Month: August 2023

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgen outbound

Unlock Your Target Audience: A Step-by-Step Guide to Enhance Inbound Marketing and Outbound Sales

Use this template for nailing targeting (for both inbound Marketing & outbound Sales). Below are the steps

1. Create your version of this spreadsheet.

2. Ask Sales, Marketing, CX, & Product to add their ideas.

3. Make logical combinations of the ideas in the top section (if not already done when people added their ideas).

4. Ask people to rank their top 3 (or 5) rows of the combo of these characteristics.

5. Come to an agreement on what your top 3 rows/combos are, and then focus almost all your efforts on them only.

Now you have your exact targeted audience to go after. AND your messaging can be very targeted to their pain points and opportunities.

For paid social in LinkedIn, metadata.io, Clearbit, or some other tool – use these job titles, company characteristics, countries, etc. to narrow down your audience.

For outbound, use the criteria to make your list for outreach. You can use ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, Lusha, or others to filter down companies & contacts using the criteria you created. Now outreach to this niche audience with a specific message.

Every company is going to have slightly different columns. E.g. Some may not need “Integrations Required”.

What would you change about this template? Have you found success doing something similar?

(Click on the image to make it bigger. Or right-click the image & click “Open Image in New Tab” for a full-screen version.)

Categories
b2bmarketing customerresearch

Boosting Marketing Success: How Regular Interactions with Customers Can Transform Your Strategy

Want to make talking to customers, prospects, and your ICP a priority for Marketing?

Make it a goal for everyone on your team to have X interviews, calls, or meetings with them in a quarter.

If this is new, I’d suggest setting 10 each as the goal.

And make sure to discuss these convos as a team so that the insights get shared with each other.

Categories
b2bmarketing partnermarketing productmarketing

Unlocking Successful Product Integrations: A Comprehensive Guide to Using our Proven PMM Content Kit Template

Use this PMM content kit template for every new product integration you have.

Core:
1. Simple messaging guide (internal)
2. PDF one-pager
3. Demo video
4. Partner marketplace web page
5. 3+ screenshots of actual integrations
6. Dedicated website page on your website
7. 1-2 slides to go in the general sales pitch deck (internal)
8. Feature matrix
9. Pre-sales enablement deck for Zingtree (internal)

Collab With CX Team:
1. Documentation about the integration
a. 3 short videos
i. How to integrate (likely just a couple of mins)
ii. How to use 101
iii. Advanced how to use 201
b. Article ‘How to integrate’
2. Ideally an Implementation & best practices guide
3. Implementation Plan (when applicable) (agenda, team, etc.)

Ideal:
1. Ideally a customer story and customer logos
2. Ideally how integration compares to top competitors’ integration with the same one (internal doc)
3. Ideally a pitch deck for the partner to pitch you to their existing customers (internal)
4. Pre-sales enablement deck for partner sellers (internal)
5. Discovery questions for Sales related to the integration (internal)
6. Feature matrix comparing integration features and limitations (internal)

Shoutout to David Chase, Brad Schieber, Guillaume Tarralle – “GT”, Danna Troncattty Leahy, and Farhad Rizvi for helping me create this.

What would you add/subtract from this?

Categories
b2bmarketing darksocial

Why Peer Reviews are Crucial Before Investing in New Software: A New Approach to Marketing

You should talk to peers before buying a new piece of software.

The reality is most people are doing this before they ever hit “Request a Demo”.

This requires marketing in a different way than just Google ads. Make sure you’re creating demand too.

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration

Transitioning from Capture Demand to Creating Demand: A Gradual Approach for Business Success

If your company is primarily “capture demand” focused and you want to move to “creating demand”, then you may want to make a transition to more create demand $ somewhat gradually.

Otherwise, you might pull the wrong levers accidentally.

Better to move as a transition rather than a light switch so that you don’t cause mistaken harm.

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgen saas

Split the Funnel Analysis for Effective Demand Generation

Actual tactics for “split the funnel” analysis (click image for full view):

Break down every stage in your funnel, by quarter and lead source.

Then analyze the cost ratios.

This will give you powerful insights into historical data if the company has been focused on lead gen.

Now you’ll have a business case to probably take budget away from Google Ads (and probably other sources) and start creating demand.

Add qualitative attribution from a free-form required “How did you hear about us?” and you’ll be able to show your create demand strategies drive results too.

Big shoutout to Danna Troncattty Leahy for helping me with this!

How does your analysis look? Anything you’d add?

Categories
b2bmarketing outofoffice

Spicing up Out-of-Office Emails: How Leopard Geckos Inspired Workplace Innovation

Out-of-office emails are too boring. But I made my last one fun! Check it out:

Have you ever tried incubating baby leopard geckos [1]? One of my former housemates, Nicholas, did so. It’s interesting because leopard geckos use temperature-dependent sex determination [2] – becoming male or female depends on the temperature at which they’re incubated. 

To become female, eggs should be incubated between 80 and 82 F. Males should be in 88 – 91 F. Temperatures in between those two extremes produce a mix of sexes, and anything above and below those two extremes will create either sex or will kill the eggs. He tried to incubate females and was successful for most!

As I listened to Nicholas tell me about this, I pondered how constraints can actually produce certain types of growth in living creatures. 

It made me think about how this applies to work as well. Constraints can actually make us more creative, produce new ideas, and create new ways to grow. Stanford’s d.school [3] and Johns Hopkins University [4] professors, among others, back up the idea that constraints can be advantageous.

So the question I started asking myself and would pose to you too – what kinds of constraints could we try placing on our work or life to stimulate new ideas and new ways to grow (temperature, budget, acquisition channel, environment, target persona, time, etc.)?

As you may be able to tell, I’m out of the office. Looking forward to connecting when I’m back on June 6th.

See you soon,
Grant
——–

Hyperlinks from the actual email are in the comments in case you want to dive deeper.

Shoutout to Russ Chadinha for being the inspiration that OOO emails can be fun!

Categories
contentmarketing productmarketing

Mastering the Content Creation Process Flow: A Guide to Boosting Quality and Efficiency

Clearly document the process flow for creating content. For instance, who needs to review it, whom it goes to next, etc.

This helps everyone get on the same page for expectations, and you’ll probably get more work produced at a higher quality level b/c of the clarity.

Categories
b2bmarketing socialmedia

Boosting Employee Engagement on LinkedIn: A Proven Kickstart Strategy for Companies

Want more of your employees getting active on LI? Offer a kickstart plan 💡

1. Meet to do a review of their LI & provide suggestions.
2. Guide them in drafting 3 posts.
3. Tell them to post 3x/week.
4. Optional: Brainstorm more posts with them as needed.

I did this at Zingtree and 8 people asked for help! Should be fun to get more people active 📈

Categories
Uncategorized

Maximize Your Business Potential: How to Effectively Utilize a Freelancer for Paid Social Approach

If you’re looking to take a create demand, majority paid social approach and you’d like a freelancer to help you with this, let me know and I can connect you with someone great.