Strategy

Step up your lead generation game with these 5 tips

As we all know, your website is your shop window. In this day and age your website’s look and feel along with its functionality can really turn your customers on or off, there is hardly anything worse than a dated website that gives you a sense of the early 2000s. Nostalgia is a no-go when it comes to your inbound marketing and B2B lead generation. Your website is the tool which lets you attract, engage, convert, close and delight. Obviously, the conversion part is fundamental to this process, but how do you get there? The answer READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Sales, Strategy, Tactics|

Are your sales people merely communicating value – or creating it?

One of the problems with creating generic “unique value propositions” is that they are just that - generic. They might be a useful basis for communicating mass-marketing messages, but they are not a suitable basis for a truly productive sales conversation. To be truly effective - and to have real impact - your sales people need to be crafting uniquely customised value propositions for each individual prospect (and often each significant stakeholder). If that sounds like hard work, it is. But here’s why it is worth it… Your prospects are tired of generic value propositions that do READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Strategy, Tactics|

B2B Marketing tactics with high closure rates

Want to receive more blogs like this? Subscribe to our twice weekly B2B marketing insights! In B2B marketing, Marketing tactics early in the journey have more effect on closure rates than sales tactics later in the journey (which is why search beats social, blogging beats traditional, and it doesn’t matter what tactics the sales team uses). What affect do various tactics have on closure rates at each stage of the buyer's journey? If you have listened to some of my recent blogs, you know that in 2005 we published the first of our landmark reports into alignment. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|

Demand beats Brand (but only to a point)

Get your copy of our 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment Report In B2B marketing, demand is more important than brand, but only to a point. So, can you have too much demand? If you have listened to some of my recent blogs, you know that in 2005 we published the first of our landmark reports into alignment. What we learned then has shaped much of the debate on the topic of alignment ever since. In 2014 we published the 2013 refresh of the landmark alignment research. What we learned about training, process, automation, structure, tactics, demand generation, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics, Velocity|

B2B marketing strategies and our loose use of common terms

In last week's blog on a B2B marketing definition, I defined B2B marketing as "the planning, execution and measurement of the strategy and the tactics needed to sell a product or service to a business". So the clear point here - apart from the B2B-ness of the definition - is that planning, execution and measurement are separate, and that strategy and tactics are also separate. If you work at McKinsey and like little boxes you could draw this as a 3 x 2 grid. In this blog I'll get into the actual B2B marketing strategies a little, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Velocity|

Marketing automation delivers scale, but not confidence

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 Is Marketing automation really worth the effort and expense? In this week's blog, Hugh delves into findings from the 2013 Sales and Alignment report to show how marketing automation delivers scale, but not always confidence. Even firms just planning to automate marketing have improved efficiencies in marketing's contribution to revenue and customer retention. That's got to be something to consider.

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics, Velocity|

Help Out to Stand Out: Customer-centric to win Business

Imagine for a minute that it is the 1920s and you have been doing the washing by hand your entire life. You have had to fetch water eight to ten times a day from a pump, well or spring to do your washing. Your mother did her washing by hand and so did her parents and everyone before them. Recently you’ve heard about machines in commercial plants that can do a lot of washing automatically and you know people are now buying these machines for their homes. You also, after some contemplation and discussion with friends and READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Strategy, Tactics, Velocity|

A freebie’s cost: a reputation for poor customer service

All customers love a freebie! Right? But, what happens when your good intentions backfire, and you’re left looking like the bad guy, as well as being out of pocket? This week, Hugh shares a few personal stories and examines the relationship between discounting and customer service. He looks at the common mistakes companies make when trying to provide deep discounts, and how to offer these discounts without disappointing your customer.

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales, Strategy|

B2B Sales & Marketing: you talk to people you sound like

Sales training traditionally encourages B2B sales people to “call high” - in fact, it’s hard to keep track of all the articles and publications focused on selling to the C-level (a simple Google search reveals over 100 million hits). “Thought leadership” is no less fashionable amongst the B2B marketing community (over 200 million hits). But if you want to engage at the right level, and stay there as opposed to being bumped down the decision-making stack, you need to bear one simple principle in mind at all times: you’ll end up talking to the person you sound READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Strategy, Tactics|

How to position your brand in the category

We get this wrong all the time. Businesses seek "brand awareness" in order to position their brand prominently in a given category. Unfortunately, while this is all fine and dandy in theory, it is inevitably followed by salespeople complaining about the marketing departments feeble attempt at positioning the qualities of their products and services relative to competitors. Getting your image right sounds like the over-riding priority, but the issue for many businesses is having their brand considered by buyers at all.. In this blog, Hugh helps us think about positioning a little differently, and suggest two approaches and eight tactics we READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|