The Tools Required for Closed-Loop Marketing

Think about your recent marketing initiatives. Can you write down which was most successful? Where did those leads come from? Chances are, you can't.

Keeping marketing initiatives straight is something that many companies struggle with. If pouring money into campaigns that may or may not produce ROI seems risky, you're not alone.

Sixty-nine percent of CEOs think they're wasting money on their marketing strategies. Why do people continue throwing money at the great unknown?

Well, digital marketing does produce a pretty solid ROI. Content marketing produces three times more leads than outbound marketing and costs 62 percent less.

The issue being, you need to know what campaigns are doing well, and what campaigns waste money. To solve this problem we are turning to closed-loop marketing.

Closed What?

As you may or may not know, closed-loop marketing refers to the process of tracking the entire consumer "life cycle." In other words, tracking your lead from start to finish.

We'll break it down into four steps that make the process easy to follow.

1. Your visitor arrives on your landing page.

Congratulations, some part of your inbound marketing campaign is showing results.

2. The customer goes shopping.

They'll browse your website while your analytics software (more on this later) tracks them with cookies.

3. You capture the customer's information.

This often happens through lead-capture forms on landing pages. With proper marketing & sales alignment, you'll be able to segment these leads from lukewarm to hot.

4. Your lead becomes a customer with the sales team.

At this point, you'll know where that lead came from. You're now well on your way to tracking your successful campaigns.

To sum it all up, you're following a consumer from the first contact with your marketing content until the sales team finishes the conversion.

It sounds straightforward but is a little tricky without some tracking tools to help. Lucky for you, marketing tools are everywhere.

Let's take a look at some of the best tools that can help your closed-loop marketing strategy run smoothly.

Closed-Loop Marketing Tool 1:
Customer Relationship Management Software

CRM software, as it's known, helps both sales and marketing track customers and potential customers. You're storing your customer data across all departments in one organized place.

You'll see contact information, business accounts, potential leads associated with those accounts or other customers, and more.

You might have CRM software that lets you see past conversations with clients, how you met the clients (leads), their likes and dislikes, contact information, or even birthdays.

Every department can see your company's interaction with each client and track that interaction from start to finish.

Which CRM your choice depends on what marketing software you're using and if they integrate. If more than one CRM works with your marketing software, you can choose based on personal preference.

CRMs for Closed-Loop Marketing

Salesforce probably rings a bell if you've spent any time in a sales-based environment. The software has become ubiquitous with sales teams everywhere.

If you're just jumping into closed-loop marketing Salesforce is an great starting point. First, they're cloud-based. Meaning your information is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.

Second, they're perfect for businesses of any size. The program scales well so it'll continue to work while you grow.

Lastly, Salesforce covers all the basics and then some. You can track everything from conversations and potential leads to forecasting future sales.

If Salesforce doesn't seem accessible to your business, Hubspot has a free (yes, free!) CRM.

The software works similarly to Salesforce. It's cloud-based, tracks contact information, leads, conversions, etc.

It also allows for individually assigned tasks across your company. Marketing and sales can see each other's tasks and successes across each account.

Closed-Loop Marketing Tool 2: Marketing Software

Marketing software is the key to your closed-loop marketing. It's what tracks customers across your website. The cookies attached to each potential lead's browsing session are eventually connected with the lead itself in your CRM.

At its core, marketing software tracks campaign performance, social media, SEO metrics, and more.

But for cloud-loop marketing purposes, the software handles "cookies" and tracks data across your website.

Like with CRM software, there's an abundance of choices available. Though again you'll need to choose software that works with your CRM software. 

Marketing Software for Your Closed Loop

For small and medium-sized businesses the ideal marketing software scales is simple to use and helps your ROI.

Hubspot ticks all the boxes in this situation. Essentially, the software tracks your marketing campaigns while offering projections and other data you can use to plan future strategies.

This includes using cookies to track web visitors and their path to your lead-generation form. Which means it takes care of steps one and two of the closed-loop marketing process.

Hubspot works well for large companies while still holding value for smaller businesses.

Integrating Your CRM and Marketing Software

Your CRM and marketing software work together to ensure your marketing strategy works. The marketing software handles steps one and two, while the CRM handles three and four.

The marketing software tracks visitors until the lead-generation form, and then the CRM takes over.

You're able to look at the final CRM sale and work backward. The two software communicate, associating each anonymous cookie tracked the user with a lead generation form.

Once you know which form belongs to which user, you can find what marketing channel they originated from. Social media? SEO? Content Marketing? You'll see which channels offer the best ROI.

Closed-Loop for Your Business

Closed loop-marketing means maximizing your ROI through tracking your successful marketing channels.

By finding which channels convert, you can focus more money on things that actually drive sales. Despite many CEOs' worries, marketing is not a waste of time or money.

If you're interested in getting your own closed-loop marketing strategy off the ground, get in touch with us.

We specialize in helping your business track your marketing campaigns from start to finish. We'll tell you what converts, why, and where your customers come from.

So don't wait, let us help maximize your ROI today!