1 May 2023 by Angela Knox
Building a sales funnel
So you’re getting your marketing team together and crunching some numbers working out how you’re going to set about building a sales pipeline, and set aside a budget for the activities you need.
Organic marketing versus paid advertising will be a big topic of conversation, and there will be advocates for both. And they can both be used to great effect, either in isolation or together.
Organic
Organic methods are without doubt the most holistic and should in any case form the bedrock of any of your marketing.
Earned media (PR / articles in the press) and great SEO optimised content that drives traffic to your website, along with stimulating content itself should always feature heavily in any marketing plan.
And some well-targeted social media activity and clearly catalogued YouTube videos help to create a picture in the mind of your customers, and increase the amount of touchpoints available to them.
Gaining trust amongst your target audience/s is the first building block to selling to them, especially if you are selling services or complex / high end products.
Building a community of like-minded prospects and customers is a process that requires a lot of work and commitment, but in the longterm it will pay off.
Buyers like to peruse a selection of products or services if they are thinking of making a purchase, and will shop around until they feel that they have all the relevant information to hand.
Educating a buyer is a key process, and providing free information which they find helpful is vital to the process of building a relationship with your buyer or client - especially if there is potential for repeat purchases or a continued service.
So whilst using organic marketing to build your sales pipeline can be a case of playing the long game, it should always feature in your long-term marketing plans.
Don’t expect instant results - if you put a blog post up one week and you don’t see sales coming in as a result, you’re taking the wrong view. It’s like running a marathon, you have to keep consistently putting in the miles to get to the end and achieve meaningful results.
The other thing to bear in mind is that organic / content marketing takes up a lot of resource.
Creating all of that content takes commitment - day in day out preparing for the next video shoot, briefing blog writers, and thinking up the next idea for a white paper or a killer infographic.
But planning ahead and having a content calendar pays dividends - there are also lots of software tools to help with this, although you can also use a simple spreadsheet.
You don’t want to have an idea for a video one day, go out and shoot it and then start again with a new idea and start the process all over again - better to plan ahead and shoot all of the common content at once while you have your production team available.
Paid ads
Advertising in its various forms is a key strategy for both brand building and lead generation, and you need to be well prepared with a budget set aside and key objectives laid out in order to make it work.
You also need to know who your audience is and where they reside.
If you’re a start-up, you need to have nailed product-market fit so that you can target the right people with the right messaging at the right time.
Otherwise you run the risk of wasting ad spend by targeting people who are not interested in your product or service and not achieve the desired result from your campaigns.
Advertising should also support your other efforts - so if you have an ongoing PR campaign and some editorial schedules to hand, you can link your ads to where the features are to support the editorial features.
Assuming you have decided on your campaign strategy, I would advise co-opting the help of a specialist media planner / buyer.
This is often overlooked especially in smaller companies - many times I have heard non marketers say ‘why aren’t we advertising in X,Y, Z publication, we’d look good in there’ or something similar, without having considered budgetary planning, overall objectives, and the reach and targeting of the media concerned.
Consider whether your budget is going to be spent online, offline, or a combination of both.
Digital advertising is made up of many parts - including online versions of offline publications, online publishers, social ads, YouTube advertising, Google PPC & Display etc, video on demand etc. So navigating around these options is an ever changing challenge.
Hence having help with selecting the right channels that will work for you, and how to set realistic expectations in building a sales pipeline is key to progress.
And analysing the results of your efforts so the ads and channel selections can be adjusted accordingly to give you the best bang for your buck is a process that needs to be embedded into your team - or agency.
There are also AI based platforms now which will help with developing new and better performing creative ad treatments, and will re-adjust versions of your ads according to the most successful ones.
Performance marketing is all about tracking the effectiveness of your advertising and making changes and adjustments to your content and the channels you use.
This needs an understanding of analytics (Google Analytics is the industry norm and it’s free), and if you have a data analyst to help that’s even better.
Conclusion
So to sum up, there are many different methods available to any business when it comes to promotion and building a sales funnel.
The key is to have a balanced plan, set out your budget and work out some realistic expectations when it comes to expected returns.
Document all of your objectives, how you anticipate you will meet them, and readjust as you go through the process of utilising the relevant channels you have at hand.
Organic is a long-term objective - although with tack sharp SEO optimised websites, killer content (and content promotion), and smooth as silk user experience to maximise lead gen (particularly in B2B), you may be surprised how quickly this can make an impact.
Any business needs to advertise their products and services, but plan your media choice and budgets carefully, and be prepared to make frequent adjustments to your plan when needed.
Getting advice from the relevant experts is key to success - whether you use one agency to do everything for you or hand-pick individual experts in each field, you need to appoint people who understand your business and objectives, and who will help you win!