What is Revenue Marketing?
The goal of marketing is to generate revenue, of course. But, things often get complicated and marketing teams fail to directly connect campaign specifics to revenue, especially in the B2B space.
Earlier marketers would generate leads, qualify them, send them to sales and consider their job to be done. In this system, the role of the marketing team pretty much ends at handing over the generated leads to the sales team, where they pursue the leads further. Sales would also need to do nothing on leads that are not ready for them to close. The buying process has changed and the status quo has changed with it.
By definition, revenue marketing refers to the holistic process of identifying specific channels in marketing that offer revenue growth and aligning sales and marketing efforts with revenue. In this form of marketing, a more comprehensive approach is followed where both the marketing team and the sales team work together to maximize ROI.
Marketing also needs to have a closed-loop system and fetch data from sales in a 2-way sync scenario (instead of the most commonly used marketing to sales data transfer). It is the combined effort of the sales and marketing team to drive revenue growth in a predictable way, by creating a constant and continuous loop of feedback. It seeks to develop strategies that can be effectively repeated to drive new customer acquisition and in turn predict sales and revenue.
Here’s what revenue marketing aims to achieve:
Generation of sales-qualified leads and driving them straight into the sales funnel. Successful attribution of sales to campaign specifics for replication. Aiding the smooth and solid journey of customers across the funnel. Marketing enablement even after leads get passed on to sales. Aligning sales and marketing to work towards the common goal of generating revenue.
Rise of revenue marketing The revenue marketing concept was brought to light with the book, Rise of the Revenue Marketer, back in 2010. This happened in the time period when digital marketing automation, data-driven marketing, and CRMs, in the telemarketing data form we see today, started to gain huge momentum.
Like we mentioned earlier, the marketing status quo has changed and marketers are now closely tracking and working on customers till the end of the buyer’s journey. Marketers continuously engage with buyers even after conversion for retention and upselling.
The latest CRMs and marketing automation solutions provide a 360-degree view of customer relationships including data on the impact of marketing activities, making it easier for the marketing manager to monitor the outcome of every penny invested in marketing.
With a clear view of the impact of marketing campaigns on lead generation and the impact of further marketing activities leading to conversions, the journey reveals at what point these leads turn into revenue-generating customers.
Importance of revenue marketing today
According to a study by Gartner a potential buyer in the B2B industry spends a good majority of the time researching brands and products independently, mostly online. Only 17% of the time is spent actually talking to a vendor.
Moreover, almost 63% of buyers prefer not involving any sales reps in their search. They prefer doing research on their own.
This means that a sales executive gets a very small window to make his case, convince the buyer of the quality of his products, and induce action from the buyer. This also means your low-touch conversion system needs to provide the data marketing needs to connect with revenue.
For the same reason, a lead pursued separately by the sales team has a statistically lower chance of converting into a sale. Of course, this depends on the type of customers and the industry. High-ticket customers would still prefer to talk to sales. A holistic approach allows both the marketing team and the sales team to pursue the lead through different methods and improve the prospects.
To put this into perspective, here’s an example:
Marketing engagement – A prospect visits your website and engages with your copywriting and case studies. He/she signs up.
Sales Engagement – He/she then ends up having some quick conversation with your sales team on live chat.
Marketing engagement – He/she continues to engage with marketing content and emails (drips, newsletters, etc.) even after starting the conversation with sales.
Sales Engagement – Sales rep later closes the deal.
Marketing engagement – Customers continue to receive marketing communications after buying.
In fact, a study from MarketingProfs has shown that organizations with more accurately aligned sales and marketing strategies have been able to achieve almost 38% higher conversion rates as well as 36% higher customer retention rates.
Clearly, revenue marketing is the way to go in this day and age where people are more aware of their needs and businesses have access to better data.
What makes a winning revenue marketing strategy?
A winning revenue marketing strategy needs both marketing and sales teams having a close grip on all stages of the buying process while aligning with each other in a cohesive manner. In order to make an impact in your customers’ minds and lead them towards making a purchase from you, there is a need to capture their attention and sustain it throughout the journey by communicating the values of your product at all times. And for this, you need to strategically connect with them through both your sales and marketing channels and serve relevant content and empower them in accordance to the stage they are in on the pipeline. That is how a revenue marketing strategy works.
Here are the steps involved in creating a winning revenue marketing strategy.
Step 1 Step one is to study and understand your target audience. This involves carefully analyzing what your buyer needs and figuring out the buying cycle for them. Your buyer’s needs could be anything from getting a task or a job done efficiently to getting more knowledge or insights into a subject they are researching. You need to get down and dirty with the details and map out the buying cycle starting from creating awareness of their problem to inducing them to make a purchase decision. Understand the journey of the buyer very carefully throughout the cycle so that you know exactly where to strike to influence them at each stage of the cycle.
Step 2 Step two involves the more difficult task of integrating your sales and marketing team and preparing to launch more aligned campaigns. For this, both your sales and marketing teams need to be aware of each other’s individual goals and objectives, KPIs, and other aspects along with the common goal of pursuing a lead together. A common strategy needs to be planned out after discussing the buyer’s behavior, buying cycle, and profile so that everyone knows what to do at each stage.
Steps should also be taken to ensure seamless and smooth communication across both departments so that no opportunity is missed. CRM tools and workflow management tools can be utilized to attain a reliable channel of communication with real-time updates on the progress of the campaign at each stage.