Pipeline Marketing: 5 Reasons Your Business Needs to Focus On

As a business owner or business professional of some sort, what do you do every day? We don’t mean the obvious. We mean the nose-to-the-grindstone, the dogged, the dig-deep type of stuff.

When you go into the office or log onto your business accounts from home every morning, what do you do? Can you even keep track as you try to think of everything? 

Yes, you have to build sales and keep up with your sales marketing strategy. But what steps do you take to get there? How do you ensure that you are building your sales pipeline? How do you shape your marketing efforts? What about the budget, or the seemingly “small” tasks you have to accomplish? Paying bills, checking in on your accounts, attending meetings and conferences. 

Yeah. It’s a lot, to say the least (the very least). 

And with all these new marketing tools invading your every corner, how do you know what works? 

With us to stand in that same corner. And with the help of a little something called pipeline marketing. 

What is Pipeline Marketing?

You may not have heard of it yet. Don’t worry about that. Pipeline marketing is a relatively new concept in the world that is marketing. You need it, though, if you feel like you have a massive pool of leads that never turn into quality customers. 

In essence, pipeline marketing is the new age of lead generation. It is a strategy that you can adopt where you prioritize lead conversion. In other words, you prioritize lead conversion to turn them into paying customers as opposed to generating more and more leads. 

How do you go about it, though? First, you have to eliminate your silos. You cannot let your marketing and sales teams sit in their own separate offices all day and ignore the existence of one another. You have to merge the two and their combined efforts for pipeline marketing to work. 

Think about it for a second: both departments share the same goal. They want to drive revenue, right? So if you have not already combined the two and their efforts, why not? Often, business owners like you answer with the same reasons as to why not. 

They both take different steps and approaches to accomplish their goals and fulfill their responsibilities, day in and day out. Even the metrics that measure their success are different for sales and marketing. That makes it tricky to keep everyone on the same page. 

But pipeline marketing, and the related marketing pipeline stages and pipeline strategy, combine their efforts. It finds common ground between the two and shows you how to give both teams room to stand on it. 

And most importantly of all, you get higher levels of revenue coming your way as a result. 

Marketing Funnel vs Sales Funnel

To break down those silos, we have to start with the difference between your marketing funnel and your sales funnel. 

Let’s talk about your marketing funnel, or marketing pipeline, first. 

Here, you and your marketing department work to guide leads to where you want them to be. As with most funnels, your potential customers start in the awareness stage. They end when you convert users and turn them into leads. These are the people who take the action you want them to take, per your marketing strategy.

You can categorize the funnel as a whole into individual stages. Each stage works toward the goal of turning a user into a lead. You end with converting them as you take them from awareness to conversion. That conversion can come in any form, like opting in for a newsletter or giving your team a call or email that shows interest. 

What about your sales funnel? Your sales funnel also has stages. On paper, it looks quite similar to your marketing funnel. Your sales funnel, though, works to drive leads into long-standing, paying customers. The end game here is to close a sale. 

Sounds foolproof, right? 

Not really. 

This dated approach limits your ability to ensure those leads are quality ones. Your marketing team could generate hundreds of them a day. But you might notice your sales team seeming to fall behind and only close a few sales from the leads daily. 

It’s not a matter of “falling behind,” contrary to what you might have once thought. It’s just a matter of the fact that you have not been using pipeline marketing to align the two departments. And that changes today. 

Why Focus on Pipeline Marketing?

You need to be active in all parts of your business. But obviously, that is not possible on your own. That’s why you hired your team members, isn’t it? And the only way you can ensure business success and long-term growth is by making sure they are active in their respective roles within the company. 

So you want to focus on pipeline marketing because it allows you, and everyone else involved, to do that. 

What are your overarching professional goals? “Money” is the first thing that comes to mind. You cannot get there without the right approach. 

Most people, including your competition, spend a lot of time on top-of-the-funnel activities. That goes for both sales and marketing. To stand out, both of those parties need to start paying attention to the middle and bottom of the funnel instead. 

It gives everyone a big-picture view of what you need to do for general success, specific to your organization. The minutiae become less of a focal point but comes naturally as you develop your holistic strategy. 

You will see a greater ROI, higher revenue and better understanding of all aspects of your business across the board. 

Why is Pipeline Marketing Important?

Without pipeline marketing, you show your potential and existing customers that you favor a one-size-fits-all approach to selling. Yikes. 

Nobody wants to buy from a company that thinks they are the same as Average Joe. 

With this type of marketing, though, you add a new dimension to your client interactions. One that nurtures them through the buyer journey and pays mind to their needs. 

Of course, you still need to generate leads. That goes without saying. But like we said, you need quality leads instead of thinking along the lines of “Oh, anyone will do!” 

To qualify your leads, sales and marketing can now turn to pipeline marketing. It will help them scrape valuable data together to achieve a streamlined lead qualification process. Then, your marketers can take over for a bit to pinpoint where in the pipeline they are and what content they will respond to. 

Why Do You Need to Focus on Pipeline Marketing?

You know why you need to highlight pipeline marketing now. But why do you specifically need it? How will you benefit? What’s in it for you? 

All great questions. Allow us to demonstrate. Below, you will find the top five reasons your business can succeed with its help. 

1. Allows Optimization for Faster Sales

Now, we stumble upon the sales problem of the century: time. Have you ever had a sales rep that spends months on end trying to convert a lead? Maybe they finally do, maybe they don’t at all. But we’re sure you have experienced this same dilemma at least once in your professional lifetime. 

With pipeline marketing, you will not have to worry about it anymore. Remember that you will start to spend more time on marketing and sales activities closer to the middle and bottom of your pipeline? This means you are putting out customized content to your leads. Leads will come to you once you have already piqued their interest about your business and what you sell. 

2. High Conversion Through High-Quality Leads

As of right now, do you have a lot of generated leads? Sure. 

As of right now, are you converting as many of them as you need to? Nope. It might feel like a zero-sum game, in fact. 

You are not getting the revenue you need at this very moment. Because your leads are not high-quality. Less is more sometimes. This is true in particular for your business when you are spending time (which is, as you know, money) on generating low-quality leads. 

Trust us. You would rather have a handful of loyal customers at the end of the day than a ton of leads that are going nowhere fast. 

3. Will Bring More Loyal and Paying Customers, Not Just More Leads

Are you making your hard-working marketers’ spend their time on lead generation marketing content? Are you expecting it to work in terms of cash flow for your company? If you are, you might want to lower your expectations. 

Leads are great, but you’re not making any money from them. That’s for sure. 

Instead, look over your budget. Assign time and budgeting for your marketers to appeal to buyers at the bottom of your funnel. That means you will get the most out of your existing leads rather than ignoring the ones who could be your best customer to date. 

4. Revenue Over Meaningless Metrics

You have to measure your efforts to see if they are effective or a massive waste of time. But as we went over earlier, your main goal is to drive revenue. 

What stats are you reporting on now? Are they vanity metrics, like site traffic and social media post reactions? 

Pipeline marketing lets you report on metrics that value revenue as the end-all, be-all of your company’s success. 

5. Measure Your Marketing With Cost Per Opportunity

Do you know how much it costs you to acquire a new lead? Sure you do. That’s your cost per lead. But it’s time to draw your attention elsewhere. 

What is your cost per opportunity? Or, how much does it cost you to acquire a new paying customer? 

You don’t want to spend money on leads that don’t spend money with your business. 

Conclusion

We know because we’ve been there too: you have a full schedule. You want better leads, and you now understand what pipeline marketing is to get there. But you cannot block out time in your busy schedule to set it in motion. 

Hi. Nice to meet you. We are the sales and ads wizards of Selling Revolution. And we are the answer to your questions “How do I focus on quality leads?” and “How do I improve my team member’s training so they can push us towards success?” 

You asked, and we’re here to answer. High-intent buyers, consistent quality leads and more sales are only some of the ways we can launch your business to the land of success. 

And like all things sales-related, time is of the essence. 

Click here to book a call with us today.