Personalizing Your Sales Funnel

For marketing techniques, no single fix will accomplish everything you need. No simple change will help you find new customers, sell your product or service, and nurture current customers to keep them satisfied. If you’re looking for that one technique that will achieve the golden ticket, you are better off focusing on your entire sales funnel.

Make small changes and tweaks based on solid data. Then personalize your messages at every stage of your customer’s journey. This is as close to a magic bullet as you will find. Do not focus on one area of your customer experience and forsake all others. Rather, look at the customer journey as a whole.

If you want to grow your business, give equal attention to improving both your customer journey and your marketing funnel. It is when you focus your efforts to provide a consistent experience at every stage, you’ll improve your sales funnel. But how can you improve each stage without breaking the bank?

Focus your efforts on marketing improvements that enhance your efficiency and profitability. The key is to optimize each stage of your buyer’s journey to minimize marketing costs and boost revenue. The following tips help you tighten each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Lead Acquisition

B2B marketers all face the same two problems at the top of their marketing funnel: how can I increase lead quantity and quality? Regardless of your lead generating tools and strategies, your efforts are not producing enough leads or the leads you are producing are not high enough quality to convert.

If you have not already, analyze your full funnel. Follow a lead from top of the funnel through to the end to see what happens. Use an analytics platform to help you visualize all the important metrics like total lifetime value of each customer. Analytics will help you pinpoint if you are not converting leads or you do not have enough. Once you are clear on where the problem lies, you can make changes.

For example, if you are struggling with lead quality, analyze your acquisition costs to see how much revenue they generate over the long haul. If you have a platform that costs a lot to generate low-quality leads, cut that source out of your strategy and focus your marketing spend on more profitable avenues.

If you have quality leads, but not enough, you need to improve your brand’s reach. Advertising is a great way to increase reach.

Personalization

Your marketing efforts do not stop at lead acquisition. Once you have captured a lead, you need to personalize your messages and targeting through all remaining steps in their journey. Not only do your messages need to be stellar, but you need to provide enough information about your business and your product or service to help them decide.

One goal during this phase is specifically to address your prospect’s objections. Tell them explicitly how they will benefit from your product. As not all leads have the same needs and objections, you need to personalize and address each of them separately.

You should offer plenty of education on your product or service’s value and use segmented and personalized content targeted at each customer group. Show them not only your product’s value but also the value your business provides. Most webinars are education-based according to State of Webinars 2018. When you offer free webinars that provide excellent education, you’re providing value beyond your product and positioning your business as a top resource.

To speak to each prospect’s pain points, segment your marketing messages and show how your product can solve their problems. One way to segment is to target emails based on a customer’s buyer persona or their behavior on your website. Segmenting and personalizing messages boosts your open rate and produces an emotional impact. Using your marketing automation tools combined with personalized marketing, you can convert leads at a lower cost.

Conversion

As you know, “Always Be Closing” is the ABCs of marketing and sales messages. You need to shore up any holes and missed opportunities at the bottom of your sales funnel. Most marketers only try to sell once and then they stop. Truthfully, if a prospect has made it this far in your funnel, they are qualified, and you can convince them to buy. Trying more than once to clinch the deal will help you understand the appropriate timing and messages needed to convert.

Consider how re-marketing helps you target leads who slipped through the cracks in other stages of your funnel. You can guide them back on the path towards conversion. In addition, if someone engages with your messaging and brand but does not convert, continue nurturing them rather than stopping after one try.

Finally, it is imperative you fix your funnel. If you have a leaky funnel and you are not spending wisely to plug the holes, your losses cost double. Focus on your customer’s journey and find the leaks that need your attention.

A Trusted Partner

KEO Marketing has been a trusted marketing partner to B2B companies for nearly 20 years. Contact a member of our team to assess your marketing needs and explore ways to personalize your sales funnel and generate high-quality leads.


Author: Emina Karic