Category: marketing

Categories
bdr marketing pricingstrategies

Mastering the Art of Discussing Annual Pricing with Inbound Leads: Transforming Sticker Shock into Engagement

How do you discuss annual pricing with an inbound lead:

When you mention the annual price such as $2,000, it’s best to translate that into a per user per month price. For instance, “Our starting package is $2,000 per year with no long-term contract. So that breaks down to $x per user per month.” If this pricing also includes a discount from the month-to-month price, make sure to mention that!

Why do this?
It makes the price seem smaller, so they’re more likely to stay engaged and avoid sticker shock.

Categories
esl interviewing marketing

Mastering Your English Job Interview: Tips for Non-Native Speakers to Boost Confidence

I’m not sure who needs to hear this today but don’t be afraid of interviewing in English as a non-native speaker.

The Marketer I interviewed today occasionally forgot how to say certain words or phrases in English. That is no big deal for 95%+ of roles! Especially in this case b/c it was for an international region.

Heck, even native speakers often can’t think of the right word to say to capture a certain sentiment.

Knowing more than 1 language is a huge value; be proud of your roots and your ability to learn new things.

I hope this helps you be confident in your next interview 🙂

Categories
marketing sales

Unveiling the True Cost: A Comprehensive Comparison of Customer Acquisition in Marketing Vs. Outbound Sales

Here’s a simple way to compare customer acquisition costs from Marketing efforts vs outbound Sales efforts.

NOTE: This doesn’t factor in the long-term benefits that naturally come from Marketing such as brand awareness, dark social, and becoming a thought leader so that people come to you when they are eventually ready to buy.

Calculate the average cost per inbound closed won customer. (Or avg cost per inbound $ of revenue if the deal sizes are different between inbound and outbound.)

Then compare that with the cost per outbound closed won customer.

Depending on your company stage, you’ll get different winners. Just don’t ignore those long-term benefits from Marketing I mentioned earlier 🙂

Categories
b2bmarketing careerdevelopment hiring marketing

Mastering The Ladder: Proven Strategies to Accelerate Your Promotion to Marketing Manager or Sr. Manager – Part 3

How to get promoted to Manager or Sr. Manager in Marketing (part 3 of my series):

To become a Manager of a specific discipline in Marketing (e.g. Product Marketing Manager), you need:
– Demonstrated completion of successful projects
– Curiosity to learn more

To become a Senior Manager of a specific discipline in Marketing (e.g. Senior Product Marketing Manager):
– Able to estimate timelines and due dates accurately and consistently
– Able to plan out and execute projects with high performance from framework to collaboration & review to completion
– Proficient with the relevant tech stack
– Able to track the quantitative performance of activities

What would you add or change? Has your experience been different?

Reminder about the stages I’m talking about in the series: Intern, Associate, Manager, Sr. Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP, 2x VP, CMO.

To see each stage, follow me & click the 🔔 icon on my profile for the next stage posts.

Categories
associate careers internship marketing

Step Up Your Marketing Career: Essential Guide to Landing Your First Associate Job

Day 2 of my new series – how to advance each career level in Marketing. Today’s stage: Associate
 
Reminder: Stages I’ll show: Intern, Associate, Manager, Sr. Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP, 2x VP, CMO.
To see each stage, follow me & click the 🔔 icon on my profile for the next stage posts.
 
To get your first Marketing job as an Associate/Analyst (for those who go to college, this is probably your first job out of college)
 
– An internship(s) or full work experience. Ideally in Marketing too.
     – If you have 1 internship, you can hopefully get by
     – 2-3 internships – likely to find something
     – 4-5 internships – you’re setting yourself apart

– Extracurriculars that ideally have a Marketing focus to them. (s/o Reyna Olivares for this idea in the comments)

– Same experience listed previously for getting an internship (see below)
 
Reminder for how to get a Marketing internship:
– Have a strong referral from someone
– Do a side project so there is something tangible to show for your experience
– Analyze the Marketing of the company you’re applying to and share that with the hiring team and post it on LinkedIn
– Use perseverance, curiosity, and tenacity to find the first internship
– If you can’t get a referral and you’re following the steps above, you might need to apply to a lot to get your first one.
 
 
Background to this series:
Each level in Marketing builds on the experience of previous levels.
 
My framework assumes you want to manage people and become the general VP of Marketing or CMO; not just a VP/SVP of a specific discipline in Marketing.
Although most of the requirements would be similar.
 
These are not hard & fast rules and it’s geared more toward people working in startups rather than big enterprises.
 
Many people will be exceptions to these in some way in their journey. Nevertheless, hopefully, it can help guide you.
 
 
Was this similar to your path, or did you
have something else to get into your 1st Associate job?
 

Categories
careergrowth hiring marketing

Seven Essential Skills to Master for Your First VP of Marketing Role

You need these 7 things to become a 1st time VP of Marketing:

1. People management experience (ideally at least 4-6+ people, some may require 10+)

2. Product/brand marketing experience and demand generation experience

3. Expert at budgeting, forecasting, financial management, headcount planning, and agency management

4. Able to speak to past quantitative pipeline and revenue results

5. Experience in a similar industry

6. Able to speak to how you build culture and employee engagement for the whole Marketing team

7. Able to solve cross-functional issues, not just Marketing issues

What would you add/change to the list? Or what is something you admire about a VP of Marketing you know?

Reminder: Stages I’m showing in this series: Intern, Associate, Manager, Sr. Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP, 2x VP, CMO.
To see each stage, follow me & click the 🔔 icon on my profile for the next stage posts.

Categories
careers marketing

Ascend the Marketing Ladder: A Comprehensive Guide to Navigating Each Career Level in Marketing

I’m starting a new series on how to advance each career level in Marketing.

Stages I’ll show: Intern, Associate, Manager, Sr. Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP, 2x VP, CMO.
To see each stage, follow me & click the 🔔 icon on my profile for the next stage posts.

Background:
Each level in Marketing builds on the experience of previous levels.

My framework assumes you want to manage people and become the general VP of Marketing or CMO; not just a VP/SVP of a specific discipline in Marketing.
Although most of the requirements would be similar.

These are not hard and fast rules and it’s geared more toward people working in startups rather than big enterprises.

Many people will be exceptions to these in some way in their journey. Nevertheless, hopefully, it can help guide you.

Starting from the bottom:
To get your 1st Marketing internship:

– Have a strong referral from someone

– Do a side project so there is something tangible to show for your experience

– Analyze the Marketing of the company you’re applying to and share that with the hiring team and post it on LinkedIn

– Use perseverance, curiosity, and tenacity to find the first internship

– If you can’t get a referral and you’re following the steps above, you might need to apply to a lot to get your first one.

Lastly, shoutout to 🍏 Mason Cosby for prompting me to think about this when he interviewed me on The Marketing Ladder podcast.

What have you seen be helpful in getting the 1st internship?

Categories
careergrowth hiring marketing

Unlocking Success: Essential Skills and Strategies for Securing a Director or Senior Director Marketing Role (Part 4)

Want to get a Director or Sr. Director Marketing role? Here’s what you need (part 4 of the series)

Director-level:
– People management experience (ideally 2+ people)
– Deep expertise in the specific discipline of Marketing, perks if you have experience in another discipline too
– Has shown quantitative impact on ROI, pipeline, ARR, or other relevant metrics to the discipline
– Has shown the ability to create strategic plans but still able to get your hands dirty
– Able to do budgeting, forecasting, and financial management, most likely with the help of someone more senior
– Proficient with analysis and reporting
– Proficient with your own discipline’s tech stack and some abilities in other disciplines’ tech stacks
– Strong collaborator with other teams inside and outside of Marketing

To become a Senior Director in Mktg:
– Do things that Directors do but be consistently achieving or outperforming people management, marketing planning, and quantitative goals

Reminder: Stages I’ll show: Intern, Associate, Manager, Sr. Manager, Director, Sr. Director, VP, 2x VP, CMO.
To see each stage, follow me & click the 🔔 icon on my profile for the next stage posts.

Was this similar to your path, or did you have something else to get into your 1st Dir/Sr. Dir job?

Or if you’re not there yet, what have you been told that you still need?

Categories
copywriting demandgeneration marketing

Unlocking Creative Ad Copy: The Power of Cross-Departmental Brainstorming Sessions

We had a brainstorming session on new ad copy today, and the number of new ideas was spectacular!

Make sure to invite people outside of Marketing as optional to get other perspectives. For instance, Ryan Peterson from Sales joined and had terrific contributions 🔥
Sales people can have excellent insights b/c they’re talking with prospects often and usually doing cold outbound email, which requires creative copy testing.

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration marketing

Unlocking the 4 Secret Strategies to Optimize Self-Reported Attribution in Marketing

There are 4 secrets about self-reported attribution that every Marketing leader should know before implementing “How did you hear about us?” on their forms…

1️⃣ You need to create a second field to categorize and bucket the free-form answers.
This second field with grouped categories is what you’ll use for reporting purposes. You can do this manually or through automation. I prefer manual b/c I like to review every lead to find new insights & it only takes 5-10 seconds to populate the second field with the category.

2️⃣ You should test the exact language on your form.
We changed it to “How did you hear about Zingtree? Please provide as much detail as possible.”, and it greatly increased the length of answers and insights we could get from the field.

3️⃣ It’s not perfect when someone says they heard about you through multiple sources.
E.g. LinkedIn and Google search. Unless you want to do very advanced & often convoluted reporting with a bunch of (If field contains “word”, then show in this report), then you should only put one answer into the field. Which means you’re losing some of the data in your reporting using the second field.

4️⃣ Setup syncing between your MAP to CRM so that the field can carry through to the opportunity too.
This enables you to do reporting at the lead, opp, and customer level.

What would you add to the list?
Any questions about these?