iSmart Communications Blog

For B2B companies, one of the biggest obstacles is the restriction to a small pool of audience. Due to limited reach, there is a need to identify and create a targeted communication for this niche group of people. Digital marketing allows for tailor-made solutions to help B2B companies address challenges. In this age, where technology has advanced, and customer behaviour has changed, here are five steps to create a successful B2B digital marketing strategy.

1. A good website

A study by Hinge Marketing shows that 80% of customers will visit your website to learn more about you. Unlike B2C, B2B customers do not make decisions based on emotions. B2B customers will decide to engage with your company that is only after careful consideration using all resources available. Your website is like your virtual shop. It allows people to come in and learn more about you. It should be designed to enable a smooth discovery process. It should have a clear picture of your organisation stands for, value propositions, testimonials and case studies for credibility. Lastly, you must ensure your website is mobile-optimised.

2. Content Marketing

It is no surprise to know that B2B has a longer lead time than B2C. To push your lead down the conversion funnel, it is essential that you nurture them with targeted content marketing. You can build a knowledge resource using blogs and nurture them with more contents. These contents can include some of the tried and tested such as webinars, eBooks or even white papers. Remember to do keyword research in which your target audience is interested in and find engaging. Then build your content surrounding those keywords.

3. Optimise for search engine

While B2B companies actively seek out new customers, do not forget that customers are also looking out for companies to engage with. As compared to B2C, B2B has a relatively narrow market. You have to make sure you are visible through search queries. It does not matter if you have the best website design, but no one can find you. Therefore, you need to optimise your website with on-page and off-page SEO to improve your searching ranking. You will want to drive organic traffic to your site and ultimately, generate leads for your company. However, just SEO is not enough. Your SEO has to work hand-in-hand with your content marketing to drive results.

4. Advertising 

Paid advertising across various channels can build your brand awareness. Due to having a limited audience in B2B markets, customer acquisition costs tend to be higher than in B2C markets. Hence, it is crucial to ensure your advertisements exposed to the right target audience. With an abundance of platforms to advertise on, the platform you choose will largely depend upon which is most relevant to your brand. The right mix would be one which enables you to find your audience and gain high-quality leads at a lower cost-per-lead.

5. Integrate offline and online marketing 

While digital marketing appeals to most marketers today, it does not mean to disregard traditional marketing entirely. They need to support one another. The foundation of most B2B businesses is building relationships. Relationships require time to build, and the key is to back up your digital touch-points with offline support and vice versa. For example, you are involved in relevant conferences or exhibitions to represent your company and would like people to come to visit your booth. You can let people know about this by publicising on channels such as social media, search engine marketing or even blogs.

As technology continues to advance, the B2B digital marketing landscape will only become more competitive. With these five strategies, you can develop a strong and reliable online presence to push for great results. Don’t get left behind and start adopting digital marketing today.

A strong marketing strategy typically involves suitable advertising and market research to create a link between consumers and your products and services.

Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing allows you to track and measure your performance in real time. In the past, your marketing message is broadcasted to everyone using prints or radios etc. You have no idea where your leads are coming. 

Marketers ask themselves: Are the leads coming in from my print ads or elsewhere? How many people are being exposed to it? How long should I pump money to continue this type of advertising? 

If you are still sticking to traditional methods, here are three simple reasons why you should adopt a digital marketing strategy.

1)    Works for All Kinds OF Businesses

Whether you are in the B2B or B2C businesses, digital marketing works for everyone. Depending upon the budget, there is a selection of strategies to adopt. Due to the customisable nature of digital marketing, it is even viable for small businesses. It enables you to reach out to a wider audience at a lower cost as compared to traditional marketing. 

2)    Higher Conversion Rates

Today, the purchasing behaviour has changed. People are on the internet most of the time. That is where you should be doing your marketing. With real-time data analytics such as Google Analytics, you can identify what percentage of viewers are converted into leads and subsequently into subscribers and customers. Such metrics include calculating return on investment (ROI), returning visitors, web traffic sources to inform you of your digital marketing performance. Instead of relying on gut feel, you make improvements to your strategies based on data-backed decisions.

With regard to traditional marketing, joining a three-day convention could cost you up to 50,000. The same amount could enable you to run a digital marketing campaign for six months and up to a year. Of course, this very much depends on the number of strategies adopted. In other words, a small investment in digital marketing strategy can deliver the desired result to give a better return on investment (ROI).

3)    Branding

 To find your target audience, you have to be where they are spending their time. This means on the internet and specifically, on social media as well. Extend your reach and awareness of your brand by marketing on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on. 

For example, the ads on Facebook could help to drive visitors to your site. Moreover, posting regular informative and relevant content will position you as a thought leader. Furthermore, social media can act as a conversational channel for your prospects or customers to reach you. You can answer queries or take feedback and build a relationship with your prospects or customers. You can even ask customers to leave a positive review and ratings. By marketing on social media, you can enhance your brand reputation. 

In conclusion, digital marketing works for every business. However, your marketing strategy must be aligned with your goals and aimed towards the right target audience. And ensure that you employ the use of analytic tools to track performance on a regular basis accurately. With these, you are on the right path towards the continual growth of your company.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has evolved so much in the last couple of years. You can’t just stuff keywords everywhere and expect to climb the rankings in search. Now, you need to create informative and relevant content that specifically addresses your target audience’s problems and interests.

Keyword Research involves finding the words and phrases your target audience uses when typing their queries into a search engine. It allows you to build a list of keywords you want to rank for. It works together with your content strategy helps you develop a strong SEO standing. Hence, this is why keyword research tools are essential for any content marketer’s toolkit.

1)    Organic Traffic Is Still Crucial 

For every company, organic traffic remains one of the most important sources of traffic. Appearing on the first page positions yourself as the industry expert to help others solve their problems. Moreover, by appearing on the first page for multiple but relevant keywords, people will engage with your content more.

By continuing to provide informative and relevant content, it creates a good impression in the eyes of your visitors. And with proper usage of CTAs and content offer, you can turn them into leads. 

According to statistics, the higher your ranking, you will attract more readers to come to visit your site. The first position on Google search results on desktop draws a 30% click-through rate. The click-through falls the lower your rankings.

2)    Four types of Keywords to Consider

Generally, people use four different kinds of keywords when they’re using a search engine.

Informational
It usually starts with a question because the people are looking for tips, solutions and insights on a specific challenge.

Navigational
Very often, the searcher already knows a particular feature or a product or service. Often, they will search by typing a product or brand name.

Transactional
For this, the searcher has probably done some research and understanding their problems. Now they are ready to dive deeper, that is to convert.

Commercial
Keywords could include pricing, buy or even subscription, keywords and phrases that indicate their readiness to purchase.

3)    Never-ending Research

Keyword research is an ongoing task, just like of your digital marketing tactics which you should aim to optimise. Your list of keywords will change according to the search behaviour of people. Your list will evolve and grow over time, especially when reaching out to new markets or introducing new offerings. Therefore, you can’t keep creating content around a specific list of keywords and must continuously keep up to date.

4)    Keywords Relate to your Topic Clustering Strategy

In order to stay ahead of the competition, organisations and marketers have to ensure your keywords are linked to your topic clusters constantly.

Topic clustering works when you create a single pillar page that acts as a comprehensive resource covering an overarching generic topic. There, you can create other content pages that cover related subtopics of that pillar page and ultimately, to link them all together internally. Using topic clustering together with keyword research will score big for your SEO.

5)    Spy On Your Competitors

So how do we define success in your SEO efforts?

Of course, part of measuring your success will likely be influenced by how well you’re standing out amongst the market you’re in.

It is where competitive intelligence tools come into play. You need to use tools to track your rankings and see how they change over time as compared to your competitors. It allows you to identify where you are gaining or losing traction and find opportunities to improve your content strategy. This competitive intelligence reports should be part of your keyword research strategy because they influence one another.

As your SEO evolves, your keyword research game should keep pace as well. It remains a vital part of your SEO strategy. Together with informative and relevant content and prominent CTAs, your website is on the right path to converting visitors into leads.

Nearly everyone has an electronic reading device, be it a phone, tablet or even a Kindle.
Reading is one way to obtain information quickly and make use of downtime. eBooks are especially ideal for busy decision makers.

Early marketers have likened eBooks to something like a long-form blog post. Since then, technology has improved, and people’s behaviour has changed. So, the concept of eBook has to change as well.

To answer the question: Yes, it is still relevant but only if you do it right.

Ebooks are still valuable and essential in your digital marketing strategy, especially for B2B businesses. They are a form of content which helps to convey a large amount of information in a professional yet accessible manner.

Here are some of the reasons why eBooks are still relevant in your digital marketing strategy.

1. EBooks Are Professional and Impactful

Of course, anyone can write and publish on today’s web. However, publishing an eBook will help you position you as a kind of expert that is similar to those who appear on bookstore shelves.

EBooks are especially great when your target audience is in the B2B Business. A well-designed and well-written eBook also positions you as a thought leader in your field. Moreover, it is a preview of the care and effort you put into your work. In other words, you build trust with your B2B target audience. Hence, they will more be willing to work with someone like you.

2. EBooks give you versatility for Marketing

They are seen mostly in the top of funnel marketing, very early in the marketing process. However, you can find uses for almost anyway in your marketing campaign.
Now, let’s consider the three-stage buyer journey which most digital marketers adopt:

Awareness stage: An eBook can define a problem or provide a step-by-step “how-to” to guide.
Consideration stage: An eBook can walk readers through buying criteria for a solution.
Decision stage: An eBook can review the value buyers would get from using your product.

As above, eBooks can be used in the buyer’s journey. In other words, marketers often use them throughout the lead nurturing process. eBooks work well on other channels as well. Another alternative is social media ads such as Facebook. They are usually used an ad offering to drive visitors to the landing page to download the eBook. A way to help you capture your leads.

3. EBooks help your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing means providing relevant and informative content to your customers and prospects. Other than the benefits it offers to your target audience; another is the usefulness for content creation.

An example: You can break your most useful eBook into a series of blog post. Likewise, it could also work in reverse. They could also be used to churn out a checklist, infographics, videos, or other forms of content which is easier for your target audience to digest.
With this, you are accelerating your content creation and strengthening your SEO which depends very much on content as well. With a strong content marketing strategy and SEO to boot, it improves website ranking and lead generations overall.

4. EBooks Help Your Team Members Learn and Grow

Although this point is not really about your customers or prospects, it is essential to the growth of your team and ultimately your strategy. The more time your team spends researching about the topics or issues in your field, the easier it’ll be to communicate those ideas to your potential customers.

Some people might think eBooks are old-fashioned. However, they are a tried and tested way to connect with your potential buyers. To make better purchasing decisions, decision makers are always hungry for information. And with eBooks, you help satiate their hunger to make better business decisions.

Verdict: Yes, eBooks are still useful in Digital Marketing strategies.

That said, your digital marketing strategy should not revolve only around eBooks. Complement it with your other strategies or channels to help your business grow.

Are you still resorting to manual marketing task? I hope not. If yes, then it’s probably time for you to start using marketing automation. Essentially, marketing automation is designed to automate marketing actions, cut down on repetitive tasks, better lead nurture process and to close more sales.

The benefits are:
- Improves productivity
- Automates manual workflow
- A centralised hub for actions
- Improves customer retention
- Tracks and monitors all campaigns

Still not convinced? According to CMO.com, 91% of successful users agree that it is vital. But how do you recognise your marketing needs one? Continue below for four ways to tell if your marketing requires automation

1. You Spend your day on Manual Task

If you’re spending too much time on manual tasks, it’s likely time for you to adopt a marketing automation solution.

With marketing automation, you can automate the following:

- Social media management: Schedule shares across multiple channels to reduce time spent to publish across each channel manually
- Publishing: Much like above, marketing automation lets you schedule your blog post. All you need to do is load the content.
- Emails: You can build up an email template and clone multiples of it to keep the brand message consistent. It also enables you to automate email follow-ups to engage your leads and prospects better. Furthermore, it provides insights such as data on email opens, bounces, unsubscribes or clicks.
- Workflows: Perhaps one of the most important. It allows you to set up a series of automated actions based on predetermined rules. For HubSpot, it will enable you to send an automated nurturing email which is determinant on the contact’s actions.

2. Different platform for different tasks

Are your content management system (CMS), email marketing solution, customer relationship management solution (CRM) and social media channels are under one umbrella? If yes, you need marketing automation.

With HubSpot, you have access to all marketing software needs, including:

- CMS
- CRM
- Email Marketing
- Workflows
- Social Media
- Landing Pages
- Calls-To-Action (CTA)
- Ads
- Reporting

3. Lack of Dynamic Database

A customer database is important but how you manage it is even more crucial. If you’re manually adding or removing contacts, not segmenting contacts or have a lack of insight into individual contact records, its time probably time for you to adopt marketing automation.

With marketing automation, it helps you turn your static contact database into a more dynamic one by:

- Automatically adding or removing contacts to your database. A new contact would be added to your database when a website visitor fills out a form. Likewise, when someone unsubscribes from a mailing list, they get removed via automation.
- Segment contacts into list or groups based on demographic, psychographic information or even recent actions. For example, you can categorise your contacts into buyer personas.
- Through individual records, you will be able to understand the recent actions by user done on the website. For example, which page the user has seen or which content has the user downloaded.

Therefore, with a centralised hub for your marketing, sales and customer support, you will be able to provide a consistent experience for your customer regardless of their stage in the buyer’s journey.

4. Performance Data

For every marketing campaign, there is a goal. However, to achieve that goal, there are individual components that funnel up to your goals. These projects could be blogging, CTAs, social media promotion, landing pages, workflows and even email marketing.

For example, HubSpot marketing automation allows you to tag projects by campaigns.
Data obtained could include:
- Landing page visits
- Bounce rates
- Email opens
- Email click through
- CTA submissions and so on

With marketing automation, it enables you to track each project’s performance, thereby enabling you to make changes to them with the aim of ultimately hitting your campaign goal.

After all, the only way to prove marketing success is to have numbers to back them up. While you may have tracked data, you want something that pieces all your data in a single platform. Moreover, some platforms categorise common metrics such as sessions and impressions differently, leading to skewed data.

To sum it up, marketing automation helps you gain a holistic view of all marketing performance. And with HubSpot reporting function, you can customise your view of these data with a dashboard. And there you have it, four ways for you to tell if your marketing requires automation. If you have not done so, get started today!

But, how do we know when leads are cold? Answer: Due to their behaviour.

Sure, sometimes your leads may require some time and nurture before coming back to you. These include visiting your website, checking out your content offer or even looking at your social media. However, time spent off your radar could be spent with your competitors.

Therefore, it is important to re-engage with them and provide them with the value they need and get your leads back on track. There are 2 things you should consider.

Is there enough data to inform you when your leads go cold? 

The B2B sales process is generally long. Before thinking that your leads are already lost, ensure that have analytics in place to help you understand leads behaviour. Implement a lead scoring system that helps you qualify as your leads progress towards the next stage in the buyer’s journey. This should work hand in hand with your CRM which sends a notification to your marketing or sales team for follow-up of your leads.

It is OKAY to ask

Based on your gut feel, you are confident that your lead is interested in your offer. However, it seems that they have gone cold after 2 weeks.

Don’t assume right away that it is your fault. It is fine to ask your leads directly what’s going on.
They might be interested but stalled their project due to handling multiple projects at once. You may have misread them or your lead where never really interested in the first place. They could also be tempted by your competitors.

Doing this, you can learn and take precautions that will keep more of your leads from cooling in their first place. This helps you improve on your sales cycle by focusing on “best fit” leads.

While taking note of the above considerations, here are 4 things you can do to get your leads back on track.

1. Send Out a Customised Email

Your lead may have joined your email list but hasn’t opened your messages. These days, people are overwhelmed and do not have the time to derive the full value of your content. Your customised email could something like a guide or a checklist that may spark their further exploration into the rest of your website offerings.

2. Offer Something Relevant

Your leads may have been checking your emails but are not clicking through to your site. Re-ignite your relationship with your lead by offering something up front. Even if they might not show interest in the initial stage, they may be excited to accept something like a free assessment or a free 15-minute consultation. Of course, you should customise your approach to different prospects. Put an intriguing subject line as compared to previous emails to pique their curiosity.

3. Other Ways to Re-Engage

You could make use of re-targeting ads to get your cool leads back onto your website. Direct conversation through social media could also work out. As for leads who poke around your website, make use of custom pop-ups and lead magnets to drive them back.

4. Approach Another Prospect Within a Company

This happens way too often. You are absolutely sure a particular company is the best fit, but somehow can’t get them on board. Don’t be afraid to have another go at it. Double check your assumptions and ensure you’re really addressing your content to the right person.

Use these 4 methods to re-engage your cold leads and bring them back. Be diligent and follow-up with them even if it takes months. However, don't waste any more time and energy than necessary. It is important to be relentless as well as learning to let go.

A good content strategy is fundamental to understanding your customer’s pain points.

All web content should be useful to someone, and it can’t be useful unless it addresses a genuine need for a specific audience. In the context of B2B, it is sort of business problem, a customer pain point.

However, prospective buyers express their pain points in terms of search queries by typing into search engines. They are usually open to the possibility of utilising a new solution to help them achieve better results.

So, you want to solve for your customer pain points. But how do you know their pain points in advance??
Here are 5 ways to track, monitor and learn about customer pain points.

1. Stick With What You Know 

To understand a customer’s pain points, marketing teams should always start with what they already know. Typically, we group customers in different buyer personas. Buyer personas refer to the representation of your ideal customer. They help you to understand and prospect your customers better.

A buyer persona needs three key information such as:
-    Demographics (job title, industry, location, interest)
-    Problems that your prospective customer might be facing
-    How your buyer will use your products to solve their problems

While a buyer persona may not help you find new customer pain points, it enables you to validate assumptions guide your market research over time.

2. Ask Your Customers 

Most marketers would tend to put this at the end and you need paying customers before you can ask them what they need. So don’t forget the power of asking.

You can’t really get what you want from people unless you make your needs clear. Create a simple and clear CTA to get your prospects to make the desired action.

Use surveys and interviews. While it is not easy to get a response, the better you understand them, the easier it is to incentivise them to give you answers. The more people feel that you’re actually out to help them, the more likely they are to engage with you.

3. Ask Your Sales Team

Your sales team probably has more in-depth knowledge about customer pain points than anyone else in your organization. Being in the front lines every day, they are the first to get to experience and deal with new situations every day. 

Therefore, it is all the more important to keep an open channel of communication with sales. Schedule regular meetings to discuss new observations in customer behaviours toward certain problems or issues.

4. Social Media and Groups

Try connecting with a lead with an open platform like Twitter to find out about their needs or even Facebook to find out about their interest. This is a step in warm prospecting. People love it when others pay attention to them. And the best place to meet your prospect?

LinkedIn of course.

LinkedIn Groups lets you learn how prospective buyers for your offerings think:
-    Allows you to pre-determine if someone is an ideal buyer based on their profile information
-    Take a look at comment threads for valuable insights
-    Group memberships give you clues about users’ interests and product research methods 

Most importantly, in LinkedIn, you can simply ask people what the biggest problems are or how they deal with the current businesses issues. This enables you to brush up on the latest customer perspectives and keep those buyer personas up to date.

5. Attend Industry Conferences

Attend not just your industry’s conferences, but for your customer’s industry as well. It also gives you an opportunity to prospect to thousands of eager buyers at the convention floor. Professionals who attend usually know best about the pain points they are facing. Deep dive for information without coming across as someone who is looking to sell. Seek to understand their "pain". 

Your content should be tailored to resolve your customer pain points. Some of these have to do with technology. Show how you can help them. Be one step ahead and always keep an eye out to identify new pain points your customer may have. These serve as opportunities to better solidify your content strategy, which helps to improve your SEO ranking too.

As technology improve and change, so do buying behaviour. Most people today will use a search engine to find out more about a product, rather than to ring up a salesperson. Unlike before, the purchasing power now lies in the hands of the consumer.

When someone keys in a search online, they almost expect to find the information they require immediately. As a result, in order to appeal to change in consumer behaviour as well as buying trends, it is increasingly important for businesses to send their best salesperson.

Who is this you ask? Your website of course!

People prefer educating themselves through their own research and search engine allows them to achieve that. By optimising your website and ranking well on Google, your prospects will be directed to you.

This is part of the inbound methodology (ATTRACT) where customers find you through keywords and blogs, where their answers may lie. However, it doesn’t stop there.

You risk losing a customer to your biggest competitor if there is missing information on your website. A well-designed and information website will allow your prospects to learn more about you and your business at a comfortable pace for them.

Your website guides your prospects throughout the buyer’s journey

Much like a salesperson, your website should be optimised to guide your prospects throughout the buyer’s journey. Information should be fed throughout the Awareness, Consideration and Decision stage. Optimise your website with a good content strategy as well as SEO.


Awareness stage: Content that focuses on the problem your buyer persona is experiencing
Consideration stage: Content that is more about the solution to a problem
Decision stage: Content that answers questions about your product or service.

To make the process more human, every stage should be personalised and tailored to each prospect. This largely depends on the amount of interaction they’ve had with your website and information exchange to access premium gated content. 

Mirror Your Company’s Sales Process

Map out the key stages and reflect it on your website design. Think of questions like:

-    What is the value proposition of each page?
-    How would you like your visitor to proceed on their journey?
-    Are there analytics tool in place to check if your paths are effective?

Answer 90% of Your Prospects’ Questions

Your website should answer all common questions a prospect or a customer would have. By providing valuable information for your prospects, you save them the trouble of having to talk to a salesperson for a relatively simple answer. Moreover, it allows your sales team to focus their time and effort on truly qualified leads.

A highly-structured FAQ will help you achieve this, giving your users easy access to all the answers they’re most commonly seeking about your brand, services, industry.

This could also be achieved by installing a chatbot or live chat on your page. This caters to modern users who also prefer not to interact on the phone at their stage of their buyer’s journey.

Strong Value Proposition

Every business should have a strong statement as to why someone should use your service or buy your product. 

On a sales call, this may lead to a discussion on how your business differs and stand out from your competitors. From your website point of view, you need to strategically convey this message. Convince your prospects or leads that your company is the right fit for them while being humble. This way, you are more likely to develop a new relationship and gain a new customer.

In a nutshell, your website is your most hardworking salesmen, working 24/7. Cheap and efficient. Design your website with your persona’s in mind and not what your company desire. Top it up with analytics to ensure you are constantly improving as buyer behaviour continues to change.

After all, business is about establishing trust. With the right tools and design, your website can bring in new qualified leads to your sales pipeline and increase the number of lead-to-customer conversions, helping your business grow.

Lead nurturing refers to the practice of developing a flow of communications (through emails, social media messages, etc.) that seek to qualify a lead, keep them engaged and gradually guide them down the sales funnel. In this post, I will just discuss lead nurturing campaigns for email.

Lead nurturing email campaigns provide you with an engagement safety net which ensures that your leads are engaged during each stage of the buyer’s journey, increasing value, brand recognition and trust.

Before you jump right into lead nurturing email campaign, remember to follow these lead nurturing email best practices.

1. Define Your Goal

As always, you must first define the goal of your lead nurturing campaign. Your purpose may be centred around guiding your leads along the buyer’s journey and earning their business when they are ready. An example would be moving them from an MQL to an SQL.

However, knowing your goal not only applies to your overall lead nurturing campaign but each and every individual as well. The purpose of your email is to add value to them and drive them to take the desired action.

2. Segment Your Contacts

Ever receive an email that was completely unrelated to your interests or something you never signed up for? Yes? You would probably unsubscribe or mark it as spam. This applies to your leads. Therefore, it is important to segment your contacts by classifying them into groups based on particular actions or similarities. An example would be buyer personas, grouped according to particular demographics and psychographics.

With this, you can tailor your lead nurturing emails to the relevant buyer personas. It is also important to consider at what stage of the buyer’s journey is your lead at, and then to deliver the right content at the right time.

3. Targeted Education Content

While you segment your leads, you will also need to ensure that you write targeted content for your lead nurturing emails. Remember to keep your goals in mind so it’s clear what action you want your readers to take in each email. This means that your call-to-action (CTA) should be simple, clear and easily visible. Build trust with your leads and position yourself as an industry leader by including resources such as:

• Blog articles
• Webinars
• Case studies
• Whitepapers

4. Short & Sweet 

Ask yourself. Do you have a long attention span when you are reading a marketing or promotional email? I guess not. So, keep your lead nurturing emails educational and brief. This will encourage people to read the emails all the way through and further your chances of more engagement.

5. Use Personalisation

Personalisation is a great and simple way to make your leads feel more human, like you are conversing with them one-to-one. Personalisation tokens such as name, company, location, industry allows you to make your email feel more personalized. Up your game by using personalization even in the subject line or preview text. They can help to increases the overall open rate for your lead nurturing emails as well.

6. Space Out Your Emails 

An unspoken rule: Don’t set up your lead nurturing campaign to emailing your leads every single day. However, there is also no standard number of days for which you should run your lead nurturing campaign for. It depends on the length of your sales cycle. The longer the buying process, the longer your lead nurturing email campaigns will last.

7. Use Analytics 

Once your lead nurturing campaign is underway, constantly review your analytics to see how it’s performing. Be sure to look at things like open rates, click rates, number of unsubscribes, time spent reading the emails. These types of analytics can provide insights as to which of your lead nurturing emails need refining. If your open rate is low for a particular email, take another look at the subject line and preview text to see how you can make improvements.

As do many other aspects of inbound marketing, lead nurturing requires time and patience as well. Keep making changes and try new things. Simply put, it is the building of relationships with individuals who are currently not ready to buy. So, build that trust and adhere to these best practices for a better lead nurturing email campaign.

Deciding on the SEO metric to focus is essential to marketing success. After all, the point of understanding SEO metrics is to gather insights from the performance data. With these insights, you can understand what’s working and what’s not. Here are 6 SEO metrics you should pay attention to in any digital marketing campaign.

1) Organic Traffic 

Organic traffic has to be one of the most important metrics to monitor. As your traffic continues to grow, you will naturally become more interested in quality traffic over quantity.

Organic traffic comes from search queries through search engines. Amongst the different types of traffic, organic is the most indicative of your website’s overall health. In other words, it represents how well your site ranks for the targeted keywords.

As you introduce more keywords into your content strategy, your ranking increases on the Search Engine Results Page, thereby increasing your organic traffic as well. By posting relevant and optimised content, your organic traffic will also improve.

There are several other types of traffic such as Direct, Social, Paid and more. You should have a data analytics tool in place to help you monitor these figures over time. As organic traffic improves, so will your other traffic sources.

2) Bounce Rate 

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who arrived at your site and left without taking further action. With Google Ads, it can often lead to expensive ads that do not provide value for the campaign.

There are mainly 3 types of bounce rate:

1. Users who visit your site and didn’t like it or need it; clicked on the wrong thing
2. Users who visit your site but didn’t see what they wanted; clicked on the wrong page
3. Users who visit your site but could not interact with the page.

For (i), there is nothing much we can do. However, for (ii) and (iii), we can develop keyword-focused landing page, helping visitors to the relevant answers they might be seeking.

3) Conversion Rate 

To see how traffic adds value to your marketing efforts, we look at the conversion rate. It refers to the percentage of visitors that took a defined action to move toward a sale.

Throughout the buyer’s journey, we have several types of conversions, such as:

• Subscribing to an email newsletter
• Registering for product demo or consultation
• Making a purchase

You may break down your conversion optimisation along the different events to see where conversions fall off throughout your entire marketing funnel.

4) Dwell Time

Dwell time refers to the average amount of time a user spends on your page within a session. It is different from bounce rate since the latter also includes zero-second sessions into your total.

You should be aiming for a higher dwell time.
High dwell time could mean:

• Visitors are finding your content relevant and informative. In other words, they are actually reading it.
• Visitors are consuming important content as they near a buying decision

5) Page Exits

Page exits are useful as they tell us where we ‘lost’ the person. While any user can exit on any page, do keep a look out for a clear pattern.

If there is one page which is driving many visitors to exit, then there is definitely a problem:

• Visitors could not find what they had hoped to
• A poorly designed page which did not make for a good user experience

6) Return Traffic 

Return traffic indicates interest in your content and a growing awareness of your brand. Initially, traffic might not be high. By implementing a content strategy, graphics and video, thought leadership as well as social media, you will encourage return traffic. Moreover, returning traffic might choose to share your content on social media, allowing you to future expand your reach.

There you have, 6 SEO metrics to consider when implementing your digital marketing campaign. However, SEO in itself is not enough to rank well. Remember that SEO works best with a strong content strategy. But don’t just do content for the sake of it, build a connection with the people you want to reach. Unsure how? Start with blogging.