The Best Way to Achieve Your Top of Sales Funnel Goals

1. Your company must have a robust website that provides informative, up-to-date content about your products, services, and the business problems your company solves for its customers.

2. An automated lead nurturing program must be fully implemented and poised to deliver a stream of personalized and highly relevant content to each website visitor who requests additional information, after all, 50% of leads generated from a website are qualified but not ready to buy. Lead nurturing keeps them engaged with your company util they are ready to buy.

Your website functions as a magnet to attract the interest of potential buyers. Your lead nurturing program serves as the engine that pulls them through the sales funnel. Well-developed content provides a shared foundation for both your website and your lead nurturing engine.

Before expending time and resources to increase top of funnel activity, you must be prepared to respond to new prospects with content that engages them and converts them into qualified sales leads. Otherwise, these prospects will lose interest and fall out of the funnel.

So let’s assume your website and lead nurturing engine are up and running, fully supported by a pool of strong content that is ready for distribution. Top of funnel leads are being generated, but not in sufficient numbers to meet your sales objectives. Now, you must add fuel to your lead nurturing engine to boost your website’s visibility and accelerate the process of attracting and engaging more prospects who need your company’s product and service solutions.

One of the most effective ways to fuel interest in your company beyond SEO and organic search, is to employ strategic use of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

PPC advertising provides a direct path to your website for buyers who are researching the specific business problems solved by your company’s products and services. PPC advertising is practical, measurable, and widely available through most major search engines and social platforms. When applied correctly, PPC advertising is a cost effective method for increasing the right kind of website traffic to produce greater numbers of qualified leads.

In order to capitalize on interest generated through PPC advertising, it is essential that website visitors be directed to landing pages that focus on solving specific business problems. This is key to converting anonymous website visitors into known prospects who can then be nurtured through the sales funnel.

For optimal results in the B2B environment to achieve your top of sales funnel goals, we recommend the following PPC options:

• Google Adwords

A recent blog post at Digital Marketer, an online community of digital marketing experts, lists all the reasons why businesses should utilize Google Adwords to attract the right website traffic. Among the most compelling of those reasons:

Google Adwords provides a way to achieve page one search rank and increase your company’s visibility among your targeted audience.

For a useful and concise infographic describing the key factors that contribute to a successful Adwords campaign, we encourage you to review “The Essence of Google Adwords in 876 Words”.

• LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads offer the ability to target prospects by general categories such as job function and geography. Perhaps most importantly, they also enable targeting of specific LinkedIn user groups.

Click this link for an informative outline of best practices to follow when implementing LinkedIn advertising.

The image to the right links to a great blog post by Unbounce.com with a simple 5 step process to create effective LinkedIn advertisements.

• Facebook Ads

Facebook offers online advertising opportunities that leverage existing social and business groups as well. Review the advertising information under Facebook for Business for more details on the features and benefits of Facebook Ads.

The image to the right from nanigans.com links you to a Facebook advertisement cheat sheet infographic that outlines the dimensions for each advertisement type with tips for making each more effective.

• Banner Ads

Place banner ads on respected websites your target prospects are most likely to visit. Examples of websites where banner ads may be effective include online industry forums, industry conference registration sites, business publication websites, etc. Banner advertisements are perhaps one of the oldest forms of PPC advertising. The website Retargeter.com has several great blog posts that address banner advertising best practices.

Leads resulting from organic search have the highest conversion rates at the lowest cost. A comprehensive Inbound Marketing strategy built around a strong lead nurturing engine is essential for delivering these leads in today’s highly competitive world of online search.

To establish a strong lead nurturing engine for your company, focus first on creating a broad mix of educational, solution-centered content and then define the parameters that will drive delivery of that content to your leads at just the right times. Once that engine is in place, maximize its power by adding the fuel of targeted PPC advertising to attract more prospects that need your company’s solutions to their business problems. PPC advertising fuels your company’s lead nurturing engine, which in turn manages the tracking and nurturing of PPC traffic through the sales funnel and toward new customer conversion.

For more information on using Inbound Marketing strategies to generate sustainable increases in the number of prospects flowing into your company’s sales funnel, please download our whitepaper “8 Steps to Attract Qualified Leads For Your Business”.

Bristol Strategy is a full funnel inbound marketing agency and inbound sales agency offering the full complement of services to enable our clients to surpass their business objectives by transforming the way they engage with their buyer on-line.  Reach out to us to learn more about how our experience and capabilities can help your business grow.