About 90 percent of U.S. consumers indicate that non-relevant ads are annoying, according to Statista research, yet 40 percent of U.S. and U.K. marketers report that digital personalization is not a priority. This disconnect between consumer needs and organizational strategy presents a challenge: How can marketing and sales teams align to increase personalization efforts in a way that gains consumer trust?
Part of the solution lies in RevTech, the industry’s natural evolution of MarTech and SalesTech. Traditionally, sales, marketing and customer success metrics existed independently, leading to data silos and interdepartmental platform fatigue. A modern RevTech stack provides an integrated toolset that invites sales and marketing initiatives under the same roof. Instead of focusing on nebulous statistics, RevTech provides tangible methods for converting informed leads into dedicated revenue streams.
However, RevTech alone will not result in lead conversion. Marketing and sales departments looking to target their customers effectively must implement Person-Based Advertising (PBA) models, which handle buyer personas individually to enhance the consumer experience. And those organizations looking to make the most of their advertising spend should explore Buying Group Marketing (BGM), an evolution of PBA that intelligently targets individuals on an account.
Generating Synergy Between RevTech and BGM
The introduction of PBA rocked the marketing world by suggesting the future of ads lay in hyper-personalization. This revelation continues to define the joint world of sales-marketing as teams struggle to find the most effective way to market smarter, not harder. That’s where PBA, BGM and RevTech align.
PBA addresses modern marketing demands by targeting fewer leads but landing a greater sales ratio, resulting in lower upfront costs and higher revenue. By focusing solely on individuals who express interest in a product and are therefore more likely to close a deal, PBA generates a higher bang for marketing teams’ buck – with proven success. Industry research shows revenue can skyrocket by 208 percent when sales and marketing teams align on PBA.
Buying Group Marketing builds on PBA and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) foundations by providing a personalized experience to individuals on an account, a more common scenario in today’s B2B world. Instead of treating an account as a single decision-maker sharing thoughts and responsibilities, BGM threads the needle and meets all account members where they are depending on their specific role and buying behavior. This results in fewer decision-making breakdowns and a more successful sales funnel for the customers.
As marketing teams are asked to accomplish more with fewer resources, it’s crucial to prioritize tools that integrate with existing processes. Luckily, RevTech, PBA and BGM initiatives are grounded in the same philosophies, and with the right provider, these tools interact seamlessly. Marketing-sales departments implementing a RevTech stack will find that PBA and BGM tools naturally coincide with personalization-based initiatives. And those teams that have started the process of PBA adoption will find that BGM enhances these tools without extra hassle.
But to take full advantage of these capabilities, sales and marketing teams must align and goal-set as one “smarketing” team.
Prioritizing “Smarketing,” AKA Sales and Marketing
Picture this: an organization’s marketing team has researched a list of informed leads thoroughly. They’ve prepared personalized ads for these individuals and even proportioned part of their budget to target them and their team. Meanwhile, the same organization’s sales department has generated a list of its own leads. These lists may not be the same, but they likely overlap. Maybe sales team members have even made contact with the marketing team’s leads of interest through social media or professional networking applications.
This double-dipping scenario leads to wasted time, marketing dollars and frustration on all ends. And, as both sales and marketing professionals know, it’s far too common.
Adopting integrated tech solutions like RevTech benefits smarketing cohesion, but true alignment requires a paradigm shift in the workplace. Seemingly inconsequential steps, like scheduling more frequent sales-marketing meetings, can immediately improve team unity and oversight. As an essential preliminary conversation, sales and marketing teams should discuss their respective goals and decide on an interdepartmental success metric. For some organizations, this goal may be revenue generation; for others, it may be account growth or average account spend. Once smarketing teams identify a North Star to work toward, they can pool crucial, limited resources to drive greater profit.
When organizations eliminate silos between sales and marketing, they curb operational inefficiencies. And with the right digital transformation, they can use that streamlined workflow to improve the customer experience. Cohesive smarketing teams can take full advantage of PBA, BGM and RevTech, thanks to their heightened oversight. In other words, marketing team members have access to the same valuable customer data as sales team members and vice versa. Using that data, smarketing teams can hit their newly aligned OKRs every time with streamlined internal processes and a more personalized approach to digital ads.
The author, Joe McNeill is Chief Revenue Officer at Influ2.
