How Dedicated Expertise Can Boost Your Digital Marketing

Although this can work to a degree, a Marketing Director with actual digital expertise will bring a lot of value to a Board. Digital marketing deserves an expert in charge who can manage and keep up to date your business’s very image. 

Sales and marketing: know the difference

There are many things that are similar in the theory of sales and marketing. At smaller scales a Sales Director can manage both, but they can’t keep that up indefinitely. This is especially true when you consider the scale of any digital marketing exercises. 

The kind of leads that a Sales Director wants is what their marketing strategy will inevitably focus on. While this can generate sales, this doesn’t mean it’s actually the most efficient way to generate leads.

Dedicated marketing leaders will look beyond easy to convert leads and consider the whole market. A common difference between sales and marketing specialists is the shape of their marketing efforts.

Marketing strategies

The marketing dictated brand strategy has a funnel shape with a wide, shallow top and a narrow but deep bottom. The bottom is for people who already know they want to buy, so they’re the people that a sales team cares about. 

Focusing only on the bottom means not enough attention is given to the top and middle. The top is about creating awareness, so it can get ignored. A marketing expert understands the importance of the whole process, where sales may just focus on the end.

Your marketing team is also responsible for keeping your customers coming back. A return customer is more valuable than a new one, as they tend to be more willing to spend larger amounts and cost less to market to. 

The more people you reach with the same work, the more efficient your marketing strategy will be. A well designed funnel can improve your sales to cost ratio and make your business growth much easier to maintain.

Keeping up to date with advances

Marketing has been greatly assisted by the advent and progress of digital technology. As that medium grows and develops, and the variety of avenues and tools available evolves, marketing becomes increasingly specialised.

When running a business’s marketing, you need to keep on top of all of these new developments. Keeping up to date with personal training and knowledge is part of being a good business leader. 

The more your areas of expertise deviate, the harder this will get. If you’re trying to cover two different fields, like sales and marketing, this divergence will make it ever more challenging. This training requirement could easily become more than you have hours to work in.

This is one of the biggest reasons why you should have a dedicated marketing expert instead of someone else. Successful use of digital marketing needs a leader to keep up with just too much to share the job. 

A specialist will have the time and expertise to explore what tools your business should be using. They’ll know which platforms are best used to communicate with your customers. They’ll be able to identify where you could automate and save time and money. 

Finding your Board expertise

Your brand strategy is your public face. It’s what gives potential customers the information they’ll use when deciding if you’re the business for them. If you want to make sales, people need to know you exist and trust your business. 

With such a wide knowledge base required, having someone who knows what they’re doing is invaluable. If you want to be making the most of your business, you want to find an expert who really understands both marketing generally and digital marketing.

Instead of trying to balance personal training between two very different fields, having two people do the two separate jobs will mean both of them will be done to a higher standard. Adding another director to your Board may seem expensive, but the growth potential of digital marketing will more than pay for itself in the long run.

Consider finding your expert

Your Board of Directors could greatly benefit from adding a dedicated export to its members like a Marketing Director, for instance. What is a marketing director? Someone with expertise in marketing that can help leverage your strategic thinking. It makes your brand a core part of how your business will grow.

This advice applies not only to marketing being run by sales, but in general too. The expertise involved can make it hard to share the job. If you already have a Marketing Director without the digital skills, adding an IT Director could provide the digital support you need as well.

Article written by John Courtney of BoardroomAdvisors.co