The SIIA is delighted to introduce one of the newest members to join SIIA’s Software & Services Division, WebMechanix. I had a chance to sit down with Jarrett Fleagle, Director of Business Development to learn more about WebMechanix and how they help mid-market companies & organizations crank up lead generation while predictably growing revenue through digital marketing. Please find my interview below.

Tell us about WebMechanix’s mission and what makes you unique.

WebMechanix exists to unlock potential. For our clients, that means moving the needle on business results faster, more meaningfully & more sustainably than any digital marketing agency on the planet. We do this specifically through the following channels & methodologies:

• Paid media / advertising (PPC)

• Organic search (SEO) / earned media

• Email / marketing automation (i.e. HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, etc.)

• Creative / technical services (conversion rate optimization [CRO], user experience [UX], website design & development)

• Measurement / analytics

We’re unique in that while we have a diverse array of clients in many industries. We get the very best results for growth-focused, mid-market B2B software & technology companies that are also mid-to-late stage in their funding cycles. We’re intimately familiar with solving for the challenges & pressures B2B tech marketers face in hitting aggressive goals for marketing qualified leads (MQL), sales qualified leads (SQL) & marketing-originated sales targets with limited timelines & budgets. And we have dozens of case studies to celebrate in this arena.

What steps can companies take in order to better understand their business so that they can drive results.

In order to understand the true business impact of marketing, you need to ensure that you can directly measure revenue produced by each marketing channel & activity.  Ultimately, the goal is to have X-ray visibility into how your customers engage with your company & products online -- from their first visit on your website to the first “Closed Won” deal in your CRM.

From a practical standpoint, this means setting up proper measurement in your analytics tools of choice (e.g. Google Analytics) & then stitching that behavior info to your CRM data (e.g. HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.).  That way, you can fully understand the customer journey & make changes as needed to optimize. 

With this level of insight, you can rapidly evaluate each channel to discover & profitably scale up the ones that actually drive MRR & ARR, while limiting resources to underperforming channels.

Are there any best practices around choosing an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tool?

Great question, we actually wrote an article recently comparing our experiences with two very popular SEO tools: SEMRush vs Moz Pro Comparison: Which is Better?

In addition to SEO tools, we find our B2B tech / SaaS clients are faced with 1000s of other MarTech choices across dozens of categories. No doubt, it can be difficult to choose. A few good rules of thumb are…

1. Less is more (ask yourself, “Do I really need that tool?”)

2. Find tech that matches the skillset of your team / vendors

3. Wherever possible, select tools that will scale with your company’s needs (tools like HubSpot are a great example of this kind of “grow with you” tech.)

Finally, consider your market & whether the tool you’re looking at will be best suited to help get you in front of them. For example, you might not need that expensive PPC bidding tool if you’re only going after a small subset of Fortune 500 accounts (where an account-based advertising stack would be far more effective.)

Can you share one tip for companies on how to increase ROI through marketing.

After analyzing hundreds of companies’ digital marketing efforts, we find most websites either have a traffic problem or a conversion problem. Usually, it’s some combination of both but weighted towards one side or the other.

For traffic, ask yourself the following questions:

• What channel(s) drive the majority of my web traffic today?

• Which channel(s) have the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rates?

• Are there any quality sources of traffic we’re NOT tapping into (but should be?)

For conversion, consider questions like:

• What is my overall visitor-to-lead conversion rate? And what would I like it to be?

• What is the quality & intent of my web conversions? 

  • i.e. content downloads vs. free trial / demo requests?

• What sequence of user behaviors most frequently drive high-quality leads?

• Are we generating qualified leads that our sales team can close?

• What is our MQL to Sales-Accepted / Sales-Qualified Lead conversion rate?

And answering these questions can sound daunting but may be easier than you think with a little visualization, like this example:

By getting the answers to these questions, you can quickly identify the bottlenecks in your sales & marketing pipeline. This allows you to focus your efforts and budget where you can make the biggest impact in the shortest possible timeframe (instead of throwing money at any channel or tactics in the hopes that something sticks.)

What new and exciting things can we expect to see from WebMechanix in the upcoming months?

We’re going to be releasing some exclusive content, trainings & digital marketing tools specifically for marketers in the B2B SaaS / software space. You can be the first to get your hands on those golden nuggets by subscribing to our newsletter here. 

Or if you have specific questions about your company’s digital marketing program, I’m always happy to look for ways we can help - whether strategic or tactical - based on what’s working for our clients right now. Feel free to book a convenient time via my calendar link & let’s chat.

Jennifer Carl is the Director of Software & Services Division Programs. Follow the Software team on Twitter at @SIIASoftware @SIIAJennifer