There was a time when the marketing funnel was nothing more than a numbers game. Grow your target audience and the increase in prospects entering the funnel guarantees a high number of leads exiting the funnel. However, it rarely works out that way.
It’s time to do away with this outdated approach. Focusing on a larger audience doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce more qualified leads. It simply means you’ve succumbed to the assumption that more is always better. It isn’t. All you’ve done is spend more money and allocated more marketing resources than needed.
Incentivize the right customers with the right message at the right time in their journey.
It’s time to use an all-encompassing strategy where the top of the funnel becomes the first and most important step to determining the quality of leads that emerge. Success involves outlining key performance indicators (KPI) that quantify how well you reach, engage and incentivize your audience to take action. If you generate more qualified and interested prospects, then you’ll have more qualified leads. So, what would these KPI look like and what role would they play within the funnel?
Brand Awareness
You can’t dictate or define how your customers see your brand anymore. All the messaging in the world won’t drown out the online noise that’s created by your customers. Instead, you need to accept the fact that your customers build your brand alongside you. Don’t fight this. Welcome it.
Your marketing funnel’s KPIs should be focused on measuring how well your brand is perceived in your market, how much it’s appreciated by customers, and the buzz that’s created with each new product launch or product upgrade. Are customer’s defining your brand in a way you never anticipated, and if so, what can you do to redirect their perceptions so that they align more with your company’s goals? Granted, it’s a loaded question but answering it is critical. Your KPIs must measure the effectiveness of your brand and its relevance in your market.
Reputation Management
Your company’s reputation is not entirely the same as your brand. Your company might be known for excellent quality but yet still have a bad reputation for on-time delivery and after-sales service. In this case, make sure your KPI measure how well your team responds to complaints and issues online. Track their ability to quickly respond to incoming requests and their overall approach to removing issues of concern for customers.
KPIs measuring the effectiveness of your marketing solutions will help you increase qualified leads.
Social Media Engagement
Engaging your audience on social media isn’t just about being present and posting an article here and there on a social forum. It really means engaging your audience in a manner that protects your brand and reputation, while also growing your audience.
Proactively managing your brand and reputation through social media means confronting every single negative review of your product or service in the best possible manner. This does two things. First, you might just be able to change your customer’s mind. Second, engaging your audience on social media shows what you’re willing to do to fix things.
Even if you’re unable to convert that upset customer, your other customers will see what you’re willing to do to right a wrong. Marketing funnel KPIs focused on reducing the number of negative reviews and increasing the number of issues resolved (corrective actions) not only helps protect your brand, but it also means you’ve laid the groundwork for reintroducing customers back into your funnel.
Content
This last one is fairly easy. Your KPIs should also be structured on measuring the effectiveness of your content. This means tracking how different customer personas react to different calls-to-action (CTAs), understanding what content generates the most traffic, and most importantly, defining the content that initiates the most customer actions, be it downloads or requests for information.
Do away with this idea that it’s merely a numbers game. Instead, focus on KPIs that help you narrow down your target audience into your focus audience. When you increase the quality of prospects, then you’ll increase the number of qualified leads.
