Don’t Mic Drop Your Marketing Efforts

by Troy Dean | Feb 8, 2017

Close the Loop and Follow that Lead!

You just deployed the final piece of your marketing campaign. The campaign performed well, delivering 50 qualified leads to the sales team. Nice work. It’s time to set sail on that cruise to Mexico, right? Wrong! Don’t mic drop your marketing efforts.

Just because the campaign is over doesn’t mean it’s time to mic drop your marketing efforts. On the contrary, the buyer’s journey is still alive and well. Now is the time to close the loop, follow that lead, and collect more data. It’s time for closed-loop marketing 101.

The Buyer’s Journey is Cyclical, Not Linear

The truth is that you won’t know the true value of your qualified lead unless you stay with them along the journey. The buyer’s journey is cyclical, each phase building on the emotional momentum of the previous phase. The more opportunities you give yourself to capture data the more you’ll learn about your leads and how to improve your marketing campaign for future use.

If you want to keep them coming back for more, you need to continuously evaluate your marketing performance including actions taken by your sales team. Here are some metrics to consider once the lead makes its way to sales:

What is the original source of the lead?
Is the lead’s information accurate?
How much time has passed between the final piece of the marketing campaign and outreach from the sales rep?
How many touches did it take for the sales rep to set-up a meeting with the lead?
What touches did the sales rep use to reach out to the lead?
What touch landed the meeting?
Is the meeting in-person or via phone?
Is this is a discovery meeting or a proposal meeting?
What is the goal of the meeting?
What next steps came out of the meeting?
What are the lead’s goals?
What services are being pitched?
What services did the lead purchase?

Now, how will you measure these metrics?

Is it safe to assume that your sales CRM tool speaks to your marketing campaign management tool? If not, it’s OK. The sales team will just need to keep you in the loop of their lead management activities. Understand the basics of closed-loop reporting.

What Can Closed-Loop Marketing Analytics Tell You?

Who your audience really is and whether or not they are profitable. This type of data is exactly the type of information your sales team needs for client prospecting and is the type of information your marketing team needs to build future marketing campaigns.

Knowing your audience is essential because the more you know about their interests, behaviors, goals, etc., the easier it will be to align your company’s services with their goals and present them with the right information in the right format along the buyer’s journey. And, you need to assess if they are profitable or not.

Assessing a customer’s profitability is essential for your bottom line. You need to know their value added, how they stack up against other customers in your portfolio, how much time is being spent on them, etc. Profitability can and should be measured over the course of the relationship and should be evaluated using a formula that speaks specifically to your business model.