Work With Your Sales Team. Your marketing team and your sales representatives ultimately have the same goal: to increase sales. They need to work together to reach that shared goal. It wouldn’t make sense, for example, for the sales team to work toward a goal of signing five new clients for BDR services, while the marketing team deploys a campaign that attracts prospects interested in network security. Marketing campaigns should align with sales team goals and activities for maximum efficiency.
 

Have a Strategy. When the sales and marketing teams meet, they should develop a coordinated strategy. The strategy can begin by creating a description of what ideal clients would look like for the product or service you are selling, and then identifying the unique value that your firm brings to the table–that is, “Why you win.” Marketing must then determine all the most cost-effective ways to find prospects that meet that ideal description and to communicate your unique selling points to them through activities such as digital marketing, inbound marketing, targeted promotions and participating in industry events. It sounds simple, but these steps keep everyone–from marketing to sales to customers–on the same page and define your position within the marketplace.
 

Monitor, Evaluate and Adjust. Although it’s impossible to understand every way marketing may impact the path to a sale, you can identify relevant metrics and monitor them to gain insight into what works–and what doesn’t–for your specific business. Adjust campaigns to optimize performance based on those metrics, and if something doesn’t provide the results you need, move on to something that does. Always try to focus on return on investment in everything you do.
  

Develop Content That Is Valuable to Prospects. Your idea of interesting content may be a blog post exploring the features of a new product or service, but your prospects may not care or may not think your offering is relevant to them. The information in your blog posts, newsletters and other marketing content should demonstrate that you are aware of prospects’ pain points and have knowledge and solutions that can help them. This is another area where the sales team can help your marketing department. Sales reps speak to prospective clients every day and can share common challenges they’re hearing about. Leverage their insights.
 

Use Marketing Resources From Vendors. Your vendor partners may offer marketing and sales materials that can help you with marketing campaigns and save you the time and resources it would take to develop them on your own. The Intronis Partner Toolkit, for example, provides rebrandable email templates, success stories, data sheets, and guidance for running campaigns, holding events, and more.