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It’s a new year, and you’re likely kicking off marketing and lead generation programs to drive more new leads for 2015. Most new leads go nowhere. Why? Often, it’s because Sales and Marketing have not agreed on a true lead definition and have not created a joint process for finding who’s ready to buy and building relationships with those who aren’t.

It’s not about more leads; it’s about doing better with the ones you already have. Here’s how. In this extended post, I’ll share some ideas on how to make your lead management more effective.



Create a marketing funnel, not just a sales funnel:
Most organizations don’t have a marketing funnel. Instead, they have a sales funnel that looks more like a bucket with lots of holes in it where leads leak out. Marketing needs to create its own funnel to understand whether leads are Sales ready or not.

The purpose of the marketing funnel is to bring leads into one spot and qualify them. By qualifying them, I mean that they are ready to talk to a salesperson. Then, there is the hand-off process between Marketing and Sales to consider.

I find that connecting the marketing and sales funnels together is really a big challenge and that is a big stopgap for most demand generation programs. You have to understand your sales process to know at what point the sales team views a lead as an opportunity and begins actively pursuing it.

The bigger and better you make your marketing pipeline, the bigger and better you make your sales pipeline. In the end, this isn’t about generating more leads; it’s about generating actionable leads. The marketing funnel creates sales-ready leads while nurturing the leads that aren’t sales-ready.

Cold Calling Can Be Fun:
The Cold Calling is the gold standard for qualifying most leads. We found that you can email, you can do Web profiling, you can measure all these touch points, but in the end if you want to know something, you need to talk to someone and engage them in conversation.

Starting a business can be one of the most exciting and empowering moves you’ll ever make and absolutely doable, even in today’s highly competitive marketplace. It takes more than a great idea to sustain a business, though. To be successful, you’ll need to first focus on building a powerful brand identity. Here are some tips to guide you on your way.

Be Sure of Yourself.
It’s important to know what your brand stands for, what makes it special and its benefit. You also need to know who your target audience is and make that benefit clear and obvious to them

Create a Distinctive Identity.
Branding is about perception and the most powerful brands are built from the inside out on differentiation. Creating a distinctive logo and tagline that captures the essence of your brand can increase your visibility. A quality website can also help differentiate your business while also introducing you to online customers and boosting credibility.

Get Connected and Be Memorable.
Creating a brand voice and social media strategy is essential, so it’s important to create a profile for your business on select social media platforms where your customers congregate. Next, create compelling communications that emotionally connect with and motivate your customers to love your brand and buy from it! Powerful brands are great at listening so be sure to respond to online comments and questions


Be Consistent and Congruent.
Maintaining consistent, congruent messaging makes your business easier to remember and trust. Ask yourself: Does your website look like it belongs with your business card and your social media channels? Is your messaging consistent with your brand?

Deliver on your promises.
Strong brands possess credible, relevant and distinctive brand promises. That said, create a brand promise, deliver on it and provide an exceptional customer experience. You’ll end up creating brand advocates who will sing your praises and help build your brand.

Top Seven Digital Ways To Build Email List:

If your business has an online presence then the opportunity exists to build a very effective email marketing list. A targeted email list allows you to constantly nurture prospects by providing them with information and offers in order to eventually turn then into a revenue producing conversion.

If the thought of building a targeted email marketing list from the ground up seems to be a challenging task, then use the following tips to help you get started.

1. Subscription forms on Website:Have prominent “subscribe to email” links on every page of your website.

Give reason why they will benefit from the email. Examples: “Receive special deals via email” or “Latest news in your inbox” or “View hottest trends”.
Show them how the email will “look” like.
Always send a welcome email without fail.
Show your emails as archives on your website, this builds trust and lets people know what kind of content they will be receiving.

2. Other Websites:There are various websites that have registered readers. These websites have taken permission from the readers to send them interesting content. If your target audience is similar to the readers of such websites then you should consider keeping aside some budget to send your newsletter to such audience.Make sure you have good content for people to click the email like something free that they can instantly download. It can be a coupon, or a code or a contest or simple a whitepaper.When they visit your website make sure you ask them for their email in a form in return for the free stuff. This way slowly you will build your database of emails.

3. Business Contacts:During the course of your interactions in your business, you have been sending emails to hundreds of your business partners, associates, vendors, clients etc. Create a one off campaign to invite them to your email newsletters. Please do not include them automatically as doing that amounts to spamming. Please obtain their approval.Make sure your signature in your emails also has a tagline that invites users to register with your website.

4. Social Media:If you use Facebook Business Page you should consider having a subscription form on it. From time to time post links on your various social media sites asking people to sign-up for your newsletter.Other social media such as twitter and LinkedIn can give you a good list of potential readers, provided you seek their permission first.

5. Offline Tactics:If you have offline stores / shops consider asking every customer to fill out a form with their short details. Keep the form short and simple so that walk-in customers will not be daunted. Give something in return, like a lucky draw.If you participate in exhibitions, it is a good time to get people to sign up for your newsletters on your booth.

6. Customer Interaction:Every inbound and outbound call that your support team makes, make sure that they have a script which will help them get the email address of your prospective customers.In every invoice, receipt, and email, that you send out include a link to your newsletter sign up.

7. Refer a friend:Incentivize people to refer their friends. You can hold a lucky draw for all the referrers and announce it every week or give some similar incentive.Give special stuff, in the form of gifts, discounts to people on your email list. Reserve some special promotions for this channel.

ClientCurve Marketing Solutions | SEO vs. PPC: Which Is the Best Fit for Your Business?

The success of any online enterprise is measured by how much traffic is directed to that particular website. The key is to draw people to your website, the shop window for your business, and give them enough reason to convert their initial interest into a sale. The question then becomes which form of marketing is best for your business? Two of the most effective forms of generating traffic to your site are PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Although they ultimately have the same target, to generate traffic to your site, each has different techniques and are more suited to specific marketing strategy.

So Which Is The Best Fit For For B2B Marketers?
Firstly, it is important to understand the difference between SEO & PPC. SEO influences Google’s natural listings, while PPC adverts will appear either at the top or on right hand side of Google’s listings.

The diagram below highlights the positioning on Google’s listings.

Strategies more suited to SEO
SEO is a series of techniques designed to improve a website’s organic position on the search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN.

There are several marketing strategies which are more suited to SEO:
- To Maintain A Consistent Flow Of Website Traffic
SEO is a timely process and is not something that will produce instant results. Getting your site on the first page of Google takes time and does not happen overnight. Yet, once your site does rise in the organic listings, it becomes easier to maintain this position and you arguably would not need any other form of advertising. Once you have created a highly optimised site, you will command a strong position and with that generate more traffic to your site.

- Creating A More Trusted Resource For Sales
Consumers are naturally sceptical about clicking on advertisements. This often may deter them from clicking on the paid Google advertisements as opposed to Google’s natural results. To avoid this potential scepticism, it makes sense to gear your site to have a high ranking on the natural listings. This is what SEO is all about.

- Cost-Effective Marketing
SEO is very cost-effective in the long term. Competitors have the opportunity to bid more for your keyphrases on any PPC platform but with SEO, the best and most relevant content always wins. By dedicating time and effort into producing high quality, original content on your site, you are responsible for your own performance on the organic listings. After running an effective SEO campaign for 3-6 months, you may no longer require any additional forms of marketing.

Strategies more suited to PPC
PPC advertising is very different to SEO. You bid on a search term which is relevant to your industry. When a search is made for that particular search term, your advert appears in the sponsored listings. You are then charged for every individual click on the advert, hence the name pay per click.

Which marketing strategies are most suited to PPC advertising?
- When Immediate Results Are Needed
PPC advertising delivers instant results. The turnover period from signup to launch is relatively short. Within a matter of minutes your advert is displayed for millions of people to see and website visits will begin to flow.

- To Target A Very Specific Demographic
PPC is very useful for targeting a specific group of customers. On Facebooks ads for example, you are able to target customers by age, gender, income level, education level or even relationship status. You can also target people by interests and hobbies. It allows you to attract highly targeted and relevant traffic to your site, ensuring each visit has more chance of converting to a sale.

- Promoting A Product For A Certain Time Period
If you are promoting an event or an offer with an expiration date, you need instant results. PPC produces results within a matter of minutes and can be scheduled to meet any deadlines you may have.
It isn’t always a case of choosing one of the other, it is entirely possible for SEO and PPC to complement one another. An integrated campaign will produce better results. Establishing your presence on both will encourage customers to choose your products over that of a competitor.

ClientCurve is a B2B Marketing Agency. We specialize in List Building Service for your marketing campaigns.

Being marketers, it is important for us to be able to make the right connection with audience. This comes with understanding of business, knowledge of product/services, right content that generates a visceral reaction from audience during a campaign, impact performances for a recall or reference. So more or less it comes as a mix of right approach, multiple methods, great content and segmented audience to talk to see the effort to business conversions.



Companies often spend a lot of time in strategizing, planning approach and budgeting in board rooms but forget about Contact list development exercise. This is where our expertise jumps in. We are B2B marketing agency with primary focus in getting segmented and extremely customized lists for our clients. Because a campaign would be in vain if you have a poorly built database or a very old database which is not updated with right decisions, persons and is not segmented finitely.

•    Boost in audience engagement with you
•    Campaign metrics show responses when addressed to a segmented recipient group
•    Acquisition of maximum Qualified Appointments in quick time
•         ROI on the campaign in the allotted budget

• Analyze who an ideal prospect profile would be. Large organizations have market analysts and consulting teams to suggest them the right picture of the target market. In cases of small and medium enterprises, if you don’t have this established then consider to do it now. Get a picture of the companies you want to talk to and have meetings with. Categorize based on industry, revenue, titles, job levels (CXO or Mid-level manager, Line managers).

• Get the segmented database built by experts like ClientCurve and get it updated on a very regular basis.

• Get the database uploaded and updated on the CRM system to be used. Each time a campaign is run, add records to further segment. Information of this kind brings in the insight and helps in analyzing a campaign.

“30 seconds to win or lose a sale”- We all hear this from our direct bosses or seniors in the beginning phase of our careers. Every sales profession would agree that the impression done could cost or earn the biggest sale. Even in times like these when a lot of business is done through phone, virtual conference calls; the first 30 seconds still plays the deciding factor.