Last week, we covered the first couple of steps in transforming yourself into a revenue-driven marketing department.
We covered the marketing foundations you can’t move forward without, how to get up and running with a marketing technology stack — and we were just getting to the heart of a campaign budget strategy smart companies embrace. You'll want to read that one first if you missed it!
Later, we’ll discuss marketing and sales alignment with your sales leaders, and account-based marketing for B2B organizations. But first, here’s the trick you’ve been waiting for.
Augment your Media Buy Potential by Moving a Portion of the Budget into Brand Equity
Straight up invest a component of your campaign budget into building the equity of the brand instead. Rather than money thrown into a black hole of advertising that sure, might get you a click or two, you’ve actually got something to show for it. Something that will continue working for you instead of being shown two or three times to a distracted internet user trying to read the content next to that ad.
Be more efficient. Be that content.
Understand what your customers are looking for and what they’re responding to. Then do that. Do more of it.
Couple it with a great SEO game, and your CFO will see that it’s not a dollar spent — it’s truly a dollar invested. Some of that investment will move from the liability column of the balance sheet to the equity column. If you want to sell your revenue-driven marketing department as valuable to your fast-growing organization, that’s gold.
The Benefit: The marketing department doesn't just sink cash into ad campaigns — it builds assets
Work with Sales Leaders for a Marketing and Sales Alignment
As a CMO, you need to ensure that you’re spending some budget, focus and effort on truly aligning your marketing department with the sales department. It usually starts with one basic concept: using the same language.
It sounds so simple, yet far too frequently a sales leader may have a totally different idea of what a “lead” is. How they qualify it could be different. You may be frustrated that nothing’s happening with that perfectly good lead you generated, while they grow frustrated that you’re not sending leads.
You need to agree on what these fundamentals are if you’re going to have a smooth, productive relationship. Agree when a lead is a lead and hammer out any other common misunderstandings.
Making this marketing and sales alignment mind-shift is a key part of becoming a revenue-driven marketing department. You generate leads, yes, but you’ve got an intrinsic interest in knowing that these leads turn into customers and how you can help, even when that later transition slips into another department’s jurisdiction.
The Benefit: Working with the aligned expectations enables more success
Last Up: Account-Based Marketing for B2B Organizations — Flip the Funnel
When you’ve got all this in place — the marketing foundation, the marketing technology stack, the flexible campaign budget, the alignment with sales and buy-in from sales leaders — it's time for one more push: account-based marketing.
Especially for B2B organizations.
This is when you and your marketing team flip the traditional inbound marketing funnel to an account-based marketing funnel that takes aim at specific accounts you want to win.
Only when you have everything in place can you sit down with your sales leaders to nail down exactly those 10, 20, 200 must-win accounts that your organization needs to acquire next year. You want this, and your sales leader wants this, so the CEO can report that the company’s moving in the right direction.
Do it by researching these must-have accounts. What unique or specific problems do these companies have? How can you provide the solution? Develop approaches and materials with a deep level of personalization to increase your chances of converting these desirable leads.
The Benefit: Your existing marketing funnel is augmented by optimizing toward high-value accounts you already know will be great fits
And Don't Forget: A Revenue-Driven Marketing Department Never Neglects Reporting
We all know that you can’t move what you can’t measure. You need to ensure as the CMO that you have a valid scorecard in place. Make it easy to measure, manage and report on your success — and ensure your sales leader and CEO have full access to these reports on as frequent a basis as possible. You may even want a real-time on-demand solution for them.
What we’ve seen as HubSpot advisers is HubSpot is coming with a lot of new canned reporting that can be customized for the eyes of business leaders. Ready-made stuff relevant for the CMO, a VP of Sales, a CEO, and other business leaders.
These could be powerful tools for a revenue-driven marketing department.
Picture yourself at your QBR (Quarterly Business Review). As a CMO, you don’t need to scramble and pull all your Business Analysts to read from different Excel sheets and dashboards to get your reports and show how you’re moving the needle forward. You’ve got what you need and can have a relevant conversation with the Board of Directors effortlessly.
Use the time you saved to put your next plan in action instead!
That's it! Five steps and a bonus tip to get your revenue-driven marketing department transformation off the ground. You're all ready for the next step. Why not make it an eBook with even more valuable information Marketing Managers need to know to get ahead?
We hope these two articles have been of use to you! What are your greatest challenges in building a revenue-driven marketing department? Feel free to send us comments. And if you’d like to know more, Flawless Inbound has helped more than 60 companies across Canada and the US achieve and exceed their revenue growth goals through exactly these methods. If you’d like to learn more, reach out and let's chat!
Also, we’ve got a book out! It’s packed full of marketing secrets and advice just like this gleaned over years of experience in evolving marketing strategies, business success, and the technology that enables it all. Get it here.