How do you measure success in marketing? Is a marketing project successful because a video went viral on YouTube, or it earned ten thousand likes on Facebook, or impressions went through the roof, or a million people showed up to an event … or is it successful because more people bought more stuff?
Increasingly the division between marketing departments and sales departments is blurring, as different teams with different backgrounds come together around common goals. Sales teams have traditionally focused on the here and now – what stock do we need to move, what will generate better sales results, what is my priority right now. On the other hand, marketing has conventionally been more haphazard – focusing on the broader market, looking to the future, connecting consumers with the brand, and relying on a much wider range of success metrics (most of which don’t actually focus on the bottom line).
Obviously these strict divisions are a thing of the past. There may be separate sales and marketing divisions, but increasingly they are speaking the same language. So isn’t it time for more agencies to start speaking the language of sales as well. Before suggesting any campaign to a client, agencies need to be asking: How will this project drive more customers through the front door? How will we get more leads and conversions?
Even if the goal is brand awareness and engagement, we should recognise that in the vast majority of cases, the end goal for the client is to sell more units. Why should a client care if a million people watched a creative video on YouTube if it doesn’t eventually lead to more customers. Even if an agency is charged with finding consumers at the top of the purchase funnel, it’s imperative that we understand the end goal, and how our activity at the top feeds through to the sales-folk down the bottom.
Take my agency Atomic 212. Our origins are in the search marketing space, but we have since grown into a full service agency. Performance and measureable results are at the core of everything we do. For instance, if we’re creating a content marketing project, our copywriter might be tasked not only with creating engaging content, but with generating calls to action and sales messaging that directly relates to the end-goal of our client.
The digital team is probably the best example of marketers-come-salespeople: every day we are developing personalised marketing tactics that do the job of traditional sales departments, with segmented messaging or retargeting campaigns which capture leads and drive conversions. Return on investment is key. A lot of this sounds pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised how many agency folk don’t ask that basic question: how does this particular piece of output fit within the client’s wider strategy, and how will it directly or indirectly generate business?
Of course, we are not the only players in town who recognise the importance of a sales mindset. Most major agencies have performance media departments and data specialists whose sole focus is conversions. But this mindset needs to exist beyond retail work, and needs to filter through all aspects of an agency’s business.
Imagine this: a large-scale brand campaign developed by a creative who truly understands how that campaign fits within the ultimate goal of increased profit. Is the objective simply consumer engagement? Or is the objective to use creativity to connect the brand with consumers to garner more leads to ultimately drive sales? If I were a marketer, I know what I’d prefer to hear.
Check out Jason's last opinion piece: Fraudulent agencies, dodgy DSPs: You’re killing our industry