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 [...]
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 [...]
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.
This B2B Marketing Playbook (series of articles and then a real book) is designed specifically to cover the unique challenges that one-person (or small staff) marketers face. The end goal is to accelerate the overall process enabling you to deliver all of the full-service marketing deliverables required to drive sales success for your business.
In the first post on this topic, “Marketing in the new world – the cheese is moved,” I covered the first marketing new world order (my term) that states: that technology has completely and radically changed the way your potential and existing customers engage with and purchase from your company. Your prospects don’t have to rely on sales personnel to gain the information they need early in the buying process [...]