Position the Internet as a key lead generation channel.

The Objective.

A technology company wanted to use the Internet to support growth in sales of its products and services.

Historically the company’s marketing efforts were focused on its sales group. They needed shift focus to position the Internet as a key lead generation channel for all sales channels. Preliminary research showed that we should focus on website development, search engine optimization and email marketing.

Our approach.

Having undertaken a number of meetings with management teams and other stakeholders to understand and agree the business goals and objectives we proceeded to determine the Internet marketing objectives and to define key metrics.

Additional meetings and workshops were undertaken to review the businesses current Internet capabilities and its ability to deliver on its objectives. We used this information together with research to develop the strategy and tactics that would be used to drive sales leads via the three agreed channels.

We conducted detailed analysis of website information including content and site architecture and reviewed customer journeys to give us a clear understanding of how the website was being used and made improvements in order to optimize lead conversion.

We carried out a comprehensive review of the businesses email practices and made changes to process including creating design templates. These changes made the process easier, increased visibility and ensured that campaigns were better managed across different business units. It also increased the focus on creating more engaging emails and ensured that they were deployed in a timely manner.

A complete Search Engine Optimization (SEO) assessment was carried out and a plan created to carry out improvements using onsite and offsite optimization techniques such as keyword and Meta data management, page content optimization and syndication thereby improving visibility of the website on the search engines and increasing share of search space.

The results.

It did not take long to see the results of our efforts. Having implemented the changes to the website we could quickly see an increase in the number of leads generated as a result of the optimization programme.

This was supported by an upsurge in the number of visits to the website due to improvements in search engine visibility and increase in share of the search space.

Website traffic improvements could also be attributed to better and more effective email campaigns thanks to changes made to processes and creative which resulted in significant improvements to open and click through rates.

Overall the strategy delivered:

• 10% of total business revenue generated via the Internet channel
• An increase of 56% in the number of quality leads
• Significant improvements in open and click through rates of email at 16.1% and 2.4% respectively,
• Greater share of search space with growth rates of 6% for the number one spot
• Greater use of the Internet channel by wider marketing group with digital being considered and the beginning of a project rather than as an afterthought