Marketing Against The Grain on Sales vs. Marketing
Wrapping up the sales vs. marketing roadshow with one final podcast (maybe (for now)). This time it's Marketing Against The Grain. The spicy take from the show is above, but let's look at what else they got into.
Here are the quick hits:
- AI is a platform shift
- Software gets easier to create and therefore commoditized
- Marketing matters (see: Liquid Death)
- Marketers are creators, creators disrupt brand
- All creators are marketing first
- Marketing will take over more of the customer journey / experience (powered by AI)
- The marketers are the automators
Let's pull a few quotes (or paraphrases) to dive deeper on some of those bullet points.
About AI:
AI will lead to the ecommercization of most businesses.
The distinction between B2B and B2C will blur and disappear. It's about B2P now: Business to Purchaser.
About commodotization:
As commoditization increases (accelerated by AI), marketing becomes more important.
You differentiate on brand, message, and value messaging instead of core product.
Marketing will take over more of the customer experience.
On the creators bit:
The creator playbook is the future of marketing (they don’t have the same concerns as a public business and can have a schtick).
And, oh yeah, sales and marketing are the same thing:
The marketer doesn’t need to stop at ‘oh, I hand over the lead to sales.’ They can automate the sales outreach. Marketer goes all the way up now to transaction. But they don’t need to stop there. A lot of the support function* can be automated.
But how does this impact the org chart?
Marketing is owning all the one-to-many work. The other teams own specialized, human-work processes.
One functional group leads the one-to-many experiences. One group leads the one-to-one.
It's not sales or marketing. It's sales and marketing.
Consumers don't get to a point in their journey and have to make a choose-your-own-adventure decision between the two. Their journey should be seamless. Structure your processes accordingly.
* Everything is customer service. Starting with this core belief creates the best marketing.
Another day, another holiday shopping survey
- 38% of Americans plan to start their shopping before Halloween
- 44% before Thanksgiving
- 81% will use reward apps and coupons
- 73% have noticed price increases on target items
What can marketers learn from the Burning Man floods?
Public perception doesn’t matter (to an extent).
Dedicated consumers will keep coming back if you service them, not the masses.
Consumer perception does.
Focus on your consumer’s perception and you’ll actually move the line.
Don't Say Content on Sales vs. Marketing
I thought I was going to be done talking about sales vs. marketing last week, but podcasts keep dropping about the same topic. Better yet, they're agreeing with me! (They don't know this, of course, but let's pretend I'm a #influencer.)
First up, Don't Say Content. (YouTube link)
They talk about past experiences with the sales vs. marketing divide and where they think the issues lie. Of more interest, they share some great nuggets to get the two teams working together. Remember: same goal, different path.
Let's start with an ask for marketing people everywhere:
Marketing, give salespeople carrots that they can use in their sales process (and I guarantee you it’s not a white paper)
Next, a grail goal for marketing teams:
The meat for me is in the second half, paraphrased bits below.
Marketing is harder than sales. In sales, you get to talk to one person and understand their situation and tailor the pitch to them. Marketing is doing that at scale, trying to resonate with more than one person with a message that doesn’t get diluted to nothingness.
Marketing’s job is to abstract a little bit,
The sales team’s job is to identify which problems apply to that company and in what ways.
Sales gets super specific, where marketing is more like a diagnosis.
How sales and marketing teams can work together to win:
Kyle Mensing
Google Discovery Campaigns are becoming Demand Gen (Discovery + YouTube Shorts) starting in October:
Starting October through November 2023, your Discovery campaigns will be automatically upgraded to Demand Gen campaigns. Your Discovery campaign settings, budget, and historical performance statistics will automatically transfer to Demand Gen with identical or comparable functionality. You’ll receive a notification in your Google Ads account when your campaigns have been upgraded.
What you should also do if you’re a brand doing influencers, is run Google Ads. Because people will look at an influencers post, they won’t buy, and they will Google you. And you better be the top search result there so they click the Google ad and purchase.
I would say this applies to all forms of paid social efforts. Advertising is an ecosystem, not a silo.
A good question to ask on a regular basis:
Are you here for your customers, to give them what they seek, or are you trying to do something to your customers, to squeeze out extra income?
Everything is customer service.