Marketing Should Support Business Development (and Vice Versa)

employee putting hands together in solidarity
On a scale of 1-10, how aligned are your business development and marketing teams? How often do they connect? What kind of information do they share with each other? Is there any synergy between the timing and effort of the work they’re doing to convert potential customers? These are the questions we like to ask entrepreneurs or business development leaders who ask about how they can improve their marketing efforts. Marketing and Business Development Shouldn’t Operate in Silos Your marketing team exists to be a strategic asset for business development. Everything they do should, in some way, work towards driving more business. Whether it’s through generating leads for business development, supporting business development in the sales cycle, or maintaining the trust and integrity of your brand with current customers, one of marketing’s primary objectives is to support business development. At the same time, your business development team should serve as a strategic asset for marketing. No one knows the challenges and questions your potential customers are facing more than your sales team. That is incredibly valuable information for marketing. It drives the type of content they create and helps them get inside the mind of prospective customers to develop strategies that accelerate the buying cycle. How to Break Down the Silos Between Sales and Marketing So how do you break down the barriers between your sales and marketing teams so that both are strategic assets for the other? Here are a few keys: 1. Make sure both teams are on the same team. When marketing and business development are on different levels of the organizational chart, it can quickly create a hierarchy of who is right and who is to blame. If business development is not above marketing and marketing is not above business development, both teams can feel more confident in having an open conversation. The verbiage becomes less “us vs. them” but rather just “us.” 2. Set up meetings to close the feedback loop. When marketing and business development are operating in silos, they don’t communicate with each other. Sales doesn’t know what marketing is doing. And marketing doesn’t know what’s working on the sales side. It’s easy to get so caught up in your own list of tasks that carving out time to have strategy conversations can be tough. Having ongoing coordination meetings is important to ensure that both teams are on the same page, that objectives are being met, and that both teams know what progress is being made. 3. Create shared accountability. How do you avoid the “blame game” between sales and marketing? Setting the expectation of organizational goals for growth through KPIs that are shared by both teams is a great start. There are several metrics owned by both marketing and business development that can be used to measure progress: length of sales cycle, opportunity-to-win ratio, and lifetime value of a customer. What are some of the biggest barriers you’re facing when it comes to aligning sales and marketing? What’s one step you can take to break down those barriers?

3 Things Every Business Development Pro Should Know About Inbound Marketing

The number of brands committed to inbound marketing has grown significantly over the past few years, as marketers adapt to the changing reality of how people buy, but many business development professionals still have questions about how it can help them generate more leads and convert more customers. A few months ago, we provided a resource to help sales-people and business executives identify the various ways inbound marketing can enhance their efforts. In this blog, we’ll unpack three key takeaways from the resource that every business development professional should know. 3 Things Every Business Development Pro Should Know About Inbound Marketing Here are three things you should know if you’re considering how inbound marketing can help you grow your business.
  1. Small businesses who are willing to invest in inbound marketing have a significant opportunity to stand out from their competitors.
Although inbound marketing is more effective for small and mid-sized businesses, many are still relying on traditional outbound methods. In fact, the number of small businesses primarily focusing on outbound marketing is double the amount of those focusing on inbound. For brands who are willing to adopt this strategy, this provides a significant opportunity to stand out from amongst their competition.
  1. Inbound marketing helps you educate prospective clients on the unique benefits your company can offer.
Over 50% of brands that use inbound marketing as their primary lead source say prospects are at least somewhat knowledgeable about their company prior to speaking with sales. Less than half of outbound marketing-focused brands can say the same. The takeaway? Inbound marketing helps you educate prospective clients on the unique benefits your company can offer, effectively shortening the sales-cycle of outbound marketing tactics.
  1. Inbound marketing provides twice as many leads than almost any other source.
At least 40% of all referrals for B2B, B2C, and nonprofit brands come through inbound marketing channels, such as SEO, social media, or lead generation efforts. Outbound marketing tactics such as cold calling, advertising, and tradeshows only equate for 20% of referrals. Are you ready to grow your business with inbound marketing? To learn more about how inbound marketing can help you generate more leads and convert more customers, download our free resource “Is Inbound Marketing Worth It?” It will help you answer almost everything you need to know about using inbound marketing to effectively grow your business.

4 Ways to Measure Inbound Marketing Beyond Leads

measure inbound marketing


Measuring your results is important in every area of marketing. However, it can be difficult to know how to calculate the ROI of tactics such as inbound marketing when you’re used to managing traditional marketing campaigns.  

The good news is that you can measure your effectiveness at any given point throughout the campaign or at its conclusion by tracking various metrics along the way. You also have the ability to monitor, measure, and manage almost every aspect of your campaign, including landing pages, emails, blog posts, social messages, keywords, pay-per-click advertising, and other sources that are contributing traffic to your campaign.

Ultimately, the success of an inbound marketing campaign is based on the number of leads that were generated, but it’s good to know what metrics influence that final number.

4 Ways to Measure Inbound Marketing Beyond Leads

When evaluating your inbound marketing campaign, here are just a few questions that should be asked to see how your promotion channels did overall in the campaign:

  • Which emails did the best at bringing people into the campaign? 

  • What blog topics led to the greatest number of conversions? 

  • How did PPC compare to Social? 

  • Overall, what channels are most effective in this campaign? 


Inbound campaigns are an impressive feat once you have all channels firing toward the same end goal. The trick is to keep your campaigns focused and powerful. At the conclusion of your campaign, you can measure your efforts and evaluate everything from your offer to your promotional channels. This will give you an opportunity to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts like never before.

5 Ways to Equip Your Sales Team with Content Marketing

Equip your sales team
A common frustration among content marketers is seeing their well-crafted content being ignored by sales reps. Depending on who you ask, the estimates for how much content goes unused by sales vary from 60% to 90%. So how do you get sales to get on board with content and leverage the content you’re producing? Many times, salespeople see the primary function of these pieces as lead generation tools. However, by encouraging your team to use them as tools for cultivating relationships with current clients and leads, you’re able to essentially kill two birds with one stone: generate new leads & equip your sales team with resources to help them succeed. 5 Ways to Equip Your Sales Team with Content Marketing Here are five ways your sales team can use the resources you generate from content marketing to cultivate relationships, shorten the sales cycle, and close more leads:
  1. Send the downloadable content to a decision maker who has stalled in the buying process. This is a legitimate opportunity to see if you can get things moving forward again.
  2. Blast the downloadable content to your existing clients to remind them that you are still there. Everyone likes to know that others are looking out for them.
  3. Print the downloadable content out in color and include that with seminar or workshop materials. Give them something of value that doesn’t ask them for a signature at the end.
  4. Include it as part of your follow-up to a conference call or onsite meeting when appropriate. Again, this is another way you can separate yourself from the competition and interact with the prospect in ways that benefits them and you.
  5. Use downloadable content to add credibility to your product or service. Independent research, case studies, and white papers remind the prospect of what you discussed and can be used to affirm your position. You’re also helping your internal champion “sell” you to all the people involved in the decision process.
Take Your Content Marketing & Biz Dev Efforts to the Next Level Content marketing does more than help you generate new leads — it can also drive the success of your sales team. If you invest in content marketing, be sure to develop a process for equipping your sales team with the resources you create and encouraging them to share the content. If you want to learn more about how to integrate your content marketing and business development efforts to maximize ROI in both areas, don’t miss our latest eBook Biz Dev’s Guide to Inbound Marketing.