October 5, 2023 Perfectly Timing a Sophisticated Sales Funnel

Digital strategies can help sales teams focus on the best, potentially most profitable leads.

By Stephen Lackey, VP of Marketing, SmartBug Media

Time can often be the greatest adversary of sales teams in the manufacturing industry. Salespeople simply might not have enough time to pursue new leads while nurturing current leads and upselling existing customers.

Nevertheless, the pipeline of new customers needs to keep flowing. A sophisticated sales funnel, fueled by a partnership of sales and digital marketing strategies, not only produces a steady stream of leads but also can identify leads most likely to convert into profitable customers. In this way, the sales team is making the most of their time—not wasting it.

Data: The Secret Fishing Spot

For sales to make the most of its resources—not only time but also manpower and budget—accurately assessing the quality and profitability of leads is essential. However, the data that marketing gathers is anything but limited, providing a way for sales to focus on the best leads.

Good data can be used for “lead scoring,” in which prospects are rated on a variety of factors that measure how they have interacted with a company’s digital marketing efforts, company attributes, or their own characteristics. Some lead scoring categories may include:

• Website visits, including views of product pages, technical resources, and more
• E-books and other premium content offerings (e.g., infographics, checklists) downloaded
• Their job title, seniority, or department
• Their company’s annual revenue or head count

Apply some algorithms—usually through a customer relationship management (CRM) platform—to this data and you get leads sorted by their potential. For sales, this scoring not only improves efficiency but also increases the odds of success.

Consider this example: A busy salesperson has just a half hour set aside each day to call or email new prospects. With lead scoring, they can reach out to the handful of most qualified prospects, as identified by the CRM, and already communicate from a position of strength, knowing that the people they’re talking to are interested in what they have to offer.

Think of this data advantage like a secret fishing spot in that you know where to take your boat to snag some trophy bass that are biting on the lures from your tackle box. That lake is big, but thanks to lead scoring, you’ve narrowed it down to a specific cove.

Good marketing data also allows you to segment leads by location, company size, products/services needed, role within the organization, and anything else that contributes to your ideal customer profile. Besides informing your sales team even more, segmentation helps you identify trends, allowing you to adjust tactics as needed.

Respectful, Relentless Lead Nurturing

Of course, a successful, sophisticated sales funnel is more than just that initial call to a prospect. Every interaction, every digital touchpoint, and every next step—no matter how small—should advance the relationship with leads.

The email sequences you send to leads offer a perfect opportunity to nurture the relationship. Say, for example, a prospect has downloaded an e-book from your website. Your follow-up email sequence could go as follows:

1. A thank-you email with a link to the e-book and other resources the lead might enjoy
2. A follow-up email asking the lead how they liked the downloaded resource and a link to a product catalog
3. Social proof sharing how others have benefited from your product
4. Technical specs of your product, perhaps linking to specific webpages with more information
5. A video highlighting your facilities or demonstrating your product at work

Retargeting ads also work especially well for the manufacturing industry. This paid media strategy identifies visitors to your website and displays your digital ads on other channels: social media, search engines, news sites, and so on. In this way, prospects aren’t forgetting you and are invited to return to your universe.

Naturally, direct communication between the salesperson and a lead is often most effective, and what leads aren’t clicking on your website can also drive this. One great strategy when you have a lead’s contact info is to reach out when, for example, they visited your “Request a Quote” page but didn’t fill out the form. Call or email within a day and ask if they have any questions. By taking the initiative via your digital efforts to build the relationship, prospects learn more about the partner you can be for their organization.

An Ongoing Commitment

Manufacturers and their sales teams might be apprehensive about investing time and resources into a digital marketing strategy to improve their funnels. The old way worked for so long, so why change things?

In today’s landscape, the question shouldn’t be, “Why?” but instead, “When?” Companies that don’t adapt risk being left behind, scrambling for leads that are selecting competitors that inspired and impressed them sooner and better.

Perhaps more importantly, feeding the modern sales funnel requires an ongoing effort from sales and marketing. New content attracts new leads; updated trends necessitate updated digital strategies. Marketing must listen to what sales is saying—and vice versa. A great sales funnel is constantly being optimized, assessed, and refined to maximize profitability. The time you put in on the front end can make all the difference when a lead is ready to become a customer.

Stephen Lackey is the vice president of marketing at SmartBug Media. He is an INBOUND speaker and HubSpot advocate with a proven track record of leading teams, growing revenue, and maximizing efficiencies in marketing and sales. Stephen thrives on identifying and executing new methods of product and company growth.

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