Beyond the close: How closed-won analysis can improve your marketing ROI
Your team recently supported the launch of a new product with a marketing campaign that helped turn a record number of prospects into customers. Marketing is happy, sales is happy, leadership is happy. Onto the next campaign?
Not yet. You should take the time to figure out why the first one was so successful. In today’s highly competitive business environment, with companies struggling just to get noticed, when something works it should be repeated. In this case, your marketing team needs to identify and understand why these prospects became customers.
Perform a closed-won analysis
The team should perform a closed-won analysis, reviewing completed sales to learn who is buying from you and to better understand what marketing activities have led to these sales. If you don’t analyze your successes you run the risk of missing valuable information and clues that could help you achieve future wins.
Examine the customer journey
Closed-won analyses are often done by sales teams, focusing on factors such as the territories, or even individuals, that made the most sales as well as what commonalities recently converted customers share. For inbound marketers, the closed-won analysis should examine the journeys that brought in prospects and turned them into customers. After collecting data about the customer journeys involved in a successful campaign you can begin analyzing elements such as:
Content — what content was involved in these successful customer journeys? How many average touches per prospect did it take to turn them into customers? Were any new topics, content types or messaging approaches taken with these assets? Did the creative take a new tack that hadn’t been tried before?
Targeting — did the campaign target a new persona, geography or other aspect of the market? Was new research or tools used to better understand and attract your target audience?
Tactics — were any new promotional tactics – different social media platforms, a new trade show, a previously untapped online outlet for display ads – used in the campaign?
Looking at these factors can help you understand what worked. Such efforts aren’t an exact science – one particular piece of content may have convinced a prospect to purchase from you while having no effect on another – but closed-won analyses will help you get a general picture of what success looks like.
Align the revenue generating team
Such examination of successful conversions shouldn’t be done in a vacuum; marketing should work closely with sales to agree upon the factors that led to closing these sales so they can bring both departments closer to their common goal – increasing revenue for your company. Closed-won analysis is one of a few tools you can use to closely connect sales and marketing to form your organization’s revenue team. Creating a shared vocabulary to bridge the gap between sales and marketing and thinking about the customer’s overall journey will help you maximize success.
Get more resources
Read more about the importance of aligning sales and marketing in my book The Principles of Inbound Marketing for Small and Start-Up Businesses. And visit our services page to learn how Marketing Strategy Solutions can help you get the most out of your revenue team.