How marketing can truly help sales

With a new year in front of us and more ways in which to provide a strong marketing foundation, there is no excuses left for marketing, or sales, to get results.

Approximately 71% of sales is still field sales with approximately 28% being inside sales or remote sales efforts. High growth companies focus mostly on inside sales and remote sales efforts as it accelerates the ability for a company to grow fast, efficiently and with a higher return on investment.

Companies seeking to take their business to the next level often restructure sales and marketing efforts ensuring that both departments have the same goals, but are responsible for delivering different aspects of the equation.

How strong marketing departments help sales is really quite standardised and mostly around delivering a streamlined inside sales platform with marketers responsible for:

Marketing Strategy

How the company executes its marketing plan is imperative to its success. Knowing what the company will do at any given time, and how it directly reports back to the scorecard, at every touch point, needs to be not only documented but measured. If you take a sporting team for instance, they always have a plan in place, which they practice and study, and then implement to achieve their goals. Marketing strategies are no different. It gives companies a blueprint on what they need to do to be successful.

Leadership

There has to be someone responsible for the marketing outcomes who talks continuously with the sales team, ensuring that the alignment between sales and marketing efforts are water tight. Leadership is not only responsible for ensuring that the marketing strategy is implemented as it is intended, but also for using data to fine-tune marketing efforts and adapt where need be. Like any business or department, the leader is ultimately responsible.

Communications

What is marketing if you don't have a strong communications plan in place? What is your brand, where does it sit in the market, and how are you going to connect with all stakeholders. What does that communications look like? Do you have direct marketing and email marketing plans in place? Is your social media content marketing strategy effective and not just existing for the sake of it? How is your team communicating with leads? 

Advertising

Online advertising is becoming one of the most influential ways in which companies connect with their audience. Rather than being a diluted platform because so many people have gotten on the bandwagon, it is in fact more powerful and driving more leads to successful companies. Go beyond Adwords into sponsored content and you truly will be creating the magic required to generate leads in a measurable fashion.

Lead generation

What does your lead generation plan look like? From start to finish, how are you nurturing your leads all the way to a sale? What is working and what isn't? Are you doing more of what is working to generate leads? Is this a process that is functioning at the highest level? Is it adhoc or do you have a ongoing lead generation plan in place?

Measurement

If you have a budget for marketing (every company who opens their doors should), you need to measure it's performance. Rather than place blame on what isn't working, make sure you are looking to ensure that your message is right, the creative is as it should be, and the integrated campaigns are consistent and result in a positive end result.

Marketing has a huge role to play in sales and can make it easier for more sales to occur, more often. You just need to know how.