Introducing 3 key methods for an integrated sales and marketing strategy
Marketing and sales teams have a reputation for not getting along. Working towards the same ultimate goal in different ways means there is often friction. That's why we recommend an integrated sales and marketing strategy.
We’ve all heard that when the sales are coming in it’s because the sales team is doing a great job and when the sales slow then the marketing team needs to pull its socks up. How do we fix this?
The key levers are regular and open communication, an understanding that each team needs the other in order to succeed, and well-implemented systems that help, rather than hinder performance for both teams.
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Traditionally, sales and marketing have different priorities, you can see some examples below. Of course, in an integrated approach, both teams are aware of and support each other's functions too.
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Don't get left behind with your digital marketing strategy, follow these 7 steps to brilliant B2B marketing!
Many Business-to-business (B2B) companies are already successfully getting great results using digital marketing tactics like SEO, PPC, landing page creation, social media and email marketing linked to a CRM marketing automation system or a simple email autoresponse system.
But often, B2B organizations are not getting the most from today's marketing since they don't have a planned approach based on an integrated inbound marketing plan. To create an infographic showing the latest research on how companies are using inbound marketing, we've researched how B2B companies are using digital marketing. The results across different studies show that while many companies are delivering brilliant results, many could do more.
Our updated infographic shows a planned approach based on our B2B digital marketing planning workbook.
We originally published this infographic back in 2012 when a longer guide was available, but we hope…
Real-world examples of PR getting an account-based makeover
You ride on the ABM train because your destination is a results town.
Life is all about the names on your account list that you’ve converted into customers and the revenue you’ve brought in from doing so. There’s a beauty to this kind of commercial simplicity!
Although the endpoint is succinct and straightforward, that doesn’t mean to say the process will be. You’ll likely have to flip, hack, and smash your way through the age-old promotional mix in a way that befits an approach that operates with laserlike focus.
This brings a neat blend of freedom and flexibility when you’re looking at the activities to deploy as part of an ABM campaign. One such area that’s been under the spotlight for me recently in helping companies with ABM strategy is PR: specifically account-based PR. Before we get into the detail on that - first things…
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to leverage inbound marketing on LinkedIn to create a steady stream of high-quality B2B leads and accelerate your sales.
No scraping emails and outbound outreach with your inbound marketing. No mass-spamming. Just an exact step process you can follow to regularly fill in your sales pipeline with high-quality inbound leads.
Let’s get started.
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Step 1: Define and focus on your target market segment
From a glance, this is the easiest step but, at the same time, wrong targeting makes every marketing campaign doomed before it ever started.
There is a famous Russian proverb: A person who chases two rabbits…
A vital step towards marketing digital transformation
In the current climate, digital interactions between brands and their B2B and B2C partners have become a major feature in their customers' buying journey.
Given the complexity of customer interactions via different touchpoints and channels across the modern customer lifecycle as shown in the visual, planning frameworks can help simplify the analysis and prioritization of digital marketing activities.
It is sometimes difficult to orchestrate marketing activities in order to ensure that the right digital tactics are used at the right time and in the right place in that journey, to nurture a customer lead. However, in the partner world it’s a lot more complex, because before you embark on the development of any marketing campaign with or through a partner, an imperative step is to market to that partner to raise awareness of your brand and educate…
If you can get customers to become loyal to your brand, their lifetime value to your company will skyrocket.
Turning customers into loyalists was once the holy grail of branding: If you can get customers to become loyal to your brand, their lifetime value to your company will skyrocket. Today, fanatics are the new loyalists. They don’t just buy your brand all the time, yours is the only brand they buy, so it becomes an important part of their identity.
A loyal customer loves your brand, but they might also buy your competitors’ products half the time. Brand fanatics — like sports fanatics — are fiercely loyal to the point of exclusion. They’ll even turn other items into billboards for your brand by placing your stickers and logos all over their computers, cars, and backpacks.
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ABM creates “markets of one” based on specific accounts, allowing you to make your marketing efforts highly specific and personal
The B2B sales cycle can be a long journey with many twists and turns in the road. For example, when you’re selling a complex service or piece of software that’s going to impact multiple processes within a business, you need to be patient and attentive in your lead nurturing process.
However, here I want to talk about one powerful approach to give your lead nurturing strategy extra fuel and encourage a faster conversion. This is focused on Account-based Marketing (ABM), an approach that has become increasingly popular within B2B organizations over recent years.
In his Smart Insights article, Adrian O’Gara defines ABM as: “a strategic approach that coordinates personalized sales and marketing efforts, to target specific accounts for new business and create deeper and broader relationships with existing customers.”…
Looking to improve your content marketing outcomes? Capture share of mind with a data-driven B2B content marketing strategy that doesn’t cost the earth
The B2B purchase cycle is changing significantly - and so are decisionmakers, who are under more scrutiny than ever to ensure that the solutions they pick deliver ROI. This means they need to get up to speed fast on new technologies, new approaches, new solutions and more. It’s a tall order, which has led the average sales cycle for a B2B solution to increase by 22% in recent years, according to Kapost.
As a result, content is now playing a vital role. B2B decisionmakers are spending more than 57% of the purchase cycle engaging with content before they ever reach out to sales representatives. According to Forrester, on average a person consumes 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchase decision.
That’s…
A content marketing funnel acts as a guide for your prospects and leads. It shows them the specific steps they need to take before purchasing your product or service
According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times more leads than outbound marketing and it’s about 62% less costly. As a B2B brand, if you want to attract more leads to your business and spend less to do so, you should leverage content marketing.
[caption id="attachment_148039" align="aligncenter" width="550"] [Image via Demand Metric][/caption]To do this effectively, you need a content marketing funnel. A content marketing funnel acts as a guide for your prospects and leads. It shows them the specific steps they need to take before purchasing your product or service. It also helps your business get more qualified leads.
In this post, you will learn how to create a…
Don't let your B2B site lose you leads by making these five basic mistakes
There are literally millions of business to business websites out there, but not all of them are as efficient as they could be. The purpose of creating and managing a B2B website is mainly to engage with your audience and turn them from passive viewers into active clients. So, why is it so hard to engage the audience that visits your website?
Firstly, most of the B2B websites don’t respect a set of basic rules that ensure success. They usually focus on the wrong thing, forgetting about the audience. A B2B website is, of course, a way for you to present and advertise your business, but it should be much more than that.
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