The world of marketing has been given quite the reputation. Especially the local firm marketing philosophies of the past. Words like "awareness" and "return on investment" should not be in the same sentence when it comes to the effectiveness of your campaign. So what should marketing results look like? Today on Facebook we posted a snapshot of a lead conversion and we thought we would break it down for you to get a good look at what a prospect becoming a lead looks like when you are navigating an inbound marketing strategy. Use the headings on the image below to understand the process as they correspond with subject headings in this post.

Social media referral from LinkedIn

This means that this contact found our business through LinkedIn. We preach the importance of a strong social media strategy on the regular, this is why. We are actively pursuing a contract with someone who found us and expressed interest in our brand from LinkedIn... while other marketing strategies make assumptions about this, inbound marketing is giving you the exact date, time and location that each lead is coming from. 

Content navigated on our site

We know a lot about this prospect based on their experience with our website. First, we know that they ended up on our Homepage first. This means that they did not come to us through a blog post, they were probably checking out a team member or our company profile on LinkedIn. The second page they visited was our team page, this means they care about who is going to be working on their marketing. Likely they were cross-referencing the roles that they saw on LinkedIn. They are obviously interested in social media for business, selected to visit that page and provide their information for the free download.

Became a Lead

This means that the information exchange has occurred. The prospect has checked out what we have going on, who we are and has decided that we are thought leaders and that they want a piece of that pie. So they have downloaded our resource to become a more educated social media user, and likely to vet the agency that they are checking out online. We are giving them a lot of opportunity to build trust with our brand.

Social Media Download

We sent the lead an email that gave them their social media download. This email was sent directly to them, it is automated but personalized based on the lead's navigation on our site. It says thank you.

Thank you for Downloading ...

If you look back to the behaviour on the site you can see that upon completion of the form we redirected our lead to a Thank You page. This page has blog posts, information and access to additional resources. An easy way to say Thanks!

What we wanted to demonstrate is that when we are talking about return on investment (ROI) the discussion is specifically about the leads that we are generating and the sales that you are closing. It isn't about awareness, brand recognition and other elements of the marketing game that mean less every time we say them. It is about building your business with solid leads and having a thorough understanding of both the business and technical side of the equation. Responsible marketing requires a hearty aptitude in each. Check out the e-book below to get some additional information on how you can take your website from resource to lead generator by closing the loop.