Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

Why you should fix your brand credibility before your visibility [video]

We marketers spend a lot of time making our brands visible. Before you do that though, make sure your brand is credible before you make it visible. Here are 4 ways to increase your brand credibility. What your brand stands for is important, but it's not important if you're not being considered. You need first to be in the considered set of companies or brands like yours, or as I like to say, 'positioned in the category'. In plain English, what people think about you doesn't matter if they're not thinking about you. We absolutely need to READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|

3 ways to use personalised video as a marketing tactic

With so much of our marketing automated these days, how do you become really, really personal? I'm going to show you how to get very personal with your market today using personalised video. Three ways to use personalised video as a marketing tactic: You’re talking to a prospect and you want to show that you’ve done your homework, you really understand them, things that they’re trying to deal with, and you wanted to appeal very personally to earn the right to a meeting with a high-quality target, or high-value target. A "how to" video using screen share. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Tactics|

Search or display advertising for B2B [video]

Should you use search or display ads for B2B? And what should the landing page offer? Should you follow up with telemarketing or an email sequence? We're going to answer those questions in this blog. So, should you use search or display ads for B2B? You probably already know I'm going to say "it depends". But I'm not going to duck the question. It depends on only one thing, and it's easy to get your head around this topic. I'll show you how to think about it, then what you should be doing with keywords, landing page READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Start with why your buyers need a solution like yours [video]

If you are one of the over three million viewers who've seen Simon Sinek's Ted Talk - Start with why, you'd know that 'the why' is more important than 'the how' or 'the what'. The what is your product, the how is the unique way you do what you do, and the why is what you believe, but it also aligns to the motivation that your clients have to engage you (or someone like you) at all. So we need to start with answering the question, "Why do I need you?". But does your website do a READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Never copy marketing tactics

Should you copy marketing tactics from a competitor or your own past successes? The answer is categorically "no", and I'll show you why. I'll also show you how to build a tailored campaign based on your unique market segments instead! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2xVxeaWhOE We all learn from each other, and the more experience you accumulate, the more value you bring to your company. So, copying is inevitable. Today I'm going to show you two strategy examples that show why copying marketing tactics - at least copying in their entirety, is not the way to go. Who matters just as much READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Tactics|

Best B2B advertising tactics

With so many digital advertising options available to a B2B marketer, and so few dollars to spend, what are the best B2B advertising tactics worth spending your time and effort on? We've done a whole lot of online advertising for align.me and for our clients - and here's our pick for the 7 best advertising tactics for B2B, in order of importance: Remarketing website visitors Retargeting on social platforms Lookalike retargeting Custom lists Search Lookalike customers and prospects Display There's our top 7. But before we go into those tactics specifically, let me first talk about digital READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

How to leave voicemails that actually get call backs [video]

We’ve recently been discussing how to earn a new meeting. In this week’s show, we’ll explore the best B2B voicemail script for complex sales. https://youtu.be/07PHL9j4rS8 In complex B2B, a full-time and well-skilled outbound cold caller might manage one or two conversations a day. A sales professional that gives cold calling only one or two hours a day might be lucky to have one or two calls per week where they actually conversed with the right person. How do we improve not the conversion rate but the conversation rate? If your marketing is really delivering for you, then you READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Telemarketing scripts [video]

Telemarketing scripts are aimed to help the uncomfortable get comfortable, and the poor get good. They rarely do either. Today I’m going to show you a number of telemarketing scripts, summarise them, and make one big change to that summarised set to help you get more effective at telemarketing for complex B2B selling. https://youtu.be/5jVSY_Ihml4 Telemarketing needs a flow, not a script I’ve reviewed practical recommendations from three sites and summarised them. I found generally that they’ve tended to be all about manipulation, trying to manage a conversation. In complex B2B, there are some really important elements going READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Set your B2B marketing strategy around buyers’ maturity

There are no obviously good ideas in strategy. The very same strategy that you saw somebody else employ to great effect, could be completely the wrong idea for you. And, the same strategy that you have employed previously might just be the wrong strategy as well. How you set your target market, your channel, your product, your pricing, your competitive strategy - that is everything - depends on the answer to one simple question. Get that right and strategy's a walk in the park. Get it wrong and you're dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pMwRuWVYS0 Set your strategy around your buyers' READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Ask pain funnel questions in the right order [video]

The best pain funnel questions, asked at the wrong time, will lose you a deal you might have won if you’d asked them in the right order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-7mxhOkFgA Popular sales training company Sandler uses the term ‘pain funnel questions’ to describe the questions a sales person should ask. I’m going to show you today that their questions are good enough. If you master these good-enough questions, you'll go a long way to succeeding in sales. And if ‘good enough’ is good enough, then have a go at mastering pain funnel questions. But if you want to excel, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales, Skills, Strategy, Tactics|

About Hugh Macfarlane