Integrated Messaging

digital marketing chantillyIncorporating sales, marketing, and business development techniques to create unified and integrated messaging for your company is critical.  Too many times a businesses’ sales team will sell their services “one way”, their marketing department is positioning their services “another way” and their business development team is pitching a value proposition never heard before.  Sound familiar?  I bet it might.

This fragmented messaging not only happens to small businesses, but it also happens to the most admired fortune 100 companies.  When I was a sales manager for a leading Telecommunication provider I quickly noticed the value proposition our Inside Sales team used to pitch our services was different than our outside sales teams.  I also noticed the TV commercials the marketing department made never integrated the values and strengths we were taught to sell.

Not only was this apparent then, but it is also very common today within the small businesses we help.  Too many times we see a company’s sales team pitch their products by highlighting one or two of their strengths; however, their website focuses on a totally different value proposition and their marketing materials (PDFs/Brochures) state something completely different.

It is critical when small businesses plan their overall marketing strategy that their messaging is consistent and integrated seamlessly across their sales and marketing channels.  The sales teams pitch must be the same as what their customers read on their website, Facebook page, LinkedIn site or corporate brochures.  And we all know repetition helps customers remember your company when it comes time for a purchase.

Consistent, clear messaging must be integrated across your sales and marketing teams; and it must be done throughout your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns.  Your keywords, title tags, Meta tags, and website copy must be entwined and work together in order to drive traffic to your website and convert online users into viable sales leads.

So, the next time you are confused by an advertisement or not sure what a commercial meant, ask yourself, “how do our prospects and potential customers perceive our messaging?  Do we confuse them”?

At Conversion Pipeline we specialize in creating unified, integrated and powerful content that is consistently messaged by your sales, marketing, and business development teams.

Sam Collingwood

Managing Partner