Traditionally the sales funnel started where one would collect leads in ways, such as cold calls, inviting website visitors to sign up for your email list, and connecting with prospects on social media. It was designed to capture as much information about prospective customers as possible. It was known as the Awareness stage where you would collect information by offering a free download to gain those subscribers.
But you had no way of knowing why those people came into contact with your business.
Then you moved forward in the funnel by nurturing these leads to encourage them to become your customers. You would offer them a free webinar, show them a preview of your course, or offer a promotional discount or coupon.
Then came the step where you would want prospects to become your customers and further garner sales from this.
Unfortunately, marketing did not focus on the last two stages, instead they kept on going after leads, hoping that some of them would convert.
It’s a strategy that may work for a particular business but it’s not very efficient.
In recent times converting a lead into final sales has become an important function of a marketing manager. This is where Pipeline Marketing plays a key role. Pipeline marketing offers a solution for entrepreneurs who have no trouble generating leads, but it streamlines the process of converting leads into customers.
Pipeline marketing focuses on converting leads and prospects into customers instead of continuing to generate more leads. This is done so that pipeline marketing can make their sales process more efficient and less costly.
Pipeline marketing is a way to converge your sales and marketing efforts where they matter most. It’s a strategy that allows you to focus on the narrower part of your marketing funnel instead of the top.
How It Works
In pipeline marketing you set goals that would help you in converting these leads to sales, you figure out the best way to unite marketing and sales activities and to put your strategy in motion.
In case of pipeline marketing the focus is on how you convert cost per opportunity. Then you continue to measure and monitor metrics that help in garnering sales and continue refining your technique until you reach your end goal.
The Power Of Pipeline Marketing
Pipeline marketing unites the efforts of both marketing and sales. This is effective when there is a small team and when you’re serving as both the marketer and the sales professional for your business, you need to combine both the activities to one.
Pipeline marketing helps you to connect your marketing efforts to future revenue. Instead of focusing on generating leads you make it all part of the same process.
For Example, let’s say you get 200 leads every month in the last one year. Only 100 out of these 200 leads brings your product. That means you have a conversion percentage of about 50 for the leads you have brought. The numbers may be good but how can you make these numbers even better?
You understand that in certain cases you might have only converted only 1 to 2 percent of your total leads. It may be the result of poorly designed marketing strategies, but pipeline marketing can help you boost your numbers.
With those facts in mind, let’s look at how marketers can use pipeline marketing to improve total revenue?
Determine the Best Way to Achieve Your Goals
Now that you know what you want to achieve, you need action steps to take you there. In pipeline marketing, let’s look at the two market leaders and innovators that can help you achieve your goal and make your selling process easier.
A market leader CRM software that is known for providing easily accessible software following are the benefits Hubspot incorporates.
Improves the speed of Conversion
When you create a new deal in hubspot it automatically saves you time by adding most of the deals detail automatically and keeps the information updated through the records.
This will help you save time on data entry and focus on other important aspects of the process which would improve the number of leads you can get.
Customize according to your own sales process
Hubspot CRM does not start from scratch as compared to a normal sales process here it is much easier to create your own process.
You can add, edit, and delete deal stages where you would not need any help from any other department and you can directly push the tasks to your team keeping everything under your control. You can further drag and drop deals between stages when they’re successful. You can totally control your own pipeline and then you can focus on the deals that matter to you.
Track the progress and checks of your pipeline.
Hubspot CRM provides a total visible idea of individual and team performance. You can use a sales dashboard to check what is the progress toward sales quotas, monthly trends in key sales activities, and the overall value and health of your pipeline.
By identifying where in your pipeline potential revenue is piling up, you can rally your team around the right deals.
Pipedrive is another CRM solution that has disrupted the market with its ability to work as an account-management tool which assists with marketing and the entire sales process. Pipedrive has automation tools that can easily track and organize calls and emails and synchronize schedules across devices. This improves both efficiency and cut through assumptions within teams, which is often the main reason CRM implementations fail.
Simplifying User Interface
Pipedrive’s main focus has been on simplifying the user interface making the design simpler and easy to access and at the same time it has a minimalist layout. Compared to other CRM softwares like Bitrix24 CRM and Insightly CRM and their never-ending customization options, Pipedrive CRM feels startlingly clean even as it feels less dynamic and responsive.
Lead Generation through a customizable Chatbot
Pipedrive has introduced Leadbooster, an industry disruptive lead generation tool with a customizable chat bot that companies can add to their websites. In Leadbooster you can add programmed questions that would help you to generate new leads and would be added in your pipeline.
Through this you can also automate your workflow according to the standards and automate repetitive tasks and save time, as well as alert employees if they’ve missed a step in the process.
Reporting and Third-Party Integration
Pipedrive CRM has integration with many other tools that you can directly link like Google G Suite, Google Maps, MailChimp, and Zapier to name a few. Pipedrive helps you to have a forwarding address so you can store your relevant emails and share whenever you want with the team.
An Attractive and Straightforward CRM Solution
Pipedrive CRM is one of the easiest and straightforward CRM available. You’ll be able to get it up and running quickly, and the simple UI will let you spend less time working with the software and more time working on your next sale. A good manager would always understand how quick and easy it is to use and understand Pipedrive CRM.
Conclusion
Pipeline marketing might seem a little counterintuitive. But the most successful business is the one that generates revenue and just not only brings leads as it is not the source of your revenue. You can’t take leads to the bank and cash them. Neither can leads put food on the table.
About Ziel Lab
Ziel is a boutique marketing lab, based in Bangalore, India, and we build laser focussed campaigns for your inbound and outbound marketing.
While our experience spans a wide variety of projects and disciplines, our clients all share one common thread: They are all serious professionals who excel at what they do, and understand thevalue of great campaigns. If that sounds like you, send us a message and let’s talk.
References
1.Pipedrive CRM Review — Review 2019 — PCMag India. 20 Dec. 2019, https://in.pcmag.com/crm/94737/pipedrive-crm.
2.Sales Pipeline Management Tool | HubSpot CRM. https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm/pipeline-management
