Conversations on Website Conversion discussion

Chapter eleven talks about a marketing funnel. There are many different methods for enlarging different portions of your funnel. The first portion of the funnel, prospects, can be enlarged by increasing the traffic to your website. The second part of the book (Get Found By Prospects) is about enlarging this portion of your funnel through SEO, Blogs, and social media. The next portion of a marketing funnel is made up of leads. Converting prospects into leads was the basis for Part Three. The bottom two levels of the funnel are Opportunity and ultimately, Customer. Measuring the changes in size of all these levels is another essential part of testing—if a change increases your Prospects, but not your Leads, then you should consider making and testing more changes. The main point of this short chapter is measurement—keeping track of what has been changed and how it has effected your marketing funnel is essential to making systematic changes to improve your return.

Which part of a marketing funnel do you view as the most vital? Which portion of your marketing funnel could use some stretching?

Maybe it's correct to think of this as a sales funnel - but I tend to think about it as the various channels that customers come to our company. We do measure the effectiveness of each channel and "reward" the channels that produce more customers. I can see that if a company was very oriented towards outbound marketing - comparing the results (yields) from the various channels would be a very effective way to turn the company from an outbound marketing organization to an inbound marketing organization.

If you haven't been sold on switching from outbound marketing to inbound marketing yet; this fact should seal the deal..."On average inbound marketing leads are 61% less expensive than outbound marketing leads." Just think of all the money wasted by companies still on efforts that aren't productive nor lead to sales.

It would be interesting to hear other people's successful campaigns in converting leads. Currently what is your highest level ROI campaign for your business?

Inbound/outbound marketing doesn't have to be an all or nothing affair. Although inbound marketing is much less expensive than traditional marketing, there is still a large demographic of people who do not use the internet regularly (if at all!), and they can be reached most effectively through traditional outbound marketing. The best overall strategy may be a mix of the inbound and outbound marketing techniques and venues that have given you the highest ROI in the past.