The job of Sales and Marketing is to work together towards common goals, helping their company grow and securing business. While their job functions differ, working together as one maximizes business profits and growth. 

Companies that unify Sales and Marketing hold the advantage of collaboration. Rather than functioning as separate entities, exchanging information and ideas between Sales and Marketing can improve results and create a seamless buying experience for prospective customers. The responsibility of creating content that generates qualified leads lies on the marketing team. From customer stories, case studies, and collateral, Marketing uses methods of promoting services to warm up leads. It is then up to Sales to follow up, build relationships, and close deals.

For Part 2 of our “B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of” blog series (Read Part 1), Vende Digital Founder/CEO/B2B marketing guru, Paul Slack, who recently guested on AdVic’s “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, offered a five-step guide of strategies that can unifying Sales and Marketing teams: 

1. Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment

“Sales and marketing have to work together as a system within an organization,” Paul states. “It’s not the sales department and the marketing department, it’s sales and marketing working together because at the end of the day, buyers don’t buy the best solutions. Wouldn’t it be awesome if they did and we had the best solution? But what they actually buy are the solutions that they understand the most from people that they like. And so when you think about that statement, that they buy the solutions that they understand from people that they like, sales and marketing plays a role in both of those. 

“Marketing’s job is to make sure that there’s a solution out there that your solution is one that they understand. 

“Sales’ job is to make sure that the solution they’re buying is from somebody that they like. That’s that human component.”

Paul describes the content Marketing produces as “Chum in the water that attracts prospective customers, that then allows reps to go in for the sale.”

2. Content Warm Up

Marketing uses methods, tactics and a variety of channels such as content marketing, social media marketing, SEO, email marketing and ads to target consumers. The content that Marketing produces is used as bait. Paul describes it as “chum in the water that attracts prospective customers, that then allows reps to go in for the sale.”

3. Cutting Through The Noise: Create Meaningful Content

Cutting through the noise is providing your prospects with impactful content. There is an abundance of content available that may not resonate, empower, or educate them, be the brand that does. 

Paul provides us with questions and solutions to be successful in content creation:

“If you’ll take the time to really understand who your customer is and what are the problems that they’re trying to solve, and not only as a business, but what are they trying to solve as a human? And really began to talk about what we call kind of an aspirational identity. What is their business going to look like when they solve their problem with your solution? What are they going to look like? How are they going to be the hero of their organization? And you can create content around those things. Instead of speeds and feeds, instead of features and benefits, really talk about the customer where you can kind of begin having, engaging in the conversation that’s already going on in their head.”

4. Social Ads for Optimal Success

Paul advises, “Promoting your content [on social media] is just as important as creating it. Promoting content to your audience is a way to stand out. It provides their problem with solutions and allows them to make educated buying decisions.

5. Reps on Socials 

Social media is a powerful tool for digital selling and marketing. LinkedIn in particular is notorious for networking, job hunting and connecting with previous colleagues and classmates, but is also beneficial for B2B selling. 

Pauls says, “Sales reps on social media should present themselves as experts that solve problems, not candidates looking for the next big opportunity. Their profile should display expertise in their field.”

In addition, Paul suggests a ”3×5 LinkedIn Marketing Plan” for sales reps:

• Reach Out to Five New Contacts: Send connection requests to five new contacts. 
• Comment on Five Posts: Engage with content on your newsfeed, especially from prospects.
• Send Five Direct Messages a Day: Use five direct messages to provide connections with useful information.

“If you’re doing this in tandem or coordination with the marketing department,” Paul remarks, “again sales and marketing alignment, then you should have lots of great resources that you can DM (Direct Market) or the sales reps can DM to their audience.”

Download Your Free “Developing a Digital Marketing Plan” Template

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Related Resources:

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 1 – Blog

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Podcast

Commerce Cloud – Unifying the Buying Experience Across all Channels

What is B2B2C?

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The post B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 2 appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

When it comes to B2B marketing best practices, a digital marketing plan is key, because it’s a comprehensive blueprint that is designed to achieve company goals and objectives. A careful and perfect execution of one provides businesses with an edge over the competition, tells a story to consumers, and provides them with an abundance of information that allows them to make educated decisions. Including detailed research, a successful digital marketing plan maps out the target markets, distribution channels, and your business’ overall strategy.

In addition to planning, executing a solid digital marketing plan is another core fundamental part of business. And as the web becomes more and more intertwined in everything from shopping to research, digital marketing’s impact is apparent. 

During a recent AdVic “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, Paul Slack, Vende Digital founder and CEO, offered some B2B marketing tips across the topics of marketing strategies, sales and marketing, SEO, and social media. Here are a few highlights from that conversation.

Developing a Digital Marketing Plan in 2021 and Beyond

“Before you do anything online, you really need to take a step back and just think about what does winning look like for your business,” Paul remarks. “Where are we trying to grow? Who’s our target audience? What is that ideal customer profile that we’re trying to reach? What are the problems that they’re trying to solve? Because at the end of the day really, we’re just going to use digital as a channel to help our buyer solve problems. Sometimes that means we’re going to help them solve problems with information. Sometimes we’re going to help them solve problems with our products and services. We need to understand those problems that they’re trying to solve. 

“And then, also,” Paul adds, “what are the topics that they want to read about? Because when we think about digital marketing, it really is about consuming information to help a buyer make an informed purchase decision.” 

Download Your Free “Developing a Digital Marketing Plan” Template

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Generating Leads Tips

Paul’s roadmap for marketers for generating leads includes these tips:

Planning: Planning allows you to spread brand awareness through a solid content strategy.

Balance: Produce content that creates awareness and make micro commitment and caters to leads throughout the sales funnel. While bottom of the funnel, sales qualified leads are important, you will fail creating content that only caters to them.

Fair Exchange: Produce a quarterly, gated downloadable where visitors exchange their information for information produced by you. Using the download as a lead magnet, content should serve as a solution to a problem your visitor is facing.

Nurture: Use your CRM and your marketing automation platforms to really stay top of mind and nurture those relationships with email marketing over time.

Sales Funnel: Paul says, “Really focus on top, middle and bottom,” of the sales funnel. He adds, “Top is really content and promoting that content, middle is having a gated lead magnet and a new one every quarter and then using email marketing and digital selling and other things as a way to warm them up so that they raise their hand and say, ‘I’m ready to talk to sales.’ That’s a great way to generate leads online today.”

Website Conversions: “Do away with lengthy jargon and copy; give your audience what they need, where they need it, and allow them to be the hero.”

Paul’s biggest piece of advice regarding web conversions? Your web pages should answer these three basic questions:

1. What do you do?
2. How does it benefit me?
3. How do I take the next step?

OK, so you have a digital marketing plan ready to go that includes the elements discussed above, but you also know that you need to complement that plan with a B2B solution that includes migrating from a legacy eCommerce solution. No worries, because the AdVic B2B Commerce team has the skills and expertise needed to get your branded storefront up and running quickly so you can drive new revenue. Contact us today, we’re ready to talk!

Related Resources:
B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 2 – Blog
B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Podcast
What is B2B2C?

Subscribe to the AdVic Salesforce Blog on Feedly:

The post B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 1 appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.