How To Align Marketing With Sales
This is arguably the single most important topic for marketing: how to align with sales. If you are asking if we need to align with sales, go find a new profession. If you think marketing is much more important than sales, update your resume. If you think marketing objectives are about something other than sales, then it’s time to start networking.
Five years into my early sales career, I realized that I was a mildly successful sales person mainly because I focused on relationships, not selling. And…Marketing needed lots of help. So I followed my frustration into a marketing career and have never looked back. In this post I will provide some of the latest thinking along with my own thoughts on how to better align marketing with sales.
Integrate Social Media Into Your Marketing Mix
As a results-oriented marketer you want to only deploy your precious time and budget into marketing programs that work. At the same time, you know that social media has changed the marketing landscape: shouting to prospects with endless email offers may produce leads but you’re worried about the longer term implications to your market.
You may have heard that social media can improve not only your more traditional tactics but also allows you to engage with your prospects sooner in the buying cycle. It may even allow you to identify those influential network hubs whose recommendations can mean big referral business for you. So how do you incorporate social media into the marketing mix?
The 4 Cs of Social Media
Social media is a paradox: it is the physical representation of a revolution in the way consumers obtain (and create) information. At the same time, it is just another marketing channel. The reason I believe marketers are so confused about social media is because of this paradox.
And the reaction of many is to rush into the technology. This misses the point, of course, since social media is about customer relationships and not really about the technology at all. In the past, I have written about the challenges of Social Media and The Brand, the power of Integrating Social Media and Search and asked Why Do You Tweet? Social Media And Your Personal Brand. So I thought it was best to identify a clear framework for marketers to use to create successful social media strategies.
Social Media and The Brand
There has been a lot of discussion lately about Social Media and Branding. Brands are valuable assets that companies create, nurture and maintain with great care, right?
But how do you measure brand value in the social age? And what role do marketers play in cultivating the brand and maintaining some level of consistency in our brand image?
