Without good Marketing, is there enough support for Sales to win with your prospects?
In some rare cases, maybe Sales can win on its own. But the right marketing activities are key to give Sales optimal success for your organization.
As a sales management consultant, I’ve seen the gamut of marketing: from no marketing to some marketing to great marketing. There are so many possible activities when it comes to marketing, many leaders may simply be overwhelmed about what to do.
10 Vital Marketing Tasks to Improve Sales
Here is a brief outline of the 10 most critical marketing activities to increase sales — from a Sales perspective:
1. Generate awareness
It takes a tremendous amount of activity to generate awareness of your company. Your prospects and customers need to know you, and like what you can do for them. Got a marketing strategy to do this?
2. Develop necessary marketing material needed for sales
Marketing teams are usually best positioned to work with the customer’s point of view and incorporate it into the company’s message. Marketing, not Sales should develop materials such as a media kit, white papers, benefit statements and FAQ documents.
3. Develop your target market
Marketing and Sales need to develop the target market as a team. Yet this is often not the case. Coordinating on the size and scope of this market is vital, so that hiring activities are scaled appropriately.
4. Develop inbound leads
First, both inbound and outbound leads are needed for successful lead generation. However, I believe inbound lead generation falls under Marketing, while outbound can fall under Sales or Marketing.
5. Define your ideal customer profile, lead definitions, and prospect buyer personas
Agreement on these definitions can bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing by helping both groups become aware of who the company’s best prospects are.
6. Use social media
Generating awareness through social media is no longer done casually, as you would on your personal time. You have to develop a strategy with clearly defined goals and measurable results.
7. Update the website
So, you have a website. But the question is… does it attract and convert viewers into buyers? Is it up-to-date? What story does it tell your prospects or buyers?
8. Identify and organize conferences, events, and user conferences
These can be excellent opportunities to meet with prospects, customers, partners, industry analysts, and media, as well as learn about your competitors.
9. Provide valid lists
It is very common for SDRs to put together their own call lists. However, too often this is a time consuming, unproductive task. If your goal is to introduce a new service, for example, Marketing be the best group to generate your list.
10. Monitor return on investment (ROI)
Marketing metrics are key to tracking the progress of your marketing programs and determining what is and isn’t working.
What About the Details?
This is a very brief overview of 10 essential Marketing activities to enable Sales to close more often with your customers.
You may be asking:
- What does it mean to perform each activity well enough?
- Why should Marketing generate your white papers, or product and service overviews, and not Sales?
- Why should Sales and Marketing define the target market TOGETHER?
Get the details in the new best practice ebook: The Marketing Guide to Increasing Sales, for a Sales perspective on Marketing’s most critical tasks.
