We hear it all the time: the myriad ways that our websites could be improved. Better images, more user-friendly layout, more cohesive language, better branding and positioning…. The list goes on and on. But when I look at a website, as an inbound marketer, I see things a little differently. While imagery, branding, and design are all really, really important, there are other key elements to a website that could be boosting your business, and particularly the amount of visitors that become leads. Here are three ways we see websites failing businesses.

It’s really no secret that video is used more and more for marketing to an audience. It’s fast, it’s visually appealing, and people seem to gravitate towards watching video more than any other content platform.

With the boom of video being used to target prospects and educate leads, it only makes sense to marry the idea of using a video directly on your lead gen offer’s landing page.

Here are four reasons why video can help retain more viewers and convert more leads:

It’s great when a plan comes together. You've designed your inbound marketing strategy, written blog articles that demonstrate your thought leadership, created premium content relevant to the needs of your buyer personas, deployed calls-to-action, created forms and landing pages to convert and capture leads, and it all seems to be working. You’ve attracted new visitors to your website and generated new leads. You’ve even deployed a lead scoring system to attach a value to each lead before you hand them off to Sales. Everything seems to be working as planned. As a marketer, you’ve done your job. Once you hand that lead off to Sales, you’re done. Right? Well, maybe not.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a very dejected and downhearted CMO.

I caught him just after he presented his budget to the CFO, who informed him that all his good intentions and ideas aside, his budget was being cut instead of increased as he had anticipated.

Apparently, this $60 million firm had a poor year, and the top levels of the organization decided that cutting expenses was the right path to growing revenues and profits. Of course, the numero uno target for cutting costs has been and will always be marketing.

That’s always been a rather strange argument to me ... the way to a better top is though making cuts to the very things that bring prospects to the dance.

But it’s also understandable.

Taken in another context, what this CFO was really saying is that marketing was being cut because the department was considered to be a cost center rather than a revenue center.

That’s what happens when marketing departments aren’t geared to delivering measurable results and unable to tie marketing activities into revenue recognition.

(See my recent post, “ A Coke and a Pink Slip for Professional Services Marketers”, for my take on marketing as a revenue center.)

First, what’s a “workflow”? It’s used by HubSpot and others to describe a series of automated emails that are sent to contacts for lead nurturing. 

You probably already have workflows set up around your premium content campaigns, sending follow-up emails with content related to what a prospect downloaded or signed up to receive. (If not, get on that! It’s a great place to start with lead nurturing.)

But workflows can be especially effective when they’re tied to a prospect’s stage in the buyer’s journey. Prospects who’ve done considerable research and are already familiar with what you offer need something different than those who have just started looking at different options to solve their issue. Here are four workflows you can use at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Today more and more businesses are enhancing their online presence with a blog. Marketers are discovering that a blog is great way to keep their websites fresh, continually attract new visitors, and generate new sales leads. However, you probably won’t see a significant and sustained increase in traffic by just adding a blog to your website. And even if you do, the visitors that you attract may not necessarily be ideal prospects for your business. Blogging, in and of itself, is not the solution to all your marketing objectives. An effective blog requires a well-thought-out content strategy and disciplined execution. The subject matter of the content that you write and publish does matter. It’s the content that dictates the success of your blog. 

Each year, HubSpot conducts a survey of 6000+ executives in companies across the globe to learn their marketing challenges and priorities. The State of Inbound 2017 report is chock-full of stats and facts that will inform your own marketing, making you more effective. Here's a summary.

If you’re using inbound marketing, coming up with blog post ideas is a constant challenge. If you’ve developed your buyer personas and have done your research, you know the general topics of interest to your audience, but what specific things should you write about?

Here are our top 10 favorites for B2B blogs that we use regularly here at LeadG2:

In the work we do with media companies, staffing firms, and other professional service businesses, two topics consistently appearing on our clients’ radar screens are how to accelerate prospects’ movement through their sales pipeline and how to close more sales, faster.

There are basically two areas we focus on as causes for a slow sales process.

First, we look for key infrastructure that may be missing or misused or underused. This can range from lack of sales training programs to missing technology like a CRM or marketing automation platform.

Second, we look at micro-level factors focused mainly on how the firm engages with prospects on a one-to-one or customized level. We know to a high degree of certainty that if a firm is using a one-size-fits-all approach to closing a sale, then a more customizable approach may be just the ticket for reaching sales goals quicker.

In this post, I’ve summarized what's holding you back from making your sales process faster.