Toward World-Class Buyer Engagement

Inbound Conference is underway in Boston with record attendance. We have been fortunate to work with HubSpot and Inbound Marketing strategies for 10 years and we remain committed to Inbound as core element of an effective marketing and sales strategy. Yet, we also see that Inbound is under increasing pressure as more and more firms adopt the strategy and crowd the airwaves with “attractor” content. In 2009, when we published a blog post, we could often rank on the first page of a google search results the very next day – now it is far more difficult to get results. What can we do about it?

We believe that businesses need a more enduring and well-constructed approach to capture customer value. They need a revenue architecture that delivers world-class buyer engagement. Buyer Engagement is the universal approach to delivering the right experiences and messages at the right time to the right buyers. Buyer Engagement is about building meaningful relationships with buyers – with an equitable exchange of value –  that translates into predictable and sustainable revenue growth. Buyer Engagement happens across the organization and across Marketing and Sales.

Ineffective buyer engagement is a drag on revenue performance.

There is a lot of hype about tactics like Inbound and ABM, but few ‘revenue marketers’ are using a true buyer-first approach. A true buyer engagement approach will more clearly identify the role of marketing and sales tactics and shape 1:1 messaging and experience.

We see issues every day as we work with clients, including:

• Confusing the “tools” with the “techniques” of effective buyer engagement
• A focus on tactics (inbound, ABM, etc.) rather the buyer dynamics
• Getting persona development all wrong
• Messaging that largely misses the mark
• Content that is domain-centric rather than engagement-focused
• Metrics that do not ‘close the loop’ across marketing and sales.

Closed-loop Buyer Engagement activates revenue performance by:

• Recognizing the new self-directed buyer & the requisite frameworks to engage them
• Deeply understanding customer composition & audience segmentation
• Understanding audience POV, pain points & organizing on shared attributes via Engagement Personas™
• Mapping audience pain & aligning messages with the buy cycle, creating Message Maps™ to drive funnel performance
• Creating comprehensive Buyer Engagement strategies, Experience Architecture™ and a Content Architecture
• Creating high-performance marketing programs that calibrate the marketing mix
• Using a closed-loop Metrics-Driven Methodology™ to measure and optimize pipeline performance via Volume, Value, Velocity & Revenue.

[NEW E-BOOK] Exposed. The False Promises of Revenue Marketing.

We recently launched an e-book series authored by Keith Sullivan that describes the 9 Principles of Effective Buyer Engagement. These serve as a practitioner’s guide to help you to increase 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.