What do you need in a B2B marketing plan template? Well, if a template is sort of part process guide, and part communication, then the process would want to be good, and the communication would want it to be clear. I did a bit of research including Marketo and Brainrider, and came up with a few examples. Let me show you what I found. https://www.youtube.com/embed/hqBZ37ur5hg In the template itself, we need a few things: Objectives; The problem that you solve; Who you solve it for, that's your target market; How you solve it, of course that's READ MORE ›

Good B2B email marketing examples are few and far in between. That's a real pity because 90% of B2B marketers use email marketing, 30% of them cite email marketing as their biggest revenue earner, and adding new subscribers to their email marketing as their highest priority. No wonder another study showed that it's a 40 to 1 return, and every dollar spent on email marketing generates $40. https://www.youtube.com/embed/JgV00HIQ8bY The B2B email marketing examples that I found suggest we need to do 5 things. Sell the value of reading the email in the subject. Use the buyer's READ MORE ›

B2B buying behaviour is changing. How is it changing? What do buyers need? What should our strategies be to take advantage of that? There are four big changes that need to be made. https://www.youtube.com/embed/dAW5vJNLfyc The four big changes are: The commoditisation of industries; The rise of procurement kind of related; The changing nature of the active selling that's changing a lot; The rising role of risk. There’s a link between point three and point four. Buyers want less content, more one on one, more insight, and they want collaboration and co-creation. Therefore, we should segment according READ MORE ›

Looking to build B2B CRM strategies? A lot of the fundamentals are really important. The devil is in the details but neither the fundamentals, nor the details are hard to get right. https://www.youtube.com/embed/7NDkvtsvXU8 I asked Dr. Google what advice he'd give someone looking for B2B CRM strategies and the essence was five points. Work out what you want your customers to do, and build your CRM to manage that progression. Segment your database according to where they are in their customer journey. With acquisition, B2C is mostly about data and segmentation and B2B needs these, plus READ MORE ›

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JPeroZL8wzQ I've done some research into marketing planning systems. Let me show you what I found. Our research suggests that marketing planning systems should: Set clear goals Describe a situation Choose a clean and unique proposition Set a differentiated strategy Choose promotional tactics Set action plan Detail the resources and financials Allow you to consider using a framework, using data, and using consultants or facilitators. These are good headings for marketing plan, but that isn't what I was looking for. I'm looking for marketing planning systems. Let me show you what I found, and then I READ MORE ›

What's in the best marketing plan? How do you pull the best marketing plan together? https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZgXDOwYSpvY I went Googling to find that answer and here's what 5 articles told me. Ask tough questions. Describe your situation. List goals for one year. Identify why people will buy. Your target. Your competition. Your tactics and your brand positioning strategy. Set a budget. Write it in somewhere between 1 and 200 pages. Take 2 months to plan. Communicate your plan widely. Let me take you quickly to those 5 articles, because I want to explain why that's the worst READ MORE ›

A lot of training lacks context, more specifically it lacks a framework to pull it all together. It's just bits, but that's where the demand is. Whether it's B2B, or B2C, people seem to want very practical and tactical training. Here's what I would look for if I was looking for B2B marketing training, and maybe what align.me should be providing. https://www.youtube.com/embed/izoUZK-E0_k I'd want the training to be B2B centric first and foremost. Then, I'd want it to give me a solid foundation, so that the tactics I got were within that framework or could operate READ MORE ›