Tactics

Trade shows: an expensive way to reach new markets

Spending the day at Salesforce World Tour in Melbourne provided ample evidence that events work wonderfully well for the organisers and often poorly for those who sponsor or take booths. For context, this event is largely pitched at existing users, not prospects, so it's preaching to the choir somewhat. Let's start with what was amazing at this event: mostly everything Salesforce did, but scale particularly. In the keynote theatre, the speakers were not on stage but wandered through the large crowd set out 'in the round' with a couple of static camera guys and a mobile cameraman READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Baskets full of nurtures – our favourite tactics for recycling

How do you get those recalcitrants - the nervous nellies and those past failures - into your funnel as quickly as possible? A part of the answer is you probably don't want them there quickly. You want them there confidently. You want, for them to want, to really be in your funnel. In this week's show we're going to explore the difference between nurturing and recycling, and some of our favourite tactics for carrying that nurture message.

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

How to fail successfully

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

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|

Tactics to improve conversion and dominate your market

If you can't make your funnel flow faster, can you lose fewer buyers throughout their journey? We've argued on recent blogs why you can't speed up your buyer just because you have quotas to meet, but that you can improve your conversion rates. We had a ton of email requests for specific tactics. So this week we're making a series of specific tactical recommendations to improve your conversion rates throughout the funnel. Want to receive more content like this? Subscribe to our monthly B2B marketing blog!

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales, Tactics|

How we produce our weekly video B2B Marketing blog

If you are committed to a regular schedule of blogging, you'll know that the production needs to be efficient or the process can quickly become unaffordable. Video is a super engaging medium for blogging, but might appear unaffordable at first glance. Great corporate videos on your web site deserve a high quality production, but frequent video blogs need 'good enough' production only. At align.me, we're a long way from the efficiency we think we can achieve, but have mastered the art of good-enough quality video blog production and are pleased to let you under the covers READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics, Velocity|

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|

Seven ways to distribute your content widely

If you followed our tips from last week's Funnel Vision you now have loads of great digital content for your B2B marketing. You've got white papers, videos and webinars from your own great ideas, and great ideas from others who have a view that supports your own. How do you get that great content out into the hands of yourtarget market? And is there a way to leverage others to do some of the work for you? Maybe a key partner or two, your sales people, and your audience itself can help to get the word READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Five steps to leveraging 3rd party content

With the best will in the world, you will never be able to create enough content to meet all of your market's appetite for content. So are asking your audience to read widely. Those other sources include your competition, as well as others who might not be competition, but definitely are not arguing a view of the issues and solutions that helps your case. In today's blog, we'll show you five steps to leveraging 3rd-party content so you can meet more of your audience's demand for content, without having a huge content team, yet still select content READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|