Marketing activities as a general principle are designed to generate leads. And leads can be the derivative of customer engagement. However, just because these are both true, doesn’t always mean your marketing team needs to push really hard to increase engagement just to get leads. Let’s take a deeper look at these two important pieces of your brand’s health.
When the brand value propositions and the customer value expectations align, together they will create a potent mix that makes your sales and marketing efforts more effective.
For over 30-years I’ve worked for and consulted with businesses where sales and marketing teams don’t exactly work together like a well-oiled machine. However, when I have seen them working on the same page and supporting each other, it’s like an ice-cream sundae with warm chocolate syrup on top. Mmm…mmm. When they are facing in opposite directions, it usually is indicative of missed sales opportunities, poor communication, marketing initiatives that aren’t fully functioning and unproductive work environments. Now, who in the world wants this?
You may be asking, how does profiling fit into the current theme of metrics? Great question. Every marketing team needs to establish a profile and not just one. By looking at the data provided from a cross-section of these areas listed above (Google, Social, Market, Persona, and Leads), and using the analytics they provide, you will be able to see common data sets – these are the secret sauce you need so your sales and marketing and be most efficient and effective.
Today’s marketers are called upon to have the requisite experience in both data strategy as much as they are asked to be content creators and strategists. PRO TIP: Keep your eye on your key data points above in TAM, leads and social– combined they will provide insights into your customers. Here’s the interesting part – your most important data is right under your nose; you just don’t know how to access it and translate it.
Marketing teams need to collaborate more with sales. You may not want to hear this, but the sales number should be the marketing number your team is striving to reach. So, plan accordingly. In this article, we talked about size, leads and cost. Start figuring out how you can obtain these numbers – the sooner the better.
Regardless of the business you’re in, your customer is never super-easy to find. And worse, if you don’t have a clear definition of who your customers are, your sales and marketing teams will spend lots of time and money trying to connect with the wrong people who are not likely to buy. Yes, without a clear definition, these teams could be going after different people for different reasons. Yikes. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?
Yes, your business does need a strategy to innovate. But, there is not one clear path for crafting an innovation strategy. Nor is there a one-size fits all for businesses to start the innovation process.
As a career marketer, I’ve always believed that great marketing can overcome pretty much anything the brand or market throws our way. (Lack of demand, lack of funds, poor lead-gen activity, PR challenges, increasing competition, and poor high-school turnout to name a few). Time and time again, I’ve been part of marketing teams that created strategies and executed on them — all designed to overcome business challenges. However, conquering a monumental challenge shouldn’t have to be the norm for marketing teams; there are other ways to attract the students you want and need that do not have the dark cloud of a looming “crisis” overhead.