There comes a point in any organization when the focus on sales begins to move toward a focus on marketing. If you find yourself shifting your thinking and budget for customer acquisition to include a marketing-based approach, you could be wondering how to even start, and whether what you’re doing is even working.
The truth is, some sales skills are going to be extremely helpful during this transition, but there are still major differences between sales and marketing you’ll need to understand—especially when it comes to considered purchase marketing.
What Sales Skills Translate Well Into Considered Purchase Marketing?
Before diving into new focus areas, let’s go over some of the skills you likely already have that translate well into marketing.
- A sales-based organization already has a deep understanding of target buyer needs.
- Sales organizations have created goal-oriented, decision-making paths for their target buyers from those needs.
- People in sales are already pros at communication and conversation.
- A sales organization knows how to use email to educate and inspire action.
Understanding your customer is the most important aspect of marketing. It’s also a crucial part of any sales operation. A good salesperson can put themselves in the position of the customer in order to identify what a buyer is really looking for. Marketing is all about building an understanding of your audience so you can relate to your customer and create the path that led them to the point of purchase. Additionally, sales requires strong communication skills which also allow you to market effectively, reaching the consumer on their terms and convincing them to take action.
Sales vs. Considered Purchase Marketing
While sales is directed by the salesperson to move a potential customer through the sales funnel, considered purchase marketing is more about educating and inviting the customer to move themselves through the funnel. A considered purchase typically has a longer sales cycle, and a buyer needs different information at different points in their journey, which will inspire them to take action and become further qualified. Those actions don’t occur naturally if there are sales-focused tactics used along the way.
So if your company is ready to lean in toward a considered purchase marketing approach, here are a few things to do to help with the transition.
1. More Customer Needs, Less Sales Messaging
A DemandGen Report study shows that 75 percent of business executives actually want to remove sales messaging from their marketing. Why? Because sales language recalls those high-pressure situations where buyers felt they had to do something, and not that they wanted to do something. The goal with marketing should be to educate, empower, and encourage people, not to overwhelm and pressure them.
The same DemandGen Report study stated that more than half of respondents felt the best way to get around the sales-based nature of marketing materials is to simply focus on value. When creating assets, focus on what the customer’s main problem is, and how your company helps them resolve that issue.
2. Get Educated
Marketing is a constantly changing landscape, which is both a blessing and a curse. The constant evolution means there’s always something new to learn, which gives you plenty of opportunities to get up to speed with and even certified in certain marketing approaches.
For instance, Google has certification programs available for its Analytics software, its AdWords paid search platform, and digital marketing as a whole.
HubSpot, one of the most popular marketing automation platforms, is also a respected authority on considered purchase marketing. HubSpot even offers certification programs in content marketing, inbound marketing, and social media. These programs can be completed in a matter of hours, and they'll fill you in on the basics of modern marketing.
There are plenty of other certification programs you can explore. Facebook and Bing offer their own certification programs relating to their advertising products, while social marketing site Hootsuite provides a social media marketing certification program.
These certification programs are just a small sampling of the educational marketing content available online. Webinars and online classes are happening all the time. Keep an eye out for these events put on by marketing thought leaders and register for as many as you can.
3. Utilize Analytics
According to SEMRush, the Google Analytics certification is the most sought-after certification program in marketing. Its popularity, of course, is entirely related to the vast popularity and effectiveness of Google Analytics.
Google Analytics might be the most important tool available to help you move from a sales organization to a marketing organization. Simply scrolling through the insights that can be gleaned from Google Analytics, you can see the building blocks of a marketing plan. You’ll see:
- How much traffic you’re getting
- Where it’s coming from
- How long people stay on your site
- Where they go after they leave
Best of all, you’ll likely see data that supports your definition of your target buyer and their customer journey, and proves out the instincts you’ve had all along. You’ll also likely find new ways of looking at them or ways that challenge what you thought you knew. This isn’t a bad thing, but instead helps focus your efforts and keeps you on the right track.
Another great way to understand consumers is to implement analytics as part of your social media strategy. The unspoken feedback you get from your followers is just as important as the likes and shares that you see every day.
While there are analytics on each individual social media platform, a third-party tool like Buffer, Sprout, and Hootsuite can help you move beyond the obvious and start to notice patterns in your social activity. You’ll learn what times of day are the best to post, what types of posts get the most engagement, how paid advertising campaigns are really going, and how all of your efforts on each network fit together.
4. Partner with Icon
Transitioning from a sales organization to a marketing organization is an exciting challenge, and the marketing landscape will present new levels of competition for your company. If you’re looking for guidance to make the shift as seamless as possible, an agency like Icon can help you find your way.
A good agency will start by helping you to figure out the basics—who your audience is and how to tailor your messaging to them at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Though you could theoretically make these choices on your own, working with an organization with years of experience in this area can only help you to start off on the right foot so you can market with confidence.
An agency can also help you build your marketing infrastructure correctly. They’ll help you decide which channels and tactics make the most sense for your budget, and how to focus the budget on the right part of the funnel for faster ROI. For instance, when it comes to paid search, a good agency will spend time analyzing data for the right keywords to optimize—and pay special attention to keywords that target buyers closest to the bottom of the funnel.
Embracing a more marketing-focused approach to customer acquisition requires a significant and dedicated effort by you and your organization. But you don’t have to go at it without a plan or help. Follow these tips and get some input from the experts, and you’ll be on your way to growing your customer base efficiently and sustainably.
