Managing Your Small Business Marketing Funnel

With the over whelming success of the Digital Marketing Age, you may think that the concept of a marketing funnel is now defunct. And, yes, what used to be a fairly direct route from drawing in leads to converting them into clients has now exploded into a multitude of micro processes.

However, the concept of a Marketing Funnel is still a good way to create a marketing plan that needs multiple levels of engagement to convert leads into clients. Today, in this era of social media and smart phones, we are definitely in a (sometimes) brave new world of marketing plans.  Even when we’re ready to run screaming from our computers after trying to make sense of all the rapid changes that have evolved.

If you use a marketing funnel plan for your small business, there are probably some adjustments that could be made to your process that will help you see even better results in lead generation and subsequently converting those leads into paying customers. Here are a few procedures to improve your marketing funnel and provide even more successful results quickly.

Carefully Research and Develop the Stages of Your Buying Process

Outlining the steps of the potential client’s process needs to be very specific. How you define a potential client gives you an idea of what key information can help you continue to perfect your marketing plans.

By converting your definitions to relate to buyer stages, your emphasis focuses on where the buyer is in the process. Using care when forming these definitions can be crucial so that the data you receive is actually what you want to know.

Utilise Coding When Tracking the Lead Process

The information your team gathers as customers progress through your marketing is crucial.  This habit is a valuable resource, allowing you to follow what stage the buyer is in, where the lead originated, and which campaign produced the lead. Using detailed and accurate coding techniques to accomplish the tracking will tell you at the end of a campaign exactly where leads did and didn’t grow.  Additionally, they will inform you what factors successfully lead a buyer through all the stages of the funnel to a positive outcome.

Create a Process to Separate Your Quality Customers from the Rest of the Herd

Although it would be a bad idea to refer to your customers as a herd of cattle, with the wide range that initial lead capturing plans cover, it’s important, as the stragglers weed themselves out, that you are able to start recognising high-quality clients.

On the flip side of that idea, be aware of clients that may have a negative effect on your business.  These are the ones you will probably prefer not to do business with in the future.

When ranking your potential and actual clients, be sure to include definitions of what the mediocre and trouble clients may be like.  This way you can determine where they came from and decide if you should you remove your efforts from those venues to prevent more issues from coming up later.

Run Additional Metrics Reports When You Make Any Changes

Usually, key metric reports can be done only once a month, however, when changes are made you’ll want to get an immediate idea about how effective the changes are. During this time, it’s best to increase the reports to once a week.

Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success.

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By Martin Goldthorpe  - Business Marketing Mastery