Matt Berringer MBA
demand generation is a strategically planned, persona-focused marketing program. While brochures, collateral, and logos are important parts of a company’s foundation, demand generation marketing is focused on orchestrated campaigns that support the buyer throughout the buying process and (as a result) drive qualified opportunities to the sales team.
At a minimum this agreement should include: ●Quantitative Goals ○Opportunities ○Leads ○Prospects ○Revenue Generated ○Pipeline Generated ○Campaign Activities (Trade Shows, Outbound, Content Development)
Typically, sales teams become upset because either the quantity or the quality of those leads is not what they expected. Working together to define your quantitative goals in this section and the criteria for these goals in the next section can go a long way towards aligning those expectations across departments.
In order to develop marketing goals that the sales team is on board with, executive leadership will first work together with sales and marketing to determine overall revenue goals and expected contributions from each department. In other words, if our revenue goal is one million dollars, how much of that should be sourced directly by our sales team, and how much should come from marketing, sales development, and customer success (renewals, up-sells, etc.)?
Here are some example conversion rate benchmarks. These numbers will vary by channel and by industry. See Chapter 12 for definitions of the acronyms. Prospect to Lead conversion rate: 10 percent Lead to MQL: 25 percent MQL to SQL: 75 percent Opportunity Win rate: 25 percent
Here’s a quick example of what quantitative goals could look like for a one million dollar pipeline target using the conversion rates above and and average deal value of $100K. We’re going to work backwards from the target revenue goal. If we need one million in revenue, and our win rate is at 25 percent, we need to generate four times that much ($4M) in pipeline to assure we hit that one million mark. If each deal is roughly $100K, we’re going to need ten closed-won deals to hit our revenue target, but we know that we need to generate 4x that number because of the 25 percent win rate. So we need 10 x 4 (40 opportunities) to hit our goal. If we need 40 opportunities, and 75 percent of our MQLs convert to opportunities, how many MQLs do we need? For that, we just take 40 and divide it by 75 percent to get approximately 54 MQLs.
To get the number of leads we need, we just take 54 and divide that by the 25 percent conversion rate to calculate a goal of 216 leads. And finally, in order to generate enough prospects to get this whole train moving, we divide that 216 leads number by the 10 percent conversion rate. And we get 2160. That’s about as far as we can go with a general example but now that you have your hard numbers, you can dive in and begin dividing it down by months and weeks to set SMART (we’ll define SMART in the next section) goals for each. You’ll also want to take into account any seasonality which may occur in your industry. With these numbers in place, you can then set out to determine which channel is going to contribute which percentage of prospects and leads. This flows directly into the strategy piece of the program which we’ll discuss in the next chapter. These two elements will need to be developed simultaneously; your goals will be broken down into a strategy and tactics for achieving them.
Sample Marketing Funnel and Definitions Prospect Contact has not engaged directly but is on our radar. (Website visitor, trade show attendee, employee at target company, member of target persona professional organization) Open Lead Prospect has taken some action to engage with the company. Action needs to be taken to qualify them. (Website download, webinar attendee, mailing list sign up) Working Lead Our team is actively trying to contact the lead. Qualifying Lead Lead has been contacted by a member of our team and has responded positively but has not been fully qualified yet.
Another useful tool for qualifying/disqualifying prospects is a lead scorecard. Using this tool and working from an ideal customer profile, we can set up a rubric for the qualifying conversation.
Below is a quick idea of what this can look like. You would insert a one in for each Yes answer and a zero for each No: Name: Title: Company: Email: Does title match a key persona? 1 Is there a defined need for what we offer? 1 Is prospect using a competitor product? 0 Is the size of the company greater than X? 0 Total 2 If the total is two or greater, the lead is qualified and ready for sales follow up. If not, it gets put into a separate workflow for follow up by the marketing team. Sample sales funnel and definitions Sales Stage: Marketing qualified lead Exit Criteria: Positive customer response to presentation Sales Stage: Sales qualified lead Exit Criteria: Budget, timing, and authority clarified Sales Stage: Discovery Exit Criteria: Customer needs are addressable Sales Stage: Solution identified Exit Criteria: Customer agrees to success metrics Sales Stage: Demo/Evaluation Exit Criteria: Customer selects your solution Sales Stage: Negotiation Exit Criteria: Customer agrees to business and legal terms Sales Stage: Closed Exit Criteria: All required documents received
With a wealth of information just a click away, buyers are much more likely to do their own research rather than reach out directly to a salesperson or wait for a salesperson to call. Inbound is a response to that. The idea is that because consumers are doing their own research, and not reaching out to companies until much later in the buying process, companies need to find a new way to establish a relationship with consumers. Enter inbound. Resources like ebooks, webinars, and videos help companies build relationships for the long term. The hypothesis is that if the consumer sees your company as an advocate and a thought leader before they need help, they are much more likely to turn to you when they actually need help. Examples of inbound resources:
Leads are more willing to engage
We found that sales winners consistently do three things: They connect, convince, and collaborate with buyers. Our research found that sales winners make strong personal connections at more than double the rate of second-place finishers (Schultz).
The process is buyer-driven - Prospects choose when to interact and what to interact with based on their needs. Because the resources are mapped to the stages of the buyer’s journey (we’ll get to this later), we can figure out where they are in the buying process.
It can raise your company’s profile - By choosing the right content partners, thought leaders, and publishers, you can effectively piggy-back on the trust they’ve built with their audience.
Your company will better understand your target audience’s needs and challenges - Part of the process of developing inbound resources is studying your target audience and understanding what makes them tick.
Driving traffic can be a challenge - OK, so you’ve worked really hard on developing your persona, you’ve then created an awesome resource based on that persona, you publish the landing page and then...crickets.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. Peter Drucker
Building your ideal customer profile
The idea here is to examine your current client portfolio and look for patterns from the ones you would deem the most ideal.
Some questions to ask: ●How many employees does the company have? ●What is their annual revenue? ●Where do they get their funding? ●What industry are they in? ●Who is the end-user? ●Who is the decision-maker/buyer? ●How are decisions made? Is the end-user of your product the decision-maker/buyer? ●How many people were involved in the decision, and how long did it take? ●How did they become a customer? Was it sourced via a trade show, word-of-mouth, your website, or something else? Using this information, you can begin to build out a profile of what your ideal customer looks like. And with that information you can then begin to figure out where these ideal customers are. From there you determine how to start a conversation with key people at the account, and that gets us to personas.
Developing key personas
The concept of personas really blew up with inbound marketing. And while it has its flaws (people have different personalities, goals, experiences, and challenges which shape their interactions with vendors), in general it’s a perfect tool for getting your teams to think about the real live person on the other end of the sales or marketing conversation.
Build cross-functional working groups to brainstorm and develop these personas, then share them with the company to refine them. If available, I’d highly recommend getting out of the building and performing qualitative research via conversations with your target personas.
Here are some key questions to ask when building out your personas:
One thing to note here is that we don’t just want to focus on professional traits. Using emotion is one of the best ways to elicit a reaction, so you also want to tap your inner Freud and figure out what these people really want on an emotional level.
If you have a contact who fits the persona profile, maybe a current customer or former colleague, but they don’t have time to be directly involved in an interview, ask them if they will do a quick review of your finished product. Ask them if it feels right or if anything seems out of place, or off target. You may also have someone who holds this position in your own company. Ask them to take a look. Don’t forget to reach out to contacts on LinkedIn as well.
Studying the competition A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is a lightweight way to get your team thinking about your company and where the competition sits in your market.
Also, visit websites and trade show booths, and ask your current customers what they think about your competition to stay abreast of what they are doing. I’ve often had customers who loved our solution forward us marketing materials from other companies.
After you’ve identified your ideal accounts and your key personas, it’s time to evaluate your database through those lenses. Do you have the right accounts and personas in your database, or is it cluttered with excessive non-niche companies and personas?
Then every six months or so you can run an opt-in or opt-out campaign to make sure the people on your list still want to receive your emails. This might sound risky, but it’s much better than getting dinged with a spam complaint because someone forgot they signed up years ago. Remember, we’re focusing on our niche. Quality beats quantity every day of the week.
Don’t forget your fundamentals Every great program, product, and team starts with a solid foundation. You can’t build anything if the foundation is weak. So let’s take a look at the things we need to get right first.
Know your ideal customer - Who are your best customers, and why did they choose you? Talk with them, review your data, and interview your team to figure this out.
The buyer’s decision process and mapping the journey In the last chapter, we prepared for execution by getting to know our key personas better. In this chapter, we’re going to focus on outlining the buyer’s journey.
There are a lot of buying/marketing models out there, but I’ve found a simple three stage outline of the process does the job. It’s based on the standby AIDA model popularized by E. St. Elmo Lewis way back in 1898 (ProvenModels). You can get more specific depending on your goals. Why is this necessary? It will help you create meaningful content and share it at the right time. When we get to creating content, we’re going to hold ourselves accountable by mapping each piece of content to a discrete buyer’s stage and key persona.
The buyer’s journey 1. Awareness (Problem) Buyer becomes aware of the product-agnostic problem. Things aren’t optimal for some reason or a need is created. The buyer wants to understand the problem better so that they can tackle it. This is the time to reference your personas. What challenges does your buyer face? When your key customers came on board, what were the issues on the ground that started their search for a solution? “My car is making a funny noise…” 2. Interest (Category-Specific) Buyer has identified a problem and is researching ways to fix it. Again, this is not product-specific, it is problem-specific. What are ALL of the potential solutions to this problem? “How much is it going to cost to fix the funny noise?” “How much would it cost to replace the car?” “What is the cost/benefit of repairing vs. buying?” 3. Action (Product-Specific) Buyer has identified the way in which they’d like to solve the problem and is now ready to evaluate the vendors that can help them do it. “It costs too much to fix the car. I’m going to buy a new one. Which car is right for me?”
That looks at the buyer’s journey through the company lens. With inbound, though (and especially content), we want to look at it through the buyer’s eyes.
And here’s a shiny new one all mapped out:
Creating and mapping persona-based content to each stage Now that we have a general model for how prospects will flow through the marketing funnel, we need to start thinking about how to get them to move through the funnel.
companies and marketers fall into the activity trap. They would rather complete a lot of low quality activities that really only show their supervisors that they were busy and rarely make an impact, instead of a few high quality activities that actually help prospects. That activity obsession has led to mountains of self-centered blog posts, white-papers, and videos that look really cool but get only 15 views
One high quality piece can generate more traffic than hundreds of throw-away pieces.
Also, don’t forget to create content in a format that they are most likely to consume. Busy executives may prefer an easily skimmable article that they can read prior to a meeting versus a five minute video that requires sound.
Don’t fall into the trap of producing one-off pieces that don’t fit into a larger concept. Think about a larger concept or challenge and then break it down into several different blog posts or content pieces. Then when you’re done, you can combine them all into a bigger piece.
People will find your content by searching for what interests them, so you need to make sure your content matches what they’re searching for.
Here’s a questionnaire/checklist that helps hold you accountable:
Types of content for each stage Because the needs of the buyer are different at each stage, we can typically map out the types of content they will find useful relative to the stage they are in.
Also, don’t forget that you can start many of these content ideas as several parts of a blog series and then combine them into webinars, ebooks, videos, white papers, etc. So you can start small and build it all or you can build it all and then break it up. Maybe you’d rather build a webinar and then do a blog that discusses the content. Experiment and see what works best for you.
Getting seen Here are some quick tips for driving engagement with your high-quality, persona-centric
Be consistent - Build out a routine cadence of posts for each piece of content. Don’t just do one post and move on to the next.
Leverage your staff - It is getting harder and harder for businesses to organically reach social media users. Provide templates to your staff for sharing out your content via their own social accounts.
Rent some high value space - Contact key publishers and associations in your target industry and find out how you can partner with them to promote your content alongside their in-house work.
Name drop - I’ve always thought this is kind of hokey, but lots of people swear by quoting an industry influencer in your content and then letting them know about it with the hopes that they will share it out to their network.
Viewing the big picture with a channel map The channel map is essentially your blueprint for success with inbound marketing.
Now that we have our content ideas developed and mapped to our key personas, we need to outline how these buyers are going to find and engage with it.
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You will note that there are several ways for people to jump into your content. They don’t necessarily all start at the first stage (awareness) and work left to right. Depending on where the prospect is in their journey, they can jump in anywhere along the way. Don’t just focus on top of funnel awareness offers or you could miss a chance to engage with a motivated buyer.
The channel map is a good tool for visualizing the actual steps your buyer will take. Use it to see where you need more content or maybe where you have too much. Typically, companies will do well at generating their top of funnel content (awareness) but fall short in the middle stage (interest) and try to jump straight from awareness to interest.
When you get the journey rolled out, you can start reporting metrics for your content to see what’s working and what’s not.
A good way to keep an eye on your most active prospects is by assigning scores to every action they take as well as key demographic info like title, company name, etc. You can give them more points for actions that are further along in the buying process to make sure they are quickly visible to your team. For high value actions (e.g., demo requests) you’ll want to set up email triggers that notify your team instantly.
Inbound Marketing | 16 mistakes to avoid
In my experience, inbound takes a lot longer to develop, but in the end the results are much better and more consistent. Before you start developing your strategy, make sure that everyone is on board and aware of the time it will take from the first piece of content to the first qualified opportunity.
You should start seeing qualified leads popping up at around six to eight months and impacting opportunities soon thereafter. Again, results can vary drastically based on the typical sales cycle in your industry and
Inbound is kind of like farming: you need to plant your seeds and let them grow. There’s no fool proof way to make the plants grow more quickly.
How much content do we need? At a minimum, start with one piece of content per buyer’s stage, per persona, and build from there. As your library of content grows, you can learn from what’s popular and create more of that content or even republish it with a fresh update. Don’t fall into the quantity over quality trap though!
one of the biggest challenges with inbound marketing is that it takes a long time to develop consistent results, and there are a lot of ways to mess it up. We’re taking a risk by deploying a strategy that takes so long to develop. One way we can mitigate that risk is by supplementing our inbound strategy with an outbound one.
There are several types of outreach that fall under the outbound umbrella.
Mass marketing ■Advertising ■Mass email ■Direct mail Field marketing ■Trade shows ■Events at trade shows ■Exclusive dinners ■Open user groups ■Lunch and learn 1:1 sales development ■1:1 email ■Phone calls ■Social media ■Personal mail
Advertising | Fundamentals for success The 3Rs - Success in advertising is all about the 3Rs - getting the right person the right message at the right time. Run through this checklist as you’re putting your strategy and specific ads together. ●Is it targeted to the right persona? ●Is the message/promotion speaking directly to that persona in language they understand? ●Is the message relevant to where they are in the buyer’s journey?
Assist, don’t interrupt
We want to offer a helping hand, not ask for one. We want to add value, not ask for it. So put together assets that will help your personas, not ones that get in the way of your personas accessing the information they are looking for. Be the YouTube video they want to see, not the ad that runs before it. An effective way to do this is partnering with trusted publishers and organizations to create co-branded materials/events that help buyers solve problems.
The buyer should never have to wonder what to do next; that’s your job. Typically, you’ll want to gain their interest by offering something of value. Then you’ll want to capture their interest with a form or sign up of some sort.
Not following up with content that is relevant to how they converted - This is another classic one. We want to get started right away, but we don’t have any TOFU offers, so let’s just offer them a demo! This goes back to working synergistically with the inbound program. Make sure that there’s a cohesive next step when someone converts from one of your ads or promotions or you’ll risk losing them.
Mass email | Fundamentals for success Opt-in is much better - Build an opt-in list and segment it by persona.
but don’t forget to segment it by persona and buyer’s stage so that you can send relevant content.
Be consistent and be relevant - Send regularly scheduled, persona-focused content, not product-focused emails.
But if your goal is to drive as many qualified opportunities as possible, as quickly as possible, I would recommend at least a small amount of your budget be allocated to advertising.
Think about advertising in different ways, not just traditional ones. Partnering with publishers on content is a great way to elevate your brand in the eyes of your target audience.
What about Google Adwords? Adwords is a good choice for people looking to bump up exposure for certain keyword searches, especially if you’re struggling to gain organic rankings for them. Be careful, though: you can easily wind up wasting a ton of money if you aren’t targeted on the right keywords. Think about fishing with a pole, not fishing with dynamite. And don’t fall into the clicks trap. Clicks don’t equal conversions. As with any other advertising channel, Adwords needs to be tended to on a regular basis.
Field marketing activities should: ●Establish trust and rapport between the buyer and your company. ●Create excitement and positive energy around your brand. ●Provide a way for current users to mingle with prospective buyers. ●Help your team quickly identify the buyers from the browsers. Common field marketing tactics include: ■Trade shows ■Sideshows ■Open user groups ■Lunch and learn
Trade shows | Fundamentals for success Know where to go - No matter the company, resources and staff are limited.
When you are thinking about which ones to attend, ask these questions: ○Will the right buyers be there? ○Are enough of the right buyers attending? ○Is the conference held at the right time, or are there other industry conflicts that may affect attendance? ○Can we get a good booth location in the show? (Location can make or break a show.) ○Is there an opportunity to present a session? ○Are there key industry partners attending? Can we leverage that in some way? ○Are current customers attending?
Present (if possible) - When you have the shows identified, start researching to see if there is a way you can get one of your customers to present (more about brand ambassadors coming up). No one wants to sit through a boring product demo, so really emphasize the ways in which your customer faced and overcame common challenges.
But don’t stop there; drive the conversation after the show by offering a second-chance raffle. Tell them to keep their ticket and to visit the URL on the back to register.
It’s about subtly complimenting your prospect’s ego, allowing them to network with others in their field, and providing real value in the form of a guest speaker.
Put your customers to work - It’s one thing to hear a sales pitch from an employee at the booth; it’s quite another to hear directly from a happy, paying customer. Brand ambassadors can give an authentic voice to your booth or event presence. Again, you’ll want to give them nearly (if not the same) training you give the rest of the booth staff to minimize gaffs, but if you can get them to agree (and you can navigate the legalities) this is a very strong way to improve event performance. As a side benefit, your booth staff gets to hang out and learn more about your key personas, which will help them as they engage with others.
Train your team - Supply your team with the training and feedback they need to succeed. Help them learn:
Instead, offer a decent reason for them to stop by (food, limited edition shirts, socks, an old screen door, etc. Anything is better than just asking them to stop by to say hello):
Open user groups | Fundamentals for success Tell a story that matters
How many shows should we do? I would say this is the wrong question to ask. Do your homework and rank the shows you’d like to attend. To make this less subjective, you can score each one on a rubric (key persona, attendee numbers, location, competition, etc.). When you have the absolute musts defined, start with those and work backwards depending on your budget.
There are a lot of tactics to choose from; where do we start? This all depends on your budget, the number of current customers you have, and your goals. I’d recommend trying each of the above tactics a few times each year and figuring out which ones work best for you and your audience.
Sales development managers | Fundamentals for success
Measure performance with precise account and contact tracking - Set up a consistent process for tracking and analyzing your SDR program. The more consistent you and your reps can be, the more reliable your data will be.
Sales development representatives | Fundamentals for success
Typically, you can do enough general research in five to ten minutes to build a custom message. Use social media and internet search engines to perform some basic research on your contact and their company.
Your goal here is just to get a conversation started. Open that door a crack, then you can build from there. If you start by trying to close them with an 800 word email, they’ll probably never answer the door. Here’s an example of what this could look like:
Sales development tactics
Always be testing - As the saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
Social media | Fundamentals for success
How many calls/emails/activities should an SDR be doing to be successful?
The All-Star Team Framework Marketing Roles Marketing Team Lead Description: This position serves as the hub for all things demand generation. Traditionally, this person would be your marketing manager. This role differs in that it requires hands-on execution rather than straight management. Eventually, the position could grow into a leadership role but it’s important to have this person executing on the ground floor. It provides them with great experience and lets them build a career based on real accountability. Unlike a hands-off manager, they can’t hide behind performance issues of other staff members. Once they prove they can run these initiatives well, they will be better off in training someone to take over the day to day and also better equipped to manage that person. Responsibilities: ●Orients the team to lead generation ●Brings strategic vision to tactical operations ●Conceptualizes and executes lead generation and development campaigns ●Lead ownership: Makes sure the right leads get to the right person at the right time ●Builds cooperation and alignment across the team and departments (sales/marketing) ●Develops KPIs and process for capturing related data ●Provides coaching and development opportunities for the rest of team ●Manages budget ●Owns recruiting ●Fills gaps in team as necessary ●Keeps executive team abreast of campaign performance, bottlenecks, and team morale ●Is responsible for delivering a set number of qualified leads and marketing opportunities. Reports To: ●VP of Sales and Marketing Key Traits: ●Broad skill set to provide management and coaching across the team ●Digital advertising, social media, marketing automation, budgeting ●Creative ●Experimentally minded
Set your goals - This is basic but bears repeating. Set SMART goals for the sales and marketing department all the way down to the individual and campaign level. Make projections based on what you know, and adjust them based on the results you see. On the campaign level make sure you are defining what success looks like before you launch. Remember, campaigns don’t necessarily have to end in close-won opportunities; a campaign goal could be to increase top of funnel leads by a percentage or hard number or to get X number of people registered for an event.
Build a system that gives you a clear window into your data, and it will repay you in kind. Priorities should include developing a system that clearly defines who owns which accounts, tracks recent interactions (inbound or outbound), and alerts the account owner to key events. The easier it is to use and the more value your team sees from it, the more likely they are to use it.
What’s not so standard (yet, anyway) is a pre-mortem. Instead of waiting until after the campaign is published and the wheels have fallen off, pull everyone into a room and brainstorm what might go wrong before you launch. Then devise ways to make sure these things can’t happen. This is an awesome idea that can help you head off major mistakes as well as minor but impactful ones.
Instead of treating the closed sale like the end of the road for sales and marketing, we should think of it like a loop. Closed customers shouldn’t fall off the radar; they should become brand ambassadors that can supercharge your marketing efforts through trade shows, events, sideshows, testimonials, user reviews, and webinars.
In general, if it is a complicated and expensive offering, the process should be hands-on, punctuated with live interactions, and measured in milestones. If it’s less complicated and less expensive, you can think about relying more on automated, self-serve options.
Remember, if your team isn’t calling your customers, you can rest assured that someone else’s team is. You’ve deployed a lot of effort and resources to bring these customers in the door; don’t let them slip away now.
Tools & Technology
Goals ●Average monthly SQL total using BANT qualification: 9.6 per month (TOPO) ●Total activities ○125 per day (49 dials, 75 emails, seven conversations) (TOPO) ○140 per day (50 calls, 65 emails, 20 social/personal) in seven hours (Sweat) ●Pipeline created ○49 percent of revenue sourced by SDRs (Bertuzzi) ○Pipeline contribution from prospecting: 40-60 percent (InsightSquared) ●Conversion rate ○Eight per qualifying conversation (PersistIQ) ○Two percent of prospects contacted (Sweat) ●Pass rate (How many conversations turn into appointments for sales?): 60 percent (PersistIQ)
90 Day Demand Generation Plan
This chapter provides an outline of the activities and outputs needed to get your demand generation program ready for business. The plan includes three stages which provide you with the opportunity to review existing operations and performance, apply that knowledge in developing a strategy for moving forward, and learn from initial campaigns to continuously improve your results.
Key deliverables in stage one Ideal customer profile - Conduct research and analysis to determine the company’s high value customers and create a profile for future prospecting. The goal is to define a market segment (or segments) that are distinct enough to target and large enough to provide adequate opportunities for demand generation. Potential segments: Firmographic Operational Situational Target persona(s) - Conduct research and analysis to determine key personas involved in the purchasing process; define their key challenges, decision-making process, and key influencers. One page profile per identified target persona Influence map charting key decision-maker, direct influencers, and indirect influencers Operational summary and demand generation action plan - This report analyzes your organization’s current state and puts together a plan to bridge the gap from where you are to where you want to be. It includes: Overall analysis and recommended path forward Current state by channel Recommended future state by channel Tactical recommendations Additional resources needed to complete recommendations Estimated goal numbers (Contacts, Leads, Opps, Closed) Lead process review - This project involves reviewing lead management and providing recommendations for improvement if needed. At the end of the project we will have clearly defined marketing lead stages and the criteria for handing a lead off to an account executive. Lead scoring rubric and scorecard - Developed in collaboration with the sales team, this resource provides a quick way for your teams to evaluate and triage leads. It also helps establish the common language needed to help improve sales and marketing alignment. Stage Two | Optimizing Operations and Building Your Audience (30-60 days) In stage two, we take what we’ve learned in stage one and begin operationalizing that knowledge to engage and attract the target audience. Projects in this phase include: Evaluating and optimizing technology Event research and planning Outbound campaigns Creating content for the target audience Promoting content Evaluating and optimizing technology - Using the lead process review and channel assessment from stage one, analyze how information is currently flowing into the marketing automation, CRM, and related systems and make modifications. The goal is to automate what we can and optimize what we can’t. Event research and planning - Determine relevant, upcoming trade shows or events and develop cohesive action plan for marketing around them.
Event guide - This template serves as your team’s resource for planning and executing field marketing events. They will fill it out prior to each event.
Campaign guide - This template serves as your team’s resource for planning and executing integrated campaigns.
Advertising opportunities and associated partnerships menu - This worksheet serves as your team’s resource for research related to advertising and association sponsorship opportunities.
Website updates - Begin optimizing the web site to become a lead generation machine. Update home page and product page content based on keywords and personas.
Stage Three | Long Term Audience Development and Demand Generation
Lead nurturing - Build trust by nurturing subscribers with relevant content (based on lead intelligence). Inch them toward SQL threshold or buying intent activities
Key deliverables in stage three
With a wealth of information just a click away, buyers are much more likely to do their own research rather than reach out directly to a salesperson or wait for a salesperson to call. Inbound is a response to that. The idea is that because consumers are doing their own research, and not reaching out to companies until much later in the buying process, companies need to find a new way to establish a relationship with consumers. Enter inbound. Resources like ebooks, webinars, and videos help companies build relationships for the long term. The hypothesis is that if the consumer sees your company as an advocate and a thought leader before they need help, they are much more likely to turn to you when they actually need help. Examples of inbound resources: ●eBooks ●Worksheets ●Checklists ●Infographics ●Webinars ●Blogs ●Videos ●Slack channels ●Messaging apps ●Podcasts, Webcasts, Facebook Live ●Landing pages and website pages optimized for keyword searches ●Sponsored content ●In-person inbound ○Exclusive dinners ○Open user groups ○Free classes Inbound positives Inbound presents a ton of benefits that can help your company build a long-term relationship with potential customers and existing customers. Leads are more engaged in your communications - If you’ve ever seen email stats of an opt-in email vs. a cold email, you’ve seen the power of opt-in lists. Engagement rates like opens and clicks can be 5x higher with opt-in lists. In my experience opt-in emails typically hit at least a 20 percent open rate and cold emails can range anywhere from the low single-digit percents (or, eek… zero) up to 15-20 if you’re lucky. Leads are more willing to engage - A few years ago my wife had an issue with the bumper on her car. A rivet came loose and it began scraping on the ground. She took it to a repair shop and was cringing while she waited to see how much it was going to cost. Fifteen minutes later, the mechanic popped out of the garage and handed her the car keys. “No charge. Come back when you have a real problem,” he said. He fixed the car and built trust with her. Guess who she called the next time she needed help? (Location 406)
We found that sales winners consistently do three things: They connect, convince, and collaborate with buyers. Our research found that sales winners make strong personal connections at more than double the rate of second-place finishers (Schultz). For sales and marketing teams to be successful, building trust and relationships early is critical. The process is buyer-driven - Prospects choose when to interact and what to interact with based on their needs. Because the resources are mapped to the stages of the buyer’s journey (we’ll get to this later), we can figure out where they are in the buying process. You aren’t guessing based on five minutes of research on LinkedIn or blindly calling contacts on a purchased list. The data is from the source - Data quality is invaluable no matter which marketing strategy you employ. By having the buyer input the data, you are getting the info straight from the source. This means there are fewer worries about dirty and outdated data. Of course, you will also run into the Bart Simpsons of the world who won’t enter the right data. They are generally pretty easy to spot, and you can build in automatic workflows to weed them out. It can raise your company’s profile - By choosing the right content partners, thought leaders, and publishers, you can effectively piggy-back on the trust they’ve built with their audience. Your company will better understand your target audience’s needs and challenges - Part of the process of developing inbound resources is studying your target audience and understanding what makes them tick. This can be extremely beneficial when you are engaging with them in person or on the phone. Happier sales people - Ask any account executive whether they’d rather have a lead that has reached out directly to the company or a cold prospect, and you’ll understand why inbound makes for happy sales people. It’s scaleable - This is huge. Inbound resources are always on. They are not limited to the amount of outreach your staff can physically perform or the talent of the people performing that outreach. Once developed, persona-centered resources can continue to generate leads for months and even years after they are published. (Location 440)
In order to develop marketing goals that the sales team is on board with, executive leadership will first work together with sales and marketing to determine overall revenue goals and expected contributions from each department. In other words, if our revenue goal is one million dollars, how much of that should be sourced directly by our sales team, and how much should come from marketing, sales development, and customer success (renewals, up-sells, etc.)? How do you decide on numbers that are fair? It depends on the existing capabilities of your department, the strength of your product, growth in the industry, growth of competitors, and more. Check out the Sales Benchmark Index (salesbenchmarkindex.com) for more information. They have done an amazing job of thinking through the process and provide a lot of research that can help build your model. With a revenue target and a contribution percentage developed for the year, we work backwards from that number to define how many opportunities, leads, prospects, and contacts marketing will need to generate in order to achieve that goal. This is where accurate data from your customer relationship management (CRM) software can really drive accurate predictions because you can predict how may leads will be needed based on your conversion rates. Here are some example conversion rate benchmarks. These numbers will vary by channel and by industry. See Chapter 12 for definitions of the acronyms. Prospect to Lead conversion rate: 10 percent Lead to MQL: 25 percent MQL to SQL: 75 percent Opportunity Win rate: 25 percent (Location 230)
Here’s a quick example of what quantitative goals could look like for a one million dollar pipeline target using the conversion rates above and and average deal value of $100K. We’re going to work backwards from the target revenue goal. If we need one million in revenue, and our win rate is at 25 percent, we need to generate four times that much ($4M) in pipeline to assure we hit that one million mark. If each deal is roughly $100K, we’re going to need ten closed-won deals to hit our revenue target, but we know that we need to generate 4x that number because of the 25 percent win rate. So we need 10 x 4 (40 opportunities) to hit our goal. If we need 40… (Location 248)
To get the number of leads we need, we just take 54 and divide that by the 25 percent conversion rate to calculate a goal of 216 leads. And finally, in order to generate enough prospects to get this whole train moving, we divide that 216 leads number by the 10 percent conversion rate. And we get 2160. That’s about as far as we can go with a general example but now that you have your hard numbers, you can dive in and begin dividing it down by months and weeks to set SMART (we’ll define SMART in the next section) goals for each. You’ll also want to take into account any seasonality which may occur in your industry. With these numbers in place, you can then set out to determine which channel is going to contribute which percentage of prospects and leads. This flows directly into the strategy… (Location 257)
Examples of outbound tactics and resources ●Phone calls ●Drop-ins ●1:1 emails ●Mass emails to non-subscribers or purchased lists ●Social media engagement ●Advertising (Digital and Traditional) ●Trade shows ●Direct mail (Location 498)
Stage One | Analyzing Your Existing Audience and Operations (First 30 days) In stage one, we take an empathetic look at our target audience and a dispassionate look at our operations to discover who our best customers are and what we need to do to find more of them. There are two main projects in this phase: Know the audience Know yourself Know the audience Build a profile of the ideal customer so that we can speak their language and offer value on their terms. Who are our best customers and why? How did we acquire them? How can we replicate the acquisition process? How can we find more ideal customers? And where do they hang out online and in person? Know yourself Examine channels, process, and technology through the lens of lead generation. Determine what's working and what's not. Identify areas for improvement in current state, define desired future state, and provide tactical recommendations to bridge the gap. Review revenue goals and establish metrics. Identify additional resources needed. Analyze existing and past pipelines. Determine where to focus engagement efforts. Are we getting enough leads but not converting them? Are we not getting enough leads? Are people responding to outreach at all? This will determine how to focus our lead generation efforts in stage two (top of funnel, mid-funnel, bottom of funnel, or the entire funnel). Key deliverables in stage one Ideal customer profile - Conduct research and analysis to determine the company’s high value customers and create a profile for future prospecting. The goal is to define a market segment (or segments) that are distinct enough to target and large enough to provide adequate opportunities for demand generation. Potential segments: Firmographic Operational Situational Target persona(s) - Conduct research and analysis to determine key personas involved in the purchasing process; define their key challenges, decision-making process, and key influencers. One page profile per identified target persona Influence map charting key decision-maker, direct influencers, and indirect influencers Operational summary and demand generation action plan - This report analyzes your organization’s current state and puts together a plan to bridge the gap from where you are to where you want to be. It includes: Overall analysis and recommended path forward Current state by channel Recommended future state by channel Tactical recommendations Additional resources needed to complete recommendations Estimated goal numbers (Contacts, Leads, Opps, Closed) Lead process review - This project involves reviewing lead management and providing recommendations for improvement if needed. At the end of the project we will have clearly defined marketing lead stages and the criteria for handing a lead off to an account executive. Lead scoring rubric and scorecard - Developed in collaboration with the sales team, this resource provides a quick way for your teams to evaluate and triage leads.… (Location 2279)
There are a lot of ways to fail at inbound; here are a few to avoid: ●Creating content that is company-centric, not buyer-centric ●Not creating enough content to properly nurture leads into qualified opportunities ●Not creating persona-specific content ●Not segmenting and following up with relevant content based on engagement ●Following up too soon ●Not following up in a timely manner with people who’ve asked for more information (Location 482)