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As a marketing leader, not only is it your responsibility to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into opportunity, but it's also your job to make sure leads are routed to the right sales rep as quickly as possible. The more time a lead has time to chill, the less likely they are going to convert into revenue for your business.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your inbound funnel.
Time is money. For this reason, it's important to know who you want to talk to and who you don't want to talk to. As you launch your business, you should already have a good idea of who you want to purchase your product. You don't have to have this perfectly defined from the get go, but the more you know who you want to talk to the better. This will make it so you can spend time with companies that will actually convert into revenue.
For example, if you have a product that is for K-12 schools, you probably don't want to spend a lot of time talking parents and students. You will want to spend time talking to school administrators.
The more specific you can get with who you want to talk to, the more time you will be spending on potential revenue.
How has your sales department defined their territories? Some examples of how businesses do this include:
These are just a few examples of how sales departments define their territories. Most companies that have more than one rep should have this already defined. If not, it's a good idea to meet with your sales team and define how leads should be distributed.
When a lead lands on your website, it will only benefit you and them if they know exactly what you want them to do. For example, if you have five different call to actions on the same page, they may get overwhelmed and choose none of the options. If you have one or two call to actions, they are more likely to take that action.
Try to add a call to action to every piece of content that you publish. After they've finished one page, they shouldn't have to ask themselves, "Now what?" By making that "now what" very clear to them, they are more likely to take the action you want.
If you want them to get a demo with you, make that very clear with an easy-to-access button on your marketing site navigation.
Ask yourself, do I need this information right now? The more fields you have on your forms, the more likely your lead will bounce. So, narrow in what you really need. At the bare minimum, these are typically the fields that SDRs or sales typically need before they meet with the lead for a demo:
Depending on your product and who you are targeting, some additional fields might include:
You and your sales organization will know, at minimum, what data you need in order to pass the lead onto the SDR or sales rep for a call.
If you're not already doing this, you are likely losing out on a lot of low hanging fruit. Your CRM should be capturing your inbound leads immediately after they fill out the form on your website. There are several reasons why this matters, including:
When you have all your inbound lead data stored in your CRM, you have a lot of power to nurture and push them through the pipeline.
| Activebook can create and update contacts in your CRM. Learn more here.
If you leave it up to marketing to forward leads to sales whenever they come in, you are adding time between the time the lead was interested to the time they see the demo. Few people will wait that long.
Use a marketing automation software, or other software, to make sure you are pushing leads exactly where they need to go as soon as you get them. As you are setting up your automation, make sure to only push inbound leads that are qualified. For example, if you know there is specific Job Title that you know you don't want to talk to, or doesn't have purchasing power, exclude them from your routing.
Using the data that you collected in your marketing forms, you can direct leads where they need to go. For example, if Kate owns all leads in Utah and Jack owns all leads in Idaho, set up an If/Then path that sends Kate the inbound lead if their state is Utah and send Jack the inbound lead if their state is Idaho.
Time is of the essence when it comes to qualified inbound leads. Instead of having your sales rep email back and forth with the lead about the best time to meet, use Activebook. Activebook will instantly qualify and route your inbound leads to the right rep's calendar. That way, your qualified inbound lead can book a time right when they are thinking about it.
In some companies, you may have sales development representatives (SDRs) that do discovery calls with inbound leads before they go to sales. Making sure inbound leads can book time with your SDRs in an instant is equally important.
Are you ready to start optimizing your inbound funnel? Activebook can help! Learn more at activebook.io.
