Search engine optimization has taken the marketing industry by storm. More than just a buzzword, SEO plays an important role in helping businesses improve their visibility online. A strong digital presence is crucial to gain an edge in today’s increasingly competitive online market.
SEO is what gets you on the first page of search engine results. And according to research, the top listing that appears on Google gets 31.7 percent of the clicks, so it commands the most traffic. The more site visitors you get, the more leads you can potentially gain, making your SEO a worthwhile investment.
But what happens after you’ve captured all this traffic? How do you convert them from site visitors to leads and eventually, to loyal customers?
The answer is lead nurturing. You can only do this technique successfully when you understand what makes your prospects tick. This means you need data – and lots of it.
Mining data about your leads, or lead intelligence, is the first step to generating more loyal customers.
What is Lead Intelligence?
Lead intelligence pertains to any information you can gather about your prospects and leads. This includes contact information, demographics, social media profiles and activity, interest data, and more.
Traditional lead generation strategies, such as SEO and targeted social media ads, aren’t enough to attract today’s consumers.
The new generation of buyers are self-educated, leveraging the power of the internet and their smartphones to make better-informed buying decisions. They no longer rely on salespeople to provide them information about products or services they’re interested in. Seventy-four percent of consumers use a search engine for research, consideration, and product comparison.
Through lead intelligence strategies, you’ll have access to the kind of data that would let you better understand what your prospects and leads want, need, and expect. These bits of information allow you to create compelling content and effective campaigns that will help customers in their self-education process.
Use lead intelligence to craft a better, smarter sales funnel that would increase your bottom line and create more loyal brand advocates.
Lead Intelligence: Patching Up the Leaky Funnel
Every marketer knows that not all site visitors turn into leads, and not all leads convert to customers. This is known as the leaky funnel or leaky bucket effect. A good chunk of your prospects falls through the gaps in your funnel for many reasons. Either they’re not the right market, they didn’t see what the value of your services, or you didn’t have a strong follow-up process.
Rather than fixing the leaky bucket, many businesses try to cope by pouring more water (driving more traffic). This means doubling marketing efforts and spending twice as much in lead acquisition strategies. But these solutions may not solve the real problem and fail to boost ROI.
Lead intelligence is the ideal solution, helping you patch up your leaky funnel. Use it to improve the different stages of your sales funnel or buyer’s journey to make the most out of every business opportunity.
Rebuilding Your Funnel by Using Data
Your funnel starts by being present in platforms housing your market. This means setting up a Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn account if they’re active social media users. But it’s more than just establishing your presence. Lead generation or top of the funnel marketing means using this presence to attract your target audience. And this starts by curating your target persona.
1. Recognize who your real leads are
Not everyone who comes across your website will buy from you. But this isn’t immediately a bad thing since many site visitors are probably not your targets. Zeroing in on the audience that has a need for your product or service will reduce your expenses because you won’t be spending money on those who won’t buy from you. Plus, knowing who your leads are will help you improve how you attract them and how you handle them once they approach you.
For example, if you’re a B2B brand, you’ll devote your lead intelligence techniques for business leads only. You’ll likely be more active on LinkedIn than Instagram, which is more appropriate for retail customers.
Top of the funnel marketing isn’t about casting the widest net. It’s about attracting those you want to attract.On-page and off-page blogs, social media posts, SEO, online ads, and influencer outreach are some examples of targeted messaging brands use to drive more traffic.
In this stage of the funnel, most of the lead intelligence you can glean are IP addresses and pages frequently visited. You can also use free tools, such as Google Analytics and social media analytics to extract the following data: bounce and linger rate, impressions, clicks, likes and shares, and others.
The next step would be to satisfy or pique the interest of your leads by optimizing your landing pages in the middle of the funnel stage.
2. Improve landing pages
Keep your landing pages short but still compelling. Be direct to the point, but angle your content to highlight the benefits of your services and products instead of the features. You also want to focus on the user experience of your landing pages. Make sure the placement of the text and images directs the eyes of the visitors downward, toward the call-to-action.
Check out these landing page best practices by Unbounce to guide you in optimizing your web pages.
This is also where lead magnets would come in handy. Discount coupons, free trials, and tutorials are helpful freebies that entice users in exchange for their contact information. Lead magnets add value to your sign-up forms, giving visitors more reasons to fill them out.
Link your call-to-action buttons directly to your sign-up sheets, making it easier for prospects to go from exploring to buying.
The information you gather from these forms help you segment your leads. Lead segmentation sorts your site visitors into more specific classification, which helps you decide which ones to prioritize and which ones to drop. Again, not all those who come across your site meets your buyer persona; lead segmentation is a good strategy to prune out these users.
Next comes the bottom of the funnel marketing. This is where you spend more focused effort and time. But if you’re bringing the right people into the funnel, you won’t have to spend as much resources as you’ve done in the past. One good technique for this stage is personalized email marketing.
3. Email marketing
If you’re an e-commerce shop, email marketing can double as your remarketing strategy. Send the user product suggestions based on their previous purchases or make it possible for them to place the same order in just one click.
Thanks to automation, it’s also easier to send relevant content to your leads and customers based on pages they’ve visited before. Exclusive content falling under their interests are good reasons to convince them to stay subscribed to your mailing list.
The key here is personalization.
Make sure the content of your email matches the recipient’s needs. Otherwise, your mail will go unread. Your priority list, which you’ve created in the previous stage, will be useful here. Group your mailing list according to different audience segments to streamline your process.
Optimizing your sales funnel using lead intelligence isn’t a be-all, end-all solution for your inbound marketing campaign. It still requires frequent tweaking plus a consistent observation of your target market and performance. Diligent monitoring and measurement also allow you to check for any leaks in your funnel and apply the necessary measures.
Results-Driven Online Marketing Services
Sievers Creative provides an extensive range of digital marketing services, from SEO and email marketing to B2B lead intelligence and PPC advertising. Our savvy marketing team spends time at the beginning of each project asking crucial and specific questions to ensure that we understand your needs and goals.
We research the possible solutions to complete your project and present you with the best course of action. Whether you need a comprehensive, end-to-end campaign or you just want a few tweaks to your strategy, we’ll help you with your specific marketing challenge.
Let’s talk about how we can improve your sales funnel. Fill out our short contact form today, and we’ll give you advice free of charge.
