What is Revenue Marketing? A Guide to Creating a Strategy that Works

Revenue marketing unifies marketing and sales teams to build scaled strategies for a revenue-driven customer journey that rakes in sales.

Here, you’ll find: 

1. What revenue marketing is
2. Which industries benefit most from revenue marketing
3. 3 key benefits of revenue marketing
4. 7 vital revenue marketing metrics to measure success
5. How to create a revenue marketing strategy in 5 steps

Isn’t all marketing revenue marketing? Sure, revenue is the end goal for every social media ad, blog article, or paid search campaign. 

However, a revenue marketing strategy reaches beyond engagement and lead generation, uniting multiple departmental efforts to focus on one common goal: revenue.

Here, HawkSEM CEO Sam Yadegar, an SEM marketing veteran with decades of experience crushing revenue goals for his clients, shares the inside scoop on revenue marketing.

We’ll break down how it differs from other types of marketing, and must-have metrics to inform a killer strategy.

What is revenue marketing?

Revenue marketing is a strategy that bridges sales and marketing efforts, and positions campaigns to meet specific revenue goals. 

But wait—doesn’t traditional marketing consider revenue a goal, too? 

How does it differ from traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing also aims for audience engagement, brand awareness, niche authority, and demand generation. Revenue marketing focuses solely on, well… revenue.

Traditional marketing also aims for audience engagement, brand awareness, niche authority, and demand generation. (Image: Adobe)

The biggest difference is that achieving traditional marketing goals doesn’t automatically translate to financial gains. 

According to HubSpot, demand generation gives you the awareness to attract sales-qualified leads (SQLs), but it doesn’t take that extra step to close the deal. This is often because the sales team doesn’t have a hand in the process. 

The same goes for audience engagement; it might bring impressive vanity metrics, but your Instagram likes aren’t paying your staff. 

So, how do you create and fulfill a marketing strategy that focuses solely on profits? In Yadegar’s opinion, the sales team is a vital player:

“Revenue marketing brings all stakeholders from sales and marketing to the same table, whereas traditional marketing plans are primarily driven by the marketing team. The latter can sometimes create a disconnect as to what happens after the leads/transactions are generated.”

But what exactly is the vital function of the sales team in revenue marketing? Good question.

Take this example: your ecommerce business seeks an increased clickthrough rate of 20%, 1,000 new leads, and higher rankings on the SERP from their marketing campaigns. You might also want an additional $500,000 in revenue this year compared to last. 

A revenue marketing strategy would bring the sales and marketing teams together to strategize conversion rate optimization (CRO) for those 1,000 leads. The purpose? Transforming leads into revenue every time. 

The beauty is, revenue marketing isn’t industry-specific. 

Which industries benefit most from revenue marketing?

Every business wants revenue generation. So naturally, Yadegar sees revenue marketing strategy as a must-have across all industries:

“We typically see it in action where there is an existing marketing and sales team, and they work together across marketing channels to drive revenue.”

At HawkSEM, we’re known for revenue marketing strategies that deliver an average 4.5X return on investment (ROI). Our niche experience spans ecommerce, SaaS, B2B & B2C, finance, education, travel, and retail businesses.

One customer success story that comes to mind?

Our client Moneta is a wealth management firm with two decades of experience and a strong rep for niche excellence. Their challenge wasn’t lead generation, as they had plenty of web visitors and views on all their marketing assets. Engagement and traffic? Check. But potential customers bounced before converting. 

The issue? Their marketing journey wasn’t attracting market-qualified leads (MQLs). In other words, they lacked quality leads with high chances of conversion. Our solution was a deep dive into Moneta Group’s audience personas, which helped us narrow down a more robust keyword strategy. 

The results were game-changing. We targeted leads we knew would deliver a return on Moneta’s ad spend, garnering:

• Over 23% boost in Google Analytics goal completions (including conversions)
• 164% increase in position 1-3 keywords
• 326% increase in net organic keyword portfolio

Wondering how we narrowed down keywords that raked in the most revenue? 

A mix of innovation and talent is the HawkSEM difference. Our proprietary tech system, ConversionIQ, puts marketing automation and artificial intelligence to work, highlighting data-driven insights to determine the most profitable keywords to drive–you guessed it–more revenue.

Apart from more conversions, what can brands expect from a stellar revenue marketing strategy? 

3 key benefits of revenue marketing

The short answer: You’ll get way more bang for your buck. 

Here’s the long answer: 

1. Longer-term sales and customer acquisition

You can’t scale lead gen efforts without a solid understanding of your target audience’s needs and desires. A well-informed revenue marketing strategy gives you insights into specific tactics, phrasing, keywords, and web elements that your customers crave and respond best to. 

All of a sudden, the awareness stage of the funnel isn’t a dead end for so many potential customers. People start to love you and your product because you showed them that same love in your marketing.

And when you demonstrate that kind of customer focus? Cue the positive feedback loop of customer appreciation. They’ll return the favor with sustained sales that boost customer lifetime value (CLV) and revenue. Revenue marketing gives you a repeatable strategy to secure higher-paying and more frequent customers.

2. More efficient sales cycle

B2B SaaS brands, we’re looking at you. 

Your niche has a notoriously longer buying cycle, as businesses typically need more time to deliberate before splurging on subscriptions. That’s why a revenue marketing model is so valuable for SaaS brands. When your sales team is in tune with what conversion-ripe customers need to seal the deal, your sales cycle becomes extremely efficient. 

When your sales team is in tune with what conversion-ripe customers need to seal the deal, your sales cycle becomes extremely efficient. (Image: Adobe Stock)

Similarly, a revenue marketing strategy helps you distinguish sales-ready leads from forever browsers. 

But it’s not just customers vibing with the sales team. 

3. Improved business collaboration

Silos are the bane of every marketer’s existence and an obstacle in the way of every company’s goals.

Normally, you spend weeks waiting on your sales and customer service teams for customer data insights to inform your strategy. What if you flipped the script and weaved them into your strategy? 

Revenue marketing fosters better cross-departmental relationships, improving operational efficiency, employee engagement, and ultimately, ROI. 

Ready to launch your strategy? Let’s get you set up with the right metrics first to build a bulletproof foundation.

7 vital revenue marketing metrics to measure success

Bounce rate, session time, impression rate, and clickthrough rate are all valuable metrics to measure audience engagement on your website or marketing offerings.

The only hitch? Vanity metrics like these don’t tell you zilch about revenue. Sure, you might have people spending hours on your website, but do they ever buy anything? 

Similarly, your highly polished LinkedIn post might have thousands of likes and comments, but has it compelled anyone to click on your product page and make a purchase?

These are the conundrums your revenue marketing plan has to address. According to Yadegar, these are the metrics you’ll want to keep tabs on:

• Budget: The amount of money you dedicate to marketing activities over a set period of time
• Conversion rate: The number of people who convert compared to those who simply view your content
• Cost per conversion: How much of your marketing budget goes toward each conversion on average
• Conversion value: The business impact of each conversion on a wider scale versus a single purchase or action
• Revenue generated: How much revenue a marketing asset or campaign brings
• Customer lifetime value: The monetary value of a customer over the period they remain your customer
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): The revenue your ads generate compared to the money you allocate to them

These metrics are essential to measuring the progress of your revenue marketing strategy. 

Ready to put these insights into action?

How to create a revenue marketing strategy: 5 steps

So you have a revenue goal—how do you make it happen? A top-3% digital marketing agency like HawkSEM can help you reach your targets with a solid marketing plan. 

In the meantime, you can take a shot at developing your own revenue marketing strategy. Here’s the blueprint:

1. Set realistic revenue goals

Every strategy needs a measurable initiative to guide revenue marketing efforts. How do you decide on a realistic revenue goal? A 100% revenue increase seems like the obvious answer, but even industry titans like Coca-Cola and Apple can’t pull off perfection.  

Yadegar shares a more realistic sweet spot:

“Take last year’s revenue as a baseline, and realistically plan anywhere between 10 and 30% growth depending on marketing budgets, optimizations on campaigns, as well as the offering,” he says.

2. Conduct a content and PPC audit

Take your revenue goals for this quarter and compare them to last year’s. It’s time to figure out what’s holding you back from your dream marketing ROI. You’ll find all those answers in an in-depth audit of all your marketing assets. 

We’re talking: 

• PPC ads
• Landing pages
• Website copy and all web pages
• Blog content
• Social media content
• Backlinks

And those revenue-focused metrics we mentioned before? Bring them all to the party as you assess performance for every one of your marketing campaigns. 

Your PPC ads brought a ton of traffic to your landing pages, but did you see any conversions? How about your website? Are visitors serial browsers, one-purchase wonders, or happy, returning customers that bring your revenue goals to fruition? 

Audits are second nature for our seasoned PPC and SEO experts. We include these deep dives in every service for our clients, helping them understand what’s working and what isn’t. 

But our audits aren’t your one-and-done, run-of-the-mill check-ins. They’re fueled by data. Thanks to ConversionIQ’s real-time insights, we can sync assets and revenue (and vice versa) in record time.

3. Solidify your brand offering

Let’s say you sell SaaS budgeting software for small businesses. Yadegar says brands must have crystal clear brand offerings for a successful revenue marketing strategy that transcends their product.

So, how do you get crystal clear? Zero in on the key attributes of your brand and product:

• UVPs: Unique value propositions, aka ways your product or service outshines the competition 
• Audience pain points: The problems your audience has and how your product solves them
• Brand values: What’s important to your business, and how do you reflect your values in your activities and offerings?

In addition to data, your customers are your guiding light. 

4. Ensure a high-quality customer experience

Sure, a 5-star rating from a customer conversation on your website chatbot signifies a solid experience. But that’s only one stage of the buyer’s journey. A solid revenue marketing strategy must nurture the customer at every stage to create a cohesive experience. Only then can you close deals with more conversions and revenue.

Wondering how to deliver a customer experience that transforms everyone from potential customers to new customers, all the way to raving fans? 

Yadegar insists that sales and marketing department alignment is crucial. Your marketing team comes up with engaging content to catch a customer’s eye. On the other hand, your sales team can provide the customer data needed to help you write conversion-worthy, persuasive ad copy to boost your revenue. 

You’ve got to keep marketing and sales reps on the same page. Here are some tips:

• Brainstorm KPIs and benchmarks together rather than in siloed meetings
• Make sure both have a clear understanding of the sales funnel and buyer’s journey
• Establish workflows and business practices to ensure seamless and consistent data sharing
• Include the sales team in marketing content approvals

But above all, you need consistency.

5. Ensure consistent messaging

Revenue marketing isn’t just about securing one or two purchases. It’s about finding scalable strategies to squeeze the most revenue from every asset and customer. That’s why Yadegar swears by CLV as a vital metric to assess and optimize revenue over time.

So, how exactly do you entice customers to keep buying? 

They have to trust you. Trust comes with consistency. And a solid product is merely a facet of that. 

Consistency must start before a customer even makes a purchase. Meaning? Your marketing materials need to communicate the same value and message from ad to post-purchase.

Yadegar shares what consistency looks like for SaaS and ecommerce brands:

• Ecommerce: Consistent product and marketing messaging, all the way through check-out and post-purchase experience
• SaaS: Consistent marketing promises, from ad copy to a demo of the software and the user experience

Consistent messaging means every customer touchpoint offers the same brand value and tone, which fosters the customer trust necessary for a revenue-driven strategy. 

The takeaway

Bottom line: Revenue operations give you the focus you need to keep your business not just running, but thriving. That said, not every biz can afford or keep track of an internal revenue marketing team.

Revenue marketing is a choreographed dance between a connected marketing and sales process, robust data insights, and a bulletproof customer experience. 

Unfortunately, the quest for revenue growth can often lead you to dead-ends and wasted ad spend. We know you don’t want that. As a revenue-obsessed, award-winning marketing agency, we don’t want that for you either. 

Let us help you with the heavy lifting and give you the best possible ROI on every marketing dollar you spend.

Book a consultation, and let’s drive revenue growth together!