Integrated sales and marketing platforms for entrepreneurs

The relationship between marketing and sales departments has always been difficult to manage effectively.  However, these teams cannot help a company grow if they don't work well together.

When the sales department fails to communicate information about the department's target and active offers, the marketing department cannot create an effective strategy. Similarly, the sales team cannot reach its monthly, quarterly or annual target, without support from the marketing team. It's a vicious circle that can hinder business growth and profitability.

If you're on this page, it means you're probably looking for a way to improve collaboration between these two departments.

Integrated marketing and sales platforms support inter-department collaborations and help teams align their objectives. Using these platforms, the data collected through the actions of both marketing and sales teams will be available for all and, thus, have a positive impact on business development.

For instance, in 2015, Trusted Web Shop, a German company that helps online retailers gain consumer trust, decided that implementing an integrated marketing and sales platform is necessary in order to increase website traffic and improve conversion rates. And, the results were quite remarkable. After implementation, website traffic rose by 30% and the number of leads exploded with 200 times more leads.

And this system doesn't just help companies generate more leads, it also enables them to better monitor and organize all their client information.

So, is an integrated solution the best way to ensure a seamless collaboration between marketing and sales teams within your company? There are no universal solutions, so it's essential to analyze these platforms and make sure they accommodate your specific business needs.

In order to make the process easier for you, we've created a list that includes the main benefits of implementing an integrated marketing and sales platform.

• Optimization of the whole online marketing process.
• Lower confusion rates among consumers.
• Real-time optimization of the sales process.
• Faster data analysis.

Optimization of the whole online marketing process

An integrated marketing and sales platform will help you more effectively measure the results of your marketing efforts and permanently monitor your relationship with potential clients.

Using this type of platform, your company will be able to easily coordinate communication via multiple media, such as: e-mail, social media, mobile. Plus, by automating different tasks, the brand's message will reach its chosen audience when it is most relevant for the consumer.

The fact that one can store and monitor data generated by Facebook campaigns is another key feature offered by integrated solutions. By analyzing the information provided by the system, sales and marketing teams can always know what stage of the sales process a particular consumer has reached and what actions are recommended in order to make sure he converts.

Since each consumer reacts differently to brand messages, audience segmentation is always recommended. And with an integrated marketing and sales platform it's easier to define distinctive audience segments and create custom marketing flows for each one.

Content marketing campaigns can also be easily monitored using this type of system. Integrated marketing and sales platforms actually enable marketers to create custom strategies and deliver personalized content to specific clients, based on their response to previous messages.

Integrated marketing platforms can contribute to improved user retention rates when it comes to online shops. According to a study by Hubspot, Casio was looking for a way to improve the effectiveness of their inbound marketing campaigns, so they decided to implement an integrated platform. And the results were spectacular. In 2016, organic traffic rose by 12, sales increased by 26% and lead generation grew by 496%.

Plus, integrated platforms can also monitor the performance of your marketing and sales teams. Thanks to this feature, the best employees and teams can be rewarded for their efforts.

Lower confusion rates among consumers

When the marketing campaign's message is not in tune with sales objectives and active promotions, the company's communication generates confusion among clients.

For instance, let's assume the sales team has decided to promote an older product that's in stock, but hasn't been performing well on the market. If this product isn't sold now, by next season it will become irrelevant. Meanwhile, due to a lack of communication between departments, the marketing team is prioritizing new products and is sending out a monthly newsletter without mentioning the discounts available for the older product.

So, when the customers interested in the new product will reach out to the company's sales team, they will be presented with an offer for an older product they never heard about or asked for. In this scenario, the consumer will end up rightfully confused and dissatisfied.

This is why integrated marketing and sales platforms centralize all information. When all teams have a clear vision of what the most important goals are and of what resources are available to help them achieve them, departments can collaborate effectively, avoiding mishaps that confuse consumers and decrease conversion rates.

Real-time optimization of the sales process

The sales team is in contact with clients on a daily basis. Naturally, they have first-hand knowledge of the consumer's true needs and expectations. And these insights could work wonders in the hands of a savvy marketing team. This is exactly what an integrated sales and marketing system promotes.

An integrated marketing and sales platform can help the company optimize its sales pipeline in order to get consumers to convert faster. Optimization can be an arduous process, but with this type of platform, you can use information from multiple teams in order to get the best solution. User information generated by the marketing department through online lead generation campaigns can make up the base of the new sales funnel. Afterwards, all the data (emails, phone numbers) will be processed by the sales team in order to generate new sales or upsell.

Obstacles can be surpassed by modifying the sales approach for a specific client. This can mean crafting a new, more personal, email, and creating an alternative strategy that addresses a specific category of customers who dislike speaking on the phone. Or it can mean offering some additional benefits in order to persuade a reluctant client.

Either way, all these adjustments will be recorder within the sales pipeline for future use. Integrated marketing and sales platforms use stages to define the consumer's journey from first contact to conversion, mapping out the possible challenges and the resources employees need to make sure each customer stays the course.

In other words, if your company implements an integrated solution, the marketing team won't have to wait until the last days of a campaign to be able to analyze the data. Marketers will be able to constantly monitor what setbacks the sales team is encountering and provide adequate support.

Faster data analysis

Companies that choose to store and monitor data without automating the process are prone to a massive performance decrease, once business starts growing and more and more data start flooding the system.

In this case, integrated marketing and sales platforms can have a positive impact on both marketing and sales teams, by organizing data and generating relevant reports. These platforms automatically collect new information and create connections with other relevant data available throughout the system.

By automating this process, the platform enables marketing specialists to focus on creating new strategies, optimizing key processes and crafting new, persuasive content. Plus, the reports generated by the integrated marketing system highlight what's working and what's not, allowing companies to react faster and improve the way they connect with clients.

Time is of the essence in marketing and an integrated marketing and sales platform can help your company gain insights faster, with less costs and stress.

Ready for a new stage in your company's development?

Designed to support effective collaboration between sales and marketing teams, integrated platforms are fast becoming a valuable tool for businesses looking to nurture lasting relationships with potential clients. By centralizing and organizing all the available data, these systems can help companies identify obstacles and optimize their strategy accordingly, in order to increase sales without additional staff.

Furthermore, client acquisition is becoming ever more expensive, so, the ability to build trust and to nurture long-term relationships with consumers through relevant communication can be a powerful competitive advantage for your business. Will your company take the next step and embrace a more integrated approach to marketing and sales?