Smarketing: Why Linking Sales And Marketing gives you a Competitive Edge

Growth Potential for Your Marketing Department

One of the fateful questions for you as a company is: How often do leads fall by the wayside because the funnel does not run smoothly or even stops at the handover between marketing and sales? And what costs arise from these breaks in the customer journey? Unfortunately, many companies lose valuable customer potential at departmental interfaces. This break in communication leads to unnecessary costs and reduces turnover. How can marketing be optimized for sales - and actions forwarded to sales without friction losses in the customer journey? The solution can be summed up in one word: Smarketing. The term combines sales and marketing and thus describes the integration of both areas. In terms of joint collaboration and strategy. At UDG, we support you in establishing and strengthening smarketing in your company.

Your Benefit: Smarketing Measures for Greater Efficiency

3× Benefits at a glance:

Together, we look at your market and individual potential and develop suitable smarketing measures on this basis to optimize your marketing and sales processes.

Our strength, your benefit: We work according to the Build - Measure - Learn principle. And accompany you end2end throughout the entire customer journey.

Smarketing Journey Supports Customer

Smarketing Journey supports Customer Integration is the basis for a consistent customer journey and yet at the same time one of the biggest challenges in the change process. Smarketing is not sufficiently implemented in the B2B sector in particular. This leads to considerable disadvantages: Loss of synergy, breaks in the customer experience (CX), higher costs and fewer leads.

Why is that the case? Traditionally, marketing and sales operate in isolation from each other - and sometimes even in competition with each other:

• Marketing Teams focus on arousing the interest of customers and building trust.

• Sales Teams focus primarily on sales and closing deals. Time to rethink.

However, corporate success requires a connection: smarketing breaks down barriers, focuses collaboration and creates a win-win situation for marketing and sales. Through:

• Transparency without silo thinking

• Coordinated goals

• Comprehensive platforms

• Consolidated understanding of data

• Communication at eye level

How networked do your teams work together?

How to: 7 Tips for Successful Smarketing

1 Collaboration Instead of Insular Thinking:
Smarketing Promotes Interdisciplinary Communication

Implement regular meetings and establish communication channels between departments: This promotes exchanges between employees from different teams and disciplines and ensures an efficient flow of information.

2 Everyone on the Same Page:
Smarketing Focuses on Common Goals and KPIs

Define measurable KPIs that dovetail marketing and sales: Both areas pursue the same goal and focus on the overarching success that is only possible through collaboration.

3 Sharing Know-how, Increasing Success:
Smarketing Needs Training And Knowledge Sharing

Promote professional exchange: Employees from different teams and departments become enablers and knowledge brokers. This motivates, creates mutual understanding and improves communication.

Constant further training is not a "nice-to-have", but a prerequisite for efficiency and continuous progress. Combining human expertise and the use of technology forms the basis for ensuring smarketing.

4 Fewer Breaks, More Flow:
Smarketing Integrates Technologies And Data Platforms

Transparency and synergy effects through a common working basis: cross-departmental tools and platforms ensure better data exchange and help to seamlessly transfer processes from team to team.

Thanks to numerous analysis tools, digitalization provides a large pool of data that the teams can use to manage and optimize their activities and sales. The prerequisite for this is that the data is used across the entire funnel and processed across departments.

Whereas marketing and sales teams used to have to painstakingly gather experience over many years to understand their customers, they can now rely on a comprehensive data basis. This makes it much easier to develop a validated strategy. This increases the chances of qualitative leads and conversions.

5 Together Instead Of Next to Each Other:
Smarketing Strengthens Collaborative Culture

Promoting collaboration and focusing on a common strategy has a positive effect on the work results. Interdisciplinary teams also contribute to successful smarketing.

6 Automate Processes:
Smarketing Benefits from AI

As one of the major megatrends, artificial intelligence (AI) offers many opportunities for smarketing. Companies have the option of linking generative AI with company data and integrating it into their business processes. For example, they can automate standard processes and workflows and make them more effective, thereby increasing sales figures.

• AI-supported Data Analysis And Forecasting

  Companies can use AI tools to process large volumes of data more quickly and create well-founded forecasts. For example, AI-supported analyses of sales potential, customer needs or trends are possible.

• Personalization And Targeting Along the Customer Journey

  Today, sales and marketing require ever greater personalization. AI can speed up processes and determine valid customer profiles based on behavioral and interaction data. In addition, analyzing customer interactions and needs helps to build long-term customer loyalty and creates opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

• Automate Routine Tasks
  AI enables teams to automate recurring tasks - this opens up new capacities for value-adding and strategic employee activities. One example of AI applications in marketing are chatbots [link to CUX], which support customer service and are available 24/7. Personalized emails through automation also increase conversion rates.

• Lead Qualification, Prioritization And Tracking

  AI-supported lead scoring enables companies to prioritize leads, plan targeted measures and check them using KPIs.

• Real-time Analyses And Responsiveness

  AI-based real-time analyses accelerate the responsiveness of marketing and sales. This allows the teams to adapt measures to the situation at hand.

• Integration of Marketing And Sales Data

  AI bundles data, tools, CRM systems, etc. and thus creates resources. Coordination between teams becomes easier and is aligned with customer needs along the customer journey.

7 Individual Approach:
Smarketing Focuses on Trends And the Future

Purchasing decisions are individual, the "one-size-fits-all" principle is outdated. It is therefore important to address interested parties and buyers in a personalized and tailor-made way. This increases sales by around 40 percent.

Thinking one step further: what do tomorrow's customers want? The customer landscape is constantly changing; demographic change, different values, purchasing needs, changing media usage - all of this has an impact on purchasing decisions. So how do experiences along the customer journey need to be designed to meet customer expectations in the future?

All-in-one Solution Creates Trust: Our Customers

UDG has a long-standing industry footprint. We advise and support companies end2end along the entire process - right through to operational implementation. Many of our clients have relied on our experience and expertise in digital transformation for years.

How We Work: Smarketing at Wieland Electric

A new landing page is to support the product launch at Wieland Electric.

The goals:

1. generate leads

2. strengthen the brand

Also part of the scope as accompanying means: Image video, social posts, sponsored ads, advertorial, PR and mailing.

Smarketing as a Forward-looking Success Factor

Many approaches and sustainable potential - but for some companies this is certainly also a reason for uncertainty or the question of how such a change process towards smarketing can be sensibly designed. As a partner for digital transformation and a leading CX service provider, we are at your side and provide you with comprehensive support in dovetailing marketing and sales.

We offer you products and services from a single source, tried and tested and end2end across the entire process: from needs analysis and strategy consulting to implementation and evaluation. This also includes the implementation of state-of-the-art technologies and platforms. This enables you to achieve personalized and high-conversion customer interactions - across all channels.

The use of data is a USP that we use consistently. So that your content is delivered where it supports your goals. For a positive brand experience across the entire funnel, more business impact and a sustainable increase in your market presence.