Stop thinking of your website as your online brochure. It should sit at the heart of your lead generation efforts and be the engine room of your marketing and sales funnel, becoming the cornerstone of your market presence.
Stop thinking of your website as your online brochure. It should sit at the heart of your lead generation efforts and be the engine room of your marketing and sales funnel, becoming the cornerstone of your market presence.
If you are a senior executive in B2B businesses, regardless of your label (CEO, managing director, country manager, general manager, etc.) you should blog.
I can already hear the collective groan. "Really...why is it so important?!" Well here's why:
The implications for your firm are profound.
The shift to the "as a service" world is accelerating. Marketing is no stranger to working with agencies to deliver specific skill sets, such as creative and PR. But now Australia's small and medium business sector is seeing the rise of whole-of-function outsourcing applied to marketing. Firms are recognising that marketing is undergoing a fundamental transition and they aren't able to keep up. Paul Roetzer, author of the marketing performance blueprint calls it "the marketing performance gap". He talks of three gaps:
Outsourcing isn’t for every organisation, but if you are increasingly finding that you are pushing marketing further and further down your to-do-list or that your current marketing strategies aren’t performing well at all, then it might just be the perfect solution for you. Used correctly, outsourcing your marketing can bring plenty of value to your business. Have a read of this blog post to see if you are the right candidate for outsourcing and to see the benefits of moving your marketing out-of-house (as well as some top tips from the experts):
Whenever we rebuild a B2B go-to-market strategy for a client, or run a course for B2B marketers the one issue that never fails to raise its ugly head, is the misalignment between marketing and sales. Delegates shake their head or shrug their shoulders as if to say “what can we do, it's just the way it is, sales and marketing are like oil and water." But it doesn’t have to be this way. In order to get your marketing and sales aligned, you need to set a common framework that both functions can align around and then set the corresponding KPIs.
But where do you start?
The cost of customer acqusition (COCA) is a business metric every leader and marketer should be aiming to control. Controlling COCA is fundamental to building a scaleable business model. If your costs of acquiring new customers increases at the same rate as your revenue growth, your margins will be under pressure.
New highly efficient, primarily digital, methods of customer acqusition are quickly emerging, driving down costs by around 60% and creating real competitive advantage for those who get it right.
Marketers are your new sales team...(well sort of!). B2B Marketing is a key weapon in driving small business growth.
With B2B buyers going online in droves, buyers aren't engaging with vendors' sales teams until around 70% of the way through the purchase process according to an array of well respected research firms such as Forrester, and the Corporate Executive Board. This means marketing has a vastly increased responsibility for influencing the buyer and a much greater direct responsibility than ever before in generating revenue for your business.
The problem is marketers struggle with this new found responsibility. A poorly performing marketing function hits your business where it hurts...lower sales and higher cost of customer acquisition. Ouch!
Digital transformation is upon us. It’s required, non negotiable and a competitive imperative. But does this affect the way senior executives manage, motivate and communicate with their teams? The fundamental values of good leadership and management determine just how effective you really are as a boss. Great bosses consistently inspire employees to perform well and remain loyal. Those qualities play a major role in the long-term success of your business. While these fundamentals remain solid they require some reinterpretation in the digital age.
The digital transformation of organisations is forcing senior executives to rethink leadership and all key aspects that come with it. The subject is high on business leaders’ agendas according to McKinsey & Co: “As businesses continue to embrace digital tools and technologies, C level executives say they are stepping up their own involvement in shaping and driving digital strategies. This is vital to the success of digital programs, as survey respondents most often cite a lack of senior-management interest as the reason for an initiative’s failure.“
So how should senior managers change their approach to leadership of marketing teams? And how can they support their marketing teams in regards to the shift of skills needed in today's digitally driven world?