B2B marketing plans

A common lament of marketing teams is that they often find themselves acting as a service desk to the sales team. In b2b marketing, it is a consistent dilemma.

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... We’ve had a social media Mecca and now we’ve got a B2B marketing nirvana. Dictionary.com defines nirvana as, “a place or state characterised by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world”. So if there is a B2B marketing ‘nirvana’, in what sense can you achieve it?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... The Mecca for social media in B2B marketing is at DemandCon on May 19th. If you’ve ever thought to yourself – ‘how does social media work in B2B marketing’ – but never quite received all the answers you needed, then I would pay close attention to what happens at the ‘Intra Funnel – Social Media Panel’ presentation on day 2 of DemandCon. So why do I believe this presentation to be so significant for B2B marketing professionals?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... The internet is no longer an optional B2B marketing channel, but a key platform to almost every campaign executed. If we consider the huge changes that we’ve witnessed in the last decade, it’s logical to think that the virtual landscape will only continue to move to the centre of every B2B marketing professional’s world. The best approach is to embrace what you can of the digital world to avoid being left in the dust! Has your company started conducting virtual events?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... Does B2B marketing receive the recognition and support that it deserves in your company? Some B2B marketing professionals find themselves having to justify what they do to the rest of their organisation, when they could be making more headway with their marketing campaigns. One way of gaining back this time is to implement an effective process for measuring what you do. To do this, you first need to know what it is exactly that you should to be measuring. So, as Laura Patterson asks, “Does your marketing plan and metrics pass the “so what” test?” 

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... We’ve talked before about the importance of handling a B2B marketing lead quickly and well in the sales follow-up process. What happens to a B2B marketing-generated lead in the process of being handed over to the sales department is crucial to the successful conversion of that lead. The wrong processes chew up time, fail to generate revenue, and send the two camps retreating to their respective corners.  So what are best practices to help you determine the best process for your company?

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of MathMarketing, writes... What use is a B2B Marketing lead that isn’t followed up? Or worse, one that is followed up badly? B2B Marketing professionals rely on sales representatives to turn leads into opportunities, and ultimately into clients, but all-too-often the expectations between marketing and sales is blocked. The effect is to reinforce the stock response from both departments. So sales people must know how to handle leads well, which means their companies need to be able to prepare them. But how?