This article outlines the essential planning priorities for B2B demand generation experts aiming to achieve significant growth in marketing revenue. The key takeaways include prioritizing data-driven strategies, implementing account-based marketing to personalize outreach, investing in content marketing excellence, optimizing the marketing technology stack, fostering seamless sales and marketing alignment, and embracing continuous testing and optimization. By aligning these priorities, marketing directors can enhance their organization’s revenue generation capabilities and drive remarkable growth.
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Introduction:
For B2B demand generation experts seeking substantial growth in marketing revenue, strategic planning is paramount. By aligning your priorities with the right strategies, you can unlock the potential for remarkable success. In this article, we will explore the essential planning priorities that can drive exponential growth in your marketing revenue.
- Data-Driven Strategy:
To achieve significant revenue growth, data-driven decision-making must be at the forefront of your planning. Leverage comprehensive data analysis and insights to understand your target audience, identify market trends, and fine-tune your marketing approach. By incorporating data-driven strategies, you can maximize the effectiveness of your demand generation efforts and optimize your marketing spend.
- Account-Based Marketing (ABM):
Implementing an account-based marketing strategy should be a top priority for B2B demand generation experts. ABM allows you to personalize your approach and focus on high-value accounts that are most likely to convert. By tailoring your messaging and content to the specific needs of target accounts, you can establish stronger connections, nurture relationships, and drive higher conversion rates. ABM empowers you to allocate resources efficiently, ensuring that your efforts are concentrated where they will have the greatest impact.
- Content Marketing Excellence:
Investing in content marketing excellence is a critical priority for B2B demand generation experts. Develop a robust content strategy that addresses the pain points, challenges, and interests of your target audience. Create valuable, informative, and engaging content across various formats such as blog posts, whitepapers, videos, webinars, and case studies. By positioning your brand as a thought leader and providing valuable insights, you can attract and retain prospects, build credibility, and ultimately drive revenue growth.
- Marketing Technology Stack:
Evaluating and optimizing your marketing technology stack should be a key consideration in your planning. Leverage automation tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, analytics platforms, and other relevant technologies to streamline your demand generation processes. Automating repetitive tasks, tracking and analyzing campaign performance, and nurturing leads effectively can significantly enhance your marketing efficiency and revenue generation.
- Seamless Sales and Marketing Alignment:
Ensuring seamless alignment between your sales and marketing teams is vital to drive revenue growth. Establish open lines of communication, shared goals, and collaborative processes between these departments. Encourage regular meetings and feedback loops to align messaging, exchange insights, and refine strategies. By fostering a close partnership, you can optimize lead handoff, accelerate the sales cycle, and enhance overall revenue generation.
- Continuous Testing and Optimization:
Never underestimate the power of continuous testing and optimization in your demand generation efforts. Implement a culture of experimentation to refine your campaigns, messaging, and conversion strategies. Conduct A/B testing, analyze results, and iterate based on data-driven insights. By continually optimizing your approach, you can unlock hidden opportunities, eliminate inefficiencies, and drive significant revenue growth.
Conclusion:
As a B2B demand generation expert focused on expanding marketing revenue, prioritizing these key planning considerations is essential. Embrace a data-driven mindset, implement account-based marketing, excel in content creation, leverage the right marketing technology, align sales and marketing efforts, and continuously test and optimize. By incorporating these priorities into your planning, you will position your organization for remarkable growth and success in revenue generation.
he only way to generate leads sustainably is to have a balanced outbound, inbound and retention strategy. But before examining what this looks like it is important to first address what is meant by lead generation.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead Generation is the crossover between sales and marketing. It is what connects your product or service to the targeted portion of the population that you want to engage with it. Lead Generation is however more than just the creation of demand or interest through targeted advertising. It is the process of putting systems in place to generate customer interest, nurture it and sustain in past the point of first purchase. Because of this lead generation systems typically require some combination of people, processes and technology.
The 5 Aspects of Success Online Lead Generation Systems
While companies generate leads is host of different ways increasingly people are turning online to find new customers and using cloud SASS solutions to nurture and automate their engagement with customers. Online lead generation systems typically have 5 common components.
1) A system that utilizes Search, Social or PPC to either 1) connect customers with the key information they want (inbound) or 2) convey information to customers that will generate interest in your product (outbound)
2) Keyword targeted landing pages that create excitement and urgency about a topic. These pages have to connect with a perspective customers interest or search query (what) and addresses their “so what” (your differentiating value proposition) and “now what” (next action).
3) A site and page structure that drives customer engagement with clear call to actions (call or fill out a form) which collects and segments contact based on their place in your sales cycle
4) A attribution system that monitors the individual customers journey (heat mapping and page flow) and the overall performance of lead sources (call and form tracking) so that you can reduce barriers to purchase and increase spending on performing channels.
5) A system that automatically delivers the information requested by a customer and pre-frames them to be closed by a sales representative.
5) A system to retarget an engaged user that leverages email, social & professional networks to solidify the relationship and sustain contact past first purchase.
Content is King if your Strategy is Inbound
While these elements are essential the most successful leaders in the space have one special ingredient that increasingly is at the core of any inbound lead generation strategy. This is:
6) An understanding of the general problems or interests your customers face in advance of them facing the particular problem or having the particular need that makes them a perspective customer.
The last is the most critical because it what allows companies to interrupt the research or buying patterns that are part of their perspective customers journey where the competition is the least. This typically means providing content for broad range of issues loosely related to your company idetity. The broad based success of this approach has resulted in most marketing companies adopting mantra’s like “content is king”.
Picking a Strategy to Reenforces Your Value Proposition
While this inbound content based approach to lead generation is useful it increasingly becoming the norm. This of course raises the question – what to do if everyone starts prolifically producing content on topics. The answer is to differentiate your offering at a more fundamental level. This often means adapting a companies core offering to reflect a position that allows them to interrupt a customers buying pattern.
So How Are Companies Actually Doing this Generate Leads?
The best lead generation strategies are more reflective of the customer base and their engagement patterns than the particular offer or service being promoted. For instance if your customer journey does not typically start with research then this is not a buying pattern that can be interrupted. That is to say you won’t see success if a campaign leads source is people searching for the solution or product you offer. While there are countless ways to break buyers patterns below are some of my favourites.
1) By Leveraging Your Customers Networks
Some companies pay to have you leverage your network by having customers sell to their friends in exchange for rewards of some sort. This often turns people off. The best brands get people to leverage their networks simply because they believe in the brand. Brands that pursue this strategy build it into the fabric of the companies differentiating value proposition. You know you have encountered a campaign of this sort when you friends or family are selling your on a cause, position or product using the language of a campaign.
A campaign is something that is by its very nature is for a limited time. That is to say, the offer at hand, the ad produced or the product created is available for a limited time. This is a brilliant strategy because people feed on novelty and scarcity. Brands that pursue this strategy create a sense of scarcity, controversy or concern. The most successful examples of it are companies that build the hook into the fabric of the company’s campaign. The motivation for this is media. Companies pursuing this are looking to create buzz that ultimately turns into demand.
3) By Creating Content that Connects with a Keywords Intention
Companies that pursue this strategy establish their authority by creating keyword driven content that connect with your target audience’s want-to-know, want –to-go, want-to-do and want-to-visit. Brands that pursue this strategy do not build their presence around their identify. The build their presence around
4) By Targeting a Particular Product or Service Application
This is simply another way of saying niche marketing. Companies that pursue this strategy frame their product narrowly in terms of a single solution. Companies that pursue this strategy try to answer with their product a particular problem it addresses rather than all of it’s potential uses. This strategy normally works best when it leverages needs based on industry jargon.
5) By Estabilishing Topic Authority
Companies that pursue this strategy focus on framing the conversation about the product around the companies thought leaders use of them. This strategy bets on you taking these thought leaders advice. Typically leaders weave the need to use their tools into the broader framework they advocate for.
