Strategic Data Connection

  What is a Sales Funnel? A sales funnel is a customer’s journey and process of purchasing a product or service. Depending on which variation of the sales funnel is used, four stages are typically present: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion and Retention. These 4 stages are also referred to as the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. Key performance indicators or (KPI’s) are metrics that should be used at every stage of the sales funnel to measure the success of a sales and marketing strategy.   MOTF & BOTF Explained Every step of the sales funnel is strategically designed to move the customer to the next stage. The top of the funnel (TOTF) or awareness stage is where the buyer’s interest in the product/service is captured. The middle of the funnel (MOTF) is an essential step in getting a customer to engage with a brand/company via sales enquiry or lead. Key metrics that need to be tracked in the MOTF include: - Banner click %, retargeting lists, new leads gen...

Using a traditional Sales Funnel can be a good way for any small business to create an effective strategy where the goal is leading their target market down the funnel, from prospects, to interested observers and finally, to conversions and repeat customers.   We should be filling up this sales funnel over and over again, so that new prospects are constantly being generated. The purpose of this is to convert them to leads and, ultimately, sales, sign-ups or subscriptions. By ignoring the Top of the Funnel (TOFU) and only focussing on the later stages, we can find ourselves running out of customers to focus on; anyone who wants to buy from us already has! So what important goals and metrics should we as SMEs focus on achieving when measuring the Top of the Sales Funnel? If we're aiming to keep our Sales funnel constantly refreshed, then it makes sense that our most important Goal at this stage would be to Acquire New Visitors to our site, or in the case of an app, new Users....

  There are various social media metrics that you can use to track your business progress in the social world. In this blog, I will share the five most essential metrics small businesses can implement right now to measure their social media performance and meet business goals. A growing number of businesses adopt various social media channels to improve customer satisfaction, create brand awareness and reputation, support marketing initiatives, and increase sales and revenue. However, the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of social media channels come with costs. It is imperative to assess whether the benefits derived from adopting these platforms justify the costs. The key metrics used to do this assessment are described below. Audience Growth Rate This measures how your growth on the social media channels you are operating. This rate tells you if you’re heading in the right direction with your growth strategy. How to track it: Divide the number of new followers you gained...

  Big Data Visualisation for small Irish businesses is something that can help us save both time and money!  The goal of big data visualisation is to visually comminucate data-sets in a clear and effective way, [1]  usually by way of an infographic, a chart, a map or some other sort of diagram. The idea is that we can easier present big amounts of data in the form of a visual representation than with raw figures. This could help when presenting results at a meeting, reassuring investors about our success or telling potential customers about the benefits of our products!  Although colleges like Dublin Business School and IADT  offer data analytics and data visualisation courses, a lot of the basics can be learned from Google Data Studio , Google's free service that links to your Google Analytics account.  Knowing which types [2] of visualisations to use for which sorts of big data sets can be important in ensuring that we present the information in a clear...

  Introduction Generating sales leads is a crucial component of the sales and marketing planning for any Small Business. SME's fortunate enough to survive and reopen in the post-COVID-19 world will be under immense financial pressure to maximise sales and reduce expenditure. Online marketing platforms such as Google Ads are an excellent tool to reach specific target audiences and generate quality leads. According to Websitebiolder, 90% of internet users see Google Ads , which shows SMEs potential benefits to generate high-quality lead traffic.   Get Immediate Attention In our previous blog posts regarding SEO and Local SEO benefits to small businesses, we mentioned that Search Engine Optimisation is a long term strategy that takes time to generate sales leads and conversions. In 2019, American SMEs spent up to $10,000 per month on Google Ads while up to 40% of small business would like to allocate more marketing spending to Google Ads.  Google Ads offers use...