What are the common challenges and pitfalls of marketing and sales alignment and how do you overcome them?

It is equally important to define who is not your target audience. Mapping out what this audience needs, wants and is looking for and defining why your solution is not the right fit for them may sound counter intuitive, but it is an incredibly powerful exercise. With this information, marketing can help qualify out this audience at an early stage, again, saving the sales team from wasting time on conversations that may seem interesting on the surface but will never convert in practise.

Symptoms: Marketing creates generic content, while sales struggles to connect with buyers at each stage of their decision-making process. Solution: Map It Out: Develop a comprehensive buyer's journey map together! This helps create targeted content that addresses specific buyer needs at each stage.

It's important to keep KPIs tight and to concentrate on a maximum of 5-8 key data points. Collecting and analysing too much data takes up too much time and can mean that you're looking at results that are weeks out of date, which is an age in marketing and sales terms. Pick 5-8 data points that reflect each part of the campaign. For example, you'll want to use a few non-revenue data points such as no. of MQLs and 'meetings booked' as well as a mid-funnel data point associated with revenue such as number of proposals out and their corresponding value. And don't forget 'deals lost'. It's just as important (if not more important) than 'deals won' as long as you're recording the necessary 'reason' data to help inform future deals.

Inaccessible content! Businesses lose approximately ￡2 billion a month by ignoring the needs of disabled people, with 73% of potential disabled customers experience barriers on more than a quarter of websites they visited. 1 in 4 people identify as disabled, disabled people make up the largest minority group in the world, larger than the population of China. In addition to this 75% of disabled people and their families have walked away from a UK business because of poor accessibility or customer service. It is estimated that the UK is loosing over ￡17 billion each year due to failures to be accessible and inclusive for disabled consumers - one of the biggest marketing and sales alignment pitfalls, that remains shockingly unspoken about!

Create experiences that do not come across as gimmicky and to be authentic in your brand personality and messaging. Always provide value back to your audience and build trust.