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

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.

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.

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:

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.  

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? 

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.