I keep running into sales & marketing alignment 'opportunities' and felt compelled to expand on my thoughts from a few posts ago...
If you're like most marketers, you struggle with how to champion your company's brand, set forth marketing programs that drive revenue and profit objectives, and to align your activities with the efforts of the sales team. Add the responsibility of conducting ROI marketing and that's a big job!
Often times we see marketing communications strategies that 'swing for the fences'. After all, that's what heavy hitters do, right? But in baseball, the most successful players aren't always the home run kings; often they are those that get on base the most. They hit singles and doubles consistently.
Marketing should do the same.
Now I'm not saying that we should take our eye off our financial targets, or broader brand development objectives, but by breaking down the big goals into smaller, easier-to-achieve milestones, I believe we stand a better chance of scoring big.
When it comes to email marketing, event marketing, interactive marketing, or other such lead-generation programs, focus your marketing communications on the sales cycle. Focus your marketing strategies on the sales cycle What steps does your sales team follow today? I contend that every business has to do 4 things very well:
1. Attract
2. Cultivate
3. Close
4. Retain
Every sales organization has variations of these basic steps. For some it's 5 steps, or even 10 or more, but the main objectives are the same.
Next, in which steps of your sales process is the team lacking? Perhaps you're creating tons of highly qualified sales leads, but failing to cultivate the opportunity. You might be finding great leads and cultivating well, but fall short at the close. Proper marketing strategy can play a big role here. Consider implementing a series of communications designed to mirror these steps in the sales process.
Attract: Use your Cincinnati advertising agency for brand development and broad market awareness, and search engine optimization and blogging as attraction methods. Cast a wide net
Cultivate: Email marketing is built for building and maintaining relationships. So are event marketing programs and interactive marketing endeavors. Build an educational video series for your blog, or a strategic customer event to get in front of your market. Use these opportunities to build a solid understanding of those you serve.
Close: Of course, nothing happens if you don't make the sale. Document your past successes and leverage case study programs and customer testimonials. Deliver 3rd party content and proof of concept. Demonstrate the use case and ROI.
Retain: The worst thing you could do to a customer is leave them all alone. Using the above methods and channels, deliver value added content. Your email campaigns turn to a nurture marketing approach, offering tips, resources, and ideas on how to get more value. Your blog is an obvious channel to deliver content from your product managers, engineers and manufacturing staff. Leverage these channels to constantly collect customer feedback and new use cases. Let your customers know you're listening and use their insight to improve the product or service, or to even build and entirely new one.
If there's one common mistake we see in small business marketing and that within larger enterprises, it's the fact that marketing communications programs are tasked with too much. With such big expectations of any one effort, it's tough to deliver and even more difficult to measure.
Break down the big goals. Create small wins. Measure success in inches, not miles. Focus on hitting lots of singles. It's easier to win and make corrections when you're not swinging for the fences.
