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Marketing-Sales Funnel Optimization: 3

questions to ask as you kickoff 2012 -
MarketingExperiments
By Daniel Burstein

6-7 minutes

On the MarketingExperiments blog, we often write about

landing page optimization and email optimization. And,
while optimizing these channels can have an outsized
impact on your results, you sometimes need to take a
step back and look at your marketing campaign, even
your sales-marketing organization, as a whole.

So, with the new fiscal year right around the corner, grab
every smart person you work with (yes, even those that
work in Sales), throw them in a room for an hour (bring
some eggnog, it will help the festive brainstorming), and
ask these three questions about your current sales and
marketing funnel:

Question #1: Do we have the right “ask” at every stage

of the funnel?

The picture we have in our minds of a funnel is so pretty,

isn’t it? A big, wide mouth at the top for all those leads to
fall into, and then, they nicely fall down the path to
closed deal. But is it really so easy?

Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, wants

you to question the very way you look at the funnel.
“People don’t fall into the funnel; they fall out. Gravity
does not work for the marketer. It works against the
marketer,” Flint says.

So, what frame of reference can help you as you

optimize your funnel? Perhaps a tower.

“The prospect climbs it, and the force which ATTRACTS

the prospect upward is the force of the value
proposition,” Flint says.

At every stage of the funnel, the prospect must make a

decision, and will only say “yes” (essentially, a “micro
yes” leading up to the ultimate “yes” of a purchase) if the
perceived value outweighs the perceived cost. And, of
course, it only takes one “no” to halt the entire process.

Here are five examples of what can cause that “no”:

1. An “ask” to the wrong person

2. An “ask” without sufficient value force
3. An “ask” with too much cost force
4. An “ask” that is premature (in the thought sequence)
5. An “ask” for too much

Question #2: Do we have the most valuable content at

every stage of the funnel?

Relevance. As we all know, that is the magic word for

marketing and content. As my old boss used to say,
“There may be an ad for a refrigerator on page A2 of the
newspaper every day, but the only day you’ll notice it is
when your fridge breaks.”
Of course, with digital marketing, we no longer have the
luxury of mass media newspaper ads that happen to hit
a very small section of a very broad audience at just the
right time. Digital marketing has become narrowcasting,
sending micro-messages to niche audiences.

Because of this, your potential customers expect a

conversation, and will only engage with you when it
matters to them – like when your content hits them right
between the eyes  becauseit reaches them with helpful
information when they are at the exact moment in the
buying decision to need that specific help.

Let’s take email as an example. In the MarketingSherpa

Special Report  Five Steps to Stronger Email
Relationships: Research-based tactics SMBs can apply for
more active and engaged subscribers (a free report until
Dec. 31, courtesy of AWeber Communications), lead
author W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst,
MECLABS, found that “Another strategy SMBs find very
effective is producing content for each funnel stage, and
segmenting email campaigns based on their location in
the sales cycle.”

The below research from that report illustrates Jeff’s

point:

Click to enlarge

As you can see from Jeff’s survey of 2,735 marketers, for

both medium and small companies (basically, any
company with fewer than 1,000 employees), producing
content for each funnel stage was the absolute most
effective email engagement and relevancy tactic.
For large companies, the most effective tactic was to
“automatically send email based on triggers.” Of course,
it should be noted that many triggered emails can be tied
to steps in the funnel as well, such as a white paper
download or webinar attendance.

Keep in mind, much with the “asks” in the first question,

any content that is premature in the thought sequence is
more likely to drive prospects out of your funnel tower
instead of up it.

Question #3: Do we have the blocking and tackling

right?

On the flip side of the above two questions, danger lies

in focusing too much on your overall lead nurturing
content plan and calls-to-action at each step of the
funnel. Doing so could cause you to overlook the basic
blocking and tackling, the infrastructure fundamentals
that serve as a foundation for all the hard work you’re
engaged in powering prospects up your funnel.

As an extreme example, if you have the wrong phone

number in your call-to-action, the best content in the
world that drives prospects to the most optimized CTA
will not do you any good.

One check and balance in your marketing campaign that

helps is a good QA process before anything goes live.

Another thing that may be worthwhile before you kickoff

FY2012 with a bang is a deep funnel audit. For example:

For the triggered email you set and forget nine

months ago, is the content still relevant?
Has there been an update to a platform you use (e.g.,
 LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress) that has hurt some
functionality you relied on?
Are there simply new people in new roles that aren’t
familiar with specific steps in your funnel (e.g., could
a new sales rep be sending the wrong content at a
specific step of the funnel)?

A nifty, free tool to help your funnel audit is HubSpot’s

new Marketing Grader, which can give you a good, basic
analysis.

Of course, unless you’re George Jetson, there’s much

more to your job than simply pushing a button. True
funnel optimization requires a dedicated mix of strategic
thinking and execution. But the above tool, and hopefully
this entire blog post, can hopefully begin you down to
the path to an optimized 2012.

Related Resources:

Marketing Funnel: How to optimize your Sales and

Marketing funnel in 5 steps

B2B Marketing: Top “Aha moments” of 2011 from your

peers

B2B Funnel Optimization: What happens after you

capture the lead?

Landing Page Optimization: Test ideas for a B2B lead

capture page