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At the 2010 Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, Bernie Borges was a panelist on the topic of "Driving More Qualified Leads into your Funnel." One of the questions from the audience was from a marketer who shifted his 2010 online marketing budget from paid to organic inbound marketing. He said that his lead performance had declined and asked for input on how to address it. He didn't give any other details, so Bernie gave his input from both a B2B and B2C perspective. Read more...

Free landing page templates - but most importantly a quick overview on what a landing page is and why you need to use them.

A landing page is a special page created for the express purpose of "converting" website visitors - to get those visitors to take some action such as filling out a lead form or subscribing to a newsletter. If, for instance, you were running an ad campaign to generate leads online, you would point the ad to your landing page, rather than to your home page where the visitor might get lost or frustrated.

This is a great explanation of how you can start, run, and grow a business for free - with a good web strategy...

But in our evolving Web 2.0 world and with Google leading the way, the rules have changed: You can get something for nothing--and for entrepreneurs, that something can have a significant impact on their businesses. Today, the web is full of free tools to help entrepreneurs start, run and grow their businesses for next to nothing. It'll just cost you some time and an internet connection.

Pancheros, a burrito restaraunt, is briding the gap between social media and its brick and mortar operations. Excellent web strategy

As far as I know Pancheros has become the first national chain of fast food restaurants to integrate Twitter promotion with their physical store locations. I am pretty happy about it, I feel like I helped get the effort going. I wonder how long it will be before McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell follow their lead.

Know your objectives in advance. Start small, when possible: think "proof of concept." Track the metrics obsessively. Make sure that your interactive marketing efforts are tied to the sales funnel (e.g., your vp of sales ought to be able to determine where most leads are coming from online). Report frequently.

A successful website leads to a successful business. So in designing a website, you need to do it correctly to have smooth process going on in your business.

How to funnel website visitors into leads and customers and track the entire process.

Great list of items you need to address when deciding on processes to manage web analytics in your company. My best advice is to find someone to dedicate an hour a day to your web analytics.

It's not that bad, I swear! 27 easy little steps that will take you from the day the boss pokes her head into your office and says "Hey, I think we need analytics" to the night you get Employee of the Year for leading a company-wide turnaround.

The first thing clients say to me when requesting SEO is invariably centered around rankings. "I want to be position so and so, for such and such a keyword." And I am certain that this is a situation familiar to many of you providing SEO services. However, search isn't always about ranking. And rankings aren't an overnight success story - they take time to achieve. In the meantime there need to be other indicators of success. There are a range of metrics possible to use to act as such indicators, many of which are key to gauging small business SEM success. Ranking high for "xyz" may deliver huge volume of visitors, but not sales. On the other hand, capturing niche rankings for "uvwxyz" and "abcdefg" may deliver less traffic, but actually better sales, not to mention may be easier to achieve in a shorter lead time.

Great points to focus on conversion rates rather than traffic.

The most important point every online business needs to know is this: Conversions (how many people take the desired action - whether that is completing a purchase, gaining potential leads, or increasing a subscriber base) are more important by far than increasing traffic.

Use your advertising to start conversations, create content that builds trust and community and you'll harness the ever effective power of advertising for generating leads and sales, you know, until the next new thing comes along.

Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager at Google presented a sponsored session on converting your visitors to customers, specifically through the use of internal site searches.

Barry makes two great points in this post you should look at if you are looking to develop a web strategy for your business.. He makes two great points that are very important for businesses to realize when crafting a social media or community building strategy. If you can engage an audience around your brand by providing them content where and how they want it - you will succeed online and see real conversions - whether it is leads or sales.

With more and more people flocking to social media sites, it is important that your audience can engage with your brand through as many channels as possible.