Here are 5 essential take-aways from the eConsultancy Funnel Marketing conference.

A range of inspiring case studies and platform-vendor perspectives structured around the themes of 'Attract, Engage, Nurture and Convert' gave the audience a high level appreciation of the changing world of lead generation and management.

Here are five things you need to know factor into your web marketing strategies.

The funnel is important. You are wasting your time if you do not understand the stages of the 'buyer journey' through your funnel and have appropriate content and automation to optimise each stage. If you have a direct sales force, you need to realise that Marketing and Sales share a funnel, and the objectives need to be aligned to financial performance.

PPC is a short term tactic. If you know your customer and your product you can optimise PPC lead generation, but don't expect it to keep growing. Instead complement it with a longer term content based strategy, complemented by SEO, Banners, social media and offline activities. Below Pascal Lendermann explains his optimised PPC strategy.

Pascal Lendermann of CISCO explains how he optimised PPC lead generation.

Map your user/buyer persona. Understanding the pathways (and dead-ends) that users follow when they interact with your organisation means you can use marketing automation and focused 'content nurturing' to aid the decision-making process or qualify them out quickly. Buyers prioritise content that is specific to their industry, then their role, then their company size.

The funnel doesn't end at the sale. Deliver strategies to satisfy and nurture existing customers. Ensuring satisfaction means more referral, cross- and up sell opportunities. This will feed a long term social media strategy that utilises content and credibility of 'Surfaced Experts' within and without your organisation.

Your content strategy should deliver insights.Help buyers understand, establish trust, speak to the emotions they associate with the problem they are trying to solve. Use keywords such as 'analysis, review' that frames your solution in terms of the problem.

To finish, here are some thought-provoking quotes from the day:

"We're no longer B2B or B2C, we're now in the H2H (Human-to-human) era." @DelphineRB from IBM

"81% of ALL buyers require five sales calls before they buy" - @aaronstead from Infusionsoft

"People still do offline?!?!" Various speakers when asked 'How does offline activity feature in funnel and marketing automation?'

See #funnelmarketing for more nuggets.

Earlier this week I attended an event at Stormont to mark 15 years of alcohol and drug treatment charity Addiction NI's work helping older people overcome their substance misuse problems. A few minutes after the event concluded, my Dad called to say that a family friend had died last night. Cause: chronic alcohol addiction and misuse. The funeral takes place later today.

I've been serving on Addiction NI's 'Executive Committee' for the last two years, mainly helping to rebrand the charity (formerly known as NICAS), and initiate fundraising activities.

You might not realise it, but lots of older people (55+) struggle with addiction problems, due to chronic misuse, loneliness, depression and myriad other reasons. Over the past decade the number of older people reporting with addiction problems has almost doubled, and recent figures show that over 40% of people attending Addiction NI were female. Every day in the UK over 700 people celebrate their 65th birthday.

Addiction problems in older people are largely hidden. We don't see shock-tactic billboards and TV ads with Grannies and Grandads blitzed on a Saturday night session, its all focused on alcopop-guzzling young people. Older people tend to avoid participating in drink fueled fist fights and abusing A&E staff of an evening. Instead, they drink alone, at home. Friends and families dwindle as the years roll on, and there's no one left to care in many cases. What's more astonishing, is that NI Health Services make no special provision for treatment of substance abuse in older people. None. Too late to save?

The Addiction NI event saw two courageous 'service users' get up in front of a packed audience to describe how they found themselves to be addicted to alcohol. One had suffered several traumatic life events including retirement, and found himself drinking more and more in an effort to soften the blows. The other had been a serious drinker since his 20s. Both men, with the help of Addiction NI, had overcome their addiction problems, and overcome their personal shame and regret to tell us 'civilians' about their challenging journeys. Neither man professed to be 'cured' but rather in a place of insight and understanding of their own mind-state and predicament. They found a way to change, unfortunately my Dad's friend never had the chance.

I'm proud to help Addiction NI battle the stigma of alcohol and drug addiction, to give more people a chance. Visit http://addictionni.com/help/older-persons-service/ for more info about Addiction NI's service, which also provides help for friends and family affected by substance misuse.

Also, if you're in Belfast next Friday 30th September, please consider bringing some friends to our fundraising pub quiz and disco, at The Errigle Inn, starting at 7.30. (more info on our facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=110426222388956)

Planzai has reached another important stage of its development. Over the last few months we've been turning customer feedback into product refinements ready for the next stage of market testing.

I was struggling to ensure that I had communicated the strategy and goals for the next 3 months and was talking this through with David Kirk, my mentor and now non-executive Director of Planzai. David gave me an excellent suggestion - "why not write a press release for the future? Pick a date that you know represents an important milestone, and write the press release describing the success your plan has created at that point in the future."

I love this idea. I'm a visual thinker, so I could immediately see what I wanted a press release to look like in three months time. From there it was easy to set about writing it, describing our targets, the outcome of our activities and a quote from one of our future, happy customers. I then attributed quotes from team members describing how their input contributed to the outcome. This was important because a lot of our startup pains are derived from understanding how our team works and how our roles and individual goals impact on achieving our vision.

This technique is powerful because it captures the excitement and anticipation that we feel now, and sort of forward-engineers it into how we want to feel when we've delivered our plan. It gives context to our financial and user acquisition targets, and as we continue on our voyage into the unknown, we can refer back to see if we're heading in the right direction.

That leads me to the second part of the title of this blog post: I think that mentoring is one of the most important interventions I've had in the last 12 months.

Mentoring is a strange mix of experience and perspective. It's about shining a light on things you haven't thought of before, words that spark inspiration, and occasionally a good old-fashioned 'wise up!'. Without regular ideas and perspectives from David, as well as several other close friends and advisors, I doubt we'd be where we are today.

One of the many fascinating findings of the Startup Genome Project has measured the impact of mentors in relation to success. "Founders that learn are more successful: Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth". If you're starting a business, you need mentors.

Experienced mentors are hard to find, but I've found that friends who care about you and recognise your passion are a good start and can also make introductions. (I've had my share of time-wasters. A simple rule: avoid anyone who believes their own hype.) Genuine mentors do it because they can, and because they're putting something back.

Please jump into the comments - I'd love to hear about other folks' experiences of mentoring and those little suggestions that make a big difference.

A recurring theme in the recent Assembly election was the potential reduction in Northern Ireland's Corporation Tax rate. On the surface this seems like a great idea, but Danny Moore's recent post about the 'GrowNI' campaign to lower corporation tax made me realise that I mightn't understand all the details. A decrease in tax has obvious benefits, but what are the implications, and what could I contribute to a government consultation on the subject?

Having read the HM Treasury consultation paper, I feel better enlightened about what a rate reduction means for Northern Ireland. In his post, Danny challenges our leaders - describing devolved Corporation Tax  as a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity for NI, however it isn't a political no-brainer. There are risks to consider, and brave decisions to be made.

A Corporation Tax rate reduction should lead to greater investment in our private sector, but will mean that we have to balance the risk of losing tax income from the NI 'block grant' with the potential that more investment can bring for increased employment, sustainability and growth, not to mention consequential improvements in social and education/skills standards. In the long term, the loss of tax income should therefore be offset by greater income tax receipts, more VAT as people spend more, and lower welfare costs as disadvantaged people gain access to jobs and learning.

In addition, a drop in corporation tax could help Northern Ireland finally 'do it's bit' in rebalancing the UK economy. Instead of being a drain on the economy, our ability to contribute positively is strengthened. Its really worth reading the document to understand how the supporting framework for a drop in Corporation tax could transform our attitude towards entrepreneurship and innovation.

These are all good reasons for anyone to participate in the consultation process and lend their support to the campaign. Here are two personal perspectives.

Firstly, I am proud to be Northern Irish and I want to create and build businesses here. We have the building blocks of a thriving startup ecosystem, with no shortage of ideas and bright, skilled people. This can be the turning point that makes market failure a thing of the past, and allows creative, talented risk-takers to stay in Northern Ireland whilst making their mark on the world.

Secondly, such a bold move by our political leaders will be inspirational, something I feel is sadly lacking at present. Decisive action on Corporation Tax can demonstrate tangible evidence of a new vision for a Northern Ireland that has left its tribal roots in the past, a place with a new excitement and ambition.

This is not a time for prevarication, posturing, or repeats of previous miserable failures (think Review of Public Administration, Replacing 11+) - our leaders need to embrace the risk, devise a plan, and commit now to making this work.

In the absence of any useful information on their website, here are the opening times for their Castlereagh, Belfast branch. (It turns out they don't open on Saturday mornings.)

Like so many of the cuts being announced in recent times, the proposed

People talk about how life speeds up as you grow older. You get into a routine, you do the same things over and over again, your brain is no longer storing new experiences and as a result, some say, time appears to be shorter. There is also the theory that when we're young, we've only got a relatively small frame of reference, so of course everything is going to speed up when you're older.

Over the course of the last 18 months I feel i've had my fair share of new memory-creating pathway-inducing experiences. Between getting married, building Crafty Devil, developing Planzai, recording, releasing and performing with Escape Act, putting drainage in the garden, being a best man, learning new recipes, and... the list goes on, i've been a fairly busy bunny.

So why does it feel like 2010 passed it the blink of an eye? Am out of of disk space or something?

Since we started accepting private beta users onto planzai.com, momentum has been building, and with it the number of interesting conversations, diverging thought processes, disagreements and collective epiphanies. This last week has been particularly hectic. 

As you do, i was in the shower this morning reflecting on the things i've heard myself saying and other things people have said to me.... validation, if any were needed of how much fun founding a new app can be... ;-)

We need seed money to prove the concept. / We can fund this out of revenue.

We need to get to revenue before investment. / We have revenue!

This isn't a good investment opportunity. / Your opportunity has significant potential.

That breaks our model. / That validates our model. / That's a completely new model.

It needs to happen today. / Ok, Friday is fine.

Go for the revenue. / That deal is too small.

No, it isn't a project management system. / Well, yeah you could manage your own projects.

Good idea, we hadn't thought of that. / Good idea, that's already in our roadmap.

He just didn't get it. / He completely got it!

We need to focus. / Our focus is too narrow.

This will never work. / We can do this!

 

Anyone else out there have a similar experience?

 

I've been struggling recently to find the brain-space necessary to post anything coherent. Between Escape Act, planzai, Crafty Devil, and well, life, i've had plenty of things to talk about but the words just don't line up.

Ok, so when we started making our new Escape Act album, i vowed to get stuck into the old video blogging to help tell the story of what we were at. It didn't work out that way, but i finally summoned the stuff needed to talk about the new album packaging.

Necessity is the mother of invention you say? Yes, it would be great to sell some of these suckers now that they are out. But really, they are such lovely objects, pictures wouldn't do 'em justice....