The relationship between internal sales teams and marketing teams can be tricky to navigate. With the right combination of teamwork and succinct client efforts within the middle market, businesses can benefit greatly from this powerful partnership. Here at Evolve Systems, we call it the “revenue team”. When marketing and sales teams join forces, they can drive momentum and achieve greater success. The power of collaboration between these two teams, and how to make it work for your business, can be what sets you apart from the competition.
Defining the Middle Market
The middle market is an economic term used to describe companies with annual revenues between $5 million and $1 billion. These companies make up a significant portion of the US economy, employing more than 32 million people in 2020.
While the exact definition may vary depending on the context, middle-market businesses are typically defined by their annual revenue and size of operations. This can include both brick-and-mortar stores as well as e-commerce operations.
So, what does this have to do with marketing automation? As middle-market businesses seek to drive growth in a competitive landscape, they need to be creative in reaching potential customers. By leveraging marketing automation platforms such as Sharpspring, these businesses can better target and engage with their ideal customers in ways that would otherwise be too resource intensive or expensive. Automation platforms like Sharpspring offer features like dynamic segmentation, automated campaigns, and lead scoring – all of which can help a middle market business maximize its efficiency when harmonizing sales team and marketing team members
Why Marketing and Sales Need to Partner Up
The middle market is a critical segment of any business, as it’s where the most opportunity lies for growth. To maximize success in this space, marketing, and sales need to partner up and work together. Both roles require successful partnerships with clientele, but the first and foremost important partnership they should have is with each other. These two teams have different skill sets, resources, and strategies, so it’s important that they are both involved in the process. When they do come together, they can create a powerful force that drives momentum in the middle market.
Marketing is essential in generating leads and building awareness for products and services. Sales, on the other hand, takes those leads and turns them into customers. The two teams need to collaborate to ensure a smooth transition from one stage of the client journey to the next. When your internal teams are unable to sync up throughout the customer lifecycle from beginning to end, inefficiencies emerge – leading to frustration and lost opportunities.
This is where automation comes in. With marketing automation software like SharpSpring, businesses can streamline processes, optimize lead nurturing campaigns, and generate more qualified leads faster. This allows sales and marketing to focus on building relationships with customers rather than manually entering data or managing campaigns. Automation also makes it easier to track customer engagement and generate real-time insights into performance.
By working together through sales and marketing collaboration, you can create a synergy that will allow your teams to capitalize on opportunities in the middle market. Automation tools can help make that process even smoother and more efficient, allowing businesses to achieve their goals more quickly and effectively.
What Marketing Automation Can Do For Middle Market Businesses
The use of marketing automation tools can help middle market businesses gain an edge over their competition by allowing them to more efficiently and effectively reach their target customers. With automated marketing, businesses can leverage technology to automate many of the tedious tasks associated with marketing, such as email campaigns, social media content, and targeted advertising. This allows companies to focus their attention on more high-level strategy and analytics, rather than getting bogged down in the details.
Marketing automation also allows businesses to quickly test different ideas and measure the results. Companies can conduct A/B tests on different messaging or campaigns, and then adjust their approach based on the data. This type of experimentation helps companies hone their strategies and continually improve their tactics.
Finally, marketing automation can help middle market businesses create personal connections with their customers. Automation tools can be used to identify potential customers, segment them into target audiences, and then create personalized messages that are tailored to each audience’s needs and interests. By developing customer relationships, companies can foster loyalty and ultimately drive growth.
Overall, the use of marketing automation tools is a powerful tool for middle market businesses, helping them streamline their processes and maximize their resources. With the right strategies in place, companies can use automation to build strong relationships with their customers and stand out from the competition.
Bringing It All Together
The success of any business depends on the effectiveness of its sales and marketing teams working together. For middle market businesses, this is especially important as they often face challenges that larger businesses don’t. In an industry like manufacturing, for example, sales and marketing alignment is one the largest opportunities for improving performance. To drive forward momentum, sales, and marketing need to work together to create strategies and systems that increase visibility, conversions, and ROI.
One way to do this is to leverage marketing automation. This technology enables businesses to execute marketing campaigns through a variety of channels automatically. From automated emails and SMS messages to social media posts, marketing automation can make it easier for sales and marketing teams to stay in sync and deliver consistent messaging to their audiences. By utilizing marketing automation, middle market businesses can gain better control over their marketing campaigns, ensuring they remain on track to reach their goals.
At the end of the day, sales and marketing need to have a strong partnership to ensure success in the middle market. Purposeful and intentional communication between teams leads to identifying and implementing ways to reach their shared goal: the generation of profitable and increasing revenue for their business and the clients they serve. With the right tools and strategies in place, including marketing automation, middle market businesses can maximize their reach and achieve their desired outcomes.
