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Gone Are 12-Month Plans, Dedicated Strategy Time And A Defined Set Of Deliverables
For 15 years prior to Square 2, I worked in corporate marketing.
Every October and November, we cleared the decks and worked on the upcoming year’s marketing strategy and plan. It took weeks to get the plan together, it was comprehensive and then it required a presentation to the management team for approval.
Once approved, the book went on the shelf, and I admit that I rarely looked at the plan again.
Simply Put: Do You Want Work, Or Do You Want Results?
I get it: A statement of work (SOW) clearly defines what you’re buying. But is that the best way to get what your company ultimately needs?
Do you need work, or do you need results? What happens when the scope of work has to change (because SOWs change 95% of the time)?
A lot of agencies will jump at the chance to put together an SOW and get it over to you. You review it and it looks like it’s what you need.
But how can you be sure? How does the agency know it’s exactly right? What happens when you learn something new, change the requirements or together decide that you need different work, different tactics or an altogether different strategy?
Sales Hacker defines sales operations as “the unit, role, activities and processes within a sales organization that support, enable and drive front-line sales teams to sell better, faster and more efficiently.”
In a blog article on the topic, Sales Hacker go on to say that “more than anything else, sales operations brings a system to selling. This often-overlooked and sometimes underappreciated department uses data to drive strategy, best practices to guide training and technology to hack success.”
It’s this systems thinking that makes sales hum, and when you’re looking for a repeatable, scalable and predictable revenue generation machine, you need to be thinking sales operations.
Boost User Experience And Rankings
Whenever someone asks for tips on improving SEO, I can’t help but feel they’re looking for a silver bullet: Just do x, y and z, and watch your fortunes change.
It’s probably because that’s what SEO was for many years – mysterious tactics few people knew anything about. And, more importantly, those tactics did improve organic rankings.
With SEO, everyone wants a new trick, something akin to insider info on Wall Street – you can’t go wrong with longtails. That could be why they’re shocked when I respond with a simple answer: Think user first.
Jamie Hardin, Director of Client Services at Square 2, contributed to this blog post.
Marketing automation platforms have quickly transitioned from a nice-to-have tool to an essential technology – a foundational solution all modern marketers need. And their appeal only continues to grow, with many platforms boasting expanded capabilities and integrations.
However, the rise in marketing automation has led to an explosion of options, each with its own unique set of features geared toward specific needs. So while every business might need marketing automation, choosing the right one often proves to be a challenge.
This is not another “SEO is dead” hit piece. Nor is it an “SEO isn’t dead, it’s changing” sidestep of the same topic.
This is the most obvious SEO hack of all time: You need quality content to rank today, so make your creative team part of your SEO strategy.
SEO is alive and well, particularly technical SEO, given the importance of mobile first and site speed. However, on-page SEO is no longer the difference-maker it used to be.
In Our Microwave Society, Your Prospects Want Answers Right Now
Live chat on websites today has come light-years from where it was just a few years ago. Today the practice of conversational marketing created by Drift has turned chat into a “must-have” if you’re looking to generate leads from your website.
As part of the wave to get your prospects the answers they need when they need them, adding chat to your website and enabling it to turn visitors into leads has never been easier.
However, using chat to get high-quality leads, create a remarkable experience and not distract your sales reps with tire kickers is key to getting your program to produce high-quality business results.
All Leads Are NOT Created Equally; Do You Know The Value Of Your Sales Pipeline?
We’ve all been part of companies with sales leaders who love to report that “the pipeline is full,” only to have the end of the month come and the full pipeline didn’t produce enough new sales to hit the revenue goals for the month.
We continue to hear reports from prospective clients that they’re still not hitting their revenue goals in a consistent, scalable and predictable way.
Could it be that while we were busy smashing the funnel, we should have also been looking at smashing the traditional pipeline view of company sales opportunities?
Today’s marketers don’t just love technology, they worship it. For many, MarTech has become nothing short of a savior – an omnipotent, omnipresent miracle worker that allows individuals to do the work of an entire team.
But the very thing that’s so seductive about technology – the bells and whistles, the promise of power – is also what makes it problematic.
MarTech is sometimes added without proper consideration for how it will be used, and by whom, to achieve business goals. We adopt tools because they’re hot or because someone in our feed suggested it.
Too often, marketers are more interested in building a stack that’s a great topic of conversation but doesn’t necessarily work for them.
If You Want A Website That Generates Leads, Stop Thinking About Your Site Like It’s A Brochure
Would you ever open a store and not have employees in it to help customers? Would you open a store and not put any signs up on the outside?
Would you ever open a store and not tell anyone about your new store? Would you ever open a store and not plan to do at least some marketing to promote the store’s existence?
Of course not, right?
But would you ever open a store and not allow visitors to sample your products? Would you ever open a store and not keep track of the number of guests and the conversion rate of guests to actual purchases? Would you ever open a store and not keep track of what parts of the store people are spending most of their time in or how they move through the store?
