What if you started to think of your marketing efforts as an ecosystem. An environment, such as a rainforest, jungle, or woodland thrives based on a delicate balancing act of the right weather, flora and fauna, and light. In a similar way, your marketing success isn’t something that can be pinned on one area alone.
You need to master the basics, or sow the seeds, and understand what you’re aiming to cultivate before you can grow and bloom.
Propagating your Marketing Qualified Leads into Sales Qualified Leads
Whether you subscribe to traditional sales funnels or a circular model for customer acquisition, leads don’t become customers by luck or serving up a contact form on a brand awareness campaign.
Certain content silos help nurture leads through your sales and marketing funnel, however that may look in your plans. For example, PPC and social media ads are ideal for driving website traffic, but for them to perform well you need to optimise your SEO. It’s crucial you have good quality, meaningful website content, otherwise your paid traffic will bounce.
All good projects need a strategy and plan to back them up. Knowing what you want to achieve is a start, but you need to factor in resources and how you’ll make it happen.
Let’s get planning!
First things first, you need a marketing plan and a well thought out user journey. You can wing it all you like, but eventually it’ll come undone. While improvising and being reactive has its place, relying purely on these tactics can risk the integrity of your strategy, leading to potential setbacks in the long run.
In order to effectively and efficiently drive traffic through your marketing funnel, you need to audit your website content.
#1 Start with your service or product groupings
You know your company’s offering like the back of your hand, but your future customers don’t. While they’ll know what initially brought them to your website, they might not be aware of exactly what you can offer and how you can make their lives easier.
Have a think about what you do, and then identify your product or service groupings. For example, ours mostly fit into two boxes: web and digital marketing projects.
When you’ve done that, it’s time to work through what’s on your website and assign your categories. If something doesn’t fit, do you really need it?
#2 Plan your content journey
Next it’s time to think about your content journey and how it serves your funnel:
- Intrigue (blogs, videos, hints and tips)
- Discover (whitepapers, guides, resources)
- Consider (product features, case studies)
- Decide (pricing, demos, sales interactions)
#3 Analyse your website performance
Take a closer look at your conversion and bounce rates. Are there any patterns forming?
A low conversion rate in conjunction with high bounce rates means something isn’t resonating with your audience. Working with a UX specialist is one way to help optimise your website into a well oiled machine.
#4 Who are you talking to?
Perhaps one of the easiest things to forget is your personas. While you’ll have a mental picture of who your customers are and what you think they want, have you got the data to back it up?
It’s a lot more than simply who, what, where, and when questions. You need to consider what makes them tick, where do they spend their time online (e.g. Gen Z are more likely to look to TikTok over Google and YouTube). Do you know their pain-points and industry challenges?
You can learn about them through a mix of Google Analytics, social media insights, and even social listening tools.
#5 Ready to go?
Let’s check in – are you happy with what we’ve covered so far? Don’t worry if it’s leaving you baffled or worrying about resources and time, that’s what we’re here for. Remember, we’re equipped to slot seamlessly into your team to ease workload or plug any knowledge and skills gaps. No shame!
If you’re happy with your product/service groupings, content journey, website performance, and personas, then it’s time to begin.
Lead generation: cultivation for growth potential
Going back to our ecosystem analogies here, your organic content is the fertile, nutrient rich forest floor. In particular, the success rides on your website, as it’s all well and good having great social media content or captivating ads, but if the website doesn’t translate, you’re in trouble.
#1 Regularly checking in on your SEO rankings is a good start. Get to know your audience and the search terms they use to find you. Understand phrases and terms that can be confused with your brand, in turn leading to high bounces. Carefully selecting the right keywords requires understanding of the search intent, volume and quality.
It’s the basis of showing up in search results, and can also impact the performance of your ads. SEO has to be a priority for continuous optimisation as it impacts all your digital work!
#2 Social media is a great way to get eyes on you. Identifying the right platform(s) for your brand, and matching it to your available resources are crucial. Resist the urge to sign up to ALL the things and then neglecting to cultivate your content and engage with followers. There is of course scope for signing up to platforms you plan to use in the future in order to secure your brands username, however we recommend focussing on one or two channels at a time and nurturing them.
Understanding the types of content that are engaging and the frequency of posting is the cornerstone of social media success.
#3 PPC will likely give you the quickest results. It can be one of the trickier of the ad types to get right, as it requires a keen understanding of keywords, algorithms, and the technical set up.
Encouraging blooms, or converting your leads
Ok, ok, enough with the dodgy plant analogies. It works though, right? You have to nurture your seeds and little plants to help them grow them into beautiful blooms. In the same way, you need to nurture leads to become customers, and put the effort in to keep them happy.
Our point being it’s a never-ending cycle. You need to continuously optimise your SEO to ensure your website ranks well, and to help with that, you need to create quality content regularly. And to get people to your website, you need to share what you’re doing on social media, utilise PPC campaigns, have thought-out email marketing strategies, etc.
Content and SEO are the trunk of your website. Without content, there’s nothing to see. And without SEO, no one will see your website.
- Social media relies on engaging content posted consistently. Remember you’re building an audience, and for that you need to build credibility.
- PPC is a bolster for good content. But you need to understand where this sits within the sales and marketing funnel, and not expect instant conversions.
- Lastly, Google scores your campaign quality. This is done through a combination of the relevance of your keywords, content on your landing page and user experience (e.g. bounce rates and conversions).
Your marketing ecosystem, as a visual
Sometimes it’s easier to digest this kind of information visually. Ta-da! Here’s one way of displaying how these areas work together, as an ecosystem:
Need a gardener? (Read: I don’t have the time!)
Beautiful gardens require investment. A balance of time, resource, know-how and budget will dictate what you’re able to achieve. Both in the garden and in your marketing efforts.
You may have a window box of colourfully curated seasonal displays, but aspire to have acres of cottage garden scenery. We all have to start somewhere!
Whether you’re short on time, resources, or expertise, we can help. Our team is made up of experienced marketing specialists with proven results. From content creation to performance marketing managers, graphic designers to web developers and UX specialists.
Get in touch with us however you prefer and let’s get your marketing ecosystem thriving!
Talk to us about your project
Get in touch and we can talk about your aspirations, inspirations, and what’s keeping you up at night. We want you to feel confident about your digital presence.
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For websites that convert visitors to loyal customers
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Supercharging your social media content
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Tailored strategies with unmatched results to unlock global success
Please feel free to call us, email us or simply fill in the form. Whatever medium you chose, we would love to say hi.
Email us: hello@uptheredigital.com
Call us: +44 1483 560333
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