In today’s world of Inbound Marketing, we have the ability - using analytics tools - to truly dissect every aspect of our marketing approach. By studying the numbers, it’s easy to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for everything you do in your marketing strategy.
Every channel, every lead source, for that matter every action a visitor takes on your website can be boiled down to simple metrics that can tell you how your visitors convert, the quality of those leads and customers, and the entire path they took from first contact to close. The best part is that - with the proper tools - it can all be done automatically!
If you’ve ever wondered exactly what path your customers took to find your company, research the products and services, and decided to become a client, closed-loop analytics will tell you.
What Exactly is Closed-Loop Analytics?
Closed-loop analytics allow you to track and analyze the entire lifecycle of your customers: From the source of the first touchpoint when a visitor first finds your site, to every interaction with your website, which links or buttons they click on (we use these as "calls-to-actions"), until they become your customer. Tracting each stage of interaction until you close a customer is invaluable.
It helps you tremendously with sales and marketing alignment, because you can see exactly what activities are working and guiding visitors through your lead funnel. By gaining insight into what activities are likely to yield a customer, you can begin to understand what is working and what isn’t producing. This is how you can “close the loop” on your marketing efforts.
Grow Your Business Using Closed-Loop Analytics
Inbound marketing is a fluid process that consists of testing and refinement in order to develop the most effective strategy. Closed-loop analytics allow you to get inside your customers' heads and understand what leads them to make their buying decisions. Let’s look at five ways you can grow your business using closed-loop analytics:
1. Know where your customers come from.
Because you can track visitors from the source, you will soon see which channels produce. This allows you to focus your marketing efforts where they are most likely to be acted upon.
2. Take the guesswork out of your marketing.
Closed-loop analytics can tell you exactly what is working. This can help take the guesswork out of your next campaign. By using actual facts and statistics, you can develop your future campaigns to maximize their effectiveness.
3. Understanding your audience.
A key part of successful Inbound Marketing is identifying and understanding your target audience. By monitoring your visitors' actions and behaviors you can understand what content they are interacting with and which content is generating results. You can then create content to target the buyers who are most likely to respond.
4. Attribute sales directly back to specific leads.
Knowing what tactics lead to sales allows you to refine your marketing efforts. Closed-loop analytics allows you to directly identify what activities online are bringing in the most and least revenue.
5. Qualify leads and pass them to sales at exactly the right time.
Closing the loop helps you to define your lead funnel. By tracking and understanding the actions of your visitors, you can qualify which actions indicate they are ready to buy. This understanding allows you to align your sales and marketing teams to maximize your chances of converting those leads into satisfied customers.
The closed-loop method can help you to better understand your target market. This understanding can translate into more effective marketing efforts which can help to guide your visitors through your lead funnel, align your sales and marketing teams, and most importantly, grow your business!
