Sales Engine

APRIL 21, 2016

“Sales has this tremendous exposure that are our readers, these business owners,” Wood explains. Wood talks about numerous examples of articles that have done really well for conversions of organic searches, despite the hyper-specific titles. They have the knowledge that we’re trying to portray in our content.”

Content 159

Content Internet Marketing Training Education 159

Sales Engine

MAY 19, 2016

The necessity of lead intelligence It used to be that a good sales rep could walk in the door of the business, meet the prospect in a conference room, shake hands and see around the office. An experienced sales rep could read eye contact and body language and would pretty much know the challenges that the business faced.

Sales Qualified Leads 159

Sales Qualified Leads B2B Marketing Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy 159

Sales Engine

JANUARY 11, 2017

For example, even buying a car has drastically changed. When someone clicks on a link, downloads a white paper, or registers for a webinar, our business development rep (BDR) gets an email alert saying that one of their prospects is checking out an article. I wouldn’t. And neither would the buyer of your products and services.

Demand Generation Agencies 136

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Budget Programs Demand 136

Sales Engine

AUGUST 13, 2015

The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice’s Josh Bland, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders. Spend your money upstream, right up the sales pipeline, generate demand, nurture business leads. Examples in case studies help people latch on to stories.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Storytelling Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 18, 2016

During uncertain economic conditions, business leaders are often forced to shift budgets amongst growth centers in the business. Examples of digital activity included website visits, email clicks, and content downloads. They realized that this was not the market that was going to grow their business.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Cost per Lead 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

They want for rich, meaningful content that helps them solve business problems. For example, if you have a problem on your computer, do you call Geek Squad , or do you type that exact problem into a search engine? I’ll assume that it’s the latter.)

SEO 120

SEO Content Keywords Opinions 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

For example, the keywords that you use in your page title, URL, headlines (H1 tag), and occasionally throughout the content are still relevant. But the people that do come to that page are a pretty good indication that they are a prospect because they’re searching for exactly the business problem that you solve.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel SEO Content Marketing Long Tail Marketing 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 28, 2016

From a content marketing standpoint, for our business (Conversion Sciences) we currently rely on little to no outbound marketing to drive demand. Of course, we all do content marketing to get business, but search engine ranking should really be the primary metric and this strategy actually hurt our rankings. That’s what got published.

Marketing & Strategy 120

Marketing & Strategy A/B testing Broadcasting Content 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 2, 2015

For example, let’s say that the conversation started with a prospect searching Google about a business problem and found you through a white paper on your website. Furthermore, those conversations must continue before the prospect loses interest in you, or it will never turn into an opportunity. Not necessarily.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Paper Fulfillment B2B Marketing 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 31, 2016

Email marketing has been used as the primary application for contextualized marketing, but since there’s still no way to tell what’s actually relevant to a prospect when they’re checking their email, it often goes wrong for marketers—for example, how many email pitches have you gotten that are completely inappropriate to your company and situation?

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Process B2B Marketing Automation Services 120

Sales Engine

MAY 5, 2016

Content for Lead Generation Should Focus on Business Problems, Not Solutions. It’s about identifying business problems that generate interest. At the top of the funnel, they’re not ready to hear about your solutions yet.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel B2B Thought Leadership B2B Business 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 27, 2016

What are the business challenges that they face and are trying to solve? For example, a top-producing sales rep isn’t out there just talking about themselves and their product and telling everyone why they should buy from them, because they know that no one wants to hear that. What are the things that keep them up at night?

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Webinar Metrics Paid Search Agency Companies 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 7, 2016

For example, that entry-level startup employee may not be ready today, but what if she gets promoted six months from now and finds herself with the budget, authority, and timeline that she didn’t have before? But with open communication and process agreement, it can be a great example of working successfully toward a common goal.

Lead Ranking 136

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads MQL 136

Sales Engine

APRIL 20, 2016

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because the underlying premise of content marketing is the same as sales prospecting—we do business with those we know, like, and trust. So from there, you should have a business development discussion to continue the conversation down the path until they're sales ready.

Lead Ranking 218

Lead Ranking Lead Gen Lead Scoring Leads 218

Sales Engine

AUGUST 23, 2016

For example, if you’re attending a trade show, you start with: Booking the space, ordering your swag, designing the booth, booking hotels, etc. In the middle, you staff and execute the show, collect business cards, and set up meetings. Project-based marketing always has a beginning, middle, and an end. And now there’s a budget cut.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 8, 2015

For example, if you’re attending a trade show, you start with: Booking the space, ordering your swag, designing the booth, booking hotels, etc. In the middle, you staff and execute the show, collect business cards, and set up meetings. Project-based marketing always has a beginning, middle, and an end. And now there’s a budget cut.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 22, 2015

Whether you are the owner of a business or the head of marketing, let’s face it—you want to dominate your marketplace. A great example is Redbull. You want to be number one, and you won’t settle for a 20% growth rate putting you at a distant number 10. So how are you going to achieve the growth rates you’re really looking for?

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Funnel Advertising 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 9, 2015

You must convert this audience (anonymous and hanging out in social media) into known prospects for sales reps to have meaningful, consultative business conversations. So if someone happens to go there, they can see that your company has activity and assume that you’re in business.

Demand 120

Demand B2B Marketing B2B Trade Show 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 12, 2016

I believe that the future of every business is storytelling and finding the right way to tell the right story at the right time,” he says. What I’ve learned in my two-year tenure at the Met is that the lessons we’ve learned here apply to every business. That includes the importance of mobile, social, and video.

B2B Marketing 120

B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency B2B Storytelling 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 12, 2016

I believe that the future of every business is storytelling and finding the right way to tell the right story at the right time,” he says. What I’ve learned in my two-year tenure at the Met is that the lessons we’ve learned here apply to every business. That includes the importance of mobile, social, and video.

B2B Marketing 120

B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency B2B Storytelling 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 28, 2016

To illustrate what I mean, let’s say that you sell an enterprise software solution to businesses. So if you’ve been producing content in the form of blogs, white papers, and infographics, it’s a fairly easy transition to take some cues from the basic structure of a business magazine. Let’s look at an example we can all relate to.

Webinar Metrics 120

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Content Paper 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

For example, a blog post from two years ago can keep paying dividends in remarkable ways. Rinse and Recycle A business could republish content such a blog post exactly as it is. Posting in multiple venues is also possible; for example, putting a video on YouTube, Facebook and a business website.

Content 120

Content Youtube Statistics Social Media 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

For example, a blog post from two years ago can keep paying dividends in remarkable ways. Rinse and Recycle A business could republish content such a blog post exactly as it is. Posting in multiple venues is also possible; for example, putting a video on YouTube, Facebook and a business website.

Content 120

Content Youtube Statistics Social Media 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 12, 2016

For example, a few months ago, I had a health issue, and it was a little bit of a scare—I had some abdominal pain and my doctor decided to order a CT scan and a colonoscopy. They hop on the Web and start typing symptoms and self-diagnose the problems in their business—and more often than not, they’re wrong, just like I was.

Top of Funnel 136

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads 136

Sales Engine

JUNE 16, 2016

The way you attract these early stage buyers is to speak consistently to their high-probability pain points because at this stage, they’re just on the internet doing research on how to solve business problems. They don’t want to talk to sales reps. They don’t want to hear about your products.

Paid Search Agency 120

Paid Search Agency Trade Show Marketing & Strategy Public Relations 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 1, 2015

For example, your latest deal could have started three months ago when you sent out a newsletter with several informative, third-party articles. B2B sales cycles are a much more complex business problem to solve as they are exacerbated by geography, industry, and so on.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Sales Qualified Leads B2B Marketing Marketing Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 19, 2015

The issue is further highlighted in a March 2015 article by Shaish Chitnis called “The MQL is Dead" where he calls for different sales-defined metrics and the use of business development to qualify and nurture MQLs to turn them into Sales Accepted Leads (SALs). Probably not to the extent that it requires in today’s buyer’s journey.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads MQL Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 7, 2015

For example, a few months ago, I had a health issue, and it was a little bit of a scare—I had some abdominal pain and my doctor decided to order a CT scan and a colonoscopy. They hop on the Web and start typing symptoms and self-diagnose the problems in their business—and more often than not, they’re wrong, just like I was.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 3, 2016

But even more interesting, when calculating the average selling price of closed business, the MQL has a value to the company of $224. For example, if you’re a buyer of payroll services and you have 10 employees, you’re probably not going to need to read a lot of white papers on the subject.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Purchase 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 3, 2016

But even more interesting, when calculating the average selling price of closed business, the MQL has a value to the company of $224. For example, if you’re a buyer of payroll services and you have 10 employees, you’re probably not going to need to read a lot of white papers on the subject.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Purchase 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 13, 2016

Just because B2B companies are investing heavily in content marketing doesn’t mean that they’re successful at generating the leads they need for business growth. You must c onvert this anonymous audience into known prospects for sales reps to have meaningful, consultative business conversations. They don’t want to hear it face-to-face.

Top of Funnel 136

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Lead Ranking Digital Marketing Funnels 136

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 16, 2015

For example, let’s say that someone downloaded an infographic, and a business development rep calls them and sets an appointment to talk further. So, if they’ve downloaded a white paper, that may or may not be enough to advance the conversation, but you run the risk of losing them if you don’t send them something else.

Advertising Agencies 120

Advertising Agencies Budget Programs High Quality Lead Content 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 16, 2016

Unfortunately, it rarely looks like that, but that's always the goal when we establish demand generation systems--keeping sales people busy doing what they do best--consulting and closing. For example, the results of cold calls and cold emails have become less predictable. The idea of marketing one-to-many is on the decline.

Sales Management 120

Sales Management Top of Funnel Cold Calling Content 120

Sales Engine

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Businesses love repeatable processes. For example, the results of cold calls and cold emails have become less predictable. Develop relationships with people and solve their problem and they’ll want to do business with you. Everyone is looking for the secret formulas that we can replicate and repeat to increase revenue.

Sales Management 120

Sales Management Top of Funnel Cold Calling Content 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 22, 2016

But they’re ignoring the changes in our underlying business and buyer behavior as a culture. For example, companies create content on their blogs and websites, and then use social media to distribute that content—but all they’re really getting out of that is branding and awareness, which is what we did as marketers in the 90s.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Digital Marketing Funnels 120

Sales Engine

NOVEMBER 6, 2015

But they’re ignoring the changes in our underlying business and buyer behavior as a culture. For example, companies create content on their blogs and websites, and then use social media to distribute that content—but all they’re really getting out of that is branding and awareness, which is what we did as marketers in the 90s.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Digital Marketing Funnels 120

Sales Engine

JULY 14, 2016

Let’s look at a real life example. For purposes of this example, it’s a two-word keyword that you’re trying to optimize both inbound and organic search content around that topic. You could take a single topic like lead scoring. I need to choose. Who am I really marketing to? Where do we have the best opportunity to increase sales?

Lead Scoring 120

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Content Sales Qualified Leads 120