4 Data-Backed Strategies for Revenue-Focused Marketing in 2023

I get it. There's a new buzzword every year and most of them amount to the same tired marketing efforts in a pretty new package. 

Not this one. 

Switching to a revenue marketing strategy fundamentally changes the approach for both sales and marketing teams.  

Which got us thinking: how has the sales and marketing landscape changed recently? More importantly, what initiatives are most effective for B2B growth and achieving revenue goals? 

There's only one way to answer that — by looking at the metrics and becoming a revenue-focused marketer.

Before we tell you how to do it, let's talk about what revenue-focused marketing really means.  

Note: Leadfeeder helps B2B companies turn unidentified site visitors into qualified leads. Try our platform free for two weeks.  

What does "revenue-focused" marketing mean? 

Revenue-focused 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, comprised of marketing and sales, the same revenue target. You’ll be surprised how this update impacts your conversion rate.

1. Focus on the right channels for leads 

This might seem obvious, right? Of course, you should focus on the most effective channels for lead generation. 

For sales teams, the most effective channel is email, with nearly 52% of B2B professionals reporting email helps them book the most meetings with leads.  

What about marketing? 

For marketing, webinars are the way to go in terms of the top of the funnel — everything is digital now, obviously.

According to our survey, webinars were the top lead generation channel for 15.3 percent of respondents. 

But, webinars aren't the only option for content marketing. 

Like sales, marketers found email was the top channel for lead generation, with 29.6 percent of respondents agreeing. After webinars, social media came in third place, with 12.5 percent of respondents saying it was their preferred method for generating leads.

If you aren't already leveraging email marketing and webinars, now is the time to start. 

Pro tip: Leadfeeder can help you automate, optimize, and manage your email marketing and track how leads interact with your website after an email campaign. 

2. Meet with sales more often (or combine your teams)

If you're tired of attending meetings that could have been an email, I see you, I hear you, I am with you. Meetings without a clear agenda suck up valuable time. 

But meeting with your sales team more often helps increase alignment between the two, and that can drive revenue growth through the roof. 

When B2B organizations have a tightly aligned sales and marketing team, they see faster growth and more profits from marketing campaigns. 

Revenue-focused marketers need to be more aligned with sales than ever before. 

If you're not meeting with sales at least weekly, you could be letting sales and revenue slip away. 

According to our research, 54 percent of sales and marketing teams meet once a week. Over 18 percent of respondents said they meet daily, while 16 percent meet just once a month. 

This increase in meetings might indicate that sales and marketing are now more likely to be seen as a joint unit (the revenue team). This is especially true for companies that have adopted ABM (account-based marketing). 

Surprisingly, 6.4 percent of respondents didn’t meet with their marketing teams at all during the year, while 4.3 percent only met quarterly. 🤯

To be an effective revenue-focused marketer, you need to know what sales is up to — even for things as simple as being aligned on messaging.

Collaboration means more meetings — or more effective meetings. More informal communication channels like Slack can also help bridge the gap between sales and marketing. 

3. Scale your personalization efforts with automation 

Personalization continues to be an important trend, with 81.9 percent of marketers saying they plan to increase the personalization of their content in the coming months. 

We also discovered 53.2 percent plan to increase personalization “a little,” while 28.7 percent say it is “a big priority” for them.

The problem? Scaling content personalization can be a hassle. In fact, 52.8 percent of marketers say personalization is difficult to scale due to how manual the process is. 

The good news is personalization doesn't have to be a manual process. Our survey found that 13 percent of marketers find scaling personalization seamless due to automation. 

 So how do you use marketing automation to personalize content? 

Tools like Turtl (one of the collaborators in this study) help sales and marketing create personalized content using psychological triggers that hold the reader's attention. They also help track your efforts so you can see how personalization is impacting your bottom line. 

4. Take events digital (yep, webinars are rocking it) 

In the B2B sector, in-person events are crucial for generating and converting leads. So what happens when in-person events aren't possible? 

We asked B2B marketers and sales reps where that budget went. 

Here's what we found out: 

• 32.4 percent of respondents relocated in-person event budgets to other digital channels 

• 22.2 percent used their budget on virtual events 

• 12 percent had the budget removed as a cost-cutting measure 

The good news? Moving budgets to virtual events really paid off for most of the survey respondents, with 55.3 percent saying virtual events are just as good, if not better than in-person events. 

Not sure what time to host your live events? 

The afternoon seems to be the best time if you target sales and marketing professionals. 

We asked both sales and marketing which time they prefer webinars to be held, and more than half of each group prefers afternoon webinars, while 12.1 percent of sales and 23.4 percent of marketers prefer lunchtime webinars. 

Focusing on revenue marketing to 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. 

Note: 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.