Did you know that only 38% of today’s marketers have a comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with content throughout the buyer's journey, according to Forrester Research?
This means that less than half of all B2B marketers are creating meaningful content for their prospects.
Before I jump into telling you the benefits of closed-loop reporting, I'll quickly sum up what closed-loop marketing is. Closed-loop reporting is marketing and sales united; a full-circle sales cycle, with sales and marketing working side-by-side, that allows marketers to achieve the greatest possible results for their clients.
Here are the 5 benefits of closed loop reporting:
1. Focuses on What Matters Most
As inbound marketers, we want to focus on content that will push and drive our client's sales. Choosing the perfect piece of content to distribute to your target personas is very important. Only by narrowing down on the best pieces of buyer-tailored content will you be able to develop a successful inbound campaign. With great insight on what end users want, marketers will often hold the golden key to turn leads into customers!
2. Sales & Marketing Work More Efficiently
When sales and marketing work as a team, they will move a prospect through the sale cycle much faster than if sales took the lead and tried to guess the prospect's interactions on your site. By learning their behaviors, sales and marketing can better qualify ideal customers during the buyer's journey. Teamwork makes the dream work, so why would you want it any other way?
3. Make Your CEO Jump For Joy
By knowing exactly what your conversion rates have been in the past, you can set appropriate goals for your marketing and sales teams each month. To ensure that you are on the right track, you should create a chart to track your progress, which compares conversion rates month-over-month. We all want our CEO's to be happy with our conversion numbers, and choosing the right goals can really make or break that smile on their face!
4. Getting to Know Your Prospects Better
Doesn't it feel awesome to see your hard research in the pursuit of closing a lead pay off?
Sometimes, doing extra homework to see how your visitors interact benefits you in more ways than you might imagine. You can almost guess a lead's every move before they make it (you can then be called Harriet The Spy - you're welcome).
5. Allocating Your Budget More Effectively
(but wouldn't that be great?)
Closed-loop analytics is extremely beneficial, since it gives you insight into your most powerful inbound marketing offers and enables you to set realistic goals for both marketing and sales. These two factors are essential in determining what channels to spend your inbound marketing budget on.
The elements and benefits of closed-loop reporting can all be summed up under the ever-famous term, "smarketing." Does your company have the loop closed between marketing and sales?
Christina Kay