Beyond e
12 Ways Technology is Transforming Sales and Marketing Strategy
Description
Today's marketers are taking a proactive approach, leveraging technology to reengineer their business models and revenue streams. This involves analyzing current sales processes to determine which parts to invest in or eliminate.
They then "supercharge" high-potential areas by integrating relevant new technologies. Finally, they reassemble modular business engines that can easily adapt as technology continues evolving. The goal is not to adopt every new tool, but to creatively apply the right innovations at the right time to stay ahead of customer needs.
As demonstrated by leading companies like Amazon and Dell, this tech-savvy experimentation and customization allows smart marketers to stretch budgets further and gain competitive advantages.
Table of contents
01Adapting marketing mix for digital
Repackage for Online Channels
Companies must adapt their products to align with the evolving landscape of digital sales channels. This involves reconfiguring products to ensure they are easy to customize and assemble, often behind the scenes, to provide a hassle-free consumer experience. Products should be designed to offer a seamless journey across both physical and digital platforms, allowing customers to research, try, order, and receive products in a cohesive manner. In the short term, businesses need to analyze changing customer behaviors and competitor strategies, as well as the technical demands of new sales channels. In the long term, products will require simplification, mass customization, dynamic pricing, creative bundling, hybrid distribution, and embedded customer service to stay competitive. By proactively adapting to these changes, companies can maintain a significant edge in the market as consumer behavior and technology continue to advance.
Harness Online Market Power
Online marketplaces are reshaping commerce by shifting power towards buyers, necessitating marketers to adapt strategies in pricing, channel management, and core marketing approaches. The appeal of these platforms lies in the variety of products and prices, transparent pricing, collective buying power, and the ease of switching sellers. Marketers must experiment with online marketplaces to keep pace with evolving buyer behavior, by assessing customer migration to these channels, selecting suitable marketplaces, and understanding the trade-offs between creating new platforms or joining existing ones. Successful marketplaces often possess unique data, category expertise, trustworthiness, volume, financing or sourcing capabilities, and significant market share. To avoid commoditization, companies should redefine value propositions and add services, faster delivery, and flexible pricing.
In the long term, insights from online marketplaces should inform business growth, aligning online and offline sales channels, and avoiding conflicts. Companies can add value through innovative services like dispute resolution, inspection, escrow, and logistics support. Data from these platforms can also aid in forecasting supply and demand, benchmarking, and forming futures contracts or supply agreements.
02Changing sales and marketing
Manage Multiple Channels
In today's dynamic business environment, companies must embrace multichannel selling to meet consumer demands for convenience and seamless experiences. This approach involves integrating online and offline channels to provide customers with various touchpoints, from online research and social media interactions to in-store visits and purchases through preferred platforms. A successful multichannel strategy requires cross-departmental collaboration, clear customer segment targeting, and defined channel responsibilities to ensure a unified effort towards growth.
Short-term, businesses should develop a market coverage model that aligns products, channels, and customer segments, along with rules for channel engagement to prevent conflicts. Long-term, companies may need to revise performance metrics and incentives, moving away from traditional channel-specific targets to team-based goals and rewards that foster cross-channel cooperation and revenue growth. This shift encourages channel partners to work together, enhancing market coverage and increasing sales.
Enable Field Sales with Tech
Marketing executives are tasked with equipping sales teams with advanced tools while shifting simpler transactions to more cost-effective channels. This involves streamlining sales processes, automating non-essential tasks, and implementing sales force automation to increase selling time. Adjusting incentives, deploying customer self-service tools, and training staff on strategic selling are also key. Success in utilizing technology hinges on removing barriers to cross-channel cooperation and transforming sales performance measurement to encourage collaboration. Developing metrics to track sales and marketing expenses against transaction margins is crucial for understanding sales dynamics and costs. Optimizing sales teams may involve changing job roles, automating compensation plans, and aligning sales with financial goals for better decision-making. The aim is to integrate technology without replacing the human element, blending digital and interpersonal channels to effectively meet customer needs, ensuring sales teams remain essential for high-value interactions.
03Changing sales and marketing
Organize Around Customers
Companies have realized that sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) systems and personalized marketing require effective management to succeed, leading to a shift from traditional product managers to roles focused on customer segments or care. To maximize the value from marketing technology, businesses should first inventory their customer-oriented functions, assess their readiness to enhance customer focus by identifying gaps in CRM management, and recruit for new or expanded roles focusing on customer experience. In the long term, success involves creating executive positions that ensure customer-centric actions across the organization, transitioning to customer segment management for personalized service, developing customized distribution systems for an omnichannel approach, and defining marketing-driven data architecture to leverage customer data effectively. This strategy requires a company-wide alignment towards customer needs, ensuring that marketing retains control over customer data and its analysis.
Master Multi-Channel Service
Interactive direct marketing enables real-time customer engagement across digital channels, presenting a unique opportunity for businesses to stand out by offering prompt online customer assistance. To establish an effective inbound e-response system, companies should reallocate resources to ensure a well-trained staff is available for customer support, implement automated response systems and self-service options, and manage online customer care centrally to avoid unaddressed inquiries. In the long term, enhancing customer value through advanced care systems involves integrating service channels for a unified brand experience, predicting future service needs, automating routine inquiries, and embedding service capabilities into products for better margins and customer retention. By proactively adapting to these shifts, businesses can secure a competitive advantage and unlock significant opportunities, while those that fail to respond risk losing customers to more agile competitors.
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