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by Bri Curran and Erica Eyerman on Thu, Feb 06, 2020 @ 09:15
Many executives and decision-makers look at marketing as an expense rather than an investment. Now’s the time to put this assumption to bed. Unfortunately, many opt to cut their marketing budgets before realizing that marketing and sales go hand in hand.
In fact, aligning your sales and marketing strategies will be more crucial than ever in the upcoming year. Why invest more money in your marketing strategy? Organizations with closely aligned sales and marketing teams and strategies experience 36% higher customer retention rates. Check out these five things you should know when aligning sales and marketing strategies.
1. Digital Marketing Provides Unmatched Data
Today’s modern digital world makes it easier than ever to track every interaction a future prospect has on your website, social media accounts and content. Utilizing a customer relationship management tool to organize your leads will help you follow them throughout the entire buyer's journey.
Digital platforms and social media platforms allow you to track activity from your posts, track follower behavior and current trends in your industry. Utilizing today’s digital marketing tools can help you build robust reports and help you tailor your sales plan to be the most successful it can be. With this knowledge in their back pocket, your sales team can make calls a little warmer and can easily increase their conversions.
2. Buyers Are a Step Ahead
In the past, sales teams had to pound the pavement and hunt for potential customers. Looking for leads is now a thing of the past. Today, customers are well informed and do their due diligence online before purchasing a product or service thanks to digital efforts. No longer are sales teams needing to beat down doors to let people know about their products and services. In fact, for many successful digital campaigns, the opposite is happening.
A successful digital campaign often has customers interacting with offers and forms before they even realize it. Forms are a great way to capture lead information without being too aggressive. A potential customer will fill out the form in order to gain more information on gated content from your website, and in return, you gain basic information from them to include them in future drip campaigns.
Customers are also driving themselves back to blogs, landing pages and websites and inquiring information on what they would like to purchase. This is aligning sales and marketing strategies more than ever before and making it easier to pull lead information from your campaigns and marketing efforts.
3. A Dynamic Duo: Content and SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) sounds like a magic spell, doesn't it? It might not be an actual spell, but it is digital marketing magic. SEO makes it possible for you to increase traffic to your content and websites by using specific keywords potential customers are searching for in a search engine. With a designated SEO plan, you can determine which keywords have high-ranking search volume and are relevant to your business. By weaving top-performing keywords into your content, it will increase content traffic and website engagement.
It’s important to continually create new web pages for your website in the form of blogs, videos and images to back up your content and boost keywords. Utilizing SEO strategies within your content is a great way to increase your search rank in today’s modern digital world.
4. Digital Marketing Aids the Sale
Having a cohesive brand is crucial to any marketing initiative, especially when it comes to digital marketing. Brand awareness helps with recognition and lead generation and, in the end, results in more sales. In order for your content to be successful, you have to have a strong brand face behind the content.
If you’re creating healthy and worthwhile content, you’ll be looked at as the expert, and when it comes time for that buyer to purchase, and when it comes time for that buyer to purchase, they'll feel more confident. Brand awareness begins with trust, and once your audience trusts your brand, they will begin to see the value in your products or services.
5. First Comes Mobile
A final and important tip to remember when branding your digital marketing is to keep mobile in mind. It's not a secret that mobile devices have taken over. From shopping to communicating to conducting business, mobile continues to reign supreme as a tool to access the web.
People are viewing websites through their phones and tablets as opposed to turning to a desktop computer. Why does this matter? This is a key factor to consider when promoting your content. Does your blog read well on mobile devices? Is your website or blog built with responsive design? Keep these items front and center when working on your digital marketing strategy and deciding where to allocate budget as this is a worthwhile investment.
If your content does not speak well to the viewer across the mobile platform, they can leave your content behind for good with one swipe. It’s important to test your website and blogs across many versions of mobile devices. The content may look good on one device, but it could completely miss the mark on another. Even though this is an extra step, it will ensure a strong user experience for your viewers and help with brand cohesiveness.
