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The Inbound Growth Blog covers all topics relating to an integrated marketing strategy. We write about inbound marketing, social media, integrated marketing strategies and the sales process.

How To Maximize Your Inbound Marketing Customer Conversion Ratio

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Posted by John Beveridge on Sep 8, 2013 6:08:00 PM

How to increase your inbound marketing customer conversion ratioThe most important (and difficult) part of inbound marketing is converting inbound leads into customers. Unless your an e-commerce company, you have to transition the relationship with your buyer from an online relationship to a real relationship with your sales or management team.

An understanding of how the business buying process has changed is a prerequisite to effectively developing and maintaining a personal relationship with your prospects. As we've cited several times in this blog, buyers conduct most of their research before contacting a sales professional. The Corporate Executive Board found that buyers complete 57% of their sales process prior to contacting a supplier. 

With an understanding of how your buyers buy, you can use the techniques described below to maximize your inbound marketing customer conversion ratio.

Use your inbound marketing process to qualify leads

Not all leads are created equal. In my marketing, I frequently get leads that will never buy from me - some are marketing agencies, some are students and some are in countries that make working together a challenge. I don't mind that they download my premium content offers, I just want to know who they are so that I can focus my sales efforts on those leads that are potential buyers.

There is some debate over how much information you should ask for on your landing page forms. Some advocate asking for minimal information (name, company, e-mail address.) They take the position that asking for more information will dissuade potential leads from completing the lead conversion form.

My experience with my company is that I've learned to use the forms on my landing page to qualify my leads. My position is that I'd rather have a few, highly-qualified leads than a lot of leads that probably won't buy from me. So if you want to use your forms to qualify your leads, ask for the information that will help you segment your leads so that you can tell which are the most likely to buy. Consider asking for information like:

  • Industry
  • Company Size
  • Job Title
  • Website

This is by no means a comprehensive list of what information you should ask for. Think of the criteria by which you qualify your ideal customer and construct questions on your forms to get the information. Make it easy for your potential leads - give them multiple choices to choose from to minimize the effort required from them.

HubSpot's software includes a feature called progressive profiling. What that means is that once a lead gives you a piece of information (e.g. - their email address), they won't be asked for it again when they download your content. I have my marketing configured so that once someone downloads a content offer, all they see in subsequent downloads is a button that says, "Download your eBook."

I increased the information I ask for on my forms several months ago and have seen no discernible drop in the number of monthly leads. I am able to qualify the leads for sales outreach and I can segment them into groups for more targeted email marketing.

Download Closing the Loop: The Ultimate Guide to Integrating Inbound Marketing Into Your Sales Process

 

Qualify leads by their behavior

 A great way to determine when leads are ready for sales outreach is to monitor their interaction with your website and social media channels. This requires internet marketing software like HubSpot

HubSpot and other inbound marketing software includes Lead Scoring logic. You can assign point values to various actions to grade a lead's interaction with your marketing assets. For example, if a lead downloads a content offer, you assign them 10 points. If they view your pricing page, you assign them 15 points. In the HubSpot software, you can get really granular with your lead scoring. Over time, you will get a feel for how many points a lead needs to accumulate in order for a sales outreach to be effective. Clearly, someone who's spending a good deal of time on your website is likely to be amenable to a sales outreach.

Another way to use your inbound marketing software to focus your outreach is to exclude people from your email marketing that aren't opening the emails. I have logic setup in my marketing software to stop emailing people who haven't opened the last 4 emails that I sent them. If they're not opening your emails, they're probably not going to buy from you.

Lastly, take the information you received from your lead generation forms and use it to segment your marketing by industry, company size, etc. This lets you tailor your message to be more relevant to the reader and it let's your separate out the people that aren't going to buy from you (in my case, other marketing agencies.)

Ask for a phone number

Statistics show that asking for a phone number on your lead generation forms will decrease the number of people that complete it by 5%. In my opinion, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm striving for lead quality over lead quantiy - giving me a phone number indicates to me that the lead is willing to put some skin into the game to access my premium content offer. In my case, I have a longer, more complex sales cycle than say, an office supplies store. That's why I ask for a phone number on my forms. Again, I've found that asking for a phone number has not decreased my lead conversion ratios at all.

Use that phone number

For customer conversion, inbound marketing experts like HubSpot recommend making a telephone outreach when a lead converts. Before making a telephone outreach, remember 2 statistics that are crucial to understanding the modern business buying process:

  • As cited above, the average buyer completes 57% of their research before ever contacting a salesperson. Keep this in mind when making your outreach - it's likely that your prospect knows more about your industry than you may expect. If you treate them like they don't know anything, you run the risk of coming off as condescending.

  • Depending on the source, experts estimate that between 75% and 90% of people coming to your website aren't ready to buy. It's best to use a soft approach when making this initial outreach. Try something like, "I see you downloaded our eBook on Social Media Marketing - are there any questions I can answer for you." If someone's not ready to talk with you yet, no problem. Thank them for downloading your eBook and let them know you're there if they have any questions. Being overly salesy at this point turns people off.

  • If 75% to 90% aren't ready to buy, that means 10% to 25% are. If you're not making a telephone outreach when someone downloads your content, you will likely lose these sales to someone else.

To summarize, you should be reaching out to all of your leads when they convert. Use a soft approach designed not to annoy people in the early stages of the buying process, but to start conversations with those that are farther along.

Get a free inbound marketing assessment with Rapidan Strategies

 

Summary

Converting leads into paying customers is the most challenging aspect of any inbound marketing program. Unless you're an e-commerce site, the leads won't sell themselves. Use your inbound marketing tools to qualify leads and tailor your message to segmented audiences. Integrate a sales process into your inbound marketing efforts that recognizes the change in the business buying process and initiates conversations appropriately. When used consistently, these tactics will increase your inbound marketing customer conversion ratio.

Topics: Inbound Marketing, Technology Companies

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