As a Chief Marketing Officer, I frequently research B2B demand generation topics online, and more often than not, I find fluffy decks full of the same old stats but lacking any practical guidance on how to do it. Hence I decided to write my thoughts on the critical requirements to drive revenue through marketing along with my detailed dashboard template for measuring/reporting the results and ROI. As always it’s impossible to deliver the whole context in a deck so please ping me if you’d like to go below the surface of the content.
As a CMO of a digital marketing company I am often asked to present to classes of trainees. As such I built this deck to provide a high-level overview of the 8 critical elements necessary for successful B2B marketing.
1. Know your customer journey
2. Always be helping
3. Create marketing so good people would pay for it
4. Promote the power trio
5. Simmer your leads
6. Get in bed with Sales
7. Cultivate continuous improvement culture
8. Build products that sell themselves
I’m a longtime American Airlines frequent flyer so they sent me an email about their new small business travel rewards program. Typically I hit delete in a nano second on the dozens of marketing emails I get daily, but something in the American email caught my eye so I opened it.
In few cases like this where I open the video I usually close in seconds because it misses the mark [too boring, off target, of no use, etc. etc.]. But in this case American did a super job of using humor about business jargon to draw me in and keep me watching until the end.
Congrats American, you did a rare thing which is to make a good promotional video. Who is your agency? I’d like to talk with them.
Remember the School House Rock videos that played during Saturday morning cartoons? Yes, I know that question dates me, but honestly those videos still stand up today. Some of my favorites were:
Taking the same approach as “I’m Just a Bill”, our latest infographic shows the long journey of how a consumer turns into a customer of a local business. It includes the steps that businesses should be taking to prevent lead leaks and squeeze more ROI from their sales and marketing budgets.
Back to school season means brushing up on the three Rs – writing, reading and arithmetic so I’m sharing this marketing math infographic by Aberdeen Group. It shows the typical conversion rates at each stage of the marketing and sales funnel.
It’s been a while since I took arithmetics but if my calculations are correct it takes over 3,000 website visitors to get just 1 closed deal. Breaking it down, that’s 3,000 visitors to get: 150 contacts, 33 MQLs, 12 SALs, 4 opportunities and 1 closed deal.
This goes to show 3 things:
- How narrow and steep the funnel really is for B2B marketers
- How you need to measure your lead gen funnel against benchmarks or you’ll have no idea what to focus on
- How critical it is to optimize every conversion point and fix lead leaks in your funnel
Speaking of leaky funnels, go check out www.dontleakleads.com and use our marketing math calculator to see how small changes in conversion can make a big impact on your bottom line.
Our goal is to make marketing so useful that people not only seek it out but stick around once they visit. Toward that end I'm proud to announce our latest effort aimed at helpfing businesses solve the deplorable problem of lead leaks. What the heck are lead leaks?
Essentially they are the places in your sales and marketing process where
you are losing potential customers to competitors because your marketing,
website, or follow-up isn’t up to par. Or stated another way, the places where you are throwing away customers and revenue.
Two quick examples of lead leaks:
- What percent of your website
visitors leave without contacting you? Not having a fresh, professional,
conversion-friendly website is like turning away potential customers at your front door. - How many of your calls go to
voicemail or are after hours? Waiting too long to follow up with new contacts
(even just more than an hour) usually means they choose someone else.
These are just a couple of common lead leaks, but there
are so many more.
Anyway, it was driving us crazy to see so many businesses
waste so many of the leads they’re working so hard to get – without even
knowing it. So, we created an entire website dedicated to educating the world
about lead leaks and helping businesses get more customers from their marketing.
Check out the site at www.dontleakleads.com for helpful info
like:
- Candid “leaks on the street” videos with real
consumers that will open your eyes to the problem - Ebooks, articles, infographics, and
presentations explaining the most common ways businesses leak leads (and what
to do about them) - A Marketing Math calculator that enables you to
calculate the number of customers and amount of revenue you could get by fixing
lead leaks - Other fun stuff like videos and memes you can share
The team is finishing off a great new marketing campaign and to get some internal buzz they made this simple time lapse video. More goodness to come soon…
More fun with funnels. Our best infographic yet. Make sure you aren't leaking leads at each step of the buying journey customers take to discover, contact and choose your business.
See more on the ReachLocal Learning Center
Every marketer leaks leads from their sales funnel so we created an ebook to help them plug the holes and get more customers.