Buzzword Buster - Why Smarketing Works

2017 is another year full of marketing buzzwords - snackable content, anyone? No doubt it can be hard to stay ahead of the trends and even harder to figure out what's important to your strategy and what's a distraction. So instead of giving you a glossary of this year's biggest buzzwords, I'm going to cover a time-tested term with both staying power and strategic value: smarketing.

What is Smarketing?

Smarketing, a mash-up of sales and marketing, was coined back in 2007 by HubSpot's sixth ever employee and current Sales Director: Dan Tyre. Dan originated the term as a way of expressing the importance of having alignment between an organization's sales and marketing departments. Because when these two departments work together instead of against each other, it sets your business on a path toward long-term, quality engagement. If you'd like to take a more in-depth look at smarketing, check out this blog post here. 

Having been around for a decade, smarketing has the staying power most buzzwords can only dream of. Do you want to know the reason for its long-term relevance? It works. 

When Sales and Marketing are Aligned... 

... they become near unstoppable. The idea is that an alignment between sales and marketing creates a single, cohesive funnel. It's when salespeople share insights and information to help marketers create content. In turn, marketers put in the effort to understand what content would be the most helpful to the sales department.

In businesses where these two departments communicate and collaborate regularly, their customers and prospects experience an improved user experience, and more prospects, visitors, and leads turn into customers. 

Sales Enablement and Smarketing

Sales enablement is dependent on everyone being on the same page and working toward the same goal, and it's easier said than done. When both your sales and marketing teams are in alignment with each other, it means everyone understands how their individual role contributes to their company's overall strategy and goals. By having the appropriate processes in place, you can position everyone for success - both individually and as a team.

This, of course, isn't going to work unless all departments understand how and why they are working together. There needs to be communication not only within departments but among them, too. Marketers need to understand when their lead nurturing responsibilities and the sales department's begin. Similarly, the sales team needs to communicate their process (this includes wins and losses) back to marketing so they can identify places where it's important to adapt their approach. Within this level of departmental collaboration (aka smarketing), you'll uncover sales enablement. 

While smarketing may have outgrown its buzzword status by providing up to a decade of value to the organizations who adopted this practice early on, there are still companies who are just now discovering and considering whether or not smarketing is worth the effort. I'm here to let you know one thing for sure: if you don't have it already, smarketing is something your organization can truly benefit from.