As we come out of the pandemic there’s expected to be a sizeable economic boom. But in order for you and your company to benefit fully from it there is one key quality which will determine just how well you do... Adaptability will be the deciding factor, but ahead of that you need to have a clear understanding of what you’ll need to re-think and re-evaluate. By contrast, inflexibility and blindly continuing with the same approach and processes for Sales & Marketing is not just ill advi...

Buyers want to be confident that they will be successful if they purchase and implement your product or service. As a marketer you can help speed up sales cycles and provide higher quality marketing qualified leads if you address these confidence issues in your content. The goal is to become buyer-centric and position everything you put out so that at every touch point it’s helping address the issues which need to be tackled before a purchase decision in your favour can be made. Well educa...

Connected TV , or CTV for short is how nearly the majority of us watch or consume television. Previously, television advertising only really suited B2C brands. But CTV offers advertisers the ability to target customers in a way which traditional linear broadcast television never could. With online advertising becoming more crowded by the day, CTV offers the opportunity for more focused attention in a relatively uncluttered space. So if you’re up for exploring new possibilities, you may we...

Marketing when taught is skewed to very large companies such as IBM, Caterpillar and Oracle. Revenue is generated by the entirety of the business, not just the top line of sales and marketing. However, if marketers widen their field of view across the whole of the business you have the potential to identify any number of improvements which will result in improved customer satisfaction, increased revenues, reductions in cost as well as additional clear points of difference for you to market ...

The most expensive way of testing anything is to launch it and to see if it works. However, that’s often how things are done when it comes to new campaigns and website launchesScientists base everything they do on the relentless testing of ideas to either prove or disprove concepts BEFORE rolling them out. So as a marketer, if you strongly commit to testing as you develop projects you’ll be ever closers to being a genius scientist yourself. And at the same time, what ever you do ultimately ...

As a B2B marketer, you can make a huge impact on your company’s sales figures by taking the lead on a very particular type of personalisation. Pitch decks are a classic request for ‘the colouring in department’. But gone are the days of a one-size fits all slide show to give to sales teams. In fact, any company who speaks to their customer base in broad and generic terms is likely to be the first to be removed from any consideration set. One of the secrets of the best performing B2B compa...

Do almost dread being asked what do you? If you do, then there’s a way to change that. The concept of an elevator pitch is as American as waffles and bacon. But the concept really does work, even for the British, who’s reserved nature would otherwise have us avoid at all costs the concept of talking to a complete stranger in a closed confident space. So the challenge is to master the art of communicating what you do in both 10 and 60 second formats so that you can give a wholesome answer ...

Tracking where leads, and ultimately sales come from is getting harder by the day. In fact, buyer journeys have become so complex, that what used to work is likely not giving you an accurate picture today. But it doesn’t stop there. Because when you factor in the desire to help direct sales teams on which leads they should focus on for maximum conversion opportunities, you’d be incredibly lucky if what you have in place, is still serving you as best as possible. The reality is, that you wil...

Your customers will likely set about searching for information that will help them with their problem or need before looking for companies to provide the necessary product or service. As a marketer, it’s important to fully appreciate Google’s mission to customers, which is to provide the best search results possible. Which is why if you set about producing content for the topic at hand and purposefully nurturing inbound links from media sources to that content, Google is likely to recognise ...

At the forefront of making B2B marcomms more authentic, along with connecting with your audience on an emotional level is the ability to communicate as we would speak normally. Who’d have thought that we’d have to make a concerted effort NOT to write or produce content which has the same flow and comatosing qualities of the terms and conditions section of vehicle hire agreement. It happens to the best of us, and it’s a challenge to break free and get back to writing content which emotes and...

Having a six figure budget and dedicated team large enough to fill your local TGI Fridays is awesome for running ABM campaigns. But small teams should not be dissuaded if the prize is big enough! The concept we’ll be examining is that if you’ve got really valuable target accounts... why would you use spray and pray when you can actually spend your money in a much more targeted way? This also aligns perfectly with the drive to make B2B marcomms more personalised and authentic. Particularly...

Winning large accounts, particularly through ABM is often a lengthy and hugely resource intensive process. But rather than going head-to-head and competing on the same terms, what if you took the gloves off and re-wrote the rules of engagement? What if instead of having a selection of key accounts, you focused your firepower on just the one? Marketers who work closely with sales teams continually outperform their competitors. So if you have an open mind and are up for embracing a rebel li...

Being smart with what resources you have can often lead you to victory, even when pitched against a much larger adversary. Time and again, challenger brands and companies pull the rug from under industry giants. It's great to hear those stories, but what if you did exactly that? What if you set about re-evaluating your resources and how you use them? Specifically, we're talking about your bringing your colleagues in to help. They are as it would seem, very commonly an untapped resource wi...

Washing the dishes and dealing with data have something in common. Unless you wash the dishes you’ll be in trouble the next time that you want to eat. The same is true for your marketing data. A mistake which a lot of marketers fall into is focusing on metrics, as apposed to owned data. Metrics such as email open rates and website bounce times are useful. But your true customer data needs to be embraced, loved and close attention be paid to it. Poor quality, inaccurate, and old data is ...

Free alcohol, always being the funniest person in the room, invites to glamorous events as well as being the envy of friends for their chosen career path. Of course, professional comics also enjoy those kind of perks too, but what can B2B marketers learn from a professional comedian? Well, as it turns out their ability to understand and connect with people on an emotional level is the core skill which we as B2B marketers are all keen to develop further. The drive to engage with customers a...

One of your key skills as a B2B marketer will be in producing epic content. Let's not be shy about that. And it's borderline heartbreaking when your hard work in producing content goes to waste. But sadly, that is typically the norm rather than the exception. The problem stems from the fact that most content lacks a clearly defined strategy to maximise its potential and get it in-front of people in a variety of different forms. The truth is, that you owe it to yourself and your company t...

Your funnel, or specifically your marketing funnel map is supposed to be your definitive guide for how leads eventually become customers. But what if that map is not a true representation of how things are, and how things work in the real word? What if there were certain assumptions or biases at play when it was conceived and codified? And have you ever challenged yourself to find discrepancies in it? According the latest research where 2.5% conversion rates on content driven funnels are ...

As a B2B marketer you're in a much better place to help drive efficiencies and profitability for your company than you might think. In fact, it really is an opportunity for you to shine. Every piece of software that your company uses makes up your tech stack, but you're likely in a better position than anyone else to investigate and strategise what other tech or software could be adopted to improve efficiencies, lower costs, reduce time and of course increase profitability. So this week on...

Agile development is a process which can benefit B2B marketers, and it originates from software development. Back in 2001 a group of software engineers got together to create a framework to facilitate adapting to changes as projects developed. The goal was to ultimately deliver better projects more efficiently. Today, that approach to development and improvement is often shortened to simply, Agile. And Agile as a discipline has enabled many industries, including marketing, to benefit in t...

If you've ever been asked to put on an event at a drop of a hat, or to 'work a bit of marketing magic' on the creative equivalent of someone's last will and testament, then that's exactly how your SEO team feels when you ask them to get you ranking high on Google for anything and everything. Now whilst it's true that your SEO team has powers similar to Harry Potter, the truth is that your company will get a ton more free traffic and leads IF those wizards receive a little help. What I mean ...