Top Marketing Insights to Enhance Your Strategy and Boost Engagement

Align Sales and Marketing With These Expert Marketing Insights

When a business is struggling to close deals, executives and managers will often ask 'are our sales teams failing to convert, or are our marketing campaigns failing to attract the right leads to begin with?' In other words: what's the problem, sales or marketing? But the truth is, if you're asking this question, you could be looking at sales and marketing all wrong.

Gone are the days when marketing strategies and sales strategies could operate separately. As buyers' journeys and market trends evolve - and marketing data along with them - modern businesses need to adapt.

Leadium caught up with Samuel Timothy, OneIMS founder and B2B sales and marketing expert, to explore the key market insights driving this change. We discussed how data analysis and customer behavior have changed business strategies, how you can align sales and marketing for more effective outreach, plus the essential tools you need to achieve this.

So if you're looking for marketing insights that'll transform your marketing strategy and create sustained revenue growth, read on; we'll be exploring Samuel's expert tips in detail.

What are marketing insights?

Why do we, as businesses, spend so much time analyzing raw data? So we can gain a better understanding of customer sentiment and market trends, right? Sure, but you're not just searching for general statistics. A good research team is looking for specific data points that reveal fresh perspectives on previously unrecognized patterns. This is what we call an 'insight'.

Here's an example of a market insight: your market data and customer research reveals that your brand's target audience prefers eco-friendly products and is willing to pay a premium for sustainable options.

Why's this important? Well, marketing insights are crucial for any business looking to improve their marketing efforts and drive sales. Put simply, the more you know about your market, the more effectively you can adapt your marketing strategy.

The best marketing insights generally come from:

• Consumer surveys, interviews, and focus groups
• Data analysis
• Market research reports
• Social listening
• Competitor analytics

Expert market insights you should know

Now we've established what marketing insights are, let's take a look at some of the key actionable insights Samuel highlights. By integrating these tips, you can create harmonized marketing and sales strategies that stand out in a competitive landscape.
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How has cooperation between sales and marketing changed?

When Samuel started out in marketing 15 years ago, sales and marketing were still suffering from disunity. Disunity, here, means that the sales teams had their process, and the marketing had another. There was often friction, which inhibited a business's ability to gather data and make informed decisions about their target market.

Nowadays, most businesses (at least, most successful ones) align sales and marketing under one unified strategy with:

• Shared goals
• Collaboration on research
• Cooperative ICP development
• Shared exploration of customer sentiment/pain points

By cooperating seamlessly on trends, analytics, the latest insights, and ultimately on unified campaigns, sales and marketing can align into one revenue-driving machine.

Another key shift Samuel spoke of is the transition to inbound marketing. Whereas just a couple of decades ago sales was all about cold calls and emails, today, 59% of sales professionals say they actually prefer inbound marketing.

What that means in practice is a huge transition toward high-quality, informative content that establishes your brand as an industry authority and attracts potential customers to you. This makes sense, too. As we're talking about marketing insights, here's one ins support of inbound marketing: a whopping 70% of customers 'fully define their needs on their own' before reaching out to buy. That means that customers today want more power to research and weigh up independently.

So what are some of the main problems companies have when building inbound strategies?

One of Samuel's most valuable insights on creating a strong inbound campaign is to adapt your outreach method to each customer individually. You need to recognize that each potential customer is coming to you (through your inbound marketing) at a different stage of the buyer's journey and should act accordingly.

For example, don't assume that someone who downloaded one e-book is ready to buy. A more relaxed email offering more information could be a good way to start the sales process in this case.

This is where marketing insights, as well as strong alignment between sales and marketing, play a crucial role. By conducting deep research on:

• Website analytics: page visits, time spent on pages, click-through rates, form submissions.
• Email engagement: open rates, click rates, response times.
• Customer services interactions: chatbot, help centre, and help desk logs.
• Social media activity: comments, likes, shares.
• Transaction data: purchase history, cart abandonment, browsing patterns.

…you can find valuable information on exactly how ready your prospect is to 'take the plunge', giving your sales team the insights they need to perform a perfect first touch.
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How can insights help determine when a prospect is ready to buy?

It's important to realize that people today are far more wary of 'signing up' to receive more information (because what that usually means is endless promotional emails stuffing their inboxes). So, just as it might not be as easy to tell when someone is explicitly interested in hearing more about your product or service, someone not signing up to receive emails doesn't necessarily mean they aren't interested.

Again, useful, informative content is crucial here. You want to analyze how much of this content a customer is consuming before reaching out and give them the opportunity to explore your brand at their own pace.

Forms shouldn't be pushy or generic; they should be available for people who are ready to buy and serve that specific purpose.

Samuel says that what this essentially boils down to is transparent, helpful marketing - a key part of modern business strategy.
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Sales reps should read up on market research

In order to successfully align sales and marketing with market insights, it's important not only for marketers to understand the sales process and aid the sales team, but for the sales team to understand their company's marketing.

This is fundamental for honing a sales pitch. Gone are the days when sales reps would see that someone had made a download and immediately launch into a generic sales pitch over the phone. Today, sales pitches need to be tailored to individual prospects.

This circles back to our earlier discussion about understanding where your prospect is in the buyer's journey. Understanding your potential customer's thought process in minute detail will help determine a specific course of action most likely to get them to convert.

Gaining customer insights and actionable information through customer feedback, market insights, primary research, and a broad range of other channels is therefore pivotal to modern sales and marketing alignment.

Technology is key

So how can sellers and marketers work together more effectively? Well, it really comes down to technology. Having marketing insights and sales processes readily available in one place, rather than on separate platforms, is key. Software like Salesforce and HubSpot are the way forward when it comes to successful sales and marketing alignment.
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Create better marketing campaigns and smoother sales today

Frankly, it's never been more important to align sales and marketing than it is today. Prospects are more clued-in than ever when it comes to marketing bait and lazy selling tactics. And in order to put their minds at ease, businesses need to align sales and marketing and provide a sleeker, more informed user experience.

Marketing insights are a key part of that process. By gathering extensive marketing data and consumer insights with metrics and analytics, you'll be able to make campaigns that more accurately target customer pain points and sales techniques which really hit the nail on the head.

Many external B2B lead generation and sales development services have already mastered this concept. Companies like Leadium can help you get ahead of the competition with expert, founder-led services designed to find qualified leads and drive revenue. So if you're ready to streamline your sales, reach out today.