How to Rank for Competitive Keywords in Search Engines

How important is website traffic to your business?

If you rely on web traffic to generate leads and grow your business, then SEO needs to be on your radar.

Paid ads are a great way to generate quick wins, but if you can optimise your site for search engines it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. The traffic comes in day after day even when you’re not doing anything extra, OR paying for it.

Given the age of the internet and the considerable amount of websites competing for the same search engine traffic, SEO is much harder than it used to be. Especially when it comes to ranking for competitive keywords in your industry.

But if you CAN rank for competitive keywords, your business offer can get in front of your target market consistently and sustainably.

So how do you rank for competitive keywords?

The problem is that there are established brands with HUGE marketing budgets that already have the top spots filled, and they aren’t going to give them up without a fight.

Sure they might own the real estate for now, but using the proper strategy and tools can help you beat the competition.

Let’s take a closer look at how.

Check If It Is Even Possible

Start your SEO journey by creating a list of potential keywords you would like to get search engine traffic for.

When creating the list, try to choose long-tail keywords that are four words or longer instead of broad-based terms that are likely to be EXTREMELY competitive already.

These keywords have less competition, and they attract highly qualified customers because it is more obvious what their INTENT is when they are searching.

If you want to use shorter keywords, you can, but it will take more time to find words that you can rank for.

When you have your list ready, go to Google and type them into the search engine. Google is your most important research tool, since it controls 65% of the search market share.

If the results contain a lot of URLs with .GOV and .EDU extensions, disregard that keyword since you most likely can’t compete with these high-authority sites.

Sites with .COM extensions might also have high domain authority rankings, but use a tool such as Open Site Explorer to check the domain authority for each site in the results. This will give you an indication of whether or not you will be able to play with the big boys or not.

Inside Open Site Explorer you should start by checking your site’s own domain authority to see how you compare:

Then, put the first competitor’s domain name into the box. If you have a better authority score, you are one step closer to outranking that competitor for the keyword you have chosen.

Google also uses domain age when determining page ranking. To figure that out, go to the WHOIS database to check each site’s domain age:

If your domain loses in regards to age and authority, you will need to put a lot of time and money into ranking. So it may not be worth your effort.

Instead, you could use the Moz Pro Keyword Explorer and SERP Analysis Tool to find long-tail keywords that are easier to rank for. Simply type your desired phrase into the tool and then click “See Full Analysis” under “SERP Analysis”, and it will generate some potentially valuable keyword alternatives for you.

In this search:

• The “Volume” refers to the number of people who search for a keyword on average every month
• The “Difficulty Score” shows how difficult it is to rank for the keyword. The closer the score is to 100, the harder it will be to rank for
• The “Opportunity Score” illustrates the click-through-rate potential for organic results. If people typically buy ads for this keyword the opportunity will be lower, because it means you are competing against ad clicks as well
• The “Potential Score” is a combination of the metrics. If you find a key phrase with a high “Potential Score,” you can likely rank for it

Uncover How Many Backinks You Need

Google puts a significant emphasis on backlinks when ranking your pages in their searches.

Put simply, “backlinks” are literally as they sound – someone has hyperlinked from their website back to yours. It’s seen as a signal of quality in the Google algorithm.

It’s not a black-and-white comparison, but if you have more quality links than the other pages trying to rank for a certain search term, then it is highly likely that you will outrank them.

“Quality” is a very important term here though. You are better off having a select few credible domains linking back to your website, rather than a hundred low-quality spammy websites.

To analyse how many links you will need to rank for a certain term, go to the Domain Comparison feature in Ahref’s software.

Put your domain name in the first box and the domain names of your top four competitors in the next four boxes.

This shows how many links you need from each referrer in order to move past your competition.

While many of the links are .COM, the top sites also have .EDU and .GOV links. These are the real momentum-shifters when it comes to ranking your site for competitive keywords. Of course these links are significantly more difficult to get than .COM links are, which makes them much more valuable.

Write Long-Form Content

SERPIQ conducted a study that found that websites in the top ten of Google’s search results have an average content length of over 2,000 words:

Sites that rank number one have an average content length of 2,416 words, and sites that come in tenth have an average word count of 2,032. This shows that there is a slight drop in page rank as the word count reduces.

Longer content (if interesting and engaging) tends to attract more backlinks and it helps position yourself as an authority. It also gives you additional opportunities to rank for long-tail keywords and increases the amount of time people spend on your website, which is another factor Google takes into account when ranking content.

Regardless of your domain age or your authority ranking, you can reap the benefits of long-form content by creating something that is 10x better than anything else already out there on a topic. This will help you stand out, not only to Google but also to your customers.

Try to include stories, visuals and a variety of media in your long-form content. You need to engage readers for a long period and ideally make them want to check out other pages on your site.

 

The goal with long-form content is that your readers will have everything they need from that topic when they finish reading, and won’t need to look elsewhere.

Do On-Page SEO

“On-Page SEO” is essentially anything on your web page that you can influence, optimise or edit in order to better align with Google’s ranking factors.

There are various components to on-page SEO, and each component plays a role in helping your site move up in the search rankings.

Let’s take a look at some of the on-page factors that are most important when trying to rank for competitive keywords.

Page Loading Speed

Google announced speed as a ranking factor in 2010, and plans to use it as a mobile ranking factor in 2016.

A content delivery network (CDN) is an easy way to speed up your website. It cuts down on the space between visitors and the server by storing cached versions of the site in various locations.

It looks a little something like this:

When someone accesses the site, the server that’s closest to the user provides the information, allowing the site to load much faster.

If you want your site to be fast, don’t make the mistake of using large images and scaling them down, as the website still reads them as large images. If you take an image that is 2000 x 2000 pixels and use CSS to scale it to 200 x 200 pixels, browsers will still view it as 2000 x 2000 pixels.

Instead, scale your images to their appropriate size and use TinyPNG to compress them. TinyPNG reduces the size of images without reducing the quality so your site will load faster without losing its visual appeal.

Another thing you can do to improve site speed is to reduce your HTTP requests down to 10-30 files per page. That is a big reduction from the 99 requests per page that website owners average. (Of course this one requires a bit more technical know-how so you may want to enlist an agency or web expert to help out)

User Experience

Google closely looks at user experience when determining rankings, so design your site in a way that minimises the bounce rate. (The time it takes for a visitor to land on your page and leave again)

For example, long-form, highly readable content that is 2,000 or more words keeps people on your site longer.

Your text’s readability score should be around an eighth grade level so everyone can read it with ease. Check the readability score with the Hemingway Editor.

Multimedia also engages users and keeps them on your site, so try to integrate videos on your pages to increase interaction. But be sure to test your multimedia, since it can also increase bounce rate if it takes a long time to load.

Navigation and Design

Make use of whitespace. Visitors who get overwhelmed with text and options tend to leave a website.

They also leave if they can’t navigate the site. Follow the three-click rule. People should be able to find what they want within three clicks.

On-Site Engagement

Getting visitors to share your web pages on social media increases your site engagement and tells Google that people care about what you have to offer.

Include social sharing cues on your website such as calls-to-action, images and embedded social buttons using tools like Shareaholic.

Other On-Page Factors

• Mobile friendly web design is a ranking factor, so you need to create a responsive website or build a mobile version of your current site.
• Every page on your site should include 2-3 internal links to other important pages on your site
• External links from your pages out to other authority sites also helps
• Create a short, easy to understand URL for every page on your site. Google pays attention to the first 3-5 words of the URL so include your keywords here if possible
• Use H1 and H2 header tags on your pages, and include your keywords in these headings if possible

Source: Backlinko

• Optimise your images for SEO by using an Alt tag that consists of your keyword and a description of the image
• Include your keyword in the first 100 words of your blog post. If you have a less valuable keyword, put it in the second paragraph
• Write a meta description that encourages action and includes your keywords. Consider the user intent and write the description accordingly

Start Link Building

Once your site is optimised for SEO, you need to get quality backlinks pointing to it. This is known as link building.

Start the process by submitting your site to directories. Before you submit to a directory, check its authority and rank in Moz’s Open Site Explorer.

Go to the explorer, type in the name of the directory, and click “Compare Link Metrics”:

Look at the page authority, Page MozRank, and Page MozTrust scores before moving forward.

In general, most directories won’t have perfect authority, rank, and trust ratings. Choose directories that are above the middle of the pack to benefit from the links.

In the example above, the link has a Page Authority of 80 and Page MozRank and Page MozTrust scores over 6. This would provide a quality link for a free directory.

Consider paid directories such as Business.com as well. Paid directories provide no-follow links that help with exposure and reputation building, which in turn can get you more links.

Continue to create quality content that people in your industry will want to link to, and use PPC and social media to promote your content.

Getting .EDU and .GOV links is more difficult, but this article will help.

Integrate with Google

Integrating your site with Google begins with creating an XML sitemap so the search engine’s robots can crawl and index your site properly. Some content management systems auto-generate sitemaps, but WordPress users need to use a plugin such as Yoast SEO to do so.

Once completed, make sure the sitemap can be accessed via a URL, then go to the Google Search Console and add your website.

Verify your site and select it. Then click “Site Configurations” and “Sitemaps” and add your site map.

Next, create a Google+ page for your business so your brand will be more visible online, and to Google.

Continue creating a Google presence by building a Google My Business profile…

Finalise your plan for ranking in search engines by adding social media and customer reviews to your site. Google uses social cues for its rankings so this will help your site move up the search results. Plus, people are more likely to engage with a site that has positive reviews visible in a search.

Consider tools like Review Buddy and Testimonial Robot for adding reviews, and Shareaholic and LoginRadius for social media integration.

Conclusion

Ranking for competitive keywords might seem like an impossible task, but with the right strategy and some hard work it’s within your reach.

And it’s worth it…

People going to search engines for information isn’t a trend that is going to disappear tomorrow. In fact, it continues to grow as more of the world’s population access the internet via their mobile devices.

I won’t sit here and tell you that SEO is the one and only tactic you should use to generate traffic and leads for your business. However, it is an extremely important cog in a well balanced and diversified digital marketing strategy.

How do you fair when it comes to ranking for competitive keywords?

If SEO is a regular sticking point for your business and you are interested in driving MORE revenue, not just more traffic contact us for a free quote.

The post How to Rank for Competitive Keywords in Search Engines appeared first on Marketing Results.

In-house Vs. Outsourced Digital Marketing – The Ultimate Comparison

Have you ever considered outsourcing your digital marketing function?

Or perhaps you’re preparing for a growth phase, and it’s time to make some choices about how you staff your digital marketing efforts?

Deciding whether you hire a full-time digital marketing team or outsource to an agency can be challenging. There are lots of things to consider, many of which are hidden from plain view. Especially if you’ve never been through it before.

That’s why we decided to put together this comparison for you. The rest of this post will help you make an informed decision about what the best path for you and your business is, by clearly outlining the Pros, Cons and indifferences about hiring a full-time digital marketing employee or outsourcing to an agency.

Full disclaimer up front, at Marketing Results we are positioned as a “Full Time Digital Marketing Replacement”. But don’t worry, I’m not here to sway your opinion either way.

The information below is designed to help you come to your own conclusion about what’s best in your unique situation. If after doing all of that, you’re interested in taking things to the next step, then we can talk.

Let’s get into it then…

Pros of In-House Digital Marketing

Cultural Immersion

If you hire a full-time team member for your business, they can immerse in your culture and values 24/7.

Your brand has a unique history, vision and goals that you’ll need to explain clearly to an outsourced team if they’re going to help convey it in your marketing message.

An in-house team has a much easier job making this connection with your brand. Not to mention that engaging with internal team members can be an effective digital marketing strategy in itself.

Here’s an example of Nokia doing just that:

Image Source: LinkHumans

Internal Business Intelligence

Someone on your internal marketing team will have extensive internal business knowledge.

This means they will have specific insights when performing analytics and interpreting your data, that an outsourced team won’t be able to access.

Faster Processes

Your own employees will have the best understanding of your company, its products, and customers. A team that’s in-tune with your business can respond faster to internal and market changes.

Also, some marketing tasks require input from other departments (product, IT, etc). They’ll need less time to get up to speed on your marketing needs, and know exactly what areas of your business have been affected by changes.

Outside agencies can only work with what you tell them.

The Right Mix of Talent

The kind of team you need will depend on your business and product, but building your own team gives you the opportunity to hire the right mix.

For example, a marketer selling a new kind of workout equipment may need bodybuilding experts, nutrition experts and many other team members to market their product. It’s unlikely you will find a digital marketing agency with these specialist credentials.

Cons of In-House Digital Marketing

Lack of Skills

Digital marketing requires many brains – the person who is a genius at copy is different from the person who is a genius at design, or development, or analytics, or strategy,

Someone who is genuinely EXCELLENT at a broad range of skills will be;

• very hard to find
• very hard to keep, or
• very expensive

Working with an internal team means at least some of them have to have skills in all of these areas, and according to B2B leaders, skill gaps are a big problem:

Image Source: B2BMarketing.Net

Not Enough Time and Resources

A lack of time, budget, and reputable training can stall in-house digital marketing teams from learning the skills they need to succeed.

A lack of time means that over 80% of digital marketers learn on the job:

Image Source: MarketingLand

This can be a big problem when working with an internal team. If everyone has a maxed out work load and a reduced skill set, it can be hard to take care of your changing marketing needs.

No Direction

Working with an internal team also means taking the time to develop a digital strategy, and guiding your employees on the right path to execute that strategy.

This learning curve takes time and money, which might be why many marketers are still struggling to develop a focused digital strategy.

Image Source: Regalix

Cost

The cost of hiring an internal digital marketing team can be substantial.

The true cost of employment includes:

• Hiring/recruitment cost
• Training cost
• Management supervision
• Performance reviews
• Paid holidays
• Other benefits
• Equipment cost
• Floor space
• Professional development cost
• Ramp up cost (time spent at less than full efficiency while they learn your systems)

Research from Bersin by Deloitte found that recruitment can cost nearly $4000 per individual hire, and here’s how much some specialised digital marketing professionals are earning every year:

Image Source: Moz

Scalability Problems

If you have an in-house team and want your marketing efforts to be scalable, the only way to do that is to hire more talent.

Investing in new marketing initiatives is a valuable strategy, but it’s limited by internal budgets.

It’s no surprise then that securing enough budget for marketing initiatives remains the second biggest challenge for internal marketers:

Image Source: Hubspot

If you hire an agency, they already have the resources available to them and can scale as soon as you are ready.

It can be a useful “implementation support resource” to an internal marketing manager or team who don’t have the time, specialisation or budget to implement everything in house.

Difficulty Finding Talent

Research by Bullhorn found that 64% of recruiters report a shortage of skilled candidates for marketing roles.

This is compounded by the fact that digital marketing professionals are more in demand than ever.

Moz did a study of digital marketing job listings on Indeed.com and saw massive spikes in the listings:

Image Source: Moz

Less talent and more demand means finding talent for your team could be all the more difficult.

With the best digital marketers in high demand, it also increases the chance that you will hire the wrong person.

Mis-hires can be extremely costly, and here’s why:

• You must first identify that the person is off track
• Then you will need to provide some intervention (e.g. management) and monitor their performance
• Next you need to figure out that the intervention hasn’t worked
• Fire them and pay out any entitlements
• Most likely go without the function for a while
• Rehire and go through the whole process again

Pros of Outsourced Digital Marketing

A Wider Skill Set

Hiring an agency means you get access to senior experts to develop your strategy – then lower-cost implementers to make it happen.

These experts are charged with keeping up with the latest trends, techniques and technologies. And the training budgets and resources are significant for marketing agencies.

Truly keeping up on these changes can seem like a full-time job in itself:

Image Source: MarketingLand

This skill set is also more flexible. You can ramp up and down quickly, or stop with little notice.

Specialisation

Hiring an agency is the “expert team” approach – you get the right brains in the right quantities – so you can get what you need and don’t over-pay for what you don’t need.

And 96% of marketers feel that the breadth of marketing skills needed for team success has increased dramatically:

Image Source: MarketingLand

Outsourcing gives you access to a larger team of expert copywriters, strategists, marketing tech, designers and more who specialise in each digital marketing role.

It’s Cost Effective

Outsourcing can save businesses up to half the cost of hiring a full time marketer.

You save money on recruiting, training, salaries, and benefits – and any other hidden staffing costs that you can’t predict.

The cost of outsourcing depends on your needs, not individual salaries.

And sure the “per hour” cost will probably be higher than an internal resource on paper (but you’ll get more done in the time AND you don’t have the high hidden cost of a full-time employee).

Measurable ROI

They’ve done it before, which means they can get in and get the job done quickly.

And good marketing agencies are results focused. They design their engagements based on hard outcomes rather than “processes” or being seen to be “trying hard”.

This solves an internal marketers biggest challenge – Proving ROI:

Image Source: Hubspot

An outsourced team knows how to analyse key performance indicators of a digital strategy to monitor ROI. They use this information to test, optimise and improve campaigns.

This is a valuable asset, considering that proving ROI of marketing activities unlocks budget too.

Cons of Outsourced Digital Marketing

Less Control and Speed to Market

Offloading work to an agency makes it difficult to maintain as much control over your campaigns. And an agency who takes projects and runs with them without keeping you in the loop can be problematic.

This typically means less access when and where you want it – you have to plan more and it may be harder to shoot from the hip with a new campaign that needs to go out “yesterday”.

No Full Time Employees

Agencies have many clients, and you’re just one of them. They MAY be less available, or slow to complete work – it depends on who you work with.

This can affect communication when other client meetings and work take up their time.

On the other hand full time employees are devoted to your needs and your needs alone. (Most of the time)

Integration Challenges

The marketing partner is external so they may take some time to understand and absorb your culture.

Outsourcing can make it difficult to keep all your marketing activity integrated and complementing each other, unless you outsource the WHOLE function.

This requires close coordination of your marketing message on social media, paid advertising, blogs, and other platforms.

The Wrong Fit

You could end up with an agency that just isn’t a good fit for your business.

Perhaps they don’t have experience in your industry, or they don’t understand your audience, or they don’t work well with your business structure and needs.

This just comes down to picking the right one.

How to Choose

It’s clear that digital marketing overall has benefits that are continuing to grow.

The real factor to consider is how capable your in-house team is at taking advantage of these benefits:

Image Source: Marketing Mag

If your in-house team is limited, you have two options for ensuring continued growth:

• Outsource or collaborate
• Add to your internal team

Because of the benefits of marketing integration, many businesses prefer to grow their internal team. But it comes with limitations:

• Lack of budget to hire new talent
• Inability to find the talent you need
• Restrictions on your ability to scale fast

If you find yourself in that situation, you’re not forced to abandon your internal team and go completely outsourced.

Many businesses opt for a mix of in-house and outsourced digital marketing activities:

Image Source: Smart Insights

Ongoing digital marketing activities that aren’t necessarily campaign-based could make sense to do in house:

• PR
• Content marketing
• Social media

Specialised, campaign based activities that require certain talents could be best outsourced:

• SEO
• App development
• Display ads
• Webpage design
• PPC
• Copywriting

This is a generalisation, because ultimately the tasks you outsource will depend on your internal team’s skills and your digital strategy.

In the end, a mixture of in-house and outsourced team members might best help businesses reap the benefits of both options.

An Example Agency Program

Disclaimer: This is where I tell you about what we have to offer and “sell” a little bit. Feel free to stop reading if you’re not considering the outsourced alternative above.

Are you wondering what an agency program actually looks like?

Here’s an insight into our Gold Client Program which is delivered by our team of highly capable online specialists.

They build a state-of-the-art Google AdWords campaign, install a testing and tracking system, then tweak and optimise the heck out of your online sales process.

Then we throw in the services of a pro copywriter, who works with you to perfect your sales message so you’re clearly, undeniably BETTER than everyone else in your market.

And once your online sales process is ticking along nicely, we pour in more traffic from sources including organic (free) search engines, Facebook advertising and social media.

We don’t do this so you can sit back and relax on the beach with a pina colada (though you’re welcome to do so if you’re able).

We do this so you can concentrate on doing the thing that YOU are best at in your business.

Those that have an imaginary business think the Gold Client Program is expensive – your investment will be around $9,000 in the first 3 months (plus traffic).

Yes, if you have an imaginary business, that’s pricey.

But if you have a REAL business, it’s CHEAP.

Here’s why: compare that to hiring an employee… ANY employee.

In Australia, $9K will get you a new graduate 2 days a week for 12 weeks. That graduate will likely have NO experience and limited real-world skills.

In the Gold Client Program, it buys you a crack team of website development and optimisation specialists who know how to do one thing: make your website make money.

You can spend the next 3 months trying to cobble together a team of freelancers, or you can get the best team money can buy working on your site right away.

If increasing the revenue and profit of your current website by 100 to 300 percent over the next 12 months would translate into a significant boost to your business, I invite you to consider joining us on one of the most profitable journeys you’ll ever take.

The first step is very low-key. I invite you to request your complimentary Online Marketing Strategy Session.

The Strategy Session is a 30 to 45 minute session with me on the phone in which we will discuss your current website results and where you want to be – then formulate a plan to get there. (If you don’t yet have a website, we can also discuss the best way to get started, although I should mention we only work with well-funded startups).

Of course, there’s no obligation whatsoever. This is just a no-risk way for us to get to know each other a little better and explore whether or not there’s a “fit”.

Click here to contact us now

Since I’ve held your interest this far and you’re still reading, chances are the Gold Client Program could be exactly what you need to put your online marketing on auto-pilot so you can focus on your core business.

The post In-house Vs. Outsourced Digital Marketing – The Ultimate Comparison appeared first on Marketing Results.

The Ideal Lead and Sales Management Dashboard

For over 13 years our focus has been on lead generation – but it didn’t take long before the realisation hit that nothing happens until a sale is made.

All the leads in the world mean nothing until they convert into new cash, customers and profits.

And because we work remotely from our clients, to really see what’s happening on the coalface, we’ve needed to develop complete lead and sales management systems that provide full visibility of the entire revenue generation function.

And there are 5 functions to this system you need to have in place in order to continuously improve results.

They are:

1. A lead generation function: marketing campaigns that draw qualified prospects to you on a steady and consistent basis.
2. A lead management function: a process for effectively managing the leads you get and plugging them into your sales process. You need to ensure unqualified leads don’t unnecessarily consume your salespeople’s time – and also that good leads don’t get dropped.
3. A sales process: a series of defined stages that prospects go through in order to become your client.
4. Sales scripts: structured language designed to achieve the best sales outcomes (without appearing “wooden” or unnatural).
5. A sales management function: this includes the visibility you need to monitor what you’re getting, warn you when things are off track, and report on outcomes and progress.

Today I’m going to share with you some of the sales management tools we’ve developed to help ensure your sales process remains on track.

Part 1: The Ideal Lead And Sales Management Dashboard

Here’s the lead and sales management dashboard we use to monitor the health of our sales and marketing pipeline.

(We use Infusionsoft – although the same concepts could be set up in most CRM dashboards if you happen to use a different tool.)

Below I’ll unpack why each box exists and what it achieves.

1. New Leads – Uncontacted

New Leads – Uncontacted contains a list of all the people who have contacted us whom we have not yet attempted to call to set up an appointment.

Because we aim to call back leads who may look qualified extremely quickly, at all times we want this box to look like this – empty!

 

If at any time there are leads in that box (during business hours), we aim to pounce on them.

We also keep a timestamp to record our actual callback speed – and work internally to improve our performance.

2. New Leads – Contact Attempts Started

This box contains a list of all the new leads that we have attempted to contact at least once. They’re in process.

We’ll attempt to contact these leads 6 times via phone and/or email before marketing them as “uncontactable”.

Our aim is to establish real-time contact via phone to determine what happens next.

3. Open Opportunities

This is where the magic happens

We use a pipeline approach to managing opportunities, and the Open Opportunities tracks every current live opportunity and what stage it is at.

We can easily see at a glance, who we’re talking to, what stage they’re in, who owns the opportunity, the Next Action – and the Next Action Date.

These last two are critical.

Especially as your sales opportunity volume climbs, it’s vital that for every opportunity you know what’s going to happen next and when it has to happen by.

Providing these fields are constantly kept up to date, you’ll always have forward momentum in your sales pipeline.

This brings us to…

4. Overdue Opportunities

I’ve seen many companies have the best intentions to establish a wonderful sales process with documented pipeline steps and the whole nine yards – but they fall down on execution.

Even if you’re the sole salesperson (but especially if you have multiple salespeople) – you need an easily visible “warning light” to tell you when sales opportunities go off track.

The way we do this is with the “Overdue Opportunities” view.  This shows us the moment an opportunity has a “Next Action Date” that is in the past.

This provides a simple mechanism to ensure we:

1. Always remember to update the opportunity with a “Next Action” and;
2. Get a reminder to implement any “Next Actions” that get missed

This allows salespeople to self-regulate in most cases, but it also allows sales managers to remain more focused on only the items that are “off track”, rather than having to stay across every sales opportunity.

5 and 6. Won and Lost Opportunities

I find it useful to keep Won and Lost Opportunities within easy viewing reach. I can quickly see where we Won and Lost (and why), so if I have to access an opportunity from the recent past, I can.

7. Recent Activity

Infusionsoft has a widget called “Recent Activity” that can be useful for reading the “heartbeat” of our subscribers, leads and opportunities in real time.

Here’s what this looks like right now:

These “triggers” allow us to see with a quick scan, what individuals in our database are doing.

It can be useful to see if key emails were opened, or if individuals are interested in a particular topic or resource.

This allows our phone calls to be better timed and more relevant.

8. Recent Email Broadcasts

Zooming out to a more “macro” level, I like to see at a glance the results of recent email broadcasts. Infusionsoft has a ready-made widget that does this:

This allows me to see which emails and topics are getting more interest than others.

The above dashboard is something I’ve tweaked and refined over several years.

It works – and is easy to change up if I decide I want to see something else.

Most importantly, it allows us to manage and keep track of a complex, high volume pipeline quickly and easily, and ensure that leads don’t slip through the cracks.

A dashboard like this is great for tracking your real time activity – but it’s not great for getting a feel for the trends and performance of your sales function as a whole.

For that, you need a sales reporting process…

Part 2: The Ideal Lead And Sales Report

Keeping your sales function ticking over smoothly is all-important – but it’s not the whole picture.

Here’s an example to illustrate: a lot of CRM systems will produce a “Pipeline Report” that tells you how many sales opportunities are in what stage of the process, like this (fictional) report courtesy of Infusionsoft:

The real problem with reports like this is that it is only a static snapshot.

This doesn’t tell me critical information like:

• how fast opportunities are flowing through my pipeline
• how close I am to making my next sale(s)
• whether or not the sales function is getting more or less effective
• which pieces of the process need the most focus and improvement
• whether or not we’re on track to hit our targets

For that, you need a sales report.

Here’s the structure we use for ours:

We use Google Docs for this, and the report is compiled semi-automatically each week by our Sales Co-ordinator.

Let’s unpack this in more detail:

Weekly Views – this allows us to get a sense for the “flow” of opportunities through our pipeline every week.

One of our clients once had around 80 opportunities in the “Ready To Proceed” stage of their sales process.  It looked good on paper – but when we started to use a report like the one above, we saw that very little were actually crossing over into a “Won” opportunity.

What they actually had, was a number of dead opportunities in their pipeline that they refused to pronounce last rites over. A report like the one above picks this sort of thing up.

List – this is the number of new subscribers joining our email list. While not a “sales” metric, per se, this is a great leading indicator of future sales enquiries and opportunities.

If this number drops, it may indicate that our enquiry pipeline will dry up in the near future

Enquiries – this is the number of raw sales enquiries coming in every week, via email or phone.

Appt Set – this is the number of Initial Appointments set – and the following column, Appt Set % – tracks the percentage of Enquiries converted into an appointment. This percentage gives a rough sense of lead quality and/or may flag issues around lead response times.

Appt Held – as you know, some appointments that are set are never held. They may be cancelled, or result in a no show, or similar. Nothing really happens until the appointment is held, so this number is critical.

FU Booked means “Followup Appointments Booked” – the number of initial appointments that result in a continuation of the opportunity. This provides a rough indicator of lead quality. If this number falls, that may suggest issues with either sales effectiveness (process, scripting), or lack of pre-qualification of certain opportunities in the pipeline.

Won – my second favourite column. The number of discrete opportunities won during the week.

New Rev – my all-time fave. The amount of new revenue generated during the week.

You’ll notice certain columns are further highlighted in aqua. These are the MOST CRITICAL numbers I like to keep track of very closely:

• Number of new subscribers
• The number of appointments with new prospects
• Number of deals closed and revenue generated

If these numbers are looking healthy, the sales function will be healthy.

How do your sales management processes stack up?

Where we’ve implemented sales re-engineering projects for our clients, they’ve usually seen a significant uptick in revenue and also reduced management time spent monitoring and improving the sales function.

Contact us if you know this is an area where you have potential and want to get a sense of the upside in terms of increased revenue, profit and reduced costs.

The post The Ideal Lead and Sales Management Dashboard appeared first on Marketing Results.

Lead Management Best Practices [Infographic]

Too many businesses put an overwhelming focus on lead generation and not enough on turning those leads into customers.

“Let’s go out and get as many high-quality leads as we can – that’s how we’ll hit our numbers.”

But what happens when you have those leads? What’s the next part of the journey?

Lead management is the systems, practices, processes and activities that support the nurturing of a prospect from “lead” all the way through to “paying customer”. It’s the money-making part of the marketing strategy that too many businesses give very little attention to.

So while lead generation is important, without a way to nurture those leads, it’s wasted energy.

Why do you need lead management?

If you have a well constructed lead management strategy, it helps you understand where your best leads are coming from, and how you can better focus the energy of your sales team.

It also ensures that less qualified prospects fall through the cracks, because they weren’t nurtured appropriately.

Over time if you fine-tune your lead management processes with lead scoring, grading, filtering, contact touch points and follow-ups – you can begin testing and optimising the individual components of your strategy and increase the ROI from your marketing efforts.

What are best practices for lead management?

When it comes to best practices for getting your lead management in order, we have found a great infographic from the Harvard Business Review. This infographic was published on the Inside Sales blog, and is packed full of helpful information to help you with this topic.

The research behind the graphic comes from three years of data across companies that respond to web-generated leads. It tracked results of 15,000 unique leads and 100,000 call attempts, so it’s a good sample size to go off.

The focus is to visualise how businesses can better respond to leads they get on the internet, to maximise results and minimise effort.

Below the infographic I dive into the findings in more depth with some additional comments and actions.

Enjoy.

This infographic was originally published on the Inside Sales blog.

Key Takeaways

Qualify leads on Wednesday and Thursday

The findings of this report suggest that the most effective time to follow up with warm leads and qualify their interest, is on Wednesday and Thursday.

And it’s not by a small margin… In fact there is a 49% difference in responsiveness between Tuesday and Thursday.

What does this mean for you?

When you are building out your lead management workflows and follow up processes, include follow up calls on Wednesday and Thursday.

For a better response, contact leads between 4 and 5pm

As well as considering the day you contact warm leads, it’s also important to take into account the best time of day to do so.

This study found that between 4 and 5 pm in the afternoon delivered the best results for the participating companies. Again, there was a significant difference in the responsiveness based on time.

For example, participants were 169% better off contacting leads between 4 and 5pm than they were between 1 and 2pm. (Perhaps due to a lunch break)

If late in the afternoon doesn’t mix with your ideal workflow for lead nurturing, consider contacting leads first thing in the morning. Between 7:30 and 8:30am is the second preference.

What does this mean for you?

Think about how this affects your team’s day-to-day workflow and structure. If you have them following up with prospects on Wednesday and Thursday, you could chunk the calls down into two slots – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Be responsive, or lose your leads

The section on response time was definitely the most disturbing section in this infographic.

The longer you leave a lead sitting dormant, the less chance they are of converting. In fact, the less chance you even have of qualifying them.

Without doubt the craziest part about this research is that a lead contacted within 5 minutes of submitting their information is 400% more likely to be qualified than a lead that is left for 10 minutes.

What that means is you have to be responsive. People want immediate attention and if they don’t get it, there are too many other factors that will help them change their mind.

Strike when the iron is hot or miss out.

What does this mean for you?

A 5-minute turnaround on an inbound sales lead is a tough ask for any business, but there are some things you can do to increase your response time and subsequently get better results from your lead management.

For example, live chat tools such as Lead Chat provide real-time engagement with your prospects and help them overcome any challenges they may have.

You can also setup direct alerts and chat management capabilities for your sales team, to make sure they are prepared to respond as quickly as possible when a lead is on your website, or ready to chat.

Don’t give up on a lead, they need a bit of persistence

Believe it or not, but 30% of leads in this study were never contacted at all…

Are we really investing money and resources into lead generation and then not bothering to talk to them?

Depending on the sales team you have on the ground, and how diligent they are with follow ups, it’s quite common for salespeople to give up far too early. So even if they do contact someone, it won’t take much for them to get disheartened or write the lead off completely.

In fact, 44% of sales people give up after one follow up… and 80% of sales actually require FIVE follow ups to close the deal.

What does this mean for you?

Build multiple follow ups into your lead management workflows, and use performance reviews and KPIs to make sure your sales team are making it happen.

Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Far too often lead management is an after thought. It’s a haphazard process where a lead comes in, someone calls them up and then gives up when the phone goes to voicemail.

It needs to be better than that.

The more time and energy you put into marketing your business online, the more important the management of your leads becomes.

Treat lead management just like you would any other part of the marketing equation. Drill down a process, create some workflows and build it into the performance reviews of your team.

We all know how hard it can be to get leads, so when you do, make sure you’re ready to capitalise.

How does lead management play a role in your business? 

The post Lead Management Best Practices [Infographic] appeared first on Marketing Results.