Posts about Demand Generation and Sales Revenue Programs and Campaigns.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach that aligns marketing and sales teams to target specific high-value accounts and drive revenue growth. By orchestrating coordinated campaigns across multiple channels, ABM enables businesses to build stronger relationships, increase customer engagement, and improve sales efficiency. Stop using “Marketing-generated” with ABM. ABM is a team effort between marketing and sales.
Creating Logical Pathways™: How to build a clear engagement path via content – to advance buyers and increase conversion through the buy cycle by 300% or more!
It’s crucial to buyer advancement and conversion to seed content in logical, sequential parts of your buyers’ UX (user/visitor experience) by using your various digital assets/properties. It allows you to use “guided selling” techniques to capture additional depth of understanding via progressive profiling. One good content asset deserves an even better one, and then an even better one after that.
Or…to put it another way: By providing increasingly attractive incentives on each successive page of your digital properties (website, registration, thank you or landing pages, etc.), you’ll be able to focus prospect behavior and streamline data capture. It works very simply: upon their registration for an initial asset for which you ask for only minimal information, pull prospective buyers further into their journey with an even stronger content offer of higher perceived value — provided, of course, that they take the “next step” you’ve guided them towards.
See for yourself how this is a powerful tool for engaging prospects and collecting essential information about their companies, current situation, challenges, pain points, needs, and stage in the buying process. The value in monitoring and analyzing their digital body language is vital.
It’s all about leaving breadcrumbs along the conversion path you want your prospective buyers to follow. And always, define calls-to-action everywhere (social media, blog posts, landing pages, on your website, in automated lead nurturing e-mails, via links within all types of content assets such as eBooks, guides, etc.). What do you want the buyer who consumes content to do next? (Below is just one simple example of the practical application of this principle.)
What questions are buyers trying to answer at the early and middle stages of their buying process?
Your content should help specific audiences (i.e., Engagement Personas™) answer questions like, “do I have a problem?” or “do I have THIS problem?” and “how should I solve it?” You’re attempting to surface pain-in-the-present and demand long before the conversation shifts to what solution is best. Your solution is obviously the best, but TRUST is what makes it obvious to a discerning buyer.
To that end, one of the most valuable aspects of Engagement Personas™ when they’re constructed effectively, is to anticipate and answer the questions a buyer would ask at each step of the process. If you have content that answers them in a way that’s relevant to the specific prospective buyer, fantastic. If you don’t, then that’s where you start. The other suggestion for enabling Engagement Personas™ to drive strategy is to develop engagement scenarios.
We published an e-book series that describes the 9 Principles of Effective Buyer Engagement. These principles serve as a practitioner’s guide to increasing leads, conversions, pipeline velocity, and revenue impact.
Volume: Generate “Top-of-the-Funnel” Visits & Inquiries
Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
Velocity: Increase Conversion Rates
Revenue: Optimize Engagement for Revenue Impact.
Get a copy of your e-book here.
Post originally published in 2014
We have written a few articles about collaborative qualification and how to select and apply the right sales qualification tools – including SCOTSMAN and BANT. These tools are quite familiar to B2B sales and teams that focused on a considered sale. Yet, we see some challenges:
So what is the right approach to sales qualification? We suggest a collaborative approach using FACT.
This post is updated. It was originally published in July 2016
Today, companies recognize the need for a company-wide revenue focus and a more integrated approach across marketing and sales. The CRO oversees the traditional responsibilities of the VP of Sales and the Chief Marketing Officer and is a member of the senior team overseeing go-to-market strategy and execution. The CRO is responsible for aligning company resources, defining differentiated go-to-market strategies and delivering on the company’s revenue performance goals.
Professional selling, at its core, is senior selling. It’s not about managing a junior team, but rather about seasoned experts doing the selling themselves – building personal brands, actively cultivating networks, and engaging prospects with unparalleled thought leadership and insights. Whether you’re a consultant adopting a seller-doer model or an expert selling high-value products and services, your presence and approach define your success.
In this landscape, LinkedIn stands out as an indispensable resource. It empowers senior professionals to connect directly with prospective clients, build undeniable credibility, and share valuable content that nurtures relationships and develops opportunities. Beyond one-to-one interactions, LinkedIn also offers powerful paid options to amplify awareness and drive lead conversions.
So, how can senior professionals truly harness the power of LinkedIn for sales? It boils down to a streamlined, three-step process: 1. Develop a Clear Strategy, 2. Establish Essential Systems, and 3. Execute Your Program with Precision.
As the old adage goes, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Your LinkedIn sales efforts are no different. A brief but focused strategy session is paramount.
Know Your Audience, Precisely.
Who are you targeting? LinkedIn Sales Navigator is your secret weapon here, offering robust search and segmentation capabilities. You can pinpoint your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) based on criteria like region, industry, company size, and specific job titles. Are you aiming for particular companies or broader functional roles? Build these targeted lists directly within LinkedIn for seamless integration with your outreach.
Craft Your Message, Powerfully.
Once you know who you’re talking to, define what you’ll say and how effectively you’ll say it. This is where a professional writer or social selling expert can add significant value, helping you tailor your writing style to resonate with each audience. While you may not be creating the core thought leadership assets yet, you are crafting the persuasive messages that will appeal to target personas at different stages of their buying journey.
Remember, you’re likely operating at the top of the funnel on LinkedIn – building awareness and engagement through thought leadership or direct messaging. Your messages should be engagement-focused, emphasizing the value you offer rather than an immediate pitch. Be direct and to the point, respecting your buyer’s time.
In a competitive environment, gaining traction requires a compelling narrative. Design your messaging campaign using a “Pain-Empathy-Insights” approach:
These key messages will also serve as the foundation for your content assets, from core thought leadership (like a handbook or white paper) to derivative assets (blog posts, social snippets, emails).
Map Your Go-to-Market Strategy.
How will you engage this audience end-to-end? While LinkedIn is central, consider other channels that make sense for your buyers. Where do they “gather” online and offline? Beyond LinkedIn (which offers sponsored posts, InMail, and 1:1 engagement options), think about other social platforms, Slack communities, Zoom, email, and even phone calls.
Define Your Metrics for Success.
What does success look like for this program? Start with simple, bottom-up metrics. If your goal is to acquire, say, 5-10 new clients averaging $100K each within 6-12 months (totaling $500K+ revenue impact), you can reverse-engineer your campaign metrics:
These numbers are a starting point for “funnel math” and can be adjusted as you gather real-world data. This exercise will guide your engagement strategy, including any budget allocation for paid media.
Embrace “White Hat” Methods.
Your professional reputation is paramount. While some automation tools and scrapers exist, we strongly advocate for a “white hat” approach. High-touch, personalized outreach and self-directed content strategies are superior to “black hat” tactics that risk LinkedIn suspensions or profile bans. If it feels creepy, it probably is.
Architect Your Engagement Program.
Outline the high-level sequence of your campaign. Will you outsource elements, or manage it entirely yourself? What’s the team mix of professional selling, marketing, and administrative support? Define which channels are most likely to succeed, what content supports your offer, your clear call-to-action, the conversion approach, and your follow-up process.
Define Your Channel and Media Mix:
Once your strategy is clear, it’s time to set up the necessary foundations.
Cultivate a Powerful Personal Brand & Digital Hub.
Your personal brand is your most valuable asset. A strong LinkedIn profile and consistent online presence are crucial. Ensure your profile is up-to-date, speaks to your ideal target persona (rather than just being a resume), and tells your unique story. If prospects search for you, what will they find? Is it what you want them to see? If you’re directing them to a webpage, is it optimized with a clear call-to-action and trackable elements?
Implement Your Technology Stack.
LinkedIn (and Sales Navigator) will be central, serving as a source of accurate prospect data and offering powerful search parameters. Beyond LinkedIn, integrate your CRM, website, blog, landing page funnel, email marketing platform, and any customer data platforms. The goal is a seamless “tech stack” where all elements work in concert.
Define Clear Roles and Responsibilities.
Who does what, and when? Professional sales and buyer engagement require a personal commitment, but also effective marketing and administrative support. Technology facilitates efficiency, but the human element is key. Clearly delineate responsibilities to ensure smooth execution.
With strategy and systems in place, it’s time to launch and iterate.
Marketing Execution: Build, Test, Run.
Sales, like all lead generation, is a numbers game. Start by creating your database of ideal targets using Sales Navigator and identifying relevant LinkedIn Groups. Build your core and derivative assets – your eBook, blog posts, social snippets, landing pages, thank you pages, and meeting schedulers. Use compelling graphics, media, and clear calls-to-action to engage and drive conversions.
A simple outbound engagement sequence might look like this:
This sequence can be powerfully combined with paid social and retargeting to build brand recognition and impressions within your target accounts.
Adopt a Metrics-Driven Methodology.
Remember your “funnel math.” For every 100 relevant requests, connections, or conversions, track your yield. For high-value B2B programs, even a modest conversion rate can generate significant opportunities. Measure followers, impressions (for awareness), visits from target company IP addresses (for account-based programs), and the level of engagement (messages exchanged). For lead generation, track conversions from LinkedIn-initiated interactions (e.g., landing page visits, meeting bookings) all the way into your CRM. Continuously measure, learn, and adjust your strategies for optimal performance.
Good luck, and good selling!
The need for content and content marketing, as well as the discipline itself, has grown exponential just in the last few years. The proliferation of content is at staggering levels and buyers are inundated with it on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour and daily basis. And I think that the majority of B2B content out there, intended for buyer engagement and advancement, is simply subpar at best. And a BIG word of caution: In addition to a proliferation of content, there is now an explosion of new “experts,” “gurus,”, and “thought-leaders”. My advice is take a long hard look at their career experience prior to considering hiring one of them for guidance.
SharpSpring has updated Lead Scoring and the Life of the Lead to now include social interactions. SharpSpring will be releasing to all clients in a few days.
Ready to learn more? Contact us for a guided walkthrough of these new features.
Financial Advisors are an amazingly difficult prospect to engage. They are incredibly busy and already have a wealth of resources already available to them – do they even need to engage with wholesalers? The best way to convert financial advisors to customers is to build your marketing automation program around them.
Before focusing on key strategies, Sales and Marketing must have defined a set of engagement personas and customer segments. Marketing has had personas for a decade but only since the advent of marketing automation software have engagement personas become empowered and brought to life.
It may take several iterations to get lead scoring and grading optimized, however, the process should be fruitful for Sales and Marketing. The process crystallizes Marketing and Sales perspectives around which advisors are most profitable and which digital behaviors are believed to be most relevant to a sale. Some marketing automation vendors have one score that represents profitability and interest. However, being able to separate advisor behaviors from profitability factors simplifies discussions by clarifying customer segments by profitability as seen in the above graphic. As an example, Pardot applies a numerical value for an advisor’s lead score and a letter grade (A-F) for an advisor’s expected profitability.
There’s a significant problem with content today that can no longer be ignored. It’s the “elephant in the room”—and some organizations and marketers are aware of it, and some aren’t. It’s that the vast majority of the data from marketing practitioners, benchmark reports, industry analysts, and a multitude of other sources suggests that the #1 objective of content is lead generation and account/buyer conversion, sometimes expressed as “engagement”: (and yes, brand awareness tops some lists). Yet, almost universally, content strategy and content creation is “owned” by Product and/or Corporate Marketing in 60% – 80% of organizations. It’s driven by the Demand Generation team in only 5% – 10% of organizations!
So, let’s get this straight. The primary objective for content is to top-of-funnel inquiries, leads and converting full-funnel opportunities, yet the very people tasked with creating integrated programs to drive that objective DO NOT control the #1 MOST IMPORTANT element which is critical to achieving it? HUH?! Seriously?! That’s like having a plumber wiring your house and an electrician installing the pipes. This can truly blow your mind!
OK, as I step back from the ledge, please allow me to share a highly-informed perspective on this based on a nearly 25 year career in B2B marketing, buyer engagement and demand generation. It’s critically important to acknowledge and understand the difference between “domain-centric” and “engagement-focused” content. Is this starting to make a bit more sense?
The CMO of a “Top 50” B2B technology company said he saw tremendous efficacy in our buyer engagement frameworks and methodologies…but asked himself, and me, the question: why would he need our help with content when he has an dedicated, well-staffed team of product marketers producing it? Then bam…the ability to articulate this difference, which was percolating in my subconscious, hit me right between the eyes. I framed it as “domain-centric” vs. “engagement-focused” content, and the CMO immediately embraced the distinction.
Seems like I sort of threw Product Marketing under the bus, right? Actually, quite the contrary. Product Marketing sits at the intersection of Product Development/Management, Sales, Corporate Marketing, Demand Generation and Field Marketing. As such, they are the single most important information resource in content marketing today. They arguably know more about your products, value proposition, market segments, buyers, market trends, etc. than anyone else in your organization. The disconnect I see, universally across organizations, is that most are classically trained product marketers…schooled in research, creating and articulating value propositions, describing features and benefits, and creating stellar product collateral.
That’s where we Demand Marketers come in and the hand-off begins. By looking through the various white papers, data sheets, collateral, and sales playbooks the Product Marketers have created, Demand Marketers can find what they (and you) are looking for. It’s content that’s embedded and buried within, and it serves a different purpose and context than what is truly useful for buyer engagement. There, in the guise of product and benefit information, you’ll find the buyer’s key pain points, as well as an articulation of how your company, products and solutions help address them. Then you can apply all the insights in our new game-changing eBook entitled Exposed. The False Promises of Revenue Marketing. to create truly effective engagement-focused content.
To discover more in-depth insights on this topic, download a copy of the eBook by simply clicking on the link below to discover 9 principles to exponentially increase leads, conversion and pipeline velocity: