Unleash the potential of smarketing with the right mindset.

Research shows that businesses with strong smarketing practices:

  • were 67% more effective at closing deals
  • were 58% more effective at retaining customers
  • Drove 208% more revenue as a result of their marketing efforts

Source: LinkedIn Research

The successful implementation of a smarketing practice is only possible with a strong smarketing mindset of the business owners, who can then instill the right smarketing culture across the organization.

Thus, the need for a smarketing mindset cannot be over-emphasized in the context of building a strong foundation for a successful smarketing practice.

Let us understand what it takes to have a smarketing mindset or what comprises of a smarketing mindset.

As a broad outline, the following are 10 main attributes of the smarketing mindset, which by conscious awareness can significantly impact the overall growth of a small business:

1. Unified Marketing and Sales Goals:

In a Smarketing mindset, you align your marketing and sales efforts toward a single goal – your business’ success. And therefore, you need to ensure that your marketing strategies and sales techniques and tactics work hand in hand. Even though you’re the only one, you’re still a team of one with a unified mission.

2. Customer-Centric Superpower:

As a solopreneur or small business owner, you focus on truly understanding your customers’ needs, crafting messages that resonate with them, and offering solutions they can’t resist. You have the advantage of connecting directly with your customers and being customer-centric in all your marketing and sales efforts.

3. Keep Communication Real (and authentic):

As part of the Smarketing mindset,  keep your communication real and authentic with your customers. You communicate your vision seamlessly across all your communication and ensure that every piece of content, every message, is aligned with your brand and resonates with your audience.

4. Data-based decision-making:

One of the attributes of the smarketing mindset is the ongoing monitoring and tracking of the performance of marketing and sales efforts, to see what’s working and what’s not.  Using data to make decisions, ensuring every move you make is backed by insights.

5. Continuously innovating and improving:

Solopreneurs and small business owners with the smarketing mindset, work on – ways to nurture their community by providing value, deploying innovative marketing strategies, creating irresistible offers, and brainstorming ideas on delighting customers, as a part of consistently evolving and improving.

6. Improving the Customer Experience:

Business owners with the Smarketing mindset focus on giving their personal touch through every step of their potential customer’s journey from the first interaction to the final purchase and beyond, thereby creating enhanced customer experiences.

7. Embrace Continuous Learning:

People with the Smarketing mindset embrace continuous learning, at the basic level, to excel in their craft or industry.  They stay updated on industry shifts and trends, explore technology and tools that can make the work more effective and efficient, stay ahead of the curve, and thrive.

8. Flexibility, Agility, and Adaptability:

Small businesses thrive on being nimble especially to adjust their strategies based on customer feedback, market changes, and new opportunities. The Smarketing mindset amplifies this agility and adaptability.

9. Results-Driven Dynamo:

Solopreneurs and small business owners with a Smarketing mindset are not only driven by the efforts but by the tangible outcomes around converting leads, increasing revenue, or customer retention.

10. Community Building:

Staying invested in long-term relationships with customers, instead of keeping it transactional, is at the very core of a Smarketing mindset.

And in order to build long-term relationships, a community for interaction and engagement is essential. The process of community building begins from the discovery stage. In exchange for a high-value offer (such as a lead magnet), potential prospects opt-in to join a (pre-framing) community as the first step.

And then from thereon, start nurturing by providing significant value on a regular basis, till the point then convert into paying customers, beyond which you have an exclusive community of your paid customers, where you delight them.

The true success of community building comes with a strong smarketing mindset.

11. Your Unique Brand of Success:

Solopreneurs and small business owners with the smarketing mindset create their own unique brands with their own recipes for success by leveraging their individual principles and strengths.

In summary, the successful implementation of a great Smarketing practice is possible only with a smarketing mindset, with all of these attributes that would supercharge the marketing and sales alignment and efforts.

It’s not just for big teams; it’s for you, the solopreneur or small business owner, who’s ready to embrace new ways of doing things – that would unlock your true potential and propels your business to new heights.

If you found this perspective useful, please share your thoughts and comments below or reach me on kdkini@gmail.com

Until then,

Happy Smarketing

Dwarakanath Kini