MarketStar Blog

The benefits of Account-based Marketing (ABM) included an increase both in the number of deals closed and the average size of a deal in ABM accounts but also an increase in the engagement level in ABM accounts. However, only a little over half had an ABM strategy in place. As high as 42% of those who did not have an ABM strategy in place said the reason for that was that they found it difficult to get their marketing and sales teams aligned. This is unfortunate, considering that both teams are internal to an organization. 

When revenue-generating departments don’t speak the same language, it often results in steep financial losses that are easily preventable. The Fortune 250 B2B company that spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to solve the wrong problem would agree.1 After the failure of a new product, the company threw money at product research and sales methodology, when, in fact, the problem was caused by misaligned goals between sales and marketing. 

The symbiotic relationship between sales and marketing finds them both deeply interconnected and yet at odds. According to Forrester research, 78% of executive buyers claim that salespeople do not have relevant examples or case studies to share with them.2 The same is true when marketing has an inflated view of the company’s brand equity on target customers. Yet sales and marketing rarely sit together to plot targets, strategies, and objectives for the year. That is set to change, especially as more businesses go the Account- Based Marketing (ABM) route. 

Snap Inc. lost over $1.3 billion in market value recently when their shares sank by 7.2% following a tweet by Kylie Jenner in which she said that she doesn’t open the app anymore, drawing agreement from her 24.5 million followers1. Now whether Jenner was solely responsible for the decline in share value or whether she only contributed to it, it must be noted that influencers wield a power like never before. 

Last year was the year of influencer marketing with 84% of marketers launching at least one influencer campaign2. That number is only likely to go up this year. Some experts deem that influencer marketing is the fastest growing channel for online customer acquisition. 

Influencers are people, typically on social media, who talk to their captive audience - their tribe - about things that matter to them. Their influence comes from their knowledge and expertise in a particular area. When they talk, people listen. Influencers have the ability to make or break your brand. 

In theory, your channel partners should be eagerly awaiting the chance to utilize the Marketing Development Funds (MDF) made available to them. After all, as far as they’re concerned, it’s essentially free marketing money! However, the reality of the matter is that 60% of marketing development funds are left unused on a quarterly basis. There are a number of reasons why channel partners leave such a large portion of the MDF pie untouched, ranging from excessive paperwork and lack of resources to poor communication with the business and low confidence in them.1, 2 

What do Airbnb and the Art Institute of Chicago have in common? Not a whole lot. Yet both combined their resources to launch a brilliant co-marketing campaign to highlight an exhibition of Van Gogh’s paintings, specifically his ‘Bedroom Series.’ They recreated Van Gogh’s bedroom, complete with objects painted in Gogh’s classic style, and opened it up for people to book a night’s stay, to feel what it was like to “almost step into a painting.” The ‘Van Gogh BNB’ co-marketing campaign was a phenomenal success, with bookings for the first month closing within hours of the campaign going live. The campaign created an incremental attendance of 133,000 visitors at the institute and generated $2 million of incremental revenue, all with just $500,000 investment.1 

Using Cross-Channel Attribution and Analysis

The only way you can keep up with today’s multi-screen, multi-device audience is if you incorporate an integrated multi-channel approach. This basically means nurturing and advancing prospects down the conversion funnel using coordinated marketing channels. This leads us to the challenge of measuring and apportioning the role of each of these channels to determine their impact and performance, or attribution.

From being a disruptive force to becoming a mainstream technology, cloud computing has come a long way within a short span of time. It has been a game changer of sorts, and today, small players are not inhibited by the lack of IT resources, which till a while back were only accessible to the big corporations. Yes, it sure does save us money and gives a lot of power in your hands to do a lot more in IT that enterprises till decade back could only dream of. However, over time the term cloud computing has become fuzzier to include anything that involves, even if remotely (pun intended), sharing IT resources via the internet. So, what exactly is cloud computing?

Brands are currently generating plenty of content, with a 300% increase this year compared to last year. However, only 5% of branded content garners 90% of total customer engagement. On average, 19 out of 20 content pieces get little to no attention at all.1 

Only 5% of branded content garners 90% of total customer engagement. 

Instead of just focusing on the content volume, content marketers now need to optimize their content marketing efforts to increase customer engagement on each content piece they produce. Here are four strategies that will help them achieve that:  

In the competitive world of business, marketers are increasingly turning their focus to Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This crucial metric offers insights into the net cumulative profit a customer can generate over their entire relationship with a company. Understanding and enhancing CLV is essential for businesses aiming to boost sales and foster long-term customer relationships. Despite its importance, many marketers fail to fully leverage CLV due to outdated perceptions of customers as mere value-extraction targets rather than value-creating partners. 

The secret of knowing how happy your customers are is to ask them. Feedback from customers are invaluable to a business. For decades surveys have given organizations a tool to have an open and honest communication with their customers.

My leadership philosophy is a combination of my own experience and that of watching and being mentored by key contributors at MarketStar. What have I learned? A sales leader is an individual who isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves to accomplish goals and lead their team to success. But we all know leadership takes more than barking orders!  I try to lead my teams with empathy, performance, and transparency as my guideposts. I don’t want to scare new hires away after their first week on the job!