It is common to see buzzwords and theories come and go with new and emerging business trends shaking up the industry. So, it is no surprise that marketers and managers alike roll their eyes each time a new concept emerges, promising to transform how they do business altogether. However, once in a while, a brilliant idea emerges from the depths and truly revolutionizes how businesses generate leads, develop new business, and maximize growth. Revenue Marketing is one of those concepts, and by all accounts, it is here to reform how sales and marketing communicate with each other completely.
To put it simply, revenue marketing is an all-inclusive approach to aligning marketing and sales goals and achievements. The idea is to create a shared plan whereby creating a continuous loop among both departments’ functions.
Revenue marketing establishes a commonality between sales and marketing, building a shared experience from lead generation to acquisition.
In a survey conducted by Heinz Marketing, they reported that only 22% of their overall survey population represent revenue marketers. Considering this on a grander scale represents a majority of marketers who are missing an opportunity to maximize their output. One of the greatest challenges faced by marketers is predicting the outcomes of their outreach. Once the marketing team hands over the reins to sales, are they going to close?
Revenue marketing is the bridge between marketing and sales creating more predictable outcomes utilizing both data and functional diversity between departments.
How Revenue Marketing Creates Value for You and Your Team
Understanding the difference between revenue marketing and traditional marketing begins with considering the difference in sales funnel operations between the two approaches. A traditional approach divides the funnel from top to bottom, with marketing efforts allocated to raising awareness and interest while sales takes care of consideration, evaluation, and purchase.
A revenue marketing approach creates a sense of synergy among all the levels of the funnel. While both departments aren’t expected to immerse themselves in all functions and operations completely, it is imperative that they have a working knowledge of each step.
Streamline the communication between your sales and marketing departments. When both departments have a cohesive understanding of each other’s goals and functions, it results in a deep understanding of how they work together to achieve a common goal, which is usually to increase revenue or sales. When the bond shared among your teams is strong, productivity, communication, and overall efficiency flourishes.
The Marketing team can determine what is useful and which of their efforts are not producing desirable results. Fostering a strong feedback loop between departments helps to eliminate any tactics or strategies that are under-performing on a real-time basis. Consequently, campaigns, messages, and channels that continue to increase revenue and maximize ROI will be easy to identify and continue to implement.
Your customer relationships become optimized. Since your teams are working together, they create effective outreach and produce an utterly optimized experience. By working between departments and functions, both sales and marketing develop a deep understanding of all of the necessary operations required to move a customer through the funnel. When this occurs, conversions occur more quickly and more often.
Implementing Revenue Marketing
Evolving from a system in which a traditional sales funnel is implemented is not easy; however, moving towards a revenue marketing funnel fuels growth and improves business. Considering which stage your team is currently occupying helps to determine how to move forward. It is imperative to define how each department is presently approaching their roles. Then you can decide how to begin blending their responsibilities and expanding their knowledge.
#1 Evaluate Your Current Approach
Only 12% of marketers claim that they are very aligned with their sales teams; however, 100% of CMOs agree that marketing and sales alignment is critical for their revenue marketing transformation. As you begin your transformation to a revenue marketing model, it is important to consider your current position.
Suppose your marketing department is tracking surface KPIs such as impressions, CTRs, and traffic and are focused on building the brand. In that case, your team is likely in a very early evolutionary stage. To generate more focus towards supporting the sales team’s roles, it is essential to start considering what brings value to your prospective customers.
#2 The Marketing/Sales Relationship
Traditionally, marketing plays the supporting roles to sales. Marketers make the brand or business look good while generating leads, and sales qualifies the leads while moving them forward.
To progress from this traditional model, both marketing and sales must understand how they add value to their prospects’ lives and consistently communicate this along every step all through the way.
It is easy for many teams to get stuck at this stage, as it demands a great deal of work. However, teams must consider whether or not they are optimizing their time and how to create automated operations.
#3 Eliminate the Divide
As with a traditional approach, it is typical for organizations to find themselves adhering to demand generation, a standard system in which marketers create leads and pass them to the sales team for conversion. The most significant downfall regarding this model is that ROI is low, and so are the quality of the leads.
Utilizing the revenue marketing approach, sales is able to qualify the leads at the top of the funnel as they work with and communicate more with the marketing team. As sales and marketing begin to understand each other’s roles, they more seamlessly interact and maximize the outcome of the cohesive efforts.
From this point forward, integrating sales and marketing roles are necessary to generate quality leads and improve ROI.
#4 The Goldilocks Zone
Once marketing and sales are working together to produce high-quality leads that result in sales and returning customers, it is the point of the process in which scalability and predictability develop.
Revenue projections, pipeline optimization, and predictive analysis lead to consistent revenue growth and expansion. On average, revenue marketers are 6.5x more likely to grow their revenue from existing accounts.
Final Thoughts
There is still an extreme disconnect between sales and marketing, which only hurts the organization. Only 55% of marketers are enabled to communicate effectively with their sales team, while only 51% claim an adequate flow of information between both departments.
From these numbers, it can be determined that a majority of businesses, marketers, and sales teams are under-utilizing the resources and support that they can provide to each other.
When marketing cannot effectively identify how they provide value to the sales team, it becomes easy to write off their efforts as a necessary cost.
Revenue marketing is absolutely here to stay. Businesses, sales teams, and marketing departments that embrace this new cross-function method will experience more growth, increased revenue, and seller/buyer relationships that are long-lasting and fortified. Progression towards this model facilitates a more harmonious relationship between sales and marketing. Rather than one supporting the other, they both exist in the same space with a common goal.
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