In a perfect world, a person who was interested in TrackMaven would only search for TrackMaven in Google, land on the homepage, fill out a form, become a lead, go through the sales process, and then, bam, become a customer. A customer who renews their contract forever and is a champion.
The would trickle through the funnel perfectly, touching on all of the parts in a stream-lined, predictable manner.
Except, we don’t live in a perfect world and this doesn’t happen…ever.
Buyers are now 57% of the way through the buying process before they talk with a sales person or anyone at your company for that matter. So the percentage up to the 57% means that they are researching for competitors, looking up stats, reading your content, tweeting at you, and really just swimming in and out through all parts of the marketing funnel.
You also have leads who initially have contacted you, but have fallen off the wayside. Or you have deals that have been lost because of budget. The marketing funnel is far from have stagnant movement.
So in reality people come into the marketing funnel at all points…
And then travel through the marketing funnel more like this…
It is important for marketing to have content and marketing materials touching every part of the funnel and holding the entire funnel together. Otherwise, your living in some sort of made-up bliss that doesn’t exist. (You’ll probably get a huge wake-up call from your CEO if your thinking of the perfect world funnel)
Tracking The Opportunities
A lead came in, they are marketing qualified, and then they become a sales accepted lead. That doesn’t mean marketing then completely forgets about them and washes their hands of the MQL turned SAL. Many marketer’s operate at the top of the funnel and are unaware of what happens farther down.
Tracking the current opportunities, asking the sales team what are the most common questions these opps. have, and overall seeing their path through the funnel can help you determine how you should shift your marketing to help grow your pipeline. Tracking opportunities also helps to identify if your lead qualifications are at the right threshold and if your lead scoring is on point with the funnel. This not only helps to align sales and marketing, but also ensures you are driving the right leads through the funnel to become opps and to make sure you are hitting them with the right content at the different stages of the funnel.
InsightSquared provides a deeper dive into your funnel and not just at the sales level, but at all levels of marketing as well.
Closed-Loop Analytics
Closed-Loop Analytics touch on the idea above in tracking opportunities, but they help show the entire lifecycle of a lead into a customers. It helps to show what makes customers buy, their interactions up until they become a lead, and what happens after they become customers.
Some examples of platforms that provide closed-loop analytics are Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot, and ultimately most other marketing automation services should provide it as well.
Proactive Marketing
Analyzing marketing data has traditionally been very reactive. You tested and ran campaigns to determine what worked and what didn’t. Yet, with expansion of every marketing channel, the rate at which buyers are consuming content, and the need to also market in all of those outlets, Marketers can no long be reactive.
We now have to optimize on the move, and know, with data on our side, what will be successful. We have to be proactive and aim before we shoot. Proactive marketing cuts the cost of unnecessary and failed campaigns, while offering the right direction to optimize your marketing in order to have the most success.
When you are in the proactively marketing, you can easily move and adapt to all part of the funnel, align with all parts of your teams, and gain clear insights into what will help move people to buying your product and retaining them as customers forever.