So why do dental lab sales departments need a CRM?

Without fear of oversimplifying, the biggest challenges that sales people face are 1) how to qualify and follow up on leads and 2) how to prioritize sales activities.

However, CRM is a tool that not only solves those key problems. In fact, it is able to handle other, no less pressing issues.

1. Enjoy a safe storage space

CRM helps sales people to safely and centrally store their contacts, sales opportunities, activities and scheduled plans in one place, and have uninterrupted access to the database from multiple locations. Rest assured that your data won’t just get lost.

2. Plan and time-manage like a pro

CRM helps sales people to optimize their daily schedules and prioritize tasks to make sure customers are not ignored and the key prospects are contacted on time. In fact, CRM allows sales people to spend more time with customers, which leads to more deals closed and a stronger customer base.

3. Activity reports? – No brainer!

CRM helps sales people to easily prepare their weekly or monthly reports for management. The process is automated and transparent, and takes just a few clicks to inform others about what sales are currently in progress.

4. Stop surfing, start targeting

CRM helps sales people to segment data and identify valuable opportunities via criteria based selections. This prevents you from hours of cutting and pasting from various documents, or surfing in the disorganized lists of data.

5. Stay up-to-date on what’s happening

CRM offers shared calendars, document templates and e-mail integration, uniting all team members and keeping everyone up-to-date. Sharing selling patterns and processes allows sales people to see what works best. CRM also increases communication between the sales force and sales management.

6. Show up in time for the new sale

By tracking all communication with the customers, CRM helps sales people to know exactly when customers need to be contacted; for example, for product replacement, contract renewal, or for an upsell to a new product or service. This all increases your chances of closing a sale.

7. Rationalize your sales moves

CRM helps streamline the entire sales cycle, which results in closing deals in your sales pipeline and helping everyone in the team to reach targets faster. Since order processing and preparing quotes is automated in CRM, sales teams are able to reduce production costs and increase sales revenue.

8. Know what your customers really want

Since all the customer-related data is stored in CRM, it helps sales people to analyze the needs of customers and even anticipate their problems – all at the right time. All this increases customer satisfaction and ensures loyalty, as well as higher profit margins.

9. Cut down on admin tasks

CRM releases the sales teams from the majority of admin tasks by reducing and even removing some of the repetitive actions that take a lot of time, but yield little profitability. CRM stores product and price details, triggers reminders for activities, and takes sales people through the sales pipeline step by step.

10. Save money

Even though CRM systems are not cheap, they actually help you save your money! With sales people, it is the reduction of errors (for example, in orders or quotes) that CRM can help with. Effort and cost related to correcting those errors may be much higher. Finally, it also boils down to such trivial things as saving money on those cluttering and often vanishing Post-it notes, since every new information can be safely stored in the system.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, sales people and CRM is not an immediate “match made in heaven”, but the more time these two spend together – the stronger the attraction between them becomes.

If adopted and used correctly, CRM is going to boost the performance of any sales team, and will help sales people to excel in 4 areas that are critical for them:

• better search, sort and qualify leads;
• follow up on sales opportunities systematically and on time;
• prioritize and rationalize follow up activities; and
• increase target reach rates faster.

The improvements that CRM brings, however, don’t come without effort, understanding and determination from the sales people’s side. Sales reps have to unanimously understand that updating CRM is central to their success.

Also, sales teams need to synchronize their activities and base them on best practices. This will enable a better sharing of information and will secure more effective work with CRM.

More so, sales teams should embrace the idea that by registering all activities and following the established sales routines they are more likely to reach their sales goals. It is also important to realize that sales people are going to benefit a lot by being able to update and share the newest information on prospects and customers – all in one place that is easy to access.

Finally, CRM enhances sales people’s mobility, as the database and all your work-related activities can be accessed on multiple devices and from different locations.

So, what are your experiences in getting sales teams on board with CRM? Do you have any other reasons as to why sales people need CRM? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you’d like to learn more contact us today DentalLabSupport.com  call 888-715-9099 info@dentallabsupport.com

Best Ways to Acquire New Customers Offline & Online

You can spend countless hours working on a great idea and perfecting your product or service, but all future growth boils down to one key factor — your ability to acquire new customers and retain them long-term.

Acquiring new customers may sound simple, but it can be incredibly challenging to find new opportunities in today’s saturated marketplace. If you don’t stay up to date and tweak your marketing strategies, you may struggle to keep your sales funnel full.

This article will cover actionable ways to acquire new customers, but first …

What is the cost of acquiring a new customer?

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing cost required to earn a new customer over a designated period. This is important because it assigns real value to your marketing efforts and allows you to measure your ROI.

Displayed as a formula, it looks like this:

So if a company spent $300K on sales and marketing, and generated 300 new customers in one quarter, their customer acquisition cost would be $1K.

Note: The total marketing cost includes all program, software, and marketing spend, salaries, wages, commissions, bonuses, and overhead associated with acquiring new leads and customers within the time period you’re evaluating (month, quarter, year).

Now that we’ve defined it, let’s look at how to acquire customers.

The Best ways to acquire new customers with Digital Marketing

The list here is not the be-all end-all how to acquire customers, but each item is a common way for digital marketers to grow their customer base today.

Content marketing

Content is the foundation of advertising, because once you’ve published content (blog posts, ebooks, guides, videos, etc.) email, social media, etc. can promote it. It also generates about 3x as many leads as other marketing methods, and costs 62% less:

Consistently publishing new content — and refreshing the old — keeps your brand relevant and shows prospects that you’re actively engaged with your industry. This is crucial in a world full of false advertising and plummeting customer trust.

Highly targeted advertising

If you’re not generating the number of new customers you want — or enough qualified customers — define and redefine your target audience down to the finest details:

• Where do they live?
• How old are they?
• What do they do for a living?
• What is their family makeup like?
• What do they like and dislike?
• What problems do they have and how can your product or service help?

Market segmentation can help:

Retargeting old customers is a great place to start. While this might seem like customer retention, not acquisition, that’s not necessarily the case. If it’s been years since a customer was last active, many businesses won’t refer to that person as an existing customer anymore. Getting them back to your business is like re-acquiring them as a brand new customer. Use any old information you have on them (email, phone number, address, etc.), and reach out with an irresistible offer to earn their business again.

Create a lead generating site

Your website might look professional and offer a ton of useful information for visitors, but does it generate new leads and acquire new customers?

It’s essential that, in addition to your website, you also have dedicated landing pages to capture contact information and fill the top of your sales funnel.

Often, your landing page is the first and last thing people see connected to your business. Since you have less than five seconds to grasp their attention, make it stand out by following landing page best practices.

An attention-grabbing headline, prominent form, and contrasting CTA button are just a few examples to follow. This Iterable landing page demonstrates all three:

Focus on benefits over features

Listing features can help sell your product to a certain extent, but it’s important you don’t overlook the customer experience. Highlighting your product’s benefits is a more direct way to relate to your customers and show them what they’ll gain by selecting your company over another.

List the features briefly, but focus primarily on the benefits. Think about your customer’s problems and dig deep to explain how your product solves those problems. This helps you stand out and shows customers what makes your brand unique.

Be present on social media

If you’re not present on social media, you’re missing out on a huge market that your competitors are likely already taking advantage of.

• The average internet user had 3 social media accounts in 2012, and now the average is closer to 7 accounts
• 97% of adults (ages 16-64) log into at least one social network per month
• Social media and messaging accounts for about 1 in every 3 minutes spent on the internet
• Over 2 million businesses advertise on Facebook

Having a social media presence doesn’t have to be expensive either. Creating a business account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn is free. Simply join discussions and groups that pertain to your industry. Provide helpful answers to questions, and insight on various posts to make yourself known.

Make your brand known on forums

Being on question-based forums like Quora is huge. By answering questions and talking about your product, you can make yourself known as an industry leader and attract new prospective customers.

When answering questions don’t just post a link to your content as it’ll likely be removed. That’s no way to establish trust anyway. It’s okay to include links within your answers on occasion, but every answer should still provide value without having to visit elsewhere.

Offer deals and promotions

People love discounts because they save money and feel like they’re getting access to something exclusive and limited. Some ideas for offering deals and promotions include:

• Using your social media accounts to run coupon ads
• Creating an email drip campaign that rewards subscribers for access to their inboxes with an exclusive offer
• Throwing in low-stock items or items that are no longer made as freebies on orders over a certain quantity

The most successful promotional campaigns also inspire sharing. When people share offers with their family and friends, they’re more likely to be interested since it’s coming from someone they know and trust, rather than an ad from an unfamiliar brand. It makes them more likely to redeem the offer and continue sharing with others too.

Run giveaways

If people aren’t buying your product, consider giving them something for free. That doesn’t mean give away thousands of products, but running monthly or weekly giveaways can certainly work to your benefit. Giving someone the feeling that they “won” something is a powerful way to make them choose your product over a competitor’s.

Sweepstakes and contests are two different methods to choose from. A sweepstakes involves giving away something to a person selected at random (nothing is required from the person); while the winner of a contest is selected based on judgment.

In comparison, contests tend to be more effective because participants get more involved and engaged. This is great for acquiring new customers because even if someone doesn’t win, they’ve likely put enough effort into their entry that they may be more inclined to make a purchase now.

Both methods are great for building your email subscriber list because to enter you can require an email address. This way, you can send promotional emails if the contest didn’t entice them to make a purchase.

Showcase testimonials

One of the best ways to acquire new customers is to highlight existing ones. When you have proof that customers have a particularly positive experience, ask them to provide a testimonial in return.

Infegy does this on their landing page:

Whether the testimonial is a short quote, review, case study, interview, etc., it’s proof that you deliver on your promises and helps prospects feel more confident they can trust you.

Keep track of the competition

Actively monitoring competitor’s marketing tactics, backlinks and traffic, web design, social mentions, products or services, etc. is the best way to stay ahead of the game.

This can be especially useful in acquiring new prospects because it puts you in prime position to swoop in and capitalize on any opportunities. For instance, if you know that a competitor has introduced an unpopular initiative, like a price increase, it may be the perfect time to step in and see if any of their clients are willing to jump ship.

Host an event

An increasing number of consumers like to actually experience brands, not just read about them online or get spammed by their ads. So much so that 89% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience, versus only 36% in 2010.

Hosting an event is a great way to do this as it gives potential customers the opportunity to meet your brand on a more personal level. Depending on your product or service, you can either host an in-person event where customers can meet you or host an online webinar where it still feels personalized — like you’re right in front of your audience.

Ask for referrals

What better way to attract new customers than to use existing ones? But instead of relying on existing customers to evangelize your brand on their own, encourage them with a referral program.

The incentive can be a physical gift, a monetary reward, or a credit, just make sure it’s valuable to them. You can’t realistically expect valuable customer referrals without giving back something valuable in return.

Make sure your SEO is up to date

SEO complements content marketing efforts by optimizing content and making it easier for your target audience to find it. Rank high in SERPs and persuading people to click through is the ultimate goal here.

SEO best practices involve creating indexable content that search engines can read, decipher, and index by:

• Including your primary keyword/phrase in the title
• Adding related alt text to your images
• Uploading video and audio transcripts
• Linking internally within your site
• Speeding up your page load time

SEO is a popular customer acquisition method because it’s relatively cost-effective. In fact, SEO and organic growth has shown to be the number one inbound marketing priority for many companies.

A/B test everything

A/B testing is crucial in determining which strategies and campaign components produce the highest numbers of conversions.

To get the most out of your A/B testing efforts:

• Mark each new test in Google Analytics
• Have a standard time frame how long you run each test and how many visitors must experience both versions
• Create a process for executive approval to announce the winner
• Move on to the next element to test
• Repeat as needed

It’s important to test every facet of your campaign or strategy. For example, not just the landing page copy, but the page’s entire layout. The more you know about the performance of your efforts, the more control you have over the end results.

Now that you acquired them, how do you retain them?

Keeping a steady flow of returning customers is equally as important. Here are a few reasonsto focus on customer retention just as much as acquisition:

• The cost of acquiring new customers vs retaining them is 5 times more
• Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase revenue by 25-95%
• The probability of selling to existing customers and new customers is 60-70% and 5-20%, respectively
• 90% of satisfied consumers will purchase again

Customer retention strategies will vary based on business model, audience, resources, and more, but here are several key qualities all of them should have:

Convenience
It’s hard to ignore something when it’s available at your fingertips, so make your products and services as accessible as possible. Identify your customers’ desires and behaviors, and create tools that empower them with convenience. For example, both Starbucks and McDonald’s have apps for customers to order ahead to eliminate the wait time on-site.

Altruism
Sometimes a brand inspires customer loyalty with their company beliefs, instead of their sales tactics. Many consumers are focused on the altruistic and environmental effects that their buying habits have because doing good is so important to them. Find something that people care about and position your brand around it.

Personalization
Execute customer service with an authentic human touch. Show you care by identifying your audience personas, communicating with them on their preferred channels, and adding personality to every interaction.

For more information contact DentalLabSupport.com or call 1-888-715-9099 info@dentallabsupport.com

What is the New Google Optimization Score & How Does it Work?

For dental lab digital advertisers using Google Ads (formerly AdWords), there is a new feature that will help you get the most out of your ad campaigns — Google Ads optimization score.

Google recently sent out an email informing users about the new feature:

Don’t worry if your dental lab didn’t receive the email or are unsure how Google’s optimization score works. In this article, you’ll learn what the new feature is, how it’s calculated, and how you can improve your score.

What is Google’s optimization score?

Google’s ad optimization score is a percentage amount that indicates how well your dental labs campaigns are optimized based on a number of factors such as bid amounts, keyword types, bid strategy, etc. The feature was first announced in July 2018 and is now viewable for all users in the Recommendations tab in your Google Ads account.

This is how the score looks like in your account (the percentage will vary, of course):

While the feature is in beta, dental labs can still use their optimization score to evaluate the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. It should be noted that, this feature is only available for Google Ad users that have active Search campaigns. It is not available in AdWords Express or used by your Quality Score or Ad Rank.

How is it calculated?

Google’s optimization score is calculated in real-time on a scale of 0 to 100% based on your dental labs campaign’s performance and your implementation of Google’s recommendations.

When calculating your score, Google considers your campaign’s:

• Bids & Budgets
• Ads & Extensions
• Keywords & Targeting
• Repairs

It also factors in variables such as:

• Statistics, settings, and the status of your account and campaigns
• Relevant impact of available recommendations
• Recent recommendations history
• Trends in the ads ecosystem

If your score does not equal 100%, Google provides recommendations and indicates how your score will be affected should you choose to apply it. A recommendation that would have a more meaningful impact on your campaign’s performance is given more weight on your overall score. This effect is represented by a “score uplift” value from <0.1% to 100%, representing the estimated impact on overall campaign performance.

How to improve your optimization score

Recommendations are designed to help you optimize your budget by improving bids, keywords, and ads. The end goal is to increase overall performance and efficiency of your ad campaigns.

To improve your score, you must either accept or decline Google’s recommendations. Your score will be updated no matter which option you choose. However, if you decide to dismiss the recommendations, they are represented in gray color when you hover over your score. You can view your dismissed recommendations at any time by clicking the “Dismissed” button:

Note: It’s important to know that your score could sum up to more than 100%. This is because some recommendations will invalidate other recommendations when accepted.

How to check your score and accept or decline recommendations for your dental lab website

Once you log in to your Google Ads account, click Recommendations from the left-head navigation menu. This will bring you to your Recommendations page, where at the top, you will see your optimization score:

Below that, you will see any recommendations that Google has suggested for your dental labs account.

You can view these recommendations at a glance or click “Learn more” to find out what impact each one might have and why it has been suggested for your account. If you have many recommendations, you can filter by specific category.

If you agree with Google’s recommendations, you can click “Apply” to apply that specific one or click “Apply All” to apply all of them at once. You can also dismiss the recommendation by clicking “Dismiss.”

Each recommendation will show a score uplift percentage under the label, “Potential Score” like this:

If this recommendation was applied, your optimization score would increase by 3.3%.

Recommendation examples

Recommendations are custom for each account. However, here are a few examples that you might see:

• Remove redundant keywords: Make your account easier to manage by removing redundant keywords:

• Promote landing pages missing from your ads: Landing pages relevant to potential customers are missing from your ads
• Bid more efficiently with Enhanced CPC: Automatically optimize your bids at auction time for searches more likely to lead to conversions

• Bid more efficiently with Target CPA: Get more conversions at a lower or similar CPA with a fully automated bid strategy

Target CPA and Enhanced CPC (ECPC) are both automated bid strategies that use machine learning to increase conversions. To learn more about automated bidding.

• Lower your bids: Lower your bids to get more clicks for the same or lower cost.
• Raise your budgets: Keep your ads running on your busiest days by fixing your limited budget.
• Add new keywords: Show your ads on more searches relevant to your business.
• Improve your mobile site: Avoid losing customers on mobile devices by improving your mobile site.

This list is only a snapshot of the potential recommendations. For a full list, please refer to Google’s help guide.

Improve your dental labs campaign performance with DentalLabSupport landing pages

While Google continues to make its ad platform more user-friendly through visual representations of performance (i.e. optimization score), maximizing your ads performance requires a hands-on approach in key areas of a successful ad campaign.

To learn more about DentalLabSupport Landing Pages and see it in action, request a free demo today. Call 888-715-9099 pr info@dentallabsupport.com www.dentallabsupport.com

Content’s role in lead generation

Content’s role in lead generation

The reason lead generation and qualification is important is the same reason content marketing has garnered so much attention over the last few years: Providing your prospects with useful, valuable information is an extremely effective way to both establish credibility as a brand and build invaluable trust between you and your audience.

Coincidentally, content marketing is the clear winner when it comes to lead generation tactics. According to the same CMI/Marketing Profs study, 85% of responding B2B marketers placed lead generation as their number one goal for their content marketing practice.

The only place the survey found different priorities were enterprise marketers or “organizations that are taking the first steps of their content marketing program.” And even in those cases, lead generation was still a close second or third.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at five pieces of content and how to turn them into lead-capturing and lead-qualifying machines.

1. Automated emails

Obvi.

Automated emails do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to lead generation, especially if you’re implementing a marketing automation program. It’s so powerful that 71% of B2B companies use email marketing for customer acquisition and 68% use it for customer retention.

Although it doesn’t take much to sign up for an email newsletter, it’s at least a small indicator someone is interested in your brand and your content. It’s also a good way to nurture your prospects and allows an easy way to communicate directly with your audience.

Pro-tip: Use your automated emails to distribute other “heavier” pieces of content.

If you’re producing “heavier” pieces of content, like e-books, case studies and white papers, your automated emails are a great way to encourage further engagement with your content. By tracking audience’s interaction with those emails, you’ve got an efficient way to both distribute content and qualify leads.

2. E-books

E-books make an effective content type for lead generation for two reasons:

• You can pack it with useful, in-depth information
• You can gate it

You can gate an e-book because it typically contains the kind of information a prospect would pay for. PricewaterhouseCoopers actually predicted e-book revenue will reach just over $8.5 billion in 2018.

That’s all well and good. But, for your organization, the most valuable currency for your content isn’t money. It’s info.

For an in-depth e-book, give your audience the option to download it in exchange for their name, email address and perhaps a couple other pieces of information you find useful such as the name of their company and their industry.

Your prospect will happily share some information about themselves in order to access valuable insights and useful tidbits, and you get valuable info about the people who are most interested in what your brand has to say.

3. Case studies

Case studies can be a real sweet spot for lead generation. They’re typically a little less time-intensive than an e-book and can indicate an interest not only in what your organization does, but also the kind of results it has generated for others.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to case studies and lead generation. Some marketers say a case study is informative and relevant enough to gate it. Others say case studies play such an important role in building credibility that it’s silly to put a barrier between the case study and your audience. Which one works best for you might depend on how many case studies you have and what other kinds of content assets you’re working with.

In any case, make sure you’re able to track who is interacting with those case studies and try featuring at least two to three case studies for every product or service you offer. Knowing which one(s) in particular a prospect looked at can give you and your sales team a better understanding about where to start the conversation.

4. Blogs

This is an often overlooked and undervalued lead generation tactic. It works sort of like an email in that it can serve as both a demand generation asset and a lead-generating and qualifying tool.

Demand generation differs from lead generation in that the desired outcome is less about qualifying individual leads for the sales team to pursue, but increasing brand awareness and general interest in what you have to offer. Blogs can do this really well.

But it can also help you generate leads in a couple different ways.

First, you can tailor other relevant blogs and heavier pieces of content to include within the blog itself. This is a great way to both provide your readers with additional value and encourage them to engage with more content.

Another way to use your blog to actually generate and qualify leads is to build a subscribe button, allowing readers to sign up (voluntarily!) and receive your blogs via email.

This would take some additional planning, strategy and IT resources. If you’re already using a marketing automation platform, setting this up could be a piece of cake. After it’s set up, this can be an easy way to make digesting your content even easier for an already captive audience.

5. Landing pages

When you think about it, your entire website is one giant piece of content, serving to engage and inform your audience through images, video and copy.

While it may seem a little redundant, there are a few ways a landing page can serve as a lead generation tool. The most obvious way is to build a landing page that hosts your gated content forms. While an e-book is the food, your landing page is the plate that presents it. Make your gated content landing pages easy to read and navigate, and make your calls-to-action easy to find.

Another way to use landing pages as a lead generation tool is a pricing page or a “Contact Us” page. These pages must also be very well designed, easy to use and understand, and include clear CTAs.

Marketing automation’s growing role

If lead generation is the ultimate goal, marketing automation is the ultimate method.

Marketing automation, while not an easy thing to master, can be an incredibly powerful tool in your arsenal. It’s becoming so popular that 83,000 companies are using the 10 biggest platforms alone.

Marketing automation brings a new and exciting dynamic into the world of lead generation for three reasons:

You can automate your marketing messages

This is an obvious benefit, seeing as “automation” is in the title. But the ability to configure certain emails to send out after certain actions (like signing up for your blog or downloading an e-book) makes this an undeniably awesome feature.

You can automate (and simplify) your lead-scoring process

Organizations that have a lead-scoring strategy experience a 77% boost in lead-generation ROI. Assign different content types different lead scores and watch them travel down the pipeline right into your sale team’s lap.

You can track it all

You can’t measure a return if you don’t have the proper way to track it. Marketing automation, with all its bells and whistles, also comes with the tools to capture all the right insights you need to make better decisions in the future.

Marketing automation is also helping organizations find better alignment between marketing and sales, making it a good fit for a robust lead-generation strategy. Though it might be a bit of an undertaking, it’s turning out to be a lead-generation juggernaut.

For more details about Dental Lab Lead Generation Stratifies, contact DentalLabSupport.com