As potential customers increasingly rely on online research to substantiate purchasing decisions, your content is becoming more crucial to sales growth than ever before—which is why you must efficiently create a high volume of high-quality B2B marketing content to reach your future buyers. Content Types: Demand Gen vs. Lead Gen First, let’s establish the types
Data Analysis After Identifying Site Bottlenecks, Delivering Solutions, and understanding Measurement tools, we can now begin the deeper data analysis and provide tangible meaning to the data presented. Benchmarks also ensure that we are comparing apples to apples when looking at data. For our purposes, as we are looking for performance improvements for a site
Introduction We can begin gathering data to determine how the solutions are affecting the site and, as a result, reaching business performance targets once you have Identified Site Bottlenecks and done an in-depth study of the Solution Delivery. Follow the steps below to gain a better grasp of all the actions required to properly gather,
Sales Pipeline Value The value of your sales pipeline is the single most important factor impacting your sales growth rates. Therefore, increasing the value of your sales pipeline increases your company’s sales growth rates — it’s as simple as that. Before we explain why, let’s take a step back and define what a sales pipeline
Which would you rather pass along to your sales team: a large number of leads of varying levels of quality, or a select handful of high-quality leads? At first glance, a large number of leads might seem more valuable than a mere handful. More leads mean more opportunities to make sales, right? In reality, it’s
High-quality leads are crucial to increasing sales growth, which means successful marketers must know how to attract this type of lead through their lead generation strategies and decision-enabling content. Why is lead generation so important? In today’s digital-first environment, B2B buyers prefer spending more time researching products online and less time speaking with salespeople, which
Introduction The first step to ensuring efficient and optimal website development and SEO is to identify site bottlenecks. With that accomplished, the next step is to implement the necessary changes to address these bottlenecks. Follow the steps below to roll out these ideas in your business plan or implementation phase. Research Solution Channels To solve
The First Step There will always be a way to measure engagements and find data on your website’s happenings, regardless of the website building platform used. Identifying Site Bottlenecks and conducting deep internal research on pain points is the first step to ensuring a time-efficient and optimal website development and SEO. By identifying where the
The Growth Marketing Stack With so many tools to choose from for your marketing stack, creating an effective growth marketing strategy might seem daunting. It takes a lot of research and resources to build a strategy that will deliver revenue growth for your company. To make it simple for you, we’ve provided an overview of
Millennials: A Brief Overview Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce today. To successfully market to this generation of B2B buyers, we have to get to know them. Like any generation, they have their own specific attributes that distinguish them from earlier cohorts. For example, younger millennials were the first to grow up with
What Is Demand Generation? Buyers typically start their purchasing journey with online research. They start by gathering information about the options in the market to decide for themselves which solution is right for their company’s needs. As they research online, buyers have a wealth of options and information at their fingertips—so how can you, as
What Is Lead Generation? The old way of making a sale was to make sales calls and send out mass emails, hoping for a response, which is ineffective for many reasons. Thankfully, there is a more effective way to spark interest in your products—lead generation. The goal of lead generation (lead gen) content is to
Lead generation is a key strategy for any company seeking sales and revenue growth—but it’s easier said than done. That’s why we’ve compiled this handy cheat sheet for easy reference as you develop your lead generation campaign. Create a Clear Path of How You Will Generate Growth Like any project, a successful lead generation campaign
High Performance Prospecting Strategies Prospecting is how companies find new business—it’s the process of searching for potential buyers for your company. But you’re not looking for just any customer. Prospecting identifies buyers who would be a good fit for your products, which increases the effectiveness of your sales and marketing efforts. This is crucial for
High Performance Marketing The key to high performance is to focus on building depth in a select few areas of excellence while leaving no vulnerabilities in other areas. You want your company to stand out for its ability to perform at a higher level than anyone else—this level of specialization is a key factor that
Consumers Expect Convenience Tech companies have changed the way consumers think about purchasing a product. Instead of walking into a brick-and-mortar store to purchase an item, why not just order it through Amazon? Similarly, why not order your favorite meals from the comfort of your own home using an app like DoorDash? The same goes
B2B Buyers Are Becoming More Like B2C Like all consumers, B2B buyers are flooded with marketing messages each day. In the digital era, we’re all used to accessing information and making purchases at the touch of a button. Your company only has a micro-moment to make an impression on a buyer before they click or
The New Mandate for Marketers: Drive Revenue Growth The digital era in marketing has arrived. To reach potential buyers online, marketers must implement a strong digital marketing strategy with the goal of driving revenue growth in mind. If this sounds difficult, don’t worry—below, we’ll list the three key steps to building a marketing strategy that
It Starts With Research As a marketer, you want to create content that converts casual readers into motivated buyers who are ready to speak to a sales representative. You know that this is the key to driving revenue growth through marketing. But creating content that guarantees high conversion rates is not as easy as it
The Digital Transformation Many marketing experts have discussed the current digital transformation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic—by now, we all know that while in-person events are suspended, it’s necessary to use digital marketing to reach potential buyers. But a deeper understanding of this transformation reveals that this trend has been accelerating for years
Why Does Content Matter? When you have an important decision to make in life, you might start by seeking out information about the issue at hand. You might also look into alternative solutions to your problem. Maybe you’ll use a list of pros and cons or another type of chart to organize information about a
Why You Should Start Treating Content Like a Product As a marketer, one of your top priorities is helping customers find your product. Like all consumers, B2B buyers have access to a wealth of information online from a variety of sources to substantiate any buying decision. The downside of all of that information? Marketers have
Buyers Aren’t Just Buying Your Product When buyers purchase solutions for their companies’ problems, they know that they’re not just buying a product — they are also buying the company offering the product. If they don’t feel comfortable with the company, they’re not going to buy the product — it’s as simple as that. In the
The buyer’s decision-making process is less straightforward than you might expect. Fortunately, high-quality decision-enabling content can help streamline the process. Business Decision-Making: How Rational Is it? When it comes to making business decisions, individuals like to think of themselves as rational thinkers motivated entirely by logic and reason. In order to make the best possible
There is a common misconception in B2B marketing that businesses are rational entities—meaning that they respond to rational marketing messages—as opposed to consumers who respond to emotional messages. In thinking this way, marketing teams forget about the humans behind the businesses. The B2B Institute calls this the “objectivity trap”—people generally assume that buyers are simply
Too often sales teams jump to quick, ineffective solutions when they see a drop in sales performance. By doing so, they fail to address the root cause of the problem. When quotas aren’t being met and sales performance is dropping, one typical response is to blame the salespeople. However, the truth is that performance issues
In today’s world, data is a vital element of any successful sales team—but B2B businesses should be smart about the metrics they track. Keep in mind, the goal of collecting sales data is to grow sales. It’s easy to get carried away collecting too much information, which can overwhelm a sales team. Overloading people with
Despite concerns in the media over the death of email marketing, B2B email marketing continues to be the most effective strategy for reaching key decision-makers, year after year. How Effective is B2B Email Marketing? B2B marketing is all about reaching key decision-makers—and email marketing is the best way to do that. The goal of B2B
By implementing best practices in B2B email marketing, marketers can establish trust with senior executives and increase email engagement. What Do Senior Executives Look For in B2B Marketing Emails? The main goal of B2B email marketing is to reach senior executives and establish credibility with them—but this is easier said than done. When it comes
In the new B2B sales paradigm, marketing and sales must be numerically aligned to facilitate a high revenue growth rate. Too often, marketing strategies are implemented without defining the specific revenue goals they aim to achieve. Valuable time, energy, and resources are wasted when marketing is not aligned with sales—in fact, 60% of respondents to
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing measures, traditional face-to-face sales have come to a temporary halt. B2B buyers and sellers alike are now forced to use digital routes instead. B2B Buyers and Sellers Prefer the New Digital Reality What was originally a crisis response has now become the new normal, with many
With well-researched, highly-relevant, and concise emails, B2B marketers can build an effective email marketing strategy that reaches senior executives. The Senior Executive’s Dilemma Reaching key executives is a top priority for B2B marketers—and email marketing is the best way to do this. Email engagement increased 78% over the past year, and the ROI of email
Choose the Right Market Focus for Revenue Growth For a B2B company seeking to increase its revenue, the first step is choosing the right market. Market focus is the single most important factor impacting revenue growth. There has been a shift in expectations for B2B marketing departments in recent years. Today, nearly 70% of CEOs
You have an inside sales team who is now working in a distributed manner, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While many companies have employees who work from home, very few have a fully distributed inside sales organization. The question is how to manage a distributed team and ensure success during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the
The increasingly blurred line between B2B and B2C has inevitably changed the nature of sales, with customers demanding a more personalized selling process. Salesforce’s “State of the Connected Customer” report recently found that 58% of consumers and 77% of B2B buyers believe technology has changed their expectation of how companies should interact with them. As
A study by Bain and Company shows an alarming trend: the cost of sales and marketing is growing faster than revenues. Half of the companies surveyed experienced their sales and marketing costs rising faster than revenues. Ironically, when companies achieved high growth, their costs of sales and marketing, as a percentage of sales, remained flat
The B2B industry is infamously known for its time-consuming sales cycle. While B2B sales are challenged by more decision-makers than B2C, they are also impacted by varying-quality leads that make the process even more unpredictable. A sales person is only as good as his or her leads. When sales reps receive poor leads, the total
High Quality Leads close faster, at a higher rate, and at a larger average deal size than do leads of lower quality. That much is obvious. What is not obvious is the dramatic change in sales and profit growth that can result from relatively small improvements in each of these metrics. What makes High Quality
The B2B marketplace is evolving faster than ever. In an increasingly automated world, sales representatives must leverage technology and analytics to adapt to changing customer needs and drive higher-value strategic sales through digital selling. Emerging research from McKinsey shows that B2B sellers often struggle between choosing a great sales force and great digital capabilities.
Optimizing sales productivity requires a top-down approach that synthesizes business sales goals with an individual representative’s daily performance. Sales metrics, specifically key performance indicators, provide visibility into the fundamental factors that ultimately drive sales initiatives and scalable growth. What are Metrics and KPIs? Sales metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are oftentimes used interchangeably, but
Management often makes the mistake of measuring the performance of individuals based on the belief that strong personal performance leads to strong corporate performance, rather than focusing on accountable leadership. This is true only when management understands all the dynamics in the organization that lead to successful business outcomes, and when the business environment is
Traditionally, employees are taught that if they designed a tight system and measured everything that could be measured, they would have enough accountability. If everyone did everything they were supposed to do and did it well, they were assured of success. Well, now we know that doesn’t work. In fact, it’s a prescription for failure!
A study by Bain and Company shows an alarming trend: the cost of sales and marketing is growing faster than revenues. Half of the companies surveyed experienced their sales and marketing costs rising faster than revenues. Ironically, when companies achieved high revenue growth, their costs of sales and marketing, as a percentage of sales, remained
Executing Account Based Marketing (ABM) In-house Account Based Marketing (ABM) requires a variety of skills and is resource intensive. Industry and Account researchers, analysts, writers, graphic designers, and more come together to create an effective campaign. Many managers feel they have better control over ABM projects if they hire employees that will be sitting close
Client Story One 1. Situation Our first client story is about a 30-year old mid-sized software solutions vendor in the Mortgage Industry. While it was a dominant player with high name recognition in its industry, the client was primarily perceived as a solution provider to smaller banks and brokerage firms that did under 600 loans
At the very heart of Account Based Marketing is content with new, compelling, useful, and highly relevant information that is 100% focused on the Buyer and is also verifiable. In fact, the success of ABM campaigns depends entirely on such High Value-Add Digital Content. The lack of high-value add content is why Marketing fails to
Content Driven ABM Execution Steps While Account Based Marketing (ABM) originally meant one-to-one marketing (for example, targeting a specific Account such as IBM or Chase Bank), it has been found to be just as effective on highly targeted group of a few hundred accounts. The key to success is truly understanding these accounts and deeply
The End of B2B Selling As We Know It B2B selling has changed—forever. In times past, Business to Business (B2B) Sellers relied almost entirely on their sales teams to generate revenue. Marketing was primarily for branding, as few Sellers understood how Marketing could be used in other ways to grow their businesses. Today, B2B selling
Capability assessments are important tools for driving corporate success. Yet, businesses often do not recognize the importance of examining and fine-tuning their capabilities. The Boston Consulting Group explains the term “capability” as “an ingrained ability to do something well in a way that improves business performance.” At the core of a capability are behaviors— “the
The mission of B2B Marketing is to get Sales on the short list of vendors that a prospective buyer wants to meet with. That is what happens to Top Tier Vendors—they get invited to present anytime a potential buyer has a need. However, the vast majority of B2B companies are Tier 3 vendors—they compete with
Missed sales quotas are becoming the new norm Misses sales quotas are becoming the norm rather than the exception. An extensive digital transformation of the commercial world has left many B2B sellers floundering in the dust. Accustomed to the personalization, immediate fulfillment, and transparency of consumer experiences fueled by artificial intelligence, buyers have changed their
