B2B Lead Generation 2.0: Align Marketing and Sales in Revenue Marketing

Revenue marketing sounds like a tautology. Isn’t marketing about revenue all the time? The emergence of a new concept, however, always means an underlying deficiency that it attempts to address. A Russian poet once said, “If stars come out at night — could it mean someone needs them?” If revenue marketing came out in 2010, could it mean marketing and sales needed it back then and still do now?

Revenue marketing is gaining momentum. Marketing teams and sales teams are joining their forces in revenue teams. Revenue marketing models are being developed. A Chief Revenue Office (CRO) is a new role many companies of various size and scale have adopted.

Does the victorious advance of revenue operations across the board mean the traditional methods of B2B online marketing, lead generation, appointment setting, and sales are no longer working? Yes and no. B2B lead generation Belkins agency will help us answer this question and examine revenue marketing from different angles.

On the surface, revenue marketing has the same set of tasks and processes that all kinds of marketing before. It generates B2B leads, aims to increase conversion rates, and tries to scale many marketing tasks through the use of automation, the right strategies, and sales training.

Then, what is different from the traditional marketing? For one, a culture shift that had given rise to revenue marketing occurred and a disalignment between marketing and sales became evident as a major problem. The disalignment meant not only lack of contact and communication between the two departments, but also the somewhat disparaging view at marketing. If marketing collateral and campaigns are perceived as expenses and costs, can it become an equal partner in generating revenue? Probably not.

But also, the B2B customer has changed. No longer passive, buyers aren’t waiting for SDRs to dominate the conversation and flaunt their product knowledge. With only 47% of B2B customers reaching out to SDRs for consultation, they spend 83% of the time on their own, exploring and researching products and solutions to their pain points, according to Gartner Research & Advisory.

This means that the traditional methods of marketing and sales are less and less efficient. SDRs simply have fewer opportunities to get through to their potential buyers. Under these conditions, does it make economic sense to let marketing and sales remain disconnected, or is it more expedient to implement the holistic approach revenue marketing is based on?

The B2B world can be pretty conservative though. Marketers who are not yet bought on the idea of revenue marketing may ask: we personalize our outreach, set up our lead generation, qualify and score leads, so what’s wrong about our service? We send qualified leads off to sales. The rest is not our job.

This approach was problematic because lead generators would do their part of the deal and appointment generators would stop right where their job description outlined their responsibilities. If a lead is not mature yet, no one would pursue it further. The result is a leaky funnel and stalled leads.

Thankfully, now the buying process has changed. And marketing has evolved too.  

Revenue marketing leaders drove home the realization that if leads have low conversion rates when generated and nurtured by marketing and sales separately, a holistic approach is the answer. Without going too deep into holistic methods, let’s see how the alignment between marketing and sales can look like.

- Marketing does its usual B2B lead generation service, posting advertising and engaging texts and images on the company’s website and social media platforms, which brings top-of-the-funnel prospects who sign up or fill out on-site lead forms.

- Sales engage with prospects on live chat by the lead’s initiative or by using their contacts to reach out.

- Marketing keeps engaging the prospects with email outreach (newsletters, drips, etc.) and content marketing.

- Sales continues nurturing the prospects qualifying them in a quick chat or scheduling an appointment.

- Marketing keeps sending out email sequences.

- Sales closes deals.

- Marketing finds new opportunities to send seasonal proposals, discounts, etc.

Technology enables the alignment of marketing and sales through sales enablement software and RevOps platforms. Having access to unified data and making use of innovative marketing and sales tools, revenue marketing is eliminating rigid silos between the two essential teams.

There are a few revenue marketing models but they all use the same principles. Not only should marketing and sales strive to achieve their revenue goals collectively, but also they should keep their eyes on the customer at all times. Here’s what you do when trying on a revenue marketing strategy.

First, identify the accounts you want to pursue and the audiences that are most likely to buy from you. This would require you to analyze their needs and pain points and outline their buyer journey.  You will need this information to know when to create awareness of their problem and how to approach them with the solution.

Second, see what resources you have now and what you will be able to allocate down the line. From marketing dollars to print and digital marketing content like case studies, search marketing, and so on.

Before marketing campaigns are launched, marketing and sales collaborate and agree on the list of accounts, KPIs, individual goals and objectives, etc. Marketing and sales should discuss and collaborate on these issues, changing aspects of campaigns when needed. The buyer’s journey can differ between accounts and the teams should account for that. The teams’ KPIs, email sequences, and B2B lead generation tactics should be aligned too.

At this stage, both teams ensure communication is smooth and technology is flawless. If the company’s tech stack is not up to the tasks, it should be updated or supplemented with new software. For example, SDRs realize their bounce rate is through the roof, then they can consul email consulting services. Real-time updates are essential at this point.

Run campaigns and nurture leads into closing. A robust sales enablement platform is to keep the revenue teams up to date with the buyer’s journey on each warm lead. That’s where the omnichannel strategy comes in handy, enabling SDRs and marketers to reach out to the lead through different channels and methods based on their data-driven insights. Tweak your approach as necessary until revenue goals are met.

Analyze the performance of all the campaigns and the alignment between the teams. If ROI is not met, see what can be improved. If some issues can be fixed by better tools, check out whether the company’s tech stack needs updates. For example, poor email deliverability is a common reason for marketing campaign failures. In such a case, use an email spam checker.

Do you agree now that revenue marketing is not just another buzzword in the world of B2B lead generation, marketing, and sales? It’s a hybrid role to impact the company’s bottom line. Even though traditional marketing methods are still used, they are less effective than solutions that emerge from the close collaboration between marketing and sales teams.