How Successful Brands Optimize their Sales & Marketing Funnel.
Not hearing back from prospects after a discovery meeting? Have not shown up to the scheduled meeting? Or worse, they are ghosting you.
The culprit is neither you or prospects
It's a traditional sales funnel that creates a gap between Marketing Qualified Lead (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) thus complexing the customer indecision phase.
This becomes even more complicated when brands reach out using generic outreach methodology that fails to build authenticity and use case awareness.
And in today’s time, customers, especially in the B2B world
Are also sales-savvy
They know how the sales process work
Have been sold to multiple times.
As a result, such audiences no longer engage with sales calls unless they find a solid use case that piques their interest in the first place.
That’s why today’s challenge is not just about generating leads
- It’s more about generating high-quality MQLs that can be quality SQLs
- Differentiate and create unique brand space in a crowded market full of similar brands like you.
Then what do great brands do differently that helps them generate quality MQLs & SQLS?
Successful brands in either B2B or B2C space have one thing in common; instead of aggressively focusing on sales outreach.
They invest in generating Information Qualified Leads (IQLs) which creates the foundation for building quality MQLs and SQLs.
What are IQLs?
Information Qualified Leadare the pool of people who knows about your brand, product or service via social media marketing or simply have shared their contact information for consuming some useful content.
These people may or may not have active intent but a large pool of provides a distinct branding advantage.
What helps brands build quality IQLs
- Tactical Social Presence: Not just limited selling or educating customers.
It's about creating a balance, researching your buyer purchase stages, and crafting content catering to all stages of the purchase journey, including post-purchase.
- Website Engagement: Nowadays, websites are a critical business resource.
The audiences build perceptions about a company and try to match & validate your sales pitch with case studies and presence.
Therefore, website building is a never-ending process;
- It needs constant research
- Messaging updates
To match evolving human preferences.
Together this helps brands create a brand space in the minds of customers. But building a strong pipeline of IQLs or MQLs is just half the job.
Why?
- Your IQLs & MQLs are also your competitors' IQLs & MQLs.
- Buyer purchase cycles are not constant; they switch between different stages over time.
That's why organizations need to build another pool of lead base:
In a nutshell, it makes them believe your solution is the right fit for their problem.
UQLs Benefits
A solid IQLs, engages audiences. They like you but to bridge the gap between need and desire (customer indecision stage) to buy your brand needs affinity and trust which UQLs helps your customer validate the authenticity of what you are saying through:
- Social proofs,
- Value-based case studies, and survey reports
Way Forward
Customers are complex, they have multiple options hence, walking the right path makes all the difference. Start the hard journey of building great business funnel just like great brands.
