Where is your Marketing Team focused?

Do you ever wonder why deals are stagnant or why your sales cycle seems slow? 

If so, your marketing team’s focus might be at fault. Departments concentrating on the wrong areas are more prone to making mistakes and missing opportunities.

Furthermore, there might be a divergence between divisions. Sales, operations, and marketing might be at odds with each other, pulling in opposite directions. 

As we emphasise at Simplified Revenue Operations, designing company-wide revenue-focused programs, and bringing the marketing team’s focus into line with other business units is key. When the direction of travel is the same, enterprises are more likely to generate desired results. 

How can you better Focus your Marketing Team

Businesses have several ways of better focusing their marketing teams. These methods often require an integrative approach – bringing the enterprise together. 

Align Marketing Goals with the Revenue Cycle

The first step is often to align marketing goals with the revenue cycle. Companies should move beyond the fixation on brand awareness and into supporting other areas of the sales pipeline. 

For example, firms might need to concentrate more on conversion. Hence, marketers must design materials that feed into the needs of sales reps.

Breaking down silos is also essential. Firms must stop creating artificial separation between revenue-generating teams, and work holistically to develop buyer journey solutions. Every part of the company needs to understand customer success and how they can help them achieve it. 

Use Data and Analytics

Data and analytics can also help focus marketing teams more by directing their attention to the buying cycle as a whole, not just one or two stages. It shows them that there’s more than one way up a mountain to engage the customer base. Metrics like customer lifetime value and ratios showing lead nurturing effectiveness (at every funnel stage) can help convince them of better courses of action. 

Once marketers begin using more data-driven decision-making, it becomes easier for them to optimise campaigns. Cross-departmental work becomes the catalyst for improved performance because each revenue-generating faction can leverage information for its segment and see how it dovetails with the ensemble.

Be Revenue-Minded

Lastly, getting marketing teams to be “revenue-minded” can help shift their focus onto what matters. Getting them to focus on the cash flow coming into the business instead of vanity metrics (“likes”) encourages them to focus more on what works. 

It also enables better cross-departmental comparisons. Every unit involved in the sales process can pitch its performance to senior management and demonstrate its methods work. 

Naturally, revenue-mindedness leads to more focus on the customer journey and buying cycle. Marketers focus less on acquisition and more on up- and cross-selling to existing customers. 

Why does Focusing your Marketing Team Matter?

Marketing teams focusing on the right things can supercharge their business’s success. A Forrester study shows marketing operations influence over 75% of all leads. Therefore, it matters tremendously. 

Benefits include: 

• Improved return on investment (ROI) from revenue-generating activities 
• More data-driven optimisation and less reliance on experience, instinct, or gut feeling
• Better optimised campaigns that generate more impact when encountered by prospects
• A comprehensive customer-centric journey using revenue operations data to address pain points at each point in the buying cycle
• A reduction in activities that reduce the incentive to buy
• Greater impact on revenue instead of metrics that don’t increase organisational success
• More alignment with other teams (such as operations and sales), including more effective collaborations

These benefits accelerate once teams design revenue-focused programs to kick-start interest in their products and services. Elements of the sales funnel link more succinctly, providing customers with a more seamless and compelling experience. 

What’s Wrong With Your Marketing Team’s Focus? 

Of course, it might not be immediately obvious where your marketing team’s focus is wrong. Even if an aligned team is 67% better at closing deals, insights aren’t automatic. 

Below, we’ve assembled the most common reasons marketing teams aren’t properly focused. Ask whether any of these apply to yours and how to turn the situation around. 

Too Little Automation

One problem could be too little automation. Marketing professionals spending so much time on rote tasks don’t have the bandwidth for anything else. Clogged workflows could prevent them from aligning with other departments and releasing resources for collaboration. 

Lack of automation could also block touchpoints with customers throughout the sales process. Marketers may miss out on tools that personalise interactions with audiences at every stage of the journey toward conversion. 

Under-Utilising Data

Under-utilising data in RevOps tools or other platforms could also prevent marketing teams from focusing properly. Hear-say, instinct and gut feeling could be misdirecting professionals and preventing them from targeting qualified leads or personalising campaigns to appeal to audiences. 

Marketing Misaligned with the Revenue Cycle

Misaligning marketing with the revenue cycle is another issue teams have with focus. Marketers could be addressing the wrong pain points or none at all. 

For example, your people could be targeting just one or two segments of the sales funnel, whereas the optimal approach might be building content for all of them. 

Lack of Focus on Revenue Impact

Not focusing on revenue impact is another area where your team’s focus might be mistaken. Professionals might believe website traffic or conversion rates matter most, not the bottom line. 

Again, this approach shows the lack of revenue impact focus. If cash flow were the primary concern, other metrics wouldn’t play such prominent roles. 

No Collaboration with Sales

Lastly, the lack of collaboration with sales could be hampering the marketing team’s efforts. Marketers might be releasing content with one set of messages while sales are using another. 

These problems often emerge from disagreements on brand voice. Companies don’t set out their standards explicitly, leading to divergent approaches.