eCommerce Glossary: S-Marketing

Glossary

S-Marketing and its Importance in Digital Marketing

What is S-Marketing

S-marketing refers to the effective alignment of sales activities to fit the output of marketing activities. Sales are the activities that are involved in the selling of a good or service. Marketing, on the other hand, refers to the activities involved in creating awareness, arousing curiosity about a product or service. Marketing activities can be used to raise sales in a company.

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Because marketing can boost sales activities, companies merge these two activities in a collaborative effort to ensure that they get the most out of them. Companies are changing their approach toward sales and marketing. Unlike before sales and marketing departments are treated as equal collaborative entities as opposed to opposing competitive elements within a single organization.

Marshall Fall writes in an article, “when sales and marketing align within a business; great things can happen.”1 Marshall’s statement alludes to the great potential that S-marketing holds. The statement establishes a discovery that many organizations have discovered and seek to exploit to drive sales up and essentially increase revenue.

Developing the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing

How To Align Sales and Marketing

Elements of both sales and marketing activities have to be understood to achieve efficient S-marketing. The aims, goals, and objectives of the activities have to be established and oriented toward a similar direction. The activities have to complement each other and, in a way, add value to each other as well.

Budgetary Control

Establishing a budget is another crucial step to align sales and marketing successfully. The budgets have to be separate since these are two separate activities that are to be merged to achieve a singular goal. The budgets should also take into consideration the number of resources that each activity would need. Assigning finances blindly without consideration may result in one side lagging.

To illustrate the need for budgetary consideration, take the case of two different products from the same company. The two products are similar, and almost the same except one product has been in the market (product A) while the other is new (product B); much like Coca-Cola when it introduces a new flavor. Both the products (A, B) need sales and marketing. However, product B (the new product) would need more marketing compared to A to create awareness of the product.

Planning

Planning is a crucial first step of S-marketing. Planning entails the assessment of needs and the establishment of ways to achieve them.1 Therefore, understanding the needs of the organization is one of the vital first steps of S-marketing. By understanding what the company wants and needs, it becomes easier to formulate a plan of action aimed at achieving the desired outcomes through s-marketing.

Establishing Organizational Design

The organizational design refers to the structure of operation with which a company operates. It refers to the planning, production procedures, leadership structure, and communication structure for an organization. All these aspects of the organization have to be streamlined to support the two departments and ensure they have everything they need to work together.

Assessment of Resources

The resources that an organization has at its disposal are essential to what the company can and cannot do. It is therefore imperative that each company and respective department (sale or marketing) understands what they have that they can use to their advantage. An assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the team is a great way to establish this.

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Benefits of S-marketing

S-marketing makes lead conversion smoother S-marketing integrates sales and marketing activities in pursuit of the same goal. The objectives of each organization are the same, but the procedures to achieve these objectives are different.2 With S-marketing, the conflict between the varying procedural elements are eliminated, and the cooperative exchange of value is introduced. It becomes more comfortable for the company to turn actionable market-qualified leads (MQL) into sales actionable leads (SQL).

Increased revenue for the company S-marketing can increase a company’s revenue; this is a result of the smooth conversion of marketing leads to sales leads. Sales activities are the revenue earning activities as they involve the actual buying of goods and services.2 The exchange of goods for an equivalent monetary value is the aim of the sales activities which earns the company money.

It is cost-effective and increases the efficiency of the activities S-marketing is cost-effective as it increases the effectiveness of each of these activities. The cost of the sales and marketing activities may remain the same, but the resulting revenue increases because of the collaboration between the two teams. In other words, the value of the investment (cost incurred in both activities) is increased with the collaboration between sales and marketing departments.

Additionally, S- marketing eliminates overlapping activities. Sales and marketing activities are different activities, but they essentially have similar goals and targets.2 Without proper communication between the two, there might be a redundancy in the efforts put forward to achieve set objectives. S-marketing ensures proper communication and division of roles that increase effort for maximum output.

Furthermore, S- marketing offers a great solution to sales and marketing conflicts. Companies can achieve so much more when they invest in S marketing activities as opposed to conducting the two activities separately without collaboration. S-marketing's value is enormous and is sure to grow even more with the improved technology that favors both sales and marketing activities.

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