Marketing automation is seen as the saviour for many hard-up B2B marketers, whether they are hard-up for budget or hard-up for time. It also holds the keys to another tantalising promise; the ability to really measure your campaigns across the whole go-to-market funnel and determine the marketing ROI of your campaign tactics.
If you are looking for a checklist to evaluate your B2B marketing agency you should consider this excellent list from Hubspot. Hubspot make some of the world's most powerful marketing automation software to drive traffic to your site, actively convert them to leads and customers, plus a really strong marketing analytics offering. They rely on a global network of agencies to implement and deploy their software.
So they should know (in the spirit of full disclosure we are a Hubspot agency, so I guess that means we should also know!)
That said it's a really useful list and if nothing else emphasizes two key points.
To outsource or not to outsource. It's one of the great B2B marketing questions. Is it more cost-effective to handle things internally or to outsource? Sometimes due to capacity constraints and headcount freezes there simply isn't a choice but to outsource.
In many organisations, it's an eyebrow-raising moment when the words "marketing" and "maths" are uttered in the same sentence.
It's just SO tempting for B2B marketers to want to target large juicy market segments and market an ever increasing portfolio of products to that audience.
In a face-to-face meeting, sales professionals can easily scan the room for non-verbal cues that indicate who is acting in what role. By observing body language, they can quickly determine who defers to whom, who asks questions, and who’s interested in what topics, allowing them to adjust their behaviour accordingly.
Easter break is that time of the year where many B2B marketers pause to catch their breath, reflect on what they have achieved so far this year, and refocus on the push for the financial year-end and perhaps beyond.
We all know that original content is the best way to go, but let's be honest; it's overly ambitious, even idealistic, for time-strapped marketers to say that it's the only kind of content they'll produce in their busy production schedule. Original content needs research and time, most of which is spent on checking your facts for credibility, and yourself for bias. That's why we turn to the now typical art of content curation to save the day.
