MARKETING CONVERGENCE SOLUTIONS
Audio Blog
UNLOCK YOUR MARKETING SUCCESS:
BRIDGE SILOS WITH OUR
STRATEGIC MARKETING PLANNING PROCESS
Marketing Convergence Offers a Way to Refocus Your Marketing Planning
on Winning New Customers, More Leads, and Customer Retention
Adopt Our Strategic Marketing Planning Process to Help
Grow Your Customer Base, Improve Customer Retention,
and Ultimately Generate Increased Revenue
Breaking Down Marketing Convergence:
Why Aligning Your Teams Just Makes Sense
Let's talk about marketing convergence. Simply put, it's getting everyone on the same page—bringing together your messaging across all channels while getting your sales and marketing folks actually talking to each other.
When sales and marketing teams work together instead of in separate silos, amazing things happen. Companies see real results: more sales, better leads, and customers who stick around longer.
Think about it. When your sales team shares what they're hearing from customers with marketing (and vice versa), your messaging becomes consistent everywhere. Whether someone sees your billboard, scrolls past your Instagram post, or reads your blog, they get the same experience. That's powerful.
The end result? Customers have a smoother journey with your brand. No disconnects or mixed messages.
Want to learn more about how bringing sales and marketing together could be your smartest strategic move? Check out our Audio Blog for insights on how this alignment can take your overall business performance to the next level.
"Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates.”
20 Sales and Marketing Alignment Statistics, The Pipeline, Zoominfo.com
Marketing with
Measurable Results
How Silos Affect
Marketing Planning
What's Included in the Planning Package
A key measure of marketing effectiveness is how well a company’s marketing objectives and strategies grow the customer base, improve customer retention, and ultimately generate incremental revenue. It can be painfully difficult to directly correlate increased sales and customer growth as a result of traditional marketing programs mostly designed to improve and measure increased impressions, higher brand awareness, or improved customer satisfaction. However, by converging sales and marketing in the marketing planning process, more highly focused marketing programs can be designed to actually “move the sales needle.” For the planning process to be successful, sales and marketing planning team members must ”buy-in” to the convergence planning process and then participate in a facilitated, collaborative, and exercise-based planning process. Role of sales in planning: share data and insights from their CRM system, first-hand customer knowledge, and other resources. Role of marketing in planning: lend their expertise with aligned messaging and content, qualified lead generation, promotions, and communications knowledge and skills. Then together, they develop marketing objectives and strategies that are better aligned to reach current customers, find new customers, and generate incremental revenue. Marketing convergence planning can be a “win-win” for both sales and marketing. Sales teams end up with more highly motivated customers and qualified leads that are nearer to the purchase decision. This guidebook, training, and planning package can help marketing planning facilitators more effectively guide the planning process to develop and implement measurable marketing solutions that can directly affect sales growth.
Sales and marketing teams often work in “silos.” While the engagement of sales and marketing can be beneficial for businesses, there are often barriers preventing the two departments from working together effectively in the planning process. These can include: - Lack of communication - Different metrics and goals - Lack of understanding - Lack of integration
- Marketing planning guidebook and instructions - Interactive online training for planners and facilitators - Interactive worksheet forms for building the situation analysis, preplanning meeting, tactics, communications, final strategic marketing plan, and executive summary - Customizable PowerPoint presentation and planning meeting notes worksheet to help the facilitator guide planning meeting discussions and document decisions - Examples of how marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics should be written, structured, and organized to clearly show what the plan aims to accomplish and how results will be measured
When Sales Meets Marketing: The "Smarketing" Sweet Spot
Ever heard of "Smarketing"? It's what happens when your sales and marketing teams actually work together. it can be a game-changer.
When you align these two departments, everybody wins. Your sales team isn't just handed random leads, they get potential customers who are already interested and much closer to making a purchase decision. Think about how much more productive their days become when they're talking to people who actually want to hear from them!
Meanwhile, your marketing team isn't just creating pretty campaigns that disappear into the void. They're developing strategies that directly boost your bottom line with real, measurable results. They can finally prove their worth beyond brand awareness metrics.
This Marketing Convergence approach just makes sense. Your marketing team better understands what customers actually need, and your sales team gets better-equipped to close deals.
Key Take-Aways
from the Planning Package
Who Should Use This Planning Process?
Group-Think -
How Much is Enough?
- A roadmap to guide planning meeting facilitators in organizing more effective and complete strategic marketing planning - Development of actionable marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics that will generate leads and sales - Identifying key metrics for measuring success and ROMI with your marketing - A better understanding of the roles of sales and marketing in the strategic marketing planning process - A clear assessment of your company, its products, and the competitive landscape - More concise knowledge of your customer base and customers you would like to have
- Professional marketing planners and facilitators - Any business stakeholder wanting their marketing to deliver measurable results - Marketing managers, sales managers, and advertising Managers - Advertising and marketing agencies, and consultants creating marketing plans for clients - Small business owners needing a formalized approach to marketing planning
There is much debate on the effectiveness of “brainstorming” in the marketing planning process. Admittedly, individual thinking may sometimes offer the better ideas. However, there are advantages for "collective intelligence" rendered by multiple people being included in the development of a plan. Group problem solving and freewheeling discussions can sometimes stimulate creative thinking and provide immediate feedback on ideas. “Buy-in” and personal involvement through group planning can be very important and can affect how the final plan is accepted within the company. Our marketing planning guidebook emphasizes the need for both individual and group thinking in the planning process.
The Changing Roles of Sales and Marketing
Back in the day, marketing and sales lived in completely different worlds. Marketing's job? Blast out those commercials, billboards, and mailers to get people talking about the brand. Then they'd basically dust off their hands and say, "Your turn, sales team!"
Sales would then have to hunt down potential customers, figure out who was actually interested, and somehow turn those cold connections into people pulling out their credit cards.
These days, the lines between marketing and sales have blurred in the best possible way. With all the data we can collect now, marketing doesn't just create awareness and walk away. They're tracking behavior, nurturing relationships, and warming up prospects until they're practically ready to buy.
And no, this doesn't mean sales teams are becoming obsolete, but quite the opposite! When sales professionals get handed leads that are actually interested and informed, they can focus their talent on what they do best: having meaningful conversations and closing deals, instead of wasting time on people who aren't remotely interested.
"Sales and marketing alignment starts with giving both teams common goals. While the two teams’ jobs will always be different, they need to have shared high-level goals that lead to pipeline and revenue targets."
5 Strategies for Successful Marketing and Sales Alignment - American Marketing Association