I’m a big fan of the buyer journey. It’s one of the most powerful marketing tools available. I’m also a big funnel geek and spend a lot of time counting leads and tweaking conversion rates. The buyer journey and the funnel are essentially the same idea – mapping the process a prospective buyer takes before becoming a customer. Understand how sales happen, and you can scale your business. Otherwise, you are merely hoping, which is not a strategy. Despite the power (not to mention the stress … [Read more...]
The Importance of Matching Demand Generation with Sales Capacity
When it comes to leads, most people assume more is better. That’s not always true. Sometimes you have more than your sales team can actually handle, in which case your leads go cold. The flip side—when you have more sales capacity than lead flow—is equally bad. This is why it’s so important to balance demand generation with sales capacity. Let’s take a closer look. Establishing Your Quarterly Demand Goals First off, you need to establish your desired lead flow. I like to model mine to be even … [Read more...]
How to Prioritize Marketing Investments Using the Demand Maturity Matrix
Explaining how you are spending your marketing dollars is a challenge that all heads of marketing face. Cynics in your company are always happy to point out a failed program, which tars all your demand efforts with the same brush. What to do? Counterintuitive as it may seem, start by pointing out your failures. Here’s how. Many marketing teams make the mistake of lumping all of their demand generation programs together. So all people hear about is the total number of leads delivered to sales. … [Read more...]
Demand Generation Through the Fisherman’s Eye: Three Ways Haul in Leads
I was preparing recently to clearly explain to an executive the different marketing channels we use in demand generation. It can all get technical very quickly, and I didn't want to cause his eyes glaze over. I was trying to come up with an analogy I could use. I'm not sure why fishing came to mind. I was in the pool when the analogy popped into my head, but I don't fish empathy triggered the idea. The image of hooking a lead may have shaken loose in my skull. Or perhaps it was the memory of … [Read more...]
Diagnostic Content: How to Boost Conversion and Increase Customer Trust with Problem Solving Content
Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the 2015 MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. Here's a condensed transcript with my slides of my talk, plus a link to the whole presentation at the bottom. The Concept: Everyone here has had what I call a "diagnostic experience". You've gone to the doctor, brought your car to the shop, gone to a golf or tennis pro, you've sought out the advice of a professional to try and help you understand your problem and give you advice on how to fix it. You've … [Read more...]
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