A few years ago, buyer behavior started to shift in a way that greatly informed businesses. Instead of viewing sales and marketing as clearly defined departments, where marketing a product or service would draw in a potential client who would be handed over to a sales rep to close the deal, a new model emerged that is more focused on buyers’ needs and buyers’ behavior. This new model allows businesses to align sales and marketing to achieve higher revenue growth.
Sales and Marketing in the Digital Space
Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn give businesses more accurate insights to identify their audiences, understand their interests, and see their relationships. Marketing and sales need to be aligned to leverage those insights to meet potential customers along the decision-making process, provide them with timely, relevant content, and steer them to specific products and services. The old-fashioned sales and marketing model is being supplanted by larger search engines with built-in shopping algorithms that will give results for any related term. Instead of letting user searches determine sales, both marketing and salespeople need to align and adapt to the digital space.
Adapt and Enable
Buyers are looking for solutions. The difference today is that they have the ability to search for products and services, read reviews, seek out demonstration videos, and look for alternatives – all in a matter of minutes. The big benefit of aligning sales and marketing is that a business can play a role in social selling – leveraging the insights they have into their audiences to place ads or guide them to specific products and services that fit their needs. By meeting those potential customers with the right information, and aligning sales and marketing, businesses can achieve a 32% increase in year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth (Aberdeen Group).
Helping Your Business Achieve Alignment
One area of differentiation at Outpace is the approach we take to understanding critical components of your business, in addition to understanding your digital marketing goals. Based on the feedback we have received so far, our approach resonates and drives value. To help your business achieve sales and marketing alignment, we consider the following factors:
- What is the overall growth strategy of your organization?
- What other channels are being utilized and how does digital marketing fit into the equation?
- What is the buyer’s experience as they begin to engage directly with team members?
- What considerations are being taken to assist in converting leads?
- Do you know what your competitive advantages are and how are they being showcased in your content?
At Outpace, we approach each client scenario holistically. Our process enables us to work with you on the overall business strategy and sales process, in alignment with the digital strategy we put forth, so that you too can achieve 32% year-over-year revenue growth.
