why should I be interested in smarketing?

As its name suggests, smarketing is the union between sales and marketing - or what is known in English as sales and marketing. In this strategy, the objectives of the sales and marketing teams are integrated. One of the characteristics of the Inbound Marketing strategy is that it integrates the marketing campaigns, taking into account the targets of both teams.

It has been fully demonstrated that any strategy, however good it may be, needs the involvement of both groups for it to be successful as a campaign. It would be doomed to failure if it did not include the combined actions of the sales and marketing teams. This is because on many occasions the objectives of both teams are disparate, or even opposed, because they do not work on the basis of the company's general objectives.

The objective of this strategy is to optimise the company's resources to achieve an increase in leads and minimise conflicts. Therefore, we understand smarketing as the fusion between sales and marketing. Sales and marketing teams must work together to improve lead generation strategies, to guarantee their quality, taking into account the targets of both teams.

Hubspot' s definition ofsmarketingis: "smarketing is the effective alignment of marketing and sales teams, working in the same channel to set common goals and objectives, evaluate progress and make the necessary adjustments to meetthem".

The objectives of the marketing team are to be responsible for generating leads and ensuring the quality of the leads generated, and the objectives of the sales department are based on working hard to close those leads and close purchases with customers. As the ultimate goal of both is to generate leads, they must set up an aligned campaign to achieve those objectives. The strategic alignment of marketing and sales is designed to maximise the quantitative and qualitative impact on the behaviour of potential customers and, therefore, influence the growth of the business.

In addition, if both departments are well communicated, it will stand out as a smooth functioning within the company, which in turn, generates greater trust for customers and the audience that receives the campaigns.

6 Benefits of implementing smarketing

• Time optimisation, decreasing the time spent filtering contacts and unsorted data.
• Generating and accelerating your sales funnel.
• Visibility of campaign impact and ability to measure ROI.
• Effective use of both departments and facilities involved.
• Collaborative relationship between marketing and sales.
• Directly impacts the company's revenue objectives.

Sales and marketing have always been measured against different metrics of success. Sales teams talk about customers, quarterly quotas and results. Marketers often measure lead volume, engagement and long-term brand awareness as they work to drive their efforts.

Traditionally, misplaced sales and marketing metrics can lead to credit arguments for business performance. But when it comes to account-based marketing, there's much more at stake. In account-based marketing, if sales and marketing don't work together, you risk wasting time and resources chasing leads that don't convert.

Without personalisation, marketers will spend money on ad targeting and personalised content that will never achieve the intended goals, and sales will crumble, putting the success of the entire account marketing process on their shoulders.

It is inevitable that both will lack Account Marketing objectives. Instead of continuing to struggle with sales and marketing dislocations, take practical steps to bridge the gap, ensure the two teams are fully integrated and achieve overall commercial success:

• Shift your prospect focus to a different one according to your sales objectives.
• Work directly with sales to identify ideal buyer personas for campaigns.
• Choose success indicators as a single unit rather than individual units.
• To maintain consistency, do analysis to record data on a regular basis.
• Work from a single database to ensure you are always on the same page.

These steps help align more closely with sales in Inbound Marketing strategies, but they all boil down to one thing: finding common ground to achieve business goals together. High-quality intent data can be the common language of the strategies.

Clear communication between sales and marketing is key and necessary. It starts from the moment responsibilities, concepts and goals are defined. Thus, it is necessary to design a customer-based cycle, identify the stages of the cycle, determine who is responsible for each stage and understand what is required for the customer to be considered qualified.

This strategy should be based on the phases of the marketing plan, and go through all of them, with the supervision of the sales team, as they must work together. Let's remember what the phases of the marketing plan are:

The sales cycle is divided into different phases, each requiring a specific area of focus. By clearly agreeing how it works and how it relates to sales and marketing, a more transparent and effective strategy can be developed. As you can see, a customer-driven loop or flywheel does not require a series of steps, but is an infinite loop driven by the power of each element. Everything is customer-centric, so every step is important for the customer to be completely satisfied with the brand or company. A customer-driven cycle is a cyclical process in which customers drive your growth. It is designed to coordinate all parts of the business to engage, interact and delight to deliver a superior customer experience throughout the customer's buying journey.

With well-aligned sales and marketing teams, you can avoid interference and reduce problems with data transfer between computers, so every area of your business is empowered to deliver a more complete and pleasurable experience.

It is crucial to organise weekly meetings with all teams to share updates, progress and analysis. A month can be long and should be planned by key stakeholders. There will be room to solve specific problems and more time can be spent on developing specific strategies.

Remember that events and products, their launches or improvements, available offers or last minute changes should be shared with everyone in a short, simple and clear message or email. Usually everyone is on the same team, the company's goals should come first.

Read more about smarketing in our blog article, What is smarketing: discover how to align marketing and sales .

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