Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

Shape your market for long-run Product Market Fit

I've argued for years the need to find an unsolved problem and then to become uncommonly good at solving it. But what comes first: the product, the market, or the marketing of that product to that market? Mark Andreessen is the co-founder of Mosaic and Netscape and other businesses, very successful venture capitalist, now on the board of Facebook and HP and eBay. Super smart guy. Andreeseen said that product/market fit, a term that is attributed to him, he said that that's being in a really good market and meeting the needs of that market. Not exactly READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

B2B marketing terminology and definitions – the best 50 [reference list]

When George Bernard Shaw said that England and America were "two countries divided by a common language", he might as well have been talking about Marketing and Sales. In fact, he might have been talking just about different marketers themselves as a profession. Marketers are shocking for using the same phrase to mean very different things. A personal favourite is the confusion between branding and positioning. More on that later. We're going to have a go this week at building the definitive source of B2B marketing terminology and definitions. We'll offer up some phrases, with definitions, and invite you READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

Long tail search for B2B [video]

Hello. We're going to talk about long tail search today. Slight change of form if you're used to watching my video blogs, they're a little bit more produced than this is, and the next 3 are going to be somewhat in this format. Leanna, who normally produces my videos, is in New York, Talon who's being trained is already becoming great, but he's got a lot on his plate, so I'm going to make the format quite simple. Also I'm traveling, so I need to do them remotely anyway. So, slightly different format, but I'm going to READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Would I lie to you? [Video]

There's not enough honesty in business. I want to tell you everything I know, exactly what I am doing, and why. And I don't need to be prompted to be that transparent. But is that really what you want? There is so much technology available to me as a marketer to track what you are doing and what you are interested in. Not you as a statistic in an average anonymous behaviour indicator in my analytics software, but you as an individual business. This week we're exploring just how much I know about you, and how much of READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen|

6 reasons to use LinkedIn for business [video]

There are plenty of how-to blogs, videos and other web pages for LinkedIn. The bigger question is why use LinkedIn for business? There is no doubt that having your CV online is a great idea for getting recruited. Get busy. And sure we should be promoting our businesses via all channels. The problem is that every communication has a curve to learn and then another to master the channel. LinkedIn, like any medium, takes time to master. Let's agree that even the smallest business should have a basic company page, and every person - employee or READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Crafting the perfect funnel model of your imperfect funnel

You work really hard for three years and does that leave you with 2% of the market or 20% of the market? How do you know? How much market do you need? We’ll explore how to make a perfect funnel model of your imperfect funnel in this week’s show. Here’s how the basic math works. Start at the bottom, how many sales do you need, work out what your leakage is by each stage and do the backward math. Now it can be that simple, but that invites all sorts of questions about what a good funnel READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Velocity|

How to prepare and run the perfect prospect meeting

Imagine that you’re in a prospect meeting. You’re meeting a client (or prospective client) for the first time ever, and you’ve got seven really cracking questions that you’re going to ask them. You might be using Spin Selling (which teaches us to use troubling questions) or Conceptual Selling (which is somewhat more of a bespoke for each opportunity). Still, whatever approach you’re taking, you’re certainly going into that meeting armed with some great questions that are insightful and penetrative. With a breath, you asked your first and wait – using golden silence. Your prospect considers your question READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Sales|

Trade shows: an expensive way to reach new markets

Spending the day at Salesforce World Tour in Melbourne provided ample evidence that events work wonderfully well for the organisers and often poorly for those who sponsor or take booths. For context, this event is largely pitched at existing users, not prospects, so it's preaching to the choir somewhat. Let's start with what was amazing at this event: mostly everything Salesforce did, but scale particularly. In the keynote theatre, the speakers were not on stage but wandered through the large crowd set out 'in the round' with a couple of static camera guys and a mobile cameraman READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Baskets full of nurtures – our favourite tactics for recycling

How do you get those recalcitrants - the nervous nellies and those past failures - into your funnel as quickly as possible? A part of the answer is you probably don't want them there quickly. You want them there confidently. You want, for them to want, to really be in your funnel. In this week's show we're going to explore the difference between nurturing and recycling, and some of our favourite tactics for carrying that nurture message.

About Hugh Macfarlane