Businesses need a range of strategies to engage with customers in today’s global marketplace. Companies today must implement multi-channel marketing through social media, search engine optimization, or an email marketing campaign. This approach can assist companies of all sizes and stages in connecting with clients, establishing trust, and proving their worth. Today’s top businesses are utilizing the strength of sales and marketing cooperation to produce outstanding outcomes.
Here, we’ll discuss a few advantages of this strategy and how companies might start implementing it into their own marketing strategies. We’ll also offer advice on effectively implementing a multi-channel marketing plan across all pertinent platforms.
Marketing And Sales Working Together For A Common Goal
The world of marketing and sales are more closely connected than they’ve ever been before. Thanks to technology enabling businesses to work remotely and the ability to easily combine different marketing methods (i.e. email, social media, and SEO), the lines between the two are blurred.
While there certainly are distinct differences between the roles (someone in sales will need to close the deal, after all), they also share a common goal of influencing customers to take action.
This collaboration between marketing and sales can help businesses of all sizes and stages to reach consumers through different channels with consistent messaging. In order to achieve this, both branches of the company need to develop a shared understanding of what the brand stands for and how it can provide value to customers.
In simpler terms, marketing and sales must work together to create a better brand experience for the customer. This brand experience can take the form of a memorable logo, a face (or faces) that the customer associates with the brand, messaging that customers will embrace, and offers that will convince them to buy what you’re selling.
Increased Engagement Through Cross-Channel Marketing
The sales staff and the marketing division frequently collaborate to raise awareness of a new good or service. Cross-channel marketing helps businesses build brand awareness and interact with current and potential customers more successfully. This kind of marketing approach can increase brand loyalty and improve consumers’ perceptions of the brand.
Customer-Centric Strategy
Businesses must create customer-centric strategies in a world where consumers may read reviews and learn more about your product or service online before ever considering buying it from a rival. Simply put, a customer-centric strategy prioritizes the wants and goals of the customer, then those of the business.
Every area of marketing, including but not limited to product development, pricing, and advertising, is governed by this strategy. In other words, this strategy entails thinking ahead to what your clients will want and need before you’ve even thought about offering them your product. Even though it might seem difficult, successful companies have used these strategies, showing that providing value for customers is feasible even if you’re offering a subpar commodity or service.
Creates A Culture Of Continuous Improvement
Sales and marketing together make up the organization as a whole. Everyone needs to be on the same page for this technique to work. Because of this, businesses should encourage a culture of continuous improvement by holding members of the sales and marketing teams entirely accountable for the performance of their respective channels.
For instance, the sales team and the marketing division can work together to develop a strategy to improve SEM (search engine marketing) performance. They might develop plans for increasing sales from organic searches and gaining more trust from Google users together. Also, marketing and sales can work together to develop a plan for converting leads into actual customers.
Different Channels, But One Goal
While we often think about marketing and sales separately (especially since they each play such an essential role in business), the reality is that they’re often times siloed into different channels. The marketing team will work with the sales team to plan an email marketing campaign, while the latter will work with the former to plan a social media campaign.
It’s not uncommon for marketers to have very little to do with the people who are actually selling the product or service.
However, businesses can harness the power of collaboration between marketing and sales for greater growth by working together to create and execute a multi-channel marketing strategy.
This approach requires businesses to be aware of and consider the various platforms and methods their target audiences use to learn about and engage with brands. Simply put, if you want to be successful in today’s digital world, you need to be present on every one of these channels.
Create A Vision For The Future Of Your Business
As the name suggests, marketing is all about advertising and promotion. Advertising is the process of communicating the existence of a product or service to potential customers. Promotions are usually used to encourage consumers to buy/try a product or service.
For example, if you sell health and fitness equipment, you may want to run a promotion where you give away free gym equipment with the purchase of another product, say a diet book.
In the same way, you would like to work with agencies to plan the strategy and scope of your marketing campaign, you need to do the same even when delegating tasks to sales or service people.
Hire The Perfect Person For The Job
A great product or service must be created, but so must a great hire. After all, the customers who use your product or service will have an impact on your company, either favorably or unfavorably. Make sure to choose team members who can contribute to the success of your business when hiring new personnel. The ideal hire should have the personality you want for your company in addition to the talents you need to achieve your goals.
For instance, if you want to raise your sales from $500 to $1,000 per week, you should consider hiring someone with more experience to assist you.
Consider creating a loyalty program so that you may thank your clients for their business if you think having long-term staff is essential to the success of your organization. Your staff will be more loyal, and you will see more results if you spend more on them.
Set Some Boundaries
Even if you are the type of person who likes to wear pants that ride low on your hips, you must still establish some boundaries. You wouldn’t want to undermine your marketer persona and display yourself as a weak person or, worse, an erotic creature bent on satisfying your carnal desires.
Marketers who cross that line find themselves without a job, and you don’t want to be the one who pushes the company in that direction. However, you also don’t want to be so far removed from sensual pleasures that you can’t experience them yourself.
Measurement Is Key
You must understand your marketing efforts’ effectiveness before determining how much you should be investing in them. Although you can’t always measure precisely what you are paying for, you can measure the results of your campaign. The performance of your marketing channels, such as social media or paid ads, should be compared to a baseline to determine whether or not your efforts are paying off.
For example, if you run paid ads on a platform like Google AdWords and notice your target audience is expanding but your revenues are staying the same, you may want to reexamine your strategy.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and what is important to measure accurately is your return on investment (ROI). Knowing how much you are spending on advertisements and how engaging your target audience is, you can determine whether or not that investment is worth it.
An important part of marketing is measuring your results, analyzing what is and isn’t working, and adjusting your strategy. Without a clear idea of how effective your approach is, you can’t determine whether or not it is time to switch gears and try something new.
Be Creative
To be successful, you need to avoid becoming too predictable. As a marketer, you will face a number of constraints that can limit your potential for creativity. You may only have so much money to spend, and you need to find the best ways to spend it. Consider the following:
- What is the one thing you need to sell to convince people to buy your product or service?
- What are your competitors doing that you aren’t?
- What is the one thing your customers want and need? (e.g., a better experience, variety, value, etc.)
By being creative, you may stumble upon a new approach that is better than what you are currently doing. With new ideas come new challenges, and you must be willing to accept those challenges to be able to grow your business.
When we design websites, we have a tendency to fall into certain habits that create busy, cluttered interfaces. To ensure that our sites are easy to navigate and fully functional, we should be considering the following:
- Colors
- Fonts
- Layouts
- Button order
- Horizontal or vertical menus
- Choice of pictures
These elements don’t necessarily have to be complex, and they certainly don’t have to be expensive. To create a simple yet effective interface that will engage your users, you should consider the following resources, free or low-cost:
WordPress
If you already use a CMS (content management system) to create and edit the content on your website, it’s almost certainly WordPress. In fact, 66% of all internet sites are currently running on WordPress, which is increasing yearly. If you use Google Analytics, you can also determine the platform your audience is using to view your content, and you can begin to understand whether or not you are reaching your intended audience.
WordPress offers a number of free tools that can help you with your marketing and sales efforts. For example, built-in SEO (search engine optimization) tools can help you determine the best keywords and phrases to incorporate into your content.
Instagram is a popular social media platform where users can post photos and videos that engage viewers. Since Instagram is a place that people can go to be entertained or inspired, you can use it to promote your business.
To get the most out of Instagram, you should consider the following:
- Hashtags
- Lists
- Geotags
- Videos
- Photos
- Branded Content
These tools can help you determine what tags people are using to discuss your product or service, and you can use that knowledge to increase the chances of your content being discovered by the right audience.
Instagram allows users to label their content with hashtags, which can help it appear more relevant to users scrolling through their feeds. A hashtag is essentially a search term used in conjunction with a keyword. For example, if you are selling swimwear, you may consider using the hashtag #swimwear or #bikiniswim as your keyword. Adding these hashtags to your Instagram content will help you achieve more engagement and drive more people to your page.
You can use lists to keep your content organized and easy to find. For example, you may want to create a list of blog posts relating to specific topics such as product launches, company updates, industry insights, etc.
You can also use lists to organize photos and videos you take at events or locations you visit. When creating a list, make sure you also add a brief description of the item so that users know what they are looking at on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a professional social media platform where users can connect with other professionals. Since users can see you are employed, it is a good place to promote your business and gain credibility.
Get Inspired
In the next few months, you may find that your business growth significantly outstrips your expectations. In order to continue increasing sales and cultivating a better brand experience for customers, you’ll want to work with sales to create a plan for scaling your operation. While this may seem daunting, the fact is that you should already be thinking about this, whether you realize it or not.
If you want to continue increasing your business’ growth and making a lasting impact on the world, you need to be thinking about how to harness the power of collaboration between marketing and sales. Simply put, if you want to continue seeing success, you need to be working with, not against, the other parts of your company. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself battling for resources and recognition in an unhealthy environment that does little to inspire confidence or growth in your organization.
