4 Ways to Smash Closed-Loop Marketing

In the world of business marketing, there are a lot of amazing individuals. People who take carefully measured steps, analyze, rinse and repeat, and develop and enhance their marketing efforts.

Then there are the other types of marketers, who essentially are gambling away their marketing in the blind hope that something hits the fan and takes off. 69% of CEO's think they are wasting money on marketing initiatives.

The scary part is, they might be right. A marketing team's inability to track the effectiveness of their campaigns reflects badly on everybody else in a company.

Closed loop marketing seeks to break this mold and help you and your business take calculated risks, rather than just gambling blindly.

John Wanamaker said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Almost a century later, many online marketers are still feeling this pain.

Time to understand closed-loop marketing better.

What is Closed Loop Marketing?

If you've never heard of closed-loop marketing before, you may be a bit lost. What even is it anyway?

Closed loop marketing is when you use analytics and insights to build more effective marketing campaigns. These campaigns then grow into a positive return on investment.

'Closing the loop' is when marketers track and analyze every effort from the first point of contact all the way through to making the sale.

Closed loop marketing allows your team to connect every opportunity, lead, and customer back to the initial marketing efforts that brought them in.

How Does It Work?

Closed loop marketing tracks every single aspect of your marketing campaign. Marketing software tracks the visitor's original source.

The call-to-action that converted your customer is also tracked. Once your visitor fills in the information form on the landing page, they become a lead for your business.

Sales are then passed the baton and take over, following up on the lead, closing the sale and tracking the sale using the CRM system. Once the sales team has completed the sale, your marketers can finally 'close the loop,' tracking every aspect of the interactions.

Why Do You Need It for Your Business?

Did you know that only 21% of B2B marketers are successfully tracking the ROI of their marketing campaigns?

What that means is only 1 in 5 marketers are using statistical data to measure their success. Everyone else is just winging it on a hope and a prayer.

We all know that inbound marketing is important, but without proper analysis, it could be a wasted effort.

Sadly, 'it seems to be working' just isn't going to cut it as an explanation anymore. You need to be able to break down every aspect of your marketing efforts into actionable data points.

4 Ways To Smash Closed Loop Marketing

To help to figure out a way to successfully use closed-loop marketing for your business, we've put together four tips to help you smash it out of the park.

1. Deliver Leads Direct to Sales People

How soon do your sales team get in touch with leads? If it's not straight away, you're missing out on some serious closing ability.

Salespeople who contacted a lead within the first hour were seven times more likely to qualify the lead and reach the decision maker. That's huge.

The same study also found out that the average response time for leads was nowhere near an hour. 42 hours was the average with 23% of businesses not even bothering to respond.

Using closed-loop marketing, you can connect your marketing team's lead generation tools directly with your sales team CRM software. This means a seamless and instant delivery from one team to another.

If your salespeople can respond almost instantly, you'll have a much better chance of landing the sale.

2. Use Data to Send Sales Your Hottest Leads First

Not all leads are equal. If you plug your CRM directly into your leads, you may find your sales team overwhelmed wondering who to contact first.

That's where lead grades come in. Closed loop marketing allows the sales team to use the information you collected during the lead generation process in the form of a lead grade.

This tells your salesperson how hot your lead is. Knowing this information gives your team the tools to act fast on super hot leads, and prioritize the most important leads first.

3. Tie Sales Metrics to Marketing Efforts

If your marketing department works alone, separate from your sales team, you may be running of two separate scoreboards. Metrics like website visits, reach, impressions and even possible sales are good to check but don't tell the whole story.

What they lack though is the ability to tell your marketing team which campaigns resulted in which sales. Your closed loop system will tie the dots, helping your marketing department analyze the success of their different channels.

One channel they thought was doing well, might be bringing them to the most traffic but the least sales.

4. Don't Leave Leads Sitting In The Cold

One of the great things about closed-loop marketing is the ability to manage your data. Effectively managing your data and leads is critical to keeping your leads warm.

Without the right tools in place, many organizations leave customers stuck in the buying process. To avoid this, closed-loop analysis can help you build a lead nurturing status.

This means that at no stage in the buying process will your lead sit around waiting for something to happen. Your lead nurturing process will take place when your other stages of the cycle expire.

You should make sure that every stage of your process has a time limit so that when your customer hits the limit, your lead gets cycled back to the lead nurturing process.

Lead nurturing makes sure you have interaction and movement with your leads, even if they're not yet ready to buy or the sales department doesn't engage with them.

How Will You Implement Closed Loop Marketing in Your Business

Closed loop marketing can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Using data and analytics, you can understand your market campaigns, and know what's working and what isn't.

If you want help setting up a closed loop marketing system in your business, get in touch with us today.