Triggered Marketing for B2B Companies

Triggers Guide Timely and Proper Reactions to Situations

Wouldn’t it be beneficial if you had an automated process that fosters consistent reactions to changes in status for a target market, account, prospect, contact, sales opportunity or campaign?

Hopefully you can envision how you can tailor this concept to your business.  Benefits include reducing account churn, improving closed-won rates, generating referrals, and optimizing lead generation and nurturing to sales-ready status.

Read The Entire Post

 By John Bernardi

A Marketing Driven Company Makes Selling Easier

Do Marketing Cultures Outperform Sales Cultures?

I Believe That a Marketing-Driven Company Makes Selling Easier

From my experience most small and mid-sized companies are product-centric and sales-driven.  They fall short of practicing solid marketing principles.  Their promotion and sales campaigns fail to achieve ROI goals.  They typically reward only short-term quota related metrics.  Buyers are wary of their sales reps who ask to partner with them to solve a problem but don’t have the necessary business acumen for adding value, which results in customer relationships that last only as long as a given sales opportunity.

Read the Entire Post

By John Bernardi

Separate Vs. Unified Marketing, Sales and Support Teams For Each Product Line

Benefits and Disadvantages of Consolidating Customer Facing Processes

I have been involved in situations where clients have separate marketing, sales and support teams representing different product lines that are often purchased by the same buyers.  What do you think are the advantages to this approach?  What are the benefits of consolidating customer facing processes?

Read The Entire Blog Post

Are KPIs Your Catch-22?

KPIs Can Be A Catch-22

People Will Behave

Processes Will Be Implemented

Based On What You Measure

If you are unable to measure what is important, you will communicate importance to the things that you can measure, which may be sending people and processes in the wrong direction.

Important Vs. Urgent: CEO Dilemma

Content Marketing Made Illustrious Through Infographics

Infographics Catch People's Attention

So That They Will Want To Read Your Content

And Say That They're Glad They Did

Pinterest provides me with a terrific repository for the infographics I've developed for my content marketing arsenal. All you need is a compelling introductory sentence and then let the infographic do its work on your blog, website, social networks and email marketing.

You can recycle the infographic with different introductions that focus on various ideas presented in the infographic.

Make sure to include a link to your Pinterest library on your website.

Here is the library of pins that I've been developing.

Maybe you can benefit from this concept as well.

John Bernardi

Marketing Automation Will Help You Get To The Next Level

Marketing Automation Enables Consistent Best Practices

You know what you'd like to do but manual efforts are totally inefficient, so you've chosen not to leverage marketing principles for business advantage.  It's time for you to figure a way to change that inertia so you can make your company the best that it can be.  Otherwise, your company will need to follow a more challenging path in order to reach the next level.  Don't overlook the basics.

Wouldn't it be great if you could automate the mundane processes for customer and partner retention?  How about recruiting new ones?  If you could survey at different steps in the cycle, wouldn't you better understand how you're doing?  How many opportunities slip away due to weak processes for lead generation and nurturing?

MA enables you to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time with a singular purpose in mind. This trumps broad brush email blasts and social network posts that are of no interest to 80% of their recipients, most of whom will unsubscribe after receiving a few of these uninteresting messages.

MA enables content marketing to be the theme for campaigns or surgically injected as 1to1 next logical steps such as surveys, or efforts to create, nurture or convert leads.  Use your CRM database to segment a persona defined target audience or filter your CRM system for the right demographics, psychographics, behavioral traits and firmographics.  Email and social networks can work together as your messaging media.

You don't need to be a large company to afford the benefits of marketing automation.  There are CRM and MA tools that fit within the budget of any size company.  If you first take the time to create the processes that are right for your business, you can then search for the right tools to make them happen.

By John Bernardi

All Companies Provide Services

People Purchase Services Differently From Products

Inseparability of the provider from the service itself challenges clients to make objective buying decisions because experience can only be judged during and after service delivery.

Services buyers are influenced by past experiences and referrals.  They lessen risk by observing early adopters, opinion leaders and trusted mavens.  They listen when raving fans tell stories that help them to visualize how the benefits would apply to them.

Services Marketing: Not The Same As Product Marketing

Attract prospects with high quality content when they discover you through your self-service channels.  Provide photos of radiant facilities, hygienic equipment and well-groomed personnel along with other physical proof such as location, reputation for consistent quality and performance, certifications and efficient, courteous service.

Frequent internal marketing must motivate employees and partners to develop customer-centricity and to have the attitude and skills that ensure sustained customer loyalty.  Standardization and training will create advantages through consistent, high satisfaction touch points and rituals.

Services buyers expect empathy and assurance, so allow them to participate in buying decisions. Then, watch and listen for personalization needs so that you can tailor some aspect of your service for them.

Services can't be inventoried like products, so when capacity isn't used, you'll incur idle time due to demand that fluctuates according to day of week, time of day or season. Adjust pricing and bundle or unbundle features to optimize capacity when demand is low.  Use idle time for training.

All Businesses Operate Within A Services Economy

Even companies that consider themselves only as purveyors of tangible products can differentiate themselves through pre-sale consultative services and post-sale support.

By John Bernardi

Start With A Market Follower Strategy

First Implement A Market Follower Strategy

Then Become A Market Leader As Success And Resources Grow

Market Leaders create an umbrella under which category members can thrive. They have the highest market share [sometimes as much as 40-50%]. Their product/service portfolio is always evolving.  Their complementary partnerships challenge them and optimize results.  They are low cost leaders whose value proposition makes them best suited to telling their compelling story. 



Market Followers possess a core competency that enables a competitive advantage but have much less resources than the market leader. Associating with a category led by a prestigious market leader enhances their credibility. Position against the category gold standard in the areas of cost, ease of use, convenience, design, reliability, performance, range of selection, service and location.  A successful follower may eventually become a leader as they build their resource pool and create their own compelling story.

Begin by narrowcasting to build a high share of your defined niche market. Always innovate - products, services and processes. Build complementary partnerships that help you to sell a total solution. Your pricing strategy must enable gross margin and cash flow to contribute to the goal of becoming a market leader.

The key to success will always be your strategy for optimizing the customer experience. This is the best way to differentiate your company for the long haul.
 
By John Bernardi