"THE GROWTH BLOG" - A RESOURCE FOR B2B LEADERS, MARKETERS, SALES & SERVICE PROFESSIONALS

Varuna Vaswani

Recent Posts by Varuna Vaswani:

Forget About Your Product, Think About Your Buyers!

In the world of marketing, we’re all familiar with The Four Ps – product, price, promotion and place. This principle of marketing was held strongly by businesses and marketers alike for decades, until it was highlighted that there is something very wrong with the four Ps. Promoting a great product in the right places at a reasonable price is all well and good, but there’s no mention about the customer, the buyer or the people that you are targeting for the product.

It was only when theorists considered the service industry that they recognised the importance of people in marketing and expanded The Four Ps into Seven Ps to include process and physical environment, in addition to people. But even then, the process was inverted as the focus is on creating the product or service rather than the customer whom the product / service is meant for, reducing customers to a mere afterthought.

Topics: b2b marketing buyer personas buyer behaviour buyer centricity

Lead Quality Over Lead Quantity: The Business Owner's Mantra

Quality over quantity. We’ve heard it a million times. We all know it’s true, but in this dog-eat-dog world where everyone seems to just focus on getting ahead, it’s often forgotten, and even flipped around. Salespeople are a common examples of this, their every day revolves around an unspoken, yet very real competition amongst their teams: bringing in the most sales.

 

 

To put this in perspective, let’s take a look at a day in the life of salesperson Sally. Sally’s day starts with a look at her calendar, noting her meetings for the day. She looks at her scribbles from a previous meeting with a prospect, and then writes a full proposal for them. Her proposal is amazing – it’s got everything a prospect needs to know about the product / service to address their needs.  Sally is confident it’ll win her the client. In the afternoon, she's off to the meeting to present it to her prospect.

Topics: strategy b2b lead generation b2b marketing sales b2b sales

Social Media Marketing for B2B: The 5 Things To Do Immediately

In a world where there is no shortage of new ideas and ways to market, social media marketing has proven that it is here to stay. However, social media marketing has evolved rapidly over the years, and success is not defined by the number of posts about your brand on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Marketers and business owners should keep up with the changes to ensure they aren’t lagging behind their competition.

Here are the five immediate actions business owners should take to ensure social media success:

Topics: social media strategy

3 Essentials for Sales and Marketing Alignment

 

According to a study by MathMarketing and Marketo, aligning your marketing and sales can improve your business drastically. In numbers this means your business can:

  • Get 67% better at closing sales;
  • Enjoy 108% better lead acceptance; and
  • Generate 209% more from Marketing.

Sales and marketing alignment is great for your business. But in order to be able to practice it successfully, you need to understand what this alignment demands. In this blog, we’ll help you understand exactly what you’re meant to align within your business to achieve best results.  

Topics: b2b marketing strategy sales and marketing alignment b2b digital marketing b2b sales

5 Reasons Content Marketing Isn’t Effective

Research by the Content Marketing Institute uncovered that 93% of Australian marketers surveyed have used some form of content marketing over the past year. What’s staggering is that only 33% of them found content marketing to be effective.

Why is this the case? 

Topics: inbound marketing content marketing HubSpot b2b lead generation marketing automation buyer centricity

3 Simple Rules for Social Media Marketing

There are too many rules for social media marketing out there. We’ve read, skimmed rather, so many articles stating the 10 laws or the 20 rules for effective social media marketing. But how many of these ‘rules’ do you actually follow? I’m guessing no more than 20 – 30%.

Opinions around the best time to post updates on social networks are rampant. Some believe it’s best to update Twitter just after lunchtime, whereas some believe that LinkedIn posts bring the most success when they’re posted right before 9am. Not only do they preach about times to post, some advocate for quantity of social profiles believing more profiles would lead to more leads.

Topics: inbound marketing social media strategy buyer personas b2b lead generation buyer centricity

The Business Owner’s Guide to an Effective Lead Generation Engine

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock these past few years, you know that lead generation is now more than just buying lists and cold calling. Inbound marketing and new technology have breathed new life into lead generation, giving us access to a variety of tools at our fingertips. Despite this, success in generating qualified leads is not dependent on using these tools.

Topics: inbound marketing content marketing seo social media strategy buyer personas b2b lead generation website marketing landing pages

Buyer Centricity: The Missing Piece in your Content Marketing Puzzle

Your marketers are typically capable of producing good marketing material. From website content, blog articles, social media updates, online advertisements to emails, surveys, newsletters, brochures and eBooks. As a business owner you review the material and most of the time you’re happy with what they’ve produced. It is well designed, it has your brand name and logo, it describes your product / brand clearly and it is interesting. You believe your company has produced a great piece of marketing material. But there’s one problem: this material might not be good enough for your buyers.

Topics: content marketing b2b marketing buyer personas buyer's journey buyer centricity

Is Your Marketing Preventing Your Business' Growth?

Being a business owner, you may have a b2b marketing team or a b2b marketing professional responsible for handling all marketing tasks in your business. You allocate a certain proportion of your company-wide budget for marketing, review a new digital marketing campaign proposed by the team and give them the go ahead. Soon they ask you for more funding to develop a different campaign, to support the existing campaign or for a different product / service altogether. 

Topics: b2b marketing strategy b2b marketing plan marketing plan recruitment reporting

How to Set the Right B2B Marketing Budget

As we all know, there is no one figure deemed to be the best marketing budget. It’s an amount relative to the organisation, its resources and its target objectives.

Topics: b2b marketing strategy lead nurturing marketing automation b2b marketing plan b2b marketing budget b2b marketing investment reporting