Digital sales and management is the way to get your brand out there. Research indicates that 88% of consumers research their products online before they make a purchase. This is through either bricks and mortar shops or online retail outlets.

As you can see, the evidence is there to show that digital marketing works – incredibly well. However, you can have all the people in the world who are interested in buying your product. But if you don’t make these people want to buy from you – and actually follow through with their purchase – you mind as well not have spent anything on digital marketing in the first place as you’ve effectively wasted this money.

So, to go with your digital marketing strategy you need a well-thought-out Digital Sales strategy to get them clicking ‘buy’ on your e-commerce store, picking up the phone to contact you or engaging in an e-mail exchange. But how do you do this? What is the force that turns a prospect into a paying customer? Find the answers in this article.

• What is Digital Sales Management
• Who is a Digital Sales Executive
• How Much Can You Earn as a Digital Sales Expert
• How to Become a Digital Sales Expert
• 5 Must-Have Skills For Every Digital Sales Expert
• 5 Things to Know About Digital Sales and Marketing
• Tips on Getting Results With Digital Sales

What is Digital Sales Management

Simply put, ‘digital sales management’ is about managing one’s digital sales. However, it’s a bit more complicated than this as there are a number of processes that are involved in getting prospects to conclude digital sales.

First of all, digital marketing is closely tied to digital sales. Online marketing functions to get people interested in what you’re selling. Digital marketers can use tools like social media marketing as well as SEO and PPC advertisements to get people to know about your product and/or service.

Read Also: Best Strategies For Branding, Positioning, Marketing And Sales For Agencies

So, for example, when a prospect shows that he or she is interested on Facebook about buying what you have to offer, you have to give them a way to leaving you their contact details so that you can further engage with them. You do this by offering the prospect some sort of value, something that they can’t get anywhere else. These value-added offerings could take the form of:

• A special offer where you discount your products and/or services,
• A free e-book on a must-know topic, or
• A coupon where you get one product free when you buy another one.

The next step is to make contact with the prospect to follow up about their interest. It is possible to do this in a number of ways. For example:

• Telephone, or
• E-mail.

It is recommended that you first contact the person telephonically. The reason for this is simple, it’s a proven fact that people are more likely to ignore text-based communication than they are someone on the other end of the phone.

If you can’t get hold of them, send them an e-mail, SMS or similar communication. However, don’t leave it up to them to contact you. Keep on contacting them but do so in a very subtle manner. Send them a series of five or six emails about the value that your product and/or service will add to their lives. Make them realise that they can’t live without what you’re selling.

This is called the sales funnel and there are strategic steps that prospects need to go through – in this funnel – for it to achieve what it set out to, which is to get people to click ‘buy’.

There are many digital sales management tools and techniques that you can try in your business. Some of them may work while others won’t. However, you need to work through them all systematically so that you’ve given each of them its best chance of working.

Who is a Digital Sales Executive

A digital sales executive is a person who presents ad agencies and marketing companies with digital, new media platforms. The platforms will present the companies’ advertising campaigns and consumer outreach.

In the past, most such outreach happened via television, radio, and print advertisements. The digital sales executive is selling and promoting similar platforms, except now they are usually internet-only ads, banners, videos, and the like.

For a digital sales executive, a key component of his or her job is research. In order to be successful, the executive must be able to show data that correlates to user reach and response on digital sales campaigns.

A good digital sales manager must be an outstanding communicator, verbally and in print. He or she must be able to give outstanding presentations using media tools to demonstrate the efficacy of sales and marketing campaigns.

In addition to having outstanding interpersonal communications skills, a digital sales executive should also have a strong background in digital media and technology.

He or she must have a strong understanding of existing and emerging platforms for presenting sales outreach and must be able to utilize them in an aggressive and flexible manner. Many companies will prefer individuals for this position who have at least a bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Most digital sales executives work regular business hours in an office environment, but they may also do field work to give presentations and pitch media services to potential new clients.

How Much Can You Earn as a Digital Sales Expert

An entry-level Digital Sales Executive with less than 1 year experience can expect to earn an average total compensation (includes tips, bonus, and overtime pay) of $50,000 based on 5 salaries. An early career Digital Sales Executive with 1-4 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $45,334 based on 24 salaries.

A mid-career Digital Sales Executive with 5-9 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $50,000 based on 24 salaries. An experienced Digital Sales Executive with 10-19 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $65,000 based on 10 salaries. In their late career (20 years and higher), employees earn an average total compensation of $169,000.

Employees with Digital Sales Executive in their job title in San Francisco, California earn an average of 125.7% more than the national average. These job titles also find higher than average salaries in Chicago, Illinois (80.2% more) and Los Angeles, California (61.7% more). The lowest salaries can be found in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (14.0% less).

How to Become a Digital Sales Expert

When you consider that Facebook generated ad revenue of $6.24 billion this quarter alone, it’s pretty clear that there’s money to be made in digital marketing. Problem is that this young industry is changing so quickly that it’s difficult to keep track and learn how it all works.

Just when you think you know what’s happening, it all changes. Thankfully there are ways for you to learn how to become an expert in digital marketing.

Teach Yourself

The world is moving in a more collaborative direction and information is being exchanged more openly than ever before, particularly in the world of digital marketing.

If you are interested in learning the industry, it’s essential that you commit to finding the knowledge that you’re looking for.

Most businesses in the digital marketing space pride themselves on being thought leaders, and are constantly releasing white papers, eBooks, and presentations packed full of information.

Keep an eye on digital marketing and media agencies in your area for these pieces of guidance. Again, these are often released on social media, so do your best to track down these resources.

Find Tutorials

Reading articles, watching videos, and listening to podcasts from marketing mavens will probably inspire you to take the next step and start exploring formal options.

The internet is packed with free learning resources on just about every topic imaginable. YouTube tutorials are an easy way to start getting practical advice, as long as you choose your material carefully.

If video lessons are your thing, you can take a look at a subscription service like Lynda.com (which is owned by LinkedIn) to develop your understanding of the various steps involved in digital marketing. This is also a solid platform if you want to expand your creative skills within the digital space.

If you have more time on your hands, you can also investigate free online marketing classes. There are also schools starting to offer qualifications in digital marketing that can help you access more work opportunities down the line.

Speak To People

Most marketing companies welcome people who want to shadow someone for a few days, or complete an internship over the summer. Even if you get the chance to spend a day at a digital marketing office, take it and make sure you speak to as many people as you can.

The industry can be quite intimidating if you only experience it on the end of a computer screen. Even though the output is virtual, and largely automated, it’s still produced, managed, and imagined by people. And most of the time they’d be happy to explain how their part of the puzzle works.

Connecting in the real world will get you a long way. More and more people are exploring digital marketing, so investigate chat forums and join the discussion to find out what people are thinking and doing.

Follow The Leader

Social media is the best place to start if you’re interested in learning more about digital marketing. After all, it is one of the main marketing channels available to digital marketers and you’re already familiar with the way it works.

Your first step is to find and follow as many marketing experts as you can. A quick search will point you in the right direction. People like Gary Vaynerchuk, Casey Neistat, and Mark Zuckerberg all offer inspirational insight into the world of digital marketing in a way that is easy to digest.

Plus, they’re all experts in different platforms, dishing out free advice, opinion, and insight.

They generate digestible content that introduces you to the core concepts driving ongoing digital marketing growth. Getting insight from the people who define the industry is an ideal start if you are starting to figure things out.

Stay Updated

From shifting social media algorithms to the release of futuristic new technology, digital marketing is an integrated web of possibility. Every new product, ad unit, and trending hashtag has an impact on the marketing landscape.

Once you’ve followed industry leaders, taken a class, chatted to people and read every PDF out there, you need to make sure that you are instantly updated when things change.

It may take some time but you will eventually build a network of sources that help you stay ahead of the avalanche of information headed your way; brands are also hyping up new developments and releases. Digital marketing is fast, exciting, and scary – and that makes it one of the most exciting things you can do.

5 Must-Have Skills For Every Digital Sales Expert

SEO & SEM

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to all levels of digital marketing and as such, anyone going into the field must have at least a basic handle on it. You can certainly leave the highly technical, back-end stuff to the more technically-oriented people on the team, having a solid understanding of best practices and how to optimize all forms of content is crucial for running a successful digital marketing campaign.

Both SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) inform your entire digital strategy on both a data and content level, and you need to be able to communicate to other teammates about this, so you just won’t get far if you don’t make a point of learning the basics.

Content Marketing

Content is the core of digital marketing and content marketing will continue to be a crucial part of the game no matter what happens. But content marketing is a huge job in itself. You have to be able to understand how to not only create high quality, SEO-friendly content of various sorts, you also have to understand how to effectively get audiences to engage.

And to make things a little more challenging, it’s important to note that content can take many forms, from video to social, emails, web content, blogs, e-books, videos, whitepapers…the list goes on. You also have to have a firm grasp on social media marketing as this will tie in to most content marketing type of work.

You’ll need to be able to strategize based on a given client’s overarching business goals, develop a campaign that involves an effective strategy, and monitor analytics as well

Video

Video is taking the internet by storm and this isn’t about to stop. According to MarTech, videos have the potential to hold customer’s attention on retail sites for two minutes longer than average (which is really like a lifetime in the digital world) and a well-optimized video can boost your chances of being in a top Google ranking position by at least 50. In addition, more than 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product after seeing it detailed in a video.

Bear in mind that these are just loose statistics are going to vary depending on who you ask, but the point is that most statistics point to much higher conversion, engagement and higher SEO rankings when it comes to video.

What makes it so engaging? Because it’s personal. When people can see your face (or the face of the person promoting the brand), they are more likely to trust the entire enterprise. It’s also a wonderfully versatile content to use through different platforms.

Digital marketing professionals don’t have to know everything about video production, of course, but knowing how to create a quick intro video from your laptop is a good place to start. And if you have some training in this area and you love it, your skills and talents will not be wasted as video will continue to be in demand.

Data / Analytics

No matter what facet of digital marketing you are going into, Google Analytics will probably be central to your strategy. Monitoring and reporting via such tools is pretty straightforward, but the tricky part is how to gather and use that information to help you learn more about consumer behaviour and apply it to new solutions that boost traffic and conversions.

Most businesses (even small ones) have huge amounts of data to track, and great digital marketers need to understand how to gather and use this to their advantage.

Most companies will always be looking for people who to only know how to “read” this data, but to know exactly which data to use towards improving business strategy in the future. If you can show that you can do this in innovative ways and that the way you do it ends with important results, you’re going to be a valuable asset in the industry.

Be Tech Savvy

Because the industry is really technology driven, you have to have a decent grip on technology as well as be able to learn it quickly. If you’re millennial-age or younger, this is probably going to be second-nature, but older generations may want to put a bit of elbow grease into teaching themselves not only specific technologies but also just getting familiar with the most commonly used software and tools in their focus area.

Generally, if you understand the basics of web coding, as well as having a clear idea of how to use the basic Content Management (CMS) systems like WordPress, you’re likely well on your way to landing that dream job.

5 Things to Know About Digital Sales and Marketing

It is not only crucial to invest in marketing for your sales team, but much of that financial investment comes in the form of digital marketing. In fact, 99% of the businesses surveyed by The Manifest plan to increase their investment in at least one digital marketing channel in 2019.

So, you may be asking yourself, ‘Why do I need to invest more money in my digital marketing strategy?’ Below are my top five things to know about the connection between your digital sales and marketing efforts.

1. Content and SEO Should Work Together

Search engine optimization was a major buzzword in the marketing industry in the early 2000’s. It meant creating a website that would give you optimal search results for whatever YOU (the website creator) wanted to be found for. This is no longer true today.

The internet is growing at an unbelievably rapid pace and there are thousands of web pages added to the internet everyday. This additional competition means you can no longer simply tell Google what search words you would like to rank high on the search engines for. You now need to back up your keywords with detailed content.

Focus on creating new web pages for your website in the form of blogs, videos and images and speak often on what you believe is your expertise. Using those keywords with new content is a big way to increase your search rank today.

2. Digital Marketing is Responsible for Handling the Sale

When your presence is known across blogs and social media networks, potential customers begin to develop trust for your brand and products or services, whether they are aware of it or not.

If you are creating healthy and worthwhile content, you will be seen as the expert, and when it comes time for that buyer to purchase, it will be a much easier and confident transaction. If your brand is everywhere online, it will be the first to come to mind to someone looking to purchase what you have for sale.

3. The Right Digital Marketing Strategy Will Provide You With Enough Data

By purchasing and enabling sophisticated analytic software on your website, you will be able to find out things about your prospective customer that weren’t possible before. Want to know exactly where on your site they are searching? What products they’ve viewed? Even the search term they typed into Google that brought them to your website?

All of that can now be compiled neatly into a contact page all tracked by that user’s IP Address. Help your sales team make calls a little warmer; by knowing the information they need to provide the potential customer, your sales team can easily increase their conversions.

4. Your Customers Are Going Mobile

One very important tip to remember when branding your digital marketing is to keep mobile in mind. Every month when handling clients’ reporting we see a steady increase of mobile visitors vs. non-mobile visitors. More people are viewing websites through their phones and tablets.

They are accessing their favorite social media websites through applications and avoiding the websites altogether. This is a key factor to consider when promoting your content. Does your blog read well on mobile devices? Is your website or blog built with responsive design?

Keep these items front and center when working on your digital marketing strategy and deciding where to allocate budget as this is a worthwhile investment.

5. Buyers Are Hunting For Products Themselves, Not Your Sales Team

In the past, sales teams had to pound the pavement and hunt for potential customers. Looking for leads can now be a thing of the past. Customers are well informed and do their due diligence online before purchasing a product or service. No longer are sales teams needing to beat down doors to let people know about their products and services.

In fact, for many successful digital campaigns, the opposite is happening. Customers are driving themselves back to blogs, landing pages, and websites and are themselves inquiring about and collecting information on what they would like to purchase. It’s now important for salespeople to know when to react, instead of pushing forward without a clue.

Tips on Getting Results With Digital Sales

Many sales organizations, however, have trouble putting this human-digital program into practice. The truth is that there are no tried-and-true methods. Companies need to create the human-digital blend that is most appropriate for their business and their customers.

This should not be a random process of trial-and-error testing. What is needed is a systematic way to evaluate the optimal human-digital balance

Understand What Your Customers Want

Customers want a great digital experience and a great human experience. Be careful, though. Customers were asked “What annoys you most?” and gave them a large number of possible answers, including price. A third said “Too much contact”—by far the single biggest answer.

The trick is to understand where human interaction is most wanted and invest there—be it in expertise available via a web chat, ensuring a speedy response to customer-service queries, or simply having a person pick up the phone when a potential customer rings.

Companies also need to invest in digital, but those investments should focus on two places. First, where digital is most valued by customers: enabling speedy purchases and repurchases, delivering online tools for customer service, or offering real-time pricing with product configurators. Second, where digital can enable humans to do a better job of interacting with customers when the human touch is required.

Since many B2B customers still want human interaction at some stage of their customer journey, sellers need to offer multiple routes to market with both human and digital resources available at all stages at varying degrees of intensity. The challenge is ensuring seamless transitions and handoffs from one stage to the next so that customers are neither repeating themselves nor frustrated at delays.

The implications for employees are substantial. Sales reps need to focus their efforts on expertise, on being more consultative, and on responding quickly. Compensation structures may well have to change, too. If reps become less important at the point of purchase, then the commission model will need to evolve.

From our research and experience, three traits have emerged that should be core ingredients of every company’s optimal human-digital blend: speed, transparency, and expertise.

Be Transparent

Customers want transparency. They want to know at a glance the difference between what they have today and what they could have tomorrow, and they want to know what the total cost is.

Digital tools make product comparison and price transparency easy and can be used both by customers directly and by sales reps working with clients, blending the digital and human.

For example, in more transactional situations or for general comparison and evaluation, customers want to be able to look online for pricing or use configurators to generate pricing for comparisons. In more complex or consultative situations, face-to-face or inside sales reps might access online configurators or pricing tools in collaboration with a customer.

The importance of transparency extends to resellers. Our research shows that customers still judge companies on pricing transparency at their resellers. If the reseller lacks a good product-comparison engine, a good configurator, easy-to-understand pricing, or easy-to-build quotations, then in the customer’s mind it’s the same as if the company was managing the sales process itself.

One option is to let customers use your site to do their comparisons; the other is to find out where customers struggle on the reseller’s site and invest in helping the reseller overcome the problem.

Whatever the specific situation, it is critical to control as much of the process as you can, and to influence what you cannot directly control. One software company realized it wasn’t converting small- and medium-sized business customers from consideration to purchase.

Its one-size-fits-all approach to product recommendations meant that SMB customers saw the same offers as enterprise-level customers and thus had no clarity on which elements might be priced differently if applied to them. So they took their business elsewhere. It was time for a change.

The company set up a “trial and buy” website specifically geared to small- and medium-size businesses. It asked customers to fill in a brief form to assess their needs and made offers based on their answers, with clear pricing for each package and a clear explanation of how each package was different.

This approach helped the company open up a whole new segment. Within three months, 90 percent of SMB buyers were first-time customers.

Those customers whose needs were seemingly too complex for an off-the-shelf package were routed to a team of inside sales experts who were able either to direct them to the right standard package or to configure a solution to meet their needs.

This ability to “triage” customers into those who need more human help versus those who can be well served with digital tools can significantly improve customer experience and conversion.

It’s not who, it’s when

The majority of B2B customers want both human and digital interactions on their buying journey, according to a recent McKinsey survey. Their specific preference at any given time is primarily correlated with the stage of the buying journey.

When customers are researching a new product or a service, for example, two-thirds of those who lean more towards digital still want human interaction.

As customers move into the evaluation and active-consideration stages, digital tools that provide information, such as a comparison tool or online configurator, come into their own, especially when combined with a highly skilled sales force.

After the purchase, when discussions are about renewal, cross-selling, and upselling, the tables are turned completely, and 85 percent of those who lean overall towards human interaction now prefer digital.

Yet most B2B companies still reward reps more for spending time keeping customers loyal and repurchasing than for uncovering new customer needs or driving demand, which is exactly where customers say they want face-to-face expertise.

The key message for sellers is that context matters more than customer type and much more than industry. Companies that are digital from start to finish today could see even higher growth if they reintroduce the human touch to the start of the buying journey.

Conversely, if companies are firmly holding customers’ hands via key-account managers or value-added resellers, they should be aware that customers are saying loudly and clearly that they don’t value that close personal attention after the sale.

Be Quick to Customer Request

Slow turnaround times are frustrating, and slow means more than 24 hours, even for B2B customers. Companies need to think about having 24-hour expertise available on call, with superexperts, who can answer customer questions in real time, sitting with the sales or customer-service team. Digitally enabled tools can help enormously, for example by connecting customers with experts via a web chat.

Even when customers are doing extensive online research, there usually comes a point when they want a question answered quickly. This could be online, through the company website’s FAQs or product pages, or through contact with a real person.

Yet most B2B companies have yet to perfect their online content to answer all questions, and even fewer have reconfigured their traditional inside sales channels or web-chat tools to deliver highly technical expertise on demand.

Once customers are set on making a purchase, they want to do it fast. One-click purchases or shortcuts for repeat orders (even for large capital purchases) can speed up the process tremendously. If customers are on a company’s website but have to buy from a distributor, they need to be able to reach the appropriate page on the distributor’s website quickly and smoothly.

Read Also: 10 Strategies to Improve Your Customer Service Experience

If there are changes to the RFP, customers expect an almost instantaneous turnaround or, better still, an online space where buyer and seller can solve the problems in real time. Customers we spoke to complained a lot about being unable to make a quick change, whether they were buying in person or digitally.

Finally, speed is vital in repurchase and postpurchase troubleshooting. Four times as many B2B buyers would buy directly from suppliers’ websites if that option were available (and fast). They are especially keen on it for repeat purchases.

For postpurchase needs, speed can come from something as simple as having better FAQs, or from a well-run forum where customers can solve one another’s problems online. Increasingly, it means using chat bots, which can often answer a lot of customers’ queries, or at least ensure they are directed to the best place or person as quickly as possible.

One B2B retailer changed how it offers online support by crowdsourcing improvements to its FAQs and offering a small reward as an incentive to engage. It also interviewed customer-facing staff to prioritize customers’ pain points.

It then updated the FAQs based on this feedback and cross-referenced the answers with the service calls that had the highest-rated resolutions to ensure the content was correct. Finally, and perhaps most simply of all, the company moved the FAQs to a more prominent place on its e-commerce site.

These relatively inexpensive and straightforward changes reduced the volume of calls and messages to its customer care center by a staggering 90 percent, since customers could now quickly find the answers to their problems. This success allowed the retailer to shift support capacity to work with the key-account teams on strategic accounts.

Finally

A great digital sales professional will have the ability to adapt quickly and learn on their own, even being ready to pivot into different digital careers as they choose or as needed should old skills become less in-demand.

They will be working with diverse teams and clients, so they will have to know how to communicate well and build strong teams.

While there are a number of things that you will have to do in order to be competitive in the digital marketing career field, it’s important not to forget about leveraging and improving your hard and soft skills as you move forward into exciting new positions.