Should you invest in sales or marketing first?
One of the problems we frequently encounter is confusion between marketing and sales, and deciding where and how much to invest. The problem is made worse with a limited budget, and often the decision is to invest in sales tools or people first and leave marketing or marketing strategy till later. This is often followed by dissatisfaction with the quality and conversion rate of sales. Why is this, and what is going wrong?
What's the difference between sales and marketing?
Firstly, it helps to get clear about the function of "marketing" and the function of "sales".
At its most basic level, marketing is about attracting people towards your organisation, and sales is about encouraging people to act, such as to buy your product or service.
Good marketing and good sales are about attracting and encouraging the right people to act.
The skills needed in these functions are different, but they go hand-in-hand. There is no point investing all your resources into marketing activities if you don't have sales follow-up. It is a costly mistake to put all your efforts into sales if you are not attracting the right people towards your business, or are attracting poor quality leads which your salesperson has difficulty converting, because they are bad leads.
Why does marketing strategy matter more than either one alone?
Secondly, there is a tendency, and most of us do it the first time we set up a business, to rush out into the marketplace telling everyone about our wonderful new product or service without really working out who we should speak with. It's a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
It is a waste of time and money to try and attract the whole world in the hope that enough people will see the value of your offering and approach you. For a scaling STEM business, this gets more costly, not less, because technical buyers take longer to convert and a scattergun approach wastes that longer runway too.
The clearer you are about your ideal client, whether you call it a profile, an avatar or a persona, the message your ideal client wants to hear, and the places they go to find answers, the more effective your marketing and sales activities will be. This is the job of marketing strategy.
If you are not getting enough leads, or you're getting poor-quality lead results, it's a sign that there is something wrong with your marketing strategy, not necessarily with your sales or marketing effort.
What do you get once you take control of your strategy?
The advantage of clarifying your marketing strategy is that it gives you confidence and puts you back in control of both your marketing and sales functions.
A marketing strategy, specific to your organisation, means that you can:
Justify to yourself why each marketing and sales activity is worth doing.
Set meaningful metrics to measure investment effectiveness.
Rank and prioritise expenditure based on knowledge of your target market.
Confidently engage and instruct all your customer-facing teams.
Justify your decision-making to stakeholders, investors and the board.
Deliver focused go-to-market campaigns.
As one of our clients recently said:
"I can't believe I made my life so difficult by not thinking clearly about my target market first. Previously I'd been so scattergun in my approaches. How can you have a focused campaign if you are targeting the wrong people or everybody at once?"
The good news is that creating your marketing strategy needn't be a time-consuming, costly process. At Priddey Marketing, we've created a "Six Step" planning approach to get you there more quickly and easily than doing it alone.
Working with CEOs, MDs and leaders of scaling STEM businesses, our CEO Su Copeland guides you smoothly through the process to document your marketing strategy and deliver a bespoke marketing plan with next actions.
Frequently asked questions
We have a limited budget. Isn't it more efficient to just pick one?
It feels more efficient short term, but it usually isn't. Money spent on sales without a marketing strategy behind it, or on marketing without sales follow-up, tends to underperform both individually. A modest, well-targeted strategy that aligns the two will usually outperform a bigger spend on either alone.
How do I know if our problem is sales, marketing, or the strategy connecting them?
Look at where deals are dropping off. If you're getting plenty of enquiries but few convert, that's usually a sales process or follow-up issue. If your sales team says they don't have enough of the right conversations to have, that's usually a marketing and targeting issue. If neither team can describe your ideal client clearly, the strategy itself is the gap.
How long does it take to put a marketing strategy in place?
Using our Six Step approach, most clients have a working strategy and plan in place within a few weeks, not months.
Do I need a fractional CMO to fix this, or can we sort it out internally?
Often the people are capable and the structure around them is what's missing. A marketing plan process can diagnose where the disconnect is and put the right structure in place, without the cost of a full-time senior hire.
