What Is Revenue Marketing? Your Ultimate Guide

This approach reveals the true impact of marketing activities by attributing revenue to the right touchpoints, and sees both teams work collaboratively to nurture leads through the funnel. By making revenue a shared responsibility, you can boost ROI and give customers a better experience. 

Let’s look at how revenue marketing differs from the traditional approach, explore the benefits, and show you how to build a revenue marketing strategy that works.

What is revenue marketing?

Revenue marketing is a data-driven approach that essentially combines sales and marketing teams. This approach allows marketers to directly attribute their efforts to specific sales and engage with leads even after the sales team takes over.

In the past, traditional marketing and sales were very distinct, separate teams—there wasn’t much sales and marketing alignment over common goals. This disconnect often resulted in miscommunication between sales and marketing, frustrated leads, and sales/marketing funnel leaks.

However, when sales and marketing partner up, they create a revenue team dedicated to generating better-qualified leads and following them through the customer journey—and improving close rates.

Pro tip: Give your revenue team—composed of marketing and sales—the same revenue target. You’ll be surprised how this update impacts your conversion rate.

Revenue marketing vs. traditional marketing

Aside from the fact that revenue marketing sees the sales and marketing teams work in tandem, there are several more key differences between this approach and traditional marketing. 

Here’s an at-a-glance comparison table before we get into the details:

Area	Revenue marketing	Traditional marketing
Goal	Generating revenue and driving growth	Generating new leads and brand awareness
Strategies	Focus on predictable revenue Complete alignment with sales Guide customers through the whole journey	Focus on acquisition Marketing and sales operate separately Campaign-based strategies
Tools and tactics	Integrated tech stack Using personalized messaging to increase loyalty Tracking revenue-based metrics	Marketing tools with automation Content marketing for TOFU Tracking vanity metrics, such as website visits and social media likes
Timeframe	Marketers work with sales teams throughout customer journey	Marketers focus on top-of-funnel activities
Budget	Allocated based on revenue impact	Harder to allocate without proof of ROI

Goal

The ultimate aim of revenue marketing is to generate revenue for the company. This is done by acquiring and nurturing high-quality leads. Traditional marketing, on the other hand, typically involves getting as many leads as possible. Revenue marketing places more emphasis on ROI and building strong customer relationships.

Strategies

Revenue marketing is a more specific approach to revenue generation, creating measurable outcomes and putting repeatable processes in place. Marketers are aligned fully with the sales team, working together to move prospects (and existing customers) toward conversion. There’s a continuous feedback loop of data between the two teams.

Tools and tactics

The revenue marketing approach is more customer-focused than the traditional method, addressing customer needs and pain points rather than driving traffic by promoting products and services.

Marketing communications are personalized, using behavioral data and insights from both teams. An integrated tech stack enables this two-way syncing of data.

In traditional marketing, the focus is on acquisition metrics, such as the number of leads generated. Revenue marketing measures progress in terms of money coming in and determines the precise revenue from specific marketing campaigns and activities.

Timeframe

In traditional marketing, the team hands qualified leads over to the sales department, and that’s it. A marketing revenue strategy sees marketers nurture leads along the whole sales funnel, even after conversion. The strategy plays out over a longer timeframe.

Budget

Revenue marketing helps you to show the worth of your marketing activities by highlighting their direct impact on results—resulting in a larger budget. This is one area where traditional marketers struggle, ending up with scattershot budget allocation because nobody knows which activities generate the most revenue.

Revenue marketing vs demand generation

So, where does demand generation fit in? Let’s look at the main differences between demand generation and revenue marketing, starting with another comparison table:

Area	Revenue marketing	Demand generation
Goal	Generating revenue and driving growth	Creating demand for your product or service
Strategies	Target people who are already aware of your product or service Encourage customer loyalty even after conversion Focus on sales-accepted leads	Target people who aren’t yet familiar with your offering Position it as the best solution for their pain points Focus on marketing-qualified leads
Tools and tactics	Full-funnel engagement Highly tailored content for warm leads/existing clients Integrated tech stack, predictive analytics, and multi-touch attribution	Engage with leads at the start of the journey Attention-grabbing content about product benefits CRM and marketing automation
Timeframe	Marketers work with sales teams throughout the customer journey	Short-term goals, filling the top of the funnel
Budget	Covers all relevant activities	Covers activities that drive awareness and interest

Goal

As we know, revenue marketing is laser-focused on generating revenue directly, not creating awareness. The aim is to take prospects from awareness to conversion. 

Demand generation aims to grab people’s attention at the start of their journey. Although there’s an overarching goal of creating income for the business, demand gen is more about driving traffic or signups.

Strategies

Sometimes, demand generation may involve input from the sales team to create campaigns that resonate. Revenue marketing requires complete, rather than occasional, collaboration. 

A demand gen strategy is about generating marketing-qualified leads, while revenue marketing seeks to engage with leads who are also accepted by the sales team.

Tools and tactics

Demand generation casts a wide net in order to attract a high number of leads. Revenue marketing goes for full-funnel engagement, directly targeting people with purchase intent to ensure a smaller number of high-quality leads. It’s a little like account-based marketing (ABM) in this respect.

As we’ve mentioned, revenue marketing is customer-centric—marketers try to understand individual needs and preferences and tailor their messaging accordingly. Demand gen also addresses audience pain points, but it’s more product-centric, promoting the features and benefits of your offering.

Timeframe

Revenue marketing takes place over time, nurturing leads and measuring revenue-related metrics right up to conversion and beyond. It recognizes that customers often take a non-linear buying journey. Demand generation is largely a top-of-funnel activity with short-term objectives.

Budget

The budget for demand generation supports marketing activities that spark initial interest from prospects. It’s likely to be smaller than the budget for revenue marketing, which supports activities throughout the funnel and is allocated based on proof of ROI.

The benefits of revenue marketing

Revenue marketing creates a reliable, scalable revenue engine through repeatable processes and accurate forecasting. Taken as a whole, that delivers a range of notable benefits.

Greater alignment between sales and marketing

One of the key benefits of revenue marketing is the way it brings the marketing and sales departments together. These two departments traditionally have different objectives and can even operate in competition with one another, blaming each other for errors or failed campaigns.

Revenue marketing breaks down these barriers and silos by giving both teams a common goal and a sharp focus on revenue generation. With the right strategy in place, this leads to improved communication and more cohesive campaigns.

Marketers and sales reps can easily share ideas, knowledge, and valuable customer insights, while close collaboration reduces omission and duplication of tasks. 

For example, thanks to the continuous feedback loop, marketers are no longer in the dark about whether a piece of content actually led to a sale.

Encourages customer-centricity

Alignment between marketing and sales helps your brand to deliver consistent messaging and a better experience to prospects and customers. With no disconnect or miscommunication between the departments, there’s no risk of customers falling down the gap.

The data sharing involved in revenue marketing enables you to target ideal customers more effectively with relevant content and messaging. When they receive the right messages at the right time, they’re more likely to engage and ultimately convert.

Revenue marketing also focuses on what customers need, keeping those needs front and center at all stages of the journey. Great CX encourages repeat purchases and ongoing loyalty, which ties into your goal of generating revenue.

Easier attribution and ROI measurement

Traditional marketing often uses a last-touch attribution model, which doesn’t take non-linear journeys into account—and doesn’t suit complex B2B buying cycles. Because revenue marketing uses multi-touch attribution, it’s much easier to find out what influenced the purchase decision.

Instead of looking at an overall campaign or tracking conversions, you can look at specific marketing actions and follow their impact along the customer’s journey. It’s ideal for B2B brands, where you need to measure marketing’s influence over a sales cycle of many months.

You can also see which activities generate the most revenue, giving you a more accurate picture of your ROI on marketing spend. This, in turn, makes it easier to justify the marketing budget and make future decisions with revenue targets in mind.

More focus on long-term relationships and customer lifetime value

Revenue marketing is all about generating properly qualified leads who are most likely to become long-term paying customers. One of its goals is to improve customer lifetime value—the amount of revenue an individual customer is expected to bring in during the entirety of their association with your business.

The cross-functional team shares intent signals and behavioral data to ensure they can nurture leads and customers throughout the buying cycle. Marketers continue to engage people after an initial purchase, cultivating ongoing relationships and loyalty.

As well as contributing more revenue to the business, loyal customers often become brand advocates who boost your reputation and encourage others to use your company.

How to build a revenue marketing strategy

It takes time and effort to set up a successful revenue marketing strategy, but the benefits make it worthwhile.

Here’s our step-by-step guide to setting goals, bringing your teams together, and tracking the results:

1. Establish clear revenue goals

Start by evaluating your current revenue strategies to determine areas for improvement. Then, take your company-wide revenue targets for the coming year and use those to set goals that align with the targets. Use the SMART framework to ensure that all goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.

Outline how you intend to reach the targets through specific marketing actions, and define key metrics and KPIs for measuring progress and assessing the impact of each activity. You might also divide the goals into quarterly or monthly objectives.

It’s critical that everyone in the organization understands the goals and is fully on board with the reasons for implementing revenue marketing. From the CEO to the marketers and sales reps on the front lines, everyone has to buy into the vision and be aware of their responsibilities.

2. Research and fully understand your target audience

The revenue marketing model relies on an in-depth understanding of your audience so that you can inform and engage them at all stages of their journey. Both the marketing and sales departments need to be clear about who they’re targeting and selling to.

Carry out extensive research to discover the needs, preferences, and challenges of your target audience. Where do they hang out online? What type of content do they respond to? Use your findings to define your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and buyer personas.

The research phase doesn’t end there. As these prospects and customers move through your funnel, make sure you collect as much data as possible to inform future campaigns. Remember, revenue marketing is a customer-centric approach.

3. Map the customer journey across channels

Now, you can create a roadmap that highlights the various touchpoints where people might engage with your brand. This enables you to visualize the buyer’s journey from awareness to conversion, and to look at the process from the customer’s point of view.

Your audience research should have told you what customers need, but the roadmap helps you figure out when and how to deliver it. It should ensure that every touchpoint does its job, providing the right type of information to move the prospect forward.

Look at the journeys of current customers and talk to them—identify the key moments where the deal progressed and any friction points or funnel leaks where prospects dropped off. You’ll also need to outline clear ownership and accountability for each journey stage.

4. Develop a content plan for all stages of the journey

This step involves deciding on the content you’ll create for the revenue marketing campaign. There are several strands to this. You’ll need to consider content for each journey stage, for each audience segment, and for each marketing channel you’re using.

It’s important that your marketing materials support the entire journey with quality content that appeals to both new and existing customers. You want to keep prospects informed and engaged even if they’re not ready to make a decision just yet. And, you want to persuade those who’ve already converted to stick with your brand long-term.

Producing this much content can be costly, which can cut into your ROI. Cross-posting or repurposing content is a good way around this, such as running the same article or ad on different channels or turning a blog article into a social media post.

5. Build an effective tech stack 

An effective tech stack is crucial for successful revenue growth marketing, helping you to centralize data and automate manual processes. Review your current software to make sure it’s effective, and replace anything that’s clunky or too outdated to allow integration with newer tools.

Integration is all-important here since revenue marketing relies on seamless data-sharing between marketers and sales teams. If your software isn’t in sync, you’ll end up with data silos, which is exactly what this approach is supposed to avoid.

Integrated tools give you a single source of truth, connecting data between software such as your CRM (customer relationship management) system, marketing automation platforms, and analytics and reporting tools.

6. Onboard your sales and marketing teams 

It’s time to bring your two teams together. You’ll have already communicated how the new approach is going to work and the reasons behind it, but make sure you answer any remaining questions and concerns to avoid misunderstandings or resistance to change.

To minimize the risk of confusion, clearly define the roles of each department and individual in the revenue marketing strategy. Everyone should be aware of the other team’s objectives and KPIs, as well as work together on joint goals and targets.

It’s helpful to create shared definitions for MQLs (marketing-qualified leads), SQLs (sales-qualified leads), and SALs (sales-accepted leads), as well as documented processes for lead qualification, handoff, and intelligence sharing. Set up regular team syncs and analysis sessions and foster a culture of collective responsibility.

7. Continually monitor, iterate, and improve

Revenue marketing requires continuous effort and monitoring to ensure its success. You’ll need to track and analyze the results of every action and campaign, and optimize your strategy based on revenue impact.

Conduct a monthly performance analysis to see how you stack up against your revenue targets, and make changes to processes, touchpoints, or attribution models where necessary. It’s best to take an iterative approach with continuous cycles of improvement.

Apart from tracking revenue, measurement and analysis are also important for showing teams the direct link between their activities and the revenue generated. You can identify patterns and trends across marketing channels and leverage intent data to learn where decisions are made.

It’s also important to stay aware of new trends and best practices in revenue marketing and to set up data governance policies to make sure your data is accurate and doesn’t compromise customer privacy.

Metrics and KPIs for measuring revenue marketing success

The only way to measure the success of your revenue marketing strategy is to use KPIs and metrics to track your efforts against your business goals. It’s important for marketers to demonstrate their role in revenue generation and growth, and prove that their efforts contribute to ROI.

Where a traditional marketing approach would only focus on top-of-funnel metrics, revenue marketing is about generating revenue throughout the customer journey. These metrics help you measure results at all stages of the funnel and include the ones that matter to both the marketing and sales teams.

Return on investment (ROI)

Marketing ROI (MROI) represents the return on investment from all your marketing activities in a given period. This shows how your efforts contribute to revenue growth. Measuring ROI helps you to optimize your strategy, prove your worth, and justify your spending.

Since revenue marketing is about alignment with sales, you shouldn’t look at this figure in isolation. Compare it with the sales team’s ROI, check if both teams are hitting their targets, and look for collaborative ways to improve.

Revenue attribution metrics

As we’ve mentioned, revenue marketing uses a multi-touch attribution model to reflect the fact that many customers encounter multiple touchpoints before and during their journey. 

It’s important for understanding which strategies are most effective at different stages and the impact on marketing revenue generation. Metrics include:

• Attribution by channel

• Cost per opportunity (CPO) by channel

• Marketing-sourced revenue (total revenue earned before costs)

Pipeline/funnel metrics

These metrics indicate the performance of your “revenue engine,” measuring how effectively your leads enter and move through the sales pipeline. They include:

• Average deal size: Average revenue generated from each closed deal

• Sales cycle length (longer for B2B)

• Funnel velocity: The speed at which leads move through the funnel

• Pipeline coverage ratio: Total value of opportunities in the pipeline compared to sales targets for the period

Conversion metrics

You’ll also want to track conversion metrics. We’re not just talking about the ultimate purchase decision, but all the mini-conversions along the way. For instance:

• MQL-to-SQL rate

• SQL-to-opportunity rate

• Lead-to-customer conversion rate

• Opportunity-to-conversion rate

• Conversion rate by channel

• Conversion rate by funnel stage

Engagement metrics

These metrics are harder to analyze and link to conversions. It’s worth measuring them, though, as they indicate whether your content and messaging are  sufficiently appealing for users to engage with. They’re also important for multi-touch attribution.

Engagement metrics include:

• Email open, click-though, and unsubscribe rates

• Organic web traffic (and referral traffic)

• Social media engagement (likes, comments, shares)

Long-term impact metrics

These metrics are crucial for revenue marketing, as they help you to assess the long-term impact of your efforts. After all, the goal is to build long-term relationships with customers. Make sure you’re tracking:

• Customer retention rate

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

• Customer lifetime value (CLV)

• CLV:CAC ratio

• Expansion revenue rates (additional revenue generated from existing customers)

Focus on revenue marketing and drive growth

B2B growth strategies shift every year and what works one year might not work the next. It’s getting more challenging to determine which marketing strategies and marketing channels are most effective. 

Plus, different industries have wildly different markets that respond to different approaches. 

Shifting digital marketing metrics to focus on revenue allows marketers to prove their impact and helps your team stay laser-focused on strategies that drive real growth. 

Remember, however, that effective marketing is still about people. Don't focus on revenue at the expense of treating your leads as people with different needs and communication styles. 

Leadfeeder helps revenue-focused marketers identify site visitors, filter for their target audience, and track them through the buyer’s journey. Learn more or try Leadfeeder free for 14 days.

Revenue marketing FAQs

What is the goal of revenue marketing?

The overarching goal of revenue marketing is to generate revenue and drive predictable growth through repeatable strategies. This involves aligning your marketing and sales teams so they work toward a common goal, moving high-quality leads into the sales pipeline, and attributing conversions to the right touchpoint(s) to prove the ROI of marketing activities.

What is an example of revenue marketing?

Revenue generation marketing requires a continuous feedback loop between sales and marketing teams, who share information to develop a better understanding of customer needs. For example, marketers might collaborate with sales reps to create content that overcomes common objections.

How is revenue marketing different from traditional marketing?

In traditional marketing, there’s a clear division between the marketing and sales teams. Revenue marketing brings the two together with shared revenue generation strategies, targets, and intelligence.

Traditional marketing is more about generating brand awareness and a high volume of leads, whereas revenue marketing favors quality over quantity and focuses more on customer needs throughout the buyer’s journey.

Revenue marketing highlights the direct correlation between marketing activities, conversions, and revenue with multi-touch attribution and a clear picture of marketing’s impact on the bottom line.