Are you familiar with the concept of "smarketing"? This term, a clever fusion of "sales" and "marketing", refers to the seamless merging of these two departments to increase efficiency and effectiveness in B2B companies.
Smarketing allows you to bridge the gap between sales and marketing and take a joint approach to customer acquisition and retention. By bringing marketing and sales closer together, companies can optimize communication, better understand the customer journey and ultimately increase sales. This integrative approach creates a win-win situation for all parties involved and ensures that marketing activities are targeted to the needs of both sales and customers.
At W4, we specialize in the implementation and optimization of smarketing strategies. We not only have the knowledge, but also extensive expertise in the implementation of these proven strategies. In order to successfully implement smarketing in B2B companies, we count on the support of the all-in-one solution using HubSpot. There is a good reason that we have been a HubSpot Platinum Partner since 2014.
SMARKETING - MIRACLE OF THE B2B INDUSTRIES
Now that we have covered that the term "smarketing" is made up of the two terms "sales" and "marketing", let's dive deeper and see how the concept works in the B2B sector.
In the past, these two divisions existed separately, and it was not uncommon for them to compete with each other to some extent and in some cases even withhold information from each other, which was detrimental to the overall success of the company. The basic idea of "smarketing" is therefore to break down this traditional divide between the two departments and instead establish close collaboration. The approach aims to increase efficiency and effectiveness in customer acquisition and retention by harmonizing marketing and sales activities. Smarketing creates a bridge between sales and marketing by establishing clear lines of communication and ensuring that both departments are working towards the same goals. The close cooperation makes it possible to develop marketing materials and content that optimally support sales.
Smarketing also promotes the sharing of data and insights to increase customer success through the use of marketing and sales automation. Through this approach, B2B companies can increase efficiency while ensuring consistent and targeted customer communication.
To summarize, smarketing is an efficient way to increase the success of B2B companies in complex industries by sending sales and marketing on a joint journey to customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Particularly in industries such as automotive, chemicals/biotech and electronics, in complex and technology-driven sectors, purchasing decisions are often lengthy and involve various stakeholders with specific expertise. Smarketing can help here by ensuring that marketing strategies and content are specifically tailored to the needs and interests of sales staff and customers. The result is improved lead generation and an accelerated sales cycle.
THE 5 BIGGEST ADVANTAGES OF SMARKETING
To fully grasp the concept, you need to understand the benefits that smarketing can bring to businesses. If you're not yet convinced about using smarketing in your business, here are five reasons why you should start right away:
1. Improved customer experience
Smarketing enables you to provide customers with a seamless and consistent interaction as marketing and sales focus their efforts on customers' needs and preferences. This harmonization leads to an overall improved customer experience, as customers receive relevant and engaging information at every stage of their buying process and the transition from marketing to sales is seamless.
2. More efficient use of resources
The close cooperation between sales and marketing enables a more efficient use of resources such as time, budget and personnel. This leads to better utilization of available resources and therefore to considerable cost savings. Resource efficiency is particularly important for B2B companies, as it helps to increase ROI (return on investment).
3. Higher conversion rates
Through targeted collaboration between sales and marketing, Smarketing can identify and process qualified leads more effectively. This leads to higher conversion rates, as customers are already well informed and pre-qualified. The increased conversion rates are a direct path to more sales and company success.
4. Higher data quality
The shared use of CRM software and the synchronization of data between sales and marketing lead to higher data quality and integrity. This enables more accurate analyses and better-informed decisions, as companies have access to reliable and up-to-date information.
5. Agility and the ability to adapt
Smarketing allows your company to react quickly to market changes and customer needs. The close collaboration between the teams enables more agile strategy development and implementation. The company can react flexibly to new trends and opportunities and thus gain a competitive advantage.
SMARKETING STRATEGY IN 6 STEPS
We would like to provide you with the most important steps of our proven smarketing strategies so that you can start implementing them immediately. Smarketing goes hand in hand with an integration of HubSpot or another suitable tool and marketing automations are crucial for a successful implementation of smarketing in your company.
Download our white paper to keep our proven roadmap at hand.
Step 1: Define clear communication channels and goals
Clear communication channels and common objectives are fundamental pillars of a successful smarketing strategy. Clear communication creates a common understanding and promotes cooperation between departments.
Ensure your sales and marketing teams have access to live communication channels such as Slack and an agile framework of meetings and sync chats.
Step 2: Introduce lead scoring and qualification
Implementing a lead scoring system and lead qualification is crucial in order to use resources efficiently. It allows the sales team to focus on the most promising leads, resulting in a higher conversion rate. This strategy ensures that valuable time and energy is focused on the leads that are most likely to become paying customers.
If you first need to overcome the hurdle of getting leads, talk to us about our proven lead generation strategies.
Step 3: Marketing automation and HubSpot
Marketing automation tools such as HubSpot play a pivotal role in automating marketing campaigns and lead nurturing processes. This not only saves time, but also ensures that leads are continuously qualified. HubSpot offers a comprehensive platform to coordinate marketing and sales activities and make them more efficient. The integration of HubSpot and marketing automation into these smarketing strategies enables seamless collaboration based on a single tool, efficient use of resources and the creation of a central, data-based foundation for decision-making. Together, these strategies form the foundation for smarketing success in your organization.
We at W4 are HubSpot professionals. Let us build a portal together from the very first step or join us in an in-depth review of your existing portal: there is always an opportunity for optimization.
Step 4: Use of capable customer relationship management (CRM) software
The use of capable CRM software such as HubSpot is crucial for synchronizing sales and marketing. This software makes it possible to centrally manage all information about leads and customers and provides the basis for personalized marketing campaigns and sales conversations.
Step 5: Joint content development
The joint development of content by sales and marketing is essential. This ensures that the marketing materials meet the needs of sales staff and optimally serve the sales conversations. Aligning content with the entire sales cycle is key to successful synchronization.
Because two heads are better than one, and in the business world, two departments working seamlessly together is definitely better than one. Ultimately, both sales and marketing want to communicate clearly and effectively with the customer and guide them through the sales funnel. Based on this assumption, it's only logical that the content your company publishes is the same across the organization.
Step 6: Regular meetings and feedback loops
We all know those never-ending meetings where an email would have sufficed instead, but by scheduling short, recurring sync meetings you can avoid exactly that.
By organizing regular meetings between the sales and marketing teams, you can promote the exchange of experiences, discuss challenges before they escalate and continuously improve your smarketing strategy. Open communication and constructive feedback are key to optimizing the synchronization of the two departments.
CASE STUDY: HOW OUR CLIENT, HOXELL, ACHIEVED SMARKETING
Hoxell, a digital platform for the hospitalityoperations, was looking for more efficient internal processes and improved sales efficiency. They decided to move from vtiger CRM to HubSpot, which provided a more powerful platform for marketing and sales activities as well as more transparent sales processes. Together with the client, we carried out a successful migration and implementation of HubSpot.
The integration of HubSpot enabled automated marketing and sales processes, the conversion of traffic to leads, performance analysis and the development of marketing campaigns.
Through targeted training from W4, the Hoxell team was able to effectively use HubSpot's individual hubs and optimize the sales strategy at the highest level. The partnership between Hoxell and W4 led to the desired improvements in sales efficiency and internal processes at Hoxell.
Read the full story here.
W4 can also help your company to achieve increased efficiency in sales and marketing and seamless collaboration between the two departments.
