5 Key Points To Building a Cohesive Marketing & Sales Strategy

Marketing and sales are two aspects of a single business task: attracting and retaining customers. A common mistake made by inexperienced entrepreneurs is viewing them as completely separate aspects of the business. Building a cohesive marketing and sales strategy is one of the most important business growth strategies for any company.

Here are five key points for building your marketing and sales strategy:

1. Know your unique selling proposition (USP). What makes your products, your services, and your company unique from the competition? What will draw customers to your business and away from your competition? The thing that makes you unique is your strongest selling point. You need a clear selling position before you can create a successful marketing and sales strategy.

2. Know your target audience. Before you can sell your products and services, you need to know who would have the most interest in it. For example, if you are in the business of selling video games, your target audience will include die-hard gamers and teenagers just getting started. You need to know as much as possible about your target audience. This includes who they are, what they do for a living, what pain points they have, and how your product or service can help them. This information helps you develop an effective marketing strategy. It also gives your sales staff the ability to target prospects with the right sales pitch.

3. Know what you want to accomplish in 2018. For success, your marketing and sales strategies must align with your company’s goals for 2018. If you want to add a new product line to your company, you need to make sure that is part of your marketing and sales plans for the upcoming year.

4. Identify the right advertising and promotional options for your business. The options depend on what kind of business you are in and what kinds of products/services you offer. It also depends on your company’s goals for 2018. These options can take on many forms. This includes giving out free samples and coupons, doing demonstrations, sending out press releases, creating content, gathering customer testimonials, putting up billboards, taking out radio/TV ads, and even having a booth at an industry trade show. Finding the ideal mix is one of the business growth strategies you cannot afford to miss.

5. Align your promotional, advertising, and sales efforts with your company’s sales process. For example, it is a waste of time and effort to have your sales staff trying to convert leads that have not gone through a qualification process. In fact, it is a poor business decision. By concentrating their efforts only on qualified leads, you will see sales numbers going up and lead conversions increasing.

By concentrating on these five keys, you will be able to form a comprehensive marketing and sales strategy. It will be aligned with what you want to accomplish in 2018. Make sure this is one of the business growth strategies you make a part of your company in the coming New Year.