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, READ MORE ›

Hi, this week we're having a look at marketing plan template. I'll show you five marketing plan template sources we’ve found.  I'll analyse them, synthesize them, draw a few conclusions, offer our own conclusions, and then give you a couple of free sources of marketing plan template. Let me start with the conclusions. You can obviously get this from the end, but let me give the conclusions right now, and then I'll build up a case for these. A great B2B marketing plan template includes: objectives, the market problem, your target market, solution, channel, your velocity, READ MORE ›

Hi. B2B Marketing certainly has a lot of similarities with B2C Marketing, but it's also different in some really fundamental ways. Today I want to distil those differences down to 4 big differences, and then give you 2 "so what?" insights into the differences between B2B Marketing and B2C Marketing. The first point is about motivation; B2B marketers are trying to fix, accomplish, or avoid something. It's not about wants, it's about needs. More particularly, it's about the problem that gives rise to the need. What are they trying to fix, or avoid, in order to READ MORE ›

  This week I went looking for a B2B marketing forum anywhere in the world. What I found was really disappointing, a little surprising and disappointing. There are not a lot of events that genuinely set out to be a B2B marketing forum. Those that do are largely dominated by consultants and sponsors. From what I did learn, I think there are five basic truths about a really great B2B marketing forum. I want to share those with you today. A great B2B marketing forum would: Deal with both strategy and tactics, but don't split them Content READ MORE ›

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 ›

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 ›