5 Ways to Get Started With Closed Loop Marketing

Most of us have come a long way and have witnessed how life was before Google, or even before Twitter and LinkedIn. It is difficult to imagine the world without them now!

Similarly, we have also seen how traditional marketing use works, and how we market today with the goal to get to Closed Loop Marketing to generate more revenue.

In a nutshell, with a Closed Loop Marketing approach, marketers are responsible for more than branding and product updates, and need to watch customer reaction to marketing, to ensure their sales funnel doesn’t have any leaks.

With a no lead is left behind attitude going in, here are 5 ways to get started with Closed Loop Marketing:

1. Data Management: Effective data management is critical for any Marketing Organization. Sales and Marketing need to collect data that is most important for their relative function. Effective data collection and maintenance is also essential to ensuring database integrity for customers and leads. Ensure you have a process in place to keep your data clean and standardized.
2. Lead Scoring: Have a good lead scoring program in place. Lead scoring is a process of determining the sales readiness of leads using predetermined scoring methodology and ranking them accordingly. Remember, it is an iterative process in that once you have lead scoring defined and working, make sure you revisit and enhance it based on information you’ve collected over time.
3. Lead Nurturing: As a general lead nurturing rule, there should be no place in the buying process where leads just “sit,” and you should have only one lead stage value for leads being nurtured. All other lead status values should have a time limit, and leads that sit idle past the deadline should be automatically recycled for further nurturing. In sum, lead nurturing ensures movement and interaction with prospects, even if they are not ready to buy or sales does not engage.
4. Sales and Marketing Alignment: Marketers today need to share pipeline information with the Sales Team, and in return Sales should share the information back with Marketing. This is all so they can get insight into which marketing campaigns are having impact. Communication is the key which brings true sales and marketing alignment.
5. Reporting for ROI: Today’s CEO demands accountability, and if you have to justify 1000’s of dollars for a trade show, then you need to present more than just the number of people who visited your booth. The CxO would love to know how many opportunities were created, and ultimately, how much revenue did we close as a result. Reporting should be able to measure the effectiveness and ROI of marketing investment.