Effective marketing funnel automation can greatly help any company seeking to boost its lead conversion with minimal effort, and online marketing companies like 5 Star Brand can easily implement the strategy for your business. Be warned, though; not every sales funnel will produce overnight results. An automated sales funnel must start with lead generation and that can take time to produce any visible results. The purpose of automated sales funnels is to nurture potential customers through the stages from initial contact to making a purchase, and beyond that to becoming repeat customers and ambassadors of your brand. Your marketing campaign needs to start off by making potential customers aware of your business before the automated funnel system can guide them through the further stages of the marketing process to convert them to paying customers.
There are two principal methods to address this first step in the marketing funnel campaign. One is paid ads and the other is organic lead sources which involve long-term strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO.)
Paid ads (whether on-line or off-line) are fairly well understood. They have three characteristics:
- High cost up front;
- Immediate results;
- Results stop when the ads are stopped.
Paid ads are a great way to boost your campaign in the early stages but for the long term, you will save money by building your reputation through organic means like SEO, but SEO takes time.
Why the Wait?
Online marketing experts peg the effective duration of an SEO campaign at four to six months before it could actually bear fruit. After all, raising your visibility requires organic growth if you want to do it correctly.
Here’s how those months usually go. The first month would be all about discovery as websites are audited and keywords are researched. This sets the ground for the second and third month, during which your website would get its overhaul and the content you need to attract leads would be created.
By the fourth month, your SEO campaign would be in full-swing, churning out content and continuously optimizing your site. Your link traffic should be on the upswing by then. When the last two months roll in, your SEO campaign strategists should be doing the final tweaks and gearing up for further optimization by analyzing site traffic and internet trends.
Don’t Stop
Six months may initially seem like a long time, but it is the blink of an eye in the business world. For the first two to three months, you may be seeing tepid results, but if you stick with it, larger tangible results would soon surface. In the mean time, you can be designing your automated funnel system so it is ready to process the leads that will begin pouring in from your SEO campaign.
Something important to remember is you should keep your expectations realistic. Many companies stop their SEO efforts midway because they weren’t getting the results they expected. Most had unrealistic expectations that set them up for disappointment. Expect results but not fantastic ones at the beginning of your campaign. SEO builds up over time and you can expect your site traffic to grow the more you develop your SEO campaign. Before you know it, your sales funnel will prove to be the most effective tool available to convert those leads to sales. At that point, if you’ve been purchasing paid advertisements to drive traffic into your sales funnel, you can begin tapering off those expenses as the organic traffic takes over. When your automated sales funnel starts going into high gear, you’ll be glad that you waited for your SEO efforts to show results.
Get professional help to ensure that you’re approaching SEO in the right manner and to avoid any mistakes.
Source:
Latest SEO Insights: SEO Takes Time before Seeing Results, Experts Say, Marketing Digest, March 26, 2015
Don’t Believe the Hype! How Long Should It Actually Take to Get Results From SEO?, Social Media Today, January 14, 2014
How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?, Forbes, February 7, 2015
