Your marketing department creates some of the coolest promotions around. Your logo is sharp, and your marketing materials couldn’t be more professional.

So if your branding is so good … why aren’t you making more sales?

Most marketing departments focus on branding, but that’s only part of the equation. The best marketing strategies in the world won’t work if you drop the ball on reaching out to your prospects and customers during any phase of the sales process.

Failing to communicate kills sales
You need to have methods in place to address customer’s problems at every level. Many companies struggle in at least one area of interaction:

• Top-of-the-funnel troubles: You may be targeting the wrong audience and missing connections with the right prospects.
• Letting leads go cold: Prospects lose interest alarmingly fast. Failure to respond to leads quickly can cost you.
• Post-sale problems: You can sour a relationship with a customer if you’re not responsive and dependable — even if the customer was initially happy with your product. Over time, this can reduce customer retention and repeat sales.

Fortunately, all of these communication failures are easy to avoid. The key is to stay connected with your customers throughout the sales funnel:

• Know which prospects are the best ones for your business to target, where to find them, and how to engage them. For example, is your audience social-media savvy? If so, reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter. Or perhaps cultivating enticing email promotions or informative whitepapers will be better for addressing your prospect’s needs.
• Make sure your sales and marketing departments are aligned so prospects and customers are continually nurtured and never ignored.
• Stay connected with your customers after a sale for repeat business and positive word-of-mouth recommendations. Happy customers can quickly become brand advocates whose success stories with your product or service create more interest than any ad campaign.

The perfect tool for staying top of mind
What’s the best way to help your sales and marketing departments keep the lines of communication open? Done correctly, newsletters can be your ideal marketing partner because they support content marketing at every step in the sales funnel.

• Newsletters build credibility with “suspects,” the members of your target audience that you haven’t communicated with yet.
• Because they’re sent on a regular schedule, newsletters keep you fresh in your target audience’s mind.
• They draw in current customers and prospects with engaging information.
• Compelling content and offers provide meaningful interactions that increase opportunities for conversion.
• They bolster your reputation as an industry expert and resource.

Everyone enjoys doing business with a company that understands their problems and needs, responds quickly to their inquiries, and provides prompt and dependable service. Challenge your sales and marketing teams to be that company for your prospects and customers, and you’ll soon see improvements in sales and have your very own army of brand advocates.