Marketing teams are facing a communications crisis trying to coordinate the communications of a global sales force. Marketing automation software has made digital content marketing accessible to many, but limits digital content awareness to lead generation, stopping short of coordinating sales communications.
Integrated marketing communication strategies are both preferred and profitable, but seemingly out of reach with current practices.
Today we look at how you can create an integrated marketing communications strategy that includes, integrates, and coordinates the sales force.
Last week we explained why marketing teams need sales enablement software, coordinated IMC was among those reasons.
Sales reps facilitate personal selling and direct selling, which are not only key IMC strategies, but crucial to a B2B sales process.
(Image Source: InsideIIM, 2014)
How IMC is Defined
Let’s refresh the concept of IMC with a few perspectives:
The Management Study Guide says IMC includes:
- Foundation;
- Corporate Culture;
- Brand Focus;
- Consumer Experience;
- Communications Tool;
- Promotional Tools; and
- Integration Tools.
(Source)
Top Ten Social Media explains that IMC includes/is:
- Client Centered;
- Product Design;
- Promotions;
- Tracking;
- Leverage Channels;
- Brand Identity;
- Synergy;
- Earned Media;
- Educated Consumers; and,
- Event Sponsorship.
(Source)
The Houston Chronicle Small Business section suggests these key components:
- Media Choice;
- Consistent Messages;
- Design Consistency;
- Reinforcement; and,
- Sales Alignment.
(Source)
Techopedia supplies this concise definition for IMC:
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) blends various promotional tools and communications/marketing/advertising services and techniques to maximize profit. IMC is ultimately achieved through concise and consistent messaging that fosters familiarity and consumer affinity. Effective IMC messages and images are meaningful and useful to consumers, and messaging and branding consistency - a proven IMC concept - yield customer satisfaction and loyalty.
(Source)
[RELATED CONTENT] Content communication challenges are one reason why more sales training doesn’t optimize a sales process in the long term. Find why, and what will in Chapter 2 of our Sales Enablement Success series. Click the link for a FREE copy.
Integrated Marketing Communications that Include Sales
You can read how each source defines the components further, but I’ve bolded the key components that cannot be effectively facilitated without sales enablement software.
Here’s why:
1) Integrated Communication Tools
When you have siloed tools, you will have siloed sales & marketing operations. If marketers use marketing automation, and sellers are juggling email attachments and a fragmented sales stack, the silo deepens.
This is why sales process tech investments require understanding the entire value chain. When the chain integrates digitally, it will integrate physically. But without an integrated CRM-workflow-data triangle, you cannot create synergy across the value chain.
Businesses with a mature content marketing portfolio understand that ‘client interaction’ matters. Sales enablement is a #4 of 5 sales stack necessity for this reason.
Furthermore, businesses with the extensive visibility of a sales enablement platform also see 27% greater sales access to the marketing automation system, and almost 80% greater integration of multiple management platforms (Source: Aberdeen, 2015).
2) Consistent & Concise Communications & Buyer Experience
We’ve already seen in our last post that most sellers are preferring to create their own material, meanwhile marketers state that they own digital content creation. The B2B buyer experience is neither consistent nor concise with this mismanaged approach.
However, coordinating the experience is easy with a complete sales stack.
Simply:
- Integrate your content management to CRM and marketing automation;
- Upload your content to the digital content management application used by sales;
- Set geographic, industry, and time-based parameters to coordinate accessibility of content; and
- Place content assets within playbooks for buyer personas and stages.
Like this you can guarantee your sales team sends the right message, to the right person, at the right time, every time. If there wasn’t content available for their needs (as many sellers will argue), you’ll know right away and the digital content can be expedited and tailored.
Fewer meetings, fewer anecdotal perspectives, and more focused marketing contribution to revenue.
In fact, businesses with sales enablement visibility in the sales process also saw 20% greater marketing contribution to revenue (Source: Aberdeen, 2015), and 157% improvement in digital content being effective for closing.
3) Leverage All Appropriate Channels
From what we’ve seen regarding popular content management choices, most sellers lack the capability to engage effectively across multiple channels. Buyers interact across multiple devices and channels, and the brand voice must not only be consistent across the channels and decision journey, but accessible across any channel the buyer prefers.
This is what we refer to as omni-channel engagement. If your sales team isn’t accessing any and all necessary channels, your integrated marketing communications have a gap.
This “great digital divide” as coined by PulsePoint is the gap between the variety of channels consumers use, and those that businesses are actually capable of operating within.
A final proof, businesses with the integration and accessibility of sales enablement software also see 78% increased ability to target customers through several channels (Source: Aberdeen, 2015).
4) Track the Data, Optimize over Time
Data is really at the heart of aligning sales to the operations of marketing (and vise versa). There is a conceptual black-out curtain between sales and marketing teams that don’t share vital information. Meanwhile those that share data also see improved content quality and effectiveness.
In order to create communication pieces that are meaningful and useful you first need to understand what content was actually meaningful and useful. No data, no insight.
Sales enablement integrates with CRM and provides extensive visibility into the sales process, providing outcomes such as:
- 84% improved awareness of the frequency of content use by others;
- 97% improved awareness of who accessed which content, where, when, and how;
- 54% improved awareness of relationship closeness and frequency of communications;
- 186% improvement in effective and actionable 360 degree view of the customer; and
- 39% improvement in real time analytics and forecasting.
(Source: Aberdeen, 2015)
[RELATED CONTENT] Want more insight into sales enablement ROI outcomes? Click the link below for a FREE copy of Chapter 1 in our Sales Enablement Success series.
Final Takeaway
Personal and direct selling are vital components of an integrated marketing communications plan. A sales stack ensures that the sales team is capable effectively doing their job, not unlike a toolbox for a tradesperson. 2016 calls for a sales toolbox that enables a seller to navigate the new digital divide.
It can be frustrating to be a marketer these days. Painstakingly creating digital content, struggling to coordinate the communications of a global sales force, and starving for target market awareness. GSK marketers using SKURA say their content is implemented “absolutely perfectly in local markets”, Request a demo and let us show you how SKURA can work for you.
