In a recent Act-On conversation, Jay Hidalgo and Arti Chatterjee defined demand generation and explained how personas, sales and marketing alignment, and content marketing are a trifecta for successful demand generation. In part one, we talked about demand generation and how the buying process has changed, and we covered “personas” as the first of three key demand generation factors. This is Part 2, in which we cover the last two key points of demand generation: sales and marketing alignment and content marketing. Sales and Marketing Alignment Janelle Johnson JANELLE: Arti, a question for you now, and it's a question that you and I live and breathe every day.
We hear a lot about sales and marketing alignment. What does this actually mean? What does this look like in practice? ATRI: Yes, we experience this every day. We talked about the buyer's journey, the different approach, how people do a lot of research before even going to a seller or a service provider. To truly interact effectively with a prospect or buyer, it's essential that sales and marketing have a common language. Who do we, each team, believe to employee data be our ideal customers? And both organizations, the marketing organization and the sales organization, have to agree on that. These decisions will guide all future demand generation and lead generation programs, as well as content created to attract the right types of leads.
We have to put ourselves agreement on the value proposition and the sales process that will be applied to these prospects. So it's very important to have this common definition, this common vision of how the sales organization and the marketing organization agree on the right types of prospects. The second part is also about really understanding the process that a buyer goes through and clearly understanding when marketing, the marketing functions, and the marketing activities that we do, influence that buyer.