Strategy

Building a B2B marketing plan for COVID normal

The shape of 'COVID normal' for your business will undoubtedly continue to change through the year ahead and will also depend very much on the countries in which you market. But what's abundantly clear is that your B2B marketing plan needs to change for 2021 – and you should be planning for the change now; preparing for it over the next few months. What do we know will change? Some of your market has already disappeared or will over the next year. While we can expect some recoveries in 2021, the OECD expects 2020 to be ugly. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Marketing on a Budget: What to keep and what to cut

Why is it that marketing is one of the first things to get cut when budgets tighten? The conception amongst B2B business owners is that positioning is a long game and that demand response is low, so taking a hiatus from both forms of marketing won’t make much difference. You could be forgiven for thinking too, in the current climate where online traffic has increased, we're 'over'; webinars again, and content creation is reaching saturation point, that your voice would be drowned out in the digital noise anyway. Sure, customers are reducing spending on 'non-essentials' so minimising READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

6 lessons we learnt running workshops remotely

Virtual workshops can be measurably better than physical workshops if you have the stamina of a bull, can work in three time zones simultaneously, and have the technical dexterity of a 12-year-old. For the rest of us, there’s work to be done to master the craft. For context, we've been building go-to-market plans for B2B companies, large and small, around the world for 20 years. This planning is usually carried out in a workshop setting; we've done about 500 physical workshops (or ‘Funnel Camps’) - usually 2-3 days in duration - in some 30 countries. We’ll typically READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Double down, go halves, pivot, or panic? Marketing during a crisis

In March, our overriding priority was to get our teams settled in their various homes, and to act with haste. We had to, right? Not panicking, but acting fast. In April, many of us tried to reset to some sort of sane mode of working. In May, we hung on to the systems and processes of that semi-sanity, waiting for the peak. And in June and July, we realised that this is going to be a long, slow dance and the idea of a ‘peak’ was a fancy. We looked for bigger, better ideas. What's Marketing's role READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Evergreen, Strategy|

3 tips for reengaging with your customers after a disruption

Business disruption happens. We’ve all just experienced what is likely the biggest disruption of a generation (let’s hope). Because of COVID-19, a lot of businesses have dialled back their operations, or stopped completely. A lot of regular customers have stopped buying. It’s been a crazy time for everyone. But as we all emerge from our lockdown stupor, things are picking back up and businesses are getting back into the swing of things. And that means reaching out to their customers and wider audiences. Taking the right approach when reengaging with your audience is vital to warm them READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How to know when you should outsource marketing Pt 2

In Part 1 of this blog, we started small – focussing on businesses who are achieving less than $20 million annual revenue. Here, we’ll be going a little bigger and look at those turning over more than $20 million. While the numbers are different, the concept is the same – your marketing needs to evolve as your business does. When revenue exceeds $20 million Once you get to around $20 million, it’s time to look at bringing some, or all of that marketing in-house. So, you're going to hire one or two in-house marketers. If there's READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How to know when you should outsource marketing Pt 1

When is outsourced marketing a good idea? When should you do it in-house? Here’s my experience... Evolve your approach to outsourced marketing I’ve managed outsourced marketing for hundreds of businesses – and operated as the outsourced group Chief Marketing Officer for many of them. So, I have got a pretty good handle on what works and what doesn’t. Let me give you a really short summary of what I’ve learned should be outsourced – and when. The answer’s not complicated, but it does need to evolve as your business evolves. Today, I’ll be talking about marketing approaches READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

6 steps to building a shared Sales and Marketing process (they both agree to) Part 2

In part 1 of his blog, we discussed the first three steps you need to take to start creating an aligned process and team. But that’s only half of it. From here, we’ll build on those steps to finish up and agree on a clearly aligned sales & marketing process that gets both teams on the same page. Remember, the net effect of building a single, optimised Sales and Marketing process is that the lead acceptance from Marketing to Sales doubles (by 108%) and Marketing’s contribution to revenue does better still (by 126%). How to build a 1-page READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Inbound marketing vs. outbound? A case for both.

The marketing world has been fascinated with inbound marketing for years. Is inbound always the right way to go? And are there parts of your market where inbound is the right approach, and others for which outbound is better? Three types of targets When considering who you wish to market your business to, there are generally three key targets you should focus your energy on: Target role and company — this is one or more key senior roles in the company you really want to sell to. They are the decision makers, or perhaps the right starting point. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Build vs Buy, and some Surprise Benefits from Aspose.Slides

Build vs Buy, and some Surprise Benefits from Aspose.Slides We're all in. Funnel Plan has gone from being a great tool to help our consultants to build sales and marketing plans for clients, to a 'bet the farm' investment in a self-contained software product licensed as a software service (SaaS) model. Our clients have built over 2000 sales and marketing plans using Funnel Plan and we learn more every day about what clients want. So you'd think it reasonable that we feel we need to build everything ourselves, so that we can own all the IP. Our READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|