Before you can set up your pipeline, you must first have a core activity like a show, email outreach, or cold calling. Whatever your outbound strategy is, that is fundamental for pipeline development.
Today we’re unpacking how we set up our pipeline here at HEARD Media, from the numbers to how we think about pipeline setup. Hopefully that will help you as you’re setting yours up.
We go through this strategic process with all of our customers, but it’s simpler for us because of our size. We’re not a huge company, so some of our costs are smaller than most of our customers and we don’t need a massive amount of qualified leads.
When it comes to developing our pipeline, here are the outreach numbers HEARD Media needs to reach on a monthly basis.
258 qualified clicks
Google has about a 4% conversion rate and Facebook has about a 10% conversion rate, making the average conversion rate 7%. Of all the people we reach out to, a 7% conversion rate means we need to get 258 qualified clicks a month.
80 emails
If we get 258 qualified clicks, that means we’re going to acquire 20 emails per week (80 emails per month) to add to our prospective database. That’s at about a 7% conversion rate, which is very achievable assuming those 258 are qualified people.
The way you go about that is by creating the right types of content, putting it in the right places through organic and paid media, making sure your ad copy is effective. It’s not quite scientific, but there is a skill to it.
4 discovery calls
Discovery calls are what we call our initial sales call. Of the numbers we’ve laid out so far, we’re hoping to hold one new discovery call a week (four new customer discovery calls per month).
From 258 a month, we’re only looking for four people to raise their hand and say, “I’m interested.”
Of those four, we want to close one.
At the end of the day, all this talk about growth is really just making sure you’re getting enough at-bats to do two things.
#1 — Test your messaging
Make sure your conversation, the messaging that you have is actually effective. If you’re seeing zero conversions, that’s not necessarily saying something about the platform that you’re on but your messaging and what you’re saying. That’s the first thing you need to confirm.
Are you talking about the right things in the right way?
#2 — Recognize your capabilities
Your pipeline going to allow you to see what you’re capable of in terms of spend-to-conversions or return on investment. It’s not going to be as clean as what I just laid out. There will be limits.
You build a digital strategy by backing into paid campaigns based on the business objectives that you actually have.
The biggest mistake a lot of marketers make is trying to make a certain number of impressions every day. What does that do for you? You need to know what the business objective is before you begin that budget breakdown.
