If you market B2B, then you know that marketing and sales, cashflow, is always at the forefront of your mind. You’re constantly looking for ways to improve stability of your company, increase cashflow and business in a sustainable manner, and get ahead of the competition. Here are some tips to help you.
Align Your Vision With Your Customer’s Goals
So much of how a business is perceived by the marketplace is driven by how well it aligns its customer’s wants and needs with its own vision. When businesses appear to be self-serving, they aren’t perceived as being nice or friendly.
And, the culture is usually not all that great.
But, when you focus on aligning your interests with your customers, then something magical happens. You’re on their side. You connect with them. You “get” them, and they know it. Journey maps and customer life cycle maps will help all departments get on the same page in regards to how to service customers.
Then, a uniform message can be communicated to everyone you do business with.
Measure Your Marketing
If more businesses measured the effectiveness of their marketing, there would probably be fewer companies on the brink of failure. One of the most important parts of measuring marketing is making sure you have a good lead management software program.
A good program will incorporate lead capture, sales funnel tracking, and followup for meetings and post-sale “thank you” messages.
Aside from that, your marketing department should be able to track the usual metrics like customer acquisition costs, lifetime customer value, revenue and profits.
Design Your Ecosystem
Does your company have a strong culture or does is spontaneously exist without any clear focus?
If you’re not sure, start with a core activity that extends to multiple marketing roles and then work to bring your marketing campaigns online, breathing life into products and services that may not be performing like you want them to.
Next, map the responsibilities to specific roles within the marketing department so you can track what is responsible for what. If you are coming up short on marketing leaders for your company, consider hiring a fractional CMO to help lead your business and team to success.
When a specific action is taken, how does that impact sales? You should be able to answer questions like this.
You should also be able to track marketing through all available channels, whether online or offline. So, if you run a more traditional business, you should be able to know what percentage of sales comes from your retail locations and from which ad campaigns or promotions versus online sales that comes from PPC campaigns or content marketing and blogger outreach.
Spend Money On Marketing
When economic times are tough, it’s tempting to cut back on marketing. Don’t. Likewise, when times are good, don’t skimp on marketing dollars. Always work to find ways to increase the budget. This is what will drive growth.
Of course, you also need to build up your customer service department to handle the increase in sales and don’t forget a corresponding improvement in fulfillment efficiency.
Ida J. Taylor is a business consultant. She enjoys writing about her experiences on the web. Her articles appear mainly on marketing and business sites.
