Many digital marketing agencies claim to be experts in revenue growth, but often they’re just regular marketing companies pretending to be more. Don’t be misled. Here’s what you need to look for in a real revenue growth agency.
After over 20 years of working with businesses struggling to grow, I’ve identified four key areas that any genuine revenue growth agency should cover. Here they are, explained in detail.
1) Marketing Strategy and Lead Generation
Marketing must create a compelling, emotional story about your company that gets people talking. This is the core of a marketing strategy.
Your strategy should also include:
- Well-defined and prioritized target criteria and personas.
- Clear alignment on your investment threshold and expected results.
This means you need:
- The right foundational marketing tactics, like a strong website.
- Effective lead-generating tactics, such as paid social media, paid search, or email marketing.
These tactics should be part of personalized, omnichannel campaigns that are continually optimized to improve performance.
You’ll need the right resources, which could mean:
- Internal team members who can create strategies, execute tactics, optimize campaigns, automate processes, analyze data, and be accountable for results.
- External partners to supplement or entirely handle these efforts if internal resources are lacking.
Effective processes are also crucial. These might include:
- Quarterly strategy sessions to align marketing efforts with overall business goals.
- Monthly work planning sessions (sprints) to set priorities and agree on achievable tasks.
- Weekly revenue team meetings to review metrics, assign tasks, check on big initiatives, and address issues for continuous progress.
2) The Right Sales Talent
With an effective marketing strategy in place, you’ll need a strong sales team to convert leads into customers. This requires:
- Continuous recruitment for sales roles, considering the high turnover rate in sales teams.
- A dedicated person or team for onboarding new sales reps, providing them with necessary technology (CRM, Zoom, LinkedIn), and training them.
- Regular assessment of new reps’ skills to identify areas needing support.
Once onboarded, reps need ongoing mentoring, monitoring, coaching, and guidance. This includes:
- Rewards, recognition, and contests to motivate them.
Outsourcing this entire effort can be beneficial. Many companies offer industry-specific, vetted sales reps who can start quickly, reducing the burden on your team and producing new opportunities and business. If you find good reps, consider hiring them permanently.
3) Ongoing Sales Training
Sales reps need continuous support and training. Foster a sales culture that equips them with necessary tools, techniques, and resources. This involves:
- Establishing a consistent sales process that everyone follows, which allows for performance measurement and process optimization.
Enhancing your sales process quickly drives revenue growth. Train reps in a specific sales methodology and reinforce it regularly. This might include:
- Creating open-ended questions for use throughout the sales process.
- Implementing a commitment-based process to guide prospects to say yes.
Monitor and measure performance based on metrics that show reps are mastering techniques and improving their sales skills.
4) Marketing and Sales Technology
Managing all these tasks manually is overwhelming. Use a single platform, like HubSpot, for both marketing and sales technology to:
- Automate and analyze as much as possible.
Automation speeds up campaign execution and improves sales follow-up, shortening the sales cycle and increasing close rates. Analysis provides insights from your data, informing action plans and improving marketing and sales execution.
By implementing these steps, your company will have a scalable, repeatable revenue generation system. This system will help you grow, consistently hit sales targets, and build confidence in your team’s ability to drive revenue.
