people. This statistic led to one of the most popular talking points of the panel discussion - Facebook Lead Ads and their growing impact on businesses, especially in the B2B space.  

FACEBOOK LEAD ADS

People are spending more time on their mobile devices than ever before, so Facebook created Lead Ads to give people an easier way to connect with businesses, wherever they are.

With Facebook ad targeting, businesses can reach the people most likely to be interested in their business right within the Facebook platform. Leads can then fill out a pop-up form without having to leave Facebook, increasing conversion rates substantially for many businesses.

IMPACT FOR MANUFACTURERS

Huddle Contacts, a contact lenses manufacturer and retailer, used lead ads to gauge market interest and retarget people with ads optimized for conversions. The campaign led to more than 3,000 new leads with an average cost per lead of $2.30.

By using lead ads, Hubble Contact was able to build an email list of people who had already shown interest in the product and then retarget its ad to this list, eventually converting people through purchases. 

If your purchasers could easily find out about your products on Facebook, do you think they would fill out a form to learn more? We think it's certainly worth the try.

VIDEO REPLAY

Interested in watching the entire 'How Social Has Changed & What Marketers Can Do' session? Take a look at the video below or click here.

NEXT SESSION

Any fans of Gary Vaynerchuk or Brian Halligan out there? They're teaming up on September 13th at 2pm EST to talk about Growing a Business in the New Age of Social. You can attend by just filling out a short form on Facebook or you can check back here tomorrow for a short recap.

Are you using Facebook Lead Ads for your manufacturing business? If so, we want to hear about it! Let us know your experience in the comments section.

Best Practices in B2B Customer Segmentation

Learning how and why your customers make buying decisions can teach you a lot about the industry your serve. If this information is recorded, analyzed, and leveraged appropriately, it can lead to a sizable lift in revenue and set you up for sustainable growth going forward. Here's a breakdown of things to keep in mind when conducting your initial customer segmentation campaign. 

What do you need? 

• Purchase History Data 
• Anecdotal Information 
• Customer Demographics 

Generally, customer segmentation happens by analyzing purchase history data alongside anecdotal information. It's usually pretty easy to acquire the purchase history data for your entire customer base by pulling a report from your ERP.  

The demographic info is also relatively easy to acquire using something like ReferenceUSA or a simple web search. Look for employee count, annual revenue, industry, and geography. 

The anecdotal data probably needs to come in the form of a voice-of-the-customer survey.  

Crafting a survey 

• Smart, open-ended questions 
• Carried out by a third-party 

What we're referring to here is a third party conducts a survey on your behalf. This survey should consist of verifying demographic information plus 3-5 open-ended questions. Here are some examples: 

• What led to your decision to use Company A? 
• What factors contribute to how frequently you place an order from Company A? 
• What can we do to continue to serve you better? 
• What else would you like to see Company A do for you? 

Aggregating the data 

There are plenty of quality data analytics partners out there who would be happy to help you aggregate, organize, and analyze the data you pull together.  

However, as a first step, it could be as simple as putting together a basic spreadsheet with each customer's purchase history, demographic, and anecdotal data compiled into one report. From there, some trends might jump out. 

Analyzing the data 

Don't panic - this is a basic, initial implementation, remember? The word 'analyze' doesn't need to be scary. There are big firms out there that will conduct analytics and throw around words like 'big data.' That's not necessarily what we're talking about here. We're talking about your data from your current customer base all put together in a format that we can look for trends.  

Do you see any columns that all seem to have the same answer? That's a trend. This could be something as simple as, the State column having most 'OH' in it. Or, if you look at the column for the question, "What led to your decision to use Company A?" and every answer is, their prices were lowest, that's a trend and is worth noting. 

Note all of those trends, and then go through the list and start placing them in buckets. As an example, one company I worked with ended up segmenting their customer base down by employee count, and then each had sub-segments. The largest customer segment was the 50-100 employees who used internal processes as opposed to outsourcing their particular application. The next largest segment was 50-100 employees who outsourced this same application.  

You may find that the buckets look entirely different than that - maybe your segments are based around geographic trends (for example, OH-based companies, sub-segmented by employee count; TX-based companies, sub-segmented by employee count). 

Next steps 

• Strategies for growing current customers 
• Strategies for approaching lapsed customers 
• Strategies for acquiring new customers 

Once you have the segments finalized, you can begin creating strategies for how to grow you current customer base. What segments of your current customers need to either buy another product you sell or to buy the same product again, more frequently?  

After you've upsold/cross-sold your current customers, it's time to look back through the archives to lapsed customers. Wherever that data lives, dig it out and use the same segments to group up your lapsed customers. Then create strategies to approach and reactivate those customers. 

Lastly, using the same segmentation guidelines, you can acquire a list of prospective companies to begin targeting in attempt to bring them on as new customers.  What strategies apply to these segments of prospective customers?

Learning How To Grow Your Business At Flight 2017

Flight is an annual conference presented by Launch League that gathers more than 200 founders, investors, and startup enthusiasts in Northeast, Ohio. Local start-ups are invited to share their work, network with investors, and increase their business success rate through educational speaker tracks about operations, growth hacking, and funding/investors.

We'll be exhibiting at Flight and dedicating our day to helping new businesses grow. So often we hear from local entrepreneurs struggling to grow their business through traditional marketing and sales avenues. When your business is new and very fragile, how are you supposed to dedicate an entire salary to sitting on the phones all day, sending emails, or drafting blogs all in the name of connecting with potential new prospects?

Of course, there's blood, sweat, and tears that go into launching any new business and plenty of founders spend their days in the trenches, but wouldn't that time be better spent running your business and providing value to your current clients?

That's where the InceptGrows methodology makes the most sense. Our Account Growth Specialists are available on a fractional basis - no fixed salary costs - to join your team, learn about your industry, become an expert regarding your product or service, and become just as passionate about growing your business. For just 2 hours per day and small monthly subscription cost that can be flexed up or down at any time, entrepreneurs are able to catapult their business in a way that wasn't possible before. 

If growth hacking with fractional sales and marketing help is something you're interested in learning more about, let's talk. 

10 Sales Team Badges That Help Drive Results

In my last post, I talked about how Fitbit inspired our sales team to launch a new badge program. It's helped motivate our Account Growth Specialist team and to create competition on a daily basis, thus improving our team comradery, competition, culture, and results!

Since that post, we've received a few questions about what the program looks like and specifically, what types of badges we use. Below you'll find an image of 10 badge and a description of how it's earned. 

Happy Camper Badge

This badge goes to the Account Growth Specialist who's received a perfect score on their client satisfaction survey. Among other things, this means the quality and quantity of leads they passed through exceeded the expectations of their client!

First Place Funnel Badge

The Account Growth Specialist that's earned the most sales funnel point throughout the last month is awarded this badge! Funnel points are made up of key performance indicators like right party contacts, emails collected, confirmed leads, etc.

List Expert Badge

Many of our clients come to us for help with sales list in hand, but others need our help generating one through online research and qualification calls. This badge goes to the Account Growth Specialist that has gained expertise in generating lists of prospects for Incept clients. 

Rally Warrior

When you're partnering with an organization to drive your sales activity, it's important to know that your team is going to be at work every day. This badge goes to Account Growth Specialists that have perfect attendance in a two month period.

Whale Hunter Badge

An Account Growth Specialist can earn this badge by setting up 10 whale-sized meetings for their client.  "Whale-sized" is somewhat subjective, so the Account Growth Specialist must document and submit proof of these 10 meeting to Incept management before earning this badge.

Lead Machine Badge

At the end of the day, our clients care about quality leads.  This badge goes to the Account Growth Specialist with the most confirmed leads in a given month.

Manufacturing Master Badge

We work very closely with the manufacturing industry, so and Account Growth Specialist is able to earn this badge after completing 100+ hours on industry sales activity. We also have several other industry-specific badges, including education, insurance, financial, and more.

Chef Badge

Some programs need line cooks, while others need chefs. For those Account Growth Specialists that have proved their abiltiy to create a successful program from scratch, this badge is awarded.  They have the creativity and problem-solving skills to make things without a recipe. 

Inside Sales Certified

This is be awarded to any Account Growth Specialist that has passed training and been awarded their first client!

Incept Longevity Badge

This badge can be earned at each yearly interval of employment with Incept – 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.

How Fitbit Inspired Our Sales Team To Improve

I love my Fitbit. The live movement tracking on my wrist, the competition with my friends, and the ability to earn badges along the way keep me motivated to move more and pursue a healthier lifestyle. In fact, adding a Fitbit to my life helped me lose 25 pounds last year!

After so many failed fad diets and gym memberships, why was this simple tool so effective for me? In part, it was because of the competition within the Fitbit community - who could walk the most steps or climb the most stairs today? Even better was the competition with myself. Would I finally be able to surpass the Ferris Wheel badge and climb 100 flights of stairs? And what quickly became my main focus - how long would it take me to earn the -25 lb Weight Loss badge? That simple badge drove me to make healthier decisions for an entire year.

Using Badges To Motivate Our Sales Team

We took that idea and translated it to our Account Growth Specialist team. First, what kinds badges would help intrinsically motivate them or create competition within the team on a daily basis? Second, what kinds of badges will our clients care about? We brainstormed a large list of options, worked with our GrowU team to test the theory and then launched the InceptGrows Badge Program with the entire division soon after.

At first, the reaction seemed sub-par. No one was jumping up and down at the chance to start earning some paper badges. We took a slight pivot to our approach, and learned that there are a few key pieces that have led to this program being successful:

Public recognition

This is crucial. We have a town hall meeting every other Wednesday that covers an array of topics, but one of the most exciting portions of the meeting is the announcement of all new badges earned over the last period. Everyone celebrates each other's achievements and helps to motivate each other to keep reaching for more.

Online profiles

As the Account Growth Specialists earn new badges, they get added to their online profiles. This allows them to stand out to clients and prospective clients looking at their profiles. There's no better way for them to depict that they earned the most sales funnel points last month or have 100 hours of sales experience in the manufacturing industry. The more badges they earn, the more clients want to work with them.

Performance evaluation

Incept uses a dynamic performance evaluation program that allows for frequent meetings regarding goal setting and success. We asked each of the Account Growth Specialists to add at least 3 badges they would like to try to earn to their Success Description which allows for regular conversation with their manager about their progress. 

Agent involvement

If an Account Growth Specialist is passionate about a new badge being added to the lineup and presents the team with a convincing argument of why it would benefit our team and our clients, we add the badge! 

This new program has positively impacted to our team comradery, competition, culture and results!

Think this the badge system could help motivate your sales team too? Take a look at all of our sales badges for inspiration, here.