The keys to sales success? The answers lie in your lead funnel

45% of businesses carry out research before the decision making stage. If you're not working on building content for the awareness stage then you could be missing out on vital business.

If you a focusing on a demand ‘pull’ strategy, then you want to consider the most optimal delivery of content, type, style, get a handle on the value proposition and identify what will perform the best to help qualify those leads as they move through the funnel.

Why have a lead generation funnel?

By building a fully optimised marketing funnel you are able to serve more relevant content to your prospects at the right time and it helps you to identify those prospects that are interested in your services. You can use it to filter through a broad audience at the top of the funnel, and identify which contacts are ready for calls, further development

It is also possible to segment the funnel to group prospects – ready to hand over a qualified warm contact to sales to convert.

Data capture through your funnel

Ensure you connect to the marketing data that you receive from across the marketing mix within your funnel, to identify what is working, where it isn’t and identify what improvements can be made to enhance the experience, serve better content, and capture more qualified prospects.

Approach to lead generation

There is no one size fits all approach to qualifying leads through your marketing funnel. It is down to your business and your service or product that you are selling. It’s not a matter of just delivering a webinar, email and social post that will deliver your qualified lead. The devil is in the detail, and it depends on many factors from audience, to sector, to product, services and so on. For example when selling a SaaS, experience is just as important as education. You need to give people the ability to test drive your product.

Optimising your lead funnel

The key to a successful funnel is through optimisation. You need to identify what is working and when and how to deliver more relevant content as your prospects move along. That means continuing to create relevant and insightful information. You want to use this opportunity for your prospects to get to know you. They need to trust that your solution is the best one available to them and give them the ability to learn more about you. You won't yet know where they are in their decision making process but you can help to inform and guide them through your funnel.

Data capture through your funnel

Ensure that your data capture is always GDPR compliant. You cannot force someone to opt into to download your report. You cannot market to someone who has joined your webinar with other information from your business, unless they have agreed to be contacted. This has to be clear and unequivocal. Pay close attention to the activities together as well as the performance of different pieces of content. You should always test and learn. Try dynamic content or different images, straplines and headings to see what people are responding to. A meaningful test is anything over 5,000 individual audience segments. Any lower and you'll struggle to determine a clear pattern.

What is driving your conversions?

Look at each of the individual elements that you are serving through out your sequences, from content style to order and identify which range of activities led to a conversion. You can use that data to zone in on a particular email or event that they were invited to, and when that was included within the funnel.

Lead Scoring through your lead funnel

To identify which contacts are qualified, you will most likely need to apply a format of lead scoring to the activities. This will help you to identify those contacts and potential leads that are interested in hearing from you and is known as a MQL, but the scoring doesn’t tell you a huge amount about the customer’s real intent. One thing you have confirmed is that they are engaging with your content and are more likely to be aware of you.

Gifting or experience for client acquisition

You need to identify how your customer can experience your product or service. This can be delivered through free trials, free products or samples. Many SaaS platforms have offered their services for free either as a beta service, or a starting package. Other examples include shorter trials of 7-14 days, with a subscription following straight after. Whatever you choose to deliver, ensure that there is some data capture involved. It will deliver more valuable insights to further enrich the marketing experience for your customer. It could also give you an idea of the prospects you want to be spending time nurturing further. To make the most of the journey, the funnel needs to switch to focus on the SQL (sales qualified lead) where activities, engagements and experiences should drive those prospects towards your conversion goals.

Marketing and Sales United

Marketing and sales are more intertwined than ever before. CMOs and VPs are being given sales targets and the functions are no longer viewed as simply profit centres. The value of marketing is now more obvious thanks to real data through digital marketing. If you want your marketing function to have a real demonstrable impact on the bottom line, then they need to be involved throughout the full customer journey from awareness until conversion. This won’t be delivered just by advertising alone. Lead scoring, doesn’t mean conversion into revenue so it is important to focus on how to deliver an experience that will ultimately lead to driving a sale.

Trust the process and ensure you give it the time it needs

Marketing is a process, at the heart of which consistency is key and timing is everything. Give the funnel time to work and review what is happening – how campaigns are performing and what is driving the best performance. Identify areas where automation can be involved to drive personalisation and also improving campaign launch to market, for maximum impact. Lastly, don’t let guts rule the funnel, ensure any decision making is driven by data and insights along the way.

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