For years an emphasis from corporate clients to marketing companies was the generation of leads. The marketers efforts were measured by the number of clicks, calls, form fills, downloads, or Internet sales. Marketing companies had a gap between the generation of the leads and the conversion to sales that companies ultimately want. This gap filled with a lot of finger pointing and disgruntlement between sales directors and marketing companies.
In 2014 we are seeing a greater stride than ever to associate marketing traffic to closed business, and measuring marketing performance based on this element rather than the generation of a lead. As a marketing company, we see the benefits and downside to everything, and can develop a strategy to fit virtually any model. Here are some of the positive and negative effects of running this model, as well as some ways to better capture and close this business.
Funnel Generation
The very first thing that must be accomplished is to generate a funnel and determine where traffic falls off and where it is converting into a lead. Generally this is broken into segments with different results for search marketing, social marketing, website properties, EDDM, and face-to-face marketing. There may be subsections of each to get a more in-depth understanding, but knowing which avenues do you the best good can be helpful to focus efforts.
After lead capture the marketing company’s job is essentially complete and the sales team should take ahold of the lead and convert it into closed business. The efforts they perform should be tracked by your marketing company or internal sales department in a customer management system (CMS). Most marketing companies offer a CMS or can suggest one that will help your internal sales team to not only track their leads, but to help you understand your funnel.
How to Measure Internal Attrition of a Lead
In order to effectively understand your sales funnel you will need to measure all aspects of it, including every step that attrition occurs and how to reduce this attrition. Some of the more common ways of doing this is to record phone calls and have quality assurance departments monitor these calls along with any and all emails generated from your sales floor. Generation of a customized report from your CMS will make sure that you are able to track and measure the elements you find crucial within your organization.
Understanding Results
Often your marketing company or internal marketing team can help you understand the results of your attrition. The results can be as high level as you want or as detailed as you can imagine for most marketing plans. However, if your marketing or analysis team don’t know what you want to see they may not be tracking it, so be sure to ask them for the details in advance.
The Disconnect Between Marketing & Sales
Even for small organizations there is always a disconnect between marketing and sales departments. Marketing generally thinks that sales are not doing enough to convert leads to closed business, and sales generally believe all marketing does is generate leads. Bringing together the heads of these departments including project managers and campaign creators will ensure that this disconnect is minimized, but more importantly that sales are maximized.
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