Creating an Integrated Sales and Marketing Strategy

Integrated Sales and Marketing is not just an industry fad, it is a proven approach to modern day marketing.

In order to achieve a successful integrated and sales marketing strategy, it comes down to open communication, departmental alignment and well-managed systems designed to help performance across both teams.

This proven approach creates a unified and seamless experience between consumers and brands. This is done by ensuring marketing and sales teams are able to work in tandem or in alignment to keep the sales flywheel turning. 

Marketing and sales teams have a long standing reputation for not working side by side, because for decades these teams have been working toward the same goal in different ways which inevitably results in workplace friction and the “blame game.”

So, how can decades of friction be eliminated?

It's important for both sales and marketing teams to understand that in reality they actually rely on each other in order to succeed. For years these teams have been working at cross-purposes and with a different set of goals and metrics when they should actually be working to help each other to boost sales and keep the sales flywheel turning.

Getting Started with Integrated Sales and Marketing

  • Gain a Greater Understanding of the Buyer’s Journey

By aligning your sales and marketing teams, both departments gain greater insight into the buyer’s journey. The ideal customer profile or buyer persona should be shaped by both teams as each team has unique insight and key data into the customer and how they interact with the brand. In order to understand your customer you need to have key information about who they are, where they can be found, and what their average day looks like while at the same time you need to know their buying habits, how they make decisions and what their expectations are. And all of this information can be unpacked, analysed and understood if marketing and sales share their insight and data with each other. 

For example: Sales teams are able to inform marketing about the most common problems prospects face when researching your solution and the marketing team can tailor content around these problems and distribute this content through the right channels in order to help direct prospects through the sales funnel.  

  • Begin to Build Brand Credibility through a Unified Message

By integrating your sales and marketing strategy, you are able to position your brand as an industry thought-leader, one that is available to educate, advise and help clients through every stage of the buying process.

For example: As your sales team shares insight and data into their experience with potential clients and current customers, your marketing team is able to tailor content for these audiences (content for every stage of the buying cycle) ensuring a seamless message is carried throughout the marketing and sales process - and is delivered to the client in the right way, at the right time, through the right platforms. Essentially, by working together and sharing valuable insight, marketing is able to deliver a unified message while at the same time delivering the right message for where the potential customer is within the buying cycle.

  • Lead Scoring for Business Growth 

When you align your sales and marketing teams one thing is made clear: everyone is pursuing the same objective  and that is business growth. This kind of thinking simplifies everything as both teams are pushing toward the same outcome and working together helps them achieve this faster and more efficiently. 

In order to do this both teams need to understand what defines a marketing qualified lead and what defines a sales-ready lead. By understanding these requirements, both teams help each other to move prospects toward the next step of the funnel and ensure time is not wasting on dead-end leads. 

For example: When it comes to selling, it is vital that your sales and marketing team are in alignment because if these teams are cohesive, less leads will fall through the cracks and your sales team will have greater insight into which leads are of a higher quality than others. A powerful lead scoring model will have these two departments working together to develop lead scoring criteria which ensures all departments are on the same page when it comes to marketing message and sale message.

  • Improved Data Collection and Analysis through Integration

The best way to generate lead data between marketing and sales is to integrate your marketing and sales software in one place. This kind of integration benefits both marketing and sales teams by storing valuable data and lead information in a single location - allowing room for improved results. By connecting both teams through a powerful Customer Relationship Management software such as HubSpot, both teams can view the entire lifecycle of a visitor as they become a customer. 

For Example: Today, thanks to advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software such as HubSpot, your marketing team is able to track online behaviours of leads while data from your sales team can help marketing gain better insight into what kinds of leads likely convert into paying clients - and what the most effective channels of communications are. A CRM is also able to launch and analyse marketing campaigns, and provide greater insight into audience behaviour and trends through reporting features. This helps marketing and sales teams better understand what the audience is looking for, what is working and what messaging best suits a specific lead.

Key Takeaway

Your integrated sales and marketing strategy should:

  • Outline the buyer's journey in detail.
  • Deliver a strategic brand message at every stage of the buyer's journey.
  • Develop a lead scoring model to identify marketing-qualified leads and sales-ready leads.
  • Make use of CRM software to better align and track your marketing and sales team efforts

Everyone benefits from an integrated approach to marketing and sales. This kind of alignment will help your business significantly improve its bottom-line while simultaneously creating a better work environment.

By creating an integrated sales and marketing strategy, you are able to understand how your clients interact with your brand and how they get to the purchasing decision, allowing for smarter marketing campaigns, better sales interaction and greater customer service. 

DXG Consultancy for Integrated Sales and Marketing Strategies

Fast, Effective, Enterprise Level Solutions

Based in the UK, France, Dubai, Spain and South Africa, DXG is a Group of four leading digital agencies with the skill and scale to solve any marketing and sales problem, for any organisation, anywhere in the world.

As one of the largest global HubSpot Partner Groups, our Mission is to enable organisations to harness the power of digital transformation. Collectively, we offer the entire HubSpot product suite across CRM, Marketing, Sales, CMS, and Service.

Our agencies have been recognised with Diamond or Elite Solutions Partner status. These accreditations mean DXG is unmatched in the depth of our HubSpot expertise. 

If you want to implement a powerful and unmatched integrated sales and marketing strategy, contact DXG Consultancy today. 

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Creating an Integrated Sales and Marketing Strategy

In order to achieve a successful integrated and sales marketing strategy, it comes down to open communication, departmental alignment and well-managed systems designed to help performance across both teams.