Beyond The Leads: Harmonising Digital Marketing And Sales

Today, we're taking a step back from our usual discussions about digital marketing to highlight a fundamental, yet often overlooked connection between marketing and sales.

Digital marketing plays a pivotal role in generating awareness, creating interest, and ultimately generating quality leads. However, these leads will only truly shine if the sales process that follows is well-executed. The quality of leads is not solely determined by their origin but also by what happens next.

Digital marketing's role is to attract prospects to your business, bringing them to the doorstep. However, it's the sales team that holds the key to the front door, ushering these leads to conversion. This transition from interest to transaction is where the magic happens.

Let's share the story of a business whose founder understood the significance of digital marketing and decided to hire an agency to build their online presence. The founder had ambitious growth targets and believed that digital marketing would be the key to achieving them.

In their pursuit of growth, they switched from one digital marketing agency to another, dissatisfied with the quality of leads generated every time. They believed that finding the perfect marketing partner was the key to success. With each transition, they hoped for a miraculous turnaround in lead quality, but the results remained unchanged. The leads continued to underperform, and sales never saw a significant boost.

At first, they began to lose trust in various platforms, arriving at conclusions such as 'Platform X is only for teenagers, and that's where our target audience is not present.' Gradually, they started to think that perhaps their industry conditions were not conducive for digital marketing to make an impact.

One day, in a moment of reflection, the company's founder decided to dig deeper into the issue. On closely observing the sales process, a harsh truth was discovered: their sales team was either slow to follow up with leads, lacked a proper opening script, or didn't have a clearly defined sales funnel.

The leads at the start of the online activities from the current digital marketing agency were of decent quality. However, since the follow-ups didn't happen on time, the feedback given for those leads was inaccurate, which led to the agency making changes in its strategies. The problem was not with the agencies but within their own organisation. The blame game stopped, and the focus turned inward.

The company decided to invest in training their sales team, crafting a compelling opening script, and defining a well-structured sales funnel. The impact was almost immediate. The same leads that had previously yielded poor results suddenly began moving further along in the sales funnel.

In this moment of revelation, the founder understood that success in the digital age required more than just outsourcing marketing efforts. It demanded a strong, well-prepared sales force and a streamlined sales process. They stopped changing agencies and instead channelled their efforts into nurturing their internal capabilities.

Now, let's examine the reasons why their digital marketing efforts were derailed:

Inaccurate targeting:

A well-defined sales process helps in understanding the target audience and their specific needs. Without a proper sales process, digital marketing campaigns may lack accurate targeting, reaching the wrong audience or failing to resonate with potential customers.

Lack of campaign optimisation:

The absence of a well-structured sales process significantly affects campaign optimisation in digital marketing, hindering the ability to fine-tune strategies for improved performance and results.

Adverse effect on CPQL (Cost Per Qualified Lead):

In the absence of a clear sales process, determining qualified leads becomes challenging. As a result, the criteria for defining a qualified lead may be ambiguous or overly broad, leading to a higher CPQL. Proper lead qualification is crucial for cost efficiency, and without it, marketing spending on leads that may not genuinely qualify can increase.

This story serves as a reminder that sometimes the solution to your problems lies within your own organisation, not always outside of it.