Marcom roles being considered irrelevant by CEOs!

To an organisation today, Marketing Communication and Sales teams are irrelevant. They aren’t any help anymore. Simply put, they are unnecessary cost centres eating away its profits. Surprised? Of course you should be. But that doesn’t make what is said above, false. What does make it false is the lack of an “if” statement: Marketing Communication and Sales are irrelevant “if” they don’t work like they were both in love — true love — with each other. Very soon, they will become totally redundant unless they live only to complement each other.

Marketing is Evolving.

Marketing Communication intersects with Sales today more than ever. From just brand building, a Marcom professional’s role has evolved into one that can be held directly responsible for achieving a business’s revenue targets. So can we say that the two roles are merging? Or, does one pose threat to the other? Not at all so. In fact, they have become two tightly knit roles that, when intertwined with precision, form the the key factors for a business’s success. Let's see how can a marketer make this happen.

Marcom Professional's new play field: The Sales Funnel

Lead generation is one, conversion another. For lead generation, Inbound Marketing has recently been in a lot of limelight. Thanks to it, content has become powerful like never before. Everyone’s getting better at it. But while that happens and brands benefits from it in terms of both quantity and quality of leads, an important question is being ignored: what happens to those leads after they move to the Sales funnel? And the answer is expected from the Marketer.

Today, a Marcom professional’s job doesn’t end at creating an admirable funnel. It ends only once the customer has released the PO. “Isn’t that the job of the Sales team?” you might ask. Only Sales team, no. It is the job of the tag team (Sales + Marcom).

To look further into that, we need to look at what has traditionally been the role of the Sales team. In a B2B context, at least, their job is to build a relationship with the customer. That is what the customer is looking for — building a relationship with the brand. No one wants to change partnerships everyday. We look for a long term solution to all our problem and for that, we look for people with whom we can have those long term partnerships (relationships). It’s like marriage: we seek a solution to our loneliness by bringing in another person in our life, isn’t it?

In B2B, the process of buying and selling is like an arranged marriage too. You have decided to marry the customer (even if for selfish gains), but the customer is yet to decide whether he wants to marry you or your competitor(s). And it is this period where a Marcom guy has to start focussing on. Why? Because this is the time when the customer is vulnerable to Influence the most. He is paying sharp attention to everything you say, how you behave. it is generally considered the job of the Sales team to woo the customer to your side of the court by bringing in that chivalry and all. But it’s not so.

Let’s see why:

Now, say, a sales cycle lasts 3 months (an example). The sales team can personally meet the customer not more than 5–6 times — on an average. And beyond meeting, say you get in touch with him through messages, Whatsapp and phone calls another 3–4 times (other than for asking for a meeting slot). Beyond those 8–9 touch points (which is a very optimistic number) in 3 months, a sales person cannot influence the customer any further. But Marcom can.

A Marcom professional is like a superhero who can cross the barriers of space, time (and sometimes even permission) and develop several more touch points with the customer (more so in the age of digital media today). But the customer doesn’t distinguish between Sales & Marketing. He registers all those touch points as not with you, but with the brand. So both Sales and Marcom have only one choice: associate yourself completely with the brand and build that relationship with the customer. Both need to follow the slogan of love: “I am You, You are Me” if they really want to win the game.

Building Touch Points to Woo the Customer

Someone told me once: The customer judges you on two things before making a deal: your goodness and your competence. All along his interactions with different service providers, he seeks to find a virtuous, ethical and selfless team who is, of course, competent enough to seamlessly deliver the job at hand. Since that is what he is looking for, it becomes a Marketer’s job to convince him of these traits in his brand. Which means, all the content that you prepare should revolve around these two things — ONLY!

Moving Ahead Step by Step: Distributing the Content

Step 1: Identifying customers — deal stage wise.

Segregate your funnel into different stages and identify customers in each stage that you are ready to put that extra effort for. You could use deal value, or new logo value for that matter, as a criteria.

Step 2: Prioritising them

Further segregate the accounts in terms of priority. Here, you need to figure out which deal has how time left before it is due to close, the kind of competition you are contesting against, deal size, etc. I suggest you segregate them first based on your win probability and identify which amongst them can be influenced enough (within the time available before closure) to increase your win probability to 100%. Define accounts further down the priority accordingly. Make separate lists ‘Priority: Very High, High, Low, Very Low…’

Step 3: Defining communication — platform wise for different set of accounts

Though I said above that a Marketer is a superhero who doesn’t need even permission to develop a touchpoint with the customer, but that doesn’t mean we can exploit this advantage because it can very well turn against us. Sending across too much content can be extremely overwhelming for the customer. For example, he surely doesn’t wish to have your ad interrupt him in his newsfeed at 6.00 am while he is relaxing in his tub (assuming his idea of relaxation is that skewed that he is on social media even then). So we need to define content distribution very carefully: content type, platforms, frequency, etc. When it comes to your budget, the above priority list will come in handy. Distribute it amongst different lists based on priority.

Step 4: Optimise — continuously

"If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it." - Peter Drucker

Unless you track how well the above process is working, it will not help you. To stay relevant even as a tag team, you need to keep optimising your efforts every moment. Measure the new win ratio against the existing win ratio. See how are your customers responding to your content: Are they blocking you? Are they moving your emails to “Spam”? How many of them are appreciative of having you in their feed: how many hit the “like” button to your ads / posts? Ensure you use tools that will give you this intelligence.

(Caution: Because the Sales team is already selling to the customer, as a Marcom pro, you need to strictly stay away from any selling. Whatever the content, we don’t need any CTAs!)

Time to get the Butterfly Effect in motion. This extra effort is going to change the game for your business.