The debut of AdStage’s newest product, Join , is clear proof we believe that for marketers to win they must become more aligned and integrated with sales as a way to close the loop on ROI. And we’ve been talking about this topic it a lot – like in this post , which looks at the metrics marketers have traditionally focused on, and highlights the numbers they should be tracking instead.

And we’re not alone!

SnapApp reached out to 45 marketing execs to uncover their top struggles with marketing objectives, and marketing alignment with sales was mentioned by 90% of the respondents. So while 90% isn’t necessarily a good number, it does indicate that organizations are recognizing the need to bring marketing and sales together under one umbrella.

Image from SnapApp Sales and Marketing Alignment: 45 Experts Explain How To Connect The Dots

In this roundup from the American Marketing Association Jeremy Boudinet, director of marketing at Tennessee-based sales software company Ambition urged companies to take the alignment between marketing and sales seriously to the point that they should consider hiring a brand new role – a sales operation person whose job is to direct and smooth the intersection of marketing and sales.

In that same post, Fergal Glynn , VP of Marketing at New York-based marketing automation firm Docurated emphasized the need to tie ROI to marketing. He explained, “Marketers’ budgets are increasing every single year, but it’s very difficult for most CMOs to really tell what their contribution to revenue is because most of us marketing leaders are still thinking about the number of leads and not showing what we contributed to revenue.”

When AdStage was in beta with Join , a new product that allows marketers to optimize campaigns based on sales conversion goals, several client partners who were working toward a closer alignment between marketing and sales in their own organizations had the chance to try it out. The participants lauded Join for what it allowed them to bring to their individual accounts, and as a result, to ROI—a company-wide benefit. Mandy Fitzberger , Director of Paid Media at Atypical Digital said, “Shortening the path to bottom line impact from paid marketing efforts with AdStage Join is a huge win for our clients as well as for us as an agency.” And Emma Franks, Digital Account Manager at Hanapin Marketing talked about how Join’s easy reporting had positively affected her bottom line, “The time I save from no longer updating reports manually allows me to dedicate more attention to strategy and optimizations in my account.”

In this post for Salesforce , Jill Rowley , Former Chief Growth Officer at Marketo, argues this new need for a united front between marketing and sales is because of the tech advances that have put the buyer in control. Rowley says, “The modern buyer is digitally driven, socially connected, mobile, and empowered, with nearly unlimited access to information and people.” She goes on to explain, “Salespeople are being replaced by search engines and social networks. With professional, buy-centric social profiles and content, marketing can help sales be visible and relevant to the modern buyer.”

Jennifer Davis , a marketing exec at Amazon AWS echoed Rowley’s stance in this Forbes post where she writes that an increasing number of customers want to skip the sales team altogether as they use online resources to gather their own information. Ultimately, that puts more pressure on marketing to find, educate, and sell customers through the means they’re most familiar with. Davis points out that if marketing and sales aren’t aligned, it ultimately hurts customers, which hurts ROI as a result. She shares this bit of research, that “43% of B2B marketing decision-makers report that their companies have lost sales as a consequence of not having necessary content at the right time for a specific customer.” Ouch. When sales and marketing work together, both teams get a clearer view of the customer and are therefore able to provide a more seamless experience as the customer makes his way through the marketing and then sales funnels.

If the above hasn’t yet convinced you of the necessity to align sales and marketing, HubSpot shares some amazing data in this report , including the stat that sales-marketing alignment increases revenue by 208%!

Image from Wheelhouse Advisors via HubSpot: How to Align Sales & Marketing to Boost Revenue by 208%

The tone isn’t just that marketing needs to become better friends with the sales team, either. The sales team could benefit greatly from better collaboration with marketing, specifically because HubSpot’s survey found that 79% of leads never convert to sales partly due to a lack of nurturing, and of the leads that get passed to sales, 73% are never contacted.

Now that the technology exists to give marketers better insight into lower-funnel sales metrics, it’s up to the two teams to come up with a plan to better align themselves. The most immediate benefits include:

• Higher-qualified leads, which leads to increased ROI

• Cohesive buyer personas that act as guideposts for the customer journey and collateral creation

• A shared vision that supports the company’s main objectives

• A helpful team that can help you troubleshoot

Get your teams in the same room today and you could see revenue jump by 208% this year!