If you think business development and marketing sound like they should go hand-in-hand, you’re right. Business development is forming strategic partnerships and other professional contacts in target markets to bring in new clients, and marketing is development and execution of a strategic communications plan to speak to new and existing clients alike.  So why, at most businesses, don’t they sync up properly?

According to recent research in the professional services industry, only a slight majority (54%) of businesses said marketing and business development were strongly co-ordinated. It’s not entirely clear why this should be the case – but it’s likely that it’s just “one of those things”. That businesses have developed these functions separately, and never realised the potential for integration between them.

Whatever the case, syncing up the part of your business that talks to clients day in and day out (business development) and the part of your business that designs your overall communications strategy (marketing) has massive pay-offs. Here’s how to do it:

Develop strategy in tandem
Both of these teams are in the habit of talking to your clients – so it makes sense that they should work together to create the best strategy to communicate your brand’s message, and agree on suitable ways to gauge its success.

Collaborate on content
The marketing department is responsible for creating content – but business development people should be included in helping to brainstorm the type of blog posts, articles and more that clients will engage with. Business development should also be sending that content out to targeted clients.

Develop campaigns together
Marketers should create and promote campaigns, while business development people should be reaching out to make contact with the target audience for follow up. Clearly, this requires a joint effort between the teams to make sure they’re on the same wavelength.

Working together on speaking engagements
Marketers can and should work with business development to pitch at industry events and conferences. While marketers create and give the presentation, business development people should be there to meet and follow up with prospective clients.

Integrating marketing and business development will pay dividends for the growth of your business, letting everyone play for the same team from the get go and driving the whole business in the same direction.

Kiss has years of experience acting as a bolt-on marketing team for our clients – if you’re interested in having us work with your business development people to spur growth at your company, just call Lynsey on 01675 446101.