Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

Tactics need to progress, recycle and nurture

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of align.me, writes... Marketers usually choose their tactics carefully. They will ask questions like "what will work for my audience?", and "what tactics can I execute well, allowing us to stand out from competitors?". But we don't often select tactics with a clear sense of the start to finish journey for the buyer - the "buyer's journey". If you've been following us for a while, you'll already know that the buyer's journey is central to our approach to B2B marketing. And you'll likely also know that we believe marketers need to choose READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog, Tactics|

Forget ‘pipe’ – only measure deals won or lost

If you started with 100 leads, and you closed 20, what was your success rate? 20% right? No, maybe much better. There's a key piece of data missing from this initial analysis: how many deals did you lose? Let's run that again. Start with 100 leads, close 20, lose (or reject) 40. Your success rate was 33% (20 out of 60 that have been decided). The 40 still in your funnel could swing either way and so cannot be included. One of the reasons we often overly simplify this calculation (20 from 100 rather than 20 from READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog, Velocity|

Don’t ask sales people to record Salesforce history

We all know of the power of a good CRM, chock-full of history about every interaction your business has had with any contact, account or opportunity. Your marketing automation system probably plugs in beautifully to your CRM so that the buyer actions and your automated responses are all recorded. Marketing nirvana? Maybe not. Half of the problem is that most record only YOUR actions, not THEIR responses. The power of knowing how buyers have acted, what they are interested in, what they have read, how they responded to survey questions is obvious, but many businesses stop at READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Alignment, B2B marketing blog, Tactics, Velocity|

Beware the trap of the new rules of Marketing and PR

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of align.me, writes... I'm only early in to reading David Meerman Scott's book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Great so far. Well-written and compelling. I hope to have more to write about this book as I get further in. In it, he tells the story of two companies and their response to fast-breaking customer dissatisfaction in blogs and forums. Briefly: Sony BMG and Digital Rights Management An authoritative blogger complained about Sony BMG's software on their CDs used to protect their property The complaint was not that they sought protection, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

Funnel Measurement best practice

A member of our LinkedIn Group - Funnel Management - asked a straight question: what are the best-in-class metrics metrics? The full discussion is within this Funnel Management discussion. We have three sources to draw on in answering this question: Our day-to-day work work in building plans for growth businesses; Occasional detailed funnel metrics work for larger clients - diving deep into their funnel and looking for incremental improvements every month or quarter (Kaizen for the funnel) The sales and marketing alignment study we did with MarketingProfs.com where we looked - amongst other things - at the READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

Excellent insights into social media (mainly blogging)

Just listened to an excellent webinar with Chris Baggott from Compendium - also co-founder of Exact Target. It was hosted by Tobias Schremmer of MarketingProfs. Key points I heard: 80% of people who read your blog entries are strangers. So blogging is an excellent way to get found for the first (and only) time. Sure, try to 'sell' RSS link, but sell some other next step. My take: blogging is part credential, and part troubling. So make sure the blog entry is discussing how the problem plays out, and make explicit the link to the next ste. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

How much of your ‘list’ isn’t there anymore?

A customer / fellow Funnel Fiend recently sent me a link to an article by John Gibbs discussing the effect of a recessed economy on the funnel. You can read it here https://marketingexecutives.biz/The-Waning-Marketing-Funnel His basic argument is that during the downturn, many people on your list have moved on - more than usual. One of the solutions posed of course is to outsource your list. If normal tenure of a contact on your target list is 3 years, then you can be assured that every year 33% of your list is wrong. 3% a month. If you READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

How to align your b2b marketing to the way businesses buy

Hugh was in Paris helping Cisco gain additional velocity in the funnels of their partners. He presented along with Martin Lindstrom, William Aruda, Marc Lewis and many others. Prior to the presentation, Hugh gave a short interview introducing the buyer's journey. You can watch the presentation here Would you rather see the Funnel Vision articles as video (like this) or text (as they are usually)? Please let us know by commenting below.

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

We’re seeking sales, marketing & training professionals

Your experience as a sales and marketing professional has already given you strong and grounded insights into what works and what doesn’t. And because you’re an avid reader / student of great B2B sales and marketing, you’ve got all the theories down pat.But there’s a substantial gap in the market, and you might be just the person to fill it. Sales and marketing alignment remains a top priority for 1 in 3 of the C-suite of global businesses, despite (or perhaps because of) a shrinking global market. Your experience as a sales and marketing professional has already READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|B2B marketing blog|

About Hugh Macfarlane