Executing marketing tasks “just for the sake of it” only causes frustration, lost opportunities, and disconnects between sales and marketing teams in any organization. Unfortunately, this problem is common across all industries in today’s high-pressure, high workload landscape.
What Does it All Mean? Understanding the “Why” in Your Marketing Efforts.
At Goose Digital, we often work with 2 specific types of clients:
- Formerly sales-oriented organizations trying to get a stronghold on their marketing
- Organizations deep into their marketing, trying to navigate an array of marketing programs and platforms
Regardless of the client type, we find it always comes down to “what does our marketing actually mean?” This issue is universal, no matter your stage in the marketing game.
With that said, in the data era, where reporting and analysis seemingly come from all directions, it can be daunting to decipher meaning and value from the numbers.
The above discussion points immediately bring vanity metrics to mind, which include:
- Bounce rate
- Unique users
- Time on page
- Direct traffic lift
- And more
Even open rates are something of a vanity metric. While it’s ideal that your audience opens your marketing emails–and it’s unideal if they aren’t–it’s not necessarily telling you about the desired end result. Conversions and sales. Or something actionable that leads to more sales.
All an open rate tells you is that your audience is looking at your messaging. Nothing more.
Driving Revenues and Transactions is of the Essence
We get it. Your company–like most others–can’t afford to waste endless time deploying and measuring. Your primary focus is growing your business. That means increasing transactions and revenue.
You simply don’t have time to get lost in the marketing weeds. Everything must have a big-picture purpose and drive customers to a desired course of action.
Yet, there’s no revenue growth without marketing efforts, including research, strategy, and implementation.
All the same, marketing tasks can’t run independently of your bottom line. It’ll amount to wasted effort and time, more detriment than net positive. There’s a delicate balance involved.
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: Defining High-Quality Leads in Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing teams need one another to succeed.
Through effective marketing strategies, sales teams benefit from high-quality, qualified leads. But that only comes from a marketing team that fully grasps viable success indicators and doesn’t perform checkbox tasks or rely on vanity metrics that muddy the big picture.
In other words, you need a universal definition of a good, qualified lead and a poor, unqualified lead.
Too often, sales and marketing teams don’t unify their vision on what makes good and bad leads, creating an organization-wide weakness and lack of alignment. Conversely, if everyone knows their role in the process and sees the big picture, every bit of marketing performed is purposeful and practical.
Who is All Your Marketing For?
Whether brand new leads, existing customers, lapsed customers, etc., these are the specific people you’re talking to.
Companies put in a lot of upfront work to understand marketing elements such as persona, audience, paint points, etc. Then, when it’s all said and done, they lose sight of everything that was paramount from the beginning.
Each piece of marketing collateral must talk directly to a hand-chosen customer segment. Don’t fall into the trap of speaking your internal “buzz” language, a potential pitfall when marketing becomes a checkbox. Alternatively, when more focused and purposeful with these efforts, it’s likelier you’ll keep each specific segment top of mind when writing a blog, landing page, email, etc.
With all the automation and data-based capabilities of today’s CRMs and marketing platforms, you have more opportunities than ever to speak directly to your customers. Learn how to fully harness the power of data and automation by contacting Goose Digital today.
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