DRIVINGInbound LeadsPART 2 Maintenance

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STINTS AND STOPSYour house is in order.

Your content machine is purring.

Your pit crew is more agile and nimble than they’ve ever been and your team is ready to rumble.

Now what? Have you planned for pit stops? Because it’s just as important to refuel as it is to do regular maintenance to avoid a larger breakdown. You can’t run full throttle the whole race. You’ve got to step back, evaluate and redeploy.

In this white paper, we continue our discussion from our previous white paper, Driving Inbound Leads: Agility. In it, we talked about the key components for revving your content curation machine and making sure that you had the team and communication assets to make it work. We continue with this topic by taking a look under the hood to make sure your sales funnel isn’t leaking and that you are continually calibrating all parts of your inbound marketing machine.

The pit stop is critical. It is just as important to step back and check your gauges as it is to look at the whole of your operation. You may change the tires or replenish fluids—you may have to do a lot more. And then, just as seamlessly as before, you pull back onto the fairway and continue to drive those inbound leads.

In sales—we always have to put our best foot forward—every piece of content matters. Purchasers, now more than ever, are empowered to be their own researchers. Sales reps are generally less included in the earliest parts of the sales cycle. It’s up to your content to demonstrate that you know your customer, feel their pain and can fulfill their need.

Keeping a close eye on internal as well as external gauges is important. Take a cross-disciplinary approach to your analytics. Everyone should have access to the site analytics so that there is a holistic understanding of what is happening all along the

sales funnel.

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KNOWING THE RIGHT METRICS AND IDENTIFYING KEY CONVERSIONSDo you have a Google Analytics account? Is it giving you the information you need to

make strategic decisions about your marketing campaigns?

Track your inbound efforts meticulously and regularly with a crew that includes your sales, marketing and strategy players. Ask: Were we able to achieve a measurable increase in qualified marketing leads in a given time period?

Look at metrics both at a macro level (overall end goals of your website/digital property) as well as at a micro level (the intricacies of siphoning top-level unqualified leads through qualification and into actual opportunities). Purchases and leads are indicators that macro conversions are happening. You are most likely tracking these—they are typically the first and easiest goals to set up in your analytics program. Start there and then take a more granular look.

Tracking net yield is important, but not everything. You must take a macro/micro approach to tracking conversions. To find the real problems, check in with all of the minor outcomes to make sure they are supporting the whole inbound machine.

Here are just some of the inbound metrics to regularly review:

1. Site Analytics—Regularly look at your internal sales pipeline and refer back to

the inbound site and collateral visits for insights into what is working and what

is not. For example:

» Total unique site visits—look at this weekly but also for month-over-month trending. When inbound campaigns are working, site visits should increase.

» Qualified leads—how many qualified leads are in the pipeline?

» Percent of leads to total visits—look at how well your site is converting weekly and month-over-month to spot trends.

» Opportunities—look at how many leads are getting near or are into your active sales process and the percent of opportunities-to-leads, as well as compared to total site visits.

» Net yield—lastly, review the closed-won ratio. Again, measure this weekly as well as month-over-month to spot trending.

QUALIFIED LEADOne of your most important sales KPIs is your qualified lead. What is your company’s definition of a good lead? Do you know? Which leads generate the most revenue for the long term? How are you tracking them as you qualify them? Both marketing and sales should be in consensus about and sharing this metric.

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2. Content Analysis—Go back to your content playbook and track the status & performance of content by type, channel, date, time of day. Identify what’s sticky and driving the most engaged traffic. You must be dialed in—listening to your feedback loop is critical.

» Always know what content was shipped and what is on its way.

» What is the click-through rate on emails, calls-to-action and white paper downloads? How many leads actually converted to qualified sales oppurtunities?

» What is the percent opened, percent clicked or percent unsubscribed by particular content?

» Measure it by delivery method—which offered the most engagement? Which drove the most leads?

» Measure it by channel—are your most engaged prospects reveiwing your

content on your social channels, blog, email campaigns?

3. Develop workflows and get automated—Are you overwhelmed yet? There is a lot to track and look at in addition to staying on top of content generation. That’s why we recommend marketing automation software like HubSpot or Marketo. Marketing automation allows you to program, in advance, a curated series of content and have it served to the user sequentially and over time.

In the next section, we discuss the rules of the road for developing a workflow of content that parallels the organic path a user would take from discovery and

awareness through to the final conversion—a sale.

REVISITING AND RETHINKING YOUR SALES FUNNELThe proverbial sales funnel. When is the last time your sales funnel report was truly useful? Meaning—when has it provided you with actionable insights into how to track and convert the most qualified leads? Better yet—when is the last time you reviewed it with fresh eyes and thought—you know, this could use some updating? When you think about your existing marketing collateral is it clear where it all fits in the funnel? Do you have workflows that map out content designed to take prospects through each stage of your sales funnel (their buying cyle)?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, great! Let’s make a plan.

E. St. Elmo Lewis, an early thinker in American advertising, is credited with creating the first sales funnel. At the turn of the last century, years before Madison Avenue

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was Madison Avenue, Lewis was putting forth his AIDA theory of advertising: Attract attention, awaken interest, create desire, and spur action. Since that time, advertisers and marketers have revised and remixed their own versions of AIDA into their own funnels. But at the heart of all of these models are these simple phases set forth by Lewis and his contemporaries for presenting and engaging people to a product, service or brand.

Inbound marketing is about getting the right message to prospects at the right time. Keep in mind, though, that as a result of the decades of outbound marketing, consumers are self-programmed to filter out incoming messaging. So we continue to think critically about the messaging that goes out, learn what is performing, and fix what isn’t.

Working smarter, not harder is our modus operandi here at Oneupweb. We let our content funnels work smarter for us. Leads at the top of the funnel are not ready to talk to us yet. In fact, many just don’t want to. They want to do their own research, develop an awareness of digital marketing solutions and explore their options before deciding that we are possibly a fit for them. Moreover, curated workflows that abide by the sales funnel save the sales team precious time in qualifying leads. If your content is well placed and on point, it will do some of the heaviest lifting as far as

qualifying goes.

The modern sales funnel starts with understanding your customers as holistically

as you can—what are their pain points? You must understand the whole of your

customer’s psychological path to purchase as completely as you can. How can you

help them? What is your point of difference compared to your competitors? Some tips:

1. Start with the AIDA structure—but don’t be afraid to play around with this.

Digital advertising birthed an exponentially savvier consumer, and with that,

more touch points that require nuance throughout the sales cycle.

2. The funnel moves alongside the customer’s intent to purchase—naturally

from passive to active.

3. Curate content that moves from general at the top to specific and solution-

focused at the bottom. The awareness stage can be further broken down into

separate decision making stages, particularly for products or services that

are B2B and/or have a long sales cycle with multiple stakeholders involved in

Awareness

Interest

Desire

Action

1

2

3

4

SALES FUNNEL EXAMPLES OF CHANNELS TO USE THROUGH THE SALES PROCESS

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the final purchase decision. Your content should speak broadly in awareness-

building terms—introductions to concepts, to your company, to their problems

and then drill down to the specifics.

4. The final desire-to-action conversion hinges on content that relevantly focuses

on solutions specific to the prospect and the prospect’s industry, and makes

it hard for the prospect to imagine not having your product/service. If you

are a B2B company, you are most likely already in touch with prospects at this

point, but that’s not always the case.

Use a sales funnel that looks at all digital channels and serves successive content

designed to pull leads from the top of the funnel through to purchase. In addition

to thinking in terms of general-to-specific content, frame the content in a way that

meets the user’s psychographic intentions. Are they passively exploring or are they

moving toward a decision.

1. Awareness—At the top of the funnel you have a mix of soon to be qualified or

unqualified leads—they either started their search with a problem they need

solved or have been made aware of a service/product like yours via word of

mouth, social, or display ad to name only a few. Either way, this is the first

touch point to begin to inform and engage the user with general content.

Especially if you are driving a high volume of traffic, it is important to begin

vetting here. White papers, educational webinars and Google searches are all

part of awareness building. Conveying business value is the primary objective.

ACTION

AWARENESS

INTENT

DESIRE

$

SALES FUNNEL EXAMPLES OF CHANNELS TO USE THROUGH THE SALES PROCESS

KEYDisplay

YouTube

Facebook

Twitter

StumbleUpon

Pandora

Branded Paid Search

Non-Branded Paid Search

Retargeting

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2. Interest—Emotions start coming into play in this stage. Messaging should speak to the point of difference your business proposition offers. This is where you convey value that speaks to your prospective customers’ personal pain points. Touch points begin to develop a more active tone. Case studies, infographics and product/service focused webinars come into play here.

3. Desire—Lead with emotional appeals to professional benefits your service offers. Speaking to personal value, business offers are threaded throughout messaging. Content hones in on reasons to purchase and incentivizes with trials or demos. You make the personal connection and engage the lead with a taste of how you can make their lives better.

4. Action—All hands are on deck in this final phase. The sales team, with back pockets full of any other relevant content such as infographics, client testimonials, or ROI projections, are ready to close the deal. The qualified opportunity has been nurtured by content that has led them to final decision making. You have everything you need to make the case. And you can help

them make the case up the chain or through procurement to ink the deal.

Driving high volume of inbound leads is no small undertaking. There is a lot of

upfront setup—mobilizing an agile crew, developing a robust coffer of meaningful

content, knowing when and how to distribute it, regularly measuring your efforts,

and always at the ready to pivot in new directions as needed. You and your team

must be prepared to stay the course, trust each other and be willing to ask hard

questions of one another. If you need help with your inbound strategy or content

curation or need an agile pit crew to handle it all for you, Oneupweb is here to help.

Let’s get started!

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ABOUT ONEUPWEBOneupweb has been an innovator in digital marketing for nearly 20 years, creating

integrated online marketing strategies that incorporate web design, search

marketing (SEO and PPC), social media, inbound marketing and more. Heralded

by an independent research firm for their leadership team, work ethic and solid

experience in optimizing complicated sites, Oneupweb has been named a Top

25 Search Marketing Agency by Advertising Age for five consecutive years, and

CEO Lisa Wehr is recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Oneupweb is a privately held company located in Traverse City, Michigan. For

more information on Oneupweb, please call 231.922.9977, visit OneUpWeb.com.

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