In the publishing industry, marketing and sales teams need to be on the same page. Both teams ultimately exist to sell products and services, although they have different roles at different stages of the process.
Marketers sow the seeds for future sales. They reach potential customers through various strategic efforts, from newsletters and blog posts to digital ads. Salespeople develop relationships with the leads that marketing initiatives foster and turn leads into sales.
Too often, though, these closely related teams operate in silos, meaning they’re working in isolation from each other.
That’s especially troublesome for marketing teams — who do, after all, play a key role in lead generation.
What creates silos?
The causes behind silos can range from historical workplace separation and internal processes to interpersonal differences. Every workplace is unique, but a main contributor to the so-called war between sales and marketing is segmented systems.
In publishing, for example, we often see marketing teams collecting and analyzing data via their preferred marketing automation system. The trouble is, they often don’t have any way to feed the data into the sales team’s CRM. This robs both teams of a true 360-degree view of leads, customers, and everyone between.
In this blog post, we’ll outline some of the serious problems that silos create — and show how collaboration through a shared system is the best solution.
The top 5 risks of sales and marketing silos
Before we look at how tech can improve sales and marketing collaboration, let’s consider what’s at stake when these two departments don’t have a strong relationship.
1. Higher costs: Marketing and sales teams have a wealth of information to share with each other, but if they’re segmented in silos neither can benefit from the other’s insights.
Such a disconnect makes for far less effective marketing campaigns (and sales that are so much harder to close). This, in turn, pushes the customer acquisition cost — sales and marketing costs, divided by the number of new customers — far higher.
2. Limited growth: Media companies with disjointed marketing and sales departments don’t only see drawn out sales cycles. Over time, they’ll also experience a hit to customer lifetime value (how much money a customer is projected to spend with your business in total). Plunging customer lifetime values seriously limit an organization’s growth.
3. Less innovation: Innovative marketing campaigns get consumer attention, sometimes earn far broader recognition by winning awards (which drives more business), and attract top talent to the team behind them. Silos impede innovation because innovation requires the free flow of ideas and sharing different perspectives across teams.
4. Dissatisfied customers: When marketers and salespeople aren’t aligned, they may send customers mixed messages. Marketers at an online magazine might aggressively promote a new style of sponsored content, yet the sales team knows from conversations with advertisers that demand is strongest for more display ad options.
That’s a problem, because mixed messages turn off customers: 76% of customers want interactions across sales, service, and marketing departments to be consistent.
5. Stifled productivity: Using two separate systems leads to frustration and mistakes, both of which take a toll on productivity. Happy employees are 13% more productive than their less-satisfied colleagues, according to an Oxford University study, so annoyances at work spawn less productive teams.
How to break down sales and marketing silos with tech
Uniting marketing and sales teams with a solution like Lineup Systems’s Adpoint CRM — a unique platform designed specifically for the publishing industry — is an effective way to break down even the most established silos.
A shared marketing and sales solution like Adpoint brings major improvements to workflows, strategic planning, campaign execution, and more. Here are five benefits media organizations that implement one can expect to see:
1. Better data: When sales and marketing teams consolidate data, it’s going to be more accurate. With a shared system, marketing won’t have to manually enter sales data in their software, and vice versa.
2: Lower expenses: Data silos are expensive. Companies lose about $15 million annually because of bad data, according to Gartner. Accuracy and integrations save media organizations money.
3. Real-time updates: Integrations are integral for successful shared systems, and, thanks to a recently launched Adpoint enhancement, Lineup’s best-in-class CRM now has yet another: it seamlessly connects with the popular marketing automation system HubSpot. Adpoint already boasted many other integrations, including with tech staples like GAM and Salesforce.
When marketers validate a contact in HubSpot, all their data — related tasks and contact details as well as call, meeting, and email histories — is instantly synced with Adpoint. This keeps sales teams in the loop, giving them a chance to share ideas during the marketing planning process.
4. Deeper insights: Data isn’t just more accurate with an integrated solution — it’s also more robust. Marketing (and sales teams) gets a full 360-degree view of all interactions with leads, prospects, and customers.
5. Effective campaigns: Marketing teams are able to craft more highly targeted campaigns to bring the most value. With access to more data in a shared system, they can see what kind of leads are turning into customers, which kinds of customers spend the most, and where they drop off in the cycle.
Learn more about marketing enhancements for Adpoint CRM
Armed with better data and deeper insights on a shared platform, marketing teams are better equipped for collaboration with sales, and that’s proven positive: 76% of marketers who actually collaborate with their sales peers say doing so improves their understanding of customer journeys.
Marketers are already on the ground floor of the sales journey. With an optimized shared system, they’re empowered to overcome silos and achieve the best results by tapping into data on every level. Sales teams, meanwhile, are in a better position to boost conversions when they know what plans are brewing in marketing.
Find out more about marketing enhancements to Adpoint CRM by reading this blog post or booking a call today.
