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.

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.