By now, we are all well acquainted with open and click-through rates as a way to measure the initial impact of a marketing campaign. But we need to look further in order to really understand how well leads are progressing through the lead and sales lifecycle. Only by evaluating conversions (and by extension, their movement through the cycle following their conversion) will you have a better answer for your manager on things like lead quality and ROI of marketing programs.
To gain the most accurate picture, we’ll need to start at the beginning. Instead of simple opens and clicks, let’s actually look at the number of “lead” conversions—those people gave up some personal information in order to get something from your company.
Beyond clicks, which really could denote quite little—especially if you aren’t monitoring where they go on your Website and how long they are on each page—we want to get a better understanding of conversions. We need to be able to understand who is converting and how else they might be interacting with your company. For example, are they going to other pages on the Website, viewing Webinars or demos, or are they downloading information? Knowing this information helps us to better understand their beginning of interest, or research and inquiry.
To effectively measure conversions as well as interactions over the life of a lead, you’ll need one system that will track all conversions, not only for the first campaign but also for all subsequent campaigns during which the lead has interacted with your company. Today’s automated lead management systems will do just that—enabling you to track all the campaigns in which a lead has interacted with you over its life. Such capabilities will help you see over time which campaigns not only initiated action but also continuously brought leads back to your site, helping you to drive them through the lead lifecycle.
By downloading the “7 Steps To Improve Your Conversion Rates Now”, you will learn the best practices that leading companies are employing to identify their most likely buyers as well as the automated tools and tactics they are using to help progress and accelerate prospects through the buying cycle.
Good point that getting an open or a click is not enough. B2B sellers must really engage prospective buyers. While you need marketing automation, there is a lot more to it. B2B sellers need to become publishers of great content using content marketing.
For instance, lead nurturing lets a company share bite-sized information with prospective buyers. However, great content keeps them interested and walks them on a journey from problem to solution. In order to get that content, companies must become publishers of great content. The only want to change behavior is to start compelling content with prospective buyers.
Good content won’t work. It has to be great. That’s not easy to do, but the talent is out there today.
By learning to become a great publisher and matching up good lead management software, the B2B seller can grow and prosper.
Jeff Ogden, President
Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple”
http://www.findnewcustomers.net
http://www.fearlesscompetitor.com