Sort of.
Think of it this way – you could have a billboard campaign alerting consumers to your services but if the consumer calls and the salesperson has no idea why they are calling and are also unaware of the fact that there is even a campaign to begin with well…that’s no good.
Additionally, if a salesperson doesn’t use that billboard as a springboard for conversations with leads that maybe haven’t had a chance to see it yet – well – also NO GOOD.
Unfortunately, that’s how we see a lot of companies run their marketing and sales – separately.
At my last client site – I created a library of content. Downloadable guides, infographics, memes, white papers, calculators; a marketing goldmine. Did it work???
Sort of.
The website I built drove traffic to those assets – yes. We also used email marketing as a driver to our site. Potential customers activated by downloading content – yes. So I did my part of the work by generating leads with marketing.
But the sales teams failed to utilize anything I’d built for them. They didn’t send emails with additional content as food for thought, they didn’t tell potential customers about upcoming campaigns, they didn’t use social media channels to promote content to their audiences. They failed to use the marketing as relationship building tools.
The result was marketing momentum that screeched to a halt right at their doorstep.
Company leaders – listen up. Don’t think of marketing tools as a “nice to have,” and let them float around in the atmosphere lazily generating leads. You’ll soon create a frustrated marketing resource when there are little results. Look – you’re paying for them, so USE THEM!
If you’re not sure how – at the very least sit down with your marketing resources and allow them to map out a plan of action and communication for each new campaign and resource. Make it a requirement for sales and marketing to meet every week to discuss this plan of action and then follow up with accountability and ROI. Once your sales teams are shown the money – they ‘re sold on why it’s important not to just have marketing but to use it.