The document provides an overview of the key steps involved in implementing a closed loop lead generation process for small businesses. It discusses setting objectives, choosing lead generation vehicles, capturing leads, integrating with CRM software, and following up on leads. The goal of a closed loop process is to generate, qualify, nurture and ultimately convert sales leads at each stage of the customer lifecycle.

1. Closed Loop Lead Generation
The Small Business Guide to Growing Revenues Through
the Acquisition, Retention, Management, and Conversion of
Sales Leads
Small Business eGuide Series

2. Chris Marocchi is the
Founder of Klear
Strat, LLC, a marketing
strategy, branding and lead
generation services
company servicing small
businesses. Klear Strat is
based in Laguna Niguel, CA.
Prior to forming Klear
Strat, Chris held executive
marketing positions with
The UPS Stores, CB Richard
Ellis and ITT Corp. Follow
Chris on Twitter @klearstrat.
AUTHOR:
Chris Marocchi
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3. Introduction................................................................. ....4
Chapter 1. Set The Objectives …………………………….……..…6
Chapter 2. Determine Your Lead Generation Vehicle…....9
Chapter 3. Lead Capture………………...….………..….……………11
Chapter 4. Integration with CRM …………………….…..……….14
Chapter 5. Follow Up Activities …………………………………….18
Conclusion…………………………………………..…………..…..……...21
Glossary….........................................................................22
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
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4. The challenge small businesses face is how to grow revenues in an environment
of growing competition. Many don’t possess the resources or tools to implement
a comprehensive lead management program consisting of the following:
1. Growing a database of qualified prospects
2. Increasing engagement with these prospects
3. Nurturing interested but not-yet-ready-to-buy prospects
4. Converting nurtured prospects into customers
Small businesses often make the mistake of setting an increase in lead
generation as a solitary goal, without mechanisms in place to manage the lead
relationship throughout its complete lifecycle.
A closed loop lead generation process addresses this issue by clearly defining the
elements that belong in generating, capturing, and managing leads toward the
ultimate goal of converting the leads into profit-generating sales. The “closed
loop” phrase refers to the closing of the sales lifecycle of a lead .
This eGuide addresses the steps a small business can take to build an entire lead
eco system to optimize online lead conversions to maximize profit generation.
INTRODUCTION
• SET OBJECTIVES
• CHOOSE VEHICLES
• LEAD CAPTURE
• INTEGRATION WITH CRM
• CLOSING THE LOOP
CLOSED LOOP LEAD GEN PROCESS
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5. INTRODUCTION
Glossary
For your convenience, a glossary of terms used throughout this eGuide is
provided at the end of the guide. Selected terms have been highlighted in
dark blue and underlined so it’s easy for you to identify which words are
defined. These highlighted words are hyperlinked to the glossary page
where the definition is found.
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6. CHAPTER 1:
Set the Objectives
“If You Don’t Know Where You’re
Going, You Might End Up Some Place
Else.” – Yogi Berra
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7. Set the Objectives
Any online marketing campaign needs clearly defined objectives
before you set out to communicate with your audience. Just
executing a lead generation campaign does not mean you’ll a)
generate leads and b) generate the leads that you want.
You’ll want to start out by identifying the following:
1. Identify your target audience – what industry are you trying to
reach? Is there a sub segment of that industry that is your
target market? With whom are you trying to communicate – a
buyer, CEO or operations manager? Who is the decision
maker, and how will you best reach that person? Identifying
your target audience up front will help clarify the vehicle and
channel of communication.
2. Determine the best method of reaching your target audience –
and how you will reach it. For example, if your product is a
medical device, you will likely want to communicate though a
highly technical medium, such as a white paper, though a
channel that is respectable and credible, such as an online
publication or site dedicated to health care practitioners.
CHAPTER 1
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8. Set the Objectives
3. What do you hope to accomplish ? - Any marketing campaign
needs clearly defined objectives that will meet your sales
goals, before you set out to communicate with your audience.
Some common goals or results include:
– Sales conversions: What is your current rate of leads
converted into sales, and what is the desired increase?
– Leads captured: What percentage of new leads do you need
to capture with each aspect of your marketing campaign?
What is the quality of leads you are after?
– Website traffic: How many unique visitors are visiting your
website each month, and what pages are they visiting? How
much time are they spending on each page?
CHAPTER 1
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9. CHAPTER 2:
Determine Your Lead
Generation Vehicles
“Select the vehicles that will most
effectively reach and engage your
target audience.”
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10. Determine Your Lead Generation Vehicles
Selecting the proper vehicles for your lead generation program is
critical to your campaign’s success. Performing qualitative research
can help you observe how your target customers find information for
making purchasing decisions.
Lead Generation Vehicle options may include:
• Text PPC and banner advertising (for those who spend a lot of
time on Google searches)
• Video PPC advertising (for target customers who would respond
well to visual imagery and perhaps a “how to” message)
• Emails, articles, blogs, social media, or other online content that
drive viewers to a landing page on your website
Once you’ve selected the best vehicle(s) to communicate your
message to your target customer, you’ll need to:
1. Develop a branded creative layout for your
selected vehicle
2. Create a message that will resonate with your
target customer
3. Create a clear call to action for the prospect to
respond to
Also be sure you’re not repurposing a message inappropriately – for
example, a TV commercial might not work in a video marketing
campaign.
CHAPTER 2
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11. CHAPTER 3:
Lead Capture
“Determine the best tools for capturing
leads generated by your campaign.”
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12. You can achieve a 25% improvement in
conversion rate by using a promotion-
specific, standalone landing page (vs. sending
paid search visitors to your homepage).
To capture inbound
leads, you’ll need to
create a landing page
for each vehicle used in
your lead generation
campaigns. An effective
landing page improves
the percentage of
visitors that become
leads.
CHAPTER 3
Source: Omniture, 2012
Lead Capture
There are key areas of
your landing page that
will determine its
effectiveness:
• Headline
• Content
• Meta description
• Keywords
• Share-ability
• Navigation
• Simple Form
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13. CHAPTER 3
Landing Page for Lead Capture
You’ll also want to ensure that you only have
one (1) call to action on your landing page. Don’t confuse
the customer with two many options!
Example of Landing Page
Headline
Content
No
navigation
bar
Simple Form
Keywords
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14. “Create the ability to import the
captured lead into a CRM database.”
CHAPTER 4:
Integration with CRM
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15. CHAPTER 4
Integration with CRM (Customer Relationship
Management)
The next step of the process is to select a CRM solution that enables sales lead
capture and contact management. You’ll need to select a web-based solution that
universally works with many different plug-ins and tools, allowing it to integrate
easily with other systems. There are also several solutions that are affordable for
small business owners.
Choosing a CRM Solution
In order to properly build your closed
loop lead generating system, you’ll
need to select a CRM solution that
offers the following:
• Code generation for a web form that
will capture data entered into the
form fields .
• Imports the data entered into the
web form directly into the CRM
contact management system.
• Integrates with your email
marketing tool or marketing
automation systems.
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16. Benefits of CRM in Closed Loop Lead Generation
Once the customer’s information is captured in the CRM database, you’ll benefit in
multiple ways.
1st, you’ll have that contact in your database for future lead nurturing activities.
2nd, you’ll be able to set up an automated response as soon as the contact is
imported to notify the customer and validate that their information was captured.
3rd, you will be able to set up automated email notifications to the assigned
sales person.
CHAPTER 4
Integration with CRM (Customer Relationship
Management)
Additional features that you’ll want included in your CRM
solution of choice are:
• A solution that is easy to set up and intuitive to use
• Easy importing of existing contact databases
• Integration with customer’s email system (to capture day to
day emails in CRM)
• Automated alerts that inform you when action is required
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17. There are a few things to keep in
mind when designing an effective
web form:
1)Just like the landing page, only
include a single call to action. Make
sure the call to action matches the
action your lead gen vehicle asked
them to perform.
2) Keep the form simple, as
shown in the example to the right.
Capturing the customer’s
name, email address and perhaps
company name is sufficient.
3)Be sure to test the form with
your CRM solution to ensure you’ve
set it up correctly and have properly
set up notifications.
WEB FORM
CHAPTER 4
The most efficient way to manage the leads captured by the landing page is through a
web form. Web forms can be customized by your web designer, and will require code to
function on the landing page on your website. Web form creation software can also be
purchased; the best small business solution, however, is one that is integrated with a
contact management or CRM system.
Building a CRM Web Form
Research shows that
the more fields there
are to complete in a
web form, the less
likely it is the
customer will
complete the process.
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18. “Most failed lead conversions occur
because the sales person thinks every
inbound lead is hot, and drops it if it’s
not. Most leads take time to nurture.”
CHAPTER 5:
Follow Up Activities
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19. First, you’ll want to focus on what to
do with the leads you have captured.
Here are your next steps to consider:
1)Make sure your automated
response mechanism is working and
your leads are getting an immediate
response. Invite your prospects to
join/sign up for your social
media, including newsletters and/or
blogs.
2) Contact hot leads immediately!
This includes any leads asking for a
purchase order or other indication
that they’re ready to buy. Preferably
call them.
3)If your CRM or Marketing
Automation solution allows you to
schedule automated messaging
beyond the initial automated
response, craft a strategy for how you
often you want an automated
message delivered to nurture your
prospect along.
CHAPTER 5
Now that your lead management ‘eco-system’ is in place, it’s time to focus on lead
nurturing. It’s too soon to think about lead conversions, because the relationship
building is just starting. Too many marketers make the mistake of disposing of leads
because they weren’t interested at the time of capture. These leads are simply at a
different stage of engagement – they’re “at or near the top of the funnel”. This chapter
discusses how you can move them through the sales management cycle.
Follow Up Activities
Investing in a
marketing automation
solution will allow you
to automate follow-up
email sequences to
nurture a warm
prospect along the
sales cycle until he or
she is ready to buy. A
lead scoring system
can assist in your
assessment of when
the prospect is ready
for a call.
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20. 1) Webinars
2) Training Sessions
3) Seminars
4) Engage with email
marketing, newsletter, social
media and/or blogs
5) Promote special offers or
bonus content in the form of
special PDF reports, podcasts,
eBooks, Whitepapers, videos,
or training materials
CHAPTER 5
Blogger Ana Hoffman, creator of the Traffic Generation Café, suggests that the
main reason leads aren’t converted is due to a lack of connection. Says Hoffman
“What people REALLY want is a solution to their problem and YOU are the
deciding factor between a sale (conversion) or a lost lead. If your leads don’t have
an emotional connection with you, they will simply disappear in search of the
solution to their problem.” Listed below are some tools you can employ to develop
the right “connection” to your prospects:
Follow Up Activities
Remaining engaged
with your prospects
will allow the lead to
see further evidence
of your value and will
help them feel
emotionally ready to
make a purchase.
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21. Congratulations! You have now been educated on the 5 Steps of the Closed
Loop Lead Generation Process. By following these steps, you can ensure that
your future online marketing campaigns will be more successful than ever.
To recap, we discussed the following process for the lead generation, capture and
conversion lifecycle:
CONCLUSION
• SET OBJECTIVES
• CHOOSE VEHICLES
• LEAD CAPTURE
• INTEGRATION WITH CRM
• CLOSING THE LOOP
CLOSED LOOP LEAD GEN PROCESS
In order to most effectively evaluate your future success, it’s important to
benchmark your past efforts and compare against your future campaigns.
Be sure to select metrics for which the data is readily available to you so
you can effectively compare the before and after results.
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22. Throughout this guide we’ve used terminology from the evolving world of
marketing technology. In order to ensure that we’re doing the best job possible
to clearly communicate the meaning of these relatively new terms with
you, we’ve included this glossary with easy links from the words as they appear
throughout the pages of this guide. We hope this helps!
GLOSSARY
Automated Response - an action that is initiated when a processing rule match occurs.
By using processing rules, you can define an automated response to a detected
condition, such as a prospect completing an online form (or other predetermined
event in the customer relationship development). Responses come in the form of an
email and usually acknowledge the completion of the event that initiated the auto
response.
Banner Advertising - this form of online advertising entails embedding an
advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to
the website of the advertiser.
Call to Action - is a banner, button, or some type of graphic or text on a website meant
to prompt a user to click it and continue down a conversion funnel.
CRM - Customer relationship management (CRM) - a model for managing a company’s
interactions with current and future customers. It provides a 360 degree view of
customer data by using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize
sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support contact with the customer.
Contact Management - a software program that enables users to easily store and find
contact information, such as names, addresses and telephone numbers. They are
contact-centric databases that provide a fully integrated approach to tracking of all
information and communication activities linked to contacts.
Conversion Rate – In internet marketing, the conversion rate is the proportion of
visitors to a website who perform a specific action desired by the company, as a result
of a subtle or direct call to action.
Conversion rate = Number of Actions Performed/Site Visitors.
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23. GLOSSARY
Eco-system – The business process that encapsulates the steps and tools involved with
lead generation, lead capture and lead management.
Form fields - a simple text box found within a web form that allows input of
a single line of text
Keywords - Keywords are words or phrases that describe content found on a company’s
website. Keywords are used on the web in two different ways: 1) as search terms for
search engines, and 2) words that identify the content of the website.
Lead Generation – The process of creating sales prospects through the application of
Marketing tactics to pique interest in a company’s target audience.
Lead Capture/Landing Page – In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as
a "lead capture page" or a "lander", is a single web page that appears in response to
clicking on a search engine optimized search result or an online advertisement. The
landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the
advertisement, search result or link.
Lead Nurturing - a process by which leads are tracked and developed into sales-
qualified leads.
Lead Scoring System - a tool that provides visibility into each lead's quality and where
it stands in the purchase process.
Marketing Automation - marketing automation refers to automating the process of
sending your marketing communications. Instead of a manual process that's time-
consuming and subject to human error, marketing automation solutions enable you to
create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to
customer/prospect behaviors, lifecycle segments and other criteria.
Meta Description - the description that appears with your company or product listing
results during an online search. It is shown as text to support a listing in natural search
and does influence click through rate and relevance.
Navigation – the menu appearing on a website that facilitates movement from one
page to another page. It is usually positioned at the top, bottom or left side of the site.
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24. GLOSSARY
Paid Search - Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads
on search engines. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-
click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.
PPC – pay-per-click marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on
search engines. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or paid search
marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.
Qualitative Research - Data-gathering techniques that are focused on the significance
of observations made in a study rather than the raw numbers themselves.
Repurposing - To use or convert for use in another format or product: repurposed the
book as a compact disk.
Share-ability – the ability and ease of sharing content found within a web page with
others through social media or blog sites
Target Audience - a specific group of people within the target market at which a
product or the marketing message of a product is aimed.
Vehicles - A specific channel or publication for carrying the advertising message to a
target audience. For example, one medium would be magazines, while one vehicle
would be Time magazine.
Video PPC – The use of digital video in lieu of text in a PPC campaign
Web form - An HTML form on a web page allows a user to enter data that is sent to a
server for processing. Forms resemble paper or database forms because web users fill
out the forms using checkboxes, radio buttons, or text fields.
Sources:
• Silverpop
• Wikipedia
• Techterms.com
• Forrester
• Evolutionsearchmarketing.com
•Marketingterms.com
• Searchengineland
• Thefreedictionary.com
• Marketingabout.com
• Microsoft.com
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25. Klear Strat provides support to small businesses that are seeking a clear and concise
marketing strategy to help launch a new business or product line with efficiency while
maximizing marketing investment, no matter how large or small. Once the business
plan is in place, Klear Start offers a full spectrum of marketing services through a
virtual network of service providers hand selected to provide the best and most cost
effective work for you.
We take care of selecting the resources and managing project work so you don’t have
to. Almost anyone can build a website these days – but someone needs to determine
messaging strategy, corporate branding, integration with CRM and/or
eCommerce, marketing automation and SEO.
Click here learn more
about our closed loop
lead generation
packages.
Copyright 2013 KlearStrat, LLC. All Rights Reserved. www.klearstrat.com
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