Understand Inquiries vs Leads

First, track and evaluate raw inquiries and accepted leads.

• Raw inquiries include every contact record generated by your marketing program
• Accepted leads are a subset of these inquires and are typically those that contain legitimate and desirable contact information.

For example, before loading all inquiries into a lead tracking system, many companies eliminate records with bogus email addresses and/or phone numbers, or inquiries associated with competitors, current customers, students or consultants (not their target audience). Also, some marketers eliminate inquiries located outside their service area.

B2B marketers should analyze the cost associated with both raw inquiries and accepted leads (i.e. only those inquiries that are loaded into your lead system and warrant follow-up activity).

Across the multiple programs we manage for various B2B firms it is not uncommon to see a lead acceptance rate of only 50% — especially for firms selling to very specific, niche markets.

In a situation like this, understanding the inquiry-to-accepted lead ratio is critically. The cost-per-inquiry (or cost-per-conversion) reported by your PPC campaign or by Google Analytics is really not reflective of your cost-per-lead.

In fact, with a 50% acceptance rate, your true cost-per-lead is double the reported cost-per-conversion.

Implement A Lead Grading System

Second, implement a lead grading system. One of the most common techniques is a simple A, B, C, D format. B2B marketing and sales teams must jointly determine an acceptable grading system.

For example:

• A leads represent inquiries with the highest possible sales potential. This might include large companies, with significant purchasing power, in your specific target market and desired geographic area.
• B leads might come from slightly smaller firms, but still in your market.
• C leads could be associated with companies that have potential, but are not directly in your target market.
• D leads warrant some follow-up but are not viewed as high-potential.

Create A Marketing-Sales Feedback Loop

Communication between sales and marketing teams is crucial, especially for companies with long, complex sales cycles.

B2B marketers can’t wait until a sale is complete to assess lead quality because the data will be so old it can’t be used to actively manage a real-time program like search.

In our experience, it is extremely beneficial to have direct feedback from your sales team. This allows marketers to understand which leads are qualified and moving through the sales pipeline.

On at least a monthly basis, lead grades should be reviewed and updated by the sales team and shared with marketing – completing the lead quality feedback loop.

Marketers are often surprised to learn that the campaigns and keywords that generate a high volume of inquiries and leads are not the same words that consistently generate high-quality leads.

Identify Marketing vs. Sales Leads

In addition to lead grading, another technique used to improve lead quality is to identify marketing leads vs sales leads.

• Marketing leads typically need to be cultivated over time until they are ready to interact with a sales-person. These prospects might ultimately be highly qualified, but are typically early in the buying cycle and require additional information and resources.
• Sales leads are usually prospects who are further along in the buying process, closer to making a purchase decision. In terms of needs, budget and project timeline these leads are definitely ready to interact with a salesperson.

By identifying and categorizing leads this way, marketers are able to treat prospects appropriately as they move through the buying process. This also allows your sales team to focus their valuable time, attention and resources on the right prospects.

Evaluate Quality At A Granular Level

B2B marketers must evaluate not just the quantity of inquiries generated, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the quality of the resulting leads – based on sales results and ROI. This analysis should occur at a granular level; by campaign, ad group and keyword.

Only then can search marketers appropriately manage each keyword — based on that word’s ability to generate inquiries, accepted registrations, qualified (graded) prospects, sales-ready-leads, and ultimately – customers, revenue and profit!

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.

Focus And Differentiate

Being able to differentiate your agency is critical to success, especially in today’s climate. Specialization helps to create a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and distinguish your company against the competition.

The past two years have reaffirmed my firm’s commitment to serving the B2B market place. Our focus on B2B search marketing solutions definitely limits the pool of eligible companies we serve, but also provides a competitive advantage over general marketing agencies and firms that try to be “all things to all people”.

Specialize Based On Expertise & Clients

Specialization is reflected in an agency’s people; their skills, experience and expertise. It is reflected in the firm’s proprietary technology and processes, and it is reflected in the company’s client roster.

Take a look in the mirror to determine if in-fact you do have a specialization that perhaps you’re not even yet aware of. Sometimes, by simply looking at your customer list you will see a trend that can be defined as a specialty.

Another enabler might be the background and experience of your staff. Perhaps several employees have deep experience working in specific markets like software, hardware, or manufacturing.

Successful examples of marketing agency specialization include B2B, education, finance, travel and luxury goods.

Expand Your Service Offering

It’s and old sales adage that the more products and services you have to sell the better your chances of selling something. Consider the iconic Fuller Brush salesperson saying, “Well, if you don’t need a toothbrush today… how about a hair brush?”

By expanding into complementary products and services you can increase the revenue received from each existing client. i.e. “Do you want fries with that burger?”

Offer Complimentary Services

In the world of search marketing, if an agency (or company) implements only SEO or only PPC — the most obvious expansion strategy is to add the other core service. This allows you to better serve customers through the integration of related services and capture a larger share of total marketing budget.

Additionally, several search marketing shops are adding web-development services in the form of landing-page and microsite development, testing, and conversion improvement services. This is a strategy that my firm started to implement several years ago. Conversion services are now a major component of our offering and a solid point of differentiation in the marketplace.

Our expansion into post-click, conversion services has proven to be successful because in addition to providing a new revenue stream we are also able to increase client satisfaction and improve overall marketing ROI by increasing website conversion rates.

Other areas of expansion for the B2B search marketer to consider include:

• Reputation management
• Integration with CRM and lead management systems
• Optimized copywriting to support SEO efforts
• Advanced result reporting such as competitive tracking
• Content development to support blogging and other social activities

Survive Today. Thrive Tomorrow!

Past economic cycles clearly demonstrate that businesses that survive in a down economy are in the best position to thrive once recovery begins. By implementing strategies today such as specialization and expansion you increase your odds of future survival, growth and success.

A focus on B2B search marketing solutions coupled with a commitment to conversion improvement services is one agency’s approach to this strategy.

Sound familiar? These are common complaints made by B2B marketers. Often times, it’s because these firms are focused on only half of the success equation.

SEO programs and PPC campaigns improve visibility and drive traffic to your website. But it takes more than traffic to achieve an acceptable ROI.

The restaurant analogy

Imagine you own a local restaurant and business is not going well; very few people are coming into your establishment. So you create a marketing plan to get people in the door. You run ads in newspapers, on billboards, maybe even hire an airplane to fly a banner.

And it works. More people show up. But unfortunately, too many of these prospective customers leave without sitting down and ordering. Lesson: more traffic does not automatically equal more revenue.

Why? In addition to great promotion, you need to ensure your restaurant offers an experience that delivers good value, is unique, enjoyable and easy. For example, running compelling specials, printing appealing menus, putting special boards up, and training your wait staff to help with meal selection.

Only by focusing on the experience after a prospect walks in the door, can you turn traffic into revenue.

Search marketing similarities

Your search marketing program is very much like this restaurant. Nearly all B2B search marketers focus on improving their SEO efforts and PPC campaigns, but too few focus on improving website usability, engagement and conversion, in other words, the experience after the click.

SEO metrics include rank/position and volume of organic clicks. PPC data includes impressions, paid clicks, click-through-rate (CTR), and cost-per-click. These are the most common success metrics that search marketers track.

Ironically, post-click metrics offer the largest opportunity for ROI improvement. For example, with PPC advertising, if you work to double your conversion rate, you will receive twice as many leads without any increase in media budget. Now that’s impressive.

Pre- and post-click alignment

The key to maximizing ROI is to have your pre- and post-click activities aligned; the right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing. If you are running ads that focus on one particular product, drive prospects to a page that specifically addresses that product (not the home page and not an all-products page).

Also, if a business buyer is early in the buying cycle, and enters a very general search query, it’s really not effective for advertisers to offer product discounts or “free shipping”. This type of searcher will be much more likely to click on a message related to industry research and market trends. Only when they are further along in the B2B buying process will they be open to pricing and fulfillment offers.

Bottom line: make sure the searchers’ query is aligned with your ad copy, which is aligned with the content, or offer, on the landing page.

If you offer multiple products or services, you can see that the coordination between the pre- and post-click activity is very important. Your PPC team (selecting keywords and writing ad copy) must be aligned with your web team – creating new landing pages with specific content and calls-to-action.

Work the entire search marketing success equation

Still wondering why you can’t achieve an acceptable ROI from search marketing? Make sure you’re focusing not just on PPC and SEO but also the customers’ experience after the click.

Have you reached a point of diminishing returns regarding SEO and PPC program improvements? Perhaps you should devote more time and energy to post-click activities such as testing to improve website usability, engagement and conversion.