Articles in the 'Marketing Strategy' Category
Are Your Marketing Claims Believable?
Today’s post was motivated by an unsolicited email I received from an outsource payroll company, that made the following two claims:
If your business has fewer than 20 employees, statistics have shown that you can save money by outsourcing your payroll operations.
On average, 40% of the entire administration time of a small business deals with payroll processing.
Both of these claims suffer a credibility gap because neither is attributed to any independent source. The company sending the email could claim that the moon
Intentional Marketing Beats I’ll Try Marketing
Do you want to make a big difference in your B2B marketing and sales performance? If so, adopt the practice of “intending” instead of “trying”.
Most of the time, when I ask a marketing manger to do something, I get an answer like the following:
I’ll try to find you the information you need to make this campaign work.
I’ll try to generate some leads.
I’ll try to help the sales force make their sales targets.
You get the picture. The common thread is the
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
Marketing Strategy: Too Broad, Too Narrow or Just Right?
Getting your marketing strategy just right is critical for B2B marketing success. On the “too broad” end, lots of B2B companies, desperate for recognition and revenue, try to be everything to everyone. One of our Fusion Marketing Partners teammates worked for a company whose small C-level and business development team had dozens of potential deals cooking, not one of them anywhere near the one-yard line. The company’s core position changed with every potential new partner. In the excitement of infancy,
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
How to Shorten the B2B Sales Cycle
If there is one thing that aggravates the modern B2B company, it is the constantly lengthening sales cycle. Everyone, from CEO to sales VP to sales rep, suffers from this problem and wants to know what to do about it. The future of your company (and its stock price) may depend on getting revenue in the door faster.
What exactly do I mean by the term “sales cycle”? The classic definition is “the total time elapsed from the buyer’s first contact
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,
Don’t Major in the Minors of B2B Marketing – by Chris Ryan
One of the worst ways to spend your day as a B2B marketer is to “major in the minors.” By this, I mean spending your time on activities that have little or no impact on results.
As I write this, it is snowy in Colorado. There are three trucks in our company’s parking lot, scraping snow and sanding the pavement. They have been going at their business for at least an hour and I am impressed by how clean (and sandy)
10 Winning B2B Marketing Habits to Adopt in 2011 – Part Two
Last week, I talked about the first five winning habits you can adopt for more B2B marketing success in 2011. You can find that article here. Following are habits 6-10.
Habit 6: Work your social media plan. This is the year to really make social media work for your organization. If you haven’t already started in social media, now is the time to jump in. And if you are already swimming in social media waters, then this is the time to
