Front Page Agency Inc. claims that the marketing industry is evolving faster than any other. Marketers are aware their duties have changed dramatically over the last few years. With the rise of social media presence and the influence of generation-based marketing, they are under pressure to keep pace with emerging trends.
Due to the vast advancements in technology, marketers are under pressure to become more technical. Marketers today are developing understandings about marketing automation systems, mobile marketing apps, social media monitoring tools and content marketing platforms. Furthermore, AI and VR have been added to the mix; the pace in which the industry developed has picked up speed.
Technology and the Internet have allowed buyers to gather more information about potential investments before they make their first sales contact. Businesses should remember one factor that hasn’t changed over time and remains fundamental in marketing is understanding the consumer. Marketers must understand what the customer needs, which platforms they purchase through, and when they’d like this exchange to take place.
As customers can research products online, the role of marketers is to educate buyers in this early sales pipeline. Front Page Agency Inc. work with brands to ensure their salespeople don’t miss the “hidden sales cycle”. The firm believes marketing should support and feed into the sales or buying process. The firm’s extensive industry experience has proven businesses should not overlook the face-to-face marketing needed to complement any online strategy.
Front Page Agency Inc. share their insights into how this should work for a small business:
1. Merge sales and marketing functions to improve customer acquisitions eco-system
2. Invest in understanding existing customers
3. Track both soft and hard marketing metrics
Both sales and marketing are interlocking business functions and often overlap on essential activities such as setting strategy, optimising processes, managing technology, and getting business insights from data and analytics. The core difference is in the application.
Marketing ops tend to focus on areas that are of highest priority to marketing, such as campaign reporting, planning and budgeting, tracking lead attribution and influence, and ensuring proper marketing to sales hand-offs. Sales ops focus on sales productivity and effectiveness, forecasting, territory alignment, compensation and order management, and CRM administration.
With the blurring of the boundaries between sales and marketing and competitive tension to be customer-centric and have a single view of the customer, Front Page Agency Inc. see it as a no-brainer to combine forces.
