Inbound Marketing Blog

Internet Marketing: Lead Conversion Strategy

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How much focus have you applied to your conversion strategy?

As a certified inbound marketing consultant I am consistently evaluating online or Internet marketing strategies. I'm sure it comes as no shock to any reader that in the past 12 months, almost every (if not all) KPI (key performance indicators) have shown significant increases in:

1. Overall search traffic
2. Blog readership
3. Blog creation & posts
4. Social media accounts
5. Social media communications
6. Paid advertising
7. Products & services offered
8. Websites launched
9. Etc, etc...

My point is that all players in all ends have increased dramatically. In my own mind, and from my own perspective, this simply means more competition for attention as well as more opportunity for the savvy marketing professionals.

All of this overview leads me to the focus of this particular blog post and that is a perceived weakness or oversight in many inbound or Internet marketing strategies.

If getting found, converting & analyzing are the staples of a good Internet marketing process, this blog post is about the middle element or conversion strategy as I see that in many cases, this area needs the most attention. It's considered a great success to improve your search engine positions, increase your inbound links, double your traffic and reach but in the end, if your conversion process is sub-standard, it's not as big a success as it could have been.

With all of this in mind, it is important to understand the traditional sales funnel and sales cycle.

1. Top of the funnel = Tier one traffic from all sources including:
   • Organic traffic
   • Referral or link traffic
   • PPC traffic
   • Direct traffic
   • Email traffic
   • Blog traffic
   • Social media traffic
2. Middle of the funnel = Lead generation or conversion. This is the process of qualifying or filtering all traffic into interested or lead traffic. Once tier one traffic is converted to a lead, they have moved from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel.
3. Bottom of the funnel = Customers

In my next blog post I will discuss the process and methodology available to manage the middle of the funnel and convert tier one traffic into leads.

Other resources available to help you expand your reach: