Strategy

The B2B marketing funnel is dead, isn’t it?

"The B2B marketing funnel's dead, and here's the proof." That was the headline of an article I read recently on salesforce.com's blog. It's a nice, short article with two principal arguments. The first was from SiriusDecisions: that 70% of the journey is complete before the buyer wants to engage with the sales force. The second: that there are multiple buyers involved and, in fact, that the number of buyers involved in decision's gone up. But is that an argument the B2B marketing's funnel's dead? No it's not, and there's a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

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|

How to create a marketing plan

Marketing plans are an essential part of every marketing initiative. Whether you’re constructing a plan for a multimillion dollar company or a small start-up, a marketing plan is crucial in that it ensures your marketing objectives are aligned with your business goals and strategy, and helps keep you focused through assigning tasks and establishing timelines. It also needs to be individually tailored around the product or service being offered. This individualisation can make it particularly difficult to decide how to create a marketing plan. It can take hours to develop a good plan of action and do READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How to beat your competition by ignoring them

B2B competition strategy is like just every other aspect of strategy - there is no 'of course' approach to strategy for addressing your competition. Anyone who tells you that you always need a competition strategy in B2B is spending too much time looking behind them, and not looking at where they are going. In sales and marketing, where we are going is to the buyer. Often, the best B2B competition strategy is to ignore the competition all together and just focus on the buyer. Except for that strange stage where you can't and you actually have READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

A market strategy example: why too much demand is bad

Here is a great go to market strategy example of why crude assumptions are dangerous. Brand / Demand / Enablement need a balance, and it changes over time. B2B marketers seem to be dragged between two extremes at the whim of Sales: We're either just doing branding 'stuff' or we're supposed to focus on leads. So which should it be? Today we'll use a go to market strategy example to show why too much demand is just as bad as too little, and how to get the balance right. Want to receive more blogs like this? Subscribe READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Product Marketing Strategy and why 50% of a solution is 100% of a mistake

You sell what you are good at. The market has taught you what is attractive, and what is not. So you should gear up production and sell like crazy, right? Well, no. The product marketing strategy you have now will not be the right strategy for the next phase of the market. It is rare that a product marketing strategy deliberately only solves a half of the client's problem. But accidentally solving only half of their problem, or meeting only 50% of their need, is 100% wrong 20% of the time. There are five phases in any READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

New Sales & Marketing Strategy and Why Old Ways Fail

Your old strategy for sales and marketing just won't work. And neither will your next one, or the one after that. Sure they will work for a while, and then they won't. What's going on? Buyers change as their own familiarity with a new innovation changes. Put differently, when a new idea is put to the market, it will appeal to a certain segment of the market. Then a different segment, then a different segment again. So, should your strategy for sales and marketing be based on the industries these segments operate in? No, absolutely not. Then READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How do you sell to the C-Suite? You don’t

It’s a question that comes up a lot, and sometimes we even ask ourselves: How should you approach the c-suite? How do you get the attention and time of that elusive senior person who you need to get onside early and who, ultimately, can approve your deal? Often, the answer is: you don’t. And you shouldn’t. Let me show you why. Before we sell, we solve – so who is having the problem? Often the person who can approve the deal is not the person who actually has the problem that the deal is going to READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How to get your team to buy in to your problem choice

In the wonderful African proverb, we are reminded that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. In this week's show, we'll explore how to get the whole tribe to buy in to your Sales and Marketing plan and to join you on your journey. Although the focus is on problem choice, the approach holds true for all decision making. Want to receive more blogs like this? Subscribe to our twice weekly B2B marketing insights! Get your copy of our 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment Report Unless you are READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Your Marketing is probably helping your competitors more than you

Troubling the market about the wrong problem may actually help your competitor more than it helps you. Businesses spend money to fix problems or to avoid problems in the future, therefore buyers want a solution to meet their needs and perceived problem. If they believe that they have a problem that a competitor solves better than you do, they will go with your competitor. You may try to convince them that they actually need the solution that you offer but that will be very hard work and low yield. Instead, it is best to change their READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|