I was recently talking to someone about marketing and the woman asked a very interesting and obvious question.
“If you were the one managing and overseeing the inbound marketing efforts for your company, why was there not there enough business to maintain your position?”
Excellent point. But the response was just as obvious. The leads came in, but they were not converted.
This raises the question of how you are tracking success for your initiatives. You have to have the right strategy, the right implementation, and the right talent in place to move the process along.
If inbound marketing resources are getting the leads, but sales is not converting them into customers, you have to look at why. Where the leads not qualified? Were the leads not appropriate? Or did they just not convert and go with competitors? Are you integrating your lead generation with lead nurturing, and through to the sales process, or are you leaving that to automation?
By setting specific measurable outcomes at each point along your sales funnel you can better optimize the process to make adjustments to ensure success at each step. Otherwise you end up mistaking inbound marketing for sales conversions, or lack there of.
By the time you reach the point that the only KPI that matters is sales, it’s pretty late in the game.