The Smoking Gun and Sales Funnel

OK, it’s now time to proceed full-steam ahead. I wanted to nail down a “smoking gun” example for everyone out there to see before I started doing promotional things all over the place (like StumbleUpon), which cuts into the 100% accountability of what’s responsible for what, which we currently have.

Right now, we can be pretty assured that by virtue of using Blogger, and it’s built-in default ping system, we were able to launch a new website on a custom domain (not hosted by Blogger), and have it picked up and included in Google default search results in only 4 days. But truth be told, I’m also running the Google Toolbar, with PageRank call-to-mamma features turned on, so that’s another vector by which Google could have become aware of the new site. Also, it might be as simple as a log of every new blog created in Blogger, regardless of custom domains. So even now, we’re only dealing with about 99% accountability, when whatever minor factors conspired to catapult a previously non-existent site to the top of Google (on an admittedly obscure term) in 4 days.

But now, it’s time to work on the iterative process that vibrates between what you know, and what you do.

What you know is what comes back in the form of your Web log files, and tracking systems such as Google Analytics (which I haven’t even logged into yet), HitTail, and search engine result pages (SERPs), such as a Google search result page.

What you do are those experimental proactive things, such as adding new content, building links, and participating in social networks such as StumbleUpon and Facebook.

Truth be told, once I saw the fact that I was being found in Google on the primary targeted term, “agile marketers”, I couldn’t resist submitting to StumbleUpon, a surefire way to start the in-flow of traffic.

But I don’t want to waste the traffic. I’ve got some other urgent projects to attend to—namely, my sales funnel.

I’ll be talking about sales funnels a lot on this website. I have an admittedly sales-centric view of the world, completely buying into the Peter Drucker notion that the mission of every company is to get and keep customers. Everything else is details in support of that mission. So, defining what a sale is early on is urgently important.

And because I don’t actually have a physical product, or even a service yet, I will define my product right now so that it’s easy to “convert customers”, and I can again produce a pure sales funnel example, with lots of smoking gun events.