Michele Jensen, Author at Experience Moxie

We’re Better Together – How to Make Sales and Marketing Align

With today’s advanced B2B buying behavior, a sales approach that doesn’t include a proper marketing strategy will prove fruitless. When there are multiple stakeholders involved in purchase decisions, it’s even more important to equip sales teams with content that helps them tell the story and connects with their audience.

The disconnect of sales and marketing teams working in silos within a business is not a new issue. While sales and marketing teams have the similar goals of growing the business and increasing sales and revenue, they also have distinct roles. The sales team is responsible for building the customer relationship while introducing solutions for pain points. Meanwhile, the marketing team is focused on brand work that accurately portrays the product and company. The gap between the two can be frustrating and inefficient, especially when your solutions are customized to the client.

How We Help Align Sales and Marketing

As a marketing and communication firm, we partner with clients of all sizes, organized in a variety of ways. Sometimes we engage with the marketers and technical teams behind product innovation. In this case, we develop the content strategy and provide the creative assets. However, we don’t develop any strategy without knowing the audience, competitors, goals and objectives, and sales channels. Much of this insight comes from their sales teams.

Other times, we work directly with our clients’ sales team when there is no internal marketing team. Essentially, Moxie is their internal marketing team. In this role, we know the questions to ask to glean the sales team knowledge. This helps us understand customer insights from which we build buyer personas that serve as the foundation of our marketing strategies.

We also have clients with marketing teams and no sales teams, in these cases we help the marketers find the best ways to deliver the right marketing messages, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time of the buyer journey.

Two Tools for Sales and Marketing Alignment

Whether you work for a company that has both a sales and marketing team or only one we recommend two tools to help set you on the path for greater sales success:

Buyer personas: Understanding your target market is essential. Knowing the industries, demographics, and job titles of your decision makers enables you to create content that resonates and allows sales teams to develop the right strategies to reach this target audience.

Sales templates: Every sales and marketing toolkit should have some customizable branded templates. Things inevitably pop up and having pre-designed templates for both sales and marketing teams allows the teams to keep the focus on the larger projects and goals. PowerPoint presentations and proposal documents are two great examples.

Two songs kept popping into my head as I wrote this blog: Jack Johnson’s “Better Together” and “It Takes Two” by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock. When it comes to sales and marketing, it really does take two, and we really are better together. Wow, those titles…they work!

If you’re ready to discuss personas or templates, reach out! Contact me, Michele, at michele.jensen@experiencemoxie.com.  

Prepare Your Business for Success – It’s Not Too Late to Build a Marketing Plan

The start of a new year brings good intentions, resolutions, and big goals. My resolutions have included things like read X number of books, tackle this race distance and learn to play the guitar. I have yet to check learning guitar off my list and it has been tormenting me for nearly a decade! I used to set the guitar in the corner of my bedroom in the hopes the sight of it would taunt me into compliance. Eventually, in full defeat, I gave the guitar to my oldest son, encouraging him, imploring him to take up the glorious instrument. As I reflect on why this one resolution has eluded me, I realize it is because I did not put a plan in place.

Your business success is no different. You need a plan you will commit to and follow. A plan sets you up for success by laying out expectations for the year. Developing a marketing plan requires you to step off the dance floor and move to the balcony to truly focus on the business, to look at the big picture, to envision the future and think about what steps will be needed to turn your vision into reality.

A Great Marketing Plan Includes These Components

1. Target Market

Who is your ideal customer? What are their needs?

Consider their demographic characteristics, such as age, marital status, gender, income, or education. The more you know about your target market, the better you’ll be able to connect with them in a way that is meaningful to them. It’s also important to understand what motivates customers to buy. Ask yourself why they would buy your product or service. This will also help you distinguish yourself from your competition.

2. Situation Analysis

What problem do you solve for your customers? What makes you different than everyone else in the market? What are the trends in your industry?

A situation analysis provides an overview of your product or service and its place in the market. Many companies will start with a SWOT analysis, evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You may also want to invest time in understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This exercise can help you identify your unique value proposition (UVP). Essentially, the key features/benefits of your product or service that differ from your competitors, the value your product or service brings. Identifying your UVP enables you to—position your brand, products, or services so your target market sees your business as different from, and ideally better than, your competition.

3. Goals and Objectives

What does success look like?

Here, you detail the desired outcome of your marketing plan with attainable and realistic objectives, targets, and a clear time frame.

Make it a general practice to set only SMART goals:

Specific (sensible, significant)?
Measurable (motivating, meaningful)?
Achievable (agreed upon, attainable)?
Relevant (reasonable, realistic)?
Time-bound (timely, time-based)?

4. Strategies and Tactics

What actions will you take to meet the objectives? How will you reach more people and attract more customers?

Once you’ve identified your target market and objectives, it’s time to determine how you’ll promote your business to meet your goals. There are more marketing tactics today than ever before and trying to decipher which ones are best for your business can be overwhelming. Clear objectives and understanding your target audience give you a better idea of what marketing strategies will work best. It’s also important to know what your competition is doing and to stay up to date with tactics and channels that your target audience is using.

5. Budget and Timeframes

How much are you spending on your marketing initiatives? Do you need to spend more to generate greater results? How long will it take to achieve the objectives?

Establish a timeline and budget for your marketing strategy that reaches your audience throughout the year. Include all known promotions and a breakdown of their cost. A plan enables you to create a more consistent and effective marketing strategy. It’s also important to build some flexibility into your budget.

Make 2022 a success—take the time to create a plan. And if you need help, we have a team of experts who live for this kind of stuff. And that guitar may be out of sight, but it is never out of mind. Stay tuned…a future blog may highlight my greatest hits.

Questions about building a marketing plan? Contact me at michele.jensen@experiencemoxie.com.

Telling a Story with Your Brand Imagery – A Q&A Session with a Moxie Graphic Designer

In an earlier post, we talked about how to to capture the magic of the product and service you offer your customer. After discussions with your team and customers, we’re able to define the detail of how you go above and beyond for customers, creating a valuable experience for them.

Once we’ve reviewed and refined your messaging together, we take the next steps to develop the graphic imagery that represents your work. A Moxie graphic designer will develop concepts for you to review, together with the rationale that explains why the images represent your brand or product well. We asked Moxie graphic designer Jamie Gray to talk about that experience.

When you are developing imagery ideas for a company brand or a product, what do you think about?

Questions to keep in mind when developing imagery for a brand include:

Who is the target audience?
Where will the imagery be used?
What is the story we want the images to tell?

When the client has worked with our writing team to develop the messaging foundation, there will undoubtedly be stories that come to light. I make sure those stories are reflected in the imagery I present.

Why is imagery development important to the process of building a brand of a company or a product?

It’s important because you only have a few seconds sometimes to catch your audience’s attention. You want to go through the imagery development process in order to establish a clear identity and help your audience form a connection with the brand through the imagery.

What does your process look like from start to finish for developing imagery for a company?

The process typically begins with research. I research your messaging and your competitors’ imagery, and review the brand analysis for your company. Then I’ll put together a mood board, searching through hundreds of stock photos for fitting images. Once the client is on board with the overall imagery direction, I can then develop the images and schedule photo shoots to get the images we’ll need.

How important is consistency for a company’s images?

Very important. You can recognize a brand by an image alone when it’s consistent (think of how recognizable Target ads are).

How much involvement does a client have in the process of developing imagery? What does that look like?

I initially like to develop imagery without client involvement, so they don’t get stuck on what has been done in the past. After initial development, it’s vital to have client feedback and involvement and work together to create custom imagery that is unique to their brand and represents them well.

Do you have any final thoughts to share or best advice?

I recommend you invest in developing your messaging strategy first, which includes research and understanding how you are different from your competitors. When we have a solid foundation to start from, the images are built to support that message and will ideally represent your brand and employees well. That’s something everyone can get excited about.

At Moxie, we’re your marketing ally. If you want to talk more about your message strategy and brand imagery, contact Michele at michele.jensen@experiencemoxie.com.

The Hiring Shortage Is Real – Developing Your Company Employer Brand Will Set You Apart

Today’s hiring environment has undergone some unique stresses leading to a real challenge in finding and retaining talent. As a result, many businesses recognize the need to put more thought and effort into their talent recruitment strategies.

What Is an Employer Brand?

Can you define your employer brand? Every business has one—whether you put time and energy into developing it—it exists. The employer brand is the words and images that represent the experience that employees have with your company. Is your workplace fun? Do you treat employees like family? These are examples of how you might define your employer brand. And as it relates to talent recruitment, employer branding is one of the most important things to consider, especially during a hiring shortage. It is the differentiator that can set you apart from the competition.

To create an impactful employer brand, you need to focus on your company’s mission statement, values, vision, and culture. These things define the essence of your brand. Moxie recently completed this exercise when we rebranded in January 2021. The results can be seen throughout our website and in our annual review process.

How to Discover Your Employer Brand

One aspect of your employer brand involves the things you can control. This includes the outward-facing items that represent your company, such as your website and social media, and candidate-facing materials, which give people an idea of what your company is like. The buzz they create can motivate candidates to apply.

Another aspect of your employer brand comes from the opinions of your current and former employees. This makes it essential for businesses to take a true interest in learning what employees like about working for the company. A desirable culture is a selling point. Earning a reputation for the great culture you nurture is equally as important.

People want to work for companies that are known for being great places to work. If people love working for your company, that message will spread and lead to a positive employer brand. Your employer brand reflects your reputation, and today, your reputation matters more than ever.

A defined employer brand helps you:

Create your recruitment content plan
Maintain consistency in your employer brand messaging and imagery
Remain accountable to the culture you’ve cultivated

To Speak to Job Candidates, You Must Know Them Well

Knowing and defining your employer brand is one thing, but a good talent recruitment strategy also relies on understanding your job candidates.

To focus your recruitment efforts, you need to know who you are trying to recruit, where you can reach them, and what they are seeking in a career change. For each role you need to fill, you need to create candidate personas—or a semi-fictional representation of your ideal job candidate.

Similar to customer personas we create to drive the strategy for our clients’ marketing campaigns, candidate personas help determine what the right candidate for the position looks like from a skill and cultural fit standpoint.

Candidate personas help you:

Establish consensus on the ideal candidate for the role
Create relevant job descriptions and recruitment content to increase applications

Identify the best recruiting channels for your target candidates

Moxie’s team of branding experts loves to dive deep with our clients to explore, uncover, and define aspects of their businesses that speak to the core of who they are, who they serve, and who they need on their team. If you have more questions, reach out to me at michele.jensen@experiencemoxie.com.

5 marketing trends to watch

There’s so much marketing content out there, it’s easy to get lost among the headlines. We’ve been doing our own new-year trend watching, and narrowed down the list to five that are most relevant for our clients. Today’s blog is a brief introduction. We’ll post more in-depth looks at each topic throughout 2020.

1. Sales enablement

Remember when marketing departments and sales departments didn’t get along? In past decades, it often seemed like it was marketing vs. sales, even though they shared the same goals. Not anymore. Today’s B2B manufacturers and service providers are especially aware of the need for marketing and sales to work as synergistic teams and partners. Research shows companies whose marketing and sales departments are closely aligned see two-digit improvements in win rates.

Sales enablement isn’t a new concept, but it’s moved to the forefront of marketing discussions in recent years as a way to focus on helping sales teams do their jobs. It’s a common-sense approach that’s serving as a new thought framework for some truly innovative work.

2. Transforming the customer experience

Like many businesspeople, you may have spent the past few years defining and designing your customer experience (CX). But customer experience work is never done. Shifting from a product-centric to customer-centric mindset is only the beginning, and requires ongoing effort. The sales funnel is being redefined, or completely replaced by new models. Personalization is becoming more sophisticated and more crucial than ever. Transactions are out; relationships are in. Regardless of your business, your customer’s experience is more than a passing trend—it’s a strategic priority.

3. Interactive storytelling

With 50% of consumers preferring video over other types of marketing content, creating video that stands out is more challenging and more important than ever. Authentic stories connect with your customers in exciting ways and bring brands to life. As digital media evolves, storytelling has the power to transform your marketing.

We’re talking about things like:

360° videos
Digital sales tools that let your customers choose their own paths
User-generated content
Augmented and virtual reality

Regardless of what comes next, this is the year to truly engage your customers with stories that involve them on a personal level.

4. Next-level content marketing

Many brands are just beginning to scratch the surface of the vast landscape of content marketing. When you create content that’s valuable to your customers and prospects, you begin building relationships. B2B brands with solid content programs attest to their ability to create brand awareness, educate their audience and build trust. Strategically distributing and optimizing it for engagement are crucial next steps, but can be very labor intensive.

From financial services to health care, manufacturers to nonprofits, marketers across industries are benefitting from formalized content strategies. Are you planning to dive into content marketing in 2020? Or are you ready to up your distribution game? Can your business leverage marketing automation to generate leads? Are you staffed to create new content on a regular basis? It’s okay to start small when it comes to content marketing, but if you haven’t already, 2020 is the year to start.

5. Outsourcing

As we approach a new decade, the gig economy and technology are only going to grow in influence. Tools like marketing automation make it easier to reach more targets with fewer resources. Workforces are leaner and more fluid than ever, and increasingly, it makes more sense for companies to outsource than hire full-timers for every function.

Even if you have a dedicated marketing team, they can’t be expected to be experts in everything. Sometimes it’s just a matter of supplementing skill gaps; often it’s more a matter of available time.

When you look at emerging trends, are you excited about new opportunities, or anxious about not being able to keep up? If trend-watching makes you more nervous than energized, outsourcing some of your marketing functions may be the solution.