Most companies don’t have any problem filling their sales funnel. It’s easy to collect lead information through list appending, tradeshow meetings, mutual contacts or gated content. The challenge comes when you try to move these leads through the funnel. Leads tend to get stuck and need an extra push to flow from one stream into another. After analyzing the sales funnel, this is where strategy comes in, and it becomes extremely important to carefully plan out your next move.
As I have said countless times in the past, marketing automation should not only be a tool in your marketing toolbox, but a well-used tool. This technology, when used correctly, will fill in the holes in your sales funnel. You may be asking how this is possible. Well, the simple answer is that marketing automation is watching you.
I know, this sounds somewhat alarming at first, but I promise you’re not being stalked. Simply put, marketing automation relies on tracking code to watch and record movement as leads make their way through websites, landing pages, social media and other marketing tools. But how does this help fill in your sales funnel holes?
All this recorded data stores in your marketing automation platform as individual lead lifecycle reports. This provides you with a detailed overview of your leads engagement. The overview allows you to see what is of interest to your leads, what content receives interaction vs. what content leads ignore, what pages leads visit on your website and more. You now have the ability to create a detail lead history to base your next point of contact on. For example, you send a lead four emails – two on the importance of using social media in marketing and two on the importance of Google AdWords. You learn your lead only opens and clicks through the social media emails. Now, you have a starting off point. You know this lead is interested in social media and not AdWords. So, rather than continuing to send marketing focused on AdWords, you focus all your contact on social media.
Rather than sending whatever happens to be the next scheduled email blast, try focusing on your leads’ interests by analyzing the sales funnel. Targeting based on lead activity provides you with better results. You are much more likely to receive engagement from leads if you send them marketing based on their proven interests. Marketing automation provides you with an insider’s look at your individual leads. This allows you to target on the individual level rather than the general level. Individual targeting moves your leads through the sales funnel at a more successful rate. Plus, there’s less chance of leads getting lost within the funnel.
For more information on how marketing automation can help you fill in the holes by analyzing the sales funnel, check out our marketing automation infographic.
