Introduction to Marketing Apps

With an understanding of the basics of landing page, let us now be familiar with the concept of marketing apps which is an emerging form of a landing page. According to Ion Interactive, one of the top ‘marketing apps’ firm, a marketing app is a browser-based digital experience designed for user interaction, which provides an experience even more engaging than the landing page. Not only does it refer to mobile apps but such a marketing app can reside within the browser regardless of the device. According to Ion, any kind of content can be converted to a marketing app to make it much more interactive and engaging for consumers. Typical examples would include:

1. Converting a white paper into a quiz app
2. Sharing a pricing spreadsheet as a calculator app
3. Developing best practices into assessments, among others

Though landing page is still the holy grail of conversion, marketers can benefit immensely to create rich experiences for consumers by developing relevant and customized marketing apps.

Lead Management across Channels—Owned, Earned, and Paid

With an understanding of the basics of lead generation to conversion, in this section, we would spend time to understand the various ways in which leads can be generated and converted across different types of digital media channels—owned, earned, and paid. Some of the channels which we will cover in the section as examples to discuss lead management include:

• Owned channels—website, blogs
• Earned channels—social media
• Paid media—SEM, e-mail marketing

The understanding emerging from this section would form the base for a detailed coverage on digital marketing execution in Chapter 8. Lead generation to conversion cycle activities typically form a part of the overall campaign management process which is vital to implementing any digital marketing program on a channel.

Let us begin with the website which is the most crucial of owned channels for all lead management activities.

1. Website-based lead management: It involves utilizing the product/brand website as the base for lead generation to conversion activities. Typically, any visitor who comes to a website (either directly or through other channels), needs to be directed to the specific action the marketer wants to accomplish. This act of getting the visitor to perform a certain intended action is termed as ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) in marketing. A CTA on a website, for example, could be a banner, button, graphic, text, etc., on any of the web pages which is meant to prompt a user to click it and move ahead for conversion.Depending on the intended lead generation objective and consumer funnel stage (as discussed in the beginning of the chapter), there are multiple types of CTAs which any website could deploy. These CTAs can also be specifically built for traffic coming from various other earned and paid media channels to convert targets and leads, based on their behavior and incoming source. The most commonly used types of CTAs on a website (according to Marketo) include:
   • Website forms: Forms are one of the most basic and yet powerful ways to capture information on visitors and to start the conversion journey.
   • Contact us: involves developing a contact form to support visitor request for more information on the company, product, or any other specific queries.
   • Asset download: Supporting visitors with useful content assets to share details on the product and its usage, and to also gather more information.
   • Chat: Live chats have become a very intuitive and powerful way to connect with website visitors who have an intent and in this way marketers are able to connect on a real-time basis with prospects.
   • Surveys: Another way to give visitors an insight into their interest area and helpful feedback is surveys. With the result of surveys, further CTAs like ‘Learn More’ related to the subject of the survey, can also be provided for further engagement.
   • Contests: Quick and interesting contests with some useful freebies is also another example of using landing pages effectively to gather more information.
2. Blog-based lead management: Blog opt-ins or subscriptions could be a great way to lock-in target audience, keep them engaged and offer them multiple points of conversion at regular intervals through effective use of e-mails or RSS feeds.Next, we will move on to earned channels.
3. Social media: Social content and CTA have become a stable and effective way not only to share engaging messages but to also generate leads without spending a lot. Also with peer-to-peer influence marketing gaining prominence, a strong social presence helps dedicated fans act as influencers for others who are willing to engage more with the brand but are still not ready for a purchase. The major social media sites which are used most extensively for lead management include:
   • Facebook: With the largest user base among all social networks, Facebook can be a strong peer-to-peer influencer. Facebook began with giving opportunities for brands to develop free-of-cost brand pages and to share posts with a large number of fans. But with increased usage, credibility, innovation, and adoption, paid ads on Facebook (in the form of Newsfeed ads and promoted posts) are starting to become as prominent as Adwords (Google Search Advertising Program) to help convert leads to conversions.
   • Twitter: Next to Facebook, Twitter is a popular tool to share relevant brand messages. With concepts like hashtags (grouping of similarly tagged messages) and promoted tweets gaining prominence, it is certainly a vital tool to invest in.
   • LinkedIn: For anything related to business profiles, networking, and relationship building, LinkedIn has emerged as the premium site to market. Firms can build company pages, invest in sponsored updates and LinkedIn ads to generate traffic from those who are interested in following the company and its products.
   • Google+: While still not as widely used as Facebook, Google+ is gaining popularity primarily through the network and integration effects of its other popular products like Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, etc.
   • Other social media sites: Apart from the key ones shared above, social sites like Pinterest, SlideShare, WhatsApp, Tumblr, etc., are also popular for lead generation.Finally, we move on to the paid media channels which are a must for businesses to begin their lead generation and lead management programs.
4. SEM (Search Engine Marketing): With search marketing being one of the most prominent paid lead-generation techniques, firms depend on it the most to start their lead-building efforts. As discussed in the last chapter in detail, SEM utilizes the algorithmic capability of advanced search algorithms to match audience keywords to text, display, and video advertisements. SEM along with its organic counterpart SEO (which involves optimizing content, images, URL structures on web pages to rank organically for search results), accounts for a comprehensive lead management program for most of the brands. It also involves efforts towards link building like establishing link-based authority for brand sites through inclusion of quality external links to specific web pages.
5. E-mail marketing: E-mail marketing has been the cornerstone for engagement building with audiences and historically has had the highest RoI of all paid programs, primarily due to the cost-effectiveness of paid e-mail programs. Vendors, typically support clients’ e-mail marketing programs by helping them target on audience type and reach, topics of interest, and geo-targeting. With the development of relevant e-mail marketing metrics and strong follow-up, marketers can hope to gain a lot from their e-mail investments.
6. Other paid channels: Apart from SEM and e-mail marketing, there are other types of paid marketing channels which are also the key to lead generation. These include affiliate marketing, content syndication, direct marketing, online events, among others. Apart from these, other traditional methods like inbound and outbound tele-calling are also channels wherein firms set up the infrastructure to generate new leads (through outbound calling) and grow engagement with present leads (through inbound customer care). Here, investment could be a bit higher upfront, but if firms set up an internal tele-calling unit, the results over time could reap substantial benefits as opposed to paying per call to an external vendor.

With an understanding of how varied channels can be deployed across owned, earned, and paid media towards lead generation and conversion objectives, we will move further to the next part of this chapter to look at how companies can develop the most critical instrument of lead management, that is, the whole set of activities towards website development.

Also, we need to add here that in this section, we have covered the operational part of lead generation and conversions. To execute them, marketers need to develop elaborate marketing campaigns which we would discuss at length in Chapter 8.