In B2B companies, this means aligning sales and marketing teams. Not an easy job. For B2C companies where there are often no Inside Sales departments, the challenge is aligning marketing and sales strategies . In other words, data from physical stores and online point of sale should be used to inform marketing, increase sales, and create a seamless shopping experience for customers.
Let's look at 4 objectives necessary to achieve this alignment:
1) Ensure consistency of experience across all channels
According to Forbes, 65% of marketers are failing to chinese overseas america database give customers what they want : a seamless shopping experience across online stores – on the Internet or on their mobile devices – and in brick-and-mortar stores.
Consistency in pricing, information and communication is important for end customers , especially when it comes to products that they are spending a significant amount of money on. I'm sure you've gone to a store to buy, for example, an electronic device hoping to save at least on shipping costs, and a couple of days later you received an email with an offer from that same brand offering you the same product you bought a couple of days ago with a discount and free shipping!!!
Whether through loyalty cards or if you pay by card, brands can know what you have bought at any given time in their physical stores and avoid the disappointment of seeing that if you had waited a couple of days, you would have gotten a better price. This creates confusion for customers, who next time will not be sure whether to go to one of your stores or wait for the offers to arrive by email. On the other hand, brands can take advantage of all the information they collect about us to offer us complementary products or products related to our preferences that provide us with utility instead of frustration.
2) Concentrate all the information in one place
The only way to avoid blunders like the example above is to have complete profiles of your individual customers that include their stated preferences, online behavior, and in-store purchase history. To do that, you need a robust marketing automation platform that collects all available data about each customer and allows you to use it to generate sales.
The goal of centralizing information is not only to prevent your marketing team from being put in a bad position, but to create new opportunities to boost conversions online and in stores . In the previous example, we saw how using information from offline purchases we could boost an online sale by offering other products that may interest a customer, but we can also use the information that customers leave us online to make offline sales. Imagine that you sell banking products and in front of you you have a customer asking for information to make a deposit. You check their profile and see that they have also been looking for information about pension plans. You can offer them your help at that moment to clarify their doubts or a promotion that helps them decide and sign up for the product.
In short, using the information to offer a personalized service .
3) Operationalize Upselling and Cross-sellingFREE EBOOK: ARE YOU GETTING ENOUGH OUT OF ALL YOUR DATABASES? CROSS SELLING AND UPSELLING
When you know what your customers really want from you – not just what they say they want, but what they actually buy – you can know exactly what to offer them next. For example, if a customer buys a coat from your store, you can send an email offer recommending a scarf.
The more data you collect from your customers, the more likely you are to upsell other products or higher versions of the same product.
4) Create internal processes to keep teams connected
Well-aligned Marketing and Sales teams in B2B companies typically have weekly meetings. They discuss what each department is working on, share useful insights they’ve gleaned from their conversations with customers, and create processes that will help attract new customers and nurture existing ones.
In B2C companies, salespeople and marketers typically don't work in the same place, or even on the same schedule. Weekly meetings aren't always feasible, and if both departments have access to the same data, such frequent meetings probably aren't necessary.
That said, communication between customer-facing departments is still important. It gives salespeople easy access to information but also a way to voice their opinions and customer insights so that marketing can make use of that information. In B2C companies, the Marketing and Sales Directors are often the same person, which is great for aligning marketing and sales strategies. While it may not be possible to get a global view of how the business is doing, it's a good idea to stay in touch with store managers who know what's going on in the field.
Two conclusions come to mind from these “must do”s to align sales and marketing:
– the alignment of these two departments can go a long way with the help of marketing strategies and marketing automation technology.
– it is also essential that people within an organization are connected.
