Marketing Strategy
How Marketing From Home Will Help Align Marketing and Sales

How Marketing From Home Will Help Align Marketing and Sales

January 18, 2021
4 min read

Misalignment between your marketing and sales departments can cost your business money, waste valuable B2B content, and cause lead-to-sale conversions to fail.

Conversely, aligning your sales and marketing can lead to increased marketing revenue, better close rates, and higher customer retention.

Source: SuperOffice

Modern marketers have adopted many of the sales team’s past responsibilities. It’s now marketing’s job to build interest in a product or service, get into consumers’ minds, and persuade them to take desired actions.

If your marketing and sales teams are disjointed, you could convey mismatched messaging and confuse potential customers, losing their trust and business forever.

Source: SuperOffice

By combining sales and marketing (smarketing), you can create seamless customer journeys. Your sales team can pick up right where your marketing team left off – informed and prepared to engage with clients strategically.

Due to COVID-19, the remote workforce is at an all-time high. A Gartner survey found that 88% of organizations have required or encouraged their employees to work from home. In a study, PwC found that 78% of CEOs believe the shift to remote collaboration will endure long term.

If your workforce is working remotely, it’s more crucial than ever to be intentional about sales and marketing alignment. Fortunately, marketing from home comes with several advantages, which we’ll explore today.

Quick Takeaways:

  • You can track results more efficiently, build brand awareness, and increase revenue by aligning your sales and marketing efforts.
  • Marketing from home forces your business to be more intentional about communicating, collaborating, and sharing information.
  • Remote workers are more productive than in-office workers. Having a remote workforce is also more cost-effective for employers.
  • Working remotely makes it easier for your marketing team to integrate into the sales process.

Here are several ways marketing from home enables your business to enhance the sales and marketing partnership and create an optimal buyer’s journey for clients.

1. Marketing Can Easily Integrate into the Sales Process

When sales and marketing teams work from home, it’s easier for them to combine forces. For example, if one of your sales reps jumps on a video call with a client, they can pull in a remote marketer to tune in virtually.

When marketers listen to sales presentations or conversations with customers, they will begin to:

  • Build more empathy with clients
  • Gain a deeper understanding of your target buyer personas
  • Better understand the overall sales process and how it connects with marketing

The marketer can use the newfound insights in developing relevant content and authentic messaging that resonates with your clients.

2. More Intentional Communication and Information Sharing

If you encourage your teams to communicate and share successes through email or Slack, you can build a stronger, more close-knit community. You can also facilitate more meaningful and insightful discussions.

By updating teammates on wins, drawbacks, case studies, and new information, marketing and sales teams can remain in alignment. This type of intentional communication may not occur as often in traditional office settings. Exclusive or sudden meetings often emerge in an office, leaving key individuals in the dark.

Insist that both teams share essential information in an easily accessible common space. Organize reports, analytics, resources, goals, and persona information in a shared location. You could also invite teams to listen in on monthly meetings or attend brainstorming sessions to bounce ideas back and forth.

3. Cross-Departmental Training and Education

With conference video calls and webinar technology, it’s easy to record meetings, presentations, and training. If, for instance, a marketer misses an important meeting, they can watch the recording later in their own time – without distractions.

Consider recording educational content for your sales department to share with your marketers and vice versa. Your entire organization can learn and improve by gleaning knowledge from others in a comfortable, quiet environment. When they can watch in their own time, important projects won’t be interrupted.

4. Sales CRM and Marketing Automation Systems Integration

Your sales and marketing teams should combine their pieces of the customer journey to create one seamless experience. Your sales process should meet prospects where they are and lead them naturally from the top of the funnel to the bottom. From the awareness stage to conversions and brand loyalty, both teams should track customers throughout the entire process.

To create this ideal, connected journey for each customer, you need the right technology. Integrate your marketing automation with your sales CRM, so they function together. Then, you’ll have a holistic view of your clients for both teams to track.

Everyone can see updates in real-time. Communication will be more transparent. And the recorded data will be more accurate. When both teams understand where their clients are in the buyer’s journey, they can make smarter and more effective decisions to move them down the funnel.

5. Service-Level Agreement

You can make an SLA between your marketing and sales teams to ensure cross-departmental goals are correctly aligned. Develop key deliverables your marketing team agrees to provide your sales team and sales deliverables for marketing.

A comprehensive SLA should include:

  • Main points of contact between departments
  • Marketing department SMART goals
  • Sales department SMART goals
  • Resources each team needs from the other to reach their goals
  • How to proceed if teams don’t reach their goals

6. Remote Marketers are More Productive

A FlexJobs survey found that 95% of remote workers believe their productivity is the same or higher when working from home.

With fewer distractions, no office politics, a more quiet and comfortable working environment, content marketers can focus on writing, strategy, and research without costly interruptions. Higher productivity means increased revenue for your business.

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Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

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