Is it High Time Marketers Start Focusing More on the Bottom of the Funnel? | ODEA

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Is it High Time Marketers Start Focusing More on the Bottom of the Funnel?

 

As a marketer, where are your efforts focused most within the sales funnel? We’d be willing to bet you’re heavily involved in the top. Creating awareness. Attracting leads. Blogging. Tweeting. Emailing.

 

And, depending on the size and efficiency of your sales team, we’d also be willing to bet that leads are stalled in the middle and the bottom of the funnel.

 

Why? Because while marketing is concentrated on enticing new leads, existing leads advance down the funnel into the conversion stages. However, they aren’t feeling the love there. Often, there are little to no marketing efforts targeted at the leads in those stages, thus they either slow down or cease their decision-making journey entirely. This, of course, is a problem.

 

YES! The end of the sales funnel is in desperate need of some marketing TLC.

 

How? Stop thinking blog and social media. Start thinking campaigns (case study), lead scoring and landing pages. Prospects stuck in the conversion stage already know who you are. They know you’re smart and they know what you offer. Now, they want to be sold. What is the ROI for purchasing your product? What makes you better than your biggest competitor? How can you offer value to your prospects before they become customers (i.e. checklists, how-to guides, samples and discounts)?

 

Remember, this doesn’t mean that blogging and other “attract” activities should stop. It means your focus should readjust. Consider how your existing blogs can be repurposed within campaigns to help convert leads. And, think about new blog topics that are more upfront with the benefits of becoming a customer.

 

Still not convinced? 71% of salespeople and 70% of marketers reported to HubSpot that their top priority is converting more leads to customers. Both marketers and salespeople can see that while generating leads is important, there must be an active effort to close existing leads. Spoiler alert: it’s not solely dependent on sales to close deals, marketing plays a role too!

 

Getting started. Don’t get us wrong, this is no simple task. 35% of salespeople say closing deals is more difficult than two to three years ago. But as marketers, we should see this as a great opportunity. Salespeople feel challenged to close deals. We are creative and strategic. Marketing has the power to make the sales funnel more efficient by creating content and campaigns that don’t just educate, but sell.

 

Want to learn about even more marketing and sales data and trends?
Click below to download HubSpot’s 2017 State of Inbound report.

 

 

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