Marketing Interactions

JUNE 27, 2021

And yes, your buyers and customers are primary conversations, but it goes beyond them to your sales, product, and customer teams. First, these internal conversations provide access to an extraordinary knowledge bank of insights and perspectives about your customers based on their interactions with them. This does two things.

Buyer Personas 111

Buyer Personas B2B Ideal Customer Profiles Account Based Marketing 111

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

Get rid of the sales pitch and marketing fluff. Sales: Challenges to overcome. Sales Content: Evidence content that supports sales conversations to help buyers act, get everyone on board and mitigate risk of disruption with making the change. But for many buyers, the B2B content they encounter is out of context.

Work Management 96

Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership B2B 96

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 19, 2020

They are convinced that the higher they can get in the organization, the more sales they will be able to influence. Start by talking to your sales team. If you build personas in a vacuum, you could end up with a database of contacts that sales reps have no interest in talking to and who won’t ever buy from you. (who

Buyer Personas 121

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management Work Management B2B 121

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 24, 2021

If you take the time to do this research (memorialize it in buyer personas) and gain thorough understanding, you’ll find that several other challenges on this list will go away, including: Creating valuable content , instead of sales-oriented content (36%). Difficulty in reaching target audiences (35%). Even better, ask for their input.

B2B Marketing 100

B2B Marketing Content Marketing Planning B2B 100

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

In B2B marketing and sales, we talk a lot about our buyers’ pain or need. Like that conversation with your boss…. It’s likely you will search for options to address the problem in preparation for that conversation. What happens when something goes wrong? But that’s not what really defines a problem. Do you feel it?

Top of Funnel 88

Top of Funnel B2B Peer-to-peer Lead Scoring 88

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 20, 2021

Sales thinks marketing messaging is, well, too “marketing like,” so they replace it with the casualness of personalized conversation for face-to-face meetings—including those conducted virtually—which can result in lost context and relevance, depending on the buyer’s experience with the brand, and via which channels, thus far.

B2B 62

B2B Marketing Management Customer Satisfaction B2B Sales 62

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 26, 2022

We can start by dropping the jargon and the “scripts” of how we think marketing and sales content should sound and just talk to our B2B buyers like the professionals they are—as people. When trust grows, your buyers gain the confidence they need to qualify themselves and invite a conversation with your sales rep.

Top of Funnel 91

Top of Funnel B2B Content Terms and Conditions 91

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 25, 2023

Talking—actual conversations—with your buyers and customers is illuminating. Your sales reps will fixate on the last conversation they had with a specific customer – focusing on whatever stood out to them the most. Review the risk averse reasons for beige content above and decide to eradicate that thinking.

B2B Marketing 91

B2B Marketing Content Marketing B2B Content 91

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

Discovery is most often considered a function performed by sales reps. But in this context, it’s more about discovery FOR the sales rep, NOT B2B buyers. One of the problems marketing and sales have as B2B buyers’ roles shift is that they start too late in the process. Back to ABM…and Seamless Transitions.

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles Account Based Marketing B2B ABM 62

Marketing Interactions

JULY 25, 2019

Once B2B buyers figured out they could access whatever information they needed to understand a new subject, answer a question, or evaluate a product they no longer needed to talk to a vendor until they decided to invite them to the conversation. Sales cares about winning net-new logos. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.

Relevance 73

Relevance Work Management Marketing Management B2B Sales 73

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 24, 2021

Think about what your buyers have already gone through before they engage with your sales reps. There’s a reason statistics exist that verify buyers push sellers back to the end of the buy cycle and only spend about 5% of that time engaged with your sales rep. We need to. They’ve got work to do. Jobs to complete. Thinking to be done.

B2B Thought Leadership 62

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership B2B Gartner 62

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 27, 2020

In a lot of the conversations I have with B2B marketers, many are overwhelmed when confronted with how to build truly actionable buyer personas. These are the people who will also become the vendor point of contact with your sales reps. Building actionable personas takes a fair bit of time and effort. But, does it need to?

Buyer Personas 69

Buyer Personas Effectiveness B2B B2B Thought Leadership 69

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 23, 2017

Enable collaboration among marketing, product, sales, and customer service for a consistent experience. Select members related to the focus of the project from sales, product marketing, and line of business management. And, most importantly, structure the interviews as conversations, not inquisitions.

Buyer Personas 74

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy 74

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

The idea that if we cram everything into a 3-week campaign, we can force our prospects into speaking with our sales reps and buying. What if your small content helps them address concerns and have better conversations that help them resolve the conflicts of the beliefs each person in the buying committee brings to the table?

B2B 114

B2B Content B2B Marketing Trust Marketing 114

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

In his opinion, the world is now digital and if your company and product have no online conversation and customer advocacy taking place, there’s something amiss. Curb the sales messaging. Curb the sales messaging. Curb the sales messaging. Add more insight from industry thought leaders/analysts.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Lead Gen B2B Vendors 100

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 18, 2019

For those of us who sell outcomes based on a complex sale, we really need to embrace simplicity and clarity. And that’s what it takes to get the conversation started. Small steps. Small shifts based on what your buyer already sees to help them see it a bit differently. The less effort, the less of a stretch, the better.

Buyer Personas 119

Buyer Personas Buying Cycle Case Studies Case Study 119

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 4, 2017

But in most of these conversations, the customer becomes the equivalent of a wanted poster. This includes personas, messaging, stories, content marketing programs, sales enablement programs, and more. Marketing, sales, and service teams are pooling insights to develop a well-rounded view of the accounts and their needs.

Account Based Marketing 64

Account Based Marketing ABM Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 64

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 8, 2017

Let’s say your sales team says they must engage a CXO in order to close a deal. Rather than addressing only the needs of one persona at a time, create ways to help them facilitate the hard conversations. And that’s a big miss considering the strength of the status quo in fighting against change. A Look at B2B Buying Dynamics.

Buyer Personas 48

Buyer Personas Budget Programs B2B Cross-Selling 48

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 30, 2018

It is quite possible—as well as likely—that enterprises with a number of marketing departments and the sales team can be in different quadrants of the matrix at the same time. Becoming radically relevant is achieved when marketing, customer service and sales have adopted the outside-in approach with commitment that matches capabilities.

Relevance 58

Relevance B2B Marketing B2B Broadcasting 58

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

Requests come from sales teams, service teams, and executives with ideas they want to be executed as content assets. Because each persona was able to view the information in alignment with their context, the article sparked collaborative conversations that got salespeople invited to the conversations.

Content Marketing 60

Content Marketing Planning Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 60

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 11, 2019

Five years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for me to work with a marketing team in one department that never spoke to or even knew the marketing teams in other departments: the social media team or the sales team or customer success teams. I’ve facilitated those introductions more times than I can count.

Peer-to-peer 53

Peer-to-peer Content Enterprise Management Broadcasting 53

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 26, 2016

Where the demand generation team may need a white paper to generate leads, the sales team may need parts of it to support crucial conversations at specific stages in the buying process.

Lead Scoring 72

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking B2B Marketing Planning 72

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

However, conversational messaging for marketing is not the same as whipping out your smartphone to fire off a text to friends or family. Leads – acquire new leads and develop them into sales-ready buyers. Sales – create urgency for buyers to take action to acquire your products.

SMS 58

SMS Campaigns Marketing Automation Services Urgency Marketing 58

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

A C-level conversation about marketing must relate to how the work of marketing helps the company to reach its objectives and revenue goals. Shortening the sales cycle brings faster turn over for revenue, so put that narrative to work to pull buyers forward. Sales is not your customer. They are not.

Planning 118

Planning Paid Search Agency Content Marketing Marketing & Strategy 118