[And, rounding out my food motif for this week...I promise I'll get back to normal next week...well, maybe.]With all this talk about quantifying marketing value many companies are like lasers focused on conversions to sales as the be all, end all metric.
But, unless you apply plenty of thought into all the other metrics and steps that influence conversions you might be missing out on optimizing how many you can actually generate-even during an economic downturn. Here's why.A complex sale requires many steps before the buyer arrives at a purchase decision. If your company is only focused on the conversion metric, how will you improve it? Would you even know what can trigger a change?
Consider all the stages of the buying process and measure incremental progress through the pipeline. Are prospects stalling along the way? If you can pinpoint hesitations and develop provoking content that helps to move them over the hump, you'll increase conversion.Consider which sources attract the most prospects to engage with you. Are there new audiences expressing interest that will move faster if you tailor content just for them? And, are you providing a continuous supply of content to the best origination sources or treating all of them as equal opportunities?
When's the last time you looked?How many days does the average prospect spend with marketing? How many with sales? Are you seeing a decrease in these numbers over time? An increase? Same with contacts or touch points. Is it taking more content and communications to get progression? Consider the content you're using and audit it for value and relevance. If you're not creating your content for specific audiences start with one segment and measure the changes.
Then branch out to other segments once you've got the hang of it.How are you measuring progress? Do you do tele-prospecting to add a personal touch and inquire? Have you mapped content to buying stages and tuned the process to closely match how your prospects move forward at each step?
Are you asking incremental questions for high-value content downloads or webinar registrations?Is sales seeing less effort to connect with the qualified prospects marketing is giving them? If not, is the messaging they're using consistent with the marketing story those prospects have been told thus far?The point is that conversion doesn't happen on it's own without other influences.
You have to work on all the factors that play into producing that desired result. When you do, you'll find you can lift that conversion number skyward.
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