etailinsights eCommerce Data and Sales Blog

Now I know what you’re thinking.

The growth of your client base usually coincides with the strength of your email list. The better the list the more opportunity you have to generate sales because once you acquire a lead's email you have direct access to his inbox for correspondence and nurturing.

Whether you’re a well-known brand in your industry or you’re still trying to find a niche, I think it’s safe to say that every company wants to stimulate as much interest as possible around their brand.  And when you’re competing for attention online, it’s easy to fade into the background where etailers can’t find you.

Starting a conversation the right way often takes effort and preparation. Casually approaching etailers usually leads to talking about the weather, and although that's a legitimate conversational topic in normal social settings, mentioning the dreary cloud cover doesn't drive you closer to getting the sale.

With over 2.4 billion people surfing the Internet today, we have more data than ever at our fingertips, and as powerful as this can be for our sales teams, these large databases of consumer information can quickly become outdated.

In a perfect world, every qualified etailer interested in your products or services would eventually become a customer. Unfortunately, in this imperfect world only a fraction of the leads we receive turn into sales, which is why it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of interested prospects.

Like most things in life, quality is better than quantity. This is especially true when it comes to eCommerce prospects. The better you can identify quality prospects, the more efficient and effective your sales process becomes.

Not every lead is created equal.

Driving sales begins with encouraging prospects to either engage with you or your online content and the best way to achieve that is through a well-placed call to action.

"LinkedIn Groups can be lead generating machines, but most B2B salespeople aren’t leveraging it to its full potential. Here is a proven step-by-step guide on how you can generate more leads by participating in these groups.1) Target An AudienceStart by identifying the type of people you want as leads. Use your data and analytics and your past experience to hone in on an audience of people that are most likely to engage with you. For this to be effective, you really have to nail down your target customer.2) Find The Most Active GroupLarge groups that are inactive, or small groups that are really active, might not churn out the best results. Ideally, you’ll want to find the largest, most active group out there. Keep an eye out for groups with more robots than humans and avoid them.3) Write Super Engaging ContentThis step is critical. You need to either revamp an old piece of content or write a completely new piece of content that you know will engage your target group. This has to be your absolute best. The title has to grab them and not let go until they read more. Take your content a step further and make it into a PDF white paper.4) Create An Opt-In Landing PageOnce you contribute to the group’s conversation and post about your super engaging content, you should take them to a squeeze page. Show the very beginning of the article on this page to hook them in, and then require users to trade their email address to view the full-length article. There you go—a new lead. Wash, rinse, and repeat for best results (i.e., don’t be afraid to reach out to multiple LinkedIn groups or with different content to the same group). Do you work with eCommerce companies? See how etailinsights has helped companies just like yours increase lead generation. Image: Flickr">data and analytics and your past experience to hone in on an audience of people that are most likely to engage with you. For this to be effective, you really have to nail down your target customer.