If you’re a regular reader of the Stratus Interactive blog, you’re already familiar with the methodology behind inbound marketing. It’s the prime focus of our efforts and can be seen in everything we do at our agency.
We can’t shut up about it but we can give you a brief break.
Today we’re going to introduce you to the cousin of inbound: Closed-Loop Marketing. After reading this blog you should have a better understanding of the concept and be well on your way to “Closing the Loop,” as we commonly say around the office.
What Is Closed-Loop Marketing?
Closed-loop marketing is a unique methodology that utilizes data and critical information gathered throughout the sales process. Relying on hard data, closed-loop marketing allows us to understand what’s working and what’s not in a way that isn’t possible with alternative approaches.
Imagine knowing exactly what makes your ideal customer tick. How cool would that be?
With closed-loop marketing you can do just that. You’re able to track a leads every move from initial touch all the way down to the sale. Once you know what's working to convert this lead into a customer in the shortest amount of time possible you’ll be able to customize the experience for all similar leads. Ensuring that your leads are finding value in your communication efforts moving forward can bring you a great deal of success.
How Does Closed-Loop Marketing Work?
When using closed-loop marketing, you’ll receive data in real time. This data will give you a hyper focused and extremely accurate view of all of your leads and customers in all stages of the buyers journey (awareness, consideration and decision).
Once you have the data you’ll be able to perform a quick and easy analysis of your campaigns in a way much less cumbersome than before, giving your reports increased relevancy.
Closed-loop marketing allows your efforts to become much more streamlined. We guarantee you’ll begin to find that you’re eliminating a time wasted on dead opportunities to focus on and pursue the ones that matter!
Why Does Closed-Loop Marketing Work?
Like any marketing approach, the goal is always to attract great leads. Closed-loop marketing works because it allows you to do just that all while shortening your sale cycle. Once you learn what works you can align your marketing and sales teams together to form a band of rockstars destined for the big stage: success.
Oh and did we mention that closed-loop marketing will maximize your ROI in the process? It will.
Understanding why a lead did or didn’t convert can mean all the difference for your business’ ongoing success. Something as simple as identify the most influential pages on your website can teach you a lot about why those pages are so effective. Perhaps you can apply these insights in order to improve poorly performing web pages? We suggest it!
Does Closed-Loop Marketing Require Tools?
So you want to begin integrating closed-loop marketing into your strategy? Great! You’ll need two simple tools to get started.
Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)
Customer relationship management software, also known as CRM, is any platform that helps to identify leads and customers. This is important throughout the closed-loop marketing process.
Marketing Software
Marketing software (such as HubSpot) will help you keep track of all your valuable marketing data. You don’t want to risk losing any of it in the process!
It’s critically important that these two tools speak to each other. You’ll have to find a way to integrate the two, unless you’re using the new HubSpot CRM - In which case, you’ll all set.
