In the first article of this two-part series, I told you all about closed-loop marketing and how the pieces of a closed-loop marketing system fit together. Part two will provide tactics for closing the loop in your own marketing efforts and fixing the loop if it gets broken.
Closing the Loop
Closed-loop marketing can help you, quite literally, take your marketing efforts full circle. Here are four ways to use this system to improve your own marketing tactics.
1. Concentrate on the right channels and offers with informed marketing decisions.
Closed-loop marketing can help you hone in on those events and channels that consistently convert visitors into successful leads. Armed with this information, you can identify the behavior you need to push potential customers down the sales funnel. Basically, the information you gather can help you compare different offers in respect to customer acquisition.
2. Prove yourself by delivering clear results to your manager.
Nothing helps you to prove your worth to your boss more than demonstrating clearly how your efforts led to increased revenue for the company. The information you collect, as part of your closed-loop marketing system, will build your authority and support the decisions you make. It will show your boss that you use evidence to support your strategies and aren’t just guessing as to which tactics to try.
3. Learn about your target audience with insights gleaned from your closed-marketing system.
This system provides you with a thorough look at users’ experience on your website. You can follow their journeys throughout your site, taking note of which activities led them to take action. Using this information, you can create a target persona, which can help you understand – and market to – your ideal customers.
Another benefit of learning about your target audience is that it can help to shorten your sales cycle. You can use information gathered about your visitors to communicate more effectively with them and, hopefully, decrease the amount of time it takes to convert them to customers.
4. Create realistic goals and expectations for your marketing efforts.
When you know exactly what your conversion rates have been historically, you are equipped to set the right goals today. And, you can use this information to set realistic expectations for your team and in meetings with colleagues.
Realistic goals can also help keep your cost per lead low. Coupled with the insights gained from closed-loop marketing, your realistic goals will help you determine how to spend your marketing budget and ensure your dollars go to the most impactful channels.
Fixing a Broken Loop
Just because you have set up closed-loop analytics carefully, don’t be surprised if the loop breaks now and then. No need to worry, though – just follow these four tips.
1. Set tracking code on each page of your website, as well as on sub-domains.
If just one of your pages is missing the tracking code, your loop will be broken. Recall in part one of this series that tracking tokens must be added to the end of your links so your analytics can associate them with particular campaigns. Double-check that every page and sub-domain (like blog.yoursite.com) contains this tracking token.
2. Create tracking URLs for everything, including ads, emails, and offline events.
Although this is tedious – and maybe a bit annoying – it will be well worth the effort. Make it a habit to create a URL for every marketing event or campaign you launch. Then, you will have an accurate picture of how well your campaigns are performing.
3. Connect a visitors’ web sessions with their lead information.
The step between a visitor first landing on your website and when they fill out a lead form on a landing page is a vulnerable place for your closed-loop marketing system. Don’t let your loop get broken just because it is technically difficult to decipher this key period of browsing. As I mentioned in part one of this series, Hubspot and other companies offer software to help you navigate this tough terrain. Check out all of your options to find a solution that is right for you.
4. Be sure your sales team is closing leads properly.
After all your hard work tracking visitors, it would be a shame if you and your sales team were not on the same page. Create a system both of you can agree on, and develop a service-level agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing. This contract will help you set expectations for the quality and quantity of leads that marketing will deliver to sales. It will also outline the steps sales will take to follow up on those leads. Collaborating in this way will ensure that the loop continues, unbroken, between the sales and marketing teams.
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Hopefully by now you have gained an understanding of what closed-loop marketing is and how it can benefit your marketing program. With so many tools at our disposal, for tracking customer behavior online, marketers can create realistic, measurable plans simply by tracking how visitors engage with their website.
Have you employed a closed-loop marketing system yet? What tips and insights have I left out that helped you create and maintain loops?
Image courtesy of magnetism.co.nz
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