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Casual Articles - Marketing for Business Leaders: Three Steps to Increase Marketing Effectiveness
If you are looking for a great career, you may want to think about business school. This is an amazing opportunity that will get you where you want to be in life. You will have a great time and you can enjoy the fun and the excitement of being very professional in your lifestyle. You will want to make the most of your life and you can achieve this goal when you have the right amount of effort going into it. There is nothing better than making the most of your ability. When you have a lot of drive and a lot of will to do something great, you can achieve the best goal in life. Finding out what you
3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page
It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here's a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question "which marketing programs result in revenue?" You'll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn't follow up on leads and won't track them. And, you'll hear sales people say that marketing's leads are worthless. You can't get an answer because no one knows.
Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional t
In today’s employment environment, HR managers are faced with the monumental duty of hiring and maintaining, as well as the ongoing development, of employees. But the single most difficult task lies first in hiring the right people.Not only are prospective employers faced with the largest available potential workforce since the Second World War, but, as things have become more sophisticated, so have the deception techniques of those who would shaft you and your company. Negligent hiring, sexual harassment, and frivolous employee lawsuits have increased sharply in recent years, as have the inc
1. Know what you need.
Marketing's main job is to feed the sales force with nice, warm leads. Step one towards better marketing is to understand how much and what kind of food they need.
The "how much" is easily answered using basic math. Start with your sales goals and work backward. You'll need to answer the following questions:
* What is our annual new business revenue goal?
* How many new customers does this represent?
* What percentage of qualified opportunities do we actually close?
* What percentage of leads actually become qualified opportunities?
Using this information, you can determine how many new inquiries your marketing must generate in order for the sales team to meet their goals. For example, let's say your annual new business revenue goal is $10M; your average deal size is $100,000; your sales people generally close 50% of the qualified opportunities presented to them; and 5% of your inquiries become qualified opportunities. A quick run around the calculator tells us that your marketing efforts need to generate 4000 leads for the sales team.
With this information in hand, marketing planning becomes much more focused. Every activity in the plan should in some way contribute to generating inquiries and developing leads. If you can't trace a program or activity to this result, don't spend the money.
2. Match your marketing process to the buying process.
Unless you are selling an impulse item, the decision to purchase your product or service is based on a series of small decisions. Marketing helps to facilitate, and hopefully accelerate, the decision process by making the right information available to the prospect at the right time and from the right source.
It is critical to understand the entire process your customers go through while deciding to buy your product or service. Typically companies have a good understanding of what goes on after an opportunity has been identified, but few spend the time to understand the front end of the process.
A typical buying process could go something like this. The prospect:
a) Becomes aware that he or she has a need
b) Identifies options - often a list of vendors that offer a
solution
c) Researches the various solutions
d) Creates a "long list" and issues an RFP
e) Creates a "shortlist"
f) Invites vendors for demos
g) Checks references
h) Negotiates
i) Purchases
Information needs are different at each point in the process. A successful marketing program matches these needs. It allows the company to create awareness among the target prospects by engaging them in a flow of communication that helps navigate their way through the buying process. A marketing program that fails to meet the buyer's needs at each step of the process won't deliver as many qualified leads.
3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page
It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here's a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question "which marketing programs result in revenue?" You'll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn't follow up on leads and won't track them. And, you'll hear sales people say that marketing's leads are worthless. You can't get an answer because no one knows.
Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional te
There are various reliable training centers on the World Wide Web that allow business owners to actively participate to various professional Business Improvement Programs. Such professional training programs account for a wide range of features including business management, innovative sales and marketing strategies, as well as long-term business planning strategies. Solid Business Improvement Programs are aimed at debating both the basics and the subtleties of proper business management, accounting for all relevant aspects regarding profitability, the customer-employee relation, the development of s
* How many new customers does this represent?
* What percentage of qualified opportunities do we actually close?
* What percentage of leads actually become qualified opportunities?
Using this information, you can determine how many new inquiries your marketing must generate in order for the sales team to meet their goals. For example, let's say your annual new business revenue goal is $10M; your average deal size is $100,000; your sales people generally close 50% of the qualified opportunities presented to them; and 5% of your inquiries become qualified opportunities. A quick run around the calculator tells us that your marketing efforts need to generate 4000 leads for the sales team.
With this information in hand, marketing planning becomes much more focused. Every activity in the plan should in some way contribute to generating inquiries and developing leads. If you can't trace a program or activity to this result, don't spend the money.
2. Match your marketing process to the buying process.
Unless you are selling an impulse item, the decision to purchase your product or service is based on a series of small decisions. Marketing helps to facilitate, and hopefully accelerate, the decision process by making the right information available to the prospect at the right time and from the right source.
It is critical to understand the entire process your customers go through while deciding to buy your product or service. Typically companies have a good understanding of what goes on after an opportunity has been identified, but few spend the time to understand the front end of the process.
A typical buying process could go something like this. The prospect:
a) Becomes aware that he or she has a need
b) Identifies options - often a list of vendors that offer a
solution
c) Researches the various solutions
d) Creates a "long list" and issues an RFP
e) Creates a "shortlist"
f) Invites vendors for demos
g) Checks references
h) Negotiates
i) Purchases
Information needs are different at each point in the process. A successful marketing program matches these needs. It allows the company to create awareness among the target prospects by engaging them in a flow of communication that helps navigate their way through the buying process. A marketing program that fails to meet the buyer's needs at each step of the process won't deliver as many qualified leads.
3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page
It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here's a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question "which marketing programs result in revenue?" You'll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn't follow up on leads and won't track them. And, you'll hear sales people say that marketing's leads are worthless. You can't get an answer because no one knows.
Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional t
Throughout the century, we have seen a lot of convergence in the market, and the marketers who markets a product to the market. The consumers in the market have become more technology savvy, and that is leading the marketers to use more sophisticated tools in marketing their products and at the same time, be more efficient at doing it.One of the reasons why Google is as successful as it is today is because it provided this sophisticated tool to the marketers. And at the same time, Google provided a better way to surf the internet to people… for free. In the traditional, pre Google era marketin
2. Match your marketing process to the buying process.
Unless you are selling an impulse item, the decision to purchase your product or service is based on a series of small decisions. Marketing helps to facilitate, and hopefully accelerate, the decision process by making the right information available to the prospect at the right time and from the right source.
It is critical to understand the entire process your customers go through while deciding to buy your product or service. Typically companies have a good understanding of what goes on after an opportunity has been identified, but few spend the time to understand the front end of the process.
A typical buying process could go something like this. The prospect:
a) Becomes aware that he or she has a need
b) Identifies options - often a list of vendors that offer a
solution
c) Researches the various solutions
d) Creates a "long list" and issues an RFP
e) Creates a "shortlist"
f) Invites vendors for demos
g) Checks references
h) Negotiates
i) Purchases
Information needs are different at each point in the process. A successful marketing program matches these needs. It allows the company to create awareness among the target prospects by engaging them in a flow of communication that helps navigate their way through the buying process. A marketing program that fails to meet the buyer's needs at each step of the process won't deliver as many qualified leads.
3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page
It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here's a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question "which marketing programs result in revenue?" You'll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn't follow up on leads and won't track them. And, you'll hear sales people say that marketing's leads are worthless. You can't get an answer because no one knows.
Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional t
Interoperability is one of the sacred goals of IT, and even consumer computing. If operating systems, utilities, and applications do not work together, user productivity matches the low level I achieve on Friday around cocktail hour ... which is "none at all."Open Source is ripping profitability out of the IT software market in part do to growing interoperability. Unlike traditional technology vendors, Open Source benefits from creating the greatest amount of interoperability possible. More commercial vendors keep margins high by locking in customers to their suite of products. This is par
A typical buying process could go something like this. The prospect:
a) Becomes aware that he or she has a need
b) Identifies options - often a list of vendors that offer a
solution
c) Researches the various solutions
d) Creates a "long list" and issues an RFP
e) Creates a "shortlist"
f) Invites vendors for demos
g) Checks references
h) Negotiates
i) Purchases
Information needs are different at each point in the process. A successful marketing program matches these needs. It allows the company to create awareness among the target prospects by engaging them in a flow of communication that helps navigate their way through the buying process. A marketing program that fails to meet the buyer's needs at each step of the process won't deliver as many qualified leads.
3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page
It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here's a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question "which marketing programs result in revenue?" You'll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn't follow up on leads and won't track them. And, you'll hear sales people say that marketing's leads are worthless. You can't get an answer because no one knows.
Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional t
Adwords keyword research tools are indispensable to many internet marketers and webmasters alike. These keyword research tools have played key roles in helping many optimize their websites, and driving traffic and making sales. Internet marketing gurus would agree that these tools are instrumental in helping them build their income empire. The same is true for affiliates, whether you are a super affiliate or a struggling affiliate/webmaster. Let’s see what these tools do and whether they deserve the status as killer internet marketing tools of this decade.Keyword research has never been more i
3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page
It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here's a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question "which marketing programs result in revenue?" You'll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn't follow up on leads and won't track them. And, you'll hear sales people say that marketing's leads are worthless. You can't get an answer because no one knows.
Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional team.
One of the easiest and most effective places to start with is to develop a common definition of the word "lead". If you gathered your sales and marketing teams together and ask everyone for their definition, you'll likely find the sales team has a very different view than your marketing team. (Don't be surprised if you get different answers within the sales and marketing staffs as well.) Now work together to establish a common definition. Use this definition to guide marketing in developing leads before handing them off to sales.
These steps are a good start toward making your marketing initiatives more effective. Of course, there is much more you can do to tighten the process so that your efforts produce greater results; but by taking these three steps you'll be well on your way.
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