Lead flow is the amount of time it takes for a lead to convert into an actual sale. It's easy to think that lead flow is a very straightforward concept, but in reality, it can vary significantly between companies and industries.
Lead flow is the process of bringing leads to your business.
The lead-flow process can be broken down into two main steps:
1. Leads are generated by marketing and advertising activities that target potential customers, such as website visits, email opens, social media posts, blog comments and referrals from other websites.
2. Those leads are then funneled through a lead generation or sales funnel that includes nurturing emails, phone calls and in-person meetings with the prospect in order to convert them into paying customers.
When flow of lead is neglected, many companies end up with leads that never make it all the way through their sales process.
But when you take good care of your marketing and advertising efforts by properly managing your website’s content, including blog posts and social media posts to attract interested prospects, as well as nurturing emails to convert those leads into paying customers or qualified interest-buyers – then these valuable assets in the form of potential customers will continue to flow through your prospect pipeline.
One of the most common ways that a small business loses its lead flow is by neglecting calls from prospects on their website or ignoring email in-the-moment requests for any information, leaving comments on blog posts and then doing nothing about it when visitors click “Like” at the bottom of an article...
1. Really listening to content on your website:
What information is being requested? If a visitor can't find the answer they want and need, how important do you think that question was in their business decision-making process?
Whenever an article has five comments (not including yours), consider if those are really just people who haven't found what they were looking for yet,or could there be someone else in this small world searching for that same thing?
2. Analyzing performance:
If a blog post has 2,500+ visits to that page but the traffic is only coming through in one direction (backwards), your content may be being hidden and misunderstood, maybe something needs improvement? When read-throughs are not happening organically then it's time to start an SEO analysis.
This can help you make improvements on how you deliver your educational or informational content by showing which type of keywords are being searched, which pages are most-read and search terms that people are using across the blogosphere. This way you can reroute your strategy to ensure peak performance so readers will enjoy reading their content more!
3. Look at how Google ranks your domain:
The annual Search Engine Watchfire package is a great resource for learning what keywords bring in traffic everyday (and try to pick up some of those ideas) while seeing an increase/decrease in your search traffic.
Google Webmaster Tools is a wealth of information and will be quite beneficial to learning how you compare against competitors, organic keywords ranks, traffic counts etc. When you are finding these valuable insights, pick up the phone or email for some guidance on ways to help improve rankings.
4. If there's no accountability among your team members it can have negative effects overtime:
Authors like Amy Porterfield often talk about reading comments from all kinds of people in their niche and thinking about what's working (and not) for them. When that happens, accountability is vital. especially when you're reading feedback and using it to improve your efforts! This can be done via email communication with your team or meeting once a month at the office.
5. The need for "Word-of-Mouth" referral traffic:
If there are no referrals coming through to our website we end up with a total absence of traffic. Getting social media calls and referrals has been the single biggest way that we've consistently gained new customers (especially among vendors, publishers/authors who have used our service).
We make it easy for people to use this system because they know they can ask us questions or recommend their friends which sends them straight in!
6. The daily grind:
Nothing is more critical when you are blogging than having purposeful consistency and more of the same things. We are lucky enough to live in a moment where we can work without this and enjoy it, but if you're like me (and dealing with online business) consistency is key!
7. If you don't find something too exciting when writing daily/weekly, there's no quick fix for boosting traffic:
I know what you're thinking , "There she goes again - another daydreaming failure!" But hear me out, What we must realize is that every day of our business lives will be different whether it's good or not. Sometimes you may want to write about something you DON'T enjoy and I know what this feels like from my POV (it usually means money issues - trust in me!)
But even if YOU don't "enjoy" your job everyday, having a quick flow of things happening can stop any kind of complacency which may creep in. Take that moment and write something down, talk to a friend or goal by a specific date, anyway you can make the extra click work its magic.
In conclusion: The beauty of blogging is It causes us to think about our business regularly which adds value daily not just once or twice per week so if we have great visitors. This added regular thought will extend into other areas that are "less desirable", but most importantly genuinely useful.
8. You need to maintain a minimum of one active blog post per week (even if you write about mainly other blogs):
The worst mistake anyone can make is not maintaining their own brand. Especially when it's changing all the time from blogging, etc. It forces us to know our business better than we think and ask ourselves questions like "why am I promoting this product, who do I believe?".
And also separates for emails that go to a healthy list and those that don't. This can decide your future based on these alone, so plan accordingly!
9: You need to read other blogs regularly with an active habit (even if you're not featuring them):
Some people have mentioned this one already but I'm going out on my own limb here guys, so bear with me while I make sense of points in between. The reason is we do this daily anyway when reading our blogs. Imagine that 15 posts out of the last 30 posts were "good enough", when we click on those.
How much would they contribute? Let's imagine this number is high and what if now, going through many feeds while writing a post shows us it's only good once every 10 -15 days maybe?! How do you think people absorb all that information without losing interest?
So your daily habit (reading other bloggers regularly or your blog) should be subconsciously feeding your ego in other areas, whether you like it or not.
10: You need to find ways of sharing what you produce everyone will benefit from (this adds value every single time, even if nobody else benefits):
A friend recently said "even though he can't see things the way I do and has a different view than me on some subjects, he is still important because this gives his thoughts and views more credibility ". So what do I mean ? Can't attach an audio for this, so search for it.
And everyone can start sharing their views and development of a product or idea with the key audiences that matter as easily as sending an email. Even if they never buy your products.. you get paid by this thought process alone! It doesn't have to be dollars moving around here because there are other ways of emailing customers (free) instead anyway!
It is a process in which one type of product (the "donor") is converted into another type of product (the "receiver").
In the case of flow of lead, the donor is usually the manufacturer or supplier and the receiver is typically an end user.
It can be horizontal as well as vertical. Horizontal lead flow occurs when manufacturers send their products to distributors who then sell them to retailers or other wholesalers who resell them to retailers. Vertical lead flow happens when manufacturers send their products directly to consumers via a website or store front.
It is the lifeblood of any business. Lead-flow can be achieved by using a variety of marketing tactics and lead generation strategies.
However, there are certain mistakes that should be avoided in order to avoid jeopardizing your flow of lead:
1. Sending the wrong message to potential customers.
2. Not having a clear call-to-action for the visitor's next step after viewing your website or landing page.
3. Not having a list of your products or services on your website/landing page.
4. Not responding quickly enough to customer inquiries or feedback about what they want from you and how you can help them solve their problems better than anyone else in the marketplace at this time.
5. Not having more than one plan of action and follow up on existing campaigns.
It is a crucial part of any business. If you want to manage it well, you need to avoid the mistakes listed below. This blog post will help you understand how to improve your lead flow management process.
