Why not to cut marketing during the COVID-19 crisis?

As I work to provide marketing strategy and planning for customers during this COVID-19 crisis, I see many B2B businesses choosing to cut their marketing spend as part of their cost savings measures. I certainly understand their motives, but I strongly suggest that those businesses continue their marketing, and perhaps even increase their marketing spend and cut elsewhere. Why do I recommend this […]

Victoria Anders2020-08-21T00:45:23+00:00May 8th, 2020|Branding, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Messaging|

Reporting that creates the right marketing-sales conversation about leads

There are many ways that marketing and sales go about measuring their efforts for their own purpose. You have marketing waterfall reports. You have sales forecast reports. You have sales activity reports. You have marketing media metrics. But what about the kind of report that sales and marketing should share together and talk about the most? Which reporting creates the right marketing-sales conversation about leads?

Two reports that ask/answer the right questions for a conversation

While some […]

Victoria Anders2021-01-10T19:12:22+00:00April 13th, 2020|Lead Management, Marketing Leadership, Sales Leadership|

Putting trade show dollars to work

Note: Be sure to check out the Trade Show Dollar Challenge at the end of this post.

Putting trade show dollars to work. Many companies are tightly squeezing their dollars right now, and that is understandable. One easy target is to pocket unspent or refunded trade show dollars as quick savings. This too is understandable. However, what if you can save a good portion of those 2020 trade show dollars while also investing today in a […]

Victoria Anders2020-05-19T00:42:02+00:00April 6th, 2020|Lead Generation, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Sales Enablement, Sales Leadership, Virtual Engagements|

What will your customers know about you when the COVID-19 crisis is over?

For many businesses today, the first reaction to the current social and economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic is to cut costs by downsizing staff or reducing paid hours, by shutting down production, or other measures. Every business will have to make hard choices. However, if your business, any type of business, firmly believes that you will survive this and you want to grow quickly after this is over, then you need to remember […]

Victoria Anders2021-01-19T19:14:06+00:00March 25th, 2020|Branding, Content Marketing, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Messaging, Sales Leadership|

Failure to Launch …not the Hollywood movie

A recent Harvard Business Review article forwarded to me titled, “How to Sell New Products,” is packed full of powerful lessons for anyone wanting to launch any new B2B product. The article was based on research including one-on-one conversations and surveys of B2B sales people and early on reveals this gem of a quote:

“… found that people who excel at selling new products have […]

Victoria Anders2021-01-20T01:25:22+00:00March 5th, 2020|Marketing Leadership, Sales Leadership|

B2B Marketers: The most important questions to ask sales

B2b marketers, when you get sales leadership (or better yet, even just a few of the truly good sales people) in a room, what information should you get from them to create more success for both marketing and sales in your organization? What are the most important questions to ask sales?

There are two key topic areas where your questions will serve you best — value propositions and lead quality/quantity.

Value Proposition

What […]

Victoria Anders2021-02-26T23:31:58+00:00February 21st, 2020|Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Sales Leadership|

The One-Person B2B Marketing Department Playbook – Chapter 5 – Marketing Content: Baiting the Hook

One-Person B2B Marketing Department Playbook: Chapter 5 – Marketing Content

If you have ever fished, you know that having the right bait greatly increases your chance of catching fish compared to just having a plain steel hook in the water (it’s shiny but not fooling anyone!). If marketing content is a fishing analogy, then your content is the bait.

When engaging marketing prospects to respond […]

Victoria Anders2021-02-22T23:35:27+00:00January 10th, 2020|B2B Marketing Playbook, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy|

Which Conversion Attribution Model is Best for You?

Which conversion attribution model is best is for you? In this day and age it isn’t uncommon to find a diverse mix of channels and tactics in demand generation and marketing plans, and this is to be expected as each tactic has different strengths and weaknesses. The big question for marketers, however, is how to demonstrate how these diverse tactics effect conversions or e-commerce sales.

The answer to this big question is conversion attribution modeling or […]

Victoria Anders2020-09-12T15:27:00+00:00December 7th, 2019|Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy|

The One-Person B2B Marketing Department Playbook – Chapter 4 – Marketing Investments You Can’t Skip

B2B Marketing Department Playbook – Chapter 4: Marketing investments you can’t skip (just because you lack resources)

As a one-person or small-staff B2B marketing department, there is likely a tension between executing campaigns/tactics that are visible to the rest of the company and internal marketing investments (which are foundational to delivering the quality and results for those campaigns/tactics). I get it. Your management team wants to measure every dollar you spend. However, an important part of […]

Victoria Anders2021-01-12T19:45:59+00:00November 14th, 2019|B2B Marketing Playbook, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy|

The One-Person B2B Marketing Playbook – Chapter 3 – Defining What Success Will Look Like

Chapter 3: Defining What Success Will Look Like

For a smaller marketing department, it is even more crucial to create and implement a plan quickly to inspire confidence, expand your budget, and grow your marketing investments and success for the company. You can’t hide behind much when it’s just you. Amazingly, I have discovered that in marketing groups of all sizes, one of the fundamental weaknesses has been clearly defining what success will look like for […]

Wayne Madden2020-05-26T22:17:27+00:00October 15th, 2019|B2B Marketing Playbook, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Sales Leadership|