Measurable marketing services for business owners ready to invest in sustainable growth
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 [...]
The goal of any B2B lead generation program is to ultimately generate as many actionable leads as possible for the sales team. There are certainly plenty of topics around an approach, but the one area I want to focus on now is the absolute commitments that marketing and sales must make to each other to create an environment that will produce success. At the heart of any B2B lead generation program must be an [...]
What interesting sales data points are you seeing right now? This week I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients. He manages a B2B sales team and pointed out an interesting statistic that has emerged regarding how his sales team is performing during this “stay-at-home” period. Basically, his sales team has improved by 70% in terms of the average time for first follow-up on leads. In other words, while his sales team [...]
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 [...]
B2B Marketing Department Playbook - Chapter 4: Marketing investments you can't skip (just because you lack resources) As a one-person or small-staff B2B marketing department, there is likely a tension between executing campaigns/tactics that are visible to the rest of the company and internal marketing investments (which are foundational to delivering the quality and results for those campaigns/tactics). I get it. Your management team wants to measure every dollar you spend. However, an important [...]
Chapter 3: Defining What Success Will Look Like For a smaller marketing department, it is even more crucial to create and implement a plan quickly to inspire confidence, expand your budget, and grow your marketing investments and success for the company. You can’t hide behind much when it’s just you. Amazingly, I have discovered that in marketing groups of all sizes, one of the fundamental weaknesses has been clearly defining what success will look [...]
With your inventory scores in hand (see Pre-requisite Work), we are ready to talk about how you can examine your scores and start considering what will be a priority in hiring (as budget allows) or outsourcing to accomplish your marketing mission as you progress. The good news is that you have both internal and external sources of knowledge and skills to fill gaps for you along the way. Below we will review these source options following the inventory form categories and then discuss priorities in terms of what you might consider first as you build your team and capabilities.
As a one-person (or small staff) B2B marketing shop, the logical place to start is to map out (take inventory of) the current knowledge and skills you can competently bring to the table yourself, the knowledge and skills you believe you should learn to provide yourself, and then those that you are willing to outsource to ensure the success of your marketing efforts. Taking inventory is the first step in the B2B Marketing Playbook.