Laura McGuire, a good friend and former colleague (now CEO of SmartTracks (www.smarttracks.com) had an interesting observation the other day. She said that most of the B2B marketers that she knows can describe their own marketing and sales process in great detail but could not do the same for the buying process of their prospects. …
Category Archive
for: ‘Marketing Strategy’
Knowing Where Your “Ideal” Prospect Hangs Out on the Internet Saves Marketing Dollars – by John Leavy
Everyone on the Internet tends to congregate in certain spots. Financial people like reading blogs about making dough and investing other people’s money. Fly fishing enthusiasts hang out at fishing forums where they can lie to each other about the last “big one” that got away.
As the above illustration shows, there are plenty of places …
The “Ideal” Prospect – by John Leavy
“I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.” – Willie Mays
Wouldn’t it be good to know who the “ideal” prospect or prospects are before sending out email blasts, newsletters, Twitters, facebook fan page invites or webinar invitations? Assuming what most of us naturally assumes and that is, of course everyone wants to …
Build a Great B2B Marketing Team by Christopher Ryan
In my new book, How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing and Sales Machine (available at http://bit.ly/4zTeAs), I devoted four chapters to the subject of how to find, motivate and manage marketing and sales personnel. I gave this subjet valuable book space because it is not just the budget, programs, and technology that generate the results, …
Stop What is Hurting You in B2B Marketing and Sales (by Christopher Ryan)
Take a sober assessment of your B2B marketing campaigns, strategies, lead generation programs, expenses, etc., and immediately stop: lead generation programs that are not followed up by the sales team, campaigns that do not reinforce your core message, expenses that do not contribute to the overall objective, unnecessary reporting and analysis, working with people who are unreliable and/or unproductive, and anything that you are doing as a manager that is impeding your staff’s ability to get their jobs done quickly and efficiently.
Timing is Everything in B2B Marketing (from Chris Ryan)
I just read an interestng post at the Smashmouth Marketing Blog about the importance of timing when it comes to reaching business prospects at their desks. According to an MIT/InsideSales.com study, you are 2-3 times more likely to catch someone in the eastern time zone between 4 and 5 pm as you are between 11 am and …
Marketing Tactics Must Always Follow Strategy (by Christopher Ryan)
Bill Petro just sent me a link to an August blog post by Seth Godin titled When tactics drown out strategy. Seth made some great points as usual and it got me to thinking about the many times I have been asked to execute a marketing campaign when the person doing the asking could not clearly …
