Articles in the 'B2B Marketing' Category
Does Your Marketing Produce Accolades or Action?
MCI was a powerful company in the 1990s. And while MCI was known for producing very cool advertising – unfortunately, the business results never seemed to match the messaging “creativity.” This is just one example – how about the many $1 million plus Super Bowl ads that have produced a lot of attention but virtually no results. Some of these advertisers were start-up companies that wasted their entire promotional budgets on just one advertisement. Clever yes… effective, no. Good marketing…hardly.
Perhaps the
How Marketing Can Double the Effectiveness of Your Sales Force
I was talking to a former colleague yesterday and she made the claim that as a marketer, she had no control over the sales process and little or any impact on revenue. Regardless of whether this is true at her particular company, B2B marketers should (and do) have substantial impact on sales revenue. In fact, there are many instances where upgrading the marketing function can bring a much larger boost to the top line than hiring more sales people.
To put this
How to “Engineer” a Marketing Fiasco
Here’s the all-too-common scenario: A team of highly skilled engineers rolls out a product that passes beta and actually starts to get some traction (usually through networking with people they already know). Encouraged by their first few orders, the company promotes those engineers or product developers to fill the marketing and sales roles. Who better to sell the product than the person who built it? Besides, the product is so good, it will sell itself, right?
We have seen a few companies
Who is Sitting in the Marketing Chair? – A Quick Marketing Leadership Assessment
My partner, Myron Berg, and I were recently discussing how what we do at Fusion Marketing Partners benefits our clients. While we can always be depended on to produce results in terms of awareness, leads and revenue, it struck us that we also deliver an intangible with a huge benefit: peace of mind. After all, today’s CEO has a great many things to worry about, including product, personnel, systems, and finance. The list goes on. Removing the marketing issue from
B2B Marketing Mottos to Avoid
Let’s call these the Dirty Dozen – 12 things you don’t want to say (or have said) about your marketing operation. Over my long career in B2B marketing I have heard a variation of all of the following:
We are clueless but hope to have an answer someday.
Buy from us because we really need the money.
My job is on the line. Can you purchase today instead of next quarter?
Who needs leads when you have a phone book?
Yes, our website is lousy,
How to Become a B2B Lead Generation Master
Want to Achieve Your Revenue Goals? Learn These 7 Things
Most B2B companies are successful only to the degree they are able to generate qualified sales leads. So why is lead generation such a mysterious subject to so many? Considering the stakes, it behooves you to take lead generation seriously and become a master. At Fusion Marketing Partners, we see a full range of marketing practitioners ranging from novices (grasshoppers) to masters.
So what does a master know, and what actions do
Steps in the B2B Marketing and Sales Process – by Christopher Ryan
In a typical business-to-business scenario, responses you generate and people you have contact with will flow through the marketing system and at different times during the end-to-end process will fall into the following categories:
Database Build – Contact names you have added to your database who have not responded to a promotional offer. You collect these names for remarketing purposes because they match the prospect criteria. Your mission is to turn them into raw inquiries.
Raw Inquiry – Any person/company that
Five Questions Every B2B Marketer Needs to Ask – by Christopher Ryan
B2B Marketing is a tricky business with a lot of moving parts. To do it right, you need the answers to the appropriate questions. Here are five to get you started:
Is what you offer a commodity or a differentiated product or service? This is a critical question because it will determine how you must market to be successful. A differentiated product or service has advantages, but it must usually contend with a much smaller market niche. By contrast, a commodity
Do You Need a Service Level Agreement Between Marketing and Sales? – by Christopher Ryan
I have written a lot about the gap between marketing and sales in B2B companies and you can download my whitepaper about this subject here. One of the trickiest aspects of the relationship is establishing the marketing and sales metrics. Once you do this, you then need to agree on who is responsible for which part of the process. In most scenarios, the marketing VP is responsible for every step through qualified leads, and the sales VP is responsible for
A Dose of Reality in B2B Marketing – by Christopher Ryan
Napoleon once remarked, “A general should consider himself successful if half of what he plans comes to pass.” This is not to say that you shouldn’t carefully plan. But the fact is that things don’t always turn out the way you plan (just ask Napoleon about a place called Waterloo). For example, the list is staler than you thought. The webinar topic is not as interesting. The offer is not as compelling. Your vendor misses the mailing or email date.
