MARKETING PLANS WITH RESULTS YOU CAN MEASURE
Adopt Our Marketing Planning Process to Help
Grow Your Customer Base, Improve Customer Retention,
and Ultimately Generate Increased Revenue
What is Marketing Convergence?
There are many definitions and layered meanings for Marketing Convergence, but for the purposes of this planning package, Marketing Convergence refers to the bridging of silos between marketing and sales functions and aligning their planning efforts to achieve common goals for growth in sales and qualified customer leads.
Effective collaboration between these teams can lead to the deployment of a well-crafted strategic marketing plan encompassing objectives, strategies, and tactics that meet customer requirements, enhance brand visibility, improve customer engagement, and advance overall business performance.
"Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates.”
20 Sales and Marketing Alignment Statistics, The Pipeline, Zoominfo.com
Marketing with
Measurable Results
How Silos Affect
Marketing Planning
What's Included in the Planning Package
A key measure of marketing effectiveness is how well a company’s marketing objectives and strategies grow the customer base, improve customer retention, and ultimately generate incremental revenue. It can be painfully difficult to directly correlate increased sales and customer growth as a result of traditional marketing programs mostly designed to improve and measure increased impressions, higher brand awareness, or improved customer satisfaction. However, by converging sales and marketing in the marketing planning process, more highly focused marketing programs can be designed to actually “move the sales needle.” For the planning process to be successful, sales and marketing planning team members must ”buy-in” to the convergence planning process and then participate in a facilitated, collaborative, and exercise-based planning process. Role of sales in planning: share data and insights from their CRM system, first-hand customer knowledge, and other resources. Role of marketing in planning: lend their expertise with messaging, qualified lead generation, promotions, and communications knowledge and skills. Then together, they develop marketing objectives and strategies that are better aligned to reach current customers, find new customers, and generate incremental revenue. Marketing convergence planning can be a “win-win” for both sales and marketing. Sales teams end up with more highly motivated customers and qualified leads that are nearer to the purchase decision. This guidebook, training, and planning package can help marketing planning facilitators more effectively guide the planning process to develop and implement measurable marketing solutions that can directly affect sales growth.
Sales and marketing teams often work in “silos.” While the engagement of sales and marketing can be beneficial for businesses, there are often barriers preventing the two departments from working together effectively in the planning process. These can include: - Lack of communication - Different metrics and goals - Lack of understanding - Lack of integration
- Marketing planning guidebook and instructions - Interactive online training for planners and facilitators - Interactive worksheet forms for building the situation analysis, preplanning meeting, tactics, final marketing plan, executive summary - Customizable PowerPoint presentation to help the facilitator guide planning meeting discussions - Examples of how marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics should be written, structured, and organized to clearly show what the plan aims to accomplish and how results will be measured
Sales and Marketing Convergence,
AKA 'Smarketing'
Marketing Convergence strategic planning can be a “win-win” when sales and marketing functions are aligned. This is sometimes referred to as "Smarketing." Sales teams end up with more highly motivated customers and qualified leads that are nearer to the purchase decision. Marketing professionals can develop and implement measurable marketing solutions that can directly affect sales growth.
Key Take-Aways
from the Planning Package
Who Should Use This Planning Process?
Group-Think -
How Much is Enough?
- A roadmap to guide planning meeting facilitators in organizing more effective and complete strategic marketing planning - Development of actionable marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics that will generate leads and sales - Identifying key metrics for measuring success and ROMI with your marketing - A better understanding of the roles of sales and marketing in the strategic marketing planning process - A clear assessment of your company, its products, and the competitive landscape - More concise knowledge of your customer base and customers you would like to have
- Professional marketing planners and facilitators - Any business stakeholder wanting their marketing to deliver measurable results - Marketing managers, sales managers, and advertising Managers - Advertising and marketing agencies, and consultants creating marketing plans for clients - Small business owners needing a formalized approach to marketing planning
There is much debate on the effectiveness of “brainstorming” in the marketing planning process. Admittedly, individual thinking may sometimes offer the better ideas. However, there are advantages for "collective intelligence" rendered by multiple people being included in the development of a plan. Group problem solving and freewheeling discussions can sometimes stimulate creative thinking and provide immediate feedback on ideas. “Buy-in” and personal involvement through group planning can be very important and can affect how the final plan is accepted within the company. Our marketing planning guidebook emphasizes the need for both individual and group thinking in the planning process.
The Changing Roles of Sales and Marketing
Traditionally, marketing was tasked mostly with developing awareness and interest in products and brands through mass communications and direct marketing efforts. Sales had the job of finding and qualifying leads and turning “interest” into “consideration” and finally to a “purchase.”
Increasingly there is an ongoing convergence between these sales and marketing functions. Today, data-driven marketing goes further in qualifying prospects through lead generation marketing programs that can cultivate prospects to reach the “evaluation” level where sales can take over.
More robust and customer-centric marketing that drives sales does not diminish the role of sales. It helps maximize their efficiency by providing warmer and more qualified leads.
"Sales and marketing alignment starts with giving both teams common goals. While the two teams’ jobs will always be different, they need to have shared high-level goals that lead to pipeline and revenue targets."
5 Strategies for Successful Marketing and Sales Alignment - American Marketing Association
Results Driven Marketing Plans Are Developed When
Sales and Marketing Collaborate in the Planning Process
