(This is a guest post created by guest author Darya Jandossova Troncoso)
Revenue marketing is something all businesses likely claim they are doing as it essentially refers to using marketing strategies that have the most revenue potential.
While all companies may want to do this, several key strategies make up functional revenue marketing.
Once you know the details of how revenue marketing works, you can use those specific strategies to create a marketing plan that leads to more revenue.
Keep reading to learn more about what exactly revenue marketing entails and how you can implement it in your business to make it successful.
What Is Revenue Marketing?
Revenue marketing is the comprehensive process of identifying, assessing, and exploring individual marketing channels that provide the most revenue potential.
It involves maximizing your return on investment for each marketing activity associated with that channel and the overall clarity as to how marketing fits into revenue operations.
Image Source: Outfunnel
Revenue marketing also covers the combined sales, marketing, and support approach to deliver a superior customer experience.
An optimal revenue marketing strategy involves a holistic approach with all three departments.
For revenue marketing to work, all internal stakeholders must be on the same page in executing the company’s vision and performing ROI-driven marketing activities.
So, where does an organization start? As company leaders align on a reliable revenue marketing system, they must consider these five characteristics:
- Customer-Based Product Development: This strategy focuses on the customer rather than the product. It is about developing a product that will interact and impact customers in a targeted way.
- Treat Sales, Marketing, and Support As a Continuous Cycle: All three of these are vital for how clients see your company. You need to ensure that people working on one part are knowledgeable about what is going on with the other two so that everything feels seamless and efficient to customers.
- Merges Inbound and Outbound Lead Generation: Both inbound and outbound leads are necessary to draw customers to your business. However, they can be even more effective if you think about playing the two off each other to maximize their benefits.
- Uses Qualitative Objectives And Strategies: Having an end in mind is crucial because it helps your team stay motivated and remain focused on a shared vision. These goals need to be specific and measurable for your team to use them effectively.
- Is Measured With KPIs Which Are Revenue-Based: KPIs are valuable tools for tracking your company’s performance. If you want your strategies to be revenue-based, you should also track measurements that are revenue-based. The things you choose to measure should align with your goals.
Those are the basics, but now let’s take a more detailed and comprehensive look at these five characteristics.
Customer-Centric Product Development
Customers do not buy products.
They invest in a solution that makes their life better. When it comes to your business and revenue marketing, it should not focus on the product. Instead, you should direct your attention to the customer and how the product should directly affect the customer.
As you generate marketing programs, direct the message toward what the product will do for the customer, not the product itself.
Image Source: Super Office
Some of the top global brands execute this strategy to perfection. For example, Starbucks initially sold coffee beans and espresso beans for twelve years. After thorough research, they understood that their customers crave a more meaningful, immersive experience.
The company optimized every component of the process: ordering, customer service, and enjoying the coffee. It brought the “European-style coffee shop” vibe to all its stores by making it an environment where people can do work, read the newspaper, and enjoy a relaxing lobby area.
Airbnb also utilized the customer-centric product development strategy. In 2007, the service targeted conference attendees and professionals renting air mattresses.
When customers indicated that they prefer a cost-effective bed and breakfast experience, the company forged a $40 billion industry for themselves. The brand went on to successfully disrupt the hospitality status quo.
As you can see, these examples of customer-focused product development happened within the last fifty years, so it is not a novel concept.
Here are some other examples of how the best brands in the world developed their products around the customer’s needs:
- Trader Joe’s – This brand owns one of the top customer satisfaction scores because of its efficient response times and top-tier customer service (employees will even open up product packaging to showcase samples)
- Amazon – The e-commerce behemoth is continuously improving new customer solutions, including a smooth return process, one-day shipping, and innovative physical locations for a comprehensive customer experience
- Best Buy – This technology store completely transformed its brand digitally by streamlining the online and in-store shopping experience, personalizing its solutions, and extending its products through at-home visits
- Huntington National Bank – The bank invested two years listening to customer feedback, resulting in a new digital banking hub to better assist clients with their financial and money goals.
- Kaiser Permanente – The company leveraged creative technology to develop virtual appointments, making its customers’ and employees’ lives much easier.
Customer-centric product development has been around for a while. If we take a moment to analyze some of the world’s most innovative and successful companies, we know it is something they do effectively and consistently.
Treat Sales, Marketing, and Support as One Holistic Mechanism
As your leads go through your sales funnel, you must transition them from marketing to sales eventually. When you sign up a new customer, the company must have a reliable system to effectively retain that customer.
This concept is critical in revenue marketing, which is why your business must find a way to streamline sales, marketing, and support.
Sales produce new opportunities, marketing boosts interest and awareness, and support delivers technical assistance when the customer needs it. All three components play a vital role in building value for your clients.
If sales did not exist, marketing would not exist either. Without a strong marketing team, a support team would be useless.
According to the Revenue Marketing report by Copper, less than one-third (31%) of salespeople think that their marketing team doesn’t understand what’s important to the sales team.
Image Source: DemandGen International
Each respective function must understand the other two parts for this system to flow seamlessly. Employees must know when to refer the customer to a cross-functional group. The marketing team creates the demand and need for the product.
When they gain the prospect’s interest, they must know the right time to convey the customer to the sales team, who sells the opportunity.
- The support team needs to be on the same page with the marketing and sales teams.
- Each team member needs to understand the ins and outs of the product or solution.
That way, they know how to troubleshoot issues that come up unexpectedly for the customer.
If each team understands how they fit within the triangle, this is an ideal revenue marketing system.
The key lies in each transition. If your company wants the customer to have a memorable experience, the “handoff” between the three departments must be smooth.
The prospect or customer should have little confusion about who they are dealing with. Everyone on the sales, marketing, and support teams must understand how their capabilities fit within the customer journey.
So, how do companies combine these three arms effectively?
It starts with establishing an “alignment culture.” It is essential to plan out monthly meetings that move the business toward optimal alignment.
These gatherings could serve as revenue meetings, reporting on key metrics, and meaningful conversations between department leaders.
An additional approach would be to create enablement marketing materials. Gather feedback from key internal stakeholders about the most significant issues that threaten the holistic approach. Then, your teams can create written materials that allow the other departments to do their job better.
In turn, this will enable your company to be more responsive to customers and execute business development activities better.
For example, the support team should compile a list of common customer complaints and then relay this information to the sales team.
Someone can then create a white paper that addresses these topics. The sales team can then utilize this paper to strengthen conversations with prospects, book more meetings, and close a higher percentage of deals.
The marketing team can also leverage insights from customers to help the sales team. If your company notices that many of your leads come from males between the ages of 20 and 30, then the marketing team can convey this to the sales team.
Going forward, the sales representatives can conduct more efficient prospecting toward this demographic.
Merge Inbound and Outbound Lead Generation
Inbound lead generation involves people searching online for your brand and information about your product. It encourages your prospects to ask about your business in their efforts. You can welcome these people through blogs, social media content, and your website.
This lead generation technique is primarily digital, and it outlines a trail of critical insights about your product or service on various channels.
Image Source: Snov.io
Outbound lead generation is proactively bringing your brand, product, or service to the prospect. This direct marketing could include cold calling, emailing, or social media selling. It involves your company maximizing the direct conversations, advertising, and strategic outreach.
Inbound lead generation is a more conservative approach because you nurture potential customers toward your product or service. Outbound lead generation is loud and tastefully aggressive.
Your team works hard to convey your brand messaging and coach prospects on why they would benefit from your services.
When you manage inbound and outbound lead generation correctly, your company builds healthy relationships with potential buyers. However, merging the pair will ensure that you contact the right person at the right time.
So, what are some effective ways to marry inbound and outbound marketing? It begins with implementing a push-pull marketing system. Although inbound and outbound lead generation is much different, you can leverage each strategy to improve the other one.
For example, you could develop an engaging outbound advertising campaign for prospects to garner interest in your brand, product, or service.
As a result, some potential customers will navigate directly to your website. Others will enter your brand into a search engine. Now, all the innovative content from your inbound lead generation efforts will kick into high gear.
Your company can also take extra steps to maximize email marketing. This does not mean sending out blind mass email communications. You can increase your open rates and overall success by targeting specific segments.
The inbound marketing team will have key insights about who searches your brand the most. Use this critical information to send an outbound email marketing campaign to those people.
Use Qualitative Objectives and Strategies to Measure Success
Qualitative company goals are another vital component to add to the revenue marketing strategy. Your teams should all align on a clear vision and how they each fit into the larger picture. Every strong company vision should contain the following characteristics:
- A common goal that all sales funnel actions build towards
- An inspirational and memorable summary that explains the company’s reason for existence
- A statement that motivates and increases employee productivity, contributing towards the company’s vision
Once your team members are on the same page about this vision, they will better perform their jobs and buy into the company culture.
Every meaningful action begins with the end in mind, so your sales, marketing, and support team members can guide customers and prospects toward an ideal result.
Image Source: Medium
When it comes time for goal setting, your company’s leadership must be specific. Each objective should be action-oriented and motivate people to reach the desired metric.
For example, instead of stating: “we want to boost our closing rate,” you should say: “our goal is to convert at least 40% of our prospects into customers.”
To keep your teams on track, you should schedule weekly or monthly performance review meetings.
Establishing regular checkpoints will enable your team to regroup, monitor progress, and make the necessary adjustments to reach your objectives. It is also useful to ensure everyone is on the same page about the company’s mission and everyone’s role in the organization.
Measured with KPIs that are Revenue Based
When your teams establish goals for the next month, quarter, or year, choosing the right metrics to analyze is essential. Because the KPI’s are goal-oriented, they should always be measurable and contribute toward your long-term goals.
These measurable goals give your team’s something to shoot for. It also enables management to track progress on individual performance. If a team member is struggling to meet their KPIs, they might need additional training or coaching.
If an employee is consistently outperforming KPIs, you could ask them what works for them. Then, you could build training programs from these best practices.
When you decide which KPIs to track, you should always ask: “how does this metric relate to our revenue goals for the year?”
Here are several KPIs that will incentivize your teams to perform well, meet customer needs, and consistently exceed revenue targets:
- Sales Revenue: Make sure that your reported sales revenue is more than the expenses associated with the marketing campaigns.
- Customer lifetime value: How much is your customer worth for the time they use your product or service?
- Digital marketing ROI: For each dollar spent on online advertising campaigns, how much revenue do you bring in?
- Online Conversion Rates: For each new prospect that comes through your sales funnel, what is the likelihood that you close them as a customer?
- Cost per lead: This metric tells you how expensive it is to gain a lead for each marketing channel.
Each of these metrics paints a picture for your marketing strategy. It allows you to identify what is working, what you need to improve, and the critical actions your team must take to achieve sales goals.
Final Wrap Up
Revenue marketing strategies are the engine behind a growing organization. When all employees are on the same page about delivering value-driven solutions to customers, the sky’s the limit.
Each team member plays a vital role in making sure the revenue marketing strategy gets executed.
When organizations optimize lead generation and track it properly, revenue targets are very achievable.
Author Bio:
Darya Jandossova Troncoso is a photographer, artist, and writer working on her first novel and managing a digital marketing blog – MarketSplash. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, cooking, creating art, and learning everything there is to know about digital marketing.