Why Your Dental Practice Needs More Shareable Content
Mar 19, 2019
10 min read
For as long as we can remember, businesses have relied on advertisement medium to capture their majority audience. But much like dinosaurs and cavemen, the traditional TV and media advertisements have become a thing of the past. Today, where in a world of 7.7 billion people, almost half of the population uses internet to look for businesses and everyday things, it has become extremely important for businesses small and big alike to have and maintain an online presence.
For potential customers, one of the most important aspects of learning about business has shifted from traditional advertising and consultation. Businesses now rely on content marketing to engage their audience in the digital sphere. Adopting a carefully crafted content marketing strategy can result in greater audience engagement and leads for any business imaginable.
What Is Content Marketing?
To better understand why content marketing has become a go-to strategy for marketing professionals, it is important to learn what content marketing is.
Content marketing a carefully planned marketing approach that focuses on the creation and distribution of content that is relevant, unique and valuable to attract, engage and retain targeted audience with the aim of generating and converting potential profitable leads.
Simply put, content marketing is any type of content, whether blogs, videos, infographics or visual content created and shared with the goal of attracting, engaging and retaining audience.
Content Marketing For Dentists
Everybody knows that they should be visiting a dentist regularly in order to maintain oral hygiene and a healthy smile, but what dentists don’t know is that 51% of their potential patients use internet search engines to look for a dentist. Just acknowledging the above fact is sufficient enough to realize how important it has become for dentists to ensure they are among the top results of search engines.
Now that you have fully absorbed just how much important it is for your dental practice to have an online presence, it’s time to look at how you can make sure to appear in the results when a potential patient is looking for a dentist. Most people, when looking at content marketing focus on placing and using keywords throughout their websites. However, this is not a strategy that can yield long term effects for your dental practice. The simplest way to understand how a reader or searcher can become a potential customer is to realize that the people searching for dentists online are human.
Only providing human connection and building a relationship with your reader is the way to build trust and ensure they choose you. If you have a dental practice business or are a dentist, and are still not convinced on why you should be looking at content marketing to bring in more business, here are a few reasons why content marketing can do wonders for you.
Why You Should Consider Content Marketing For Your Dental Practice?
1. Improved Visibility
Unique and engaging content can provide you a better opportunity to optimize it in a way that will boost visibility. If you focus on creating content pieces that are informative and valuable, you will show up in search engine search results for when people are looking for similar topics you have covered. Once hooked, readers do not refrain from sharing the content.
Valuable content creation does not limit your visibility to search engines, in fact if you post unique, engaging and informative content on your social media, people might share it with their friends and family bringing more and more visitors to your website, and we all know what more visitors can mean for your business.
2.Reach Target Audience
One of the perks of using digital media for marketing your dental practice is that you can create specifically targeted content that can hit home run. Traditional ways of advertising have become tiresome, expensive and ineffective. With content marketing, you can target people looking for a dentist with effective content marketing strategy to attract your target audience, hence, filtering out people who actually are interested in your services so you can convert and retain them as your patients.
3.Build Trust
Choosing a good dentist is not less than choosing a life partner. It can have a huge impact on the quality of your life. Which is why, you need to let your audience know that you are trustworthy and knowledgeable, and that they can trust you to take care of their smiles. When you create and post content that is informative, it shows the people searching for a dentist that you are not only experienced but you believe in sharing information for the greater wellbeing. Investing in good content can help your potential clients build trust in your knowledge and to show how passionate you are about your profession.
4.Build Reputation
Nobody wants to go to a dentist that doesn’t have good reviews. Everyone including you and me look for referrals when it comes to choosing a dentist or any health practitioner for that matter, which is why you should be working on building a positive reputation among your patients. Using content that talks about authentic information and facts, gives out tips and tricks, and other essential information can help your dental practice build its reputation online. Once your audience identifies you as a reputed business, they won’t be hesitant in coming to you for their oral hygiene or recommending you to friends and families.
5.Stand Out From The Crowd
Accepting the fact that almost half of the world’s population is online, it is assumable that there must be several other dentists with online presence, looking for potential patients. Now, if everyone is already online and out there, how do you make sure you attract your fair share of the audience. Here comes quality content. Investing in quality content will help you get noticed by your potential patients. Content that provides value instantly becomes a valuable asset that you are willing to share with your target audience and if you are willing to share the knowledge without any interest or gain, automatically sets you apart from the rest. Your audience soon recognizes you as a valuable connection to their dental health practices.
6.Provide Value
Using digital media doesn’t mean that you have to attract and retain only new clients or patients, but it can also help you keep your existing patients well informed and interested. Creating and sharing valuable content provides value for your existing patients which ensures that they will keep choosing you for your services because of the value you provide to your existing patients. It’s a win-win for all.
7.Boost Growth/Increase Number Of Patients
Effective content marketing strategy can help your dental practice attract and increase followers that may in turn convert into profitable clients. Creating shareable content gives you an edge over your competition because the more times your content is shared, the more audience it reaches creating a follow back link to your website.
8.Brand Awareness
Among all of the digital media marketing aspects, investing in good content marketing strategy is crucial as it creates a platform for your target audience to build an association with your brand name. If you create content that has valuable information and sticks with your audience, they’ll automatically associate the piece of information with your brand name. This effect creates a beneficial word-of-mouth marketing platform that you won’t even have to work on forever. Now that we are convinced on the wonders content marketing can bring to your dental practice, let’s take a look at how you can actually approach content marketing in real life.
How To Approach Content Marketing For Dentists
With everything in life, strong planning and execution are the keys to having desired outcome. And content marketing isn’t any different. For this blog, let’s learn from the pros. The experts at CoSchedule have broken down the content marketing process into four big buckets.
- Planning
- Publishing
- Promotion
- Measurement
Let’s look at all of these buckets one by one.
Planning
We can’t stress enough on the importance of planning in the whole process of content marketing. Smart planning is the key and will definitely save you a lot of mistakes and hurdles later on.
Identify Your Audience
One of the first steps in planning a content marketing strategy should be identifying your target audience. To help you figure this part out, just answer the four questions below:
- What problem does your product solve?
- Who is your current audience?
- Who is your competition?
- How are you different from your competitors?
Once you’ve successfully answered these four questions, congratulations, you are now on your way to understanding:
- What content you need to create?
- Who are you creating the content for?
- What content are your competitors creating?
- How can you set your content apart from your competitors?
The answers to these questions will help you create your content core. The mixture of the content regarding what you do, and what your audience cares about. This will become your content core for all of the upcoming content pieces that you will create for your company’s content marketing strategy.
Establish SMART Goals
We won’t go into much details about SMART goals, instead we’ll just move on to the importance of establishing goals that specifically state:
- What you’re going to achieve?
- When you’ll achieve it?
Develop Your Content Strategy
It’s time to finally get on to developing your content strategy. To simplify, here are the questions that will help you create your content marketing strategy for your dental practice.
- What content will you create?
- Why will you create the content?
- How will your success be measured?
Create A Content Evaluation Strategy
Once you have a content marketing strategy in place, you also need to figure out how you’re going to evaluate and decide what is working and what is not? To help you perform regular content audits, Pam Neely has shared a comprehensive guide which doubles as a content audit template.
Generate Ideas For Content
The final step in your extensive smart planning phase is to generate a list of possible content ideas to help you create content that becomes an instant hit among your readers.
Content Publishing Phase
Getting your content planning done means you get to move on to the next step that is executing the plan that you’ve just made. Let’s see how your content planning will come to life.
1. Understanding Keywords And Keywords Research
One of the most important aspects of creating content is to understand how keywords and keywords research work. Keywords help you understand what your audience wants and how you should focus your content on keywords to reach maximum number of audience. But if you have not done keywords research before, don’t fret, because here are a few tools that can be of extreme help to research keywords you can rank on based on difficulty and competition.
2. Creating A Workflow
To make sure your content marketing strategy is executed flawlessly, it is recommended that you create a content calendar to plan out your dental content pieces in advance. Next, create a workflow so you and everyone on your content marketing team knows what to do and when. A simple workflow can be crucial in accomplishing success in your content marketing strategy.
Content Promotion Phase
Now once you have planned and successfully executed good content marketing strategy, next comes the step to promote it so it is shared now and again resulting in growing audience and potential leads. Let’s take a look at how you can promote your dental practice content pieces.
1. Identify Social Media Platforms
One of the major platforms to use to share your content created for your dental practice are social media platforms. Use your social media accounts to create a following and then to share the content and bring back traffic to your website. Prioritize social media platforms on their purposes to better engage your audience with relevant type of content. Use the following infographic to help you understand the importance of social media platforms depending on their purpose.
2. Email Marketing And Search Engine Optimization
As stated by Campaign Monitor, Email marketing is 40% more effective for acquiring customers than social media, and it shouldn’t be hard to accept because it delivers 4,000% ROI. Search Engine Optimization is nothing short in yielding lasting benefits after your social media and email marketing course has been run. It is so effective that a well-crafted SEO content strategy can boost up your traffic by up to 500%.
3. Outreach
Last but not the least, use a traditional PR / Outreach technique to promote your content to the audience directly that might be interested in your content. The key to not sound hard core sales personnel, try this guide to PR by Neil Patel. With your quest to outreaching to your audience directly, focus on building contacts and relationship rather than your customers, because according to Heather Anne Ritchie-Carson, cofounder of <Onboardly, it’s time to put back the human in PR relationships.
4. Measurement
To guarantee that any strategy is working, evaluation is important. To gauge how effective your dental content marketing strategy has worked, measurement through analytics tools. Using some of the most common analytics tools is the easiest way to measure the growth of your dental practice. Here are a few common ones to get you started:
- Google Analytics
- Piwik
- Heap
- Kissmetrics
5. Reporting Schedule
Evaluating your content marketing strategy regularly is the only way to learn about its effectiveness. Therefore, setting up a reporting schedule is important. But if you are even slightly like us (forgetful, shh), you can even set up automatic measurement schedule with this guide from Google.
Content Marketing Strategies For Dentists
Now that we have created a fair understanding of content marketing and its important and the process, let’s dive into some of the most commonly used content marketing strategies that have proven effective for a lot of dentists and other medical professionals along with hundreds of other businesses.
1. Blog Posts
Creating a great blog post is the first step in your content marketing strategy, but wouldn’t it be sad if only a fewer people were reading the awesome blog post that you wrote? Having a proven blog posting strategy like the one here can ensure your efforts and valuable knowledge is reaping benefits for both you and your readers. 
2. EBooks, White Papers and Case Studies
Creating and publishing in-depth researches are a great way to show your readers that you are passionate about ongoing learning in your profession. This helps the reader that has crossed the initial engagement period with your blog and is looking for more information to build their trust in your services. Sharing case studies prove that you are open to learning from your mistakes as a dentist and believe in growing forward with sharing transparent information that the reader can ponder upon. 
3. Videos
Remember when we talked about building relationships with your customers and providing value? Using videos are a great way to do just that. Creating an informative video or a learning guide can, not only give your existing patients a gentle reminder of things they should remember minus the embarrassment of asking again, but it is also a lucrative way to attract more new patients.
4. Infographics
Much like videos, visual content gets maximum share due to their readability and the ability to pack complete information in a short space. Infographics are easily becoming a go-to content marketing strategy because of their potential to become share worthy. They only key to producing a shareable infographic is to keep it simple, readable, reliable with references and focusing on visual content. One of our favorite tips to creating an effective infographic is the one by Neil.
5. Podcasts
Another great type of content to give a little oomph to your content marketing strategy for your dental practice is to invest in creating podcasts. These little podcast episodes can become the bridge between your potential patients and you. It is a great way to connect with your audience and share valuable content.
6. Guest Blogging
Guest Blogging is a proven tactic to build credibility for yourself as a professional while getting a follow link to your website to increase traffic. A lot of websites and blogs are almost always ready to accept in-depth, well researched articles by guest authors because as stated by Social Marketing Writing, “62.96% of peopleperceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible.” While planning out content marketing strategy for your dental practice, including to acquire guest blogging opportunities should be a must.
7. Media Publications
Everyone knows that being featured in a media publication is kinda a big deal for any business because it means popularity and exposure. As much as this sounds like a dream, Jayson DeMers, founder of AudienceBloom has given some fool proof tips to help you plan on getting your dental practice featured in media publications.
Mistakes To Avoid While Content Marketing For Dentists
Creating and sharing content to market your dental practice in the hopes of attracting and acquiring new patients can become overwhelming. And with possibilities of reaching your content marketing goals come a fair share of mistakes you’ll make learning on this journey. But you don’t have to make all of the mistakes yourself, which is why we are listing down a few common content marketing mistakes as stated by Jeff Bullas that dentists can avoid in their content marketing strategies to grow their online presence and business.
1. Failure To Plan
This is a no-brainer as we all know that if we fail to plan, we are planning for failure. This is the most costly mistake you can make in your content marketing strategy. It is crucial to plan clearly as to what the business aims to achieve through content marketing and exactly how it has to be executed to avoid maximum chances of failure. Our only tip is to spend sufficient time in planning to avoid failing.
2. Unclear Purpose
Many a times, businesses can fall trap in figuring out their true purpose when considering content marketing. It is important that you remember the reason why you’re creating the content and only focus on providing value to the reader and build relationships, the rest will follow.
3. Unprofessionalism
Understanding the need of content tone and style for your business is utmost important. If you create content that works for a specific industry, one cannot trust it to work for your industry as well. You need to remain professional while writing or creating content in language that is correct, clear and concise. The best thing is to keep your audience in mind, the people who you want to read your content.
4. Lacking The Social Signals
The importance of using social media to share your content cannot be neglected. However, maintaining a balanced usage is critical. Some businesses lack the use of social media for their content marketing which means they miss out on a huge chunk of prospective audience. But, at the same time, over using social media can move you away from your content marketing results. Do not rely heavily on social media platforms to market and promote your content rather create engaging, and valuable content that is share worthy.
5. Avoiding The Organic Search Factors
One of the major reasons to use content marketing for your dental practice is to enhance your search engine rankings to improve online visibility. However, if the latest SEO techniques are not incorporated within the content defeats the entire purpose of content marketing for dentists and all other professions. If you do not feel confident in your skills to optimize your content with SEO techniques, it is always better to engage a professional to help your maximize growth through content marketing and SEO.
Conclusion
Content marketing is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and grow your online presence in the age where if you’re not online, you’re losing business. Dentists and other medical practitioners have come to realize just how important it is to invest in content marketing for their dental practices. Thus making sure they know content marketing benefits, processes and strategies can boost their online traffic and conversion rates by ten folds.
Why Do You Need Content Curation?
Content has become king when it comes to online marketing, which has prompted a rush of people to create useful and interest content for their potential customers. Unfortunately, creating useful and interesting content is much easier said than done, which is why some people choose to blend it with a smart and sensible approach called content curation. Like its name suggests, content curation means searching for the useful and interesting content that can be found on the Internet before presenting it for the pleasure of potential customers. It prevents businesses from having to come up with its own content, which means saving a significant amount of time, effort, and other resources. Better still, it provides businesses with much the same benefits, serving to make their inbound marketing that much more efficient and effective in the long run by establishing their expertise and experience. --> Simply put, content curation is an invaluable tool of online marketing in the modern age, though it should be noted that like most tools, it needs a master to make use of its full potential. How Can You Master the Art of Content Curation? Businesses can master content curation by keeping these tips in mind: Although businesses can just find useful and interesting content before presenting it to their potential customers, this is not a reliable method for building their reputation in the long run because the nature of such services makes them replaceable. Instead, they need to make sure that they are adding some sort of value to the content that they are presenting. For example, one great way for businesses to add value is to present the right content in response to a perceived need in their potential customers, thus saving them from having to do to searching on their own. Businesses need to make sure that the content they present are tailored to the needs and interests of their potential customers, much the same as when they are creating useful and interesting content of their own. Those that do not understand their potential customers are doomed to fail, meaning that they need to either conduct market research or gain similar insight through some other means before getting started. If businesses are not sure how to start when it comes to content curation, they should not hesitate to look at what other content curators are doing. In fact, the simplest and most straightforward way to learn content curation is to look at what the most successful content curators in the business's chosen field are doing, though it is important to note that the best content curators must learn to step off of the path of emulation once they are confident in their work. Finally, it is important to note that the best way to learn content curation is to practice and practice. Businesses should look at how their potential customers respond to their content curation, make small changes based on their responses, and then look at the new results in order to engage in a constant process of improvement that will enable them to keep up with their competitors. Further Considerations With that said, it is important to remember that mastering content curation for inbound marketing purposes is something that needs a significant investment of both time and effort. As a result, those who cannot spare such resources for inbound marketing should not hesitate to outsource such tasks to an inbound marketing specialist . ...
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B2B Sales Funnel for SaaS Companies: A Step-by-Step Guide
Did you know optimizing your marketing and sales funnel is crucial for lead generation and increasing sales? The B2B sales funnel helps potential clients move from the awareness stage to the purchase stage, making the process as smooth as possible. In this guide, you’ll learn about the key elements of a B2B sales funnel for SaaS businesses and insights on improving each step. What is a B2B SaaS Sales Funnel? A B2B SaaS sales funnel is a strategic framework that outlines the stages and steps involved in acquiring and converting potential business customers for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product. A sales funnel visually depicts the path from when a potential customer first discovers your business to when they either exit the process or, ideally, make a purchase. The funnel represents the customer journey from initial product awareness to purchasing. It integrates marketing and sales, mapping the journey from attracting new prospects to finalizing a transaction. By visually representing a prospect's journey, your marketing and sales teams can identify the points at which potential customers drop out and determine where additional follow-ups should occur. Utilizing marketing automation services can streamline this process and help ensure that no leads slip through the cracks. The Stages of a B2B SaaS Sales Funnel A B2B sales funnel typically consists of three main stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Action. Each stage represents a different phase of the buyer’s journey and requires specific strategies to effectively move prospects through the funnel. The Top of the Funnel: Awareness In the first stage, the target market becomes aware of your SaaS product or service. At this stage, the goal is to attract and capture the attention of a broad audience. Key activities and strategies include: Content Marketing: Create useful content, such as blog posts, white papers, and infographics, to help your target audience solve their problems. SEO and SEM: Optimize your website and content or improve visibility on search engines to boost your organic visitor numbers. Invest in search engine marketing (SEM) to target specific keywords related to your SaaS offering. Social Media: Use social media to post content, reach the target audience, and promote your brand. The Middle of the Funnel: Consideration Once prospects know about your SaaS product, they enter the consideration stage, where they evaluate their options and assess whether your solution meets their needs. To effectively nurture leads at this stage: Lead Nurturing: Email marketing and automation send targeted content and follow-up messages based on the prospect’s behavior and interests. Product Demos and Webinars: Offer live demonstrations and webinars to explain how the SaaS product works and how it can benefit the customers. Case Studies and Testimonials: Provide social proof through case studies and customer testimonials to show that your current clients are happy with the results. The Bottom of the Funnel: Action & Retention The bottom of the funnel is where the prospects are willing to buy. Here, your primary concern is to turn the leads into paying customers. Strategies to close deals include: Personalized Outreach: Contact prospects through customized emails and one-on-one conversations to address their needs and concerns. Free Trials and Offers: Offer free trials, discounts, or special promotions to incentivize prospects to make the final purchase. Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Ensure your CTAs are clear and compelling, guiding prospects towards the desired action, such as signing up for a trial or requesting a demo. How to Create a B2B SaaS Sales Funnel? Creating a B2B SaaS sales funnel involves understanding a potential customer's stages, from being an unfamiliar prospect to becoming a paying customer. Here are steps to create an effective B2B SaaS sales funnel: Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Identify your target audience based on industry, company size, pain points, and needs. Create Targeted Marketing Content: Develop content that resonates with your target audience at each funnel stage, from raising awareness to closing the sale. Attract Unfamiliar Prospects: Use various marketing channels, such as content marketing , social media, SEO, and paid advertising, to attract potential customers to your website. Convert Visitors into Leads: Use lead magnets like whitepapers, webinars, or free trials to capture visitor information and turn them into leads. Qualify Leads: Segment and qualify leads based on engagement levels, demographics, firmographics, and behavior to identify MQLs and SQLs. Nurture Leads: Use marketing automation tools to nurture leads through targeted email campaigns, personalized content, and retargeting ads. Engage and Convert MQLs to SQLs: Sales teams should engage with MQLs, understand their needs, and tailor their messaging to move them further down the sales funnel. Close Sales: Provide demos, trials, case studies , and other sales collateral to help prospects decide about purchasing your SaaS product. Retain and Expand: Focus on customer success to ensure onboarding, adoption, and ongoing satisfaction with your product. Upsell or cross-sell to existing customers to expand the relationship. Analyze and Optimize: Continuously monitor and analyze your sales funnel metrics, such as conversion rates , lead quality, and customer lifetime value, to identify areas for improvement. By following these steps and continually optimizing your B2B SaaS sales funnel, you can effectively attract, engage, and convert leads into loyal customers. Partnering with a SaaS marketing agency can further enhance your efforts and help you achieve your sales goals more efficiently. Want to reduce your CAC to half? Book a strategy call 5 Tips to Optimize Your B2B Sales Funnel Strategy Optimizing your B2B sales funnel requires continuous improvement and adaptation. Here are some tips to improve your funnel strategy: Analyze and Refine Analyzing and refining your B2B sales funnel performance is essential for improving the effectiveness of your sales efforts. By regularly reviewing sales metrics, you can identify the bottlenecks in your funnel and take steps to fix them. If you notice many prospects dropping off at the demo stage, consider tweaking your demo presentation or creating a more targeted demo for specific industries. You can also use the A/B testing technique to test various approaches and find the best solution. Also, you can test different ad copy or landing page designs to see which version performs better. Segment Your Audience Segmenting your audience involves dividing your leads into smaller groups based on specific characteristics such as industry, company size, or job role. Tailoring your messaging and offers based on lead segmentation helps you address the unique pain points of different buyer personas, making your messaging more likely to resonate with them. For instance, if you sell project management software, you might create different landing pages and ad copy for different industries, such as construction, healthcare, or education. Leverage Automation Marketing automation tools can help B2B SaaS companies streamline lead nurturing, follow-up, and reporting, allowing them to focus on high-value tasks. For example, once a lead has entered your sales funnel, you can set up automated emails at predetermined intervals to keep your brand top-of-mind and provide helpful content. You can also automate lead scoring based on specific criteria, such as website activity, email opens, or content downloads. Improve Content Quality Investing in high-quality content creation is essential for optimizing your B2B sales funnel. Creating content that provides real value to your prospects and effectively addresses their pain points can help build trust and credibility with your audience. For instance, you might create a blog post that discusses the most common challenges small businesses face in your target industry. Similarly, you might create an e-book or white paper that tackles a specific problem related to your product. Monitor Competitors Keeping an eye on your competitors' strategies is critical to stay relevant in your market. You can spot opportunities to improve your approach and adapt to changing market trends by monitoring your competitors. For example, if your competitor uses a more targeted approach to lead generation, you might tweak your strategy to improve your lead quality. Similarly, if you see a competitor using a new platform to reach customers, you can adjust your strategy to take advantage of that platform. Why do SaaS Companies Need a B2B Sales and Marketing Funnel? A sales funnel combines marketing and selling processes. Marketing is the process of attracting potential new customers to your company, while selling is the process of converting those leads into customers. Without marketing, your target audience would never know how your business can help solve their issues, and the sales department would not be able to lead the leads through the buying journey. Studies show that organizations that follow up on their leads will likely record a 50% sales conversion rate at 33% less cost, proving the importance of proper lead management. Creating a good sales funnel helps you engage your leads correctly depending on their stage in the buying process. A sales funnel is a beneficial tool in determining the effectiveness of your marketing and selling techniques. It lets you know when potential customers drop out of the funnel, how they engage with your brand, when it is best to reach out to them, and when to close the deal and convert them into customers. Understanding your sales funnel helps you satisfy your customers' needs and communicate with them at the right time. It also enables the development of a structure to grow sales, estimate future revenues, and increase the conversion rate. B2B SaaS Sales Funnel Example and Terminology To illustrate a B2B SaaS sales funnel, consider the following example: Certainly! Here are the expanded explanations, along with examples for each stage: Unfamiliar An individual who has not yet been introduced to your product or service. It's necessary to captivate them to your website and other marketing materials. Example: An unfamiliar person could be a professional in a specific industry who has not yet come across your SaaS product that caters to their industry's needs. They may not be aware of the benefits your product offers. Site Visitor When a previously unfamiliar user arrives on your website. Example: A site visitor is an individual who, after being exposed to your marketing efforts, clicks on an ad or finds your website through a search engine. They are browsing through your site to understand what your product or service is about. Lead A potential customer who has provided details on your website or other content. Example: A lead signs up for your newsletter, downloads a gated piece of content, or fills out a contact form on your website. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) These prospects have demonstrated interest in your product or service by engaging further in sales. Example: An MQL could be a lead who has shown interest in specific product features, spent significant time exploring different sections of your website, or explicitly requested more information about your offerings. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) Your sales team has recognized prospects as engaged enough to justify a sales follow-up. There's a huge difference between MQL and SQL . Example: An SQL might be a lead who has had a demo or a sales call and intends to learn more about your product's pricing, implementation process, or specific use case scenarios. Serious Buyer Genuine sales opportunities that are prepared to make a purchase. Example: A serious buyer has gone through multiple sales conversations, expressed a desire to resolve their pain points using your solution, and is now evaluating the purchasing process, including seeking approval from their organization's decision-makers. Customer The prospect has completed a purchase. Example: A customer has subscribed to your SaaS product, implemented it within their organization, and is now actively using it to solve their business challenges. Understanding and effectively managing these stages can help B2B SaaS companies tailor their marketing and sales efforts to different types of prospects, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and improved customer satisfaction. Want to reduce your CAC to half? Book a strategy call B2B SaaS sales funnel metrics Here are some key metrics that are crucial for monitoring and optimizing the B2B SaaS sales funnel: Lead-to-MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) Conversion Rate: This metric helps you understand how effective your marketing efforts are in generating leads that meet your criteria for further nurturing. MQL-to-SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) Conversion Rate: Indicates the quality of leads passed from marketing to the sales team, highlighting the alignment between marketing and sales efforts. SQL-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate: This measure measures the percentage of sales-qualified leads that progress to becoming sales opportunities, reflecting the effectiveness of your sales team in engaging and qualifying leads. Opportunity-to-Close Rate: This shows the percentage of opportunities that successfully convert into paying customers, providing insights into your sales team's ability to close deals. Average Sales Cycle Length: Tracks the average time it takes for a lead to move through the entire sales process, helping identify areas for optimization and efficiency improvements. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Calculates the cost incurred to acquire a new customer, including sales and marketing expenses, providing insights into the effectiveness of your customer acquisition strategy. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Estimates the total revenue a customer is expected to generate throughout their relationship with your company, guiding decisions on customer retention and upsell opportunities. Churn Rate: Measures the percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions or do not renew, highlighting potential areas for improving customer satisfaction and retention. Expansion Revenue Rate: This rate tracks the percentage of revenue generated from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, or additional purchases, indicating the growth potential within your customer base. Lead Velocity Rate (LVR): This rate reflects the rate at which new leads enter your sales funnel, helping you forecast future revenue growth and identify opportunities for scaling your sales efforts. By monitoring and analyzing these B2B SaaS sales funnel metrics, you can identify bottlenecks, optimize conversion points, and make data-driven decisions to drive revenue growth and maximize the overall performance of your sales and marketing efforts. Primary B2B SaaS Sales Metric & How can it be grown? Many B2B SaaS companies focus on the customer lifetime value (CLTV) as the primary metric to drive growth. CLTV represents the total value a customer is expected to bring to your business over their relationship with your company. Increasing CLTV can significantly impact revenue and profitability in a SaaS funnel. Here are some strategies to grow the Customer's Lifetime Value: 1. Enhance Customer Experience: Provide exceptional customer service and support to build strong customer relationships, leading to increased loyalty and retention. Personalize communications and interactions to cater to each customer's needs and preferences. 2. Improve Product Engagement and Adoption: Encourage feature adoption and offer training resources to ensure customers are maximizing the value of your product or service. Implement regular product updates and enhancements based on customer feedback to drive ongoing engagement. 3. Upselling and Cross-Selling: Identify opportunities to upsell customers to higher-tier plans or additional features that align with their evolving needs. Cross-sell related products or services that complement their current subscriptions, increasing their overall spending. 4. Customer Success and Retention Programs: Establish proactive customer success programs to help customers achieve their goals and derive maximum value from your offering. Implement retention strategies such as renewal incentives, loyalty programs, and exclusive benefits to reduce churn and extend customer relationships. 5. Price Packaging and Tiered Offerings: Develop tiered pricing models that cater to different customer segments based on their usage levels or specific requirements. Introduce premium features or value-added services that customers can upgrade to, increasing their overall spending over time. 6. Reduce Customer Churn: Address customer issues promptly, gather feedback, and make improvements based on their input to prevent churn. Monitor engagement metrics and intervene proactively with at-risk customers to salvage the relationship and prevent cancellations. 7. Community Building and Advocacy Programs: Foster community among your customers, encouraging knowledge-sharing and peer support. Establish advocacy programs that reward customers for referrals, testimonials, or case studies, driving retention and new customer acquisition. By implementing these strategies to enhance customer value and foster long-term relationships, you can effectively grow the Customer Lifetime Value of your B2B SaaS business, ultimately driving revenue growth and sustainability. Conclusion Creating an effective B2B sales funnel is essential for SaaS companies that want to improve their sales strategies and outcomes. Understanding and managing each funnel stage can enhance lead generation, improve customer engagement, and increase conversion rates. Ready to optimize your B2B SaaS sales funnel for better conversion and faster revenue growth? Contact Saffron Edge today for a free consultation and find out how we can assist you to achieve better results with a customized sales and marketing plan. ...
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Why letting your patients book appointments online is vital for your dental practice
Recently, we have been talking a lot about getting more patients for your dental practice by marking your presence online in distinct ways.One sure fire way that dentists must focus on to bring in more patients to their practice is localization and the other is collecting and maintaining reviews about the services you provide. But are these the only ways dental practices can bring in more patients through their door? Absolutely not!In this post, we will talk about another proven way that can result in some serious dental business for your practice. And it’s not even that hard to implement. Actually, it has a lot to do with facilitating patient appointments. Figured it out yet? We are talking about letting your patients book appointments online through your own dental website.Which can be easily implemented on your website with the help of a software or a web development agency, like us, that can integrate this functionality on your website for you.Doesn’t matter how you do it, the bottomline is that you really have to provide your patients the option of booking appointments online. Why? Studies suggest so… GetApp, a leading directory of business apps, recently conducted a research on patient behavior when it comes to booking appointments for a treatment. Here are some of its key findings - 70% of patients prefer to schedule doctor’s appointments online when compared to doing it via call or by any other means. 56.4% of respondents are frustrated with waiting on hold when it comes to scheduling appointments by phone. 31% of respondents were more likely to choose a competitor if they offered online booking functionality on their website. The study clearly highlights a trend shift in the way patients prefer booking their medical treatments and it seems like they want the experience just to be like the way they hire a cab or order food online. Quick and easy. But the shift has been gradual and is not in any way new to the medical industry. Many forward-thinkers predicted this trend shift early on and added the functionality on their websites to get a headstart. Many small to medium sized dental practices that started providing this functionality, before anyone else, to their website visitors have witnessed growth and some patients even claimed that they chose them just because they had this functionality on their website. The story of Zocdoc I don’t think there’s a better example than Zocdoc when it comes to explaining the power of letting patients book appointments online. The founder of Zocdoc, Oliver Kharraz, is a forward-thinker himself and predicted this trend shift early (I mean really early. Like, in 2007) and capitalized on it by creating a platform that did just that, book medical appointments online. By using the Zocdoc platform, patients could choose the medical services they want and book appointments online with the available doctors nearby that provide those exact services. The platform reportedly reduced the wait time of booking medical appointments from a staggering 45 days in some cities to just 24 hours, which is amazing if you are looking to get some quick medical attention. The result, more than 6 million patients today use Zocdoc to find doctors and book appointments with them online in the United States alone.Need more convincing about how implementing an online appointment booking functionality on your website will do you only good and no harm. Here are 4 more reasons to go for it right now - Ease of Access When you provide an option to your patients to book an appointment with you directly from your website, you reduce a lot of friction. It saves your patients from going through the unnecessary hassle of calling your practice to book an appointment and saves a lot of wait time in the process as well.Moreover, with you providing the online booking facility, your patients will feel like you are dedicated in what you do and care about their wants and needs. Which is great, trust really matters in the dental space. At work 24*7 Having an appointment scheduler widget on your website means that you are ready to take in appointments as they come. Your practice will no longer be limited to your front end executive availability in the office to take calls and confirm bookings. Reduces no-shows The traditional appointment scheduling method, that involved calling, took somewhere around 15-20 days to successfully book a treatment. On the other hand, online booking appointments take somewhere around 24 hours (at max) to completely book treatments, which reduces no-shows and lost revenues by a big margin. More conversions Obviously, when there will be an easy option to book appointments on your website, there will be increased conversions as well. All your marketing efforts will bore more fruit if you have an appointment scheduler placed on your website’s homepage. Many practitioners have claimed that placing the scheduler on their website has increased their conversions by as much as 40% and in the dental sphere, 40% is still a lot of long-term business! Nothing enhances the patient experience on your website more than an appointment scheduler. We understand its importance and it’s about time you understood it too (if you haven’t already)As I said before, implementing it on a website is as easy as installing a plugin from the Wordpress plugin store. If you are facing any difficulties in integrating it on your website, you can use our help as well. ...
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