Top 5 Things to Know About Sales and Digital Marketing

Many decision makers in business see marketing as an expense, not an investment. I'm here to dispel that rumor, because unfortunately for those that cut their marketing budgets; sales and marketing go hand in hand. Not only is it crucial to invest in Marketing for your sales team, but much of that financial investment comes in the form of Digital Marketing. In fact, The Marketing Budgets 2013 Report from eConsultantcy found that out of 800 companies profiled, 3/4 of respondents shared that they plan to increase their digital marketing budgets by up to 20%. So, you may be asking yourself- why do I need to invest more money in my Digital Marketing Strategy? Below are my top five things to know about the synergy between your sales and your digital marketing efforts:

1. Digital Marketing Provides Unprecedented Data

By purchasing and enabling sophisticated analytic software on your website you will be able to find out things about your prospective customer that weren't possible before. Want to know exactly where on your site they are searching? What products they've viewed? Even the search term they typed into Google that brought them to your website? All of that can now be compiled neatly into a contact page all tracked by that user's IP Address. Help your sales team make calls a little warmer; by knowing the information they need to provide the potential customer, your sales team can easily increase their conversions.

2. Sales Teams are No Longer the Hunters; Buyers Are Doing The Hunting Themselves

In the past, sales teams had to pound the pavement and hunt for potential customers. Looking for leads can now be a thing of the past. Customers are well informed and do their due diligence online before purchasing a product or service. No longer are sales teams needing to beat down doors to let people know about their products and services. In fact, for many successful digital campaigns the opposite is happening. Customers are driving themselves back to blogs, landing pages, and websites and are themselves inquiring about and collecting information on what they would like to purchase. It's now important for sales people to know when to react- instead of pushing forward without a clue.

3. Content and SEO Go Hand in Hand

Search Engine Optimization was a major buzzword in the marketing industry in the early 2000's, it meant creating a website that would give you optimal search results for whatever YOU (the website creator) wanted to be found for. This is no longer true today. The internet is growing at an unbelievably rapid pace and there are thousands of web pages added to the internet everyday. This additional competition means you can no longer simply tell Google what search words you would like to rank high on the search engines for. You now need to back up your keywords with detailed content. Focus on creating new web pages for your website in the form of blogs, videos, and images and speak often on what you believe is your expertise. Using those keywords with new content is a big way to increase your search rank today.

4. Digital Marketing Facilitates The Sale

When your presence is known across blogs and social media networks potential customers begin to develop trust for your brand and products or services whether they are aware of it or not. If you are creating healthy and worthwhile content you will be seen as the expert and when it comes time for that buyer to purchase, it will be a much easier and confident transaction. If your brand is everywhere online, it will be the first to come to mind to someone looking to purchase what you have for sale.

5. It's All Mobile

A final and important tip to remember when branding your digital marketing to is to keep mobile in mind. Every month when handling our clients' reporting we see a steady increase of mobile visitors vs. non-mobile visitors. More people are viewing websites through their phones and tablets. They are accessing their favorite social media websites through applications and avoiding the websites all together. This is a key factor to consider when promoting your content. Does your blog read well on mobile devices? Is your website or blog built with responsive design? Keep these items front and center when working on your digital marketing strategy and deciding where to allocate budget as this is a worthwhile investment.