What is Smarketing? And Why is it Important?

What is Smarketing?  And Why is it Important?

Smarketing is a mixture between Sales and Marketing.  There is a bad relationship between Sales and Marketing among companies.  This is bad news because they are supposed to be on the same team, team revenue.  Both sales and marketing are responsible for growth and revenue.  Marketing plays the role of attracting and nurturing customers, and sales takes it to a one-on-one place where their specific needs can be determined and sold to at the right time.  

This is an example of how each department views one another. Unfortunately, they're both on "team revenue" and must work together.

Alignment Around Goals

• Having the same or related goals
• Marketing pipeline=Sales quota
• Visibility into each other’s goals and progress
• Compensation based on each other’s goals

A suggestion the HubSpot video gave was to have both a sales team member and a marketing team member work towards the same goal.  They would also receive compensation based on each other’s goals also.  They ensured they had alignment around a single goal and helped each other get there.  They were hyper aware of each others situation at all times.  This reinforced the concept that they’re on the same team.  

Alignment Around Personas

• Communicate persona details across the company
• Educate each other about new persona details
• Specialize teams around particular personas

What is a persona?  A persona is a semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer based on real data and qualitative interviews.  If we have these personas in mind while creating, it will better drive each departments priorities.  We will have this ideal customer in our mind and work to please them.  Both the sales and marketing teams work with actual customers on a regular basis.  It’s important to keep everyone informed about the personas so they can better their plans and ideas.  The customers may have new motivations, new goals, new challenges, and it’s important to keep everyone up-to-date and informed.  This will help the entire company (not just one team) better understand who you’re trying to reach.