I get to talk to many B2B companies who have strong sales operations in place but are only beginning to launch full-scale demand generation and account-based marketing.
Here are the most common misconceptions they have about B2B marketing – the myths if you will… and some valid questions they have.
1. “This demand gen/ABM thing doesn’t work in my industry.”
Truth: it works in any industry where you have high contract value and business is built on trust and relationships. Of course. there has to be a more-or-less leveled playing field (ie. – no maffia or state-maffia or any weirdness)
2. “This seems complex and expensive: why don’t we just hire more sales people? Or look for partners/brokers who can get us more projects?”
Truth: You’ve gotten this far with strong sales and little marketing – but if you want a breakthrough, you need to build a brand and get people to know, like and trust you.
You need to generate demand at scale and empower your sales team. Sales will be so much easier!
Some say sales and marketing are like the right and left engines of a plane. If you want to pick up speed, you better build out both engines.
+1 to this: if your competition has an advantage bc. they’re local and you’re coming in from abroad, you need extra trust-building, brandbuilding to make up for your relative disadvantage.
3. “We can’t produce all this content because we don’t have much to talk about.”
Truth: Yes you do. For one, things that are evident to you aren’t evident to your buyer.
#2: you need to
– talk about important concepts *multiple times* for it to actually reach people and sink in
– talk about important concepts from *multiple angles*, using a variety of examples
+1: if you follow any heavyweight content creators on any platform, you’ll see topics being rinsed and repeated with slight modifications. This very post is a re-hash of previous videos on the same topic.
4. What’s the ROI of marketing? » another totally valid question.
Answer: you can trace *some* deals back to specific marketing campaigns, but truth is, marketing impacts ALL revenue. The first thing you’ll start seeing as you implement demand generation (content, social etc.) is existing clients, partners, employees noticing.
You’ll also have prospective employees taking note and mentioning your presence on social media and elsewhere in media. This is a biggie.
Truth is: building your authoritative status will impact existing relationships first, making it easier to upsell, cross-sell and re-open lost deals. Another biggie.
Then, depending on when you start doing campaigns and how long your sales cycle is, you’ll start seeing sales qualified opportunities pop up from unexpected places.
The best way to measure marketing’s effectiveness is the increase of your sales velocity quarter after quarter. Sales velocity is a favorite metric for any legit marketer because it reflects changes in
– deal size
– sales cycle
– deal close rate
Marketing impacts ALL OF THESE.