MARKETING AUTOMATION

I spend a lot of time talking with marketers across the world and throughout dozens of different industries.  Some are 20 year veterans while others are relatively new to the profession.  Whether you are on either end of the spectrum or somewhere in the middle, the conversations bear some similarities: marketing owns a lot more of the sales cycle than ever before.

There’s no exact moment this came to be.  In the past marketing was typically responsible for growing audience awareness.  As cliche as it sounds, imagine a Coca-Cola logo painted on the side of a brick building.  Fast forward to today, marketing is now responsible for the end-to-end customer experience.  This includes building awareness and interest through to customer service and renewals (or repeat purchases) with a modest side of technology to stitch the journey together.  

The evolution into full customer experience ownership places, at minimum, a level of revenue accountability on marketing.  As a result the need for marketing to totally align itself with sales has never been more important. To that end, I consider sales and marketing alignment the ultimate exercise in teamwork.  The coordination between departments depicted below shows an organization prioritizing the needs of the prospect at each unique stage of their journey.  The diagram shows both departments interchanging roles at various stages in order to facilitate the best possible experience for your prospect.  Your organization and its journey might look different, and that’s OK.  The point is to ask yourself: what is the priority for each stage and who between sales and marketing should manage or own that stage?