What can digital marketers learn from us more traditional marketing types now that the economy is growing at a healthy clip all around the world? To focus their minds on both sides of the sales and marketing divide.
When we’re talking B2B marketing, there is a widening gulf between what digital marketing can deliver and what the traditional sales teams do in their day-to-day business. Too much marketing content is off-target and not pertinent to specific audiences.
Digital marketers need to stand back for now and do less but better content. They also need to play the numbers game.
So, what are the key ingredients?
First, marketers must ensure that the content they deliver on their brand’s website and electronically using marketing automation is high caliber and relevant. Then both the marketing and sales teams should be tracking open rates and click-throughs. The inside sales or external telemarketing team need to actually work with that data to deliver real opportunities precisely when someone expresses interest in what you’re selling.
This is really all about connection — making sure that as soon as a customer or prospect shows any interest at all they get nurtured, not just digitally, but also by real human beings following up and connecting.
And, of course, track your results. Publish a Sales Action Taken report split by media and show the proportion of qualified versus unqualified sales leads that each source generates. Providing real reporting on the performance of both marketing and sales working in harmony, that’s nirvana.