Lead generation is essential for continuous growth and development of a company. It helps strengthen a business and allows for a larger reach and consumer following. While sales and marketing teams do not typically agree on much, both teams understand the importance of lead generation. Customer Relationship Management systems (CRMs) are just what a company needs to bond the two teams and allow them to come together in order to reach the company’s end goal of growing the business. Want to learn about CRMs role in Lead Gen? We have an in-depth post about it that you can check out, but if you are limited on time just read out notes below!
- Sales and marketing have a history of not getting along, mostly because sales views marketing as a cost center and marketing sees sales as getting the glory for their hard work. Traditionally, sales’ disdain for marketing was also driven by a lack of good data — marketing qualified leads were a pipedream, and sales teams had to rely on their own skills to close deals.
- CRMs brought process, automation, structure, scoring, and most importantly, data to sales in a meaningful way for the first time. That data fuelled all sorts of marketing innovations and methodologies like content, lead segmentation, loyalty programs, and marketing automation.
- Customer relationship management systems (CRMs): software suites designed to track, measure and score leads as they move through the sales funnel.
With the development of CRM, the marketing industry has been able to embrace:
- Content creation, from inbound marketing to sales enablement and lead nurturing, had created an environment where sales and marketing teams are no longer looking just at the very bottom of the funnel or the entire universe. Rather, they’re looking at how to be helpful from the first interaction, who to deepen engagement over time and to get the lead to approach the sales team only when they’re ready to buy.
- Segmentation powered by data has allowed marketing to develop complex targeting models focused on specific interactions from prospects, allowing them to better deliver the right message at the right time.
- Loyalty programs extend the efforts of acquisition marketing to existing customers, giving the customers more reason to stick with a company and sales teams a better chance of changing their minds if they don’t.
- Marketing automation is what makes the whole thing possible. It enables construction of complex drip campaigns, automatic targeting, retargeting, and lead removal, and brings the efforts of segmentation to fruition. Plus, it makes marketing teams far more effective, giving them the headroom to do MVT testing, create new content, explore new verticals and double down on sales enablement.
Hope that helped! Need more? Check out the full article! Ready to get a lead generation plan in place? We are here and ready to help!
