When looking at sales and marketing efforts in a B2B context, too often you'll see a disconnect between the two. Here are some typical examples on how that disconnect prevents you from getting leads and developing opportunities fast enough.
The sales organization will rightfully lean towards events (on-site or online) to get the message across. But once an event is completed, the opportunity to continuously re-use and repurpose the presentations and product demos is lost. Why not using the content produced during the event as lead nurturing assets? The event doesn't have to be a one-time shot, but as part of an integrated content marketing effort going on into the future for many quarters.
Then there are marketing agencies: these will rarely have a deep technical understanding of your product or service. In the end, you're probably not selling commoditized stuff, so having someone that understands your value proposition and competitive positioning is crucial. Our content development is underpinned by a deep understanding of IT technology used in organizations - from infrastructure to security. We use that to develop assets, as opposed to mere language translation offered by typical marketing shops.
Even if agencies do their best to develop assets and content, your sales staff will probably struggle to distribute that content across email, web and social media. We don't stop at creating assets and leave it there. We distribute multi-language content through a variety of channels: from own media and contacts to paid media channels.
But say you've got the content distribution covered through all the channels. Are you sure you're cultivating the right contacts and addressing the relevant audiences in the region, influencing and engaging the buying personas? Local market reach is crucial.
We are concentrated on the Adriatics region, that's where we've built our local market know-how, and that's where our contacts are coming from. We also make sure our contacts database is constantly manually and automatically curated and segmented by relevant criteria.
Finally, how will you maintain an ongoing synergy between marketing and sales, to deliver results?
First, we understand that a multitouch approach with a strong focus on events (on-line or on-site) is needed to capture attention and generate meaningful engagement. This means content constantly re-used and repurposed across all channels, ensuring continuous lead nurturing, not just "fire and forget" campaigns.
And to round things up and deliver even more value, we can step into the initial engagement with prospects, giving your sales people qualified leads and a boost to their pipeline.
Marketing and sales bridged - see more.
Here's how we compare and complement marketing agencies and sales efforts at distributors or other sales partners:
