We’re more prone to think about what marketing does to help sales succeed than the other way around when it comes to the relationship between e marketing and sales. Despite the impact marketing activities can have on a company’s demand and revenue growth, marketers aren’t always sure what kind of returns they should expect.
E-marketing is a kind of digital marketing that focuses on the internet rather than all digital platforms. It is a subset of digital marketing that employs technology to promote.
In order to achieve objectives and develop a fully integrated marketing and sales process, Sales must hold Marketing accountable for completing their share of the conversion funnel like E-marketing. On the other hand, Marketing must be aware of the KPIs that Sales must achieve in order to accomplish its revenue targets.
Tracking Conversion Rates Isn’t Just For Sales
Sales always appear to have a firm grip on the conversion rates generated by their efforts. A sales manager could certainly tell you their close rate or opportunity-to-closed-won conversion percentage at any given time.
How many marketers, on the other hand, are aware of the specific output required to ensure that Sales fulfills its objectives and the business achieves its goals? If you don’t track conversion rates throughout the E-marketing and sales funnel, how can your organization set suitable targets and manage time and resources effectively?
Sales is aware of their individual conversion rates, whereas Marketing just knows the quantity of internet visitors they received the prior year. E-marketing might be able to estimate the total number of leads they generated on a successful day. Unfortunately, the conversion rates for each level of the lead management process in Marketing are now inadequate. In this case, how do you believe the marketing team would recognize whether their efforts and outcomes are behind, on pace, or ahead of schedule?
Your company’s inbound E-marketing strategy and inbound sales process will run independently of one another until Marketing completes the funnel through to their lead sources. Related: What is sales training?
Related: What is a sales funnel?
Goals That Are Precise And A Funnel That Is Complete
The capacity to create goals in E-marketing based on historical data leads to efficiency, agility, and effectiveness in any size company. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) must be successful in effectively projecting targets in order to avoid wasting time and money.
You can try anticipating next year’s sales and E-marketing strategy without knowing Marketing’s lead management conversion rates, but you’ll be disappointed.
Sales can anticipate how many opportunities they’ll need at each step in 2015 to accomplish their $1 million sales goal, which is a 25% increase over their $800,000 revenue in 2014, because they know their 2014 conversion rates.
Due to Marketing’s lack of awareness of their conversion rates, two concerns arise:
- How will Marketing set appropriate goals for their team and activities in the coming year?
- Will Sales believe they’re in good hands and that their coworkers know exactly what it takes to meet the company’s goals?
Related: Lead Generation: Can It Be Useful For Your Products?
Assume E-marketing has conversion rate statistics from their lead management methodology in 2014:
MCLs to MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) conversion rate is 47%.
MQLs to SALs (Sales Accepted Leads) conversion rate: 38%
70% of SALs are converted into Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
50% of SQLs are converted into Stage One Sales Opportunities.
E-marketing and sales integration begins to take shape as Marketing leverages past conversion rate data to complete the funnel from the bottom up.
Now that the funnel is complete, Sales will have a lot more faith in Marketing, and both departments will be on track to reach their goals.
Your inbound sales process and E-marketing strategy should work in tandem with this funnel. Every action you take should be aimed at meeting or exceeding these goals.
If you’d like to learn more about Sales and E-marketing alignment, I’d be happy to be a resource for you.
Related: What Is Lead Nurturing And What Are The Right Tactics?
