The Symbiotic Relationship Between Sales and Marketing

Leverage the power of your sales and marketing teams, by making sure you’re using marketing strategies to increase sales. We so believe that the relationship between sales and marketing is a powerful one! Think of yourselves as two teams using different strategies toward the same goal. If you’ve ever wondered how to improve sales and marketing skills, this is the post for you.

How Does Marketing Increase Sales?

You might be forgiven for thinking that sales and marketing are in competition. Certainly, when it comes to budget meetings, it might feel that way! The truth, though, is that you can use marketing strategies to increase sales. They’re two sides of one important coin.

We love this definition of the difference between sales and marketing from HubSpot:

“Sales and marketing are two business functions within an organization – they both impact lead generation and revenue. The term, sales, refers to all activities that lead to the selling of goods and services. And marketing is the process of getting people interested in the goods and services being sold.”

How Can You Use Marketing Strategies To Increase Sales?

Focus your marketing on your existing customers

Some studies have found that repeat customers spend as much as 67% more than new buyers. You might see that number vary within your industry, but the logic is universal:

Returning customers who’ve had a positive experience trust you more than someone new to your business.

Repeat customers are profitable. In a B2B business, you are spared costly onboarding time that happens for every brand-new client.

There are only so many new customers out there. Building lifelong relationships with returning clients is more sustainable than constantly trying to find new business.

Marketing is a great, cost-effective way to get the attention of your existing customers. Your marketing team can set up automated email campaigns to periodically check in with clients, letting your sales team focus elsewhere. Your marketing team can also use social media to highlight promotions or new offers that grab the attention of clients, so that the sales team has keen repeat buyers ready to spend.

Explore account-based marketing

This is a perfect example of how perfectly marketing can support your sales team. If you’re unfamiliar, account-based marketing targets high-value customers with a personalized sales strategy. Marketing and sales teams work together to identify these accounts and create strategies best suited to them. You can read more about how to tackle this approach here, but its benefits are considerable:

By selecting high-value customers, you know that you have a much higher chance of return on investment than traditional marketing or outreach strategies.

The smaller number of targets means you can be highly specific, again making your efforts more likely to see success.

It’s highly efficient. There are no huge budget spends on ads shown to the masses, just targeted communication with the best people.

Try retargeting strategies to gain sales leads

Another fantastic example of where marketing can step in where sales efforts can’t reach. Retargeting is a form of digital marketing, defined here by Mailchimp:

“Retargeting campaigns remind your website visitors of your products and services after they leave your website without buying. After visiting specific pages, it allows you to retarget them and show your visitors relevant visual or text ads when they visit other websites.”

Retargeting can be huge! It allows you to send emails or display ads to customers who nearly went for the sale but backed away. You can run ads that display on other websites, on social networks, or send email campaigns for abandoned carts. It’s a hugely effective strategy with brilliant results.

What are some great sales email marketing examples?

Speaking of email campaigns, if you are on the lookout for some fantastic sales email marketing examples, there are some great articles breaking down what works. We especially enjoyed this round-up by Drip, which breaks down some effective newsletters. It features some e-commerce campaigns you could adapt to your own industry, or check out these B2B sales email marketing examples here.

To further increase the impact of your marketing strategies, email newsletters are an effective way to engage donors and supporters. Segmenting your list to tailor content and tracking performance metrics can help to ensure that your content resonates with your audience and maximizes the impact of your newsletters. Encrypting your email domain by setting up DMARC will further enhance the deliverability rate.

Give your marketing team the chance to contribute to your offboarding process

Offboarding refers to any activities you do once the agreed work for a client is complete and all final payments are done. It might not sound as exciting as finding new business, but this is actually a huge make-or-break opportunity for more sales. There are many things that can be done to benefit both future sales and marketing efforts, such as:

Get clients signed up to your mailing list with a great lead magnet.

Encourage them to follow you on your social channels so they can see future promotions.

Include a feedback form with a testimonial request. Just as key, encourage them to leave a review on your Google or Facebook profiles.

Ask for permission to use them as a portfolio piece on your blog or social media content.

Host meetings with your sales and marketing teams together

If you’re serious about ensuring there is synergy between your sales and marketing teams, this one’s a must. We have a whole blog post all about how to structure your sales and marketing teams for success. You can take a read here.

In essence, your marketing and sales teams should always have shared goals. It’s important to decide what you’ll focus on each quarter collectively. This means that whenever a customer connects with any point of their client journey, it’ll feel cohesive and coherent. It’s also key to educate each other on the strategies you’ll use. If you’re collaborating with a digital marketing agency, incorporate insights you learn from them as well to enhance alignment and effectiveness.

Takeaways

Although it often feels like the two are in competition, great marketing strategies create warmer leads. Sales and marketing should work in alignment with each other.

Marketing can increase sales by focusing campaigns on previous customers, a profitable approach to sustained business.

Account-based marketing sees marketing and sales pros working closely together. The teams identify their most likely customers and target them with highly personalized campaigns, in an efficient approach.

Retargeting is a digital marketing strategy that displays ads or sends email campaigns to leads who left your site without becoming customers.

Email marketing is a hugely personal and lucrative marketing strategy that can drive sales.

Combine your efforts in the offboarding process to boost future sales and marketing efforts.

For maximum cohesion, host meetings with sales and marketing teams together. Set goals together and discuss your shared challenges.

Here on the blog, we share plenty of content on how to improve sales and marketing skills. You may also enjoy:

Can Sales Be Successful With a Four-Day Workweek?

Adding TextExpander to Your Sales Collaboration Tools

Scaling a Sales Team: Six Essential Steps