We’ve already discussed how sales and marketing impact each other from a broad perspective, but what does their relationship look like on a day-to-day basis? For today’s marketers, it’s essential to be able to communicate marketing goals and strategy to the sales department, but it’s also crucial to understand how daily marketing tactics influence what’s happening further down the funnel.
Today, we’re taking a look at the four marketing tactics that impact sales most directly and exploring how marketers can ensure that each of these tactics are optimized for sales success.
65% of sales representatives say they can’t find content to send to prospects. However, 90% of consumers find custom content useful — and considering that so much of the buying cycle happens before a prospect ever speaks to a sales representative, it’s essential to have a content marketing strategy that sets the sales team up for success.
To ensure your content marketing is optimized for an impact on sales, communicate with your sales team about what points of information they feel are most beneficial for prospects to encounter before they speak to someone directly. Use data and insights to target content toward prospects, nurture leads already in the sales funnel and re-engage cold leads (more on that later.)
Optimizing your online presence for search engines is crucial to increasing site visits, inbound leads and sales. The top spot on a Google search gets 36.4% of all clicks, so it’s clear that having a strong SEO strategy is what’s going to drive purchase-ready leads to your website and get them into the sales funnel. Using keyword analysis, you can even identify the intent behind keyword searches, allowing you to target and deliver leads with a high conversion potential to the sales team.
Thought leadership is what defines content that is simply interesting from content that encourages leads to buy. By establishing your brand and its leadership as experts in your field, you build trust with potential customers and empower salespeople to leverage your brand’s differentiators in their negotiations.
When Movéo developed a thought leadership campaign for Mercy Health hospital system, we focused on differentiating them from their competitors and developing a brand persona that positioned their leaders as expert voices in the healthcare market. As a result, we were able to resonate with their key audience and grow brand awareness by 77% in 12 months. Read our case study on this project here.
Marketing efforts that nurture customers when they’re making a buying decision can have a significant impact on lead-to-close rates as well as the length of the sales cycle. By developing a nurture marketing strategy that reaches potential buyers at every stage of the sales funnel and supporting ongoing sales activity and re-activates cold leads, marketers can generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. How is that for an impact on sales?
Let us know: what marketing tactics impact your company’s sales most, and how do you maximize them?
Photo Credit: Sylvia Fredriksson via Flickr Creative Commons
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