Revenue Marketing: An Emerging Marketing Career Path for You

Marketing is an investment, not an expense.

For a long time now, marketers have had to fight to maintain budget levels to fund marketing initiatives with their executives. Historically, Marketing Budgets have been considered one of the highest costs for businesses alongside payroll. However, with more of the buyers' journey done digitally, companies look at marketing as an investment rather than an expense.

Enter revenue marketing. Revenue marketing approaches marketing as a strategic investment that a company makes to generate revenue that sustains and grows a business.

With the rise of revenue marketers, the demand for professionals skilled in revenue marketing is also skyrocketing.

What is Revenue Marketing

The Missing Link to Growth

Revenue marketing is a holistic approach to marketing that incorporates goal-setting in marketing and sales to drive revenue growth in a business. Revenue marketing aims to align sales and marketing functions to create a uniform approach to business revenue goals. 

Revenue marketing arose to deal with the problems existing when sales and marketing teams operate in silos. It seeks to eliminate the disjointed marketing and sales efforts to ensure customers' consistent experience throughout their B2B buying journey.

 Businesses are adopting revenue marketing for the following reasons:

• Revenue marketing provides sales with the necessary context to close a deal when the prospect is ready
• Marketers understand the messages, channels, and campaigns that deliver revenue for the business
• Customers consistently receive the relevant communication allowing faster decision-making 

With the growing importance of revenue marketing, the demand for revenue marketers is growing. Revenue marketers are responsible for identifying and leveraging key revenue drivers in the business.

To succeed in their roles, they need to have the right combination of skills. So let's look at those skills below. 

What Skills Are Needed for Revenue Marketing

Revenue marketing skills for the 21st century

Revenue marketers are at the intersection between sales and marketing teams. They create room for these previously separate departments to collaborate towards one goal – driving revenue goals. For revenue marketers to thrive in their role, they must possess the following skills:

Data-driven

Revenue marketing relies on data to be successful. Therefore, revenue marketers must be ready to work with data to glean insights about the impact of their marketing and sales tactics on revenue. They must also be ready to use the same data in decision-making about the revenue marketing strategy the organization will follow. 

Good Analytical Skills

Revenue marketing concerns itself with understanding what role data plays in generating business revenue. Revenue marketers, therefore, must be capable of analyzing data to draw insights about what initiatives work and which ones do not. They must also understand what the data marketing and sales teams mean through objective data analysis. 

Good Communication

Data is useless if the insights cannot be communicated clearly to sales and marketing teams. Therefore, revenue marketers must be good communicators with the marketing and sales team and c-level executives.

Result Oriented

Revenue marketers are result-oriented. They drive towards profitable revenues for the company in both the short- and long term. 

Good Negotiator

For revenue marketing to succeed, revenue marketers must collaborate with other departments, particularly the sales and marketing teams. Traditionally, sales and marketing teams do not always agree, despite working towards the same goal. 

Revenue marketers encourage collaboration between the two, seeing how their goals align with the organization. 

Leadership

Revenue marketers are responsible for developing a revenue marketing strategy for the organization to follow. This means they also communicate that strategy and guide marketing and sales teams to achieve it.

Key Challenges Revenue Marketers Face

Overcome resistance to change

Despite the importance of revenue marketing in an organization, revenue marketers still deal with specific challenges as their organizations consider the transition to revenue-driven marketing. They include:

Resistance to Change 

Becoming a revenue-driven marketing team presents several changes that might be uncomfortable for teams and even C-level executives. Such resistance occurs because of the need for changing systems and the organization's structure to accommodate the new changes. 

In addition to the changes within the organization, revenue marketers may mean a change in the way you communicate with customers. 

As a revenue marketer, the goal is to soften the transition to revenue marketing for everyone by adopting a change management mindset.

Lack of Alignment

The greatest challenge revenue marketers face aligning marketing and sales teams. In addition to marketing and sales teams, other revenue-generating functions of the organization must be aligned with the revenue marketing strategy to become successful.

Legacy Tools and Processes 

When new strategies are introduced in a business, new tools and processes to support these strategies are adopted. The result is a combination of tools and systems, which drain company resources. 

The challenge for revenue marketers is to facilitate the transition to revenue marketing while simplifying the tools and processes needed to support the organization's strategy. This includes eliminating the tools and processes that are no longer needed and creating simplified workflows to drive business results. 

Career Growth Opportunities in Revenue Marketing 

If you are already in a marketing role, you can upskill yourself to move to the next career position that allows you to become more involved with revenue marketing – the role of the chief revenue officer. 

The chief revenue officer is responsible for overseeing all the revenue-generating functions of an organization. In addition, the CRO is responsible for driving integration and alignment between marketing, sales, pricing, customer support, and revenue management to ensure profitable revenue generation for the organization in the long term. 

CROs also collaborate with teams in various revenue-generating environments, providing them with the key performance metrics they need to work on. They also offer these teams the resources, tools, and technologies required to execute a revenue marketing strategy.

Once these teams achieve their results, CROs communicate the performance of the revenue stream with other c-suite executives. Since the role of a CRO is a senior role, you need at least several years of experience in roles related to revenue generation such as marketing, sales, product development, or customer success. You must also demonstrate an understanding of data and how to use data in decision-making. 

CROs must also demonstrate experience and success in executing business strategies and understanding customer needs. 

Getting Started in Revenue Marketing Career with No Experience 

Increase your Value as a Revenue Marketer

From the CRO role above, it’s easy to dismiss revenue marketing as a career you should even think about. However, you can still take the step to get started in a revenue marketing career to build your experience. 

Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Learn the basics of revenue marketing through platforms such as expert blogs, books, YouTube videos, marketing workshops, and other resources you can find on the internet. If you can, take an online course or certification, especially one that employers recognize. Having such certification or course on your resume makes it easier to get a role that helps you build your expertise. 
• Once you acquire some knowledge in revenue marketing, update your resume to reflect your newly learned skills. Demonstrate what you have achieved so far, with data if possible to demonstrate that you can drive results. 
• Apply to entry-level marketing positions. You can find suitable opportunities on LinkedIn, Indeed, and other popular job boards. The goal is to have a relevant job that opens the door to other opportunities in revenue marketing. 
• Build your marketing portfolio building your blog or business

Other Emerging Marketing Careers You Can Pursue

Marketing is an evolving field with new roles popping up constantly. Some of the emerging marketing careers you can explore except revenue marketing include:

Digital Marketing 

As the internet, social media, and other digital channels become more important, businesses are looking for digital marketing specialists to drive brand awareness and revenues.

Growth Marketing

If you love data and marketing, then growth marketing is for you. Growth marketing involves optimizing demand generation through data-driven strategies.  

Product Marketing

Product marketing involves introducing, promoting, and selling a new product. Product marketers excel by clearly understanding the product and target market. As a product marketer, you are responsible for developing product positioning strategies to drive customer demand.

Business Development 

Business development involves generating new ideas, initiatives, and business activities to drive productivity, revenue, and growth. In addition, business development specialists are focused on building key business relationships and strategic partnerships to drive the business forward. 

Market Research

As consumers become more savvy and informed, market research becomes an in-demand skill in the business world. Market researchers work with companies to help them understand the target market and market conditions that might affect the success of a product. They also suggest strategies businesses can implement to increase sales and revenue.

Final Word 

The Future of Marketing is Revenue

Revenue marketing roles are rising, thanks to the recognition that aligning revenue-generating functions in a business makes a more significant impact on generating a positive ROI. The role of the Chief Revenue Officer is the most prominent in revenue marketing, as a CRO oversees and manages various teams to achieve their revenue-driven goals. 

If you already have some marketing or sales experience and are good with data, you can transition into the role. Alternatively, you can work on related marketing roles as you build your way up in the revenue marketing field.