Marketing M.O.

How Marketing Automation Fits Into the Demand Generation Process

jsagar — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:52:26 +0000

It’s important for marketers to keep abreast of the new innovations in our field. Marketing automation software is one of them, and as we explore how to apply it to our marketing activities, it’s critical to understand how it works and the true value that it provides. Below is part two of the Software Advice website’s two-part [...]

Eliminate Chaos in Your Sales Team to Improve Marketing ROI

jsagar — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:16:51 +0000

B2B marketers don’t own the quarterly revenue target. That responsibility belongs to the VP of Sales. Most of us B2B marketers are focused on generating leads, leads and more leads. As long as we produce our lead targets, we’ve done our job, right? It’s the sales team’s responsibility to reap the harvest from the seeds [...]

How to Customize Your Reports in the App

jsagar — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:41:35 +0000

Your marketing reports output all of the responses that you’ve entered into the app while you’re creating your marketing strategies and plans. Default reports include the Marketing M.O. logo, green table headers, and templated introduction language. You have the ability to change all of these to customize your reports. Here’s how: To add your own logo, [...]

Customer Experience with North Social

jsagar — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:05:38 +0000

Yesterday, we received a curious package in the mail: something soft and spongy, in a black trash-bag like wrap, about the size of a text book. The return address was from North Social, the makers of the Facebook app we use for our fan page. It felt like … a t-shirt? Yep, it was exactly [...]

How to Obtain Executive Support for Strategic Marketing Initiatives

jsagar — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:00:36 +0000

Experienced B2B marketers understand that most of us are fighting a two-front battle: one with the market and one with the executive team. Penetrating the market to generate leads, win customers and earn mindshare is difficult enough. Brian Carroll, of the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog, summed up the B2B marketer’s challenge perfectly in a recent [...]

How to Improve Your Marketing Planning

jsagar — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:00:19 +0000

“Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even though they rarely stick to their plan.” - Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister “Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it’s easy to beat most folks.” - Paul [...]

How To Create Reports in the App

jsagar — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 03:09:29 +0000

The Marketing M.O. strategy and planning app current contains two types of reports – a Project Status report and Project Content report. You can access them from your Project Details screen. A Project Status report outputs all of the activities of your project and their status into a PDF. A Project Content report outputs all of [...]

Marketing Campaign Validation

jsagar — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:16:44 +0000

One of our greatest challenges as marketers is selling the value of “marketing” to our non-marketing business executives. Since many of the executives of small to mid-market companies view marketing as an expense instead of an investment, it’s challenging to gain their buy-in for our ideas, and to get budget approval for our campaigns. One [...]

Creating Effective Marketing Campaign Plans

jsagar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:00:04 +0000

A good marketing campaign plan forces you to think through all of the details of the campaign: • Business goals • Target audience • Creative • Offer • Budget, metrics & ROI • Testing • Fulfillment To create a detailed campaign plan in the app, use tools 6.1 through 6.5 from the Marketing Campaigns subject. [...]

Creating Your Competitive Positioning and Brand Strategy

jsagar — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:00:49 +0000

Experienced marketers understand the importance of a strong competitive positioning and brand strategy. In the app, create yours using the Competitive Positioning and Brand Strategy subjects. They’re the two most important elements of any long-term marketing strategy, yet few mid-market and small-market companies have the bandwidth or resources to create them. With a strong positioning [...]

The Difference Between Demand Generation and Lead Management

jsagar — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:34:52 +0000

On the surface, it sounds like these terms refer to the same thing, right? Not true. While many organizations use these terms interchangeably, they refer to different elements of the revenue generation process. The Software Advice website recently published a two-part whiteboard session with Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of Annuitas Group and Executive Director of the Marketing Automation [...]

How to Browse the Marketing Tools and Add to Projects

jsagar — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:00:50 +0000

To view and access the 667 marketing tools in the app, click on the blue Browse Tools arrow on your homepage. Or, click the Browse Tools navigation button in the upper left. This opens the Browse Tools window. Here you can view all of the individual tools in the app. Click on a category on the left — the [...]

Accessing Marketing Tools from Pre-built Projects

jsagar — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:28:24 +0000

When you’re starting out with Marketing M.O., you can preview the tools in the Browse Tools view. To interact with them, you must access them from a project. One option is to create a pre-built project. Step 1: Create your pre-built project Click on the New Project button on the homepage or in the main [...]

Evaluating Marketing M.O. During Your Free Trial

jsagar — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:19:15 +0000

Marketing M.O. is a marketing strategy and planning app. Use it to define marketing strategies, create campaign plans, measure marketing investments and design and manage marketing projects. To get feel for how it works during your free trial, try: Browsing the marketing tools: 30 subjects; 247 deliverables; 667 marketing tools Opening a pre-built marketing project to access [...]

Marketing M.O. Strategy and Planning App is Live

jsagar — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:40:59 +0000

Our new marketing strategy and planning app is now live. From the app, you can: Access pre-built marketing projects (with all the tasks and guidance already in the project) Browse through 665 guided marketing tools – over 1,000 pages of how-to content Download 144 programmed spreadsheets for all the complex marketing calculations Create detailed brand [...]

Beta Program Update

jsagar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:57:09 +0000

Our beta program for our new marketing strategy and planning app is coming to a close. Thanks to everyone who has requested an invite! We capped our invite list at 1,000, so if you didn’t receive an invite, you’ll have an opportunity to preview the app with a free trial once we go live. We’ll [...]

Sales Development Reps

jsagar — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 22:51:09 +0000

Marketing automation requires more than just software; it requires people to interact with leads as they’re nurtured through the revenue generation process. But who should interact with them? Marketers? Expensive sales reps? In this final segment of Software Advice’s 3-part educational whiteboard session, Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, talks about their Sales Development [...]

Distribution channels for services: Big ideas, big payoffs

Nancy Sagar — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:28:00 +0000

Last week Jim talked about the unglamorous but important topic of distribution channels. It’s one of the “4 Ps” (“placement”), but many marketers and smaller companies don’t think about it as often as they should. And it’s potentially the most important strategy in your arsenal. When you sell a physical product, it’s easy to keep [...]

Marketo as a marketing automation case study

jsagar — Wed, 04 May 2011 02:57:59 +0000

What’s a good way to understand how marketing automation works? Have a company explain how it successfully uses marketing automation software in its revenue generation process. Better yet, how about hearing it directly from a leading marketing automation vendor? Marketo does exactly that – explaining in the embedded video below how they use their own [...]

Revenue Performance Management

jsagar — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:58:38 +0000

The Internet has fundamentally changed sales and marketing, transferring power from sellers to buyers. We’ve all felt this obvious change, and our jobs are quite different than they were in 1994. Since buyers nowadays almost always research solutions prior to purchase, it’s imperative for marketers to make sure that they’re easily found on the web. [...]

Win mindshare to influence your market

jsagar — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 21:58:18 +0000

Years ago Peter Drucker, the father of business consulting, made a very profound observation: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” Yet [...]

Marketing plan tips: How to get your marketing budget approved

Nancy Sagar — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:00:00 +0000

If you’re a marketing manager, you’re probably swamped with this year’s planning and budgeting process. Hopefully you find it exciting to create a marketing plan filled with new programs and campaigns to build your business in the year ahead. (If not, it may be time for a new job!) And as you know, it can [...]

How to calculate Cost of Goods

Jennifer Lueck — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:56:00 +0000

Marketing campaigns are investments. And like any smart investment, they need to be measured, monitored and compared to other investments to ensure you’re spending your money wisely. Return on investment (ROI) is a measure of the profit earned from each investment. Like the return you earn on your portfolio or bank account, it’s calculated as [...]

Positioning strategy for startups

jsagar — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:44:17 +0000

Over the weekend I read Steven Gary Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win. It’s a fabulous business book packed with a ton of valuable insights from the author’s 30 plus years of experience as an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. I highly recommend that every entrepreneur running a [...]

Generating B2B sales leads

jsagar — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:41:18 +0000

If you’re a B2B marketer, the main focus of your job is probably generating leads for your sales team. Often B2B marketers of small to mid-size companies struggle to produce qualified sales leads because they don’t have a strong understanding of the nuances of selling B2B products and services. The more complex the sale, the [...]