The good news: It’s perfectly possible not just to survive, but to thrive in this new environment. But it will require teams to take a step back, re-align the resources still available to them, up-level their digital skills, and make a detailed, if not quantified, growth plan.

Why has this happened, and what, exactly, has changed?

Success in the new era of B2B marketing will require teams to reckon with four major, simultaneous, and interrelated, challenges:

1. Higher demand generation goals
   As companies retrofit their operations for the post-COVID business landscape, they’re asking a lot more of marketing. Nearly 60% of surveyed marketers report seeing their teams’ lead gen goals jump since March of last year when U.S. lockdowns began.
   
2. Lower budgets
   Not only are marketers being asked to do more – but they’re also more strapped than ever for the resources with which to do it. In addition to higher lead gen goals, most marketers are also seeing shrinking team budgets. Notably, this pressure is not being distributed equally across organizations – while marketers are tightening their belts, sales teams are reporting budget increases as often as budget cuts. 
3. Blocked lead flow
   The pandemic has closed the valve on many of the sources marketers depend upon for their hottest leads. Events, for instance, have long been among the most reliable producers of quality marketing leads. Still, between budget cuts and the obvious epidemiological concerns around crowds, no one’s giving out demos and swag in a Las Vegas conference room anytime soon.
   Instead, marketing pipelines, like the rest of the world, are going digital. But this poses even more challenges, as sales and marketing teams are falling short of the digital literacy required to thrive in this environment: Surveys show that marketers have even overestimated their digital literacy. And as sales teams realize that most of their customers’ journeys begin online, they need to partner more closely with their marketing teams, who are more schooled in intercepting and finding prospects during their online searches.
4. More accountability
   With more digital marketing and the need for tighter cooperation with sales comes more accountability for marketers. Both sales and marketing are under more pressure than ever to prove their worth. For sales reps, who are already used to being only as good as last quarter’s number, this isn’t hard to take in stride. But for marketers, this new level of accountability represents new territory they’re going to have to learn to navigate – and fast. Specifically, this means knowing how to correlate MQLs with generated $ pipeline and new bookings.

These factors have converged to create the perfect storm lurking right on the other side of the pandemic – and B2B marketing teams are sailing right into it. As teams step into the brave new post-COVID world, they’ll need a robust strategy for generating more leads, with less money, without access to their favorite tools, in an unfamiliar business environment. All the while, they’ll need tighter integration with and accountability from their sales counterparts.

How can teams position themselves to confront these challenges?

It’s clear, now, that B2B marketing teams have some major pivoting to do. But they’ve had a year to plan for all of this, so they must be ready, right?

Unfortunately, the kind of robust strategy that will be crucial in the future is one more thing that marketing teams, by and large, do not have. Only 7% of surveyed marketers have a quantified growth plan for how to do more with less, while almost 60% are without such a plan – even with the perfect storm looming larger and closer than ever as we’re well into the first quarter of 2021. That compares to 80% of sales teams that have quantified plans, goals, and or pipelines. Which of those two functions would you put in charge of your scarce 2021 growth budgets?

So, what are teams to do?

1. Get used to digital
   Marketing events and client dinners are out. To fill the gap, some teams are turning to LinkedIn as a source of new B2B leads and a forum for nurturing them. But while online networks are great for establishing connections, figuring out how to convert those connections into leads without annoying them with an obvious sales pitch is trickier. Tools like Dux-Soup, LinkMatch, or Seamless.ai can help with this, as can lots of other digital resources available right now – and teams should be keeping all of them on the table.
   What they shouldn’t do, however, is see digital as a panacea. No tech stack can substitute for the core tenets of B2B marketing: precisely defined segments of resonant buyers, compelling and differentiated value propositions that can captivate in 300 characters, and ample content to attract prospects.
2. Maintain situational awareness
   The new era of marketing has a lot of moving parts. It’s a delicate situation that will require an intricate and comprehensive game plan. Teams need to invest in resources, from MarTech to consulting to everything in between, that will empower them to stay on top of it all.
   Not only are new apps required to establish a connection and decide who’s worthwhile to go after and how digital selling and marketing offers a great opportunity to capture lead funnel analytics data like never before. But that requires more than just familiarity with the tools that help capture that data. Users of those tools will also need a baseline understanding of how to frame and complete quantitative pipeline analyses.
3. Align with Sales
   With higher goals and lower budgets, every lead is more precious than ever. Attrition is never fun, but today, it’s something teams can’t afford. If sales and marketing can keep the lines of communication open and get on the same page, they can plug leaks in the funnel and keep conversion rates high – specifically at the MQL-SQL boundary, where sales take those MQLs and try to convert them to opportunities.
   Successful teams in 2021 should be shooting for MQL-SQL conversion rates of 50% or higher. In reality, though, rates can get as low as 3 to 5%. To improve conversion rates, higher-quality MQLs are key, requiring greater accountability and a higher volume of leads sourced online. This, in turn, calls for tighter integration of sales and marketing, as already mentioned.
   Inhibiting that integration is all-too-often great cultural and DNA differences between the two groups and differences in measuring accountability and focus on demand generation metrics. In our next blog, we’ll talk about how sales seem to be winning the associated political shootouts, as CROs tend to recruit themselves from sales backgrounds, in part because of sales’ higher degree of comfort in providing measurable insight into their activities and the resulting accountability. If B2B marketing teams can present a solid plan for meeting the new era of marketing’s demands, they’ll be more likely to get more attention and favor from their CROs when it’s time for the next round of funding. And that’s when real change can happen.

This is a make-or-break moment for B2B marketing teams. What happens in the coming weeks and months will separate those who thrive in the new marketing landscape from those who fall by the wayside. If a team can’t manage the converging challenges facing B2B marketers today, the perfect storm will sink their ship. But if they can, it’ll put new wind in their sails.

Learn more about how to build a strategy to weather the storm here.

The post The Perfect Storm Facing Post-Pandemic B2B Marketing Teams appeared first on Premonio.

As a follow on to MarqetU’s recent blogs on low-cost lead generation approaches for B2B companies to re-start their sales pipelines, MarqetU’s CEO Johannes Hoech recorded this 7 minute instructional video below on how to use LinkedIn Navigator and 4 companion extensions to generate highly targeted leads.

The 4 extensions useful for leveraging LinkedIn Navigator’s wealth of high quality contact information featured Johannes’ video are Dux-Soup, LinkMatch, Sharetivity, and CrystalKnows. We have launched several new demand generation efforts using paractical, high-velocity strategies such these since the pandemic hit in March 2020 with good success and on rapid timelines.

These two graphics show a recent B2B lead generation effort where we hit the goals set by the company’s growth architecture within a few weeks of launch:

     Figure 1 – H2 2020 New Growth Architecture                                        Figure 2 – H2 2020 Lead Generation Goal Attainment

If you missed the two prior MarqetU blogs about low-cost lead generation approaches, here they are:

• “Post-COVID Growth: Do more with less – Automate digital marketing with a simple, low $ MarTech stack” (Link)
• “Telling your story via video: How to easily create, edit, and promote native video content on LinkedIn” (Link)

Here is the 7-minute video:

If you would like to know more about how to implement our sample, low-cost MarTech stack and build a well-oiled demand generation machine with parts that talk to each other, please reach out to us on LinkedIn, Twitter, at info@marqetu.com, or call (001) (650) 727-0983.

The post Grow more with less budget – Low $ demand gen with LinkedIn tools appeared first on Premonio.

Welcome back to our newsletter. In a recent online survey, we asked two simple questions of B2B sales and marketing professionals: 1) Since Covid-19 hit, have your lead goals gone up or down, and 2) have your budgets gone up or down?

The results of that survey are shown in the featured graphic at the top of this blog.

Chances are your situation is the same. How do you produce more with less, esp. since it has become more challenging to convince prospects to part with their money? So, today’s issue highlights recent, pragmatic articles for practitioners that focus on simple, quick-to-turn-on approaches for B2B marketers to build more pipeline.

Practical tools and tips for B2B marketers to generate leads asap:

• Low-cost marketing stacks to maximize productivity:
  • “Automating digital marketing with a simple, low $ MarTech stack” – Link
  • “How to HubSpot If You Have Little Money” – Link
  • 40 of the Best Sales Prospecting Tools for 2021 – Link

• Using LinkedIn for B2B lead generation:
  • Low $ demand generation with practical LinkedIn tools: Link
  • Publish native video on LinkedIn:
    • “6 High Performing Video Content Options for LinkedIn” – Link
    • “Telling your story via video” on LinkedIn – Link
    • “How to Make Viral Videos for LinkedIn in 15 Minutes” – Link

• LinkedIn Advertising:
  • “MetricTheory – THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LINKEDIN ADVERTISING” – Link

UPCOMING EVENTS AND WEBINARS

• Now April 14 -15, 2021: Topo Summit 2020”; Register here

Thank you for reading our Newsletter. You can forward this link to others to subscribe.

We wish you a safe and productive month; thank you,

Krishnan Natarajan
B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn
krishnan.natarajan@cybersecurity-insiders.com

The post B2B Tech Marketing Community Weekly Newsletter: Sept 12, 2020 appeared first on Premonio.

Overcoming this challenge requires taking a novel approach to demand generation: We have tested and proven such an approach that can help your team do more with less. After you have read this post, you will have a reference blueprint to build a low-cost MarTech stack that gives you much of the power of a stack consisting of enterprise-grade apps like HubSpot, Marketo, and Salesforce … but literally at a fraction of the cost.

Digital selling is evolving:

COVID-19 has catalyzed many long due developments in B2B Marketing and Sales. In a time when customer preference for digital channels is only rising, the importance of digital marketing and selling has increased radically for B2B companies. Recently, HubSpot in its COVID-19 benchmark data report pointed out that digital marketing outreach, open rates, and database growth have increased since the start of the crisis. BCG is calling this the inflection point for digital sales and says that planning today to invest in the technologies and people needed to make that digital shift will pay off tomorrow.

If you are not already into digital marketing and selling or want to get better at it, our lean MarTech sample stack is a solid combination of affordable and easy to implement tools that can work seamlessly together at every stage of the B2B sales funnel. Here’s an easy to implement digital demand generation tool kit and plan with answers questions like “Who to target?”, “How to target”, “How to implement your low cost MarTech stack?”, and “How to track results?”

1) Who to target?

Fewer marketing dollars leave less room for error in the customer segments that you want to target. With AI-based tools like patternai.co, you can conduct precise segmentation for a fraction of the cost of a consulting engagement, and do so in real-time with automated updating of segmentation analyses. Better and rapid segmentation results in more targeted marketing which in turn leads to higher conversion rates and lower marketing costs.

2) How to target?

• ENGAGING: Now that sales calls, demos, and even trade shows have become virtual and will stay that way for quite some time, virtual sales meeting solutions like goldcast.io can help you engage current and prospective customers live online while you capture leads, engage with prospects, and track event effectiveness, all in real-time.
• CONNECTING: With our simple, lean MarTech stack we can connect with decision makers within your target businesses through omnichannel campaigns that combine LinkedIn ads and invites and email nurturing campaigns. Tools such as Dux-Soup and SalesHandy that have out-of-the-box integrations with a low cost CRM tool like Pipedrive are tailored to help small businesses find and connect with very precisely targeted audiences, as well as score and track the resulting leads.
• ADVERTISING: You can develop very targeted lead generation campaigns using tools like LinkedIn advertising and marketing. By integrating first LinkedIn and then Google advertising campaigns, you can target and then retarget exactly the right decision-makers and influencers within a business. These platforms also provide trackability that makes it simple to measure ROI.

3) How to implement your low cost MarTech stack?

So far, we have laid out all the elements you could be using to enable digital selling and marketing and how tracking and analyzing your campaigns can optimize your pipeline. Since you might be interested in more specific information about these applications and how to make them work, we added some more details here:

1. Pipedrive, Dedupely: Pipedrive is an easy to implement and integrate sales CRM and pipeline management software that will do most of what an enterprise grade CRM does at a fraction of the cost. Dedupely can then be used to track and consolidate duplicate lead entries to create a high-quality database.
2. LinkedIn Navigator, Crunchbase, Dux-Soup, LinkMatch, CrystalKnows and Sharetivity: LinkedIn is an important part of your B2B pipeline-building tool kit. The combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Dux-Soup, and LinkMatch can automate the importing of your newly generated and old network contacts into your CRM tool (here we’re using Pipedrive). Sales Navigator supports an advanced lead search, makes lead and account recommendations, and helps you stay up to date with target company news. LinkMatch allows you to instantly see which LinkedIn profiles are in your CRM and which ones are not. You can then save profiles into your CRM and synchronize your CRM whenever a profile is updated. Dux-Soup can automate connecting with these profiles with personalized messages while collecting every profile’s contact information that can be plugged into your CRM system. How can you ensure that these profiles respond to you? CrystalKnows is an AI tool that you can use to scan a person’s LinkedIn profile (you have to be visiting their profile for CrytalKnows to run on it), assess their personality type, and get their optimized suggestions on the type of messages that are most likely to get them interested (e.g. to get them to take an appointment, to introduce yourself, etc.). A companion piece to CrytalKnows is Sharetivity which in a few seconds give you the loaded profile’s externally visible presence like published articles, company announcement, their social posts, etc., etc. While CrystalKnows tells you how to approach them, Sharetivity gives you material relevant to them that you can approach them with. Both together are great to strike up conversations with.
3. SalesHandy, mail-tester.com: While the pipeline management and LinkedIn tools will ensure that the leads in your database are constantly updated, email nurturing will ensure that customers and prospects are consistently hearing from you. SalesHandy automates and tracks your email outreach for you. Set up email cadences to execute email outreach and nurture campaigns for your leads. A solid email campaign requires a clean database and mail-tester helps achieve that by evaluating the deliverability (aka “spammyness”) of your planned emails.
4. Goldcast.io, Patternai.co, Challenger Selling: Real-time and automated segmentation using tools like Patternai.co can help businesses tailor their messages and offering to meet the needs of different customer segments. Goldcast.io is used to help set up memorable online sales events that are complete with networking sessions, group discussions, lead generation capabilities, and collects rich data for follow-up. Do your sales and marketing teams feel like a lot is changing very quickly? Challenger Selling can be taught via commercially available transformation programs that help your sales team change behaviors and develop engaging sales skills during a downturn while providing strong financial results for your organization.
5. Hootsuite, Bitly, Medium, Paper.li, Flipboard, Meetup: Consistent and high-quality content marketing and social media marketing is essential for pipeline building. Good content facilitates conversion by building trust with and educating your leads and customers. Medium is a social publishing platform where you can post thought leadership content that can be discovered by your target audience. You can then use Bitly to identify which platforms give you most traction. Bitly helps you brand and customize links, track real-time click data, and identify top referrers and locations for all your links. A newsletter is a powerful way of creating awareness about your brand and products. Paper.li helps you curate already published content into newsletters which you can proactively send to your customers and prospects to build familiarity with your brand. Similarly, you can create a magazine using Flipboard and populate it with content from your brand’s blog, social media accounts, and website. If you want to engage with prospects and customers beyond blog posts, emails, and social media, Meetup may be a great marketing tool for you. Build groups that cater to the interests of your prospects and customers and engage them with virtual educational events. A great way to start using Meetup is to frequent other groups and see if the organizers will have you speak for five minutes about a topic in which you have expertise. To tie all of this content marketing and social media promotion together, use a social media management software like Hootsuite that helps you create, schedule, and analyze your content.
6. Google Analytics, Crazy Egg: Now that you have a website and all this content out there, it is important to analyze the traction it is bringing you so that you can optimize your content and your promotion strategy based on real feedback. Google Analytics allows you to analyze your website performance and track audience behavior and demographics. How to make sense of all this data? Crazy Egg is a great tool for your MarTech stack that helps you visualize your Google Analytics and optimize your website through A/B testing.
7. Asana, GetHarvest: Now that we have a fair bit to execute before we start generation leads through our lean MarTech stack, let’s talk about a project management tool. Asana can help your marketing and sales teams collaborate on plans, manage interdependencies and expectations, and prioritize their workflow. Keep track of the time and resources you invest in your endeavors via GetHarvest which is a time and expense tracking tool.

Here is a graphic showing how to implement this methodology using our lean, low-cost sample MarTech stack (pricing out at about $400 per month):

Figure 1 – Flowchart Outline of Low-cost Digital Marketing Stack

4) How to track?

Even the largest marketing budget will not yield optimum or any results unless you are tracking your progress and leveraging analytics:

• Quantitative Pipeline Modeling and Graphical Sankey Visualization: We have helped marketers across B2B startups analyze and optimize the return on their spend from all their lead generation sources. Our cohort models and Sankey diagrams (sample in Figure 2) help marketing teams identify the most effective demand generation sources so that they can optimize their spend while maximizing pipeline generation. The pipeline visualizations make it easy to see where marketing spend is warranted and where further optimization is needed. These visualizations are also great eye-candy in important meetings, e.g. with board or other exectives.
• Tracking KPIs: Once your growth pipeline has been modeled quantitatively, these quantifications can be turned into early warning systems by extracting “leading indicators” like activity metrics or KPIs (emails sent, calls made, impressions generated, etc.) that are occurring at the top of the funnel (TOFU). The “lagging indicators” or outcome metrics (i.e. bookings, pipeline generated, or SQLs produced) occur at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU). The latter is what everyone wants, but the benefit of modeling lies in knowing whether the TOFU KPIs measured now are sufficient to generate the outcome BOFU metrics three, six, or nine months from now.

Figure 2 – Sample Sankey Pipeline Graphic

If you would like to know more about how to implement our sample, low-cost MarTech stack and build a well-oiled demand generation machine with parts that talk to each other, please reach out to us on LinkedIn, Twitter, at info@marqetu.com, or call (001) (650) 727-0983.

The post Post-COVID Growth: Do more with less – Automate digital marketing with a simple, low $ MarTech stack appeared first on Premonio.

Welcome back to our newsletter. As the pandemic is taking its course, economic life goes on. Most B2B technology marketing teams by now have cut budgets or resources, and with the focus now on hitting the numbers in the second half of 2020, they are being asked to produce more pipeline with less budget. This is THE timely issue our newsletter focuses on now.

Part of the solution are to leverage LinkedIn more, integrate that outreach with email nurturing, and to automate previously manual tasks. Today’s issue highlights recent writings and research results that focus on inexpensive and practical approaches for marketers to (re)build their B2B demand generation pipelines.

Insights and next steps for marketers to resume growth:

• “Automating digital marketing with a simple, low $ MarTech stack” by MarqetU – Link
• Live Q&A with two digital demand gen practitioners on how to implement a low $ stack

• • Register for the live, interactive web event on August 11 at 9 am PDT – Link

• Jon Blumenfeld’s “Periodic Table of MarTech” – Link
• 38 of the Best Sales Prospecting Tools for 2021 – Link
• 25 LinkedIn Text Ads Examples that are Crushing it – Link
• 7 Actionable LinkedIn Tips You Can Implement – Link

UPCOMING EVENTS AND WEBINARS

• August 11: “Building a low cost MarTech stack for your needs” Webinar; Register here
• Now April 14 -15, 2021: Topo Summit 2020”; Register here

Thank you for reading our Newsletter. You can forward this link to others to subscribe. To unsubscribe reply “unsubscribe”.

We wish you a safe and productive month; thank you,

Krishnan Natarajan
B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn
krishnan.natarajan@cybersecurity-insiders.com

The post B2B Tech Marketing Community Weekly Newsletter: July 29, 2020 appeared first on Premonio.

Fellow CMO Jill Richards (link) and I continued our April 16 explorations around what and how B2B marketers should cope with the impact and aftermath of COVID-19 (read that blog here).

Today we presented the follow-on webinar to Dennis Shiao’s “Bay Area Content Marketing” Meetup group (link is here) with additional market data (courtesy of HubSpot; link is here), and the resulting series of quantitative and qualitative survival tips.

Like how to re-forecast, how to protect your existing revenue and pipeline, how to optimize spend, how to tune your messaging, how to align with the sales team as well as drive revenue. And for the adventurous among us, how to go after your weaker competition? If you got the financial staying power, now is the time.

You can download everything here:

1. Download the presentation at this link
2. And watch the entire presentation here

Lots of practical advice that we’re learning from our clients, friends, and the marketing community out there … passing it on in real time.

Good luck and stay safe,

Jill & Johannes

The post “B2B Marketer’s Survival Guide: Adapting to a Changed Landscape” – Webinar Video & Presentation appeared first on Premonio.

Welcome back to our newsletter. With 33 million having filed for unemployment and public as well as private noise levels rising around wanting to return to a more productive life, the pressures to re-open the economy will increase probably in fairly short order.

In fact, in China there are signs the economy is restarting (e.g. car sales grew 4% in April over April 2019). Considering China’s 3-months head start on dealing with C-19, it is conceivable similar patterns of satisfying pent up demand will also materialize in the Western world.

So, today’s issue highlights recent writings and research results that focus on practical steps marketers can take to resume growth.

Insights and next steps for marketers to resume growth:

• McKinsey article with current stats on sales spend and strategy changes – Link
• CMO Jill Richards on “5 Things Your Board Expects from Marketing Now” – Link
• Topo Post with excellent ideas for “Extreme Value Messaging” – Link
• Practical advice with “2-Step Formula for Specific, Meaningful Website Copy” – Link
• Bullish advise on your edge: “7 Signs This Recession Will Make You Rich” – Link
• Some practical ideas on restarting your ideation to prepare for what’s ahead – Link

UPCOMING EVENTS AND WEBINARS

• Jun 16 – 18: San Jose Digital Marketing Conference; Register here
• August 26 – 27: Topo Summit 2020”; Register here

Thank you for reading our Newsletter. You can forward this link to others to subscribe. To unsubscribe reply “unsubscribe”.

We wish you a safe and productive week; thank you,

Krishnan Natarajan
B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn
krishnan.natarajan@cybersecurity-insiders.com

The post B2B Tech Marketing Community Weekly Newsletter: May 11, 2020 appeared first on Premonio.

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people and businesses. Many of us are now working from home and trying to stay productive amidst a barrage of unsettling and sometimes confusing news.

But what is productive at this moment? How do we, as B2B marketers, set ourselves and our companies up for success as we navigate this crisis? This blog will provide some information to answer those questions. We will also be hosting a live interactive webcast with more detail on this topic on Thursday, April 23rd, at 9 am PT / 12 noon ET /5 pm BST, and we invite you to attend. You can sign up here.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Despite the confusion of the moment, one thing is clear: the landscape for marketers has changed. That 2020 plan cooked up in Q4, likely won’t work now. But how do you know what has changed and in what ways? Here are some highlights to give you some perspective.

1) The crisis has not had a uniform impact across sectors.

Many sectors have declined while some are actually growing. It’s important to know what’s happening in your target sectors. Here is an excerpt from a recent article by McKinsey & Company:

2) Website activity and exploration is up, but deal creation is down

Source: HubSpot: Benchmark Data: How COVID-19 Is Impacting Sales and Marketing Performance

3) Selling is out; marketing is in

Marketing is at the fore now in its role of understanding current market needs and translating that to product and sales teams in ways that are sensitive to the market and its needs

Source: Lisa Nirell: Stop Messaging, Start Making Meaning: The Secrets of Growth CMOs

Join us! We’ll share additional information in the upcoming webcast.

Success and Survival Will Require Being Proactive

We’ve shared this taste of available data on what’s happening now because, as a marketer, you know it is essential to be informed by data to assess any crisis. Information is power. It gives you something to work with and can be a catalyst to action.

Marketing teams that proactively evaluate their environments and options rather than freezing in fear will be in far better shape now, and as the crisis passes. So, it’s a good idea to create a path to survival and success by acting: gathering data on your resources, your customers’ needs and your options for retooling,

As a starting point, you can simply determine which of these categories you might be in:

• SINKING: Cutting expenses and staff without a clear plan for success, in a cash flow crisis
• SWIMMING: Changing tactics to more digital conversations, but sticking with the same market approach and budget
• SURFING: Actively adapting focus, spend and staffing to pivot now to drive future business strategically

The Marketing Crowd Has Your Back

To move you into the Surfing category, we’ve compiled several practical ideas from colleagues and research that you can implement now. Again, we’ll have more information as well as Q&A in our webcast, so if you need more ideas, we encourage you to join.

At a macro level, there are more significant changes you can think about driving to ensure success. These are things like:

• Shifting the business online. From your offerings to remote working, consider how/what you could move online. This can not only save costs but also open up new opportunities to serve customers.
• Shifting to digital marketing. Many already have digital as a major part of the mix but what if you have to shift everything to digital for the foreseeable future? Can you? What changes are required in your marketing stack, your budget, your staff, your content, your metrics?

At a more tactical level, almost everything is a candidate for change or adaptation. Think about:

• Getting (even) more customer-focused. Now is the time to listen to customer needs by convening (virtually) your CABs or just doing a weekly listening tour inviting customers to speak with you and share what is happening in their businesses. Ideas for products and revenues always emerge from these kinds of conversations.
• Re-forecasting. Things have already changed, and you need to get started re-forecasting leads, opportunities, and revenues to be able to make adjustments. Think about areas of decline and those that might be growing or could grow.
• Update your messaging. If you are making any changes to offerings or products, you’ll certainly want to update your messaging. But, this is also a great time to turn down the volume on sales language and adapt your messaging to be more educational and supportive and less deal-oriented.
• Change your offerings. This is an ideal moment to introduce promotions or pricing that earn long term loyalty by actually helping your customers. What do they really need? What can you do for them that no other company or your competitors cannot?
• Retool for virtual selling. Enable your sales teams and revise your outreach to replace in-person interactions in your marketing and sales successfully.
• Shift to inbound. Task inbound marketing with more of the lead load by enhancing SEO, social, and content to align with educational and updated offer messaging.

While investors may be less optimistic and are focused on reducing spend and surviving, this is an excellent moment for B2B marketers to shine by adapting well to the current realities, being the voice of the customer, and delivering value to the executive, sales, and product teams.

Thank you to my co-sponsor Jill Richards and to all of our friends and colleagues who have shared their time and ideas to support our B2B marketing community.

Jill & Johannes

The post B2B Marketer’s Survival Guide: Adapting to a Changed Landscape appeared first on Premonio.

Welcome back to our newsletter. It seems people have begun to cope with the new reality, while others are forced to find new work. Similarly, some companies are struggling while others are already investing to prepare for the eventual recovery.

So, today’s issue focuses on recent writings and survey results that provide insights into the options marketers are pursuing to survive as well as lay the groundwork for resumed growth.

What marketers can do now to cope as well as resume growth:

• The above graphic is from HubSpot; more superb data from March on what worked (or not) for their 70K customers – Link
• Preview of two tech CMOs insights on what companies can be and are doing now – Link
  • Register for their live, interactive webcast on April 23 at 9 am PDT – Link
• Post from Scott Brinker of chiefmartec on making marketing more agile – Link
• McKinsey article on how to connect with customers in times of crisis – Link

UPCOMING EVENTS AND WEBINARS

• Apr 21 – 23: “DISCOVER MARTECH – A Virtual Event”; Register here
• Jun 16 – 18: San Jose Digital Marketing Conference; Register here
• August 26 – 27: Topo Summit 2020”; Register here

Thank you for reading our Newsletter. You can forward this link to others to subscribe.

We wish you a great week; thank you,

Krishnan Natarajan
B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn
krishnan.natarajan@cybersecurity-insiders.com

The post B2B Tech Marketing Community Weekly Newsletter: April 16, 2020 appeared first on Premonio.

Today’s blog is still about what can we do professionally, but with a more personal touch, as well. The last 2 or 3 weeks seem to have followed their rhythm, maybe analogous to the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, with much of the country first having started in denial until a week or two ago, which was quickly followed by widespread anxiety. Increasingly, however, it seems many of us are moving on and are accepting this new reality and settling into a “new normal.” As part of that new normal, I have been moved by the numerous spontaneous expressions of caring and concern, as well as a genuine interest in connecting with others that are not as freely expressed usually. One lighthearted example for many of us is that we are now receiving way more emailed and texted jokes than we’ve gotten in a while

Maybe it’s that all of us being in the same boat against this virus reminds us of our shared humanity. To understand whether or not what I started seeing is a broader spread trend, I spent the last few days interviewing friends and acquaintances all over the world, ranging from China to Europe to across the US. I simply asked them what they’re doing to cope with the new reality without any expectations, nor did I try to guide their answers.

What I heard grouped in two buckets:

• People are trying to stay busy and optimistic, partly by exercising and partly by learning from what others are doing
• And they’re starting to reach out helping others, or are planning what they’ll be offering their communities shortly

Staying Healthy and Helping Others

What struck me was the creativity and inventiveness with which people picked things to work on and help with, and how to spend their time at home. Below are more details around the types of things the folks I spoke with said they’re doing or are planning to do, grouped by the above blue, orange and green buckets:

Here are the quoted links in the table above:

1. Google info portal
2. Worldwide Virus Map
3. eHealth newsletter sample
4. COVID Wikipedia page
5. Volunteer Match COVID website
6. Sample help site on Facebook
7. SMB financial help – USA
8. SMB financial help – Germany
9. SF Chronicle article on helping

Making a Difference and Staying Involved

As we’re all spending weeks at home now, the above is a simple list of ideas for how to keep meaningfully busy ourselves – both professionally and personally – but also how we can help others. The outpouring of support and concern for each other that’s increasingly appearing now across the world has touched me deeply to the point where I today launched my own pro bono offer to help SMBs and startups quickly adapt their sales and marketing (you can see it here).

Hopefully, you’ll find these ideas for how to keep going useful or even inspiring, and maybe also (re)discover an unexpected silver lining around this entire epidemic that knows no national, ethnic or racial boundaries:

“Our shared humanity and caring for each other”

The post Coping with COVID-19: Practical Ideas from Around the World appeared first on Premonio.