Blog - Valuelead

27 October 2022 Marketing, News Sebastian Schulten

How much are you ready to start B2B digital marketing?

When potential customers start looking for the services your company offers, the first place they look is online. That’s why all your sales and marketing efforts must work in parallel, on every single digital channel. After all, the online customer journey is made up of the sum of many parts: SEO, content, targeting, accessibility, coding and everything in between. An objective assessment of these components not only helps measure your company’s performance against industry benchmarks, it also offers food for thought to make improvements. In this article, you will learn some of the key points for B2B marketing, which fall into six main themes: Proposition, Targeting, Website, Content, Search and Lead Generation. Visibility of the value proposition The visibility of your proposition has an impact on the success of your entire online presence. Great design, layout and structure are important … but if your site visitors don’t understand what you do and why you do it better than the competition, they don’t have the incentive to buy from you! It is therefore good to remember that the proposition is the explicit and / or implicit value that a company puts in its products and that helps its customers choose it because it can give them an advantage. It is therefore a concrete statement of intent, in which it is clearly explained what is being sold and how it will be made and, finally, what its key benefit is. Targeting Your online presence should immediately attract the kind of customers you want to win. So, the more you know your customers, the easier it is to tailor your offers to them. The more you understand them, the more comfortable they feel and the longer they will feel comfortable. So to identify the right customer target, you need to take into account demographics, location and, above all, interests and opinions. Site loading speed Visitors will linger on your site for some time. And the more time they spend, the more money they will spend on your products and services! So what should your website look like? In a word, fast. It needs to load images and text quickly, be responsive, work on both mobile and desktop, and keep visitors as engaged as possible before they lose interest. Google Lighthouse can be useful as an open source automated tool for measuring the quality of web pages. Accessibility Businesses that prioritize accessibility are more likely to be seen as innovative and inclusive businesses, thus reaching more people. But how does this impact your website? On two fronts. First, it means having a responsive site that works on different types of devices. Secondly, accessibility includes the implementation of several features to help users with some disability navigate your website better. Although the level of accessibility of a website may vary, there is no doubt that this translates into a better information consultation and a better user experience, which has a positive effect on your brand and its reputation. About us A company is more than just a business, it’s a group of people: talented experts who work tirelessly to help customers. People buy from other people, which is why it is so important to outline who you are on a dedicated page under the heading “About Us”. It is also an opportunity to tell the story of your company, why it was born and how potential customers can get in touch with you.

22 August 2022 News, Sales Sebastian Schulten

Billing and CRM

Invoicing is a hot topic for every company, because today we try to simplify management and to have a 360-degree view of everything related to accounting. Furthermore, corporate teams are becoming increasingly liquid and even those who do not work with accounting are required to be aware of it, even indirectly. In order to unify and harmonize information flows, we need a central system that integrates the existing systems. A single access point that collects and exposes data from all company systems. Let’s take an example of a team that deals with sales and marketing. How can a team working with pipelines of new and potential customers view the accounting situation of the same customers at the same time?Below are the advantages of integrating order and invoice management software with CRM systems. CRM and order management CRM software is used by a company to manage relationships with its contacts and customers, by tracking and collecting various information. These are for & nbsp; guide the sales force to plan and execute commercial actions, as well as to improve customer retention and manage the customer in a more targeted way. As regards the management of accounting and billing, among many other data, there are ERPs, an acronym for Enterprise resource planning, that is, planning of business resources and allows you to effectively keep productivity and finance under control. CRM and ERP are therefore two solutions that ideally could be integrated, because with the first (I have more information about the customer and) activities are better organized and a greater number of commercial negotiations are closed, while with the second one manages the sales order and the entire process of fulfillment, invoicing, collection and accounting. ADVANTAGES OF THE INTEGRATION BETWEEN ERP AND CRM SYSTEMS One of the advantages is certainly the transparency and ease of access to data. Thus, all employees can access the customer’s invoice and payment history, useful for example for adopting different and customized customer retention strategies.A greater presence of data also allows you to create more accurate reports. This results in many benefits including better financial planning and cash flow optimization. Savings on business costs. Savings on business costs are also not to be forgotten. The company can achieve many savings thanks to the integration, which allows to standardize the flows in a single system, speeding up management. For example, the integration between ERP and CRM allows for better management of offers and orders: the company can convert the offer created and issued with the CRM directly into order in the ERP, using the same system and saving time and money. < / p> Improved customer service. Finally, another benefit is improved customer service. CRM becomes a useful tool for grouping the information obtained in the sales phase. And the combination of this information with economic indications such as the annual expenditure towards your company, their most recent purchases, credit limits, uncovered invoices, allows you to have a truly complete picture of the individual and his company. When it comes to the integration between ERP and CRM, it is evident how this allows a 360 ° view of its customers, understanding the customer’s loyalty, his preferences and his economic potential faster, so that marketing can convey the message for him. fairer, and customer service can anticipate problems.

11 July 2022 News, Sales Sebastian Schulten

5 TOOL OF DIGITAL SALES B2B 2022

The online world is full of very useful tools of any kind, and knowing how to navigate this jungle is essential to adopt the most functional solutions. In the last article, we suggested 5 “Tech” tools, which if implemented are of great help in optimizing B2B digital marketing processes. In today’s article, we offer 5 other software of the “Sales” genre, always free, capable of supporting you in the selection of opportunities, in the management of business relationships, and in closing sales. My-ip.it When launching email marketing campaigns, care must be taken to have the lowest possible bounce rate, to avoid the risk of ending email communications in the spam folder. This is possible only if in possession of valid contacts, and for this reason there are tools capable of verifying the existence of any email address in real-time. One of them is present on the website www.mio-ip.it: just enter the desired address in the search bar and the software decides in a few moments whether a specific email box works or not, helping you to have a CRM that is always clean and updated. In addition to the email verification tool, the www.mio-ip.it site provides others capable of verifying the IP address of the computer in use, the speed of the internet connection, the reachability of a site, the availability of a domain, and finally extract the email addresses from a text. Grammarly Keybord Grammarly Keybord is a software (also available as a Google Extension) that facilitates the drafting of emails and documents in English. The free version of Grammarly corrects grammar, spelling and punctuation errors thanks to its accurate error detection. In addition, thanks to its artificial intelligence, it offers suggestions as synonyms and provides information on the tone of the message. With these functions, it becomes easier to build texts in English and contact prospects from abroad via email. Calendly Always being busy is good for business, but it makes scheduling a real job. Calendly is an application for managing appointments, events, and meetings, which helps to save time in setting dates. Just send the invitee a link that leads to Calendly, where all your availabilities and times are marked, and people will be able to book a slot among those available (even if they don’t use Calendly). In this way, you can be sure of being free on the date that potential customers book a meeting, as well as eliminating the problem of continuous rescheduling of meetings and long threads of emails and phone calls. MailChimp It is an all-in-one tool where you can manage your mailing lists, create custom email templates, and fuel your marketing campaigns. A tool like Mailchimp is ideal for companies that want to take advantage of email marketing and manage their campaigns easily and automatically. Mailchimp can be purchased in packages, and the “Free” plan includes the management of up to 2,000 contacts, with 10,000 mailings per month and a daily limit of 2,000. VidYard During the smart working period, tools like VidYard have become the key to making remote sales smoother for many businesses. With VidYard you can film and use short videos to add a personal touch at all stages of the sales cycle. They are useful both in the prospect research phase and in the sales and solution proposal phase. The benefits of short targeted videos like VidYard’s are many. From the increase in Brand Awareness to the greater knowledge of one’s product or service, to the establishment of better relationships of trust.

12 September 2022 Marketing, News Sebastian Schulten

B2B marketing still needs effective email marketing

One of the most efficient tools to make room in the B2B market, data in hand, is the evergreen email marketing. Even today, emails are the favorite channel of 9 out of 10 professionals (Content Marketing Institute, 2020), thanks also to the average levels of CTR (Click-through rate, a measure for the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns) that are truly impressive. But for effective communications, it’s important to know how to write B2B marketing emails. To do this, there are important factors to consider: below we list some of them to make your business fruitful. Target audience. First, you need to think about the target audience. Knowing your audience is the first step to be successful and establishing a good relationship with them is the second step. Knowing your audience means knowing who they are, the problems they have to solve and the values they follow. This is essential to understand which topics to cover and how. Referring back to the buyer persona and related information is a great way to create targeted emails. Title. Then, it should be remembered that the title of a newsletter can be the reason for the success or failure of a communication. This is essential to ensure that the email is noticed and opened in the midst of the many that arrive in the inbox of their leads. It is therefore important that the object is close to the needs of users, proposing solutions to their needs. It happened, for example, that a first experiment of massive use of keywords in the subject made a lot of difference in terms of performance, with an open rate increased by almost 20% and higher conversions than other emails with a more reasoned subject. Mail Body. Once this first barrier has been overcome, the recipients of the email must find a text that is easy to read, with short and relevant sentences. Ideal is therefore a simple and direct text, which creates curiosity, which refers to the target and which includes the most important keywords. Better if accompanied by a captivating graphic style, with reasoned colors and elements that are quick to load and interpret. Time. Among the elements that make the difference, frequency and time should not be forgotten. The frequency refers to the interval that is allowed to pass between one communication and another: it can be a week, less, or more. Instead, in time, we refer to identifying the best time to send your newsletter: which day of the week? at what time? These are two factors that strongly affect performance and finding the best time becomes one of the keys to success. An example is letting a few days pass between one email and another, leaving time to think about the recipient. But to avoid the opposite effect, ie that the recipient forgets and considers our emails as spam, it is better not to wait too long, thus making sure that the sequence of the emails takes place preferably within a period of 7 days. Testing. There are studies that have tried to answer these questions, trying to identify the perfect email algorithm. But as always, the best way to know which option is best is to test! A / B testing is essential in email marketing and is used to test alternative versions of titles, graphics, texts, delivery times, but also for the combination of these elements. Knowing how to write emails in B2B marketing is important. There are many aspects to take into consideration, including public knowledge, the right subject, the text of the email, the sending times.To get the desired results, if this is your first time doing email marketing, it will take time and practice. But it is an effort that is worth making and that pays off, because email marketing is a classic that works and by now many companies have built and today are building their success in the B2B market with the help of good old email.

7 March 2022 News, Sales Paolo Tacconi

The “as a service” sales marketing service is launched ValueSales for accelerated growth of scale-up tech and B2B service companies

Milan, Italy Valuelead announces the launch of the Marketing and Sales As a Service ValueSales service, the innovative outsourcing service that allows all B2B companies to use the best digital resources to increase their effectiveness on the market. Using content marketing, advertising, digital programming and the exclusive YourWOO software in “as a service” mode, all companies of any size can dedicate their internal resources to corporate strategic development and drastically reduce marketing and sales costs. “Thanks to ValueSales, finally, even small and medium-sized B2B companies have the best technologies, the most effective contents and the most efficient processes available to them easily and at reduced costs, to sell more and better” said Paolo Tacconi, founder and CEO of Valuelead. “We have thought of those innovative and growing companies that need to reach a widespread and highly contested corporate audience such as that of Italian and European SMEs: ValueSales is the missing promotional and sales tool at flexible costs and predictable results. Among the main advantages. • Complete outsourcing of digital sales & marketing activities, without resorting to dedicated internal resources• Transparent and monthly subscription cost to reduce the financial risk of marketing activities• Program entirely designed for small and medium-sized high-growth service companies that want to reach their customers in the SME world• A team always available to the customer to direct the activity towards the most effective channel• Activation times under two weeks to start receiving and managing quality B2B leads using digital The ValueSales service is already available at this URL: https://www.valuelead.com/en/valuesale-eng/ Who is Valuelead: Valuelead is an innovative digital service provider for the marketing and sales of small and medium-sized service companies. Born in 2019, its mission is simplification and transparency in the provision of digital services for companies. Using the best technologies and resources available, it provides outsourced and “as a service” solutions, revolutionizing the customer-supplier relationship in marketing.It has served dozens of small and medium-sized Italian and European companies, generating thousands of qualified B2B leads for companies in the fields of software, artificial intelligence, security, cloud and legal services and corporate security.

28 February 2022 Marketing, News Paolo Tacconi

Relevance: The First Rule Of B2B Communication

In one day we receive much more information than a person received a hundred years ago in his entire life. A lifetime would not be enough to read all these contents. Legitimate defenseBy force of circumstances we have to defend ourselves. We have all become expert information selectors. In a fraction of a second we decide whether it is worth opening or scrolling that email, that article, that post on a social media. On what basis does this selection take place? One would say “I choose the most important”. But it is an imprecise explanation. If that were the case, we would all have followed closely the Indian elections (1 billion voters, the largest democracy in the world) or the evolution of global warming. No, the importance … is not important. Neither is the ‘freshness’ of the information. or the authority of the source. What really makes us decide whether to read content is its relevance: how much does this content matter to me reading it. “I read this content”, we say to ourselves, “because it talks about me, because it is ‘made especially for me’. The first rule of communicationBeing relevant is therefore the first rule of communication, especially in a B2B context. The center of communication is the recipient, not the issuer. If you read this text it is probably because it is about you. If it were just about us, you probably wouldn’t have gotten to this line. To be relevant upstream of the communication there must be drastic choices. I cannot be relevant to everyone: I have to get a precise picture of the recipient of my communication. I need to know precisely ‘for whom’ I am writing. The ‘buyer persona’We at Valuelead encourage our customers not only to select their interlocutor but to paint him with a wealth of details. We are not talking about the target (male, 30-50 years old, high school education, manager, lives in a big city) but about ‘buyer persona’. We urge the customer to draw a portrait as defined as possible of his ideal interlocutor (and therefore potential customer): What car does he drive, what kind of house he lives in, what sport he does or would like to do…. The paradox of verisimilitudeBy doing so, do we not risk reducing the effectiveness of the message by narrowing the goal? No. A novelist dedicates pages and pages to outline the protagonist with a thousand unique details. Yet despite this, indeed precisely for this reason, we identify with him. This paradox was analyzed by Daniel Kahneman, the ‘father’ of behavioral economics and Nobel laureate in Economics. Kahneman and Tverski in Thoughts slow and fast, reported an experiment that we propose again with some modifications: Based on this description “Linda, thirty-one years old, she is single, very intelligent and outspoken. She graduated in philosophy. As a student she was very interested in the problems of discrimination and social justice, and she also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations “; having to indicate the most probable alternative among the following: 1) Linda is a militant of a feminist movement, 2) Linda is a teacher, 3) Linda is a teacher and militant in a feminist movement, most of the subjects chose the third without hesitation. Yet the number of female teachers and militants is a fraction of the number of female teachers (perhaps less than 1% one might think). You ‘sound’ to us ‘more likely’ simply because it is plausible. A woman could identify with this character even if she does not teach or even if she is not a feminist or has no degree in philosophy. There is no relevance without ‘buyer persona’In practice, having a precise image of the recipient of the communication, what we at Valuelead call ‘buyer persona’, helps immensely in the selection of themes and their treatment and extends instead of restricting it, the number of people who ‘find themselves’ in the communication. . But it’s not just this. We dare to say that without investing time in defining the buyer persona (its attributes must not be chosen at random: they must be as relevant as possible … relevant to the purposes of what we want to offer or sell) it is not likely that our communication will be considered relevant .

15 February 2022 Marketing, News Paolo Tacconi

Word-Of-Mouth: Two Rules And A ‘Miracle’

Needless to call it word-of-mouth. ‘Spread the word’ is fine. It is one of the best marketing tools, even if it is the oldest and the least expensive. But are we sure it always works? Yesterday I was stopped by a person. The battery in his car had run out and he asked me if I knew a nearby electrician. None of them came to mind. Continuing, not even 200 meters away, I saw the sign of an auto electrician to which I had also turned to even a year before! Maybe it happened to you too. I forgot it. Yet I had been happy with his work; it wasn’t too expensive either! Having a satisfied customer is not enough to trigger word of mouth. It is necessary to impress yourself in his mind in order to be remembered and therefore advised. Reflecting on my experience as a customer – and as a supplier – I started a list of ‘successful word of mouth principles’. Obviously it’s just a start and I hope you help me complete it. 1) Satisfying the customer is not enough, you have to amaze him!Today, as a customer, we expect absolutely error-free, fast and comprehensive service. Therefore, meeting the customer’s expectations fully is not enough to be remembered. We need to give something more. And this ‘more’ is not always the good price: it is something unexpected and personal. Let’s think about our travel experiences for example. What do we remember of a vacation or a stay in a hotel? Was the bed comfortable? Was the bathroom clean? No. We remember that personal and unexpected touch. That ‘something more’! 2) A flow of communication to stay in the customer’s radar.Why hadn’t the electrician come to mind when answering the unfortunate driver? Simply because… in life hardly one thinks of auto electricians. And vice versa, auto electricians hardly think about their former customers. To stay on the customer’s radar, on the other hand, you must always be present in his mind, with a constant flow of communications. Constant but not pressing. In my opinion, a continuous stream of unmissable, limited and exclusive ‘special offers’ makes you nervous. Better a flow of communications that are pleasant to read, with no or almost no overtly commercial connotations and consistent with the type of customer. 3) The miracle of the Prospect-2-prospect.In my opinion, doing so opens up the ‘miraculous’ possibility of being recommended by a non-customer! Like auto electricians, I sell services that are not of continuous use. It may be that my prospect has not yet had the opportunity to become my client but has nevertheless appreciated my way of contacting him. If I was able to give life to a narrative, I created a relationship, let’s say ‘platonic’ with the prospect and it is perfectly possible that this will lead him to recommend me to another potential client.

15 January 2022 Marketing Paolo Tacconi

Marketing-As-A-Service. Why not?

If I can, I’ll go to the gym tonight. I have a subscription, one of the many subscriptions that I find every month on my credit card statement: Netflix, Spotify, the PC antivirus … I go to the gym because there I can choose from the latest equipment, I find expert staff, I meet other people and … I can unsubscribe whenever I want! Excuse me, do you have a light?And so I too became part of the subscription economy, that era of access that the futurologist Jeremy Rifkin wrote about (back in 2001). Why on earth buy goods (paying fixed costs, losing the advantages of technological updating, giving up advice) when you can rent them and always have the best? Years ago, I must admit, I built my own gym, in a corner of the rumpus room. What happened? What was the leading edge of technology in just a few months had become scrap metal. I was bored just seeing those tools, let alone using them. And you, after how many months did you get bored? Me after three. We have been using software-as-a-service in the company for years now, the cars are serviced leasing, as are the copiers / printers. Many of our businesses could take on an as-a-service mode. Oh no, marketing is not possible!As-a-service mode also for marketing, or at least a part of it. Thing? Marketing? No, that is not. For charity! Marketing is an office, a box in the organization chart, a team of valiant collaborators. You can’t even think about it! Or maybe yes. After all, HR has always been outsourced to a ‘payroll and contributions’ study. The passive and active cycle has been online since the invoices are dematerialized. Let’s not talk about the logistics. Why couldn’t marketing be done as-a-service? Perhaps it is a ‘pre-digital’ mentality that makes us see marketing as something untouchable. Once upon a time, small and large companies decided if and when to appear. They launched the ‘campaign’ and then re-dived like submarines. When you are on the market, you can no longer hideFor some time now, a company has no longer been able to hide. And it doesn’t have to. Like parties, businesses are also ‘in the electoral campaign’ 365 days a year. The company must communicate on a regular and continuous basis as the heart must beat and the lungs inhale and exhale. I don’t stop breathing because I’m focused on driving. In the same way I do not stop being present (for example on social networks) because I have focused the best resources of my marketing on a campaign or an event. Digital marketing and ‘active’ marketing. The two must travel in parallel, without hindering each other, without overlapping their deadlines and priorities. Experts to do, measure, improveMarketing-as-a-service does not mean giving out (let alone doing away with) the marketing of a company. It means having digital marketing managed by experts (like the coach in the gym) who makes available the most modern technologies and approaches, with which you can agree and measure trends and objectives. It means giving consistency, aligning it to the highest level, keeping the pace of a company’s breath, thus freeing up resources to concentrate on campaigns, innovations, added value without distracting resources from your desire, from your need to change.

15 December 2021 Sales Paolo Tacconi

Networking? Yes please. But then?

I find them in the most unexpected places: in the pocket of the jacket I wore the last time at the Congress or in a pocket of the 24 hour with which I went to the Fair; they pop up dusty in a corner of the desk… These are the business cards I collected when, obeying the marketing manuals, I got involved in networking. Obviously none of these contacts have been useful or used. What happened? I probably ran into one of the 4 ‘post networking’ mistakes (or more than one!) Dying as a prospectCollecting ‘contacts’ indiscriminately is useless. Indeed it is counterproductive. You can’t be everything to everyone. Even regardless of the time it would take, if I want to interest ‘everyone a little,’ I end up not being relevant to anyone. I don’t know about you, but my profit depends 80% on a small number of good customers. So I don’t have to look for ‘customers’ but ‘good customers’. Potential good customers aren’t the ones with a big budget, nor the closest, nor the ones where I know the most people. They are the potential customers for whom I represent a potential good supplier. They are the prospects with respect to which I have a distinctive character. To each his own listA real list of contacts (customers and prospects) is a corporate asset, increasingly the main asset. It should be valued and depreciated like a server or machine tool. And it must be shared. Someone will invest in a CRM, someone else will just need an Excel spreadsheet but there cannot be a database of marketing customers and another of Sales. And it must be managed, updated, enriched. You can’t get to the day before the launch to find that half of the emails we sent went back because the address had changed. Stop & GoCommunicating once in a while is not only useless: it is counterproductive. The hallmark of good customers and good relationships is continuity. I must therefore also be continuous in communicating. Each company has its own rhythm and this rhythm must be maintained. Genius and recklessnessCreativity is fine but improvisation is not. The precise definition of the target (or targets: I can also start several parallel lines of communication) and the pace of communication are the pillars of a strategy. I have to decide which channels to use, define formal and content guidelines to ensure consistency and recognition of my messages. I have to provide procedures to be activated to react to feedback (whether positive or negative) with the timing dictated by the medium. It’s always late to start strategically dealing with your network of contacts. But postponing is even worse. A strategy allows you to be more effective by investing less time. And not to fill your pockets unnecessarily with business cards!

12 November 2021 News Paolo Tacconi

The Way To Go, Together

Our time is complicated, the challenges are many and for this reason it is time to commit to understanding the way to go. New techniques, new ways to live in the environment that surrounds us and that continues to change around us. Big companies are getting bigger and small and medium-sized companies have more and more energy and flexibility. But they can’t do it all by themselves. We know how to help you. How will we do itWe will offer you a revolutionary structure and a platform that will help you find new customers without effort. What we will do? It’s simple: we’ll talk to you.

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