Anyone in the marketing industry is well-aware of the buyer’s journey and sales pipeline. These are fundamental concepts in marketing that help marketers provide their leads and customers with the right kinds of content at the right time to encourage them toward making a purchase. However, as the industry continues to evolve, so too does marketing’s role in the sales pipeline.
Like Martech Advisor says, “With a wealth of information at our fingertips, how we consume information, interact with brands, and make purchases has changed completely. We want to be anonymous and left alone behind our screens in our research until we are ready to take the next step and make a purchase.”
With these developments in mind, the days of siloed sales and marketing teams have approached their end. However, as you approach the bottom-of-the-funnel, the line that separates sales and marketing can begin to blur, making it difficult to tell if your teams are achieving their goals. As vital as departmental alignment is, how can you ensure that both departments are not only happy but also producing the kind of ROI your company needs?
The solution lies in closed-loop marketing, and its partner-in-success, full-funnel marketing. Here’s how implementing these strategies can help you win more sales and better understand (and act on) the analytics associated with your sales pipeline.
Marketing shouldn’t work exclusively at the top-of-the-funnel, and sales shouldn’t relegate itself to the bottom-of-the-funnel. The two teams need to be comfortable exploring the top and bottom of the sales and marketing pipelines if they want to meet prospects where they’re at and help them reach the climax of their buyer’s journey.
A full-funnel marketing strategy can do this. As explained by Bizible, full-funnel marketing is when “marketers care about the entire funnel. Since the funnel ends at revenue generation, not lead generation, both the marketing team and the sales team should have the goal of generating revenue.”
If closed-loop marketing occurs when sales teams report to marketing with a breakdown on what happened to the leads they received, then full-funnel marketing is the precursor to that. By exploring the full-funnel pipeline, your marketing can guide prospects through each step of their journey, with each step garnering a different tactic. This helps marketers improve their sales pipeline management and prioritize the kind of marketing that brings in consistent ROI.