Zheng Yi Lee Of SmartBear on 5 Proven Strategies for Increasing Lead Generation

An Interview with Rachel Kline

Drive traffic and engagement to your website: A strong digital presence can attract visitors to your website and boost organic traffic growth. When someone visits your website, they should be encouraged to engage with the content such as downloading a resource, making inquiries, or signing up for webinars. These actions can help initiate the sales process by converting unknown visitors into known visitors, allowing for further engagement in the future.

Generating quality leads is crucial for businesses in today’s competitive landscape, and finding innovative and effective ways to attract potential customers has become a top priority. In this interview series, we are talking with marketing experts, industry professionals, and thought leaders who can share insights and stories from their experience about the best strategies for effective lead generation. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Zheng Yi Lee.

Zheng Yi Lee is a Senior Marketing Specialist, APAC at SmartBear, a leading provider of software development and visibility tools. She focuses on driving demand and product interests in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region with the support of technology services such as Marketo, Salesforce, and 6sense. For more than eight years, Zheng held various roles, including client management and marketing consulting at MarketOne International, a global integrated demand generation agency, specializing in marketing automation, database analysis, digital content creation, and telemarketing services. Zheng has a bachelor’s degree in Communications and Marketing Communications (Advertising) from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Thank you for doing this with us! Before we begin, our readers would like to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this career path?

I studied advertising at university which resulted in me envisioning a career in the advertising industry. Nevertheless, I was given the opportunity to take on a different path, where I joined a demand generation agency. My primary role was to support clients in the tech sector to generate high quality leads and implement marketing automation. I started as a sales development representative and was later promoted to a consulting role, where I assisted clients in improving their lead conversion. This journey has led me to my current position at SmartBear, a leading provider of software development and visibility tools, where I oversee marketing activities within the APAC region.

Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that has occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or takeaway you took from that story?

One of the most rewarding experiences in my career thus far was a client visit to Bengaluru, India. Initially, I felt nervous as I was traveling alone to a country I’ve never been to and was hesitant to go on this trip. In hindsight, that was rather unnecessary. Everyone was so welcoming and keen to share their marketing journey with me. This helped me tremendously with the key objectives of the trip to develop better client relationships, improve engagement with our local team as well as develop a better understanding of the trends and nuances in India.

I was blessed to have had the opportunity to speak to so many different marketing professionals in India, leveraging their knowledge and understanding to better inform our marketing approach. It is hard to put into words the personal and professional growth I gained out of this trip, so I am glad I decided to give it a go despite my initial concerns. My stomach was pretty happy too with all the delicious food I sampled!

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I am really excited about our meetup events! We have been working hard on building SmartBear’s brand awareness and growing the company’s presence in Australia. A key pillar of our strategy is to participate in events and host meetup style events to build relationships with our customers and create a SmartBear user community in Australia.

At these events, we share SmartBear’s latest and greatest software development and visibility tools, but more importantly, we focus on the challenges our participants face when it comes to developing software and apps. This not only gives us an opportunity to highlight tools within the SmartBear portfolio to address those challenges but also allows us to feed information back to our development team to inform new projects.

Our first meetup event was really successful. It was good to get people back in the same room for a face-to-face event after the pandemic. There were many lively discussions which are hard to replicate virtually, and I think everyone left that day feeling more confident to execute.

For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about your experience with Lead Generation? Can you share an anecdote or two that illustrates your experience in this area?

Lead generation has changed since I started my career in this area. In the past, lead generation involved reaching out to potential customers through cold calling or following up via phone with them based on their recent activity. However, lead generation methods have changed in recent years due to consumer preferences and regulatory requirements. As people started to work from home in greater numbers and the increased prevalence of spam calls which resulted in less trust in unknown numbers, we had to adapt our lead generation methods to the new world.

Today, we utilize various marketing channels to nurture and target leads, ensuring that the right content is delivered to the right audience at the right time. For example, we built a content recommendation engine that offers personalized content to visitors as they browse through our website. Instead of calling or sending nurture emails, the engine recommends relevant content to visitors based on their previous actions. This personalized content experience results in leads being far more engaged and increases their time on the hub. In parallel to that, we also utilize a lead scoring model to assess leads based on their profile and behavior. The model allows us to identify potential opportunities for conversion. We continuously work on improving the model through refinement of the scoring criteria and optimization of lead qualification which have resulted in a model that generates high quality leads for conversion.

How do you determine which channels to invest in for lead generation, and which ones have been most successful for you?

For me, the most important thing is the target audience. When faced with the decision of selecting the best channels, I often ask myself the following questions to help guide the investment decision.

• Which channel is my target audience mostly consuming content from?
• Where is my target audience in their buyer journey stage?
• Are these channels highly effective in contributing to the business’ ROI?

As an example, I have collaborated with paid media vendors to assist clients in generating leads through content syndication. Publishing content on well-known third-party sites or platforms has helped raise brand awareness and has generated a substantial number of quality leads.

It is also unsurprising that social media like LinkedIn is also an effective channel for lead generation. We have used lookalike audiences as a targeting option that allow us to reach a new audience that closely resembles our existing customer base. In fact, we have also been able to retarget accounts that were not ready to be qualified at the time but had high potential.

Each channel has its own pros and cons when it comes to lead generation. However, in my experience, I have found investing in multiple channels to be effective in broadening our reach, acquiring leads, and leveraging the unique benefits each channel offers.

How do you balance lead quantity with lead quality? What metrics do you use to measure the quality of your leads, and how do you ensure sales and marketing are aligned?

We know that not all leads are ready to be converted into a sale, hence at SmartBear, we use lead scoring as a method to qualify leads. With our strong inbound engine coupled with our lead scoring process, we are able to effectively identify potential buyers of SmartBear products and de-prioritize unqualified leads. We leverage predictive modeling to grade our leads and score them based on their engagement. This relies on collaboration between marketing and sales teams to develop the scoring criteria and the lead threshold where a prospect is ready to be routed to the sales team.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to have both the sales and marketing teams aligned to improve the marketing and sales funnel. Every quarter, we report on the funnel to understand how many leads we have generated and converted into sales. It also helps us identify leads that drop off during the path to conversion, allowing us to prioritize our marketing effort for the relevant funnel stage. We regularly meet with the sales team to gather feedback on the leads so we can continuously improve our scoring mechanism and the overall funnel to drive higher conversion.

What are the biggest challenges you see companies facing when it comes to lead generation, and how do you suggest they overcome them?

I have noticed that one of the biggest challenges companies face in lead generation is bad data quality. As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. There are several reasons for bad quality leads, including:

• Inaccurate/incomplete data: This occurs when the leads provide inaccurate information during the lead capture process, making it difficult to contact them. One approach to address this issue is to use validation techniques on the form to ensure accurate and consistent data entry. Tools such as ZoomInfo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator can also be leveraged to enrich contact information and enhance data quality. I have also found implementing a data enrichment and normalization program which regularly updates the databases helps address this issue.
• Misalignment between marketing and sales: Often sales and marketing teams have not established a shared definition of a qualified lead. This misalignment results in leads that are not fit for purpose. As such, sales and marketing need to be on the same page regarding the criteria when a lead is ready for sales engagement. Regular feedback from the sales team and periodic reviews refining the lead qualification criteria will result in a better lead handover and follow up, resulting in better lead conversion.

What role do marketing automation and CRM systems play in your lead generation strategy, and how do you use technology or AI to streamline the process?

I cannot overstate the importance of marketing automation. At SmartBear, we use marketing automation and CRM systems to create and deploy campaigns. Marketing automation has enabled integration between different systems, which has made it more effective and efficient for me to manage day-to-day campaigns.

Marketing automation also plays a key role in helping SmartBear host webinars. Having automated processes in place helps avoid the tediousness associated with creating webinar programs, as the systems are able to communicate with each other enabling us to track the entire customer journey, from the invitation and webinar attendance through to the lead conversion and sales process in a CRM.

As there are many moving parts involved in a marketing campaign from the planning, design, and reporting perspectives, and will only get more complex going forward, I have no doubt that technology and AI will play a significant role in automating the many tasks involved.

Can you share an example of a successful lead generation campaign you’ve led? What made it so effective?

I find the key to a successful campaign is content relevance and personalization. We are bombarded by so much content these days in both our professional and personal life, it is imperative that we consistently deliver compelling messages that capture one’s attention.

One of the campaigns where I had much success was sales-assisted webinars. I run them on a quarterly basis for the APAC region for approximately 30 minutes. The webinar is tailored toward the needs of our region, and we make every attempt to localize and personalize the content through close collaboration across the different SmartBear teams. I believe personalized and local content helps us establish trust and credibility with our customers. This approach allows us to improve the overall customer experience and achieve better lead generation performance.

Here is the main question of our interview. What are your 5 proven strategies for increasing lead generation? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

1. Drive traffic and engagement to your website: A strong digital presence can attract visitors to your website and boost organic traffic growth. When someone visits your website, they should be encouraged to engage with the content such as downloading a resource, making inquiries, or signing up for webinars. These actions can help initiate the sales process by converting unknown visitors into known visitors, allowing for further engagement in the future.
2. Personalize your content: In today’s market, it is essential to tailor your messaging to create an emotional bond with your audience and motivate them to take action. To expand your reach across multiple products, implement behavioral targeting in nurture email campaigns based on the audience’s product interests and searches. I believe that quality content is far superior to a deluge of content, so by adopting this approach, we reduce the number of emails sent, hence reducing customers’ annoyance with irrelevant emails which leads to increased customer engagement.
3. Build an omnichannel experience: By diversifying your marketing efforts across various channels, your chances of capturing leads from different sources increase. However, with the growth of available marketing channels, it is important to ensure a seamless and consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. For instance, if a customer chooses to opt out of receiving emails but is still interested in your brand, the experience should continue seamlessly in other marketing platforms. One example is targeting them through ads on social media and third party sites.
4. Nurture and retarget your leads: Each individual has unique needs and progresses through the stages of the buyer journey at a different pace. It is important that we build relationships with our audience and provide valuable information to guide them toward their buying decision. One of the marketing campaigns I worked on involved building an always-on nurture campaign to funnel unqualified leads. Aside from nurturing, leads that have shown interest in the brand but have not been converted will be retargeted through LinkedIn. This helps provide an additional point of contact with your potential customers.
5. Test, track, and optimize: Testing is crucial for growth marketing as it allows you to understand what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t based on real data. For instance, conducting A/B testing on email subject lines or content can provide insights into keywords and content types that resonate with your audience. By tracking the metrics and running tests, you can optimize your campaigns and improve your conversion rates. With access to customer insights, this can assist you with making informed decisions to generate leads and improve overall conversion rates.

What trends do you see emerging in this space that businesses should be paying attention to?

Key trends that come to mind include:

• User-generated content: While this concept is not new and has been around for a while, it has gained significant popularity in recent years. User-generated content serves as social proof, showcasing how others are using and enjoying the product. We often trust opinions and experiences shared by our community more than branded content. It also amplifies reach when users create content and share it on their social media platforms or through word of mouth.
• Video live streaming: Video live streaming has become popular and important in marketing due to its ability to provide real time engagement and a broader reach. It also encourages consumers to quickly make a purchasing decision. During my recent trip to Bangkok, I was fascinated to see how content creators were selling via live streaming by showcasing clothes in-store. This approach can save retailers’ promotional budgets as they can rely on users to promote their brands.
• AI in digital marketing: Data is ubiquitous, but leveraging the right data to make informed decisions can be challenging. AI has the potential to revolutionize how marketers approach their campaigns by making predictions about customer behavior and enhance personalization tactics. The integration in AI digital marketing can equip businesses to better engage their customers, tailor their marketing strategies, and drive a higher ROI.

We are nearly done. You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It would be the ‘become a better you’ movement. We should be inspired to be a better version of ourselves everyday — and not try to keep up with the Joneses.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/zheng-yi-lee/

Thank you for the interview. We wish you only continued success!