How to Build a Digital Marketing Team for Your Business Posted on March 25, 2022September 18, 2024 by Guest Author If you want to grow your business, a digital marketing team is essential for generating new leads, increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, and nurturing customer relationships. Building an exceptional marketing team is about more than just hiring people to manage your ad campaigns. Today, consumers have higher expectations from brands, which is why each member of your digital marketing team should bring specialized skills in different types of marketing disciplines to the table to drive your business forward. From content experts and visual design gurus to web development specialists—team members’ skills should come together to build a unified brand marketing strategy and achieve sustainable long-term growth through various marketing initiatives. So, how do you build a multifaceted digital marketing team? Keep reading to find out. Begin with the makeup of your digital marketing team Digital marketing is an essential business process for attracting leads, converting customers, and growing your business. The structure of your digital marketing team will depend on the size and budget of your business. If you’re a startup or small business, you might not have the resources to hire a different person for each job. Consider marketers with a wide-ranging skill set that’s transferable across the board. As your business grows, you’ll be able to take on more employees to fulfill essential roles as they come up. Enterprises will have more scope to hire a larger marketing team with specialists in each area. Whatever the size of your business, it’s essential to structure your digital marketing team to align with your business budget and goals. Marketing is a highly dynamic industry. As technology advances and consumer demands shift, so do the roles of marketing professionals. So expect your marketing team to develop over time. No matter the size of your digital marketing team, make sure communication silos aren’t creating barriers to collaboration. The team should communicate with each other to holistically execute marketing strategies. Collaboration and communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams can be super useful for day-to-day communication. Virtual meeting platforms, like Zoom, can help your team connect while they work remotely. Another option is to bundle communication tools with the best phone systems for small business, including the features you need for your business, like a CRM integration, video conferencing, voiceover IP, or an integration with your workforce management solution. Start hiring for different roles. We’ve chosen these roles based on what kind of digital marketing expertise a small-to-medium-sized business will need to grow. Leadership roles Just like any other area of business, you’ll need people in leadership roles to execute your marketing strategy smoothly. You might hire a chief marketing officer (CMO), Director of Marketing, or a VP of marketing. Whoever you choose needs to be a steadfast leader with organizational and interpersonal skills to manage a team and liaise with other important figures in your organization like your CEO, account executive, and so on. Digital marketing leaders must be able to spearhead campaigns to achieve specific goals, delegate tasks to team members, motivate employees to perform well, and report on the overall success of marketing initiatives. This requires leaders to work closely with their team, using synchronous and asynchronous communication channels to connect and collaborate whether working in-office or remotely. Content marketing team Content marketing is integral to any digital or inbound marketing strategy. The content marketing team, depending on your budget, can consist of: Content marketing managers: They are responsible for overseeing content creation, developing content strategies, implementing editorial content, and ensuring content meets quality standards and adheres with the brand tone of voice. Copywriters/content writers and editors: The wordsmiths of the group. They write copy and content for an organization’s website, landing pages, blog, webinars, resources, email marketing campaigns, and so on. SEO specialists: Using their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) skills, they know how to create and implement an SEO strategy to index your website and content on search engines like Google and Bing more easily. Social media marketers: As of October 2021, there were 4.55 billion active social media users around the world. Social media marketers promote your business over social media. They’re also in charge of managing a social media budget for PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and tracking and analyzing social engagement, conversions, and other key metrics. Your content team will need to collaborate internally between themselves and with other members of your digital marketing team. It’s a good idea to leverage communication and file-sharing apps to keep them connected. Plus, another important thing you can do is leverage Kanban for multiple projects to keep everything organized and on track. Image source Creatives Creativity is what makes your brand unique. It’s essential to hire creatives as part of your digital marketing team. This includes roles like a head creative director, visual and graphic design specialists, video production specialists, and photographers. This team is tasked with creating cohesive brand imagery across marketing channels that represents your organization and appeals to prospects and customers. They know how to create a consistent brand strategy and possess a deep understanding of design principles. If you’re a small business, you might look for someone who possesses diverse creative skills to take on different roles. They should be familiar with web tools and creative programs like Adobe and Photoshop, as well as proficient in brand strategy. Web development specialists Having someone skilled in web design and development is crucial. It takes people about 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website. It’s the face of your business, so website optimization is key. If your site is slow or not optimized for mobile, visitors are likely to leave before they even look around. Your web development team is the point of contact for any website issues, and they’re in charge of ensuring your website offers a seamless user experience. You’ll be able to expand your web development to include senior developers as your business and website grows. Paid media team Your paid media team might consist of a demand generation specialist or manager, or digital marketers with experience running paid advertising campaigns. It’s a good idea to hire a dedicated team or team member to manage PPC (pay-per-click) social and search ads because it can be a time-consuming job that requires you to constantly refine and update your strategy for best results. The paid media team will pay close attention to the media consumption and behavior of your target audience. This way, they can find out what they’re buying, which social media channels they’re using, and what kind of content they like. Armed with this information, they execute paid media campaigns that boost your online visibility, increase brand awareness, and drive sales pipeline growth. Paid media team roles require employees to have extensive knowledge of tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. They’ll also need to keep up with algorithms across channels, ensuring they’re always on top of industry trends and consumer behaviors. They’ll collaborate with the rest of the digital marketing team to align paid media with marketing campaigns. Adopt the right tools to bring together your digital marketing team Whether your digital marketing team is located in-house or working remotely from around the world, you’ll need to empower them with the tools they need to succeed in their roles. The software you need will all depend on your company scale and budget, but a few are essential for any digital marketing team. You’ll also need robust CRM software to store customer data and help bridge the gap between your sales and marketing team. You should also consider investing in social media tools, SEO and keyword research tools, email marketing software, lead enrichment tools, and so on. Outline KPIs to track performance What is a business process you can implement to monitor the success of your campaigns? Well, setting and tracking KPIs is an effective answer. After all, building a digital marketing team is not a one-off activity. You need to continually track performance, make tweaks to your team set up to keep improving and carry on tracking. Everyone should know exactly what they’re working towards and what your campaign hopes to achieve. Outline priority goals and generate metrics and Key Performance Indicators to monitor progress and ensure you’re on track to achieving your goals. For instance, if you’re launching a content marketing project that aims to increase traffic to your website, you’ll want to measure KPIs like unique page visits, time on page, and engagement rate. Image source Keep building out your digital marketing team as your business grows Building a comprehensive digital marketing team as a small-medium business can be challenging. There are so many facets of online marketing that need to be covered. It’s a good idea to take a look at your existing team to understand whether they have transferable skills and expertise that can fit in with your new digital marketing team structure. However, always ensure that they’re focused on digital marketing to guarantee a cohesive strategy and achievable goals. As your business grows and your digital marketing team requires more force behind it, you can start making additional hires or adjusting the roles of your existing team members. Ensure your digital marketing goals align with your overall business objectives, and make sure they’re empowered with the tools they need to communicate, collaborate, and execute marketing campaigns successfully. John Allen – Director, SEO, 8×8 John Allen is the Director of SEO for 8×8, a leading communication platform with integrated hosted VoIP phone, contact center, voice, video, and chat functionality. John is a marketing professional with over 14 years experience in the field, and an extensive background in building and optimizing digital marketing programs across SEM, SEO, and a myriad of services. This is his LinkedIn.
8 Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them Posted on March 23, 2022October 14, 2022 by Jessica Lunk There are many steps to operating a successful marketing strategy. None of them are easy, and you’ll undoubtedly run into some mistakes along the way. From generating new clients to using effective SEO tactics, the digital marketing challenges that agencies face can — and often do — stand as hurdles to scaling. We’re taking a deep dive into Wordstream’s State of the Internet Marketing Agency 2019 report to pull out the most common challenges today’s marketers are facing and, more importantly, to share some advice on how to overcome them. Challenge #1: Getting New Clients According to the report, 51% of agencies rely on customer referrals as their main source of new clients. That hasn’t changed much over the years, which makes creating a referral program a no-brainer for getting new clients. However, now more than ever, agencies are also relying heavily on content and digital marketing to grow their client base. Generating leads with content marketing is totally doable, but you’ve got to ace your content creation and digital marketing approach. In terms of content, start publishing articles on noted online marketing publications that you know your audience reads. This will help you broaden your reach, further establish your authority and credibility in your space, and tap into a broader audience. Another tactic is to incorporate co-branded marketing webinars into your content strategy. Just make sure you partner with a brand that has a similar audience as yours so you can both benefit from the other’s network. Another suggestion is to use a CRM and marketing automation software. Doing so allows you to more fully understand where your prospects are in their journey so you can send them personalized offers and content that educates them and leads them down the funnel. Challenge #2: Retaining Current Clients The average client lifespan is just 0-12 months for 30% of agencies. And that’s a big issue, considering that existing clients spend more and cost less than new ones. So how do you keep your clients on board for longer? Once again, it starts with content. Send your existing clients resources that can help them get the most use out of your products and services. Send personalized perks, gifts, and/or exclusive promos too, and use milestones like birthdays and customer anniversaries as excuses to send offers and messages. Don’t be afraid to change your approach to individual clients over time. Get creative with your customer retention strategies, and know that as their plans change, so should yours. If you notice that a client is on a package that no longer suits them, adjust it — even if it costs them less. It’s better to keep a client around on a lower-tier plan than to lose them entirely. Challenge #3: Keeping Up With Ad Platform Changes Nearly half of agencies don’t have any full-time staff members dedicated to paid search, which means it’s easy for ad platform changes to fall through the cracks. But your paid search strategy is at the mercy of the ad platforms you’re using, and if you’re not keeping up, you’ll fall behind. Make a plan for staying up to speed with platform changes, whether that means adding this type of research to an existing team member’s role or setting up an RSS feed so you’re notified right away and can do research on your own. Publications, like Search Engine Land, can be a great source for staying up-to-date on new tools and current trends. Better yet, schedule routine check-ins with your team to discuss what’s working and what’s not with your paid search strategies. Not only will this hold more people accountable for tracking any changes, but it also makes it more likely you’ll notice changes earlier rather than later. Challenge #4: Time Management After generating new clients, managing time is the most common challenge agencies face. And it makes sense: there’s a lot to juggle when it comes to digital marketing, and while the workload is getting bigger and more complex, the teams and spending don’t always keep up. Our first piece of advice for making better use of time is to get a project management tool. Platforms like Toggle or Basecamp can help you organize your to-dos and stay on track, no matter how busy you get. Some other tips for managing time: Give yourself a limit on the amount of time you work on something. When you hit it, stop and move to the next thing on your list, then revisit it later on. This way, everything moves along, and you avoid sitting on one task for too long. Divide projects into three categories: this week, next week, and this month. Then prioritize accordingly. Ask for help! After all, teamwork makes the dream work, right? Challenge #5: Hiring and Training New Employees Onboarding is crucial, but it often gets pushed aside for more pressing matters. With all but 11% of agencies anticipating growth this year, hiring and onboarding are still going to become more important than ever. The best way to manage this is to make sure you have a job description already created for the various roles within your department (that you update as-needed), as well as an effective and specific hiring and training process. Having these things created ahead of time helps reduce any scrambling when it comes time to hire someone and speeds up the process of getting everyone on the same page. Challenge #6: Unlocking the Power of Data Your Martech stack spews a lot of data that you can use to drive personalization and business growth. To unlock the power of this data, you have to get five elements right: gathering data, deriving insights, driving action, and measuring outcomes. However, aligning these processes to wring the full potential of data is easier said than done. For example, unifying and cleansing data coming from internal and external sources can be a real challenge. Statistics show 63% of marketers struggle with unconnected data, meaning they fail to get a holistic view of customer behavior. Some tips to unlock the potential of data include: Create a solid data management platform (DMP)) Unify internal data with external sources to get a comprehensive view of each customer. Embed analytics with defined process workflows to ensure actionable insights are available where they are most needed. Hire people with advanced analytics skills to derive and translate insights into action for your team. Challenge #7: Improving Email Engagement Email marketing can deliver a return on investment (ROI) of 3600%. However, you have to improve email open-rate, engagement, and conversion rates to obtain that ROI. Sadly, a whopping 56% of marketers say improving email engagement is their greatest challenge. If you’re struggling to improve email engagement, your approach to this form of communication might be the problem. Today’s subscribers engage with emails that resonate with their needs and preferences — targeted, personalized, and valuable emails. If the engagement rates are dipping, your messaging might be the culprit. 62% of savvy marketers claim that personalization is the key to improving email engagement. Take time to get to know your subscribers and understand their interests, needs, and preferences. Know the devices they use to read emails, their time zones, and the best time to send out emails. Doing so will help you send more engaging, personalized, and timely emails. Challenge #8: Understanding Metrics As a marketer, part of your job is defining goals and ensuring they are met. While that sounds simple, it can be complicated, particularly if the team doesn’t understand the key performance indicators (KPIs) for marketing success. Take this example: email marketers know that their campaigns are bound to fail if subscribers don’t open emails. That said, they don’t toot their horns when email open rates improve. Why? Because an increase in open rates doesn’t necessarily mean revenue growth; it’s the conversion rate that really connects action to income. Remember, anecdotal metrics such as organic traffic growth and click-through rates are important. However, you have to assign a financial goal and measure the ROI to reap optimal benefits from each campaign. Besides that, follow these cardinal rules when identifying the metrics to track: Explain metrics to the team to make them easy to understand and use Make sure the metrics are easy to replicate. Collect internal data and back it up with external sources so that each metric delivers useful, actionable insights that impact the business No challenge is too big if you know what you’re up against. Embrace this year with a new plan for tackling some of the biggest digital marketing challenges.
How to Grow Your School District’s Email List with Online Forms Posted on March 17, 2022March 16, 2022 by Jess Lunk Photo by Caleb Oquendo from Pexels Email is one of the best communication and marketing channels for K12 schools. It’s a great channel to reach parents share updates, important news, back-to-school protocols, and upcoming events. The channel boasts an incredible 36% open rate, which means when you send an email, there’s a high probability your message will reach home. However, before you can send an email to support parents, students, teaching staff, or donors, you need their email addresses. In this article, we’ll show you how to build your K12 email list and why doing so is extremely important. Why You Should Build Your Email Newsletter List A school’s email list degrades naturally. Parents will remain in your school’s email lists for as long as their kids are enrolled in your school. If the kid transfers or completes 12th grade, the parent will likely unsubscribe from your list or just completely lose interest. Not to mention, approximately 0.4% of parents unsubscribe from your list even when their kids are still enrolled. Taking this into consideration, you can see that if you don’t double down on continually building your email list, eventually, you’ll have no one to send emails to. And if you don’t have an email list or it’s constricted, you will be unable to: Drive direct email marketing campaigns and raise funds for various programs Support students, parents, and teaching staff by keeping them as informed as possible Conduct surveys or research targeting non-teaching staff, teaching staff, or students Run contests, organize sports events, games, and shows Why Web Forms are the Best for Growing a High-Quality List One of the easiest ways to capture email addresses for your K12 newsletter is through forms on your existing website. There are various types of web forms you can use, such as: Opt-in forms: Used when you want to request parents register for specific events, competitions, or your school newsletter. Pop-up forms: Place this type of form on pages or blog posts that receive the highest traffic. As the name suggests, the form pops up when the web visitor performs a predefined action such as showing an exit intent (moving their mouse to the upper right-hand corner, for example). Pop-up forms are good because they grab the reader’s attention and prompt them to take a specific action before you lose them altogether. Landing page forms: These can be used in promotions and as lead magnets so you can direct visitors to these pages and grow your list in a more conscious way. With BenchmarkONE K12 Edition, you won’t struggle to create any of these forms. We give you customizable templates which you can use as a springboard for ideas to design forms that grow your list significantly. When contacts start streaming in, we help you manage and segment them to ensure you’re sending the right message to the right group—no more looping grade eight parents into messages specific for grade one parents. Tips for Using Web Forms to Grow District Newsletter Email List Here are some helpful tips for growing your K12 email list: Maintain Consistent Branding Whether you’re creating a pop-up or opt-in form, make sure the design matches your website’s color palette. This way, when you add the forms to the web pages, they won’t look out of place. Most marketing automation tools, like BenchmarkONE, offer you tons of templates to choose from that make assembling your school newsletter super easy. These templates help do most of the work for you, and you can swap in your school logo and colors, so your messaging is consistent with your school branding. Place the Forms Strategically on Your School’s Website If you are using opt-in forms, add them in strategic places, such as landing pages, sidebar widgets, headers and footers, or at the end of a blog post. For pop-up forms, choose when you want them to appear, such as after a user has spent a specific amount of time on your page or when they show exit intent. Make Your Forms Mobile-Friendly The majority of the parents, teachers, and non-teaching staff consume your school and district’s content on mobile phones. For this reason, make sure your forms are mobile-friendly so that it’s easy for them to fill out anywhere and anytime on their mobile device. The last thing you want is to lose potential subscribers because they couldn’t read or notice your sign-up form. Give Web Visitors Value in Exchange for their Email Address If you are asking parents to sign up for the school’s newsletter, your content should be valuable to them. Don’t send too much content at once, and pay attention to which topics are resonating with readers the most. It can be hard to get parents and other constituents to read your newsletters, so you want to make sure you’re doing yourself as many favors as possible. Only share key information and insight and do so in a way that showcases the importance of being subscribed to your newsletter in the first place. Encourage Subscribers to Enroll Friends and Family Create a helpful district newsletter that parents, donors, or parties outside your school community will find interesting. For example, you could choose to deliver a newsletter series to help parents manage kids’ digital security. And then ask parents to recommend the newsletter to friends and family. Since this is a topic of concern for every parent, regardless of their kid’s school, a good number may subscribe to your newsletter, particularly if their school doesn’t cover the same. In general, be selective with how you go about this. Having more people subscribe to your district newsletter is great, but only if they’re going to truly value receiving it. Make sure that when you’re encouraging those on your email list to share the newsletter with others that they understand the value in doing so. For example, if you share upcoming district basketball games and tournaments, there are probably extended family members that would enjoy knowing about them and therefore want to be signed up for your district newsletter. Growing your district newsletter’s email list may sound super confusing and overwhelming, but with the BenchmarkONE K12 edition, it’s a cinch. Use the tips mentioned above and check out what our marketing automation and CRM software can do for you by scheduling a live demo.
The Top 9 Best CRMs For Agencies Posted on March 16, 2022October 14, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick When it comes to a CRM, every agency has its own unique needs. Whether you’re shopping for a new software solution or getting set up for the first time, the purchase of a CRM is not a decision to be taken lightly. Before we dive into some questions, you should ask before shopping around for a CRM and the top CRMs for agencies, let’s lay some groundwork. What is CRM Software? Customer relationship management (CRM) is a combination of processes and practices aimed at managing customer interactions throughout the buyer’s journey. The goal is to engage customers at all touchpoints to build better relationships that drive retention, loyalty, and sales growth. It can be difficult to handle all of this manually, particularly when your business scales. This is the reason why 65% of businesses invest in CRM technology within the first five years of launch. CRM software automates repetitive CRM tasks and streamlines processes, giving sales and marketing teams more time to handle critical tasks. It centralizes customer contacts, gathers customer data from a variety of sources, and offers actionable insights to boost relationships between the customer and your agency. Some of the key CRM features include: Contact management Lead management Interaction tracking Email integrations Workflow automation Pipeline management Sales forecasting Reporting and analytics Here are a few questions to answer before you start test-driving different CRMs: What’s the most important functionality you need? For example, are you looking for something to help you streamline your sales process or a tool to help organize your multichannel marketing campaigns? Are you looking for a CRM for your own agency to use on behalf of your clients, or both? The more users involved in your CRM, the more expensive (generally) it’ll be. Which processes would, if automated, save you the most time and money? Different CRMs have different options for automation — for example, triggered email drip campaigns or automatic lead scoring. Which do you need, and which can you live without? What kind of user interface (UI) do you prefer? Not all UIs are created equal. Some use spreadsheet-style interfaces with unique “views” that help you sort and filter records. Others mirror social media networks with centralized newsfeeds or dashboards that all users see when logged in. Do you really need something new? If you’re using an Excel spreadsheet to track client relationships, the answer is probably “yes.” But if your current CRM is missing a couple of features you wish you had, consider if you really need them. No CRM is perfect, and switching to a new solution can be time-consuming and expensive. Get input from your colleagues and other stakeholders. Ask your sales and marketing team what’s most important to them in a CRM. And once you have your list of “must-haves” and your budget in mind, it’s time to demo the best CRM software for agencies on the market. Benefits of CRM Software for Agencies From what we’ve already discussed, the benefits a CRM offers are apparent. However, we really want to examine what a solid tool can offer your agency, so here are some core benefits that come with using a CRM: 1. Better Contact Management If you want to build comprehensive customer profiles to spur advanced personalization for your agency, CRM software is the way to go. First of all, it centralizes customer contacts, making them easily accessible for sales, marketing, and support teams. More than that, it breaks data silos in your agency, improving functions of various departments ensuring customer interactions from all departments are recorded in a single repository. For example, the sales team can easily find the deal, continue from where the marketing team left off, and progress without a struggle. 2. Better Sales Forecasting CRM software updates customer profiles as new information about them come in, helping to build comprehensive profiles. Each bit of customer detail, from needs to locale, is at your sales team’s disposal. Using historical data helps sales reps determine which customers can be profitable. Moreover, CRM tools with predictive analysis provide insights for better sales forecasting. Unfortunately, it seems not many agencies are aware of these benefits since only less than a third use CRM for sales forecasting. 3. Increased Customer Satisfaction Your agency clients expect personalized emails since they often vary in industry, services needed, or interests. With a CRM, it’s easy to use personalization to your advantage. It allows to segment clients based on different aspects such as services, deal sizes, and more. Segmentation drives better personalization, which in turn leads to higher customer satisfaction and retention. Statistics show that when you prioritize personalization, you convince 90% of customers to spend more on your services and products. 4. Consistent Revenue Growth 68% of today’s businesses are increasingly using customer experience as a competitive advantage. Lisa Masiello makes it easy to understand the force behind this trend. She posits, “Happy customers are your biggest advocates and can easily become your best-performing sales team.” A CRM helps you keep track of your customers and get to know them better. When you know them better, you’re able to keep them happy by offering them tailored services and care. And when you keep customers happy, they are more likely to become repeat buyers and even woo others to partner with your agency. Losing a client could be extremely detrimental, even leading to some agencies closing their doors. This is why retainer business is crucial for agency success, and a CRM can help you establish a healthy retainer machine. Ready to get on board with a CRM? Let’s take a look at some of the best CRMs out there for agencies. Insightly Image courtesy of Insightly Insightly features exactly the level of functionality a small business or mid-sized agency would need. It has built-in project management tools, an excellent user interface (UI), integration capabilities with third-party apps like MailChimp, and many customization opportunities. Users like Insightly because of all of the functionality offered in the free plan. Pricing: Free plan, Plus – $29/month, Professional – $49/month, and Enterprise – $99/month Podio Image courtesy of GetApp Podio is a CRM that also provides project management, workflow management, social intranet, and product planning tools. With all of its added benefits, Podio is a great solution for agencies that want to manage both creative projects and sales activities in one place. Pricing: Free plan, Basic – $7.20, Plus – $11.20, Premium – $19.20 Nimble Image courtesy of Nimble Nimble focuses on each customer’s individuality, pulling insights from social media and other channels to give you the most accurate, updated profile information. With several email marketing tools built in, this CRM is especially useful for firms that provide email marketing (or rely on it for their own marketing strategies). Pricing: Nimble Business – $25/user/month, billed monthly or $19 per user per month, billed annually BenchmarkONE BenchmarkONE is a CRM and marketing automation platform built specifically for the needs of SMBs and agencies. With customizable lead scoring capabilities and a suite of email marketing automation and tracking tools, BenchmarkONE makes it simple to manage opportunities and grow sales. Customers choose BenchmarkONE because of the ease of setup (Ranked #1 by G2 Crowd), intuitiveness, and live-dedicated customer support. Pricing: Free Plan offered, Lite and Pro plans start at $0/month for 250 contacts. Price based on number of contacts. Unlimited users. Qualifying agencies can access partner pricing and discounts. Pipedrive Image courtesy of Pipedrive Pipedrive is a sales CRM that’s focused on prompting salespeople to take action with leads and customers. It integrates with several third-party email providers and other tools, like Outlook, Gmail, Google Maps, Trello, and Zapier. It’s ideal for agencies with long or complex sales cycles, as it’s primarily a pre-sale tool. Pricing: Free trial, Essential – $12.50/user/month, billed annually, Advanced – $24.90/user/month, billed annually, Professional – $49.90/user/month, billed annually, Enterprise – $99/user/month, billed annually Salesforce Image courtesy of Salesforce If you need a CRM with all of the bells and whistles, the industry-leading Salesforce CRM may be the one for you. Though some users find the UI and the numerous capabilities overwhelming, Salesforce is a powerful tool once you’ve taken the time to learn how to use it. Pricing: Essentials – $28.33 per user per month, Sale Professionals – $84.97/user/month, Enterprise – $169.94/user/month, Unlimited – $339.88/user/month Sage Image courtesy of Software Advice Sage CRM is a multipurpose solution that connects your sales and marketing activities to other departments, like accounting, service delivery, and customer service. With lead scoring, email marketing, and territory management capabilities, it’s a great solution for bigger agencies with complex or dispersed sales teams. Pricing: Starts at $45/month/user Apptivo Image courtesy of GetApp Apptivo CRM is known for its “do it all” functionality – from lead and opportunity management to document storage and email marketing. Manage your customer relationships from pre-sale to sale and beyond. Pricing: Lite – $8 per user per month, billed annually, Premium – $12 per user per month, billed annually, Ultimate – $20 per user per month, billed annually, Enterprise is quote-based HubSpot CRM Image courtesy of HubSpot HubSpot’s CRM is free, which might appeal to you if you’re a boutique agency or testing the waters of a CRM for the first time. It’s easy to use, and while it doesn’t have as many advanced features (like a mobile app or proposal tools), it’s a great solution for keeping your customer information organized. Pricing: Free Spiro Spiro is a reliable CRM software for small and medium-sized agencies. It’s a powerful tool that lets you automatically create contacts and organize and prioritize opportunities. It distinguishes itself with a solid functionality to pinpoint anomalies in your sales pipeline and recommend sales steps to convert more sales. Pricing: Quote-based We hope this guide helps you as you consider a CRM for your growing agency. And if you’d like to learn more about what BenchmarkONE’s agency-focused software can do for you, you can sign up for a free plan here.
8 Tips for Community Management Posted on March 10, 2022August 25, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Building and managing a community of advocates is critical to the success of your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies. However, your customers are spread out all over the internet, which makes it increasingly difficult to manage their interactions. But, it can be done! Before we share eight community management tips to help you build a strong community of customers, brand advocates, and enthusiasts, let’s cover some basics. What is Community Management? A community is the people who interact with your brand on various touchpoints, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Snapchat, Forums, or the comment section of your blog. Community management involves everything you do to build lasting relationships with your customers, potential customers, and brand followers. In a nutshell, it’s all about listening to the internet and bringing about active discussions around your brand. Why is Community Management Crucial? There are different ways you can manage your community, but all have the same goal: to align your advocates and bring them together for increased engagement. An acronym for Support, Product, Acquisition, Contribution, Engagement, Success – the SPACES model breaks down the benefits of community management quite well: Why Do You Need a Community Manager? Appropriate community management is typically orchestrated by a community manager. A community manager is at the helm of your community-building strategy – monitoring, engaging, moderating, and measuring the progress of these efforts. A community manager juggles multiple tasks, including: Gathering raw yet valuable feedback Managing buyer complaints Building relationships with other brands Winning over influencers Initiating and managing one-to-one connections with your audience Monitoring keywords relevant to your business Quickly responding to complaints to maintain a strong reputation Gathering reviews and ideas from community members Raising brand awareness within your niche Boosting customer lifetime value, satisfaction, and referrals 8 Tips for Community Management 1. Determine Your Most Engaged Audience Engagement levels differ across channels, as does the audience. To be a successful channel manager, develop a knack for prioritizing your time. Oftentimes, the most active channels elicit the most interactions than the less engaged channels. As you set time aside to go through responses, you have to allocate more time to the most engaging channels. Use relevant metrics to rank your channels in order of activity, so you can determine which channels will require more attention. 2. Acknowledge the Customer When a customer approaches you with a question or complaint, it’s important that you acknowledge it. This goes a long way in making them feel heard and in building trust among your customers. Where possible, give them an instant solution to their problem. When that’s not possible, let them know you’re actively looking into the issue. Make it clear that you understand where the customer is coming from, as that will amplify the value in the community you’re building. 3. Be Authentic and Consistent in Your Communication When customers sign up to be part of your community, they do so hoping to connect with someone real. So, besides maintaining a consistent voice and tone of messaging across all communities, be authentic and genuine. In other words, engage with customers, supporters, and followers on a human level. Be empathetic and approach every interaction from a customer’s standpoint. 4. Always Provide Follow-Up Interactions Let’s say you handled a customer complaint about a faulty product they recently received. If you promise to ship a replacement, don’t leave it at that. Contact the customer to check-in and get an update. Did they receive the replacement, and did they like it? If they did, share the feedback with your followers on social media and other channels. This shows other community members that you care about your customers and are ready to stop at nothing to solve their problems. 5. Gather Customer Feedback Building a vibrant community doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long process that involves a constant iteration of engagement techniques and content formats. Your customers know what’s working and what’s not, so create surveys or polls to gather feedback on various community management practices, your products, their practices, and anything else you want to know. You can survey on most social media platforms, but also consider sending customer surveys via email. Analyze the feedback and use the insights to adjust your process, how you manage your community, and the content you create for your community. 6. Set Goals and Measure Progress As you tweak the process, be sure to measure progress. Each type of community management should have a goal. The common goals are: Build domain expertise Build lasting relationships with customers Improve brand awareness Drive traffic to your website Expand your audience Connect with influencers Check the sources and volume of your site traffic, your customer satisfaction rates, and other KPIs to determine if you’re meeting your goals or not. 7. Ask for Input Community management doesn’t happen in a vacuum: broaden your perspective by involving others in the process. For example, while the community manager is in charge of comments on industry-related news, get the CEO’s input on thought leadership content for a fresh take. Similarly, ask the sales manager to answer customers’ questions on product pricing and technical details. 8. Automate Repetitive Processes Community management involves a lot of moving parts. Done manually, the process can be long and tedious. So, automate some of these processes like social listening and posting to save time for important things. Create a More Engaged Community We recommend following these tips as you try to build a strong, growing, engaged community. Sticking with your strategy is key, so make sure your efforts are fueled by a dedicated community manager for maintenance and consistency.
Master These Three KPIs to Grow Your Business Posted on March 9, 2022March 8, 2022 by Guest Author Marketing without monitoring and tracking your progress is pointless. In fact, it’s worse than pointless – it’s a waste of resources and a missed opportunity to improve your business. If you are going to spend the time and money required to pursue marketing campaigns, you need to be committed to carefully evaluating the success of those initiatives. That’s where KPIs come into the picture. KPIs – key performance indicators – are measures that you select to monitor the quality of your marketing efforts. In a high-tech world, it’s easy to get distracted by the enormous wealth of information that is always available at your fingertips. However, by looking at too many numbers, you might struggle to get a clear picture of your success or failure. Consider narrowing your focus to center on these three essential KPIs. 1. Return on Investment Return on investment – often referred to as ROI – is a logical place to start. Each of your marketing efforts is going to come along with some financial cost. Certain activities will cost more than others, of course, but your goal is to have all of your marketing initiatives generate as much revenue as possible. If a certain area of your marketing spend is actually bringing a negative return, you’ll likely want to discontinue that effort. The calculation for ROI is deceivingly simple. To determine the return on investment for a specific marketing effort or for your marketing department as a whole, simply divide the amount of revenue generated by the cost of your campaigns. If that calculation leaves you with a number larger than one, you know that you have at least come out ahead. So, what makes that calculation “deceiving?” The issue here is figuring out what revenue to credit to what marketing measure. How do you know which of your many marketing plans actually led to a given sale? This can be tricky, to be sure, but there are ways to produce accurate numbers. 2. Win Rate Where you have almost certainly heard of ROI before – even if you aren’t yet tracking it carefully – you may not be familiar with the concept of win rate. This is a KPI that aims to measure how many opportunities you are actually turning into customers. It’s great to present your products or services to a lot of interested people, but if those people aren’t making purchases, it will all be wasted. Win rate is one of those metrics that you’ll never be completely happy with. Even if you are doing a good job of turning some of your opportunities into sales, you’ll always want more. By monitoring this metric, you can see how certain adjustments impact your win rate, so you can continually adapt and grow. It’s important to think about win rate from a big picture perspective as you analyze your business. If your win rate is falling below where it needs to be to turn a profit, there are a couple of angles from which you can approach the problem. A marketing issue. It’s possible that your lagging win rate is a marketing problem. That is, it’s a problem related to attracting the wrong potential customers with your advertising plan. Placing your advertising in front of the wrong people is going to result in leads that don’t have any chance of converting. Attracting quality leads is the first big step toward establishing a solid win rate. A funnel problem. Once you get prospects into your sales funnel, you need to have a structure in place that will compel them to make a purchase. So, for instance, if you want your prospects to click a link for more information, what happens after they do so? If your win rate is disappointing, it might be that the link you’re directing them to is to blame. Tracking your win rate over time can provide important insights into your business. Stay on top of this one and reverse negative trends in win rate before it’s too late. 3. Cost Per Acquisition You might also see this one referred to as cost per new customer. No matter what you call it, the idea is simple enough – you are trying to track how much it costs you to add a new customer to your business. This is important because you need to confirm that the amount you are spending is worth it in the long run. If each new customer costs more to acquire than they will be worth to your business, you are playing a losing game. To calculate your cost per acquisition, you’ll divide the amount of money spent on a marketing campaign by the number of new leads that campaign generated. So, if you spent $1,000 on a marketing plan and that plan helped you acquire 100 new customers, your CPA would be $10. Is that good? Well, it all depends. In some industries, a $10 CPA would be incredible and would lead to huge profits. On the other hand, some businesses would quickly fall apart if they had to pay $10 per new customer. It all depends on the value that the customer brings to your business. In other words, how much do you expect that customer to spend with you over the years to come? If they can only be expected to make a one-time purchase for $5, you are obviously in trouble. You’ll need to know the average value of a new customer, so you can properly evaluate how much you can spend for acquisitions. Sometimes business growth can be very simple. By focusing on these three metrics, you’ll be able to make some small strides towards growth that can lead to more opportunities. Good luck! Matt Buchanan is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct, a technology company that offers local lead generation solutions for service businesses. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. He has 15+ years of expertise in local lead generation, sales, search engine marketing, and building and executing growth strategies.
Your 2022 Hiring Guide Posted on March 3, 2022May 8, 2024 by Jonathan Herrick The Great Resignation has led to a scenario where there are far more open positions than employees willing to work. This has given job seekers leverage they never had while taking away the control employers held over employees. Hiring in 2022 is now more complicated than ever before. 61% of employers are having a hard time filling vacant positions despite the high unemployment rate. You thought hiring the right candidate was hard, but now, it’s even harder. The Great Resignation is throwing us all a curveball. So, if you’re finding it increasingly hard to fill open positions, we’ve got some steps you can take that are sure to help. Check them out! How To Attract The Right Talent Amidst The Great Resignation Grace Lordan — associate professor at the London School of Economics — states that employers haven’t seen the end of job-hopping. She also says that employees who value a flexible and hybrid working model will change jobs until they find a company that offers just that. If you can connect the dots in Grace’s message, you’ll get hiring right amidst the recruitment upheavals. Today’s employees are attracted by more flexible work hours, continued availability of remote work, better treatment, and higher wages, to name a few. If you offer these, there’s no doubt top talent will knock on your company’s doors in droves. However, 70% of candidates these days are passive job seekers, and 40% of applicants are unqualified. This means that even though many applicants will tender a formal interest to fill a position, you’ll need a proper strategy to pinpoint the right candidates. Hiring in 2022: A Comprehensive Guide Let’s break this undertaking down into a step-by-step process. 1. Create a Stellar Job Description People are quitting jobs in droves because they no longer meet their expectations. To ensure you appeal to the right candidate, you need to put together a job description that is transparent and honest. Job descriptions are super important for capturing exactly what the job entails so you can accurately manage the expectations of those applying, as well as find a candidate that is actually qualified. Create a comprehensive job description that captures: Job requirements Desired characteristics Requisite experience Special qualifications Salary and benefits Nature of work: remote or in-office If you’re hiring for a newly created role, make sure it aligns with your overall business goals and plan. Doing so will help you stipulate the scope of that role and decide the qualification and characteristics of the ideal candidate. 2. Post the Job Description Finding the right candidate often begins internally. Consider posting the job in internal communication channels, such as Slack, and ask qualified employees to apply. If you can find a good candidate internally, you don’t need to advertise the job externally, which can save you a lot of time and headache. After all, when you hire internally, you already know the candidate and his or her work ethic and process. However, if you’re determined to cast a wider net and capitalize on a larger pool of candidates, post the job externally. Generate a promotion plan that outlines where, when, and how you’re going to publicize the job. External publicity will likely entail posting the job description on: Your company website Online job boards LinkedIn and other job posting sites Industry publications Keep in mind that 68% of Americans would choose a remote working option over the 9-to-5 work, so consider offering remote work. If you’re looking to hire remotely, consider job boards such as: We Work Remotely Flexjobs RemoteOK Working Nomads Also, consider posting your job on social networks like Digital Nomad Jobs, Nomad List, and Work From for some added exposure. 3. Build a Strong Employer Brand Online These days, candidates don’t just read the job description and apply. 75% of interested candidates first gauge your employer’s brand reputation to decide whether or not to apply. 52% of these candidates first go to your website and social media to learn more about your company. Others will scour the web and sift through online reviews on job websites like Indeed and Glassdoor. Before you post your job, audit your online reputation. What do former employees say about working for your company? Take note of anything negative and address it in advance. 4. Vet Candidates Once the candidates apply, separate the wheat from the chaff. On average, a corporate job attracts 250 resumes, only 4-6 candidates get interviewed, and one gets hired. An applicant tracking system will help you review applications to eliminate unfit or under-qualified candidates. Besides that, use applications such as ThriveMap and Saberr to review candidates’ cultural fit and whittle down your list. Be selective but also don’t disqualify someone if they aren’t an exact fit. If you think their experience may still lend to the role, consider moving them to the next step. As we mentioned earlier, despite the wide candidate pool, employers are still finding it hard to place roles, so being too selective could be a bad move. 5. Interview Candidates If you’re hiring remotely, you’ll have to conduct interviews via phone and video conferencing platforms. Alternatively, if you’re filling an in-office position, schedule interviews with candidates at your company. Depending on your interview structure, you can put candidates through further assessment and background checks. This is quite possibly the most important step of the entire process. Since the hiring landscape is much different than in the past, you’ll want to establish and ask the right questions. This includes focusing on candidates’ motivations, passions, and the real “why” behind them applying. With so many people experiencing burnout, the last thing you want is to select a candidate you’re really excited about, only to have them quit a few months later. Make sure your questions land and help establish adequate expectations for the role. Lastly, evaluate the interview and assessment performance to identify the top candidate. Be sure to select a backup candidate in case you fail to find an agreement with the top candidate. Most importantly, keep both candidates engaged. Remember: the candidates are likely to be courting multiple offers, so losing touch with them would be costly. 6. Make it Official At this point, extend the offer to the number one candidate, detailing: Start date Salary and benefits Potential severance fee Paid time off Remote work policy Company mission statement – if you haven’t sent this already. The information helps the candidate evaluate the offer and decide whether to take it or not. Sometimes, the candidate may open negotiations if they aren’t comfortable with an item on the offer letter. Interestingly, the person extending the job offer may influence the candidate’s decision. 94% of candidates accept the offer when they are contacted by their prospective manager, compared to 89% when contacted by the recruiter. Once the candidate accepts the offer and signs the paperwork, move them along the hiring process with the following paperwork and documents: Form I-9 and E-Verify Form W-4 State registrations Organization’s rule book Take into account employment and payroll policies in different countries when hiring remote workers. If unsure, seek advice from remote employment experts such as Remote. 6. Onboard Your New Hire The recruitment doesn’t end the moment the employees ink the deal. You hired them to help you achieve your goals, so signing the paperwork is just the start of the journey. Next, you need to onboard employees and integrate them into your team. Do not underestimate the power of onboarding: it reduces employee turnover and boosts new-hire productivity. According to statistics, 69% of new hires would stay in your organization for three years if you offered them a great onboarding experience. Welcome new employees in a professional way to make them feel valued. Doing so lays the foundation for a super-productive relationship between the hire and your company. Give them clear scheduling and program of the orientation process to help them prepare in advance. And, if possible, assign new hires a mentor to take them through the first stage of their career. This can be their manager, or it can be someone else at the company who has expressed interest in mentorship. Either way, this will help ensure your new hire feels secure and ready for success at their new job. The Great Resignation has made hiring new employees extra tough right now. The tips above should help you get the ball rolling and ensure your next new hire is in it for the long haul.
7 Most Common Link Building Mistakes You Might be Doing and How to Avoid them this Year Posted on March 2, 2022February 25, 2022 by Guest Author At the beginning of a new year, SEO marketers may find themselves looking back at how the discipline of SEO has changed over the years. Certainly, in 2021 SEO evolved. And as in previous years, it evolved largely to reflect the changes and updates made to the Google ranking algorithms. In recent years, many Google updates can be seen as the company’s response to what we’ll call the SE-Only approach. This approach leads to content designed only to boost Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings. In other words, it leads to content that is heavy on keywords but light on actual information. Besides content, there are also important things you should consider when it comes to keeping your link-building strategy up to date. Read on to discover what the most common link-building mistakes are and how to avoid them. 1. Broken Internal Links Ensuring you have a well-organized internal site structure that is optimized for crawlers is possibly the single most important thing you can do to ensure your content is found by the right people. As such, when it comes to your linking strategy, prioritize your tasks so that dealing with broken internal links is the first thing you do. That’s because when a crawler encounters a broken link, it has to terminate there and will be unable to continue to pages that may be linked to from the affected page. Broken links are frustrating to visitors and signal to search engines that a website is of low quality, yet a recent study by Semrush found that 42.5% of websites were affected by the issue. Image Source If you encounter broken internal links on your website, the first thing you should do is check whether the link’s URL is correct and change if necessary. If a webpage returns an error, remove the link leading to the error page or, preferably, replace it with a live link. If, for some reason, you can’t do this, create a redirect from the broken page. 2. Not Enough or Badly Structured Internal Links If a page features content that you want to be findable by search engines, you need search bots known as crawlers to be able to index that page. For them to be able to do this, it needs to be linked to. You don’t need to link every page to every other page, but having a clear interlinking structure and strategy will help crawlers to index your pages and therefore improve their search engine visibility. XML sitemaps are an essential tool to help crawlers navigate and find new pages on your site. Sitemaps are a way to show search engines the different pages that exist on your site. If you’re a web developer implementing CI (continuous integration), remember that you’ll need to list every new page in your website directory and adjust your sitemap accordingly. 3. Confusing Website Navigation If your internal link structure doesn’t follow a clear and intuitive logic, people won’t be able to find the content they’re looking for. The art of creating a clear and effective sitemap is one of the biggest challenges of web design that can help people get from A to B within your site. Image Source As well as making sure that you’re making the most of expandable menu options so that visitors can navigate your site with ease, for navigation best practices, you should also install a search bar in a visible place on every page. Search bars can be especially useful for navigating blogs, where there may be hundreds of posts in a given timeframe. For example, a blog that focuses on business technology may feature posts on topics ranging from WFM tools to marketing automation trends to CRM comparisons. As different people would organize such a wide-ranging group of topics according to their own system, it can be difficult to design intuitive menus. A search bar solves this problem by creating a fast and efficient way for people to find posts on a given topic, in turn decreasing bounce rate. 4. Having the Wrong Linking Strategy for your Content-Type Many people think that link building is link building, no matter what the specific content you’re trying to promote is, or who makes up your target audience. But this simply isn’t true. For example, consider a recent post from Google engineers on the Google Search Central blog. The post concerns a 2021 update to the way reviews appear in search results. In it, the engineers offer two pieces of advice for product reviewers looking to rank highly on Google SERPs: Provide evidence of your experience with the product to reinforce the authenticity of your review. Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice. As we can see, according to Google’s own advice, product reviewers should be applying a linking strategy built around consumer choice if they want to boost their SERP rankings. Image Source In other contexts, linking to multiple sellers could end up negatively influencing your SEO. For example, if you were to write an article claiming to be about free video chat but then only linked to paid video chat solutions, it may decrease your page authority. 5. Redirect Loops and Chains Redirects, which automatically direct traffic from one page to another, can be useful if you have a discontinued page that still receives regular visitors. However, poorly organized redirects can seriously damage your SERP rankings and create friction in the user experience of your site. A redirect chain is when one page redirects to another, which in turn redirects to yet another, and so on. Not only do redirect chains make it more difficult for search bots to crawl and index your website, but they can also inhibit the ability of browsers to navigate effectively. Slow page load times or even failure to load can create significant frustration for visitors. A redirect loop is when a redirect chain loops back around on itself, creating an unbreakable cycle. Search engines hate redirect loops, yet they are a surprisingly common link-building mistake. Problems with redirects most often occur when external web pages are involved. When it comes to internal pages, chains and loops are usually the consequence of a website’s previous migrations. For external links, make sure any links that make up part of your inbound or outbound lead generation strategies are properly coordinated with your backlink partners. Avoid internal redirect chains and loops by reviewing all your redirects and ensuring they link straight to the correct destination page. Image Source 6. Breaking the Three-Click Rule The three-click rule is a frequently applied principle of web design that states that a visitor to a website should be able to find any information with no more than three mouse clicks. The three-click rule is based on the idea that users will become frustrated and leave a site if they can’t easily find what they’re looking for. You go through all that effort creating quality content optimized for search results and building backlinks in order to increase referral traffic. But all that work is wasted if poor website navigation design means visitors leave without finding what they’re after. While some web designers insist that the three-click rule should apply to paths between any two pages, others state that it only applies to how many clicks it takes to reach content from the homepage. However, you choose to count, keep in mind that the three-click rule is more of a guide than a strict rule and that usability can’t be boiled down to a specific number of clicks. To check whether your website adheres to the three-click rule, write a list of the content visitors are most likely to be looking for and try to navigate there from your homepage. If you find that pages are frequently breaking the three-click rule, it’s time to re-evaluate your site navigation. Ask yourself whether you’re efficiently organizing your menus with categories and subcategories or if you’re making use of non-click navigation options like expandable menus. 7. Accumulating Toxic Backlinks With the increasing digitalization of business communications, it can be hard to keep track of which websites are backlinking to yours. To make matters worse, advances in automation technology and the easy programmability of contemporary bots means your site may unwittingly become the object of a spam campaign. We call these unwanted backlinks toxic because: Links from low authority or known spam websites can be bad for your SEO Few things will put people off your brand more than if they arrive at your website via a spam link. The best way to remove toxic backlinks you will need to use one of the SEO software tools available designed specifically for the job. Backlink analysis tools allow you to see and analyze all of the backlinks leading to your site. Having identified toxic backlinks, all that’s left to do is to disavow those links on Google. Disavowing a link comprises of creating a disavow file that tells Google which links you consider illegitimate and don’t want to be associated with your site. As SEO evolves to reflect changes to search algorithms and the way people search, the art of link building inevitably changes too. Keep up to date with SEO best practices and avoid these common link-building mistakes if you want your content to succeed in 2022 and beyond. Author Bio Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications platform and leading Bitrix24 alternative that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning conversations into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts for both company and client campaigns. Here is her LinkedIn.
4 Obstacles and Solutions for Better Sales and Marketing Alignment Posted on February 24, 2022September 16, 2022 by Guest Author Sales and marketing are traditionally viewed as two separate departments. However, it wasn’t until recently that companies began to understand the benefits of aligning their sales and marketing strategies and making them work together towards the common goal – increased revenue. Still, sales and marketing alignment can be challenging, and you are likely to come across various difficulties. So, we compiled a list of the obstacles you should expect to come across and how to deal with them. 1. Weak Communication Poor communication between your sales and marketing departments can be the result of many things – independent development, unclear responsibilities, ineffective tools, etc. And you must address this issue, as it can lead to decreased productivity and increasing costs. One of the ways to improve communication is to schedule regular feedback meetings. It can be very beneficial to have the two teams together in the same space (virtual or physical), discussing ideas and working on the problems. In these meetings, they can discuss the following: Ideas for quality content Social media strategies Targeting new customers Defining sales goals that can benefit from marketing assistance Process updates The efficiency of marketing campaigns Another way to tackle this problem is to create centralized communication using messaging apps such as Slack, ProofHub, Twist, etc. This way, you will have one platform where all parties can get informed on the workflow and stay in sync. 2. Unshared Goals While marketing concentrates on generating and tracking leads, sales representatives are trying to convert those leads into customers. It is often the case that the marketing department isn’t providing quality leads to sales and the two worlds end up colliding. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to fix this, as we are going to explain further. Make a shared plan that determines the road from leads to customers to revenue. Reach the agreement on what the quality leads are and how it’s best to attract them. Define a marketing-qualified lead (MQL), a sales-qualified lead (SQL), and determine where account-based marketing fits into. Define which are “cold,” “warm,” and “hot” leads and prioritize the ones worth pursuing. Analyze where the leads are coming from, how many of them turn into customers, and how to improve your marketing plan to generate more conversions. Another way of unifying goals is to enable these two departments to work together on providing the answers to frequently asked questions on sales calls, via the company website, and on social media. Visitors often search for a solution for their particular problem and are not interested so much in the website design as they are in quality content that can help them achieve their aim. Providing your leads with valuable information will ultimately lead to a greater conversion rate, and that is the goal that both departments should aim for. 3. Different Metrics Marketing metrics focus on evaluating the efficiency of marketing campaigns, while sales metrics evaluate overall business performance. The two teams are commonly working and assessing success separately. To maximize your results, your marketing and sales teams should have an insight into all relevant key performance indicators (KPI) results. These indicators are important for targeting problems and coming up with fast solutions. We are going to explore some of the most important marketing and sales KPIs. Marketing KPIs: Marketing revenue attribution indicates how much revenue came from your marketing campaign Customer acquisition cost (CAC) indicates how much it costs you to obtain a new customer Customer lifetime value (LTV) indicates how much revenue can your business expect from a single customer over the average lifespan The traffic-to-lead ratio gives an insight into your website traffic and where it’s coming from Sales KPIs: Sales target shows whether you are reaching your planned sales goals Customer drop-out rate shows the number of customers who stopped using your products or services The lead-to-opportunity ratio measures the possibility of your leads becoming customers The sales teams can provide the marketing department with better insights into customers’ behavior. This will help the marketing department create more personalized marketing campaigns, ultimately leading to better results for both marketing and sales. It is more than obvious that the two teams can benefit just from knowing each other’s KPIs and results. This will enable them to work together towards a common goal – revenue. 4. Inaccurate Customer Data From the sales point of view, an incorrect email address or phone number means substantial time wasted on tracking down accurate contact information. From the marketing point of view, inaccurate data means that their campaign might not reach the right person, which can lead to a high email bounce rate. Thankfully, a team of good web application developers can create a data platform that can easily solve problems related to inaccurate data. These platforms allow your business to acquire, store, prepare, deliver, and administrate all your customer data. Setting accurate customer data in one place is beneficial for both marketing and sales. The Advantages of Sales and Marketing Alignment There are many advantages you can gain from sales and marketing alignment, and here are five of them, in case you are still not sure whether all this trouble is worth your time and effort (it is). 1. A Better Understanding of Your Customers Understanding who your customers are is what can make or break your business. This is why it’s crucial for marketing and sales to join forces in creating more quality leads that convert to customers, and in order to do so, both teams will need to have a firm grasp on who your customers are. 2. Winning Your Competitors’ Customers With sales and marketing alignment, everyone is informed about the tactics your competitors use. This helps your sales team prepare for answering the questions about why your products or services are better than your competitors’. Without alignment, your sales team would be in the dark on this information, and they wouldn’t be able to benefit from knowing certain lead objections or competitor comparisons before they’re presented. 3. Increased Revenue With sales and marketing alignment, your revenue and conversion rates increase because your teams are both working towards the same goal. This results in a shorter sales cycle and a more accurate sales target. 4. A Better Strategy By planning and enabling alignment, the company acknowledges the impact of both your marketing and sales efforts. When the two sides work on strategies for launching marketing campaigns, attracting leads, and converting them into customers, their chances of success increase. 5. More Feedback From Customers Both sales and marketing gather relevant feedback from customers as they interact with them on different levels. Sales and marketing alignment facilitates sharing this valuable information. That creates a better understanding of how to reach higher conversions and win rates because both can understand and find strategies that address customer pain points. Aligning sales and marketing comes with many challenges, but the end result is worth the effort. Their work creates the bigger picture of your business, and that puts you on the right road to success. Author Bio Carl Fisher is a PPC and CRO specialist, but writing was what led him into the world of digital marketing. Armed with a Bachelor’s degree in English language and literature and extensive writing experience, he writes about technology, web development, and marketing. After his writing is done, he mostly spends his time creatively, working as a sound engineer.