Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

How to Create Sustained Success

You might be close to the action in a start-up, or a cog in a big business. Either way, you have a critical role to play in the sustained success of your business. Today, I'm going to show how you can do just that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb0sHeqfLRg I'll be drawing on the work from Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their fantastic book, ‘Built to Last’. They gathered their conclusions by comparing 18 highly-successful companies against 18 companies that did reasonably well. Both groups had the same capital, technology and start time. Despite having similar opportunities, the comparison companies READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Where to use video for B2B

If your blog copy and your web pages are boring and 'me too' – you're dead. People have really short attention spans. Video, on the other hand, is engaging, it allows you to be authentic, and it connects you with your buyers. Today, I'm going to show you where and how to use video for B2B. https://youtu.be/9d-ZAcdOyA4 8 ways to use video in B2B 1. Cold Outreach In no particular order, let's begin with cold outreach. If I'm about to make contact with you as a targeted prospect – and I've done a bit of homework about READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Radically cut your B2B AdWords budget

B2B AdWords can be wickedly expensive. However, they can also be incredibly affordable. The difference doesn't come down to small tweaks but instead, undertaking radical surgery to your existing approach. Today, I want to show you how to make your AdWords both affordable and very profitable. https://youtu.be/Gq6r0JG2t2o Does AdWords work for B2B? It's not unusual to spend $10 for a click. If you're getting a 2% conversion rate once they get to your landing page, then it's going to cost you about $500 for a lead. Sounds okay so far, but half of those will be rubbish, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

How to Recover from a Marketing Mistake

In marketing, we all make mistakes. So much of our work is automated that it's really easy for them to happen. Nevertheless, it's not about whether you do or don’t make a mistake, but how well you recover. That's what I want to talk about today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUVgj22LGFM&t=3s Not all mistakes were created equal I think it helps to separate mistakes: There are simple mistakes, things like, “Hi Firstname.” Frankly, we’ve all done it. It’s embarrassing when it happens and awful when you do it for a customer – as we did a couple of months ago. It READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Tactics|

7 Tips for Crafting Cold Electronic Direct Mail (eDM)

https://youtu.be/aos2WQZkxUQ Cold, bulk emails are an awful tactic. Your buyers hate getting them, you hate the responses, and you also hate the lack of replies you receive. They're ineffective and they can even devalue your brand. But sometimes, just sometimes, they're welcomed and very successful. I want to talk today about those exceptions. Like any marketing message, a good eDM should be highly targeted to the buyer - customisation is key. So, here we'll talk about how to approach two different targets: new movers and strategic targets. New movers are those people who have just moved READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

4 tips for using Electronic Direct Mail (eDM) to promote events

Electronic Direct Mail is a great way to warm a prospect up to some great event, but warm up means warm up, not blast them with too much heat. Let me explain how to warm up your prospects. In B2B, there are all sorts of events that we might want to warm a prospect up to using electronic direct mail or EDM. Some fairly common examples are a physical event itself or a webinar, maybe some kind of launch of a product or service that’s new for you or new for that market. It could also be that READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

7 opportunities to ask for a meeting using triggered Electronic Direct Mail

Electronic direct mail, or EDM, is a great B2B tactic for people who visited your site, discovered a great asset and downloaded it. Because what you really want isn’t to give them an asset, what you really want is to get a meeting. Today, I'll show how to do that with Electronic Direct Mail. If somebody visits your site, reads about an asset, downloads it, and in the process of downloading it, gives you their details, it's safe to assume they're interested. Because of that, everything changes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cfHXuRX3uc We need to use the EDM to earn the READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

6 tips for writing Electronic Direct Mail to nurture your prospects

Not everyone is ready to buy from you right now. But that doesn't mean they won't be ready to buy from you soon. In B2B marketing, we use email nurturing as a tactic to remain positioned with our prospective buyers even when they're not ready to buy. Electronic Direct Mail provides us with an opportunity to remain at the front of a lead’s mind and shape their thinking until they’re ready to buy. In today’s blog, I've got 6 tips for writing Electronic Direct Mail to nurture your prospects. Let me share them with you now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_e6DgvvxOo&feature=youtu.be READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Align Sales&Marketing to double contribution to revenue

Podcast interview with Andy Paul He's has been heroically publishing a daily podcast episode under the Accelerate banner and Andy recently invited me to join his show. We had a ranging discussion about sales and marketing alignment which I thoroughly enjoyed. Here are the highlights: Sales people want to tell their story before the buyer is ready to hear it. The buyer's journey gets gazumped by the seller's process. A sales person needs to know as much as they can about what each buyer already thinks, and Marketing can help. Sales and Marketing don't need to understand how to READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Alignment, Evergreen|

Why email newsletters don’t work [video]

Email newsletters don't work. That might be an unpopular opinion- but it's true! Email newsletters are poor marketing tactics, simply because your inactive buyers don't care about your new features, your recent wins, or your stellar hiring decisions. They simply don't care about your news. This isn't a recent change. Email newsletters have never been a good tactic for the reasons I explained. But email marketing can be your most powerful tactic. The difference? Well, it's the content, of course. https://www.youtube.com/embed/P7G3uTjZrT0 Why email newsletters don’t work Flip your perspective just for a moment. Become one of READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

About Hugh Macfarlane