As my partner, Art Saxby, is fond of saying, “The best marketing takes no marketing dollars.” What he means is that the stuff that makes marketing work—and work most efficiently—is done before a dollar is spent. After working with nearly 1,000 mid-market CEOs to capture or recover growth, here’s what we’ve learned:
Fri, Mar 13, 2020 — A Common Challenge for B2B technology, SaaS and Professional Services Businesses If market demand was a fixed commodity, attracting new business would require only that you create awareness and build interest around well-known needs. Companies who see their marketplace in this way often subscribe to a “lather, rinse, repeat,” approach to pipeline management – focusing marketing dollars on prospects already well-along their purchasing journey, identifying qualified opportunities, but paying little attention to the world of prospects who do not yet see their needs as urgent.
Mon, May 6, 2019 — Improving Your Lead Generation and Qualification Processes Mark Coronna, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Jeff Parris and Daniel Steyn, Fractional Sales Executives, Sales Xceleration Sometimes we take certain business models for granted. The model of a “funnel” to represent a sales pipeline is certainly one example. Dusting off its past, a gentleman named E. St. Elmo Lewis is generally given credit for initiating the idea of a funnel in 1898. The author is also credited for introducing the first formal theory of Marketing. It would be amazing that a model like a funnel would still find relevance 120 years later. There have been previous attempts at calling the funnel “dead.” In a 2016 article in Marketing Week, Mark Ritson declared that “If you think the funnel is dead, you have mistaken tactics for strategy.”
Mon, May 7, 2018 — “An improvement of less than two-tenths of a percent in converting online prospects to customers increased revenues by $5 million.” (From a recent Chief Outsiders engagement summary) I’m only a student of online marketing, not a master. In recent weeks, I spent time with colleagues who ARE masters of online marketing and eCommerce. I’ve seen how they work carefully on conversion — increasing the percentage of people who respond at each point in the progression from Aware, to Interested, to Engaged, to Buying, and Repeat Buying. Improved conversion often comes from discovering which offer, wording and graphic design make it easiest for prospects to “get” why the offer might be for them.
Tue, Feb 27, 2018 — The old style of marketing is toast. Quite literally, the entire phase shift that has changed the way the public considers and consumes products and services, can be distilled down to a single, perfectly-browned-on-both-sides slice of artisan bread.
