Make Your Web Site Your Marketing Hub

In the current business climate, human marketing resources are under threat. They are too hard to manage and too expensive. At the same time, clients and potential clients are demanding more and more interaction with your company. If you were to nurture all these leads with human beings, it would cost too much. So what should you do?

Using marketing automation is essential. But which tools are most appropriate?

Lead Nurturing is Key

The more you know about your prospective clients and their needs, the better you'll be able to nurture them. Good lead nurturing therefore requires tracking prospects' activities, following them along their path of research and deliberation about how best to solve their companies' challenges.

When this sort of activity happens offline, it becomes very difficult to track. Consider this scenario: You send prospects your latest white paper as an email attachment. From this point on, you will have no idea if anyone even reads it. It is possible to have sales or marketing personnel call each prospect, ask if he/she liked the white paper, and then enter that data by hand. However, this would definitely be an expensive endeavor, not to mention unreliable and prone to human error.

Tracking Online Activity

By far, the best choice is to use your Web site, because it is the only medium that is truly trackable. Instead of sending that white paper as an attachment, send prospects an email announcing your latest white paper with a link to your site where it can be downloaded. Suddenly you're able to tell who has opened it, and therefore, who has real interest in your company. You also know who isn't interested. This is equally valuable information, allowing you to weed out unqualified prospects.

And this is only one example of the Web's power. A Web site is the only tool that can keep track of all the touch points between your company and your prospect. Knowing which web pages a lead has visited, and how many times, empowers you to tailor your nurturing strategy to their needs.The Value of Robust Content

Note, however, that your Web site probably does not already have enough content to serve these functions. Company sites usually contain much less interesting content than the company has available. You will need to think of all your marketing efforts as leading somehow back to the Web site. To track effectively, you need to make sure you have content related to your prospects' problems and solutions. This will allow you to eventually go back and look at which of those the prospect was most interested in.