March 21, 2019
It’s time to optimize your data! We’re talking about how to enrich and expand your company’s database with Technology Marketer, Marketing Leader and Vice President of Product & Solution Marketing at InsideView, Joe Andrews.
This episode is all about maintaining a healthy and accurate database. You’ll learn how to optimize your data by assessing, cleaning, enriching and ultimately expanding it so you can have confidence in every aspect of your sales and marketing efforts going forward.
Takeaways:
- Don’t turn a blind eye towards your data. Pay attention to it and review it regularly.
- Sales and marketing alignment starts with data. Lack of agreement on target accounts it the highest source of misalignment between sales and marketing leaders.
- Metrics are how sales and marketing measure. Sales measures revenue; marketing measures leads and quantity.
- Work collaboratively to determine who are the right accounts to go after and who are the right people at those accounts.
- Data is not a set it and forget it exercise because things are always evolving.
- The purpose of data quality is to make sales and marketing execution better. It’s goal is to optimize the revenue engine.
- About 25% of the database is inaccurate at any time. Don’t waste your salespeople's' time and your marketing efforts with incorrect data.
- Get your data ready by self-assessment, cleaning it up, filling in any missing information and expanding it to include new fields if necessary; assess, clean, enrich and expand it.
- Reassess your data once every year to keep it updated and fresh for the highest effectiveness.
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March 14, 2019
It’s time to establish a marketing routine that wins! Don’t miss this exciting episode featuring marketing leader and strategist for both B2B and B2C channels, and VP of Digital Marketing at Dynasty Financial Partners, Justin Barish.
In this episode we discuss how to get the most out of your social platforms, the benefit of digital network referrals over word-of-mouth referrals and share first-hand career advice on how to boost your professional game and become an authentic marketing influencer.
Takeaways:
- Remember that referrals can come in through a digital network as well as a personal network.
- Make sure you are testing the different ways digital marketing gets you referrals.It will help you determine what works and what doesn’t.
- It’s strategic to develop specific messages for specific audiences BUT every message must map back to your brand DNA to maintain your overall brand integrity.
- For marketing to work you need a value exchange; what you’re giving must be of equal or greater value than what you are asking for. Avoid a misaligned value exchange.
- Process comes down to routinization. Commit to being consistent and disciplined with your marketing process and you’ll eventually get the results you want.
- It’s all about small wins. Don’t miss out on the progress obtained from small wins by being too obsessed with the big wins.
- Have confidence in your ability to do things in your own style and flow. Don’t be afraid to do everything in a personalized way.
- Practice makes progress. It’s not about perfection, it’s about making progress.
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March 7, 2019
It’s time to demystify your marketing data and customer data platforms (CDPs) with author, Marketing Data Consultant, and Founder of the CDP Institute, David Raab.
Data is such a big part of marketing today and it’s becoming more and more necessary to rely on technologies to gather and organize customer data. This episode will teach you all about the purpose of using a CDP to organize your gathered data for marketing use.
Takeaways:
- Figure out your own requirements and use cases then find a tool that does what you need. Don’t just use tech because it’s what everyone else is doing.
- It’s easy to overlook your requirements gathering. Think about what you need to do first.
- Determine tasks you need your marketing tech to accomplish then sit down with the salesperson to find out how that product will work for you.
- When deciding to gather marketing data, put together the strategy first, develop your process and leave the technology for later.
- When it comes to multi-touch reporting, do it right. Get your data first then normalize it.
- Customer Data Platforms make your collected data easy to understand by building a database. They get all the data together in one place then enable your systems to use it.
- Involve your IT department in implementing the technology for system and security purposes but the Marketers should be the ones running the platform and making the decisions on the technology’s use.
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February 28, 2019
It’s time to step up your sales development strategy with Sales Guru, SDR Ninja and Director of Business Development at Ringlead, James Buckley.
In this episode we not only smash many common myths about sales development but we also discuss the importance of relationship in all your sales efforts and why it’s essential for marketing and sales to work as a team to communicate properly and get real engagement.
Takeaways:
- It’s the responsibility of sales representatives to build relationships. Sales reps need to start the conversations and qualify the leads before they reach the account executive.
- Marketing doesn’t qualify leads, they can only pre-qualify leads. It’s sales that sets the structure for qualifying those leads because marketing can only go so far.
- The hand-off is the teamwork most miss out on. It’s important that marketing communicate the context of the lead and its engagement with sales when they transfer it over.
- Relationship is the only thing that matters. It’s what makes your retention sustainable. Without relationship your sales are short sighted and you won’t gain lasting clients.
- Keep in mind that clients form connections and relationships with the people behind the company, not the company itself. Each individual they interact with is a different connection and a different relationship.
- The main job of an SDR is to change perception and create enough interest to make a change.
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February 21, 2019
Become a social media rockstar with surefire digital media techniques from marketing sage, copywriter, speaker and founder of Cargill Creative, Bob Cargill.
Learn all about why it’s important to maintain an active presence on social media, useful strategies for determining the best platforms for you and why keeping humanity at the heart of your content builds credibility and trust that can speak volumes for your brand.
Takeaways:
- Don’t forget the human side. It’s critical that you make the human connection and create your content with human feelings and desires in mind.
- Reinforce your technology with the right team. If you don’t have the right people, all the technology won’t even matter.
- Repurpose your content for more uses across platforms. Turn your videos or podcasts into blog articles or graphics to be used other places.
- If you’re new to social media, make sure you look at where your audience is and do a competitive analysis. This helps you determine what kind of content you should create.
- When doing social for business, try to stay personal most of the time. 20% - 30% of your content should be promotional, the other percentage should be educational and entertaining.
- Make sure you listen to and learn from others on social media. It’s a great way to share your thoughts and opinions without having to create every piece of content by yourself.
- Be likeable. People look to do business with people they like.
- Visual content is HUGE. Make sure to incorporate videos and photos into your social content. It might be intimidating at first but it can get you a lot of traction.
- Make an effort to be in touch with your social media audience. You should be conversing with your audience, learning and adjusting accordingly.
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February 14, 2019
Learn how to develop a stronger social data strategy with business development badass, social media wizard, and Founder/CEO of StrikeSocial, Patrick McKenna.
In this episode we discuss the best ways to use social platforms for data strategy and business development, how working hard to use and gather specific data can make you truly exceptional and smash some massive myths to oblivion.
Takeaways:
- Don’t just rely on the platforms when they tell you they can find your customer for you. You need to work hard to be exceptional. It does not come easy.
- Remember that you are talking to a computer when gathering data and you need to be really specific when talking to that computer.
- Don‘t postpone making your data more efficient. That can waste time. Look at the data and adjust your budget accordingly right away.
- AdWords is more than just adding one word here and there. There are layers of data you need to consider and know about in order for your data to be successfully used.
- Get specific for results and be specific with your targets and you’ll be able to see more in your data.
- Stay relevant. Keep up with the changes in the current platforms and keep an eye out for emerging platforms.
- Be transparent with your customers. If you’re honest and real your customers will trust you and you’ll be more likely to get the sales you’re looking for.
- You may fail sometimes or a lot of times but you’ll learn from those experiences and don’t stop moving forward.
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February 7, 2019
Gear up for some highly insightful tech talk with the VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot, Editor at chiefmartec.com and Program Chair of MarTech, Scott Brinker.
Advances in marketing technology have changed a lot about how marketing is done today. In this episode we discuss what those advances mean for your marketing plan, the benefits of looking into and incorporating new technology into your upcoming strategies and as usual, smash apart some common myths to pieces.
Takeaways:
- Don’t pick your technology without first having a strategy of how to use it. It’s important to use new technology and innovations to uncover what’s possible with your strategy.
- You should have someone on your team keep a finger on the pulse of changing technologies that are relevant to your customers.
- Don’t waste time chasing things that just look or sound cool. Make sure they are useful to both you and your customers before launching right into the unknown.
- Use the 80/20 rule as a guide to build your marketing technology toolkit. 80% of your efforts should be focused on present day operations and 20% should be spent looking at trends and emerging technologies.
- Get out and take time to meet with others in your profession but in different businesses. Ask questions and see what they are doing. You may discover something new.
- The cloud world brought a whole new revolution to technology that enables better integration which will ultimately open up many creative possibilities for the future.
- Grab hold of the citizen marketing trend! There are so many platforms and tools out there that have made it easier for regular marketers to build, develop and design with very little expertise needed.
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January 31, 2019
Equip yourself with mindful marketing techniques from project management superhero, marketing leader and Founder of The Project Designer, Nicole Jackson Miller.
In this episode we discuss effective ways to manage your emotions in the workplace, how to practice mindfulness to help you keep calm in the chaos, and ways to add an emotional touch to your social content that speaks directly to your audience.
Takeaways:
- Leadership is something everyone has. Leaders must either invest an amount of time attending to people’s fears and feelings or an unreasonable amount of time to managing ineffective to unproductive behavior.
- Learn how to pause. It supports you in knowing when to stop and tend to your own emotions and fears.
- There is no wrong feeling or emotion but make sure to process it and make a decision after calming down and understanding what is going on.
- Take a look at triggers, Identify what needs to be worked on within yourself like insecurities and doubts.
- Stay open and curious. Get a handle on your fears or emotions and opportunities will start to appear.
- Make sure you are where your audience is. People love hearing the personal stuff. Connecting with people on a personal level is extremely important.
- What are your values? People like this holistic view of who you are. Mix personal and professional. Twitter people want to know the real you instead of just the link sharing.
- It’s good to try new things but if something is working great for you already, it’s okay to keep promoting yourself on that platform.
- Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment without judgment.
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January 24, 2019
It’s time to go against the flow and become a technology heretic with some pro tips from digital tech expert, sales expert and CEO/Founder of Heretic Technology Group, Brent Hale.
In this episode we talk about uniting sales and marketing for effectiveness, the importance of putting your efforts into quality leads before the quantity of leads and of course, we smash some selling myths to pieces.
Takeaways:
- Metrics can be smoke in mirrors. You can try for a certain number of goals, but it may not necessarily get you the results you want.
- Use the law of averages to get the right leads using the right data. This will help your good salespeople get better numbers and your struggling salespeople improve their performance. You’ll accomplish more with less activity.
- It’s about quality and quantity. Keep in mind that lead quality comes first, then you can focus on the lead quantity.
- There should be a give and take between marketing and sales. Today, marketing has a huge burden to get the leads interested and sales needs to make sure they are contributing by turning those leads into opportunities.
- It’s important for sales and marketing to hit leads while they are hot. Don’t let them get cold. Make sure to reply and reach out promptly after the conversations are made.
- Marketing should be driving people into what you’re doing like webinars, your website and events. Sales should be sending out case studies, following up, and closing the sale.
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January 17, 2019
Maximize the impact of your buyer interviews with this expert advice from speaker, competitive intelligence expert, CEO of Business Intelligence Source, and author of Win/Loss Analysis, Ellen Naylor.
Listen in on how to master the art of conversation and pick up helpful interview tactics you can use to formulate the right questions, collect the right data and use your interview results to take the right actions.
Takeaways:
- Look out for your own bias when conducting interviews because it may interfere with the outcome. Having a third party conduct the interview helps keep the bias out if your data.
- Win/loss is the process of interviewing your customers. Your goal is to understand what their buyer journey was and how to make it better for them.
- Today the buyer journey is very long. 80% of the buyer journey is done before your customer even calls sales.
- Use your win/loss analysis to look at service issues, your company reputation and product attributes.
- Win data has the potential to give you information about your competitors and sometimes loss data can actually give you surprisingly good feedback.
- You will benefit the most if you do win/loss interviews on a regular basis. Don’t just do an interview once and expect you’ll have all the information you’ll ever need.
- Know your goals and what you are trying to accomplish. This will help you determine who you are going to reach out to and interview.
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