What do you believe should be the top priority for marketers today?
Two words: Revenue responsibility.
It’s critical that marketers think of their primary objective as revenue-producing metrics – sales pipeline creation, closed deals, renewals and customer lifetime value. This doesn’t change what marketers do, but it certainly helps them prioritize the right strategies and tactics.
You’re speaking on the topic, content that converts. What do you think are the biggest missed opportunities for content to impact revenue?
Too often, content is created to earn clicks and likes without focusing on your target buyer’s journey.
Simply focusing on content that earns their attention, helps them loosen their status quos and ultimately commit to change based on their outcomes – that content will mobilize and catalyze your prospects into active buying cycles. That is content that converts.
How tech-savvy are your own Marketing, Sales, and Branding teams? How do you rate them on a scale of 1-10? How do you inspire them to work with technology?
I often tell people I’m not just the president of the Hair Club for Men, I’m also a client (for the millennials reading this, that was an infamous line in a hair restoration TV ad and I’m… oh, nevermind). I’d say our marketing and sales teams are quite tech savvy, but like most companies, we have tons of room to improve.
I’d give our marketing an 8, our sales a 7 and our branding a 5. We focus a ton on our sales pipeline and a bit less on our branding.
Technology is in our DNA so there’s less we need to do internally to inspire its use to achieve our goals.
How do you think young Marketing and Sales professionals should train themselves to master MarTech skills?
Know that technology is not your strategy. It’s one of the last things you should think about after knowing your objectives, audience, and strategy.
Technology supports, automates and accelerates your strategy when implemented well. That said, you simply won’t be able to create a consistent, predictable and scalable marketing and sales pipeline without mastering the ever-increasingly complex marketing technology landscape moving forward as a B2B marketer.
Are contemporary marketing technologies pushing the boundaries of present-day brand engagement and customer experience?
I see it as the other way around. In an increasingly distracted and skeptical world, we need to focus on better and more unique customer experiences. When our channels are even more diversified, a consistent and integrated brand experience stands out and becomes a competitive advantage. I think those needs are pushing the boundaries of what’s needed from the technology to keep up and implement.
What are the dynamic elements driving your B2B content engagement model? What tools and strategies do you use to create effective B2B content for events and webinars?
We have a complex martech stack that supports our content efforts – everything from content creation to curation, amplification, influencer leverage, as well as ensuring the right content gets to prospects and customers at each stage of the buying journey.
Our content strategy is increasingly channel-diverse – including Sales Pipeline Radio, regular webinars, and videos, as well as daily social engagement and reciprocation.
Do you see Sales and Marketing Technologies unifying or evolving together to deliver higher ROI?
Yes absolutely.
It’s critical that Sales Technology and Marketing Technology completely integrate moving forward. One team, one budget, one strategy. Anything less and you’re leaving room for your competitors to bypass you sooner vs later.
What webinar best practices would you recommend for 2018?
Focus on engagement, personality, interactivity, and frequency. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Create more content, shorter content, more “imperfect’ content that’s easier to watch, listen to and share.
Thanks for chatting with us, Matt.
