In the economic climate the key thing for any business is its bottom line. Sales become increasingly important when there is less money to go around. As well as a great product you also need a crack sales team if you are going to survive. But even then, the sales team will only be as good as the organisation allows it to be.
I recently read a whitepaper entitled ‘Changing expectations: the future of lead management’, which got me thinking about the role of the marketing team in the sales process. It is quite astonishing that some marketers are providing sales teams with unqualified leads. This means that once the sales team has established whether the lead is a potential customer, they must then start to ‘warm’ the lead from scratch. If the company isn’t a major player in their field, the task is twice as challenging as the sales teams must first educate the potential customer as to who they are, that they are trustworthy etc., before they can even start talking product.
At present some marketing teams think that advertising and PR is where their role ends in generating sales. However clippings and case studies alone will not help sales team reach their targets. Ideally, targeted and tailored content marketing will enable sales teams to pick up the phone and find an end user who a) knows the company b) knows the product c) is in the right phase of the sale cycle to actually close a sale.
Every marketing activity must ultimately be about generating revenue. While some marketers may think that their function has many facets, like establishing thought leadership, really it all boils down to one key question. Is what you are doing going to increase sales in the short, medium or long term?
So how can marketers support the sales team and keep the company healthy in tough economic times? With resources limited across the board, marketers must think smarter. That means less emphasis on bread-and-butter PR, and more focus on producing quality content that is more cost effective, adds value and ultimately remains your intellectual property. A savvy marketer will use this content across the board, to feed the PR team as well as support sales and provide quality advertorials.
For content to achieve these objectives, it needs to form part of a wider narrative arc. One viral video is great, but as a standalone piece it isn’t going to improve the business. Marketers need to set an editorial agenda for their content. Look out for our next blog post to find out exactly how they do that!