How to Increase Traffic, Leads, and Conversions

Improving Your Site One Week at a Time

Improving targeted, quality traffic and increasing the number of leads and conversions your site generates is a multi-faceted, comprehensive goal. It’s not a task, so much as it is a goal to which you align deadline driven specific action items. These action items should also include performance benchmarks that are targeted and achieved at each milestone.

We’ll be writing a series of articles on this subject to help you identify exactly what online gaps exist in your situation. Some of our clients begin realizing that the cost to maintain their current condition far exceeds the cost (+ increased revenue opportunity) to improve it.

Absence of Value

What is the absence of value?

In the online world, the absence of value is the quantified value of the gap that exists between your current online state (website quality, targeted visitors, lead and customer conversions, new customer revenue, customer retention via website efforts) and the ideal potential state – the one where your company’s growth goals are strategically influenced and achieved by the efforts and outcomes of your online or inbound marketing efforts.

If we were to conduct a thorough audit of your current online state, we would be able to gain an understanding of how well your online marketing efforts are achieving your company’s revenue, client retention and new customer growth goals in the online world.

We would understand if an absence of value exists in your (online) inbound marketing efforts.

It is common to find that the existing absence of value is costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Looking at your marketing efforts and budget requirements begins to make a lot more financial sense when you have a clear understanding of your current (and likely growing) absence of value.

Applied Value

The applied value refers to the value of the solution that fulfills your company’s growth goals. To understand the value of achieving your goals, you must understand a few things:

• The lifetime value of your ideal client, which is calculated using these values:
  • Annual value, including upsells
  • Approximate number of years this ideal client remains a client
  • Approximate number of new clients that were originated via referrals from the client
• Goal number of new online client conversions
• Period of time within which to attract and convert those new clients

Let’s say your ideal client has an annual value of $25,000. Because this ideal client has become very loyal and can’t imagine not receiving your solution and support, they typically stay with you for at least 3 years. *A strategic post-sale customer loyalty campaign can significantly influence customer retention, satisfaction and referrals.

This client also refers approximately 3 clients to you over their lifetime relationship with you.

These numbers help us understand that in this scenario, the lifetime value of your ideal client is:

$25,000 X 3 years = $75,000

The ideal client’s 3 referrals also have a lifetime value of approximately $75,000 each.

$  75,000 your ideal client

$225,000 your ideal client’s referrals

If your ideal client’s referrals never referred a single client to you, the total lifetime value of a new ideal client is $300,000.

If your ideal client’s referrals also referred new business to you (and, why wouldn’t they?), digesting the exponential value of one ideal client becomes overwhelmingly motivating!

Suddenly, the absence of value of a strategic inbound marketing plan begins to make a lot of sense.

You can see how it makes sense to make the investment in inbound marketing. Even if you only received one new ideal client from a one-year comprehensive campaign investment, the ROI is 500% – 600%. You can’t make that sort of return on any other investment.

Closing the Value Gap

Closing the gap that exists between your current online marketing state and the desired state opens the door to hundreds of thousands of dollars of value and opportunity – for each new ideal client.

If your current website is not attracting ideal client traffic, then it is not converting new ideal clients. If it is attracting some ideal client traffic, but it isn’t converting them to leads, then it isn’t converting them to new customers. If it is attracting some ideal client traffic and some of that traffic is converting to leads, but they aren’t making it to the closing table, so to speak, then it isn’t working.

It is important to understand where the failure points exist. These failure points can be related to:

• Non-existent or ineffective website strategy
• Poorly designed, user-experience, and/or site architecture
• Non-existent or poor on-site and off-site SEO strategy and/or implementation
• Lack of an accurately defined Buyer Persona for each targeted client type
• Lack of an accurately defined Buyer’s Journey for each unique Buyer Persona
• Poorly researched content strategy
• Content that simply does not attract your ideal buyer
• Content quality and/or quantity of on-site and off-site content publishing
• Ineffective landing pages and inbound marketing campaigns
• Lack of effective information / content your ideal client is looking for at any point throughout their buying journey
• Ineffective calls to action
• Poor use of Thank You page opportunities
• Lack of or poorly developed email follow-up and email nurturing campaigns
• Lead segmentation
• Disconnected marketing and sales teams
• Failure to measure outcomes and interpret data into improvement strategies
• Social Media and social media marketing, PPC, ads, etc.

These are only the major areas that affect the success of your online marketing efforts.

Unless you are educated in the intricacies of online marketing, it can be very costly to try to improve your situation by doing it yourself. Many companies hire one person and expect that they should be able to achieve great success in their online marketing efforts. This person would need to conduct thorough and effective online analyses, design, develop and implement a highly effective, multi-pronged inbound marketing strategy.

Successful campaigns are run by a team of subject matter experts. There are many people involved in the execution of a solid and successful inbound marketing effort. It is simply impossible for one person to do all of this.

One very skilled, experienced person could, however, quarterback a successful campaign initiative.

If you are beginning to recognize that you need a strong and effective inbound marketing strategy and you don’t yet have anyone dedicated to the management of your online success, you could hire someone with certifications, experience and documented successes in online or inbound marketing. Be sure this person can quantitatively communicate the successes they’ve achieved as an online marketing expert.

What you can expect from a one-person marketing department is someone who understands how your company’s growth goals have influenced the marketing department’s performance goals. She needs to be proficient in translating the marketing department’s goals into the performance requirements of the inbound marketing strategy.

Once your marketing manager has a clear understanding of the performance requirements of your inbound marketing campaign, she will serve you best, if she is empowered to create a high-trust relationship with a dependable full-service inbound marketing agency.

This marketing agency would then perform a full analysis of your current state to gain a comprehensive understanding of what is possible. Your marketing manager would work with the inbound marketing agency as they manage some or all the aspects of your inbound marketing strategy.

There is much to be said about finding and working with a successful, honest and communicative inbound marketing agency. We’ll address what you should look for in an agency in future posts.

It isn’t necessary to hire a marketing manager to maximize your company’s online marketing success. Engaging a highly-skilled and successful inbound marketing consultant is not only a good alternative, it will save you money in several ways.

Inbound Marketing Consultant

A qualified inbound marketing consultant is an independent strategist that conducts a thorough analysis of your company, your market, your competition and your industry to identify unique online and inbound opportunities that will catalyze your company’s online performance, resulting in new leads, new customer conversions, increased revenue and profit.

This person may work independent of the agency you ultimately partner with or they may be an employee of the agency. Either way, an inbound marketing consultant can conduct the required analyses, help you identify your needs, as well as develop and quantify the value and goals of your new inbound marketing strategy.

Your online marketing consultant can also support you throughout the implementation of the inbound marketing strategy to act as a liaison and advisor and ensure your campaign is performing optimally. She can also help you evaluate your options, understand hurdles and opportunities and communicate with your marketing team, ensuring maximum outcomes.

An online marketing or inbound marketing consultant can help you:

• Analyze your current state of affairs and gain an understanding of (your):
  • The quality, limits and opportunities of your existing website
  • Existing marketing campaigns and efforts
  • Your industry to effectively identify opportunities
  • Competitors via a competitive analysis
  • Company’s goals and capabilities to achieve them through online or inbound marketing and automated workflows
• Create a formal recommendation based on the findings of the comprehensive analysis
• Create a 12-month strategy and action plan. This action plan empowers you to go out to bid with a solid scope of work rather than have several different companies providing you with their opinions on what they think is best. It is impossible to compare your bids when they aren’t based on a common scope.
• Create new systems and processes that synchronize the passing of a qualified sales lead to the sales team. Teaching the sales team to work with the marketing team to increase new customer conversions is critical to the success of your inbound marketing campaigns.
• Some Inbound Marketing Consultants are able to make recommendations for an online or inbound marketing agency or they may work for one. You may decide to continue working with this person. Having a relationship with a person you trust can be helpful in assuring the goals and results are achieved.

This article details the value of partnering with an inbound marketing consultant.

Improving Your Site One Week at a Time

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be writing a series of articles that help you identify gaps that are preventing you from:

• Attracting ideal client traffic
• Converting your targeted traffic to leads
• Nurturing leads and closing new customers

If you have questions, please shoot us an email or post them on Facebook. We’ll be more than happy to answer them.

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