Looking for ideas to grow your business?
Everybody is telling you that you need digital marketing services by your side in order to grow your business, but are they telling you how, exactly, to turn your investment in those services into actual revenue you can build on?
You need a website, social media, blogging, blah, blah, blah... But how how do ANY of those translate into growth?
The answer: They don't
... not on their own... not without a plan... So, before you sink any money into ANY of those things, let me share with you exactly how to ensure they are properly aligned to achieve that revenue growth you're gunning for.
Step 1: Establish Sound Marketing Objectives
"Growing the business" isn't enough. It's a start, but not something you can objectively work towards. After all, you only need a single client to satisfy this requirement. It's also not putting emphasis on marketing. It sounds more like a sales goal.
A sound marketing objective would start with "growing the business by $x," but you have to take it further than that if you want it to be a marketing goal.
For an inbound marketing agency like Orange Pegs, we need this in order to even consider working with a new client. Let's peel it back to how marketing, or more specifically, how digital marketing services can influence those numbers.
Where does digital marketing focus its energy? Your website.
Okay, so let's start there... How can your website influence your business' growth?
Well, if you're looking at it from the perspective of inbound marketing, where we generate leads through your website that we can dish to your sales teams, our first stop is website traffic. Stop number 2 is leads generated. Stop number 3 is qualified leads.
Let me start by taking a snapshot from a recurring revenue model client of ours in SaaS (which would also work similarly to staffing) that is looking to grow by $6,000,000 in year 1. Each new client is worth a minimum of $20,000/month, so if we help them land 25 new clients (2.1 per month), we should have no issues hitting those goals, right?
Not exactly. We know that in the first year there is going to be a ramp up period that includes a series of learning and realignment phases. So, we have to amortize our schedule and assume that client acquisition is going to be slower in the earlier phases of the project.
In reality, it's going to look more like this:
That's right, so in reality, we're looking at a total of 82 customers in order to hit their goals. It could be less if we have some early wins, but by month 12, we should be on pace for a HUGE year 2.
So, now that we know how many customers we need, we break it down into how many leads we need to generate through digital marketing, then peel it back from there to determine how many visitors we need to our website every month.
NOTE: Goals like these are aggressive and will require more than inbound marketing. So, this is when we deploy an equally aggressive PPC program to feed the inbound program.
Step 2: Establish Benchmarks
How many leads do you get from your website every month today? How many visitors?
These metrics are VITAL to knowing where to apply our marketing efforts. If you're getting 10,000 visitors every month already, but you're getting fewer than 100 leads per month, rather than pump a bunch of money into paid ads, we'll likely suggest creating more content offers than somebody who has 1,000 visitors and the same amount of leads.
We also need to know what percentage of those leads are turning into actual customers. Mind you, these numbers are going to be different than other lead sources. They should be higher than cold calling, but lower than referrals.
If you don't have these numbers, because the "leads" coming in are primarily other companies trying to sell you services, then shoot for 2 - 10%, but remember, we're going to have a LOT to learn, which means your sales team needs to be in complete alignment with your digital marketing agency.
Step 3: Ask for a Realistic & Detailed Plan
If your goal is $6,000,000 in growth in 12 months, don't expect a $2,000/month marketing investment to get you there. This isn't bitcoin ala 2010.
Inbound marketers like myself have a strict formula that we follow, and we use calculators to break it down. (See the secret to inbound marketing agency pricing)
We know that we can grow your organic traffic based on certain digital marketing services, such as SEO, blogging, and social media. We can improve your lead conversion rates by publishing more gated content offers that address each of your main buyer personas at each stage of the buyer's journey. And we can help improve sales conversions with lead nurturing and sales & marketing alignment.
But you should make sure that you have an answer to all three of those stages (attract, convert, close), otherwise, what's the point?
Step 4: Commit
Once it's go-time, commit to it. You saw the amortization schedule, and i'll post it again:
Months 1 - 3 are learning months. Months 4 - 6 will be stronger, but we're realigning, and we're learning again, and we're making one final major adjustment before it goes into overdrive.
Part of committing means being patient in the early months, which, in this case, means holding back on the PPC investment. We need a decent flow of cash going through it to test and learn, but expectations about outcomes in those early months should be realistic, and we shouldn't be putting the full investment in until we've learned a few valuable lessons.
CONCLUSION:
Hopefully, you can now see how a digital marketing investment can actually help you grow your business. If you'd like to see specifically how to apply it to your situation, give us a call (949.478.5175) or schedule a free marketing assessment:
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