Picture this: you’re single and it’s Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air and you are more certain than you’ve ever been that the perfect person for you is out there. But finding that person is a process. You’ve just arrived home from a long day at the office as a marketing manager. You open a bottle of wine, pull your cat onto your lap and start to ruminate. If you really think about it, and think about it hard, for a long time, the search for love is a lot like the sales cycle.
Let’s break it down. First you need to eliminate all the people who don’t fit your demographic profile, people who are already in relationships, not in your geographic area, not within your acceptable age range, etc. That’s where you get your pool of prospects, much like leads in the sales cycle. From there you want to find someone to whom you are attracted and willing to engage with socially. This is where the pool of prospects narrows to those you flirt with. In the sales cycle these would be your marketing qualified leads.
At this point you’ll flirt and if they flirt back hopefully it ends up in a date or several. You’re trying to impress, getting a sense of who you are as a people, seeing what you have in common. These would be your sales accepted leads. You’re calling, you’re meeting, and you’re working to hopefully move forward together. You might date multiple people at the same time or multiple people in your lifetime, it’s all part of the qualification process.
Not all the people you date convert into relationships. Sometimes things don’t work out for numerous reasons, but occasionally you really connect with someone and want to be together in a more serious capacity than just casually dating. That is when a relationship is formed and the “opportunity” for love is created. Several long walks on the beach, deep conversations, and candle-lit dinners later, you hear those three magic words that mean you’ve closed the deal, “I love you”. You did it! You found love!
But wait, you’re still single, and it’s Valentine’s Day.
Now you’re asking yourself, why haven’t I found love? It all sounds so simple, what could I be doing wrong? You’ve consumed several glasses of wine by now and your cat is looking hungrily at your face. You start to question everything. You ask yourself what kind of moves am I making and are they successful?
How am I putting myself out there? Is playing hard to get really the best option? Should I wear more fancy hats? Should I create an online dating profile? You start to lament the past. You’ve been on some dates that ended badly. You ask yourself, where did I go wrong? Why am I not getting back what I’m putting in? Where is my effort best spent? What moves are translating into dates? Which dates are forming lasting bonds?
You consume some heart shaped chocolates you purchased for yourself and indulge in dreaming of how to find the answers you need. The marketer in you pictures tracking all your engagements through the funnel of love to see which were and were not effective. You imagine knowing that wearing silly hat number five has resulted in you making the most dates but silly hat number three has never once helped you find a date.
You’re spending way too much money buying people drinks at the bar. This leads to a lot of dates but all of them have ended up disqualified, ironically because they drink too much. You’re conversion rate from dating to a relationship was 50% better when you called after one day rather than three. You are certain that if you had that kind of data you could find love.
You realize that you’re alone this Valentine’s Day because your love life is basically a mysterious black box. You cry out in horror and frustration, “How can I market myself for love if I don’t have the metrics I need!?!.” Defeated, you turn on Netflix, kiss your cat on the forehead, and settle in to watch The Notebook with the hope that next Valentine’s Day will prove more romantic than this one.
At Full Circle, we can’t help you find love, but we can help you capture the marketing metrics you need and track them through the entire sales cycle so you can generate more leads, close more deals, and grow the confidence found from being able to justify your marketing spending.
Who knows, maybe then, love will find you.
Get the funnel metrics you need. Full Circle Insights can help you diagnose your funnel. Here’s a quick cheat sheet on diagnosing problems in the middle of your funnel.
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