It’s too easy to underutilize your sales funnel by failing to analyze it effectively. Too often, marketing teams get left out of the discussion altogether, or they receive minimal data about the company’s funnel strategies, implementation, and success rates.
When you thoroughly analyze each stage of the sales funnel with marketing in mind, your marketing team can identify opportunities to improve conversions and maximize your ROI.
Let’s look at the sales funnel’s importance in creating better marketing results.
Break Down and Analyze the Funnel, Channel by Channel
The best way to get a clear picture of what marketing channels are performing the best is to break down and analyze the funnel, channel by channel.
The most common marketing channels include:
- SEO
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Online display advertising
- Native advertising
- Direct mail
Imagine a company putting most of its marketing budget into two categories: direct mail advertising and email marketing. There is only a little left over for SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing.
An in-depth channel analysis may reveal that email marketing is bringing in okay results, but direct mail results in almost no qualified leads coming into the company. And yet, even with just a little bit of funding and a smart social media marketing professional, those social posts are getting quite a bit of traction and turning into actual convertible leads.
This in-depth analysis would reveal a need to change strategy.
Decide What to Do with Underperforming Channels
After your channel-by-channel analysis, it’s time to decide what to do with channels that aren’t doing as well as others.
Underperformance doesn’t mean failure. Sometimes, a channel underperforms because it has been ignored. When you invest time and money into an underperforming channel, you can learn more about what’s not working, identify strategies to improve it, and start implementing those ideas.
Strategies for examining problematic channels include:
- Look for weaknesses and gaps
- Examine conversion rates and leads/sales data
- Determine the associated costs of the channel
- Account for the potential returns if you increase investment in the channel
- Research best practices for your industry
Avoid abandoning channels without careful analysis – you may uncover hidden opportunities. However, in some cases, thorough research may prove that a problematic channel is simply not well-suited to your business or customers, no matter what you try. Factors like industry dynamics, product-market fit, demographic appeal, and historical data on channel efficacy should inform whether to suspend further testing and investment.
The opportunity cost may be put to better use, improving existing high-performing channels.
Analyzing underperforming marketing channels does not always require an “all or nothing” approach. A data-driven, experimental process focused on optimization can turn around struggling channels. However, know when to cut losses and shift resources elsewhere for maximum ROI.
Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams for Funnel Success
Finally, if you want to take advantage of the sales funnel’s importance, you will need to foster close collaboration between your marketing and sales teams.
Your sales team brings crucial insight into customer pain points, objections, and needs. Your marketing team, on the other hand, produces data-driven strategies to attract and nurture high-quality leads.
Focus on:
- Open communication channels
- Regular meetings
- Shared CRM systems
- Consistent data sharing
- Unified goal-setting
Your sales team should provide feedback on the success rate of lead nurturing tactics and post-sale customer experiences. Marketing team members can provide additional content to help sales close more details.
Cogo & Co. Can Help You Find Marketing Insights from Your Sales Funnel
At Cogo & Co., we know the value of analyzing the sales funnel through the lens of marketing. It’s a great way to boost conversions, revenue, and ROI from your marketing channels.
Collaboration across sales and marketing enhances all the positive outcomes you want to see in your business. When you work with the marketing experts at Cogo & Co., we successfully analyze every aspect of your sales funnel to create actionable marketing strategies.
To find out how your sales and marketing approach is working, take the Cogo & Co. Growth Readiness test and get your score! Schedule a free consultation to learn more about how we can analyze your sales funnel, boost conversions across every stage, and accelerate growth for your business.
