Smarketing is the alignment or integration of the Sales and Marketing department to combine their efforts and achieve desired results. It is an integrated approach to enhance revenue and profits. Historically, Sales and Marketing department have worked solely in their own domains; not at all communicating with each other. Therefore, Smarketing came to rescue. The objective behind combining the Sales and Marketing is to promote the product and its services to potential customers and align it with the Sales team to sell the product because they both are responsible to grow the business.
Traditional Sales and Marketing doesn’t work anymore. Therefore, Digital Smarketing is helpful in spreading awareness among customers about your product, providing them the best solutions, nurturing them and effectively managing customer relationship with them.
The stages of the Digital Smarketing are outlined here as follows:
1. TOFU: Top of the Funnel
TOFU is categorized under marketing department. Their main purpose is to attract customers to their web page and spread awareness about their products and services. At this point, customers aren’t ready to buy your products, but they are trying to make up their mind. Therefore, your marketing team should be creative, innovative and, helpful; so that the viewers don’t shift to other websites.
2. MOFU: Middle of the Funnel
Once the customer gets all the necessary information about a particular product, they will eventually shift to the MOFU stage. Their main purpose is to provide all the essential information about the product that the prospective customers are looking for; to address their questions, problems and provide a solution.
At this stage, it is important to nurture the leads with all the necessary details and that can only happen when the Sales and the Marketing Departments come together to serve the customers.
3. BOFU: Bottom of the Funnel
Now, all the information has been provided to the customer in the last two stages. Bofu is categorized under the Sales department. Under this section, the main task of the business is to sell their product or service to the customer. At this stage, your Sales team has to be really convincing. Prospects here are ready to buy the product, you just have to make sure that your product and its services separate it from the competitive products in the market.
Why should you implement Smarketing?
You would have often heard in Business conversations that our Marketing Department isn’t getting many leads, or that our Sales Department isn’t enough skilled to sell the products. It was arguments like these that was creating a gulf between the two teams that are anyway working towards the same goal.
To deal with this, there was an urgent need for Smarketing, so that both the departments can work together. In order to attain a successful Smarketing paradigm, it is vital that both the departments communicate with each other. Then, they need to collaborate with each other to make it a big success. Therefore, Smarketing is important to grow business and accomplish company’s goals and objectives.
What are the benefits of integrating Smarketing into the Business Model?
- It creates an opportunity to enhance your product and its services and analyzing it in-depth;
- It facilitates the alignment of sales and marketing in a cost-effective manner;
- The integration of sales and marketing is beneficial for greater brand visibility.
Somy of the best ways of implementing smarketing are:
1. Encouraging Open Communication
One of the best ways to implement smarketing is to promote open communication between both the departments. The heads of both Sales and Marketing Department should arrange some weekly and monthly meetings to discuss about the product information, service level agreement (SLA), resolve issues, and in general engage in in-depth discussions about their operations. In order to be successful, the Sales and the Marketing team have to align with each other.
For Example: Sales team can share the details about the product and the needs of the customer and how to provide best services to them. And, marketing team can use this information to improve the product and services and they way they are introduced to the customers.
2. Same Funnel for Smarketing
In Sales and Marketing or popularly called, Smarketing funnel, the top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) is under marketing department and the bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) is under sales department. And, middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) is the shared responsibility of both sales and marketing departments. Therefore, all the three stages of the funnel are important and if both the departments align with each other then they can easily get leads and an opportunity to sell their products to potential customers.
3. Focus entirely on BOFU
As it is mentioned above, that bottom of the funnel (BOFU) is under the sales department. However, the main objective of any company is to sell their products at higher rate. Therefore, smarketing is really helpful and beneficial to create more leads and sell the products. Marketing team can analyze where the customers are dropping and how to improve their product and its services so that leads moves down the funnel without leaking out of it.
4. Easier Collaboration
The most important step in integration of sales and marketing is that it should be easy. Sales team operates on the basis of the information shared by the marketing team to the buyer. And, marketing team operates on the basis of the feedback received from sales team and generate high quality product according to the requirement of the customer. So, the collaboration between the two makes things easier for them, and at the same time enhances the overall customer experience.
5. Solely Rely on Data
Firstly, it is necessary to measure and communicate progress towards the primary goals as agreed upon in the service level agreement (SLA). For example, how many leads are to be generated in a specific number of days. Sales and marketing team should set goals regarding the leads/ prospects- how many they got from referrals and how many from the campaigns. And, then track the prospects they got from referrals and measure the progress and success of each individual effort. It is important to analyze the results of each campaign and which efforts successfully drive customers for your products and services. This can only be done if the data is purely authentic and there’s proper communication between both the departments.
6. Sales and Marketing Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Smarketing service level agreement is an agreement between the two departments to work towards a common organizational goal. Marketing team agrees to generate a agreed upon quantity of quality prospects and sales team agrees to perform sufficient research before they connect with the customers. Basically, both the teams work together to accomplish a common goal and if, the results aren’t satisfying then both the departments are held accountable for that. They all have to put equal efforts without any sort of disagreement.
7. Mutually Shared Goals
Aligned goals are the basis of an effective Sales and Marketing collaboration. Before creating common Smarketing goals, it is crucial that both the departments work in sync with each other. Communication on weekly and monthly basis is required to understand how both the departments can produce high quality products.
For example: If sales team is having a hard time in selling a product or service, then marketing team can make strategies about how to create awareness among the customers about the product, so that high potential leads for their products can be generated.
Conclusion
According to a survey, Smarketing leads to an increase of approximately 20% in the annual income. Smarketing is an important tool through which we can increase revenue and effectively grow the business. Although, integration isn’t easy but if both departments follow the common goals and service level agreement then it’s not too difficult and maintaining harmony is easier than it seems. By utilizing the above mentioned ways of implementing Smarketing, these two teams can formulate a strong sales and marketing strategy to increase revenue and profits for the business.
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