Your marketing may be creative, beautiful and interesting, but is it actually driving customers to the sales team and revenue to your business? It’s time for a reality check: no matter how innovative you think your marketing is, if it’s not driving growth, it’s failing.
For the next few months, we’ll be taking a hard look at marketing’s role in driving measurable, bottom-line-focused business results. We’ll be encouraging you to ask tough questions about your own marketing campaigns, and to evaluate their effectiveness using data. To kick off, let’s consider the three areas of business growth on which we will be focusing for the next few months on the blog. These also happen to be the things at the center of our work as an agency: branding, demand generation and sales activation.
A truly differentiated brand is what separates good companies from great ones. Ask yourself: can you quickly and easily define your brand’s essence? Is your brand clearly defined in both internal and external communications? Do your current customers not only relate to your brand, but actively promote it? If you can’t sum up what your brand stands for, and you can’t confirm that it’s expressed in your marketing, your audience won’t be able to define your brand either.
To drive business growth, your brand needs to saturate every aspect of your messaging, from the logo to product names. Where can your marketing department improve dedication to the brand? In February, we’ll be providing answers to this question and more.
While demand generation can be achieved through a variety of approaches, its goal is always to engage prospects and motivate them to become interested in your products or services. If your marketing is unearthing new prospects and leading to sales calls, it is creating some kind of demand. But is it aligned with your organization’s overall goals and messaging?
To understand if your marketing is generating the right type of demand, take a look at how those sales conversations are working. Are the leads you are warming up looking for what you are actually selling? Is your messaging consistent? Check back on our blog in March for a broader discussion on generating meaningful demand.
Ultimately, whatever the mix of tactics used, the goal of marketing is to drive sales. In this digital age, marketing automation is key to successful sales conversion. In fact, organizations that use marketing automation to nurture leads see a 451% increase in qualified leads and 53% higher conversion rates on average. But marketing automation alone isn’t enough. Leading companies understand the importance of using their automation campaigns to generate and deliver intelligence for their sales teams, and spend a great deal of time and attention optimizing marketing-sales alignment. Marketing must, above all else, position sales for success. When we take a deeper look at sales activation on the blog in April, we’ll include marketing automation’s role in lead nurturing, and the best practices you need to know to better align your marketing and sales efforts.
Could your marketing team do more to drive business growth? We’re always happy to answer your questions and discuss strategy. Contact us.
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