Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Just as in a recent post I wrote about format vs. relevance , relevance (as interpreted by the buyer) wins out again. And you filter out the people who won’t ever buy from you, just waste your sales reps’ time. Use POV to Win Engagement for Your B2B Content. POV plays a role in driving affinity.

B2B Thought Leadership 69

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership B2B Content 69

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

These events in your target markets can quickly make your messaging irrelevant, rendering your marketing programs and sales plays ineffective. So, if your main buyer personas have always been tech roles, you may be missing the mark with today’s marketing and sales outreach. What worked yesterday may not work today.

Ideal Customer Profiles 80

Ideal Customer Profiles Buyer Personas Marketing Analytics Tools B2B 80

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

I want insights that help me see things relevant to me in new ways. Get rid of the sales pitch and marketing fluff. B2B Salespeople say: It’s like an archeological dig to find content that’s relevant to buyer situations – if that even exists. Sales: Challenges to overcome. Provide substance over style. Why to change.

Work Management 96

Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership B2B 96

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 26, 2022

Think relatable, relevant, and empathetic. 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. This is a huge opportunity for how we develop humanness in B2B content experiences.

Top of Funnel 91

Top of Funnel B2B Content Terms and Conditions 91

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. It’s mission, business objectives and core values to help you weave a thread of company/account relevance throughout your communications, content, and messaging. This does two things.

Buyer Personas 111

Buyer Personas B2B Ideal Customer Profiles Account Based Marketing 111

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. The thought alone is overwhelming in its lack of appeal and relevance. These questions are somewhat based in fear, but more likely based on “the way we’ve always done it.” The campaign mentality.

B2B 114

B2B Content B2B Marketing Trust Marketing 114

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

OCTOBER 5, 2022

This becomes even more important when you consider 73% of B2B tech companies have accelerated existing company revenue goals and 41% of them are decreasing their emphasis on net-new sales to focus on up- and cross-selling. The customer retention programs you design deserve great and relevant storytelling.

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Enterprise Management Work Management 62

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

The process of Q&A drives momentum based on addressing how context shifts with each new intake of relevant information that helps your buyers advance their thinking. In support of sales conversations valued by buyers. Most marketers still struggle to understand what’s relevant to their buyers and customers. Write them down.

B2B 75

B2B B2B Sales Webinar Metrics Buy 75

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 22, 2022

Given that 94% of B2B Buyers say they are very well informed or somewhat informed before they talk to a sales rep, there’s a lot of opportunity for marketers to help buyers self-qualify as ¾ of them push off engaging with sales until the end of their change process. At the pace of change today, is qualifying based on budget relevant?

Work Management 62

Work Management Marketing Management Ideal Customer Profiles Sales Qualified Leads 62

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 25, 2023

Relevance: The Gorgeousness of B2B Content Marketing Pick your tribe and put a stake in the ground. You can’t create relevant B2B content using a foundation of opinion and bias. Your sales reps will fixate on the last conversation they had with a specific customer – focusing on whatever stood out to them the most.

B2B Marketing 91

B2B Marketing Content Marketing B2B Content 91

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

OCTOBER 24, 2021

But, interpreting this another way, it may mean that B2B content marketers are not able to create content that’s relevant for each of the different roles – rather than one asset to address all at once. They include levels of your narrative from About Us to specific persona messaging to product messaging and sales (conversational) messaging.

B2B Marketing 100

B2B Marketing Content Marketing Planning B2B 100

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

Either way, you’ll have valuable insights to share with your sales reps when you ask them to reach out to gauge where they are. When used well, B2B intent data can be a game changer for relevance, which drives engagement and results in momentum toward purchase. If they don’t, you’ll know they’re not there yet.

Intent Data 124

Intent Data Intent B2B Marketing B2B 124

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 8, 2021

“Sellers use their sales process to place solutions.”. The other is a change management initiative with individualized criteria sales reps lack insight to. This is because our marketing-to-sales models and processes are not built to help buyers buy. They are sales-driven, not buyer-driven. They drive, but you can enable.

Buy 62

Buy Work Management Lead Ranking Marketing Management 62

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 25, 2022

What parts of the change will be visible to your markets and how is it relevant to them? Instead, we need to think about how the change shifts the overall story in relation to what’s most relevant to our markets. And until all their “jobs to be done” are complete, there’s no sale. How can you narrow that gap?

B2B Marketing 69

B2B Marketing B2B Budget Programs Marketing & Strategy 69

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 4, 2017

This includes personas, messaging, stories, content marketing programs, sales enablement programs, and more. It takes campaigns out of the equation and focuses marketing, sales, and service attention on helping our target list of accounts get the job done—from start to finish. Marketing and Sales Alignment.

Account Based Marketing 64

Account Based Marketing ABM Lead Ranking Lead Scoring 64

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

A buyer-driven experience is based on relevance, context, choice, and simplicity. Campaigns with the age-old structure of three touches followed by a sales call are obsolete. Until and unless we help them navigate all of this—on their terms—sales opportunities will continue to stall or evaporate.

B2B 69

B2B Peer-to-peer Gartner Top of Funnel 69

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 15, 2022

For Sales leaders, it may mean not only closing more deals but also selling more expansion deals. This reality just screams for simplicity, context, and relevance from vendors—both marketers and sellers. We push the sale instead of solving a problem and showing our buyers how to get the outcomes they need.

Buyer Personas 75

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Gartner 75

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 3, 2022

I propose that the way you’d premise and focus the content is different and should be to increase relevance and answer the different questions that each scenario raises. What considerations should they have about the related modules or capabilities?

B2B 69

B2B Paid Search Agency Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 69

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 7, 2022

Competitor Content: Just bear with me… If you have a competitor publishing great, relevant content that speaks to a reason you lost an opportunity, such as lack of differentiation, here’s your opportunity to show why you’re a better choice—without dissing the competition. A podcast also applies to more than buyers in lost opportunities.

Ideal Customer Profiles 88

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer 88

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. Relevance is in the eyes of your audience. What they want is a simple, straightforward way to do something they either can’t do today or that’s become too painful to keep on doing it the way they’ve always done it. Small steps.

Buyer Personas 119

Buyer Personas Buying Cycle Case Studies Case Study 119

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

Requests come from sales teams, service teams, and executives with ideas they want to be executed as content assets. The attributes of hirable content include: Relevance to a specific, defined target audience (persona). As long as the job to be done exists, the content developed to support it is useful and relevant.

Content Marketing 60

Content Marketing Planning Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 60

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

Getting proactively involved in customer retention and working collaboratively with sales and customer success teams will help to remove that blindness and replace it with relevance that enables even better marketing strategies for customer acquisition.

Marketing Funnels 87

Marketing Funnels Top of Funnel B2B Marketing Work Management 87

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. What do you think sales needs to win more deals? Clarify their priorities and challenges.

Buyer Personas 74

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management B2B Marketing Marketing & Strategy 74

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

JUNE 13, 2021

The only thing that matters is what’s relevant to them. Most of them don’t want to talk to your sales rep. At the Gartner CSO conference, Brent Adamson said, “The single biggest driver of purchase likelihood in a B2B sale is the degree to which customers feel confident about their own decisions.” Break the Illusion of Control.

B2B Marketing 174

B2B Marketing B2B Gartner Purchase Intent 174

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

Leads – acquire new leads and develop them into sales-ready buyers. Feedback – learn from a voice-of-customer initiative how to improve your brand’s relevance. Sales – create urgency for buyers to take action to acquire your products. Loyalty – ensure your buyers return and buy more to build customer lifetime value (CLV).

SMS 58

SMS Campaigns Marketing Automation Services Urgency Marketing 58

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

What I mean by this is that brilliant, engaging, and relevant content is audience-driven. What’s relevant to the CIO is not going to be relevant to a director of HR, for example. Shortening the sales cycle brings faster turn over for revenue, so put that narrative to work to pull buyers forward. Real Qualification.

Planning 118

Planning Paid Search Agency Content Marketing Marketing & Strategy 118