Sales Engine

MARCH 10, 2016

Once he understood how it worked and why he’d been successful attracting readership, Lemas started looking at how others were doing it in different spaces, and his career in search engine optimization took off. Q: How has search engine optimization changed since you started working in the space?

SEO 120

SEO Organization Content Marketing Agencies 1 120

Sales Engine

JULY 7, 2016

The math doesn’t work the same as it used to because of decline in connection rates. When it works that way, it’s great! Middle relievers are many times on a different career path than the enterprise sales person, but the good news is that they tend to be less expensive high-commissioned sales rep.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Paid Search Agency Content Marketing 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 2, 2015

In fact, there’s not even a series of projects that can be assigned to marketing that’s going to work predictably because not every prospect is going to follow a predetermined, automated sales process—it’s a continuous process that requires shifting on the fly by providing more content to the prospect when they need it.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Paper Fulfillment B2B Marketing 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 27, 2015

It is not reasonable, however, to expect that this person is unsatisfied with their current vendor, has the budget, or has the authority to make a change in the organization. If an MQL agrees to have a conversation with your sales rep—in person or by phone—that’s an SAL. It’s just not going to work effectively.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Buy 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 31, 2016

The problem is that mass media and the mass approach to marketing just don’t work anymore.” Something that leverages real-time analytics and insights to personalize and automate that customer experience. This turns out to be a real challenge for digital marketers. But across the digital landscape, that trust has been broken.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Process B2B Marketing Automation Services 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 14, 2016

But we also have so many more media outlets now to work with including the bloggers.” We’re all people, and even if you’re B2B you’re still a person,” she says. You have to have an interesting point of view, an interesting personality, and a story to tell that people want to hear.”

B2B 168

B2B Blogger Content Public Relations 168

Sales Engine

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

So from a branding and awareness perspective, it worked fantastic! The first key to making this work is hiring a marketing leader that has his/her effectiveness ratings tied to lead generation and revenue growth— similar to a commissioned sales person. Marketing works in tandem with sales on an ongoing basis.

Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Qualified Leads High Quality Lead Conversion Paid Search Agency 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Marketing automation should deliver content that speaks to your prospect like a person—rather than a machine. The key is to build content in multiple formats that work with the media channels you’ve chosen as distribution networks. It also compiles data on customer interactions across all channels.

Acquisitions 149

Acquisitions Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Automation Services 149

Sales Engine

NOVEMBER 12, 2015

Jennifer Gluckow: Cold calling may have worked in 1972 (and even 2002), but it’s now a distraction and an annoyance to the person receiving the call. In-person networking, online (LinkedIn) prospecting, market positioning, content marketing , and value messaging are now the ways to go. Social selling works the same way.

Cold Calling 120

Cold Calling Allocation Youtube Internet Marketing 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Marketing automation should deliver content that speaks to your prospect like a person—rather than a machine. The key is to build content in multiple formats that work with the media channels you’ve chosen as distribution networks. It also compiles data on customer interactions across all channels.

Acquisitions 120

Acquisitions Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Automation Services 120

Sales Engine

MAY 17, 2016

Any person who has engaged that much is a wonderful lead worth keeping, and should be considered a marketing qualified lead (MQL)—but he may need more nurturing to be sales-ready. Behavior that indicates sales-readiness to a computer may be more complex than it appears.

Lead Ranking 136

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Top of Funnel 136

Sales Engine

AUGUST 2, 2017

The reason: it’s essential to maintain a digital connection with buyers who want to learn about a business pain, product, or service—but who are not yet interested in talking to a sales person. So why do sales and marketing departments still work together in a linear fashion?

Lead Ranking 168

Lead Ranking Case Studies Case Study Marketing Qualified Leads 168

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

Following up on marketing qualified leads is going to take way more work than your closers are going to want to put in. In fact, the entire sales and marketing process needs to be reworked on agile principles to be able to capitalize on the one-to-one conversations (digitally AND personally) needed to work prospects through the funnel.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Thought Leadership Demand Generation Agencies 120

Sales Engine

JUNE 20, 2016

Most marketing and sales leaders in the business-to-business world know that nurturing leads is essential to maintain a digital connection with buyers who want to learn about a business pain, product, or service—but who are not yet interested in talking to a sales person.

Lead Ranking 174

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Nurturing Lead Scoring 174

Sales Engine

MARCH 28, 2016

Demand generation requires a complete marketing program that not only attracts prospects to your website, but also converts them into leads, nurtures them over time through their own buying journey, and assists the consultative sales person to close. The right offer at the right time will always work. That’s what got published.

Marketing & Strategy 120

Marketing & Strategy A/B testing Broadcasting Content 120

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 21, 2015

You need a person who owns the strategy and oversight for your program. An expert agency can do a lot of the work we’ve been talking about at a fraction of the cost that companies would need to spend in-house. Start with a content strategist. It’s time to flip the question of how much content you need to produce.

Budget Programs 120

Budget Programs Work Management Marketing Management Allocation 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 13, 2016

Why is it working for some companies and not others? In fact, the entire sales and marketing process needs to be reworked to be able to capitalize on the one-to-one conversations (digitally AND personally) to adequately work prospects through the funnel. That’s a big disconnect. So what’s the problem?

Top of Funnel 136

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Lead Ranking Digital Marketing Funnels 136

Sales Engine

JUNE 20, 2017

Any person who has engaged that much is a wonderful lead worth keeping, and should be considered a marketing qualified lead (MQL)—but he may need more nurturing to be sales-ready. Using our Revenue Growth Marketing Calculator, you can work backwards from your sales goal to determine how many leads you will need to achieve the growth you want.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Top of Funnel 120

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 6, 2016

But it’s not as simple as hiring one key person; it’s very rare for all of the necessary skills to exist in one person, or even several people. And it kinda works to drive traffic, but it’s not converting into sales conversations. (They may still be necessary, just not in a demand generation function.)

Demand Generation Agencies 168

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Paid Search Agency Demand 168

Sales Engine

MARCH 15, 2017

Demand generation is not a one-off initiative that you work on for a period of time, launch, and forget about. You may find that a single person can take on multiple roles—managing copywriting and execution for email campaigns, for example. Needless to say, juggling this many ongoing projects requires tremendous effort and discipline.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Resources Demand 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 12, 2016

Sreenivasan leads their content marketing arm like it’s a full-blown media company, running a 70-person “newsroom” that focuses on topics he loves: digital, web, social, mobile, video, apps, data, geolocation, email, and more. “I You have to build your audience one person at a time, and you keep them one person at a time.

B2B Marketing 120

B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency B2B Storytelling 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 12, 2016

Sreenivasan leads their content marketing arm like it’s a full-blown media company, running a 70-person “newsroom” that focuses on topics he loves: digital, web, social, mobile, video, apps, data, geolocation, email, and more. “I You have to build your audience one person at a time, and you keep them one person at a time.

B2B Marketing 120

B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency B2B Storytelling 120

Sales Engine

MAY 31, 2016

It’s not a one-off initiative that you work on for a period of time, launch, and forget about. You may find that a single person can take on multiple roles—managing copywriting and execution for email campaigns, for example. This perpetual nature that demand generation requires is what makes it so difficult. Not necessarily.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Resources Demand 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 7, 2016

Alignment means that sales and marketing are truly working together to generate revenue, and that requires a change in behavior and process on both sides. To marketing, though, that person looks good enough on paper (or rather, in the CRM) to be designated “marketing-qualified” and handed off to the sales team for follow-up.

Lead Ranking 136

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads MQL 136

Sales Engine

APRIL 20, 2016

That was what we used to do before the emergence of a content-heavy internet, and it worked because sales people were the gatekeepers of information about products and services within a company. And with great content, a lot of the sales work is done before anyone ever picks up a phone. But are they ready to talk to a sales rep?

Lead Ranking 218

Lead Ranking Lead Gen Lead Scoring Leads 218

Sales Engine

AUGUST 15, 2016

In fact, the entire process must work in tandem with sales to turn suspects into qualified opportunities resulting in revenue. In smaller companies, this role may be filled by just one person, whereas larger companies may have teams in place that share out the duties. Enter the lead nurturer. Messaging strategy and application.

Lead Nurturing 120

Lead Nurturing Sales Qualified Leads Leads Lead 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 22, 2016

In fact, the entire process must work in tandem with sales to turn suspects into qualified opportunities resulting in revenue. In smaller companies, this role may be filled by just one person, whereas larger companies may have teams in place that share out the duties. Enter the lead nurturer. Messaging strategy and application.

Lead Nurturing 120

Lead Nurturing Sales Qualified Leads Leads Lead 120

Sales Engine

MAY 5, 2016

It requires re-working by in-house subject matter experts, and that defeats the purpose of outsourcing in the first place. All you want to do at this stage is capture their interest, nurture them with more content until they are sales ready, and then pass it to a sales person.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel B2B Thought Leadership B2B Business 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 28, 2016

This used to work more effectively when there was less noise, but because it still works, we’ll keep doing it. You have to build your audience one person at a time, and you keep them one person at a time. But given our limited resources, I simply can’t put out as much content as my competitors.

Webinar Metrics 120

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Content Paper 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 23, 2016

Intuitively, you probably know this, but because people are doing their own research about products and solutions to their problems, they don’t have to talk to sales person until they are ready to engage. Salespeople can’t engage in conversations with prospects like they used to—that’s now a marketing function.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

Personally, I love the big cats in the “Red Rocks” section. That’s because it’s laid out in a way that any person of any age with any interest can follow. Others read every work of every placard. (If you ever get to St Louis, definitely go to Forest Park and the zoo… it’s free, and it’s pretty awesome!)

Marketing & Strategy 120

Marketing & Strategy Demand Generation Agencies Content Marketing Agencies 1 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 12, 2016

And the result may be that we need fewer sales reps, meaning we have to focus on hiring the really qualified, well-trained, consultative sales person that truly helps prospects diagnose their real problems. It turns out that they needed process redefinition, more staff and more data to make that software work.

Top of Funnel 136

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads 136

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 8, 2015

Intuitively, you probably know this, but because people are doing their own research about products and solutions to their problems, they don’t have to talk to sales person until they are ready to engage. Salespeople can’t engage in conversations with prospects like they used to—that’s now a marketing function.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 1, 2015

For B2C companies, if someone types in something like “buy goPro Camera” as a marketer, I really don’t need to know much about that person, if anything. There’s still some marketing guess work here, such as: what is driving that conversion? But the first step is converting them into a marketing qualified lead.

Top of Funnel 120

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

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 7, 2015

And the result may be that we need fewer sales reps, meaning we have to focus on hiring the really qualified, well-trained, consultative sales person that truly helps prospects diagnose their real problems. It turns out that they needed process redefinition, more staff and more data to make that software work.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

JULY 21, 2016

It does, however, mean that you have a real person at a real company that is engaging with your brand, on a topic (pain point) that you can solve, so this is a very good thing! It doesn’t mean they have the budget, authority, need, or timetable to solve the problem. Perhaps it’s not something their company can take on right now.

Lead Generation 120

Lead Generation Top of Funnel Generation Ad Building 120

Sales Engine

JULY 21, 2016

It does, however, mean that you have a real person at a real company that is engaging with your brand, on a topic (pain point) that you can solve, so this is a very good thing! It doesn’t mean they have the budget, authority, need, or timetable to solve the problem. Perhaps it’s not something their company can take on right now.

Lead Generation 120

Lead Generation Top of Funnel Generation Ad Building 120