marketing plan

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... If it’s the customers who are in control in B2B marketing, who’s watching them? With all the free information available, and all the savvy buyers sorting through it, B2B marketers need the right business processes to create behaviour (and track it) if they want to drive revenue. Today’s B2B marketer needs a strategy to manage how companies interact with buyers. This strategy must follow the customer through their entire purchase-process. Get this right and you will see dramatic changes: more predictable, rapid and profitable revenue growth. So what kind of B2B marketing strategies work best?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... B2B marketing is my passion, and one of the biggest challenges for B2B marketers is alignment. While we're all busy trying to get Sales and Marketing on the same page, the goals often go and shift on us. And this can be even before most of us have reached the half-way mark! The crucial thing is that the need for alignment has broadened. It's now about getting the whole business and your partners pointing in the same direction. Sounds logical. So how do you do it?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... Most B2B marketing professionals learn PowerPoint in about 30 minutes, then jump straight into building lots of presentations. To be sure, B2B marketing professionals have more time to get PPT right than their sales counterparts, but they still suck.

The way people search for products has drastically changed. B2B marketing plans seem to describe potential customers as if they are static up to a certain point, then all-of-a-sudden engaged. But buyers are seeking out information all the time through Google, blogs and social media. So how do you leverage this new buyer-behaviour in a B2B marketing plan that helps them move though your sales funnel?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... B2B marketing is “...more than right brain vs. left brain,” says James Obermayer, CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association. Obermayer has made it his mission to overcome the rhetoric about what ‘separates’ Marketing and Sales – the two wealth-builders in a b2b marketing company.  Obermayer suggests a new way to banish the ‘evil twin accusations’ that circulate between the marketing and sales departments whenever a company underperforms.  Instead of pointing the blame, Obermayer suggests bringing the two parties together to negotiate a renewed effort of cooperation. Sound far-fetched?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... Depending on the methodology used, studies show 80-95% of buyers begin their journey with an internet search. So it’s no surprise that smart marketing plans keep across the ever-evolving best practice for search marketing. So what is the best practice for search marketing?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... Every company starts out small. So what is the magic recipe that sets the not-so-successful ones apart from the oh-so-successful ones? A great marketing plan. Small businesses are not just poorer versions of big businesses. They need to create new tactics and strategies to suit their size. Simply scaling down those that apply to a big business isn’t a marketing plan for success. So what is?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... Donna J Kent, SVP of Global Sales, Marketing and Services at Televerde, sees the top of the funnel as a key performance indicator. As a practitioner, Donna has some key insights into new-customer experience. So what techniques should you use to optimise your marketing-contact database and digital marketing approach? What kind of dialogue and telecommunications practices actually work?