MARKETING
APPS
for Lead
Generation
Making your digital experience
more useful, more engaging and
more effective.
01
Skyrocket Your
Results
03
What is a
Marketing App?
04
Lead Generation
Inspiration & Ideas
02
Why Marketing
Apps Matter
Table of Contents
05
Start Improving your Lead
Generation Results
01
Make your Lead Generation Results
Skyrocket with Marketing Apps
You need leads? If so, then it’s likely you’ve been using one of the key tactics in the unofficial lead-gen marketer’s playbook: Drive traffic into campaign landing pages that include an offer and a form. For years, that’s about as complex as it got when it came to scooping up lots of leads online. But with competition for time, attention and hand-raisers heating up intensely with each passing day, this old standby tactic is becoming less effective, and leads are becoming harder & harder to capture.
If you are a marketer tasked with generating high quality, engaged leads, you already know it’s hard enough to get a lead, let alone a great one. Your visitors expect usefulness, relevancy, and interactivity from you, and those expectations directly impact your ability to get those visitors to complete your form. ‘Good enough’ lead-gen landing pages no longer provide good enough results. Online visitors expect more.
High
Quality
Inter
activity
1
Marketing apps can provide value to your audience through usefulness. For example, if you provide a custom configurator of your product, that’s useful—and people will register in order to use the configurator. That same content in a static PDF might not be perceived as valuable, because it’s really just a piece of marketing collateral (and who wants to fill out a form to get marketing collateral!?). The more perceived value something has, the more likely you are to get people to complete a form to access or use it.2
Marketing apps are easy to test, with bigger potential
outcomes. Just as you can test a headline on your landing page, you can test the color, layout, copy, forms, and content of a marketing app. Heck, you can even test two entirely different marketing apps against each other to see which converts better. Marketing apps should be tested, just like any other online experience, and those tests should yield conversion lift and learning. These types of tests can yield much bigger lifts than a simple headline or button test.
3
Marketing apps provide a wealth of insightful data to make your outcomes better. All visitor behavior in a marketing app can be captured. Leverage this data by appending it to the lead record and pass off a rich lead record to your inside sales team showing all responses and clicks that visitor took within the app. And don’t stop there. Leverage this data at the aggregate level by viewing trends in responses, drop off rates, and outcomes and use this information to fuel new marketing apps & new tests for higher conversion rates. Better yet, track and leverage user As competition heats up and marketers seek strategies to generatequality leads in the face of increased clutter and higher expectations, marketing apps provide new opportunities for more engagement and higher conversion rates. Marketing apps turn tired lead-gen campaigns into modern high-performing lead-gen machines.
Adding marketing apps to your lead-gen touchpoints — both within your main website as well as within your landing pages — creates an opportunity for much higher conversion rates. Here’s how marketing apps can help you drive more leads into your funnel:
“A relationship exists between placing a high
priority on digital experience marketing and
revenue growth. 76% of participants reporting
revenue growth in the most recent fiscal year
also put a high priority on digital experience
creation. For organizations that report
declining revenue growth, only 6% report
digital experience creation as a high priority.”
~ Demand Metric, Digital Marketing Landscape, The Power of
Digital Experiences in 2014
behavior across all your marketing apps to further personalize and target from marketing to marketing app.
The old tactic of putting a form on a simple landing page with a white paper offer is so over. Interactive marketing apps are an easy way to engage & convert your traffic.
But we bet you are wondering how to get started. Have no fear!
Brainstorming ways to increase the interactivity of your lead generation campaigns is easier than you think. You probably already have existing content that can be transformed into an interactive experience.
• Turn your list of industry-specific best practices into assessments your visitors can take to rate themselves for how well they are executing those best practices.
• Take your best sales person, pick their brain on how they engage with your best customers, and turn that into a product configurator that helps your visitors determine which products are right for them.
• Leverage your internal pricing spreadsheets by turning them into interactive calculators that let your buyers determine specific pricing or price ranges for your products & solutions.
• Turn your audience segmentation messaging into conversion paths that allow your visitors to easily segment themselves to quickly drill down into the most relevant content you’ve got for them.
02
Why Marketing Apps Matter
Online visitors expect useful, meaningful digital experiences every time they interact with your brand. Your digital touchpoints give you a critical opportunity to meet (or exceed) visitor expectations through easy,
enjoyable, interactive experiences. Several trends are quickly converging to radically raise the expectation of the average web visitor.
• Mobility: Users are increasingly conditioned to interact with mobile apps, which provide an instant feedback loop. Book an appointment. Play a game and see your stats. Transfer funds between accounts. Put in data, get a result. There is an inherent interactivity in a mobile app that users have come to expect with their browser-based experiences as well.
• Utility: It’s no longer enough to pitch your wares and win the sale.
Consumers expect useful experiences from the brands they do business with. A helpful experience will always win over a self-serving experience that simply overloads the visitor with information.
• Content Overload: With the explosion of content available at every turn, web users are increasingly feeling overwhelmed. Visitors now either stockpile content to read ‘at a later date’, or they surf & skim, ‘snacking’ on content rather than dining.
Mobility
Utility
Digital touch points can drive
revenue, lower costs, build brands,
and engender customer loyalty.
But to achieve these potential
benefits, companies must deliver
digital interactions that meet their
customers’ needs in easy and
enjoyable ways.
~ Forrester Research, Top 10 Ways To Improve
Digital Experiences
Marketing apps can transform static content into interactive, useful digital experiences. Forrest Research identifies 3 types of customer perceptions that a digital experience must align with:
Enjoyable — How enjoyable were they to do
business with?
Easy — How easy were they to do business with?
Useful — How effective were they at meeting
your needs?
“The degree of sophistication of the digital
experience that is created is a clear predictor
of brand perception.”
~ Demand Metric, Digital Marketing Landscape, The Power of
Digital Experiences in 2014
03
What is a Marketing App?
A marketing app is a browser-based digital experience designed for user interaction. It’s not a native mobile app that runs on a mobile operating system as an installed application. Rather, it’s an interactive, engaging experience that lives within the browser, regardless of device. It’s desktop, mobile, tablet it’s any device, any time. If you are an online marketer, you probably already have marketing apps like:
• Quizzes • Assessments • Surveys • Contests • Conversion Paths • Calculators • eBooks • Wizards • Configurators • eCatalogs
• Interactive White Papers • Look Books
A marketing app typically includes some sort of feedback loop where the outcome is directly impacted by the interaction of the visitor. In this way, even a sophisticated, logic-based landing page or microsite can be cate-gorized as a marketing app.
Quizzes & Assessments Contests
Calculators Wizards & Configurators
Surveys
eBooks eCatalogs Conversion Paths
04
Lead Generation Inspiration & Ideas
Ready to drive way more leads with interactive app-like experiences? Here are some ideas and examples to get your ideas flowing!
Content Wizard
Content wizards let visitors drill down to their favorite content while enabling you to learn who’s on your site and what interests your visitors have. Rather than showing long lists of white papers and webinars to wade through, content wizards provide a more enjoyable and personal user experience and allow you as the marketer to gain specific knowledge about your leads. Ask your visitors about their interests or how they like to consume content, and serve up the most relevant stuff you’ve got.
Here are some options for using content wizards to
generate leads:
• Allow visitors to go through the wizard, and insert a form before they access or download the resulting content.
• At the end of the wizard, reveal only long excerpts from the content, and have visitors register to get full access to the content.
• Try a lead generation form at the start of the wizard and have visitors register first.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Try varying the number of steps in the wizard to see how increasing or reducing the pre-conversion steps impacts conversion rate.
• Test where you insert the form to determine where visitors are most likely to bail or convert.
• Test content (copy, images, buttons) at the start of the wizard to decrease bounce rate.
Conversion Path
Do you have specific messaging for verticals, roles, or business need and struggle with getting the right content into the right hands? A conversion path will help visitors step themselves through a series of simple choices to quickly get to the most relevant and targeted information. The post-choice page is then more specific to the visitor’s interest and more likely to convert their initial engagement into conversion. And, conversion paths are mutually beneficial—giving marketers valuable segmentation data tied to the resulting lead record and tied back to the referring source of traffic.
Here are some options for using conversion paths to
generate leads:
• After visitors have stepped through the choice(s), have a lead generation form before providing the relevant asset or information.
• After visitors have completed a short lead form in your conversion path, use your ‘thank you’ page to upsell a “contact sales now” option, helping you get the most interested leads into your sales team’s hands instantly.
• Pass all conversion path choices into your CRM or marketing automation along with the lead record, so you can use that segmentation information for future nurture tracks.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Try testing different segment labels and calls-to-action to minimize bounce rate. • Try testing different page layouts, visually emphasizing the most important segments first.
• Track your tests to see how the various segment labels impact bounce rate and/or conversion.
Quiz / Assessment
Turn your best practices into an online self-assessment or quiz. Based on visitor responses to questions, you can deliver personalized recommen-dations for improvements. You can use the data that you gain from the answers to drive targeted marketing automation programs and to surface warmer leads to sales with pre-fab insight into pains. For quizzes to work well, they must offer valuable information.
How to generate leads with a quiz or assessment:
• Try gating the quiz results at the very end. After completing the assessment, the visitor is highly curious to see their results and will be more likely to convert.
• Let visitors take the quiz or assessment without any registration, including the results and offer to send personalized recommendations as an option.
• Try the old standby—if your content is of very high value, require visitors to complete a form before providing them access to the quiz or assessment.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Test radically different versions of your first page to see which version reduces bounce rates and increases engagement with the quiz.
• Test where you insert the lead generation form—try requiring sign-up before taking the quiz versus before getting the recommendations versus only if the respondent
wants to receive the recommendations via email.
• Test different number of questions and or answers to optimize for quiz completion and conversion.
Calculator
Turn your internal pricing spreadsheet into an online calculator. Even complex pricing can be converted into a pricing range estimator. Most organizations have something that can be calculated using an engaging app-like experience. This provides the immediate gratification that B2B buyers crave while allowing sales to continue to build value prior to delivering a specific price quote by providing them with highly price-qualified leads.
Take a look at some tips for generating leads with a calculator:
• Offer to send pricing results from the calculator to the prospect instantly via email, rather than displaying the pricing results in the calculator itself.
• Display pricing in the calculator with a prominently featured form to contact sales.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Try varying form fields to determine optimal form length.
• A calculator is a great place to test different headlines, images and calls to action around the calculator itself.
• Test different forms of calculators (sliders versus text inputs, for example)
Configurator
Do your products or services require complex configurations to
determine the right personalized solution? Configurators allow visitors to assemble or package your product or service to what they specifically are looking for. This provides a valuable service to the visitor while providing marketing with even more valuable packaging data on what visitors need and want. This insight can be used in marketing automation programs as well as in personal selling to cater messages and offers, which makes sales and marketing smarter, more likely to satisfy visitor expectations, and more likely to convert traffic into leads.
Here are a couple of options for how to generate leads with
a configurator:
• Use a lead generation form at the end before giving the visitor the configuration results. • Share a summary of the configuration, but offer to send complete configuration
results via email.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Experiment with the number of steps and questions in your configurator to optimize for engagement & completion.
• There is often reluctance to divulge information deemed too personal or specific, so experimenting with varying degrees of specificity can reveal the sweet spots at which information gathering and conversion optimization are in alignment.
• Test layout and copy on the first screen of the configurator to decrease bounce rate and get more visitors engaged with the marketing app.
Game
Games are entertaining ways to engage, educate and convert prospects. For example, rather than answering survey questions for themselves, visitors can guess which answers were most popular amongst their peers. In answering, they are exposed to shared pains, problems, and solutions that drive demand. Simple guessing games provide another way to communicate strategically compelling information. Not only does it provide knowledge, but gives your brand that standout attention to draw in qualified leads.
How to generate leads with a game:
• Allow visitors to play the game and insert the form before receiving score.
• Reveal the game score and insert the form to reveal where they stack up against others that have played.
• Try a lead generation form at the start of the game and have visitors register before playing.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Game incentives are great to experiment with. Try monetary incentives versus social recognition versus an asset offer to stimulate engagement and conversion. • Test different conversion points —pre-game versus post-game —to see which
delivers the most conversions.
The Game of HR
Learn all the answers in this FREE report
Which do you think it was?
Voting / Survey
Voting and surveys for preferences can be an easy-to-tap motive for visitors. Extending the experience to show how the visitor’s answer compared to the votes of others can further deepen interest and desire. When the reveal of results shows shared pain that can be solved by the brand, engagement can turn into persuasion. While it can be difficult to use a voting app for lead-generation, they are often used to collect data that can be used in sales enablement or useful information for other marketing apps. However, surveys in a marketing context can be more persuasive than ordinary research surveys.
Some tips to generate leads with voting and surveys:
• Give visitors the opportunity to share their vote or survey results. Have inside sales team follow those visitors on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It’s a soft social lead, but an engaged one!
• Offer to send updates on how the poll continues to trend, or to send total survey results, to those respondents who provide their email address.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Polls and surveys are a great place to promote a simple subscribe form for people to sign up for your newsletter. Test different ways to promote your “subscribe” call to action.
• Polls and surveys are also a great place to promote social engagement. Rather than asking visitors to complete a form, ask for a follow, a tweet, a like, etc. Test different placement of your social icons.
Testing Lab
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How to generate leads with an interactive white paper:
• Offer visitors a glance at the eBook or interactive white paper. Allow them to see the first page or so, then insert a form for them to receive the complete content. • Add in forms within each smaller marketing app used inside the interactive
white paper.
• Add in forms at various points for an optional subscribe, or to have the PDF version of the whitepaper emailed to them instantly.
The best way to generate leads is real-time testing to see
what works best. Try some of these tests:
• Test varying form lengths to optimize for maximum conversions.
• Test various placements of the form throughout the interactive white paper/eBook to determine where visitors are most likely to convert.
• If you want to give your visitors easy access to the PDF version, try placement of your form, whether it be in the side rail, or on the last page, or continuously viewable while scrolling.
• Try testing the gate within one of the supplemental marketing apps inside the interactive eBook.
Interactive White Paper / eBook
Do you have an in-depth white paper? Turn it into an interactive, ‘choose your own adventure’ eBook. Chunking up the white paper content into interactive, navigable sections can bring your content to life in a highly engaging way. Instead of a visitor downloading a 12-page white paper to quickly skim through then throw away, entertain them with something useful that they want to share.
Testing Lab
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Marketing Apps Done Right
Commonly, marketing apps are custom built by software engineers or developers. While this provides the marketing department with a high degree of customization for the final end-result, there are some inherent inefficiencies with hard-coded marketing apps. In addition to long lead times & high costs for development, a coded marketing app is largely inflexible and can’t be modified or changed without additional costs & time. A modern marketing department needs an agile, flexible, marketer-managed system for the creation and launch of marketing apps. A marketing app platform can drastically reduce the time & cost associated with launching marketing apps, while providing several significant benefits to marketing:
• Agile, flexible marketing app creation & launch—drag-and-drop interface with simple rules-based logic give you tremendous power without programmers
• Optimize both form & function—Rather than being restricted to just one version of a marketing app, use built-in A/B and multivariate testing to easily learn which app experiences & content are most effective at increasing engagement & conversion rates
• Not one app, but complete “app capability” throughout all your marketing—launch dozens or hundreds of different apps with no additional hard costs
• Share data across multiple apps—every user interaction with your marketing apps can build behavioral and profile data that can be
05
Start Improving Your
Lead Generation Results
After taking a look at some ideas, it’s your turn to be creative. Grab an existing content marketing asset and transform it into an engaging marketing app. It’s time to turn your content from “ho hum” to exciting with useful, relevant, engaging content. And once you have your initial marketing app, leverage the data you collect in that one to personalize and target your second (and third, and fourth) marketing app, building deep visitor profiles that can be used to enhance your visitor and customer experience even further.
In a world where every prospective
customer is facing an invitation avalanche,
where every business is asking people to follow
their tweets, read their blog, or watch their videos,
you must resist the temptation to communicate
solely and endlessly about your company, hoping
for the quick sale. Helping can replace selling, or
at the very least reduce the friction within that
sales transaction. And you can do this. You can
help your customers learn… You can help them
plan… You can help them enjoy.
leveraged for personalization & targeting across your entire portfolio of marketing apps
• Reusable components—reuse content and functionality across marketing apps
• Centralized and decentralized control—centralize brand control and consistent measurement; decentralize app creation and deployment to brands, teams, regions, etc
• Simplified integration—single integration point connects all your apps into your marketing technology ecosystem; seamlessly share data with CRM, analytics, marketing automation, and customer data platforms
Next Steps
Implement app-like experiences and see how they can improve your campaign results.
It’s time to turn your digital experiences into interactive, useful, enjoyable ones. It’s what your web visitors expect, and the technology exists to enable you to rapidly deploy and test complex custom marketing apps while minimizing development time and costs. App-like digital experiences can change your campaign results from “so-so” to “wow” by decreasing bounce rate, increasing visitor consumption of your content, and ultimately delivering far more leads and sales to your organization.
More
leads. More engagement.
More
revenue.
Marketing Apps from ion interactive
ion interactive is a marketing apps platform that generates leads and revenue with engaging, highly interactive, digital marketing experiences that can be created and tested without developers. ion interactive is used to differentiate brands, increase engagement and improve conversions in content marketing, social marketing, email marketing and advertising campaigns.
➜ Create engaging app-like experiences in minutes
➜ Pass segmentation and sales enablement data in and out ➜ Test and auto-optimize alternatives
➜ Save time, money and resources
According to TechValidate: 73% of our customers double their conversions. 90% get positive ROI. And 95% would recommend us. Join them.
Get Started: meet.ioninteractive.com/getstarted or Call 1.888.ion.idea (466.4332) or +1.561.235.7474 outside the US
