B2B Conversations Now

While most B2B marketers are familiar with using white papers for lead generation, they may not have heard the term price paper. A price paper is a document that helps prospective customers with budgetary information about complex products and services. For the B2B marketer, it is a valuable document that prospects want and can be used as a strong offer to motivate them to provide their contact information (lead conversion).

The above diagram shows two key ingredients for a strong B2B offer: Value and Scarcity.

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Tags: B2B Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Social Media by daleu
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A new year always brings with it fresh ideas. Many reflect on the past year and yearn to make a career change. I was thinking of how B2B Marketers might pursue that change and the thought led to ask “what does a B2B marketing job description look like”?

I recently wrote a short white paper called “How B2B marketers became responsible for everything, including sales, and how to fix it”. Taking that concept as a starting point, I thought it might be interesting to come up with several B2B marketing job descriptions, each from a different point of view.

B2B Marketing Job Description 1 (from the B2B marketer’s point of view)

“The ideal candidate will be responsible for all marketing efforts including, but not limited to, industry direction, market share analysis, product vision, service offerings, corporate branding, community involvement, social media engagement, advertising placement, blog writing, video producing, podcast recording, campaign management, suspect capturing, prospect nurturing, sales hand-off, funnel tracking, case study development, closing material creation and, finally, ROI measurement.”

B2B Marketing Job Description 2 (from a VP of Sales point of view)

“The ideal candidate will surface new sales opportunities so we can close, close, close.”

B2B Marketing Job Description 3 (from a CEOs point of view)

“The ideal candidate will be able to quantify the marketing return on investment (MROI) and make me proud to be the head of the company.”

Put yourself in their shoes

What’s interesting about this exercise is that the C-suite paints in broad strokes while marketers tend to live in the details. Maybe to land that next new marketing job it makes sense to simplify your approach and focus on what those who are hiring are looking for.

Good luck in the new year!

Write your own description, I’d love to hear what you think.

Tags: B2B Marketing, B2B Sales, Lead Conversion, Social Media by daleu
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I just read yet another blog post about how hard it is to justify efforts spent on social media. The post was, of course, followed by many others comforting the poster that they knew how he felt. “There’s just no way to make the C-suite understand the value of the influence social media creates” one responder said. I must have heard a dozen prominent speakers at a recent Social Media Summit chime in with the same “poor us, we can’t quantify social media ROI…if only our bosses were smarter and could see how valuable it is.”

It’s hogwash and I’m tired of it.

The next time anyone asks you about Social Media ROI, simply say “Social Media is only part of our marketing effort. Our combined marketing campaigns, including social media, create a marketing funnel that is 5 times our annual revenue.”

Don’t believe me? Read Are B2B Marketers Sabotaging Their Own Success?

Happy Holidays! Now if you get “the” question during one of those wild office parties, you’ll know what to say!

Tags: B2B Marketing, B2B Sales, Lead Conversion, Social Media by daleu
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