Chart of the Day: What are the success factors for improving sales and marketing alignment
This research from the Content Marketing Institute and LinkedIn shows how the continuing popularity of content marketing in business-to-business (B2B) marketing has highlighted common flaws in the way organisations are structured to manage their content marketing.
The report starts by showing how changing buyer behaviour has demanded an increased focus on content marketing since, of prospective buyers:
- 92% start with an information search
- 53% find that going online and researching is superior to interacting with a salesperson
- 75% depend on social networks to learn about different vendors
- 90% won’t take a cold calling
The report goes on to compare the performance of highly aligned sales and marketing teams with less well aligned teams. Across the board, the highly aligned content marketing and sales teams collaborate far more frequently than the low aligned.
This chart reviews these success factors for alignment around content marketing activities:
The areas where they saw the biggest gaps between the high and low aligned were: How to use the content (81% vs.25%) and when to use the content (79% vs 19%). Success factors suggested to support alignment from this chart are:
- Account targeting strategy including buyer personas and sharing market data
- Content marketing strategy
- Measurement and evaluation plan
The report also considers broader issues of sales and marketing alignment that we consider in our sales and marketing integration guide including goal setting, lead profiling and scoring and measurement.