MOFU is not the latest disease that can be treated with a prescription drug and warns of several side effects. But left untreated, MOFU is a serious condition that is proven to make thousands of advanced marketers sick, says Kelly Waffle, a contributing blogger on marketo.com, a B2B marketing and sales blog.
MOFU stands for the Middle of the Funnel stage in a marketer’s lead funnel or revenue cycle. Too often, a blockage develops in the MOFU stage where sales leads stagnate, wither and die. Companies suffer painful losses of thousands if not millions of dollars in revenue opportunities, Waffle says.
MOFU ailments are usually associated with advanced marketers because they have developed a marketing funnel process and the ailments can be detected with proper analytics. But the problems of MOFU or leads not progressing affect virtually all marketers to one extent or another.
MOFU ailments can go undetected for years within a company because most marketers focus their time on generating demand and qualified sales leads (top of the funnel activities). Sales teams focus their time on closing the opportunities (bottom of the funnel activities). That leaves the middle for revenue-stealing conditions to grow and negatively affect the health of your marketing funnel.
The good news, says Waffle, is that it is not too late to cure the ailments of MOFU within your company. Here’s what he suggests:
• Get a checkup on a regular basis.
Make sure you are using a marketing automation platform with advanced analytics capabilities. These capabilities will help you analyze flow, conversion and velocity metrics from stage to stage. You will be able to see trends and SLA violations (sales not following up with qualified leads) over time and take appropriate action such as creating a lead stage conversion campaign. You will become more proactive rather than reactive.
• Feed and nurture your leads.
Leads respond especially well to high-value content. Make sure that you take the time to identify the personas (executive, power user, mid-level manager) in the middle of your funnel and provide them with tailored diets of content with relevant messaging.
• Get your leads out and exercising.
It’s great to make sure that your leads are digesting the right content, but they also need to stay engaged. Just like going to the gym, it is often hard to get someone into the mind set to take the next step and engage. Be sure to create calls to action in your messaging to the MOFU that drives them to compelling events such as webinar, seminar or product demos. Get them into an environment where they will ask questions or start thinking about your company, product or services a little deeper.
• Communicate with your leads.
You need to nurture your leads by feeding them quality content. You need to get them beyond good nutrition and into exercising their mind. However, many will have excuses why they cannot attend one event or another. It is important that your leads get the answers they need when they need them. They need to know that you are accessible to them to provide information.
In the end, it is important to remember that there is no marketing funnel that exists separately from a sales funnel.
Both funnels are part of one large revenue cycle. If there are problems with the middle of the funnel, those problems affect the company overall.
