funnel

B2B SEO demystified: a content marketing case study

As a frequent attendee of marketing conferences I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard speakers tell their audience that SEO is incredibly simple, it’s just about having great content.

Not while this may be true in theory, many businesses are understandably sceptical about whether they have the necessary manpower or expertise in-house to regularly produce high quality content.

So at our Funnel event yesterday, which is part of the Festival of Marketing, it was refreshing to see Search Laboratory’s John Readman back up his words with a relevant B2B SEO case study.

SEO is very important for B2B businesses as 21% of all traffic to B2B sites comes from search engines, with around 90% of that portion coming from organic search.

Seven simple tips for improving your B2B lead nurturing

If you attend any sales or B2B conference then it’s difficult to avoid hearing someone mention ‘the rules of engagement’.

But, David Klanac of Pardot argues, it is actually a very relevant phrase. It’s the nature of the marketer’s job to follow the changes wrought by proliferation of media.

David was talking at FUNNEL, part of the Festival of Marketing, and gave his seven tips for lead nurturing.

The first step for Pardot was to actually ask the B2B consumer “what steps do you take to research and purchase a solution?”

This question is important because the tactics for buying have changed. When Google started in 1998, only 26 million web pages were indexed, ten years later in 2008 this figure stood at one trillion. With all that content it’s hard to get found. Nevertheless, consumers try, searching two or three times on Google before considering the purchase cycle.

So, what are David’s seven tips for nurturing leads?

Behavioural marketing and how to get your customers to love you

How can marketers get consumers to love their brand? It’s a long and difficult process that requires a complex system of tools and tactics.

Yet at Econsultancy’s Funnel event this morning Silverpop’s John Watton managed to summarise the process in just 20 minutes, succinctly laying out the basic premise of behavioural marketing and how it can benefit businesses.

Watton began by describing the relationship he has with a wine merchant in the Chiswick area of West London, which is a neat metaphor for the principles behind behavioural marketing.

Though there are a huge number of shops that Watton could go to for his weekly wine fix, he chooses to return to the same shop due to the relationship he has with ‘Bob’ the shopkeeper.

Six priorities for B2B CMOs in 2014

It’s never too early to get your house in order for next year.

This morning at FUNNEL and the Festival of Marketing, I listened to Adam Sharp from clevertouch, marketing automation specialists.

Adam outlined how the marketing department is changing, and what you need to be thinking about to prove that the marketing team is the place where fundamental change can be driven within the organisation.

abandoned

Interest abandonment: coming to a purchase funnel near you

A lot has been said about the purchase funnel.  

In fact so much has been said about it that many feel it has been exhausted to death. In its wake, a smorgasbord of geometric configurations have been posited: cylinder, concentric circles, orbits, spindles, dodecahedrons (ok, I added that one). 

Type ‘purchase process’ into Google Images and scroll away: everything from crazy path diagrams, the old funnel, cartoons and one that suggests it’s now a pretzel! Personally, I prefer the poetic variety such as the ‘consumer journey’. 

It suggests a Tolkien-esque epic requiring consumers to circumvent mythical creatures and fiery environs. Which is a typical experience for any of you that have hazarded Bluewater on a Saturday!  

But whether it’s a funnel, a journey or a cycle the one thing that is generally the same is that it has a recognized objective beginning and end. That is to say, one of the chief goals of any marketer is to create awareness of their product or service and ultimately keep people interested enough to drive them to purchase. 

Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2017

How to optimise your funnel: free B2B digital marketing briefing

Econsultancy last month held Europe’s largest conference devoted to B2B marketing and sales.

Our London FUNNEL event at the Emirates stadium saw some of the world’s leading B2B business experts present to an audience across four streams: Plan, Align, Attract and Engage. 

The thoughts and insights shared that day, along with case studies illustrating best practice, have been used to create our B2B Digital Marketing Briefing, which is free to download.

Q&A: Minter Dial on the sales organization of the future

Minter Dial is co-author of a new report published by Econsultancy entitled The Sales Organization of the Future.

The report, which is free to registered Econsultancy users, explores how product-oriented companies need to evolve into value-added services organizations to meet the changing expectations of customers in a business environment which is fundamentally changing. 

I asked Minter some questions about the report and the imperative for business change.  

Forget mobile-first: solution-first is the only way to succeed

A growing number of companies adopt a mobile-first perspective and investors increasingly encourage entrepreneurs to think about mobile before the web, and it’s not hard to understand why.

Smart phones penetration in developed nations has jumped significantly over the past several years, mobile internet usage has skyrocketed and there are now literally billions of mobile devices in use around the world.

B2B marketing: who should own the funnel?

After last week’s FUNNEL B2B marketing event at The Emirates in London, we arranged a discussion with three of the speakers about who should own the funnel. 

The speakers were Lisa Hutt, VP EMEA Marketing at Concur Technologies, Bob Apollo, Managing Partner at Inflexion Point and Jurgen Heyman, Director at SPI Sales. 

I’ve added a transcript of the panel discussion from FUNNEL, or you can simply head for the video at the bottom of the post and watch the debate… 

50+ key takeaways and soundbites from Funnel 2012

Yesterday around 600 marketers attended the Emirates Stadium in London for Econsultancy’s Funnel B2B marketing conference.

The agenda for the annual event included speakers from Standard Life, IBM, Lloyd’s of London, Marketo, Deloitte and Adestra.

The slides from all the presentation will be available online shortly.

It’s not possible to condense all the different tips and recommendations from the whole day into one blog post, but here are a selection of the interesting points and takeaways…

Five tips for boosting your inbound B2B marketing leads

In theory inbound marketing leads should be cheaper than paid leads as customers are seeking you out rather than the other way around.

But just how much money do you stand to save by increasing your number of inbound leads?

In a talk at our Funnel B2B marketing conference HubSpot’s CMO Mike Volpe revealed that his company pays an average of $346 for each paid lead compared to $135 for inbound, a saving of 61%.

Not only that, but inbound leads also convert at three times the rate of paid leads.

And if you’re still not convinced, Volpe said that for every $1 HubSpot spends on inbound marketing it achieves a $6 lifetime value from the customer, whereas the same amount invested in paid marketing returns $2.50.

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