We cannot anticipate a successful alignment of marketing and sales without digital change. Continue reading for examples of digital transformation that can help corporate reorganisation be more successful.
There will always be bumps, setbacks, and difficulties whenever we try to change the status quo. This fight might be quite lucrative when addressing the realignment of sales, marketing, and customer service inside a firm. No sensible businessperson, however, should try to implement changes within the company without first considering all the relevant factors. Digital transformation can radically alter this situation. Not only is it essential for coordinating sales and marketing effectively, but it also needs to serve as the primary drive in and of itself. If digital transformation is done well, the rest will come.
What is the aid of digital transformation?
A more thorough examination of clients is made possible by digital transformation. It identifies particular market segments and demographic groups, each with its peculiarities and behaviours. This knowledge can be utilised to predict consumer behaviour and enhance customer outcomes when combined with useful information. What does this mean for the integration of marketing and sales? First, it presents a chance to track client journeys from MQLs to SQLs to SALs. This can reveal trends from which we might infer pretty accurate predictions of future client behaviour. From there, we may take coordinated action to inform anything from website and digital marketing tactics to digital sales funnelling. As a result, our project starts to identify the actions that lead to sales conversions at each stage of the customer’s brand experience.
Fundamentals of Digital Transformation Strategy
Because of this, the potential of a change in command between marketing and sales is as seamless as velvet. To successfully assess our prospects, how clients act, what they could need, and their objectives, we need to arm ourselves with the right tools. The service they require can now be given to them much more easily. As a result, time and resources from the appropriate departments are better utilised, encouraging teams to cooperate rather than compete. It is feasible to foster more fruitful joint ventures to enable both parties to work together to increase conversion rates. This is made possible by real-time digital handovers and exceptional customer comprehension.
Leading the Way to Precise Content Delivery is Digital Transformation
Another area where the focus needs to be adjusted is content. As you negotiate clients and goals while selling your company’s insights and understanding, content should be king in today’s marketplace. We can only guarantee that our customers’ motivations are unwavering and centred on building relationships based on trust through this venture. However, simply piecing together any old information and hoping it sticks is no longer sufficient. It would be preferable to have actionable insights into the needs and preferences of your target audience, which can best be accomplished through digital transformation. We can now precisely determine what a consumer wants and how to align our processes to supply it at the point of want, thanks to digital transformation.
Why is it important for marketing and sales to align?
Ultimately, you want your marketing and sales teams to operate like machines. To produce highly engaged leads that can be smoothly transferred to your sales team for closing, your marketing team should assess, comprehend, and nurture prospects’ intent.
The process should work both ways, with leads continuing into a marketing journey for additional nurturing if prospects are not ready to execute a sales activity.
Unfortunately, many people can’t say that. Leads may be overlooked or not given the proper nurturing. How can you then enhance this procedure for your company?
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Adopt innovative methods of operation.
Since COVID-19, how we work has evolved, and businesses need to adopt a new form of communication. Workflows can move leads down the sales funnel, while remote or hybrid working can be successful with team communication and virtual meetings. This makes it even more crucial to keep customer information and meeting details current so that one hand knows what the other is doing in the company.
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Implement customer relationship management (CRM)
Every company has to implement a CRM. It aids in storing, collecting, segmenting, and identifying customer information and sales prospects. Salesforce, Zendesk, and Zoho are a few examples of this software. To create a holistic picture of a prospect while keeping data in one location, your CRM should be connected to any marketing automation solutions. If you want to learn more about using the management system, check out our tutorial on CRM.
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Account-Based Management should be used (ABM)
Your sales and marketing team can utilise this go-to-market approach to target specific accounts that suit your desired customer profile or have been determined to fit your product. In addition to analysing performance and calculating ROI, your ABM strategy would strive to develop customised messages and content to move them through the sales funnel.
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Customize your content
Content is essential for marketers and sellers to draw in and keep the attention of potential customers. You can produce a tonne of excellent content, but only the material that will convert is important. The marketing team needs your sales team’s input to generate material specifically designed to convert both large and small accounts.
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Develop your nurturing funnel.
At various points during their journey, prospects need information. For instance, a blog will effectively attract potential clients, but a whitepaper or client endorsement is more likely to convince them to purchase. At each level, be aware of the wants and intentions of your customers.
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Digitize and modernise
Your sales and marketing employees must possess digital abilities; it is not enough to just implement new systems and technologies. To engage and convert prospects, both teams must be aware of how the lead process works and how to use internet resources like LinkedIn or a CRM.
What advantages do marketing and sales alignment offer?
Aligning your business’s marketing and sales departments has many pros. It reassures improved cooperation, which is internal, and also provides each department’s human resources the chance to learn more about what the others are doing. Let’s try to understand three principal pros for a business:
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Allows for omnichannel marketing
Although it may seem like a term, having an omnichannel strategy is essential when a consumer has many online and offline contact points with a company.
Delivering a seamless customer experience is the main goal of an omnichannel strategy, ensuring that the customer’s journey with your company is unbroken regardless of where they connect with you.
What exactly does this mean in practice? Say a QR code in a print advertisement produces a lead. This code will then send the customer to a landing page that requests information before allowing them to download an ebook.
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Greater understanding of your customers
Working collaboratively, your marketing and sales teams can more easily gather crucial data on your prospects and clients.
Sellers may have detailed and useful insights that the marketing team can use to create material specifically for nurturing. However, marketers frequently have a wide perspective of an industry or prospect. Customer insights are available from:
- Individualized sales interactions
- Polls or surveys Customer comments
- Events like live webinars or social media live streams that use third-party data
- A/B testing for content engagement
- study on the market, industry insights
- listens to podcasts.
These two components work together to create a complete and accurate image of a prospect or customer. For a clear focus for everyone, combine quantitative and qualitative data to expand your understanding of your client base.
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Personalization of Drive
According to McKinsey, 78 percent of consumers stated that receiving tailored communications increased their likelihood of making a second purchase, and more than three-quarters said that receiving such communications was a crucial element in triggering their consideration of a brand.
Personalization works well for attracting and nurturing leads, as well as for retaining customers and promoting repeat business. People prefer to feel appreciated, which is why this is the case. Customers are more likely to respond favourably if your company shows that it understands and cares about them.
Content is the most efficient means of promoting personalisation. Teams from marketing and sales might collaborate to discuss target accounts or similar prospects to develop messages and campaigns that can draw in and engage audiences.
Permit delivery of important content.
The basis of your marketing plan and how you want people to perceive your business should be content. Content is a hot topic right now. It fosters trust in a business connection and serves to strengthen customer motivation. However, confusing and poorly thought-out information will no longer be effective in a saturated market. Concrete knowledge about your clients’ probable behaviour must inform your content approach. What is the best way to gather this information? Digital transformation in retail. With the help of digital transformation specialists, you can accurately predict what a consumer will desire and when to present it to them. This enables you to realign your business procedures to best meet their needs.
Some firms won’t survive the upcoming long-term changes as the coronavirus devastates the global economic order. Some may argue that sales and marketing teams should continue to act as gatekeepers, but such a wasteful paradigm cannot possibly endure in the long run. In an era where face-to-face contact is becoming obsolete, digital transformation lets you refocus your retail efforts on online consumer connections. It results in a flexible and effective corporate model responding to market fluctuations. It assists in offering a unified toolkit to ensure that all of your departments are reciting from the same hymnal and prioritises the customer in all business decisions.
