Balance is important. Working too many hours for instance will throw my schedule out of balance. It causes me to skip a few of my morning runs, which in turn makes me cranky, and before you know it nothing seems to be going smoothly. My husband will pick up on this and remind me to slow down and pay attention to each piece of my life, to maintain balance. Amazing, that when each part of one’s life is given its proper attention life as a whole is more successful and enjoyable.

The same conclusions can also be drawn regarding an Internet marketing plan. When each component (drive, convert and measure) of a company’s Internet marketing plan is properly addressed and balance is maintained, leads become plentiful, customers are won, and business is more successful and enjoyable.

In his presentation, Identifying Your Key Conversion Strategies, Brain Massey of Conversion Sciences, outlined a 3 phase buying process and it how it relates to Internet use.   The phases: Awareness (prospects become aware of your offering as a solution), Consideration (prospects explore your offering as a solution to their problem) and Action (prospects select your offering as a solution to their problem), tie closely to what a website should do for the buyers.  In the Awareness Phase when the website has appropriate and well written content it should equate to traffic.  In the Consideration Phase the website provides the detailed technical content that the buyer needs to conclude your solution answers his problem, which will lead him to the crucial part of any sales opportunity – Action.

Additionally, Brian Bluff President of Site-Seeker, Inc. recently published the final piece of a three part blog series on Successful B2B Internet Marketing called, “Top 5 Types of Website Content to Increase Internet B2B Conversion . . .” Brian cites the following key components, each an integral part of drawing your visitors through the three phases of the buying process outlined above:

1.     Pricing information,
2.     Detailed product information,
3.     Product comparisons,
4.     Downloadable information, and
5.     Your approach to doing business.

Bring these two thought processes together and one can see that the core of a well balanced plan is of course, the company’s website. So often I meet with companies who are interested in driving traffic but overlook using their website to convert that traffic into sales.  While simply driving more traffic would generate business, the sales growth possible if the website is used as an effective conversion tool is tremendous.

Consider the following example; I recently met with a client and while reviewing visitor names from his website’s tracking logs, one name jumped off the page. It was a visitor whose company he was scheduled to fly out and meet with the following week, and it had figured to be a significant opportunity for them.

After further analysis, here’s what we found. We did an IP sort of his logs for a 6 month period, which revealed that the entire process from first view of the client’s website, to date of contact took approximately 10 weeks. The majority of the time spent on research before contact date however, was approximately 3 weeks.  The research path looked like this:

1) Google search for the name of the machine – link to facility page
2) Google search by company name – link to home page
3) Industrial Vertical Search for the service – link to service specific page
4) Mywebsearch by company name – link to home page
5) Mywebsearch by name of machine – link to facility page
6) Google search by company name – link to home page and 23 minutes on site with 3 pages viewed
7) Direct to site with 9 minutes on site and 23 pages viewed

This search information clearly showed us that everywhere this buyer researched and in every manner he researched he kept finding his way back to my client’s website. It was obvious that my client was the answer to his needs.  But what was more obvious is that the design, structure and content of the website supported the information and technical needs of his prospect.  In digging through some of my other manufacturing client’s weblogs similar search paths were found.

Clearly balance is crucial, and when all phases of an Internet marketing campaign are addressed, Drive, Convert and Measure, the client will maximize marketing dollars and generate solid returns on their investment.