Businesses constantly have to decide how to divide their budgets to get the best results from their lead generation efforts. Website Optimization, Social Media and SEO are the top three strategies receiving the biggest bump in budgets. More time and money is being committed to these tactics, and the reason for that is simple: it’s measurable and effective.
Smart business people understand that having a website is not enough. In fact understanding how people are finding your website and what they are doing upon visiting your site is critical to optimizing your lead generation funnel and helping you attract and retain new customers.
Marketers are Looking for ROI
The pressure for ROI and qualified leads is higher than ever, and it’s not going away any time soon. Gone are the days in which a marketer or business owner could throw money at an unproven model to see if it works. Now they have to justify the marketing expense in terms of revenue and profit that goes back into the company.
The 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report below, conducted in May of 2012, shows that the highest priority for marketers is achieving or increasing measurable ROI and optimizing the marketing-sales funnel.
What this means is that leads alone are not enough unless they are leads that are very likely to convert to customers. This is why it's so important to reach an audience that is actively seeking to make a buying decision within your market. And the Internet allows you to do that.
Online Marketing is Effective and Measurable
Online marketing allows marketers to contact qualified prospects early on in the prospect’s buying cycle. One of the first places people go before making a buying decision is online. Even if they’re been referred to a vendor and your services come highly recommended, they will still go online to verify the recommendation. They will then either confirm or deny that recommendation by what they find online.
If your online image or online reviews conflict with what they’ve heard, you’re quickly crossed off the list of alternatives.
It’s no surprise that the tactics that receive the smallest increase in marketing budgets are traditional marketing tactics such as direct mail, tradeshows, and print ads. These offline tactics are only getting more and more expensive and are still difficult to track.
With the increase in paper, travel, printing and postage costs – these traditional tactics are no longer feasible. Not only are the costs too high, but ROI is far too difficult to track. How can you know the number of qualified prospects who viewed your print ad? How can you effectively monitor what steps were taken as a result of reading or viewing that print ad? How does a marketer measure the conversion rate of a print ad?
B2B and B2C are Surprisingly Similar in Online Lead Generation Tactics
When over 1,900 marketers were surveyed by MarketSperpa, 66% of marketers said that the business-to-business and business-to-consumer lead generation efforts are virtually the same. Many marketers ask me, “I’m in the B2B space, so how will effective Internet marketing be different for me?”
But the truth is that the dynamics of effective Internet marketing are virtually the same across the board. In both B2B and B2C markets, people conduct an online search the same way, including viewing online video and engaging websites the same way. That’s because businesses sell to people no matter if the person is a consumer or if the person is working at a business looking for a product or service for the business.
Regardless of your market, you need a strategic, quantifiable goal that can be tracked and measured. You need a professionally developed website that conveys an online image that is congruent with the quality of the service and products that you offer. You need a search marketing strategy to rank effectively among the search engines for targeted and relevant search terms and keyphrases. And you need a content marketing strategy to leverage the social media platforms and build your online exposure and credibility.
No matter your target market or end user, you are rarely exempt from the requirements outlined above.
If you need help achieving an effective ROI in your lead gen strategies, and if website optimization, social media, and SEO are not effectively filling your sales funnel with qualified leads, then do not hesitate to contact Xcellimark.com. We’ll be happy to help you grow your customer base and generate new revenue today.
Survey Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009213
