Relationship Between Sales And Marketing in Digital Marketing
We have touched on this before by mentioning that marketing and sales were two related departments, but this slide shows an actual representation of what the marketing and sales funnel is and the definition of the lifecycle stage of contacts in the database. The above stages describe the customer lifecycle used to qualify a consumer’s readiness for sales. In this article, I want to look at the activities of sales and marketing in digital marketing.
How it goes…
- A customer starts as a subscriber after subscribing to content, such as a newsletter.
- Than they move to a lead as they show more interest in the brand and product by visiting multiple pages, following on social media, clicking into emails, etc.
- The lead will than be qualified by marketing and than by sales. This stage is critical as a badly qualified lead can be lost. The qualification of a lead is about marking the lead as ready for a more aggressive communication strategy.
- The qualified lead is than marked as an opportunity, defined as a contact who has become a real sales opportunity in your CRM and is ready to buy. They need extra attention and are about to make a purchase.
- A customer is the actual paying customer that has bought the product at least once in the past.
- An evangelist or advocate is a returning customer that has proven to believe in your product or business.
- They are a vocal group who will refer new business to you. Leveraging there networks often bring in new customers and help you reach leads you may not have been able to otherwise. They will refer your product to friends, family, co-workers and be in regular communication through social media or direct email.
To be successful in achieving objectives and pushing ideas, marketers need strong skills that will help them connect, engage, and get buy-in on their projects.
As we have seen, marketers work with numerous amounts of stakeholders, both internal and external, and keeping good relationships with other team members is one of the keys to success for marketers and for the general business organisation.
Let’s now review a couple of the skills that can be worth focusing on when trying to improve digital marketing performances. As Paul McDonald, senior executive director for Robert Half, said:
“The most successful and satisfied employees work well with just about everyone. Building relationships across departments ensures enhanced collaboration, smoother processes and greater influence for practitioners.“
Let’s list some of these skills:
#1 Listening skills
You need listening skills in order to be a good digital marketer. Most of the decisions that you are going to make as a Digital Marketer are not going to be unilateral decisions. You will have to carry all departments along in your decision making. You have to discuss issues with your team members and get their inputs. This will ensure that you continue to refine your campaigns based on inputs from your stakeholders.
#2 Analytical skills
Another marketing skills that a digital marketer needs to perform effectively is analytical skills. They will always have to compare the past with the present in order to determine what will likely happen in the future. They have to also analyse these campaigns. They must be able to determine what is working and what is not working. This will allow them to refine these campaigns based on the feedback that they are getting from there customers.
#3 Interpersonal skills
If you ask me what my own perspective is when it comes to digital marketing, All I can tell you is that you should bring to bear, your interpersonal skills. You might need to apply your communication and analytical skills when you are running your campaigns. You cannot rely on analytics alone. At times, you have to also reach out recipients and listen to the voice of reasoning. This will help to decide on whether to pause the campaign or not.
#4 Sales skills
One of the essential skills that you need for marketing in digital marketing is sales skills. You must understand the Unique Selling Proposition for your product. What do you think your product has, that will make any prospective customers to have developed an interest in the product. You need to be able to answer this question when a prospect asks such question(s). There might not be enough time to get answers from the sales team when such questions are asked.
#5 Strategic thinking skills.
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