One of your most important jobs as a marketer or business owner is to attract visitors and convert them to leads. Once your leads have been converted, you need to close the sale and then continue to delight. It sounds fairly straightforward, but if you don’t control all of these processes, all of your efforts will be for naught. Gain control of your inbound marketing leads with these five techniques to achieve maximum ROI on the time and money you spend.
1. Deliver quality and quantity to your audience.
In almost any dealing with people where you are responsible for delivering information, you likely follow the practice that “less is more”. When it comes to inbound marketing however, you have to push aside that learned instinct and deliver a large volume, but every piece of content has to count. It is critical to know whom you are trying to attract and what type of content will catch and keep their interest at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
2. Lay a solid foundation for lead management.
Attracting all the leads in the world won’t matter if you don’t align with your sales team and incorporate tools that will help everyone stay on the same page for the inbound marketing goals. Consider a customer relationship management (CRM) system that will allow for seamless management from marketing to sales. Incorporate a plan for scalability as your lead volume increases.
3. Resource planning and preparedness.
To properly maintain a successful inbound lead generation strategy and make conversions, you will require additional resources along the way. You’ll require more time, money and people to handle the extra work for campaign creation, lead management, analytics and more. Plan ahead so you know where you will pull resources from and when.
4. Combine inbound marketing with traditional methods.
Don’t abandon all other marketing efforts in exchange for inbound lead generation. While inbound is an excellent method of gaining new leads, you may alienate those who are not entirely sold on the inbound process. There is still a portion of your audience who will be encouraged to convert by the impression traditional marketing leaves on them. You also have to achieve internal buy-in for the newer inbound marketing style through statistics and proven cases so they support your efforts.
5. Analyze, optimize and test for continuous improvement.
Too often, once a campaign is underway, marketers will rely on their original strategy and hope for the best. Make use of your analytics to see how your efforts are working and in areas that are weak, make improvements. Once improvements have been made, test them and repeat until maximum results are obtained.
Attracting and managing inbound marketing leads takes considerable effort by both marketing and sales. If you use these five techniques as a baseline to create your strategy and gain control of your leads, you will maximize conversions and realize great reward for your efforts.
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