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This third blog post of the “7 things a CEO needs to know about marketing” series focuses on the B2B buyer journey. You may believe your company sells stuff to the market – like your products or services, however, that is your seller view and not a buyer view. You indeed have products and services, and you definitely engage in activities that lead to sales but the truth is people are buying what they [...]
Many CEOs tell me about marketing companies that call or email them to sell automated nurture, or paid search, or SEO, or other services that they assure the CEO is what works. There are certainly some marketing tactics that one might consider fundamental to many business operations but the real truth is, and the #2 in my series of 7 things every CEO should know about marketing, tactics that work for one or more [...]
The Marketing Ante What do you, as a CEO, need to know about marketing? If you have a marketing professional in a leadership role on your team, you might initially think you don’t need to know that much. Of course, how do you know if they are doing a good job? If you are a CEO that has part-time marketing staff, or maybe just tactical marketing support (graphics design, email marketing, etc.), and/or directly [...]
Best Practices for Today’s Virtual Events One very obvious phenomenon during the COVID-19 crisis has been the great increase in online live and recorded webinars and full-on virtual events (multi-session events). We have been directly involved in increasing the use of both and both creating and project managing these events. Here are some best practices to keep in mind: Develop guidelines for the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) Some SMEs have done webinars, and some [...]
Why not to cut marketing during the COVID-19 crisis? As I work to provide marketing strategy and planning for customers during this COVID-19 crisis, I see many B2B businesses choosing to cut their marketing spend as part of their cost savings measures. I certainly understand their motives, but I strongly suggest that those businesses continue their marketing, and perhaps even increase their marketing spend and cut elsewhere. Why do I recommend this approach? One [...]
Note: Be sure to check out the Trade Show Dollar Challenge at the end of this post. Putting trade show dollars to work. Many companies are tightly squeezing their dollars right now, and that is understandable. One easy target is to pocket unspent or refunded trade show dollars as quick savings. This too is understandable. However, what if you can save a good portion of those 2020 trade show dollars while also investing today [...]
For many businesses today, the first reaction to the current social and economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic is to cut costs by downsizing staff or reducing paid hours, by shutting down production, or other measures. Every business will have to make hard choices. However, if your business, any type of business, firmly believes that you will survive this and you want to grow quickly after this is over, then you need to [...]
One conversation that catches my attention with B2B marketers is the “why don’t we just host and promote our own webinars instead of spending all those dollars with media companies?” That’s a great question and the answer is based on a clear understanding of what a webinar “is” and “what media companies sell.” Anatomy of a webinar The first thing is to have clarity on the required properties of a successful webinar. There are [...]
B2b marketers, when you get sales leadership (or better yet, even just a few of the truly good sales people) in a room, what information should you get from them to create more success for both marketing and sales in your organization? What are the most important questions to ask sales? There are two key topic areas where your questions will serve you best — value propositions and lead quality/quantity. Value Proposition What do [...]
If you have ever fished, you know that having the right bait greatly increases your chance of catching fish compared to just having a plain steel hook in the water (it’s shiny but not fooling anyone!). If marketing content is a fishing analogy, then your content is the bait. When engaging marketing prospects to respond (generate leads), there is one truth you cannot change: if you don’t have the right content, you will fail. Instead [...]