Aligning Your Sales and Marketing into One Funnel

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Aligning Your Sales and Marketing into One
Funnel
Posted by Pat Owings on Sat, Nov 24, 2012 @ 07:04 AM
Smarketing: Aligning Your Sales and Marketing into One Funnel
Posted by Pat Owings on Sat, Nov 24, 2012 @ 07:04 AM
Don't Ignore Your Funnel!
Content is king, but irrelevant content is pretty darn
useless. In 2012, producing quality blog content means
more than just taking the time to proof-read thoroughly.
It's an issue of making your blog and content off ers
relevant to your buyer personas, and aligning your sales
and marketing efforts, a concept known as smarketing.
Your content calendar should be a road map f or driving
ROI. In order t o blog relevant information, you need to
ensure your marketing team or content creators
understand your company's unique sales cycle and the questions prospects ask at every stage.
The best content is centered around real-life questions from real-life personas, and it drives
results:
Mapping Your Marketing to Sales
What path do your leads usually take before making their first purchase? You've been through
hundreds of thousands of sales funnels in your lifetime. Think about the research you
performed before your last major purchase - which for the purpose of illustration, we'll say was
a crossover SUV.
You probably started off by heading to Google and looking at reviews of vehicles within your
price range. You may have looked at reviews of car dealerships in your area, too. You might
have even made a few trips in to various car dealerships and performed dozens of test drives
before you finally made your decision. You went through a series of stages that are illustrated
in the infographic below, courtesy of entrepreneur Saad Kamal:

Awareness
Your 4-door sedan from 1999 has over
200,000 miles. Besides, you're
redecorating and you're tired of
begging your friends with trucks for
help every time you want to buy some
furniture.
In the awareness stage, a consumer
has realized they have a product or
service need. They're not ready to f ork
over their credit card number and they
haven't picked a company. They're simply aware that they need a larger car. Content mapped
to the awareness stage of the sales funnel will be based on topics and concepts like "How Do I
Know if I Should Buy a New Car?" or "Benefits of Buying a Used Car."
Interest
Okay, so you've officially had it. You bought a bookcase f rom Ikea and had to pay their delivery
company to get it back t o your house. Besides, you're pretty sure that an belt on your sedan is
about to break, and you're not sure it's worth repairing. You're interested in buying a new car
soon, and you're working on nailing down a price range.
During the interest stage, the content becomes more targeted and specific. Barring pre-existing
loyalties, t he consumer is open to all brands, models and dealerships in their area. "The Best
SUVs in the $30,000 Price Range" or "What You Need to Know About Buying a Used Car" are
content that is well mapped to t he interest stage of the funnel.
Desire
You've spent a f ew days Googling everything you can about fuel-efficient, larger vehicles.
Nothing is set in stone yet, but you're feeling pretty partial to Honda CR-Vs or maybe a
Toyota Rav4. You'll probably make the purchase next weekend, but for now you're reading
everything you can get your hands on and making a few test drives after work.
At the stage of the sales funnel known to marketers as "desire," it's well-established that the
client is actively moving towards making a purchase. They've probably recognized that a certain

brand might meet their priorities and pain points better than others. If you were a car dealership,
writing content that compares, contrasts and highlights details is a strong choice for the desire
stage: "Crossover SUVs: Honda CR-V versus Toyota Rav4" or "Why 2009 Was a Great Year for
Honda Crossovers."
Action:
You head to the car dealership and drive away in your new Honda CR-V. You've now reached
the bottom of the sales funnel in our example, and have become a client at your friendly
neighborhood dealership.