It’s satisfying to see principles that we’ve touted for years enjoy more traction and visibility in today’s Sales 2.0 world. The concept of revenue-minded marketing is a prime example. A post today in a Marketo’s blog calls out the new focus on sales and marketing alignment intended to maximize each function’s specific skills and what they do best. In fact, the software vendor urges marketers to be more “revenue focused”. Amen, indeed.

The message to marketers? It’s never been enough to only be good at “messaging”. To be a sales-minded marketer, your content must be informed by sales-mindedness. Familiarity with the world your customers live in. Being conversant in their daily issues. At the very least, all terminology of campaigns and product materials must reflect the language of customers and prospects. Ditto for website copy, collateral, and anything else seen by customers, users and prospects.

Tools such as those available from vendors like Marketo and Eloqua among other things enable predicting future revenue based on present efforts. When investments in marketing generate revenue, and everyone can see and measure the cause-and-effect, you make course corrections faster. You can better allocate your budget. Added bonus: making your budget case for a bigger investment will not fall on deaf ears of management. And then you’re free to focus on even more revenue-minded marketing content.