The Development of IT Has Changed the Face of Marketing

According to the Financial Times, the development of IT has changed and evolved the role of marketing and sales in business.

The article highlighted that the development of software such as CRM has become a key tool to improve efficiency in business, resulting directly in greater success.

However, the development of technology has moved on from simply employing CRM software – it now enables business to integrate a range of different approaches such as email marketing, social media and CRM systems. Only by bringing everything together and gaining insight into what works and when, can each channel be developed to reinforce the others, improving the success of the overall marketing and sales activity.

Technology such as Profunnel’s demand generation platform delivers incredible visibility over campaigns, together with the ability to enhance both tactical and strategic marketing activity. By integrating with the CRM system it means companies can create, control and manage campaigns across key media, while giving insight into why, when and how your customers are most likely to buy.

Click here for more information on the demand generation technology available.

The Key to Customer Engagement – Your Website

In a competitive B2B world, first impressions of your website are essential in turning prospects into customers. A successful website must engage its audience from the outset.

Information such as white papers and a regularly updated blog provide added value and give a reason for customers to keep visiting the site. But while content attracts visitors, businesses need to understand how to turn this website traffic into new customers.

The key to this is following your website visitors from their first visit through their whole journey - how often a lead visits your site, how long they spend there and what they look at gives companies an incredible insight and understanding of potential customers.

It’s here that using a quality forensics solution to understand visitor actions comes into its own, giving your team the information it needs to improve communications and ultimately sales. The latest technology goes far beyond just the basic analytics, delivering knowledge that can enhance business performance and put you ahead of the competition.

CRM and Social Media

With the rapid rise of social media, technology has been developed to help use this to a competitive advantage. Social media is now integral to nurturing customer relationships, and gaining a competitive edge to win sales.

The technology has developed to allow users to maximise the potential of social media and integrate with their CRM activity, providing a far greater insight and understanding into their customers’ activities, motivations and touchpoints. The results allow sales and marketing to deliver a more co-ordinated communication programme to generate sales, which in today’s competitive market can be crucial in winning business.

For example, many of our customers, through our system, now create social site-specific links (tracking URLs) back to homepages or landing pages with in-depth tracking and reporting capabilities. This means clients can now publish content on social networking sites through our system, while tracking and monitoring responses, which enables better understanding of potential business and drives enhanced future marketing from the best performing social media sources.

EU Forecasts Growth

Amid all the talk of spending cuts, the latest news that the European Commission has raised its forecast for growth in the EU this year is a shot of positivity.

After what has been referred to as "particularly strong" growth in the second quarter, the Commission is now predicting growth in 2010 of 1.8% in the EU, up from an earlier estimate of 1%. For the UK it is now projecting expansion of 1.7%, up from 1.2%.

For British business this should boost optimism for the future, and encourage business to look for the sales opportunities – both in the UK and overseas – that exist. Having an effective lead generation system is crucial to support this, enabling companies to gain an enviable insight into the motivations of potential customers, and communicate with them when they are actually ready to buy.

With the future looking brighter, why not make the most of the latest lead generation technology and be part of the growth?