Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

How to get Leads from LinkedIn [video]

Hi again, LinkedIn's core value proposition remains pretty much the same. It legitimizes putting your CV online, keeping it up-to-date, and putting your best foot forward for future job prospects, for most people. That's fundamentally its core proposition. A lot of us use it for different purposes, but that's essentially it. That, therefore, means that lots of people keep their profile really up-to-date, which makes it a great source for leads. Today, I want to explore how to get leads from LinkedIn. I've explored great advice from other bloggers, including a couple of our own articles, and READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales, Tactics|

Aligning Marketing and Sales [video]

Hi. Aligning marketing and sales is hardly a new topic, but we still get asked about it all the time and I've been asked to talk about it again today. I'm going to refer to what some other experts on marketing and sales alignment have said is the best way to go about aligning marketing and sales. Well, for starters, are we aligning marketing to sales or are we aligning sales to marketing? I'll answer that and lots of other questions in today's show. To do that, I'm going to refer to doctor Google, find out what READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Alignment|

Brand identity template for B2B [video]

Brand matters. It matters to you and it matters to your customers, what you stand for, and how you stand for those things really does matter, but how do you create a brand that really stands out? That's why in today's show, I'll give you a great brand identity template for B2B. This week we're going to take a look at brand and specifically through the lens of brand identity template. We'll look at 50 brand identity templates and synthesize them, and then explain why they fundamentally, all of them collectively and individually miss the mark, completely READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

How to do a webinar in 8 steps [video]

Webinars remain a super-popular tool for marketers to use, but very few low-budget, or I should say low-resource, marketers are using them well or often. I want to give you a practical guide on how to do a webinar. There's loads of content on why webinars are a good idea. I want to get very practical and talk about how to do a webinar, and so I began by Googling the very expression that I'm presuming to write about, "how to do a webinar". Here's what we found. There were four articles that I started with. I'm READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Skills|

Five steps to get your partner marketing plan to stick

Your ability to get traction with a partner marketing plan has almost nothing to do with the length of a document and a lot to do with how many people and who built it. We've been working quite closely with a large vendor on building partner marketing plans over the last couple of years. I want to share with you a little of what we've learned today. I've personally led the building of over 400 Go to market plans for vendors, and now in the last couple of years have led an initiative for the building of READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

5 key skills of a marketing manager [video]

Today I want to talk about the five key skills of a marketing manager. Now, if you're an individual contributor, that is you're just one person and you're working for the marketing manager, I'm really making this video for your boss. Also, if it's just one of you, again this is not really for you. I want to make really clear, I want to talk about the skills of the manager of marketing needs. Hi, we have met, I'm Hugh Macfarlane and I'm super passionate about B2B marketing and in particular I want to make B2B marketing READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Skills|

Cold calling email template [video]

I've previously argued the need to find your Valid Business Reason (VBR), is the reason why the prospect wants to meet with you, not the reason you want to meet with them. You must find that VBR before presuming to ask for a meeting. Today, I'll go one step further and I'll give you a cold calling email template. Close.io recommends 5 guidelines for cold calling email templates. Use the person’s name in the subject line. Make the subject line as specific as possible. If you wonder if it sounds too much like a marketing email, then READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

A channel partner strategy in 4 steps and 60 seconds

Selling a great solution to a willing market through the wrong channel is almost always going to generate really disappointing results. Marketers, particularly consumer marketers often use the term channel to mean a tactic where there's a channel. Radio is a channel, TV is a channel. Salespeople and most B2B marketers use the term channel to mean the sales channel, directly, indirectly or type of indirect, et cetera. Now that we're on the concept of sales channel, what kind of channel partner strategy is going to work best for your business and how do we make that READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

The B2B marketing funnel is dead, isn’t it?

"The B2B marketing funnel's dead, and here's the proof." That was the headline of an article I read recently on salesforce.com's blog. It's a nice, short article with two principal arguments. The first was from SiriusDecisions: that 70% of the journey is complete before the buyer wants to engage with the sales force. The second: that there are multiple buyers involved and, in fact, that the number of buyers involved in decision's gone up. But is that an argument the B2B marketing's funnel's dead? No it's not, and there's a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

B2B advertising strategy in 7 steps [video]

You don't need any more leads. Seriously, you don't need any more leads. Well, at least you don't need any of the wrong kind of leads. Your B2B advertising strategy needs to be set to generate more of the right kind of prospects. There's simply no point spending any money on dealing with leads, generating or dealing with leads of the wrong sort. With digital advertising, you get so much immediate and powerful feedback that you'll very quickly get absorbed into the ideation, creation, testing, measurement, improvement cycle, and that's a good thing. It'll generate great results, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

About Hugh Macfarlane