A single ant can bear 5,000 times its own weight – not too shabby for such a small insect. But strong as they are individually, ants are most impressive when seen in their colonies. Each ant serves a necessary function, whether that’s gathering food, laying eggs, or protecting the queen. Together, they sustain a thriving, dynamic colony.
Marketing teams, whether internal or a collection of outside resources or contractors, can learn something from these tiny heavyweights. Rather than each person toiling away in isolation, everyone should collaborate and innovate together for the greater good of the company.
When you draw customers into your pipeline, you must give them a coordinated path to follow. You can’t delight them with a fun social media post, then expect them to follow up on their own. Clear calls to action turn prospects into customers.
Establishing that path requires a team effort, with everyone bringing his or her expertise to bear on the customer experience. Let’s assume you recently hired a great SEO guy and a whiz at email campaigns. It’s not enough for them to excel at their roles individually. They need to work with one another, and the rest of the team, to create a functioning, profitable funnel.
Here’s how to develop this infrastructure in your organization:
1. Create a central command center
Assign one person or a group of people to coordinate your marketing message. They’ll facilitate conversations between different marketing divisions so that the AdWords people talk to the email team, the SEO guy works with the content marketers, and so on. The last thing you want is for prospects to get conflicting messages at different points in the sales funnel. Your command center ensures that your brand voice and message are accurately reflected across all channels.
2. Give every channel a function
Marketing strategies should lead prospects effortlessly through the conversion process. To achieve this, end each step with an invitation to learn more about the company. For instance:
- The landing page encourages visitors to sign up for your newsletter.
- The newsletter suggests they attend a webinar.
- The webinar ends with an invitation to schedule a free evaluation.
Providing great content at every step is important. But creating the coordinated path is the real key to conversions.
3. Be consistent
Potential customers enter the sales funnel from any number of points – an ad, blog post, an article published with their favorite website. However they find you, they should encounter the same brand personality and message throughout their experience.
Have you ever seen a fully developed ant colony? Beneath those tiny hills lies an intricate, multi-tiered, bustling network of insects. Sure, they’re resilient on their own. But they’re much stronger together – and so is your marketing team. When everyone collaborates, they produce rich, compelling campaigns that convince your audience they simply have to have what you’re selling.
