Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

B2B marketing tactics [video]

What are the best B2B marketing tactics? To answer that question, I've looked at 5 really excellent articles and the data from over 1,000 B2B marketing plans. The essence of this is not particularly surprising, but what we don't want to prioritize might surprise you. https://www.youtube.com/embed/-kpSYxUiEeU Four things you really need to have in place are: Basic inbound. Accelerated inbound. Targeted outbound. Tools for your sales people. Let me unpack this a little bit and give you the 14 tactics that really make sense for you to focus on, and those that you might want to READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

B2B marketing campaigns – great examples and a 7-step plan [video]

B2B campaigns built around a single tactic that either flies or flops make 1 hero for every 99 zeroes. A B2B marketing campaign should be complete, that is end-to-end, and it should be optimised over time. I'll show you 5 great articles that between them reveal about 20 B2B marketing campaigns. Then I’ll outline 7 steps to building your B2B campaigns https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bxu75Xk3l4A First, I'll summarise key learnings from those 5 articles, and then I'll argue why I think we're looking at this completely the wrong way around. What they say Article 1 Our first article is READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

What’s the cost of content marketing?

What's the cost of content marketing? I'll assume that you've bought into the need for content marketing, and you just want to know what it should cost. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZF7CQk-FjBs Conclusions Content marketing is just a part of your total marketing, and your marketing spend should be somewhere between 2 -5% of your gross revenue. You should allow for the following: Planning ($25,000): $5,000 for an external audit. $20,000 to build your strategy. Execution: Insource for $80,000 per person, on average. You're going to have some younger team members, and some more senior, and therefore wages will change; READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Buyer’s journey: A framework for strategy

The buyer's journey started as a framework for choosing tactics and we still use it for that purpose. It turns out though, it's got a really big strategic impact as well. Let me share that with you. https://www.youtube.com/embed/_mDXmg3pQcw Buyer’s journey Let's start with the buyer's journey. The transition between gap and need turns out to be the most important transition, that is how you shape the buyer's concept. I'm going to dive into that quite a bit and explain the impact that all of that has on your strategy. The transition between gap and need READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Buyer’s journey: A framework for tactics [video]

It doesn't matter what you do to the buyer, what matters is where they get to, as a result of what you do. The buyer's journey is a simple concept to help us to shape tactics that progress buyers, and that's what I want to share with you. https://www.youtube.com/embed/_mDXmg3pQcw When I coined the phrase ‘buyer’s journey’ in 2003, in the Leakey Funnel, I didn't think for a moment that I was inventing anything, and I wasn't. The buyer’s journey existed as a concept, however not yet as a phrase. I coined the phrase to express the READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Can you have too many sales people?

How many salespeople do you need and how do you work that out? I looked at all of the funnel plans that we have in the database and I found that on average the companies in our database are growing at just short of 50%. However, the size of their sales force is growing at just on 80%. What on earth is going on and how should you calculate the size of your sales force and how it needs to change over time? Let's take a look at that in this blog. Use the objectives section READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales|

B2B marketing and the Black Swan [video]

I've just been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, The Black Swan. It is a fantastic book with some really important lessons for marketers. Essentially, a Black Swan is a rare, unpredictable and big impact event. Despite this, we try to retrospectively fit justification to explain why it occurred. If your forecasts are less than 100% accurate, then there are some great lessons in today's show. https://www.youtube.com/embed/qtmJMdgz7Cc What he said: Let me give you the theory of The Black Swan. Taleb makes appropriate apologies to West Australians, my fellow countrymen, about Black Swans, because over there they're READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|

Content Marketing Plan Template [video]

You understand the importance of content marketing. We are creating more content and we are consuming it more carefully, so good content really matters. I scoured some great sites, looking for the best tips on content marketing and in particular, a content marketing plan template. I’ll take you through these articles and then share with you our template for creating a content marketing plan. https://www.youtube.com/embed/V-64_3dZnSA I found lots of great ideas about how to approach and create content and, some good individual element templates, that is, templates for building some of the pieces, but, not so READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Template for risk sharing [video]

Do you ever get involved in risk sharing conversations, either as the buyer or the seller, but don't quite know how to construct a reasonable risk sharing model? I’m going to provide you with a template for risk sharing, and I'll explain why it needs to be deconstructed from price and value. https://www.youtube.com/embed/cZEdcbYqPf0 How to build equitable risk sharing The following 6 steps outline a process for reaching an equitable arrangement on risk sharing between you and a client. Make sure that the value you are delivering is excellent. Make sure that your price for that READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Skills|

Sample go to market strategy for B2B

We want B2B marketing to be a respected management science around the world and we want to play a role in helping it get there. As a part of that, I went looking for samples of go-to-market strategies, but in the top 5 results I didn't find a single go-to-market strategy sample. What I found was loads of theory about the processes that you should use to form your plan. So if no one's willing to share theirs, I'm going to share my Go to Market Strategy. Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/QKcsjmK7vyo Based on the 4000+ plans we've READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Strategy|

About Hugh Macfarlane