Many B2B marketing programs end up being “meeh”. On the surface, they’re doing the right things.
You really have to peel back the curtain to figure out what holds the company back from the results they deserve.
I’ve found that 98% of the time, it’s a mindset issue.
You have to “internalize” these things (and a few more we discuss in episode 12).
First, there are three pillars of B2B marketing. The mindset issue is this: you can’t ignore any of them in the medium-run; you can’t favor one over the others without paying a penalty in results.
Three big areas:
Demand generation: putting out content that educates the market and makes them want to work with you – at all stages of the buying journey – including upselling existing clients.
Branding: branding is not the logo, not the visual appearance, not the slide decks. It is the goodwill and sentiment around your company. It is the sum of interactions, experiences and which will get them to want to work with you. This goes for employees as well.
Account-Based Marketing – go to market: how you create a list of dream accounts and target and engage them to become clients.
There is more to growth and revenue than just marketing. Thus, a second set of principles:
• Don’t think just marketing. Think marketing, sales and customer success. These three should go hand-in-hand and the lines between them often blur. This unified team of diverse customer-facing talent – all focused on revenue and driving customer experience is referred to as revenue operations or revops.
• Marketing and sales have to be aligned on metrics, especially on what a “quality lead” is.
• Forget lead quantity. Organizations tend to trust in “many leads”. They have the assumption that once they have a bunch, all there is to do is weed out the buyers which is straightforward. Life doesn’t work that way: you need a small number of high quality leads.
• Make everything about customer experience. CX starts at the first interaction with a prospect. The way your marketing and sales flow is a huge part of customer experience.
