Tactics

Refresh your marketing with a website lead gen engine

Is your business trying to make sense of all this new fangled {insert your chosen word - inbound/digital/online/website/internet} marketing? Are you unclear exactly how spending your precious time and money on social media, blogging, search engine optimisation, landing pages and so on, is actually going to generate any new leads - let alone new business? Don't worry you are not alone! Many medium and small businesses are in the same boat. But the evidence is now very strong that the inbound marketing (our preferred phrase) tail is wagging the marketing dog! It's time for a fundamental refresh for your approach READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Tactics|

Should B2B marketing employ more scientist than artist?

Should B2B marketing be employing more scientists than artists? That’s the question implied by one of IDC’s recently published “Top 10 predictions for 2013”. Driven by a number of profound changes in both the business and marketing environments, they project that from 2013 onwards, 50% of new marketing hires will have technical backgrounds. They point out that the fastest growing job categories in marketing today include campaign management, marketing operations, intelligence/research, sales enablement, social media and marketing IT. Many of these categories hardly existed less than a decade or less ago. Analytics and automation All of these roles require - to varying degrees READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Tactics|

B2B sales: “how are you?” and other cringe-worthy opening questions

Call me old fashioned if you will, but when someone I have never met phones me out of the blue and can’t think of anything less inane than “how are you” to start the conversation, I know one person on the call is an idiot. And, IMHO, it isn’t me. In a business-to-business environment, that sort of false familiarity isn’t just cringeworthy, it’s downright impertinent, and a sure sign that the speaker that is utterly devoid of imagination or any detectable level of emotional intelligence. Why on earth would I want to waste my time in continuing READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Tactics|

B2B lead generation: Why Sales and Marketing alignment produces better leads

The sales department wants the marketing department to provide more leads. But they want them to be "better qualified". The real question is, "qualified according to whom?" We all know the cliché that a suspect is not a prospect. If someone fills out a form at a trade show it doesn't mean they are interested in your products or services - just that they visited your stand or gave their contact details in order to pick up a trinket for the office. The big issue is that Sales and Marketing are not looking in the same direction. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics, Velocity|

How to generate B2B marketing content

What is the best way to gather and generate new content for white papers, blogs, videos, presentations or other marketing collateral and tactics? We got inside the heads of two leading content generators – Hugh Macfarlane, Founder and CEO of align.me and author of The Leaky Funnel and Adam Posner, Founder and CEO of Directivity – to find out how they come up with new, exciting, and relevant content. If you’ve ever attempted to start a blog, prepare collateral, or build a presentation, you’d know that generating content is not always easy. There are obstacles and READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

How to create unforgettable PowerPoint presentations

By Inka Wibowo As marketers, we use PowerPoint presentations at multiple points in the buyer’s journey – as digital assets on Slideshare to position with prospective buyers, and in sales meetings with prospects. We also use them internally to train others, and to report on campaign progress. It’s a tool that we use to communicate, and to engage audiences both visually and verbally. PowerPoint is therefore an undeniably powerful marketing tool. Yet, how many times have you walked away from someone else’s PowerPoint presentation without remembering a single word of what was said? If you have, it’s not your READ MORE ›

By Inka Wibowo|Tactics|

B2B Complex Sales: why sales people should NEVER demo their product

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a product demo that seems to go on interminably until you feel that you have lost the will to live? Ever felt that the sales person is simply lobbing feature after feature at you, desperately hoping that that at least one of them will be of interest? Ever believed that they aren’t going to let you out of the room (or off the call) until they have shown you absolutely everything? Well, you’re not alone. That’s exactly how most prospects that have been subjected to a classic “everything READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Tactics, Velocity|

7 Prescriptions for Aligning B2B Marketing, Selling and Buying

While the practice of aligning the B2B marketing, selling and buying processes has seen a lot of development in the recent years, there’s no doubt that there’s still a great deal of room for improvement, as evidenced by 4 disturbing statistics: 80-90% of all the materials generated by marketing for sales consumption remain largely or completely unused Sales people are still wasting dozens of hours per month (re)creating materials to support their sales activities Only 1 in 8 of all meetings with sales people are rated as in any way “valuable” by prospects There’s a growing READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Tactics|

SEO for Video: The ‘why’ and ‘how’ for B2B marketers

By Yulia Edirisinghe It’s undeniable that video is an essential tactic in any B2B marketer’s arsenal. Why? Have a look at our wiki on video production to learn about the many benefits. Unfortunately though, even the world’s best video is redundant if no one can find it to watch it. And, with sixty hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, competition for the top spots in search results is only increasing. So, how do you beat the competition? The answer lies in three little letters: SEO. Optimize your video for search engines by following these READ MORE ›

By Yulia Edirisinghe|Tactics|

Linking Buyer’s Journey, Your Pipeline & Revenue Goals

The changing shape of the buyer's journey has introduced a raft of new issues for sales leaders who are trying to manage sales pipelines and generate accurate revenue forecasts. Prospects are leveraging the internet and business social media to do their research - and engaging sales people later in the decision making process. In fact, the latest research from the CEB suggests that the typical B2B buying-decision process is 57% complete before a salesperson is even actively involved. By that time, the prospect is a long way down the path of scoping their needs, establishing their priorities, READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Strategy, Tactics|