Closed-Loop Marketing: The Glue that Binds Marketing & Sales

Let’s admit it now . . . Marketing and sales teams have not always stuck together like glue.  In fact, their relationship probably resembles rubber more than it does glue.  Part of the reason the relationship between the two has failed is due to marketing being really, really bad at tying marketing initiatives to closed sales.  But, and I mean a big BUT, we now have the technology to easily close the loop so there shouldn't be any more excuses. 

What is closed-loop marketing?

As you may have guessed from the introduction, closed-loop marketing is the tracking of marketing channels from the time a person first lands on the website to the time they close as a sale. Closed-loop marketing integrates your marketing software with the sales’ CRM system.  This type of marketing gives you the ability to see which channels are most successful at closing sales and which ones may need to be revised. 

How does closed-loop marketing work?

Attract: When a visitor first enters your website, you should know where they come from.  Otherwise, how will you target them in the future?  With a closed-loop marketing software like Hubspot, you know what attracted visitors in the first place and where they came from.  This is the beginning of the loop, and you can track your website’s attraction using the sources tool in Hubspot or Google Analytics if you don’t have Hubspot.

Convert: The next segment of the loop is discovering where visitors convert to leads.  Are leads more likely to convert on your webinars than they are your eBooks?  Again, the sources tool in Hubspot will show you which channels are more likely to convert leads.  You should also monitor landing page performance for lead conversions.  If you notice a particular landing page is higher in lead conversions, you may want to promote that page more.

Close: More importantly to you and sales, is whether those leads converting are valuable.  What makes a lead valuable is whether or not they are likely to become a customer. With closed-loop marketing, you are able to track the path the new customer first found you on and all the way to their first talk with sales.  

What do you need to get closed-loop marketing started?

First of all, you do need a marketing software.  As I said earlier, Hubspot is one marketing software you can use to close the loop and is one of the most preferred by marketers because it is an all-in-one marketing software.   Literally, you can do everything from hosting your website on their CMS to closing the loop with CRM integration.

The next thing you need to get started is a CRM that your salespeople actually use.  Sounds trivial right?  However, I’ve come to the conclusion that poor CRM use is a bad habit of sales people.  Thus, you have to make sure that they are updating their CRM, especially any closed sales. 

Finally, as I said before, you have to have your marketing software integrated with the CRM.  This allows a lead to be tracked from the moment they land on your site to the time they sign on the dotted line.  Without technology, especially in larger companies, a lead is handed off to sales, and you never find out if this lead was valuable.

Now that we have the technology to make closed-loop marketing possible, why would’t you implement it?  Closed-loop marketing allows marketers to make more informed decisions about our marketing campaigns, it helps us to deliver better lead quality, and most importantly, it is completely changing the relationship between sales and marketing by making them more cohesive or shall I say “adhesive.” (Cheesy, I know)