How Sales and Marketing Alignment Can Increase Revenue

We tend to divide companies into departments – sales, marketing, administrative, etc. And while each department has its own set of experiences, tasks, and skills, they work together toward the same goal.

While we draw a hard line between being a salesperson and a marketing person, the truth is, both departments depend on and grow by learning from each other. As a digital marketing agency focused on senior living, Markentum knows the importance of understanding the audience, crafting content, and building marketing strategies to attract and convert prospects to customers. But, the sales team is directly connecting with these prospects.

By successfully aligning sales and marketing, you can increase your revenue by 32% and retain 36% more customers. (Source: Aberdeen Group)

We are sharing a few ways that your marketing team (whether in-house or agency) can improve and learn from your sales team.

What’s Working vs. What’s Not Working

As you build and implement a marketing strategy, the most important question to ask is, “Is this working?” Is it attracting users? Is it attracting marketing qualified leads? Do you see a positive ROI from your efforts?

For Markentum, lead generation is always our goal for partners, helping them grow their customer base and improve occupancy rates, but the data can often be one-sided. As a marketing campaign generates leads, the sales team needs to shed light on the quality of those leads. Connect your marketing and sales teams and address questions like:

• Is the campaign generating qualified leads?
• If not, what is off? Their price point, location, expectations, etc.?
• What adjustments can we make to the current campaign to make it more effective?

“When sales and marketing are aligned, the business is poised to attract and qualify more leads and generate more revenue (HubSpot).”

What Are Prospects Looking For?

Beyond targeted marketing campaigns, users may find your company in a variety of ways – organically through a search engine or social media. When these prospects reach out to learn more about your business, your sales team should share insight into these users.

If five of the last seven prospects to reach out to your company asked the same question, the marketing team could create content that answers it. If they are interested in a specific service and your website only briefly touches on it, the marketing team can dive deeper and create more content to potentially attract more users.

Doing general research on what your target audience is looking for is an excellent starting point for creating content, but learning from those who have already shown interest in your company can help you improve and target your audience more effectively.

Which Channels Are Converting Leads to Customers?

The most vital data a marketing team can learn from is what area (if any) is driving the most customer conversions. This can not only help a marketing team be more effective, but it can help your business save money.

At Markentum, we believe in the benefits and power of a CRM. If they aren’t currently using one, we encourage any partner we work with to find one that fits their budget and goals, and we work with partners to integrate their CRM with our marketing automation software, like HubSpot.

Why?

It can close the loop in the marketing and sales process. When updated consistently and appropriately, we can track how a user initially found the business, what actions or engagement they made with the website, and if they became a customer. If 60% of customers YTD came from a specific paid ad, we want to make sure we continue to focus on that messaging. If 60% of customers YTD came from organic social media and we spend $5,000 a month on paid search ads, maybe we need to adjust our budget to get the most return on our investment.

Markentum aims to help senior living communities generate business through innovative and effective digital marketing campaigns. We rely on sales teams to share feedback regarding the quality and conversion of leads. As they say, “teamwork makes the dream work!”

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If you would like to learn more about our digital marketing services and how we can align with your sales team, contact us today for a free evaluation – we would love to learn more about your senior living community!