In a head-to-head comparison of an educational webinar versus a product webinar, the educational webinar wins hands down every time. If you share expertise and educate your target audience about some problem they struggle with regularly, you will generate hundreds of qualified leads for your sales funnel.
If you want to get more awareness of your brand and your offering, stop shouting about your company and your product and start engaging by offering helpful, useful, and relevant information to the people in your target audience.
As humans living in the modern age, we are being shouted at during nearly all of our waking hours. I am equating shouting to interruption advertising. TV commercials, Internet ads, billboards, magazine ads, telemarketing calls, unsolicited email, et al. These methods of marketing or advertising interrupt whatever it is you are doing when the ad shows up. We have all become experts at filtering and tuning out these messages. Shouting or interruption marketing can work if you are able to shout the loudest. The loudest shouter must also spend the most money.
You've probably heard the term 'positioning statement', but you may not be sure of the exact definition. When you ask the question, "what is a positioning statement?", do you have an answer? If not, read on.
Typically we see a vision, values, mission statements, strategy, and value proposition. The written positioning statement is rare but extremely powerful. If your firm does happen to have a formal positioning statement, is each and every employee able to articulate that statement?
Who is responsible for developing the positioning statement and who is responsible for ensuring that every person in the firm is able to articulate it? The answer is you, especially if you are in a senior director, VP or C-suite position. If your firm has one, then I applaud you and place you at the top of the heap of manufacturing firms and marketers.
It's not easy to convert content to revenue. It is safe to assume that revenue generation influences whether or not the content conversion strategy is effective. In the B2B world of marketing, if our content and associated content marketing efforts are not generating revenue, then we should fix it or stop the effort altogether so budget and resources can be diverted to those tactics that are generating revenue.
If you're going to prosper in the coming years, your sales team needs customers, prospects, vendors, and peers to say "yes" more often than "no." Getting to "yes" requires a substantial degree of persuasion and influence skills. Contrary to popular belief, persuasion and influence take much more than just a ready smile, a big handshake, and an outgoing personality.
Robert Cialdini published a book in 1993 called, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which discusses, investigates, and proves how influence works. This book is a must-read for your entire revenue team in sales, marketing, or general business development.
Leads are the driving force of any business. And without converting leads to paying customers who eventually become loyal to your brand, your company cannot thrive. For this reason, most companies need to be methodical and organized in the way they manage their leads. Maintaining a lead database is essential for any business that wants to maximize the benefits of marketing automation.
"All the leads I get from Marketing are crap. I don't bother with them anymore," said the salesperson. "We deliver a lot of high-quality leads to Sales and those lazy bastards never follow up," said the marketing person. If these or similar phrases sound familiar, then you most likely suffer from a lack of Sales and Marketing Alignment.
Some statistics to consider:
Customer relationship management software enables companies to quickly find the necessary information required to make important business decisions. Sales and Marketing are more efficient and more effective with up-to-date CRM software and proper sales processes in place.
Similar to content, images also impact the ranking of your web page within the SERPs. In the US alone, 20% of searches happen in Google Image. However, simply adding any random picture to your webpage will ruin your existing content marketing strategy. Ultimately, you will miss out on a significant percentage of potential visitors.
Doing everything needed to keep your business afloat is tough. Acquiring more customers to grow your business is altogether another challenge. Most people will tell you, ‘You just need to market your business better.’ Even if that advice sounds too general or uninformed, it’s true. Winning more business requires targeted, specific and personalized marketing campaigns that are executed with an intimate understanding of your audience.
In order to achieve this for your business, continue reading.