[Infographic] Top 5 Challenges of Marketing and Sales

Over the past few years, marketing still continues to change in a way that allows businesses to adapt to ever-changing needs and demands; trends, technology and certain marketing tactics are constantly evolving.

It is essential that your business stays up to date with these new developments, so you can target clients successfully, stay way ahead of your competitors, all while remaining relevant and top-of-mind with marketing efforts. Converting leads to customers, growing traffic to the website, and cross-selling remain most company’s top marketing priorities. So how is this achieved through marketing?

Marketing Channels

• SEO or Search Engine Optimisation allows you to understand how consumers are searching for and finding information about your brand and your competitors online. By incorporating SEO strategies in your marketing efforts, you'll increase your website's visibility and rankings. 
• Content Marketing; the main purpose of this effort is to create and share relevant written, downloadable, and visual media so your target audience can learn about your brand, expertise, and products or services. It also provides insight into the ways other content marketers are solving the pain points of their target audience and generating leads. This will allow you to determine which techniques will work best for your business, customers, and leads. 
• Social Media; with about 3 billion people actively using social media, knowing how to target customers on various social media platforms is crucial to every business’s success. 
• Video Marketing; over 50% of consumers prefer watching their content as opposed to reading it in the form of emails, blogs and other pieces of social content. 
• Email; to this day, email is still one of the most important and effective means of communicating and targeting your customers in order to build long-lasting relationships with them.
• Lead Generation; this refers to how your business attracts and converts anyone interested in your brand, products, or services into valuable, paying customers.
  Even companies with the best means of marketing efforts eventually run into some walls; 

Top 5 marketing challenges:

• Proving the ROI of marketing activities: 69%
• Generating traffic and leads: 61%
• Securing enough budget: 27%
• Managing our website: 25%
• Identifying the right tech for our needs: 24%

 Marketing Channel Facts:

• Content  - marketers who prioritise blogging content see a 13x more positive ROI, and video remains the #1 form of media used.
• Social - Facebook has over 2.3 billion active users, and is the #1 platform used by marketers with the highest ROI. Take advantage of this by actively communicating your message to potential customers.
• Video - 93% of marketers say they have converted a lead into a paying customer with a video on Social Media/website. 
• Email - 80% of marketers have reported a surge in email marketing over the past 12 months. 
• Lead generation - 68% of marketers use marketing automation to convert leads into customers.

Sales Efforts

A strong relationship between marketing & sales is crucial for any business. Knowing how to combine these practices, and combine them well, any company can increase its efficiency through both B2B and B2C selling techniques. This, in turn, will help your sales team stay better connected to your marketing team, ultimately boosting sales and customer retention. 

Feedback from the sales team on lead quality and time to close becomes critical to improving the ROI on marketing spend. Buyers are researching you long before they reach out to your company, and by the time they do reach out they have probably narrowed down their options to you and another one or two providers. If marketing is doing their job well, you will make the buyers shortlist. It is reported that 84% of people will not make a purchase if they are dealing with an unsecured website. So work with your digital marketers. If the current leads are not the level of quality you expect or require, work hand in hand with them to help them improve. Take action.

How is this done effectively? 

• CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a strategy that companies use to manage interactions with current and potential customers, as well as improving business relationships.
• SLA or Service Level Agreement is a commitment between the service provider and their client to uphold the best service practices and provide quality, availability and responsibilities. 
• Selling or sales techniques have changed over the past few years, and companies have become more aware of how to go about selling their products/services in a more human and helpful way. 
• Social Selling is the process of building relationships as part of the sales process, and today this takes place online via various social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

Top 5 sales challenges:

• Getting a response from prospects: 40%
• Engaging multiple decision-makers at the company in the buying process: 31%
• Closing deals: 30%
• Connecting via phone: 29%
• Identifying/prospecting good leads: 28%

With this being said, sales have proven to be quite challenging due to a number of reasons. Here are some listed below. 

Top 5 sales channel facts:

• 18% of salespeople don’t know what a CRM is. 
• 23% say that manually entering data into the CRM system is their biggest challenge. 
• Companies with an SLA are three times more likely to be effective with business practices. 
• With regards to selling, prospecting is the most difficult part of the sales process for sales teams. 
• 75% of companies say that closing sales is their top priority. 
• 65% of salespeople who use social selling fill their pipeline, compared to 47% of sales reps who do not.

Wrapping up

Marketing is crucial when it comes to converting leads into customers. Consumers want to know that what you are offering them comes from a secure source, in a practical approach, on various trusted platforms. Gone are the days of cold-calling, and waiting for answers from prospects is getting harder, and more tedious. If your company can solve this in an innovative, fun and helpful way, why not take the leap and see what all the hype is about? If Marketing and Sales become a cohesive unit, then this achieves a successful and effective way to reach out to your audience and convert potential leads into loyal customers, if done well. 

No matter what your business is focused on or what your goals are, whether they're related to SEO, content marketing, social media, video marketing, email marketing, lead generation, advertising, marketing technology, or sales - reading up on the latest stats within each category is a great way to ensure your and marketing tactics stay relevant. This is how you'll reach your audience members and customers to convert more leads and boost conversions. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

If you are interested in reading more in-depth on the subject of Sales Strategy, read our article: How to Build a Modern Sales Strategy in 7 steps.