💡 How to become more revenue-driven
Learn to build relationships with sales. I can’t tell you how crucial being relationship-driven is to the success of sales & marketing alignment. It’s the first thing I focus on in any company I join.

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
Understanding that MQLs alone aren’t going to move the needle. You need to have that revenue mindset that the campaigns and activities you are doing will move the needle from a revenue perspective. If you aren’t KPI’ed or have metrics around pipeline sourced as a marketer then there are probably alignment issues within the business.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
The marketing teams that drive revenue have stopped focusing on lead generation, and are driving demand through thought leadership, buyer-centric social, community engagement, events, podcasts...

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
The key thing to succeed? Targeting the right buyers, and engaging them with the right messages and content.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
Understand how your audience buys. I mean really understand their buying journey deeply. As a marketer, you need to focus on the whole purchase channel from top to bottom, not just the top of the funnel such as only capturing marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
Work with your sales team closely. Understand the top accounts that they would like to go after and work together to tackle these accounts head-on.

💡 How to become more revenue-driven
A marketer needs to define clear KPIs and try to connect their efforts directly to revenue using proper attribution. While it is understandable that not all marketing activities can directly be correlated to revenue, marketers need to work on connecting conversions to touchpoints whenever possible. There are multiple surveys that prove that a large majority of CEOs are unable to fully trust marketers because of the inability to prove ROI on campaigns. This is the most important problem that revenue marketers need to solve.

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
Again, revenue attribution. It helps marketers separate the wheat from the chaff by understanding which marketing campaigns and touchpoints are working and which are not. This helps them promote efficient campaigns and disable the inefficient ones.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
Work backwards, start with closed-won deals and reverse engineer everything from there. The trend seems to be shifting, but marketers and sellers have had misaligned incentives for too long.

Marketers are getting a pat on the back for delivering MQLs and Sales, as they should, being on the hook for turning those MQLs into revenue. I've always advocated for Marketing to be held to the same standard as sales, with very clear expectations of MQLs translating into closed won-deals at a reliable rate.

If Marketers start their process at the bottom of the funnel and work backwards from there, they are on the right path. Bonus, if they want to assure their success, they should ensure their comp is aligned with Sales. Nothing creates better synergy than that.

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
Focus. Define your objectives, messaging, targeting, and tactics as tightly as possible. Spray and pray is your enemy! Too often, and this comes from personal experience, success is hindered by inadvertently drowning in opportunity.

The product you sell is fantastic, and it can help customers of all shapes and sizes. Interest is coming from all directions, and partnerships are presenting themselves left, right and centre. These are all amazing, but don't be fooled; it's also perilous.

Identifying what moves the needle the most and using that to define all of the things that ultimately feed your sales machine, whether assisted or unassisted, is the single most effective thing you can do as a marketer to drive revenue meaningfully. I hold this to be such a self-evident truth that Breadcrumbs is built around this idea.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
To become more revenue-driven and get into revenue marketing, meet more frequently with four different kinds of internal and external stakeholders:

Your sales team -- to figure out where deals get stuck
Your customer success team -- to understand where new customers get stuck
Your product managers -- to learn why certain features are getting prioritized on the roadmap
Your best customers (and channel partners) -- to find out what your company is doing right and what it could do better vs. other market solutions.

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Customer insight -- especially buyer personas and job-to-be-done -- is vital for helping marketing drive more revenue. And once that insight is captured, analyzed, and prioritized, revenue marketers must develop content and distribution to capitalize on that superior customer insight. But everything starts with getting to know your most important customers better than they know themselves.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
The number one tip I would give for marketers is to step outside of the marketing zone and step into the realm of sales and business growth. To become revenue driven, marketers need to think beyond marketing strategy, activities and metrics and understand business drivers, customer pain points and get closer to sales.

The end goal is to optimize customer experience, not just accelerate pipeline velocity. By taking this approach marketers will ensure that they get a seat at the leadership table.

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
Sales and marketing alignment is the key to revenue success. Sales and marketing need to work as one team across the buyer journey in to drive growth.

Often we find that marketing KPIs or goals are different to sales - ie. Marketing are measured on top of the funnel metrics vs sales are measured on revenue growth. Top tips for driving better alignment across sales and marketing are:

• Define joint goals so that both teams’ achievements enable the others’ success.
• Build unified processes across all teams - eg. connect the SLAs (eg. marketing to BDR & BDR to sales) to get a full view of the lead lifecycle and identify any gaps
• Focus on the complete buyer journey, from initial awareness through to repeat business.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
The best tip I can think of is strategic and not tactical. Think of where you would like to take marketing within the organization. Chances are your company is still sales led.

Chances are that you know demand gen is the future of the sphere you're in, but no one can hear you above the din of "air cover" and "gated eBooks"... The problem is, marketing has been reduced to a leads farm. Just get the raw material in the door and then back off. Let the revenue specialists - the sales force function - do what they do best.

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You can't really swap what people actually think, why they take action - with assumptions brainstormed in a meeting room.

So improvise. To move the needle. Here are a few ways:

• Run A/B tests on copy. Get a causal relationship between the ideas you have about what your target market is up to, and the changes in conversion rate or other key metrics across the site.
• Follow your ICP on LinkedIn. These are people ranting about exactly what's broken in the industry. You can lift words and phrases directly from conversations to feed that copy testing machine.
• Follow what gold standard agencies in your space are doing. It's vicarious customer research.

You shouldn't go to market and shout about what you think is the problem. You have to talk about real problems - and make room for your brand's perspective in the solutions. You don't get to dictate what you're solving - in most cases. What you do get to dictate is how.

Once you adopt this mindset, you become relevant & differentiated. The two key drivers of revenue.

💡 How to become more revenue driven
Align your marketing goals with your company's overall revenue goals to ensure that you're working towards the same objectives and that your efforts are contributing to the bottom line. Use data and analytics to track your performance, identify what's working and what isn't, and adjust your strategies accordingly. Provide value and solve problems for your target audience - customers first. Revenue-driven marketing requires a close partnership with sales - get buy-in from the sales team And don't be afraid to experiment to see what works best for your business. 

💪 Action item for bringing revenue
Making sure that your marketing strategy is aligned with your business goals is crucial. I see marketing as a bridge between the company and its customers. Once you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, you can start to create a plan that will help you get there. Create a strategic narrative and make sure everyone inside and outside the company knows it and understands it, and is aligned with it across all departments and the board. Having a strong strategy and narrative aligns everyone and gets them all working together towards the same goal - driving revenue.