Marketing Fact: While 80% of marketers consider their lead-generation strategy lacking in effectiveness, more than 50% still devote much of their budget to it, and nearly 25% don’t know whether their top-funnel efforts are resulting in closed sales. (HubSpot)
It’s time to change tactics. Get on the fast track toward success with pipeline marketing – the solution for converting leads into customers.
Pipeline marketing principles include:
- Combining sales and marketing data where it matters the most – converting leads and prospects into customers
- Making the sales process more efficient and less costly
- Focusing on the narrower part of the marketing funnel
So, where does pipeline marketing come in?
First, let’s look at the sales funnel.
Top of funnel – Making a broad sweep that tries to reach as many potential customers as possible. Cold calls, social media connections, inviting people to sign up for email, etc. It’s a necessary first step – without leads, you can’t have sales. But it’s only the first step – the initial introduction to your brand.
Middle of funnel – Nurturing qualified leads with drip emails that share relevant information and offers such as free webinars or downloads and coupons or promotional discounts; encouraging prospective customers to “buy” into your product or services; building brand awareness.
Bottom of funnel – Closing the deal. That sweet spot where your prospect becomes a genuine customer and stays a customer through your quality product/service and your incredible customer service.
Your sales pipeline takes you from the top of the funnel – that first connection to the bottom of the funnel – a loyal customer.
Pipeline marketing sets aside the separation between marketing – the top of funnel – and sales – the middle. Instead, it unites marketing and sales, which enables your marketing budget to generate revenue. The power lies in combining the lead-generation part of marketing and the “closing the deal” part of sales into one, multi-step process.
With those facts in mind, how can marketers use pipeline marketing to improve total revenue? Focus more on less – when it comes to leads.
By all means, bring in leads, but focus on taking the best ones further into the funnel, rather than on obtaining a massive pool of unresponsive leads. Nurture the qualified leads through social media connections, drip emails, and attractive offers. Never forget that content is king. As you draw prospective customers further into the funnel, get to know them – their needs, wants, styles, and preferred medium of communication – and cater to it. Get personal.
In other words, after capturing leads, the marketing and sales team work to move as many as possible through the entire funnel until they finally emerge as customers.
How? Set goals. Track appropriate metrics. Refine your strategy accordingly. Don’t ditch marketing or sales – unite them. Align your message and your tactics. Leverage your connection all the way through the funnel.
We’ll share more specifics on setting goals and tracking metrics in future blogs. Meanwhile, connect with CloudCreative. We are your answer to web and graphic design, SEO/SEM, social media, and digital marketing. We’ll help you use marketing strategies, such as pipeline marketing to generate sales and build your business. Contact us today.