The buying process is different from what it was 20 years ago. Buyers used to learn about companies and products through billboards and sales calls. Today, they’re tuning out ads and using Google to take the decision-making process into their own hands.
Most people take the time to learn about your company and competitors before they ever pick up the phone to talk to you. Successful entrepreneurs have adjusted their marketing and sales mindset to work with this shift instead of fighting it. If you’re still struggling to understand today’s digital marketing strategy shift, here are the fundamentals you need to know.
Sales and marketing trends entrepreneurs should know
1. Marketing and data go hand in hand.
Today, marketers must be analytical, make data-driven decisions and provide measurable results. If your marketing team doesn’t have the insight to measure return on investment (ROI) for digital marketing campaigns, they can’t prioritize one campaign over another, let alone tie campaigns to revenue.
For example, marketers are quick to invest resources into social media marketing. But in a survey by Statista, 34 percent of respondents were unsure how to measure the ROI from their campaigns. Not knowing how your marketing affects your bottom line will end up costing you time, money and energy.
Equip your marketing team with a robust analytics platform that allows them to close the loop between marketing and sales activities. Tying campaigns to actual customers and dollars earned will help to inform your strategy and budget.
Did You Know?Did you know
Customer analytics are essential. Insight into customers’ behavior helps you adjust your sales, marketing and product development strategies.
2. The user experience turns websites into effective sales tools.
For businesses, websites are the storefronts of the digital age. If your website isn’t intuitive, user-friendly and personalized, visitors will never turn into customers because they won’t make it past your homepage.
Unfortunately, most marketers spend too much time worrying about brand colors and layouts and fail to turn their websites into effective sales tools. Design is important, but it won’t do anything if you don’t provide a good user experience.
To build relationships with visitors, you need to make your site responsive and dynamic. Start embracing smart content so that when a prospect or customer visits your website, they see content tailored to them. The right content management system will let you show different calls to action and copy to different contacts.
Most importantly, your website must be mobile-friendly. Around 96.5 percent of people access the internet through their mobile devices, compared with 55 percent who use a laptop or desktop computer to do so, according to Statista. A mobile-friendly website is easy to access across all devices, and it will make your business more credible.
Plus, any money you spend on search engine optimization (SEO) will be wasted if your site isn’t optimized for mobile. Google prefers mobile-friendly sites, so if yours doesn’t meet certain standards, your SEO ranking will drop.
Curious about how your website is performing? Free and paid SEO tools can evaluate your site by analyzing elements such as load time and page sizes and alerting you to any problem areas.
3. Content marketing is king.
Buyers have access to more information than ever. That means your marketing efforts should focus on engaging them with helpful content.
Think about all of the ads you’re bombarded with throughout the day. Odds are, you probably tune out most of them — and so do your potential customers. Ads, cold calls and email blasts are far less effective than they used to be.
Instead, businesses should focus on creating content that their audience wants to consume. Evernote’s blog does a great job of this by sharing helpful, valuable blog posts about its industry and products, making its business a resource for buyers.
Creating easy-to-find content — such as blog posts, case studies and product videos — can help companies play an active part in buyers’ research. Over time, you’ll become a trusted ally in the purchasing process.
Some ideas for your brand’s social media posts are FAQs, thought leadership articles, and news about your products and services.
4. Personalization is everything.
If you want to stand out in the market, you must personalize customer and prospect interactions. Imagine having three separate phone calls: one with a prospect, another with a brand-new customer and one with a long-term customer.
You would probably speak to each of them differently and share different information. So why would you send all three the same generic email message?
Unfortunately, that’s what many companies do, and it hurts them in the long run. Research from McKinsey shows that 71 percent of customers expect companies to deliver a personalized experience.
Here are a few ways you can personalize the experience for prospects and customers:
- Offer a communication choice. Allow people to select how they interact with your business. Some people prefer email or live chat, while others need to get on the phone with someone.
- Get feedback.Ask for customer feedback regularly so you can learn what’s working and what isn’t.
- Continually improve. Constantly reevaluate your service offerings. Customer preferences change over time, and your business must change with them.
The right email marketing platform makes it easy to personalize customer emails. These services can also help you build email marketing lists and create compelling messages. Learn more about top email marketing platforms in our Constant Contact review and Benchmark review.
5. Sales and marketing must work together.
Research shows that 70 percent of buyers figure out the types of solutions they need before speaking to a sales rep. That means your sales reps must come to the call with just as much information about the prospect.
If a sales rep starts asking questions that the prospect has already learned from a landing page or social media interactions, most of your marketing efforts and credibility will be wasted.
Instead, reps’ conversations should position them as helpful consultants, and they can do that only if they have access to the information the marketing team has gained through website and social media interactions.
Of course, this is easier said than done, and it requires companies to invest in an integrated sales and marketing platform. The right platform will capture, organize and share this data with your sales reps.
In the meantime, your reps should seek out new prospecting and lead-generation tools to facilitate the process. This way, they spend less time cobbling together information about the prospect from their LinkedIn profile and company website and more time helping the prospect make a smart purchase.
6. You must align your customer service and marketing.
Customer service and marketing have more in common than you might think. If the marketing team and customer service department work in silos, it will affect the customer experience.
For instance, if the marketing team promises something that customer service can’t deliver, the customer will inevitably be disappointed. A poor customer experience will lead to poor customer satisfaction and lower retention rates, hurting your bottom line over time.
Aligning the customer service and marketing teams requires a shift in thinking. Encourage both departments to communicate with each other, and ensure they understand why it matters.
7. AI is being integrated into sales and marketing.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has disrupted many industries, including sales and marketing. Although AI won’t replace sales reps anytime soon, it can make your current sales team more efficient.
For example, AI can help you segment leads based on different characteristics and uncover trends in the data you might not have seen otherwise. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help you create content for landing pages, emails or text messages.
You can use AI to monitor your sales team’s performance to determine who’s doing well and who could benefit from additional training. These tools can also help you see which sales and marketing tactics are the most effective.
Best sales and marketing tools to use today
Having the right tools is crucial if you want to improve your sales and marketing results. That’s why businesses of all sizes can benefit from customer relationship management (CRM) software.
CRM software makes it easier for sales teams to manage leads and track communications with prospects. It also helps sales and marketing teams collaborate and build effective digital marketing campaigns. Here are some of our picks for the best CRM systems:
- Salesforce: Salesforce is best for businesses that are looking for a customizable CRM system with plenty of features and third-party integrations. Salesforce can scale alongside your business, making it a good option for businesses of all sizes. You can also use the software to send marketing emails and coordinate telemarketing campaigns. Read our Salesforce review for more information.
- monday:monday lets sales teams manage the customer journey from beginning to end. It comes with customized workflows, the ability to automate certain tasks, and a user-friendly interface. Marketing teams can also use the software to manage content marketing efforts. Find out more in our monday Sales CRM review.
- Pipedrive: Pipedrive makes it easy to manage your pipeline and automate your sales process. Once you add a new prospect to the software, you can immediately schedule a follow-up email so you never have to worry about forgetting a lead. Pipedrive integrates with software you use daily, like Slack, Gmail and Asana. See our Pipedrive review for more details.
- Oracle NetSuite: If you already use Oracle NetSuite’s accounting software, you may like the company’s CRM system. The software provides detailed information across the entire sales cycle; you can manage leads and look for ways to cross-sell existing customers. Learn more in our Oracle NetSuite review.
Mike Volpe contributed to this article.