The Evolution of Online Business Intelligence with Raymond Wright of Lead Forensics

Well, greetings everyone. Welcome to the Wednesday, April 9th, 2014 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook with WSI Internet Consulting, where we work with businesses and organizations in helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and WSI online at www.poweredbywsi.com. With me this week is my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner, Mr. Jeff Simpkins. Jeff, say hello to everybody out there in Free Webinar Wednesday world.

Hello everybody, this is Jeff Simpkins. I am with Community Bank Consulting, Inc., and you can learn more about me and Community Bank Consulting, Inc. online at www.communitybankconsulting.com.

Excellent.

And as I mentioned last week, we have a new service that I'd like to mention to bankers that are joining us. And that is we are working with banks on their technology contracts. We have a service that does quite an outstanding job of helping with getting appropriate pricing. So any of you bankers in the audience, if you'd like to learn more about that, reach out to me and I'd love to chat. Thank you, Eric.

Sounds cool. All about saving money these days, isn't it?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Or, or I guess I should say spending money more efficiently in areas where you know it's going to generate returns, hopefully bigger than what you're spending.

Which is always the name of the game, is bigger returns than you're spending.

Exactly. Otherwise, you can't make that up on volume if that's not happening. You'll end up going the wrong direction. Yeah, well, we're losing money on every order, but we're going to make it up on volume, so we're going to be okay. So yeah, that's not a good thing. So, well, I do have some news as well, though it's not nearly as exciting as Jeff's, but I'm heading north this week and I'm going to be part of the Michigan Bankers Association's BEST conference. Their Bankers Education Summit and Trade Show, and we took a quick little pit stop at the lake, and I'm looking out at lots and lots and lots of ice, but I can actually start seeing water. So I'm hoping that we're actually gonna have a lake by the time June rolls around with the weather that we've had and the cold, frigid temperatures. I feel sorry for the little fishies out there because they probably didn't have a whole lot of water left over this winter to swim in, but I'm seeing water and vague hints of sunshine, so I think we're getting to the end of what we refer to as one heck of a winter. So I know you don't get to look at ice a whole lot, Jeff, where you're at, so I figured I would at least just share that with you and you could commiserate with me that way.

Yeah, even though I spent 2 years in Minnesota and Certainly have walked and driven on frozen-over lakes. It's still a concept my mind has a hard time getting around as I sit here looking across a beautiful lake with not a drop of ice anywhere.

Yeah, exactly. Well, the good news is all the ice fishermen have wised up and there aren't any shanties or quad runners or anybody else out there. If there were, I would think they would be taking their life into their own hands. So hopefully we'll get there soon and looking forward to summer. Anyway, we haven't had a weather report in a couple of show episodes, so I figured we'd throw that one back in there and at least weave in some positive warming trends because it seems like we've been doing a lot of complaining about the weather this year and being super cold. So almost a good segue actually back to your comment about spending money wisely and making sure you understand where it's going and what's happening. I'm really excited about today's topic and the whole concept of online business intelligence and taking data of what's going on online and using that to your strategic advantage. So we'll introduce Ray here in just a little bit. But a couple of housekeeping issues. As a reminder, Free Webinar Wednesdays are recorded and available online at freewebinarwednesdays.com. So if after today's session you'd like to go back and check some stuff out, review it, or share it with a friend or a colleague, You're more than welcome to do that, and we try to get those posts up as quickly as possible. Also, if you'd like to ask a question or have some feedback during today's session, please use the chat feature in your control panel, which is likely located in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. And Jeff and I will monitor those during today's session, and when there is a break in the action, we'll go ahead and we'll ask it of our presenter. So with that, it's my pleasure to introduce and welcome to the show Mr. Raymond Wright from from a company by the name of Lead Forensics, and Ray and I have had several chats over the last couple of weeks, and I'm really excited that you're able to join us on the show. So thanks for coming along, Ray. All right, you may be muted.

I think I'm muted. Am I unmuted now?

You are unmuted. It's kind of hard to hear you when you got the mute button clicked.

Funny that, very funny that.

So guys, yeah.

Excited about the opportunity to be here and present with yourselves. Obviously, we've been working together for a bit of time now there, Eric, and sort of been building out, you know, how we, how we do that and what we do. So, so yeah, just excited about the opportunity to chat to everyone today, to talk in a little bit more detail about that online technology sort of revolution that you were alluding to just before, and then field a few questions around that as well.

Absolutely.

Now, for the listeners, we've got some pretty smart listeners, but I'm suspecting a lot of people are detecting a little bit of an accent because you're not a Michigander nor a South Carolinian or North Carolinian like Mr. Simpkins. So where are you joining us from today so the rest of the world knows?

So I'm joining everyone from Portsmouth in the UK, so on the south coast of the UK. Probably most famous for the— this is where the Armada launched in World War II to go over and reach the D-Day beaches over in the Normandy coastline in the north of France. So Portsmouth, UK is where I'm calling in from, and yeah, it's where our company headquarters is over here.

Excellent.

We always love it when we get our UK friends to join us. There's a couple of colleagues that have joined us in the past, and we also appreciate the fact that it's beyond normal business hours for you and you're spending a little bit of your evening to present. So we want to make sure we thank you for that as well.

No, much appreciated, but more than happy to be here, so, you know, no problems at all.

Good, good.

Well, let's, let's jump right into it, talk about kind of the evolution of online business intelligence, you know, how businesses are gathering information through their website and their online properties. Better understand what their customers and prospects are doing, how it's changed over the years, how there's new technologies such as Lead Forensics and others that are giving us some really nice data that we can use to— as you and I have talked, instead of waiting for customers to contact us, it puts the business almost in more of a proactive sales position. So Why don't you go ahead and click on your display settings and flip your display. We're looking at your presenter view right now with the screen that's showing.

Right, okay, I'll just flip my display over here. Let me just see how I do that. Sorry guys, I've just got to—

Up in the top area, display settings.

And then just swap side view. There we go. Great, excellent, excellent.

I have to do that a lot.

Well, it's a good thing I've got you there as a coach there, Eric. There you go. So, yeah, guys, look, like I said, I'm excited about talking about the opportunity here, and certainly in terms of the evolution of our business here at Lead Forensics, we've really moved quickly with the technology that we have into this sort of online space, and what it's all about is driving more from online investments. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. I'm actually going to talk about online channels, I'm going to talk about what's happening in that space, technologies that are available. Touch on how our technology is being used in the market space and where we have been able to develop relationships with people like Eric and sort of go through that in a bit more detail. So the preface for the topic is, is search marketing today's mass marketing? And are you wasting your marketing budget or are you using it more efficiently is probably a better way of describing that. So I will dive into it. So the first thing I want to touch on is driving more from your spend online, so getting more return on investment. And to sort of set the scene around that, I think we all can probably assimilate with a number of the things that are on the screen in front of us now that we are probably investing with or we may have invested in in the past. So things like paid search, things like Google pay-per-click, obviously is quite an affluent channel there that people are investing in because you want to be at the top of the search, or you want people to find you when they search for a particular topic, so paid search. Natural search, so around our content, our SEO, more and more companies are investing in that and our websites now aren't just a flagship sort of thing or a postcard of what we do, but what they are is a content bank of who we are as a company and it allows people to investigate us in more detail. There are other types of online advertising there as well and spend, and they are display, affiliate marketing, driving direct traffic into your site, and then there are other things that we do as well, like email marketing. So if you think about it, we send a lot of targeted emails out to people trying to tell a message. We look for those people to engage with that message and respond or visit our website. So there's a hell of a lot we do, and one other thing that I could probably include into this slide as well now is the onset of social media. And I'm sure that's something you have touched on in other sessions there, Eric, but social media becomes ever more prevalent now in reaching our target audience and engaging with them. So it's about how do we get more from that online spend, and these are some of the channels that you will typically see people investing in when it comes to online. So just onto this slide here around the online revolution. So a report that we got at the end of 2012, or it summarised 2012 basically, it's a B2B marketing report, it's from a business called Market Marketing Sherpa shows that 60% of companies spend their marketing— sorry, 60% of marketing budget is spent by companies on online channels. So it's massive in terms of that revolution on how much people are spending online, and it's where you get found. So to put that in context for our attendees today, when you look at the way people search these days, you know, it's all about If you need to know something, you go online. Think about if you are trying to book a holiday, think about if you are trying to find a new car, a new barbecue, a new icebreaker for up there in Michigan, whatever it might be that you are looking to buy, you will generally go online and you will do your research. So you need to be found online, and we are finding that 60% of marketing budgets are actually being spent on online channels. So there is a real revolution towards that space, and that's becoming ever more prevalent. So moving on to this slide, what does that mean then? Well, what we need to be able to do and to be smarter in what we do and to drive more is we need to know more about that audience. So who is engaging with us and why are they engaging? And there are some stats I am going to show you a little bit later on in the presentation that show you why. But what I want to do is I want to set the scene around a couple of technologies that help that, and the reason being is it's all about people selling to people. So it is online, it is anonymous, yes, but it's about people selling to people at the end of the day. So I want to introduce into you a few concepts that work alongside lead forensics, and they're called lead nurturing tools. And I'm sure a number of you are familiar with this and some of the companies that I've actually got on the screen in front of you now. So companies like Silverpop, Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, these sorts of businesses, they're all around communicating to a specific audience and using online channels and marketing channels to actually warm up that audience to what we do, what we can offer them, and understand what the buying signals are in those online channels. So I want to introduce those to you to start to set the scene around some of the technologies that you may be familiar with or that may actually be foreign to you, but you may want to start considering when it comes to that mapping. So the question is around those technologies, they are communication tools. And this is where I want to start to set the scene around what we do as a company here at Lead Forensics. So you've got these tools, you've got an online spend, so you're investing in these online channels, you've got these tools that help you communicate to those audiences, so what's it all about then? Well, what online spend is really about is transposing visitors online who engage with our messaging into opportunities for our sales team to actually convert against. And let's be honest, that's what it's really all about here. It's actually about how do I maximise my sales opportunities from what I actually do and what I spend from a marketing perspective. So the question is, you spend money online, you get people engaging with that, some people enquire into you, then you can put those people into a sales process and you can market and communicate to them. But what happens when you've got a shortfall on those sorts of people that are actually coming in and enquiring? What do you do? Do you make up that shortfall by actually calling those businesses? Do you put the pressure back on sales to make up for the shortfall?

What do you do?

So this here is a representation, just a bit of a jovial slide. It's the board putting pressure on the actual sales director and the marketing team to say that we are investing this money, we want to see a return on our investment. So what do you do? Do you increase your activity? So do you increase your online activity to drive more leads to sort of satisfy that sales team and that board? Do you nurture leads to close the gap? So do you use those marketing automation technologies more to nurture leads and have more qualified opportunities? It creates a bit of a problem because coming back to Eric's comment at the start of the webinar here, what it's all about is spending less to actually get more. I think this is the way we need to start thinking about our online marketing efforts and our technologies is what technologies are actually out there that will help us actually get more from our online spend? So yes, we can increase spend. Yes, we can increase the time and effort we actually spend on potential leads, but actually what's going to help us drive more leads and sort of stronger engagement? So just a couple of quick stats on conversion optimisation, just to set the scene for everyone. So just coming back to sort of looking at website testing and sort of marketing channels and that kind of thing, what we see is that People, when it comes to completing forms and completing online activities, we see people drop out. And a few of those statistics you can see there in front of you now show that where people have to complete forms and where, you know, they are trying to shoehorn them into becoming a lead from the web and that kind of thing, we see that it basically drives down our funnel, it drives down our pipeline. So what we need to be able to do is we need to be able to reverse engineer this process so that we spend less but we get more engagement with people, so we need to go beyond that online spending. So just touching on conversion optimisation, just really quickly on this here, what you find is that conversion optimisation is typically low from websites and online channels. So what you need is you need something that's actually going to help you, not necessarily increase that conversion, but you need something that is actually going to give you more insights on what doesn't actually convert. I guess this is where I set the scene around Lead Forensics. So to put that in context, here is your typical sales funnel and your analytics. So through your spend online, what you do is you put opportunities in at the top of the funnel and then you convert at the bottom through what actually comes in. So what you need to be able to do is you need to be able to broaden that funnel. Effectively, you need to be able to get more from that. 2%. So putting this all in context around this online spend and what we are looking for, 2% is what the average company actually converts from online enquiry through to sale. This is what we typically see. We see that the internet is really being used as an anonymous browsing tool. And that's great because it allows us to go and showcase our businesses, but companies aren't inquiring. So like I say, we need to reverse engineer that process. We need to find a way of getting to those businesses. 48% of those visitors that come through to a website are actually companies that are browsing around, who are sort of trying to collect information. They might be people just looking to collect information. There might be some people in there that actively aren't interested and found the website accidentally, so we sort of see 48% fall into that realm there. But what we really want to be able to do is we want to be able to drive down into these stats. I want to come down to this stat here to say that 46% of our website traffic, what we find, and this is a market fact, 46% of our website traffic is actually companies that are actively in the market for what we do, and those businesses are collecting information on us, but not just on us, on our competitors as well. So what is crucial is that we now look at our online spend to say, how do we get to this 46%? What is it all about? Why are we doing these things, and are we missing a trick with this, and how do we get to this 46% of our website traffic? And reach them with our messaging, and that will come through building personalised relationships effectively, but we need to be smart about it. So like this slide says here, you know, what happens if people don't contact you? Serious customers will contact, won't they? Maybe not. Think about in your own businesses there, you know, the biggest clients that you have ever signed. Did they contact you or did you contact them? So 3 key reasons why people don't convert online. It could be the design of your website, it could be the content on your website, and it could be the calls to action that you actually put out there to those particular businesses. So what happens with those things, if someone doesn't convert on your website, what happens is that they continue surfing and they might even look at the competition, particularly if someone comes in through organic search where they will have a number of different options come up through Google, they may go back and look at competitors. So are they prospects? Well, let's look at the things that actually happen when someone comes through to a website and someone comes through through an online channel. You know, we can look at specific things that actually happen. So let's look at search again as an example. You know, people will type in a keyword. What they will do is they will review pages on the website, they will spend a number of times, and they may even come back over and over again to the website So what we know through all this is that people are soaking up information, but you have got to be proactive about that. And I am really trying to build the prospect around what Lead Forensics is here. So the question is, are you ignoring these prospects if they are coming through the front door? And the way I like to view online and websites these days is that it's literally your shopfront. If you were someone that owned a shoe shop or in your case banks and that kind of thing, if you were on a high street or a commercial street and you had a shoe shop, for example, and people were walking into your shoe shop and looking at the shoes that you sold, you would want to actively go and ask them about what they are looking for. So are they looking for a brand, are they looking for a design, a particular type of shoe, you want to be asking those questions and the thing about the web is that At the moment, a lot of us are missing that point. So this slide here represents, are you ignoring prospects that are coming through the front door by not picking up that 46% of companies that are potential opportunities from your website? So just carrying out a bit of research here. So what we have got here is a bit of research that we carried out with 4 companies that actually trade with us. We ran a 3-month research period with them, and what we found out is that each of those companies identified about 100 opportunities per company over that period. What we found out was that their contact rate with those businesses was around about 42%. So what we found out also by looking in more detail at that is that when those companies were actually contacted, we confirmed that about 48% were already in the market and ready to make a buying decision. So it was quite interesting when we spoke to those businesses over that sort of term. So sort of coming into the benefits here, and I'm going to stop before I go into benefits, and I'm going to sort of put all this in context to explain to you what Lead Forensics is and how our technology fits in with all these stats that I've just shown everybody. So Lead Forensics is an online technology that sits behind your website and tells you exactly which companies are actually coming in, what they do on your website, so what pages they look at, and it actually gives you complete insight on their contact details and what types of companies they are. So the thing that we need to put in context when we think about all these things around our spend in online channels and, you know, what kind of content we are putting on our website and what we want people to engage with and Ultimately, what our goals are between our marketing and sales efforts are to find ways to identify who it is that's actually engaging with us so we can go back and actively engage with them. And that's really the call to action to be proactive. So to put that stat— to put some stats up there again, 2% of website visitors actually inquire, and 46% of website visitors that actually come through are actively in the market looking to make buying decisions about products and services that they might be interested in. So looking at the key—

hey, Ray, can I just make an observation here? And I guess this is one of the points that you and I talked about when we were prepping for this a couple of weeks ago, and how, you know, everything old is new again concept and how that's applying to the digital space. And you use the example of a shoe shop or even a bank or, you know, some other retail location If you're a business, before the internet, you would actually get foot traffic that would come into the office or come into the store. They would look around, they would talk to you, that's how they got their information. And as a business owner, you had that tangible feedback. And when digital came around, the technology was great because it gave businesses the ability to expand their reach. But it pushed people out of the business and it gave them the ability— and you talked about kind of the anonymized web where they could go around and get all their data and become an educated consumer, but businesses didn't know really what was going on anymore because the technology wasn't there and they weren't coming into the stores. So now it was kind of flying blind. And, and what got me really excited, and I want to make sure that everybody that's listening either live or on the recording catches this, Is technology exists, and you've got some of the best that I've seen, but technology exists to really take it back to that. We know who's walking in our front door. We know when the bell dings and the door opens and, oh, hey Jeff, how you doing? And, you know, that happened years ago. It went away, and now we have the ability to do that from a digital perspective. And so businesses that are listening to this, I really want to make sure that that point doesn't get lost. And, you know, you're given some great statistics and, you know, further validation as to why this is important, but I want to make sure that that point doesn't get lost, that it's basically going back to sound business principles and bringing that personal touch back to a business that may operate only with its customers through a digital relationship.

You're absolutely right, Eric, and I think there's a really interesting point to touch on. So we do a hell of a lot of work with Google, as you do as well there, Eric. And in working with Google, one of the things that they really aim to do is they aim to get people to spend more money advertising through them and that kind of thing. And I think we all know the machine that they are, but they spend a lot of time talking to their client base and to their audience. And one of the really interesting things that Google brought up with us recently was around a statistic which was to do with the way that people buy. So Google went back and surveyed their audience and said, okay, so what makes you buy from somebody? And their audience said, well, we buy from people who give us good information, who help guide our decision and help us make the most informed decision we possibly can. And I said, well, what does that mean for Google exactly? And here's a stat that sort of blew me away: 70% of people said that they will buy from the first company they speak to about their product or service offering, right? So if I'm out there looking for, you know, financial— let's say I'm looking for a business loan, for example— I'm more likely to buy from the first person I speak to about that loan, okay, according to the statistics that Google has. What makes that really relevant to the online space is that if people are researching online and they're making their decisions based on the content that they're seeing or the channels that they're being led down, then ultimately they're going to pick up the telephone to somebody, and 70% of those people will buy from the person they actually pick up the telephone to. So where, you know, we really look at our technology being crucial in this process is if you have the capability to be able to see who is looking at you and what they're looking for, then you have the opportunity to be able to get in and make that phone call and speak with that person, understand their business in more detail before they actually make an action themselves.

Right.

I think that's absolutely key. You're absolutely right. We go full circle on this because it's actually all about growing stronger relationships. It's about how do we get more insights and intel to be able to go back and have those conversations and grow those relationships and do good business. That's where the success of our software certainly is being felt by our clients. Because they have been more proactive and they have been able to get out to the marketplace before their competitors have to build those relationships and basically ring-fence their space.

Yeah, and I'm glad you said proactive several times because I think what a lot of businesses have from an online perspective, as good as they are, a lot of it is reactive, you know, we've got the info, we've got the blog, we've got the contact us, but We've got the web forms and we hope that they fill that out and we hope that they send it in so that we can react to those and hopefully we get back to them very quickly and we can be that first person that they talk to. But now there's technology that makes it possible to take a proactive approach. Maybe they didn't find your contact form, maybe they found your info but there's still something that isn't quite right, not that it's good or bad, or maybe something else just got in the way or they got distracted and saw a squirrel outside and You know, the next thing you know, they're on— But now with a proactive approach, you can do more to get yourself as a business in that first conversation and tip the scales in your favor. And that's what's got me really excited about this whole kind of the shift in what technology can do. So it's like you said, it's a really important point that I just wanted to make sure we reinforced and I hope I didn't beat it too much, but I think that's an important element to keep in mind here.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, as you say, online is such an important space now, and it's about having a multichannel strategy that you implement and get right. But what you always need to underpin a multichannel strategy with is a solid process to actually follow up and make sure you get the best possible return. So I couldn't— anymore I couldn't emphasise the importance on doing things like your social selling and your advertising online and being found and getting the right content up there, because it's absolutely mission critical. It's the way the world revolves these days, but you need to have that trigger to be proactive and drive the opportunities back to you, because people will always buy from people. So you're absolutely right, Eric.

Cool.

All right, I'll let you go.

Continue. Excellent.

Yeah, no problem. Look, it's always a good talking point, and as I say, look, I'm really interested to take questions from people as well and have this further discussion on the back of this because it's something we're very passionate about in what we do. And so, you know, we're grateful for the opportunity today. So just a couple of slides to go here. So I just want to touch on 4 key benefits to lead forensics that we see. Keeping it really simplistic. So, you know, the way we look at it is that if you can see companies coming onto your website and you can see what they're looking for and what they're looking at, then, you know, the follow-up to that could be a remarketing approach that's quite targeted to warm that business up, or it could be a call into that business, but it's not a cold call because you know that they're actually looking for your product or service. So actually, it should be a more welcomed call. Targeted in at the specific people that you want to speak to because, you know, you actively seen them looking at something that they may need and that they probably want. So less cold calls for sales, higher conversion rates, much higher conversion rates because you're hitting a market that's ripe with people that are actively looking, higher average order values we put down there, and it depends on what your objectives are. Your objectives might actually be acquiring new clients over time. So it's about we acquire a client now and then what's that client worth to us over time, or it might be about winning an order off that client. So we find that typically the client retention sort of piece is either stronger or the, the actual orders are stronger in themselves because you've been able to get in there and influence that client and build a proposition. And the biggest benefit is that if you're spending money on online channels and Now all of a sudden you can see who is coming onto your website. The thing you should know is that you have already paid for those leads by spending money on SEO, on social, on paid advertising. You have already actually paid for those leads to hit your website, so it's probably your right to be able to see those businesses and proactively do something about it. So we put that in there, that the biggest benefit is that you have actually already paid for those leads, so you should be out there optimising those. So just a couple of quick points on the impact for clients. So, you know, what does Lead Forensics sort of give there, working alongside other sorts of technologies? So it generates more leads, it closes the gap between sales and marketing. I think that's an important element, is that it gives sales and marketing more tangible information to work together on. That's always— that's an age-old sort of gap that I think we're all aware of, but it does really help with that process. It gives more insight into campaign performance as well. So looking at, you know, our attributions around how did we generate opportunities, so what spend did we put out there and what did that generate for us. It gives more insights on that. And then it can improve ROI from campaigns as well. So really important is, at the end of the day, what do we return for our marketing efforts? And same with hard-to-measure channels like social media. And that's effectively it.

Thanks, Eric.

I'll pass back to you for the time being there, Eric, and we can take some questions and stuff from your end.

Cool. Good, good, good, good. Mr. Simpkins, I'll maybe toss you on the hotspot here. And Ray and I have chatted quite a bit about this, so I think there's some things that I take for granted that I already know, but I think this is one of the first times you've had an opportunity to hear him talk. Or kind of the concept. And I don't know if it would be beneficial, or Ray, if we put you on the spot, if even an impromptu demo just to kind of give an example. And believe me, I, you know, even though this may seem like we're coming across as like a pitch for Lead Forensics, which, you know, in a certain way it is because I think you're a great company and got some good stuff, but, you know, to maybe make it familiar to people as to how something like this technically even works. in the type of information, if that's anything that you would be able to do, or if maybe we'd have to look at that as a, as a maybe a next phase, or maybe if there's people that are interested, we could do kind of one-on-one demos. But any thoughts on your part, Jeff, of the old is new and kind of gathering that data and being able to be proactive as a consumer? Would that freak you out?

Mm-hmm.

Would you think Big Brother? You know, any thoughts?

Well, I like the way you brought this together by pointing out it's like the olden days of walking in the storefront and the bell on the door dings and somebody comes out and greets you and they've got the physical presence to be able to learn and engage with you. It's a great way of explaining what's going on here. To answer your specific question about does it freak me out and do I think— do I have concerns when I hear about big data, those are 2 entirely separate questions. Does it freak me out? Yes, to some degree, but the bottom line is big data is— it's going to happen no matter what we do.

Right.

So it doesn't matter if it's lead forensics or if we're going other places on the web. All of those activities that we're doing, somebody's tracking it and learning things So the answer is no, it doesn't freak me out in that aspect.

Yeah. And you make another point there that causes me to think of something. Other technologies that exist, and maybe Ray, you can give some comment on this. I've been to more sites now where I go there and I'm on the site for maybe 30 or 45 seconds. And I get a proactive chat request to say, hey, is there something I can help you with? And I think initially when that technology was available a couple of years ago, people would be like, you know, that's annoying, turn it off, and, you know, deny, deny, deny. And I'll be— from my personal experience, when I don't get the option to have a chat request, or if it's someplace where I'm legitimately interested in learning a little bit more, and maybe I'm just lazy and I don't want to have to pick around the site, but I would much I would much rather have a proactive chat request to invite me, to say, is there something that I can help you find? Just like walking into a store, I know I want a particular shirt or a particular pair of shoes. Don't make me search around for it because I'm busy. Help me find it, but don't do it in an annoying way. Do you have any insight, or have you guys done any research on how chat, as maybe a little bit the more apparent effort for a site to be proactive and outreaching has made an impact, and is it gaining more acceptance with consumers?

Yeah, I think, I think it is. I mean, you know, we're very focused on B2B from our end, but certainly, Chad, it allows people to be specific. And I think what you find is that people want to know certain snippets of information, so, you know, particularly technical people. So if you think about the IT space, for example, Someone might be looking at IT solution. They might just have a question. They might be trying to find some content online and looking at a website specifically. Then a chat window pops up and offers some assistance, and it's easy for the person just to ask that question, get their response, and save them time. And I, I think that's really important because time is time is the most sort of crucial element in all of this. It's how much time does somebody have to find the information they need, and the quicker we can serve that information. Information to them, the better. So I think chat windows definitely provide a good forum to be able to provide that information to someone quickly and simply sort of propose just a question to them of, how can I help you? And chat rates, it varies based upon what you are actually looking at and that kind of thing, but we have certainly seen that a lot of our clients are actually saying that we would love to use chat in conjunction with Lead Forensics, because if we can get people to engage there and then, then that's great, you know, we are on top of it. But what we know is that not everyone is going to utilise the chat function, so if we can pick them up and then re-engage with them by personalising it and contacting them, then that's also important for us. I think what it does do is it lends itself into the lead nurturing programs as well, and I have certainly found this very interesting as a consumer of lead nurturing programs. So I'm particularly interested in taking vacations, as I'm sure we all are, and there's one particular travel company over here in the UK that run an excellent lead nurturing campaign. They are using a marketing automation system, one of the tools I presented to you before, and what they have been able to do is they have been able to capture my imagination with a nice piece of content around a holiday package down to Spain. So what that did was that caused me to say, oh, I'm interested in that, I might download a little brochure on that, or I might pop in a quick question to them about that in a bit more detail. So they capture my details, and then what they start doing is they start marketing to me in more of a specific way about what I've shown interest in. But also, through that whole lead nurturing program, they pick up on other activity I do. So they'll notice if I go and look at a holiday to Alaska, or if I look at other things, they'll know a bit more about what kind of searches I'm running. So How much am I prepared to spend on my holiday? What kind of activities am I interested in? Am I going on holidays to go to the beach or go skiing? And they start to build a profile of me. And what they do is they tailor their communications in alignment with that profile. So they are using online to understand more about me, to communicate with me in a more effective manner, and they use triggers to then say, okay, so if this guy does this, we know he will be interested. Actually, we should probably call him now because he is interested in a summer vacation down to the beach and we are coming into summer, so he is probably going to book his holiday around about now, so we are going to get in contact with him now. So there are a couple of different things there I have touched on. There is one, there is the chat element capturing someone right there, but then there is two, just understanding that audience and building a profile of the people and what they are doing and what they are interested in. To help you build out buying signals and serve the right content at the right time. A company that does that efficiently will be much better positioned to win that business than a company that is inefficient and serves the wrong content, because that only turns somebody off. I think there are 2 important elements there, Eric, that people should be considering in their strategy going forward is how do you communicate, how do you get that engagement, and how do you do that over time as well? So how do you build someone up to that point where they are ready to part with their money?

Right, right.

You know, a lot of it, and even my head, and I'm in the industry, so, you know, when I hear stuff like this, you know, my head on behalf of my clients just starts spinning because it's almost like, you know, well, who is going to manage all of this? You know, you almost need to have an online store manager just like you have a regular store manager, again going back to the bell dinging. There's somebody that's always there in the store paying attention— who's walking through, what part of the store are they in, what clothing are they looking at, what shoes are they checking out, um, and, you know, have they been in the store before? Did they stop in in the morning and walked around? Now they're back with their wife and an ice cream cone because maybe they needed to get her permission to buy something. Is it going to get to the point where Businesses either are going to have to, or are you seeing more and more businesses actually dedicating a full-time person or full-time staff to just paying attention to this online shop and visits and, and everything else that's going on? Or can it still be managed as a blend of all sorts of other marketing and sales functions?

It can be managed as a blend, but it's the age-old You get out what you put in, and I'll put that in context. Us as a business, we have about 12 people that sit within our marketing team that actually work on that lead nurturing side. So they work through things like social media platforms, understanding what people we're communicating with, monitoring what those people are doing, following their companies, following where their businesses are sort of achieving growth, success, positioning our story on the back of that to make sure that they see us as someone that can help them continue that growth and that kind of thing. So, you know, we internally have a dedicated team to drive that thing, and we're particularly seeing, you know, with larger organizations, we're definitely seeing an investment in that side of things, or we're seeing them work with their trusted advisors to help with that. But we are starting to see it happening at the SME level as well, because I think what SMEs have realized now is that it's no longer a competition on price when you are trying to sell a service or a product. What people want to buy is value, and as an SME, your point of value over your competition, particularly if you have got big competitors in the marketplace, is going to be what you offer back to the client. So what's critical there is that you understand what that client actually needs and you understand them. So if you have got a profile of that business, if you can understand what they are doing, what it is they are engaged with, what kind of solutions they may need in the future, then you can start forward sort of planning with them, you know, how you can deliver those solutions to them, and you can really cater, you know, your position with them and, you know, what role you are going to play. And I think that's what people want. They want partnerships and they want people to understand. So that's what's really critical there. And so I see it becoming more sort of prevalent as time goes on, and certainly, Eric, to your point, When you think about, can a small business do it, can a big business do it, yes, you all can, and you will get out what you put into it. But it certainly has been very effective for our business and has helped us achieve significant growth just through understanding that audience and focusing down on that.

Sure.

Other thoughts, Geoff?

There is a question in the question box, Eric, that I'm going to ask you to—

Is that the one related to chat and voice?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, let's— so when we got on the topic of chat, there was a question of— in-house management versus outsourced. And there's even some chat functions that, you know, they position themselves as chat, but it's more of an automated FAQ query type element. And my gut tells me, and maybe you can either validate or provide a counterpoint, my gut tells me that chat is best provided by somebody for an organization that's within the organization that is familiar because you want to make sure that you can convey that brand voice or that personality that goes back to the visitor on behalf of your organization, but that there could be some potential outsourced operations to maybe a third-party source or even some automation. You know, maybe the business closes at 6 o'clock, so from 6 PM until maybe 8 AM It goes into automation view. But, you know, I'm not aware of any real success stories where they've outsourced that chat function. And I think it still needs to be something that the business manages themselves. But obviously there's that critical tipping point of when that happens. So any thoughts on the right voice and who manages it, and if it can be outsourced, or if it still needs to be something that the business needs to think of themselves?

Yeah, I guess it does depend upon what you do as a business. So, you know, if you are in a very technical space and you require certain expertise, you would probably struggle with the outsourcing of that because, you know, you couldn't guarantee that that person working in the chat function would have the level of expertise that you would necessarily need someone to have. So that's probably an example of where you would look to manage it in-house. My personal experience, and this also comes down to social media as well, using things like Twitter and stuff to convey messaging and that kind of thing. My personal experience is you are probably better off doing it in-house, and you can buy tools where you can be trained up and you can use that chat function and manage that and have a dedicated resource on it. But that's not to discount actually outsourcing it as well, because it comes back to your objectives. So maybe you enable a chat function around a promotion that you are running. And that promotion doesn't require a hell of a lot of knowledge on your product, but what it requires is someone just to be there to capture as many people as they can, to convert them throughout that promotion that you run. So it might be a 3-month campaign that you are running, a 6-month campaign, and in that case you don't want to take someone on full-time to actually manage that. You are probably better off outsourcing it to keep your overheads down and setting objectives around maximum return for from that chat function. So there is probably a case on either side to have it either outsourced or in-house or have a blend of both, but you want to align it to what your specific goals are and make sure that you are addressing those. The biggest thing is that it has to please or satisfy the customer's expectations. If they are going to engage with the chat function, they need to be able to get the answers out of it that sort of satisfy what they were hoping for when they came into the chat function.

Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. So potentially blended, but certainly it's not a black and white answer. So, but good perspective there.

You know, Eric, you made the comment that you like to see the opportunity for chat. I don't mind it in circumstances where, number one, every time I click to a new page, I don't have A box popping up that I have to close. Once is enough. And then put a button on the screen. The other thing that I would prefer not to even be able— be offered the option of chatting is when I'm working with a company and when I chat, the only thing they do is tell me to call this toll-free number. You know, if there's no value in chat, don't offer it to me.

Right.

And yeah, I think that's probably the point that you were making in saying, you know, do it in-house if it's going to be long-term ongoing, right, Raymond?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's, that's the thing is if it's going to be long-term ongoing and it requires specific expertise as well. So I think of a great example. We're located next to IBM down here in in the UK, and they obviously have some very business-critical solutions that are quite technical, and they're around plugging in one level of infrastructure into another. So, you know, you need to— and some people need to engage with those things real-time as well. So what you need is you need a dedicated team actually working across those functions to deliver feedback, and actually at times clients will position very technical questions in that space, so you need to be able to give technical answers. So yeah, as I say, it does need to align to the need of the actual project, and it could be across— it could sit across multiple websites with some companies. It's just a case of being pragmatic around what outcomes you need to get from having that function there. But I definitely think I understand your point there, Geoff, around the box pops up and you are like, oh, I wish that thing would go away, and that kind of thing, but it's there to serve a purpose. So maybe the thought process around it has to be, well, how do we encourage people to engage with that? What are the calls to action? So if the chat function is going to appear and someone is viewing content, how do we then encourage them through the content to engage with the chat function to find out more about this? So is it that we say, You know, to find out more about a specific business case, engage with our chat function here and we can share something with you. You know, it's about setting triggers and calls to action to make sure that we maximize the responsibility of that function within the whole process.

Yeah, and you know, I think what I see— and you mentioned social media just a little bit ago— kind of as also Be careful if you outsource that. I think the lure for a lot of businesses is maybe they want to dip their toes. They're not sure they have staff for chat or any of the other digital strategies that are available.

Uh-huh.

They take the easy road out and they, well, let somebody else do it because it's just online and it's not like we're putting a robot in front of somebody person-to-person. It's something that people are maybe thinking isn't going to make a big difference. But the reality is it's like anything else. It needs to be given some pretty serious planning and review and make sure that you are really doing it for the right reasons and have the right strategy in place. And I think sometimes because the Internet is seen as a black box, people don't think as much about strategy because it's not a tangible place that you can go touch And I think that's a mistake. I don't see it happen as much anymore, but certainly at the beginning stages of social media, we heard from a lot of businesses, banks included, that, you know, why do you have a Facebook page? What are you hoping to get out of it? Who are you hoping to connect with? And the answer is, I don't know, we just knew we needed to have it. Our marketing director wanted it, or our competition had it, so we just did it, but we didn't have a plan, we didn't have strategy, we didn't have any expectations. And I think the days of being able to just fake it are over. And so, you know, tools like yours and others that give you that data allow you to let the people that want to fake it continue to fake it, and they will fail, and you'll have the real data and rise above everybody else. So I That's how I see it at least.

I suspect you wouldn't argue. No, no, I actually don't argue on that point, particularly around the social media piece. We ran an event last week in central London there and we had a keynote speaker who actually was responsible for setting up MySpace in the UK and he took MySpace from 0 to 10 million users in 12 months. Back, you know, 7 or 8 years ago when Facebook was just finding its identity and MySpace was sort of the premier place where people would hang out and have profiles and share content and that kind of thing. And this guy is a strategist, he works with some massive businesses, and we had a really in-depth sort of session with him talking about the importance of, you know, social media and why you would have a social media strategy. And the one thing that really resonated with me is that, look, as consumers in any space, most of us have some kind of social media presence, whether it be a business professional presence on LinkedIn or a presence on Facebook because we like hanging out with our friends on there and stuff. You know, it's just the way of the world, and it's the way that we're being steered by things like Google, you know, with Google+ and that kind of thing. It's the way things are going. So his point to me was, look, you need to look at your social media strategy for a number of reasons, but your key reason has to be that regardless of whether you like it or not, somebody is going to talk about your business through social media at some stage, and that might be positive, it might be negative. You can't stop what people are going to say, but what you need to do is have a mitigation strategy for if someone does say something negative, so you can flood that with positive PR. So what you need to be able to do is control ultimately, you know, the way people see things coming through social media, you can use it as a business development tool if you want to. If you're not invested in that, then that's fine, it's not an issue. There are other ways to skin a cat. But what you need to understand is at some stage someone's going to talk about you on social media. So what you want to be able to do is be aware of that and be able to mitigate that. If it's a negative message, to influence it with a positive sort of message that goes out on the back of that. Or if someone says something positive, then you want to be able to share that with the community so other people know about that positive message. So his point was really, really clear to me, and that is have a strategy, whether it be you go full-blown on social media or whether it be you just focus on where might we be found on social media and monitor it and make sure that you've at least got a plan in place to how you handle situations that might arise on social media. It's only becoming more powerful and more prevalent, so you definitely need some focus on that to make sure that you are in the right place when things happen.

Cool.

Well, we've covered a lot of different digital marketing topics today, from online intelligence to online chat, a little email marketing, and we always seem to end up back talking on social media. It was a good conversation and certainly lots of, lots of good thoughts there. So thanks, Ray, for that, and Jeff, for your insight. And just looked at my clock and we are like right at the top of the hour, so we've, we've consumed 60 minutes relatively quickly here. So thanks, guys.

You're more than welcome. Thank you very much for the opportunity to join.

Cool, good. Well, like I said, this recording will be out on Free Webinar Wednesday. Wednesdays.com. Please feel free to check it out, share it with your friends and coworkers, and we will be looking forward to seeing you on our next Free Webinar Wednesday show. And until then, have a great week, everyone. Bye-bye.

Bye.