Free White Paper "Driving Inbound Leads Part 2: Maintenance"

DRIVINGInbound Leads
PART 2 Maintenance

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877.568.7477 • OneUpWeb.com ©2014. Intellectual property owned by Oneupweb®
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1
STINTS AND STOPS
Your 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 CONVERSIONS
Do 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 LEAD
One 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 FUNNEL
The 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
KEY
Display
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 ONEUPWEB
Oneupweb 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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Free White Paper "Driving Inbound Leads Part 2: Maintenance"