Delivering Leads to the Top, Middle, and Bottom of Your Sales Funnel

So much attention gets paid to the bottom of the sales and marketing funnel – those prospects that are closest to converting into a new customer – that the middle and top of the funnel can sometimes feel neglected. But watch out – if you’re not constantly filling up the top of the funnel, you’ll find yourself without anyone asking for a proposal other than those few referral that trickle in.

So what to do?

As you look to building a more robust sales and marketing machine for 2024, I’ll boil it down to a few simple ways to fill the top of your marketing funnel.

1. Create something interesting. I’m very reluctant to say “content” here because 99% of you will read that as “blog post”. And while a blog is a great platform to share content: I’d encourage you to think bigger. Come up with an original idea for a video, e-book, download, PDF, sales guide, research article, etc. Example: we recently created a Field Guide for Credit Union CEO’s for our client Think|Stack. This guide takes 5 of the most important IT themes a CEO needs to address in their first 90 days and boils it down into an easily consumable, fits-in-your-pocket piece of sales collateral. They mail this guide to new CEOs when we see a change in leadership at a credit union, offering our services as an expert in the industry in their first days on the job. We also use this guide in LinkedIn ad campaigns, on our website as gated content, and at trade shows to give to prospects offering our services. Think of a way to tell your story, and help prospects, in an interesting way.
2. Whatever you create – pay to promote it. As much as you’d like to think that your prospects sit around dreaming about you, but just can’t find your phone number – they don’t. You have to figure out an economical, impactful way to get your new shiny content in front of people, or they’ll never see it. SEO, paid ads, webinars, email marketing, industry news, heck use a billboard for all I care! Just don’t let that awesome new content sit on a shelf where only you can see it.
3. Have a plan to nurture those top of funnel prospects – or you’ll scare them off. Remember, these are top of funnel leads – they haven’t asked for a proposal, you shouldn’t put them in your sales projections. Have a plan in place to nurture them with additional email drip campaigns, social media content, retargeting ads, and more – so when they are ready to move down the funnel to the consideration phase, you’re still top of mind and ready to help them make that transition.

As we head into the last few months of 2023, and you’re planning for your 2024 lead generation machine – we’d love to help, please don’t hesitate to reach out.