Marketing and Sales Work Better Together

Getting your marketing right can help sales conversions increase, work together to get the best results!

Your marketing is generally seen as the bit that fills the sales funnel, if there are lots of enquiries coming in then you could say that this element is doing it’s job well. But what if most of the enquiries aren’t genuine leads? It’s a bit like being in a networking group and being handed a referral for someone that isn’t a genuine fit for your business, what’s the point? Sales can end up spending valuable time following up with people that really aren’t ever going to become customers. 

So how do you work out who is who and how do you attract the right leads in the first place?

Understanding your Market

The first element is to really get to grips with who it is you are trying to attract. We all want that customer that is going to spend lots of money with us without any hassle. This isn’t necessarily about understanding who your ideal customer is, it’s about looking at your existing customer base, picking out your tier 1 customers and understanding patterns. Finding those similarities between them and then using that information to gain an insight into how best to market to more likeminded companies/people.

Once you have a clear picture of who your best customers are, speak to them. Ask them why they chose to come to you in the first place, find out the things that are important to them. Do your online research to find out where they hang out online, what topics interest them. Are they on LinkedIn, do they join Facebook groups, what websites they frequently visit.

Try and really understand what makes them tick, without this how can you possibly be able to produce quality marketing collateral for them?

Create your content and share

Content comes in many forms, words, pictures, video, audio etc. Once you know what your target customers are interested in you need to create the content that is going to resonate with them and then share that content across social platforms to help gain momentum. If you are consistently creating quality information that is seen as valuable, not only will people keep coming back for more, but they may well start to share your content amongst their connections.

Host this content on your website, you want to be driving web traffic here so that you can convert that traffic into leads. Avoid timewasters by providing the right information. Yes, you will always get enquiries from people looking for free advice and nothing else, but if you can reduce this and in turn increase the genuine leads, this should be the aim.

Passing quality to the sales team

Adding in filters through the whole marketing process can help ensure that those leads that get passed to sales are genuine. Things like forms can be customised to help weed out those potential customers from those that are looking for information that a different area of the business could be dealing with.