Two Truths & A Lie: Marketing Edition

What was once true in marketing, is not anymore. What was once seen as unchanging, is now evolving rapidly. Companies, mindsets and marketing are all facing new battlegrounds. Join us for a game of Two Truths and a Lie: Marketing Edition where we will explore how the B2B marketing landscape is changing and what that means for you to ensure you stay ahead of the competition.

Join Expert Marketing Advisors’ President and Advisor, Courtney Kehl, and Business Development & Partnership Manager, Vincent Sanchez, in discussing the importance of digital marketing and impact it can make to your bottom line.

You will learn:

  • How to set-up a sales pipeline & marketing funnel
  • New trends and truths to incorporate into your marketing strategy
  • The power of a data-driven marketing and sales strategy

Courtney Kehl:

Welcome to our webinar. We’re excited to have you. I always typically open with good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, depending on where you are in the world. Thanks so much for joining us. We’re going to cover two truths and a lie. Our marketing edition basically diving into the digital landscape.

Things have changed a lot over the last few years, more so than ever before. So what kind of looking back on things from years past and looking forward on what we’re seeing in today’s landscape. So let’s dive in. I want to introduce you to Vincent he’s joining me here kind of putting him on the, on the spot.

So Vincent, if you want to go ahead and introduce yourself, that’d be great. Yeah,

Vincent Sanchez:

yeah, sure. Hi everyone. I’m Vincent and I manage partnerships as well as business development here with expert marketing advisors.

Courtney Kehl:

And thrilled to have yet, and we have a lot of fun each day, and I’m always great to kind of put folks on a, on a pedestal and be able to speak about the different things that were encountered.

I’m Courtney the founder of expert marketing advisors. And really, I always kind of say that. Kind of sit back and try to stay out of the way and let the team [00:01:00] Tim know, shine and lean in with our various passions. Alrighty, let’s talk about digital marketing. So Vincent, tell me what’s the landscape of digital marketing look like.

Vincent Sanchez:

Yeah. So, you know, these are just the various different components of digital marketing. It’s really important to have a mix of different inbound and outbound tactics and, and different channels that you’re leveraging. So on the left here, we have you see the marketing channels includes both paid and are.

And we’d like to start off and double down on the organic and find things that are working there before we start putting money and delving down on those wins with the paid efforts. On the right-hand side, you’ll see the sales and partner channels and, you know, sales is a good tactic or important to have those outbound efforts there.

And then it’s for partners it’s really important to leverage and we found this to be extremely successful for us, and that allows us to grow and extend our. Significantly. So, and then at the bottom, these are other components that’ll help drive your marketing. And that’s what the customer and advocate channels, and, you know, [00:02:00] consists of like PR and AR efforts, webinars which we’ll touch later on.

But that’s pretty much provides the landscape of digital marketing right there.

Courtney Kehl:

Yeah. And I’ll just kind of reiterate the organic is where we like to work with high growth companies. We certainly want to make sure we’re spending their money properly and we’re being very conscious.

The organic is an easy way to ensure we’re identifying. We’ve got that, that, you know, identified of course we’re going to double down and, and really get the paid channels going on the sales side to Vincent’s point. The the sales and partners can lean in of course, with the inbound and outbound.

But doing those, those calls and. Converting all the marketing activities over to opportunities and meetings. Folks often ask once they’ve launched. And once I really got things going, how do they exponentially grow? And I always recommend look at those channels and look at those partner programs.

And if you can lean in with any of your tech alliances and folks with those sorts you can really double down on that, that those efforts on the customer marketing side, it’s the huge opportunity. If you can get your customer [00:03:00] voice out there and let them tell the story forward. And the product value just really kind of speaks for itself there.

And that that’s what your media and your press stories will, will come from there. Great. So what does it take you know, what are the skills that are needed to execute a digital marketing? What do you, what are you looking for in your team? So let’s talk about some of that Vincent putting you on the spot yet.

Once again,

Vincent Sanchez:

Right. So obviously it’s important to have a very important or a good website developed. And on those on your website, you want to have you know, the assets like slide decks, videos, blogs in order to create those assets, then, you know, you need a good copywriter and ghost writer. You know, these are all just like Courtney was saying, there’s a different skillsets and that you, and that you want to have part of your team and you want to make sure your team has these capabilities.

So operations management kind of ties in with the tech stack hygiene. You wanna make sure that your data, which we’ll get into later is a good quality and is properly maintained. Messaging is obviously very important as you find your you find and refine your ideal customer profile. And you’re able to [00:04:00] target better with good messaging.
And then that also ties in with your design and brand. And then social media management is something that’s, you know, no longer, a nice habit is something that’s very necessary. And we found that to have a lot of success, especially recently with our social selling and our social lives.

Courtney Kehl:

Yeah.

When did he going to say about this as we, we really, you know, over the years, you’ll, you’ll notice that it’s not just one person that can really have all of these various skills under their hat. As folks refine their different passions and you need to get really good on the creative side. You know, the operation side is drastically different than, than design and brand and the creative but it’s really great to bring it all together and have everything.

Kind of, you know, running in the same direction and be cohesive as a team. Right. More to it on the strategy side, of course, this is I’m bringing it all together. As you’re putting out campaigns, you want to make sure you’re identifying where those twins are and clearing out those [00:05:00] bottlenecks the program side mapping to, you know, specific campaigns, but getting that sort of inbound and outbound tactics set and what those activities are and, and see, see where we can really put something more specific for your, your audience together.

Events site on a digital component where we were over the last couple of years, as I’m sure you’ve all seen. Physical pull is also merged with virtual and we’ve got these hybrid events PRN and AR you know, this is where you’re, you’re really leveraging the digital component to. Media is actually mapping over to, you know, your blogs as well, and really getting that extra extra footprint out there SCO and SCM speaks for itself, but, you know, getting that page one ranking whether it’s paid for or earned and to just identify those keywords to where your audience is searching.

And then of course, sales, enablement, and partner enablement, as we already talked, touched on pulling those marketing activities through to ensure your sales sales org, and your partners are able to leverage the goodness that you’re creating. [00:06:00] Great. Anything on that one visit?

Vincent Sanchez:

No, no. I think we should move on to the busting, these marketing myths.

All right. Cool.

Courtney Kehl:

Yes. So back to our theme, two truths and a lie. So I’ll put you on the spot. Look at the key focus areas that move they

Vincent Sanchez:

heal. Right? So let’s choose the lions play a little game here. Obviously two truths and one lie. So the first statement is data is king. Second is social media is a must have for all B2B companies.

And the last statement is webinars. Drive lead generation for marketing programs and drum roll, please. And the lie here is. Webinars are a drive lead generation from marketing programs. So I think there’s, there’s,

Courtney Kehl:

it’s a little controversial here, but this is something that we’re seeing again, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago versus today.

Webinars are no [00:07:00] longer bringing none, no longer the tactic that would be listed among the, you know, the top five for lead generation. My background is demand gen and I’m a numbers person. And we have definitely seen the appetite for webinars has declined. But here we are on a webinar ourselves. So, you know, what does this mean?

It means we really would look at webinars now. So more so as a thought leadership. A set for the recording, the, and really as a component that you would use for your SEO strategy as well. And we’ll dive into that in a little bit, but let’s, let’s go back to the first one. Data is king. So diving into that piece, what makes your data what brings us all together?

So, you know, as we all look at the left-hand side of your pipe here, I’m not sure if you can see the, the arrow moving. Great. So, you know, this is an example of you know, we, we, our experience comes from specifically B2B tech companies and working with folks kind of, sort [00:08:00] of, again, in the high growth stage.

But certainly what you would see as a typical marketing funnel on the top, there a mapping through to your sales pipe and on the left, but various tools that you might encounter as you’re building that out to support your tech stack or to support your pipelines. Pretty common ones, obviously.

ZoomInfo Marquetto which were more commonly now seen HubSpot is kind of taking over that landscape perhaps because I’m at the Adobe acquisition. Usually when folks go through acquisitions and there’s an opportunity for competitors to kind of lean in there sales often outreach or interchange.

I didn’t mean to overstep zoom, zoom webinar, obviously we’re on one now. And then, and then you’ve got the CRM so that the, of the bunch, right? So HubSpot is also a CRM competitor with sales force is the beast of the bunch. And then you’ve got your Microsoft dynamics, which is a little bit more of the legacy of the crew, which has also come out with their own marketing automation tool as well.

Okay. So what depends regardless of [00:09:00] what you choose on your Microsoft, regardless of what you choose on your tech stack as you set up your pipeline and your marketing funnel what’s most important is making sure that they all flow together. And as your tools push out new releases and you’ve got everything mapped together.

This is where, you know, making sure your CRM is the single source of truth. And is actually, you know, their data is clean and the hygiene is kept, kept all together in one place. So bringing that all together, data is king,

Vincent Sanchez:

right? So. That brings us to our next MythBuster. So we’re gonna play the game again and you’re gonna choose a lie.
So first statement is operations. Man, operations managers are very important. The second is data in your CRM is your single source of truth. And the last statement is you should always question your data. This is kind of a tough one. This is a tough one. And we might be contradicting ourselves a little bit here, but we’ll explain further.

And so the lie here is [00:10:00] actually. Going to be the second statement data in your CRM is your single source of truth. So Corey, I know you mentioned, you know, that obviously your CRM should be you know, we are primary source for your data, but you want to kind of touch on why it’s that’s that’s

Courtney Kehl:

Well, yeah, I mean, so again, going back five to 10 years ago, this was the common phrase.
Your CRM is your single source of truth for, so this was something that folks would say to kind of drill it in. This is where we point all your sales folks to this is where we point obviously your revenue folks, and you find, you know, at the end of the day, your board is looking at an evaluation is taking place.

So it was a common term or common phrase that you would hear w part of why we’re kind of calling this out is again, we wanted to make sure all of your tools that map into your CRM are kept up to date. The hygiene is clean. And you really have the, this goes back to your operations [00:11:00] managers and, and really everything is flowing together.

So we’d definitely recommend that you keep a regular cadence around your. And and you’ve got things set up properly. So number three, question your data. Lift up the rock, look, look under the hood. We, we do go into the individual tool, sets themselves to look at how they’re reporting on data and what’s taking place within each of those.

And then of course, how that it’s reflected in your actual CRM, which is where we do where you should be pointing everybody. But it is a complicated, complicated web of, of operations and tools as we keep layering on more and more great, anything around that. And we also encourage. Chime in there’s Q and a box there.

So feel free to ask questions along the way. Cool.

Vincent Sanchez:

And then now we’re moving on to you know, social media and I talked about earlier, how it’s not, not a nice to have [00:12:00] anymore, but a must tab. And so here, we’re going to dive into some of the best practices to grow your, your social media.

Courtney Kehl:

Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, on the left, there is an example of what we’ve seen, just incredible uptick incredible just burst of engagements and conversions and growth. As just an example actually that would be, yeah. Sorry. That’s on the right. I don’t have enough coffee on me. But basically, you know, pre COVID and you’re all thinking of world in the world of pre COVID versus post COVID.

So media has just completely taken off. And, and it’s just an incredible appetite for people to interact and, and engage with each other on, on channels, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, and the likes of these are the two that we would recommend for. LinkedIn is of course, where you’re going to find your decision-makers in Twitter is where you’re gonna find your influencers.
Some best practices there on the left is there, you know, [00:13:00] try as much as possible to keep things around the industry, curated content, and then 20% leading back to your actual website and around your own original content, the branded pieces. So it’s tough. It’s a tough thing to do folks typically, do you want to push things back to themselves?

So it’s kind of a tricky balance. I also of course keep everything very much sort of around expert thought leadership and valuable content. Then folks will want to engage in, in gateway. And then keeping things around your messaging. This is the digital marketing component, you know, that the kind of bringing it all back to one solid voice and your tone for consistency and what you’re doing across one channel, you can do of course, across the other channels.

And kind of getting more, getting as much bang for your buck. Great. That’s a real-world example. Again, I, it just blows me away at how, how much how much of an impact the social channels are making. So this was just more recently Q1 of this year, some results that we’ve seen just by attorney turning the knobs ever so [00:14:00] slightly and just week over week and month over.

And increases in impacts. I’m so happy to dive in with some more specifics around this. If anyone is interested, please reach out. Well, we’ll show you that actual case study itself. Just incredible. So we’re seeing this for ourselves as well. Lot of this translates over to social selling. All right.

Let’s talk about programs.

Vincent Sanchez: Great. Right. So, you know, it’s This is just a typical example of what it’s like or whatever are our monthly. Demand gen cadence looks like, and we like to call us the hamster wheel. And we want to be as consistent as possible with this cadence. So whether we’re running this month, one of Q1 or middle of the year later in the year, we want to try and be consistent as possible with this.
And just keep these things going. So this is where we pull in, you know, the, the Mo the webinar monthly running the SEO date and social media daily continuing to push those assets there. Yeah, Courtney, you want to do

Courtney Kehl:

the foundation going? So from here, then [00:15:00] it’s easy to scale and then layer on campaign specifically around us or, you know, to some segmented The targeted and this poll and then some specific segments an outbound emails and cents and nurtures.

But it’s off of your verticals or industries. But getting the base foundation here where something is happening every single week. Yeah, you’re pushing a new asset out that I’m fulfilling in a specific area or gap in your buyer journey. Have a blog that relates to your webinar so that their right hand is talking to the left you know, level your webinars so that the recording is then transcribed.

And you can put, you put the, of course, put that of course, on your, on your website. So you’re getting that SEO value. And then the newsletter is a. Of essentially those, a minimum of those three things and put a teaser as to what’s coming around the corner for the next month. Once you kind of get that sort of muscle memory in place, then you can really start kind of breaking into specific campaigns and, [00:16:00] and start segmenting again, of course, by, by either industry or audience.
Yeah. Some quick tips around this to really sorta you know, get some wins on the table. And once you’ve got your cadence there, start elevating your SEO. So something that we’re seeing happening, it seemed to happen more and more is we identify your your targeted keywords. And spin up some cute, some knowledge centers or a learning centers glossary of terms.

So if you’re trying to go after specific AWS terms or specific, you know, some niche terms in your industry, you know, SD LAN this or that, or SAS, this or that Take those targeted keywords and turn them into a knowledge center on your website. And those will really get you those sort of move the needle for your page one ranking as, as you start to, you know, earn those in the, in the long run.

Another one that we’re seeing more commonly of course, is taking your press releases and repurposing them as blog topics, [00:17:00] as blogs also just kind of gives you that moment in time. Taking the webinars, transcribing them for SEO and including those on your website, people digest. Digest information in different ways.
Of course. So again, kind of going back to the original myths webinars as a lead gen tool, people are not attending as much during the live webinar, but they are digesting them later and as is a recording, or of course reading the transcription taking the webinar and also turning it into a blog.

So a blog topic is a great one too, to just kind of get as much bang for your buck. Then internally. LinkedIn is important. So as you go through your different pages on your site, look for those keywords link within your website, give it, give your kind of, sort of calcium for your bones, strengthen it.

And then of course, look for those opportunities to link out. To perhaps your partners or of course, to, to your customers and other areas that would make sense to of course increase your digital footprint and kind of that spider web effect. And [00:18:00] then I already mentioned up with team webinars and applause.

Upload replays on social media platform. So don’t discredit a YouTube take those recordings and they’re shit out there on YouTube as well. We’re finding a lot of traction there and have that presence and then take smaller snippets in a person and use those for social media too. And just have that constant okay.

Presence there. I think those are some quick ones. So it was quite a lift there once you, again, kind of get that wheel turning, it gets it gets easier and easier each time. Anything else on that one, Vincent, putting you on the spot again?

Vincent Sanchez:

No, I think we covered all the bases there. I’m not sure if we wanted to, to pull into the Q and a, if anyone has any questions for us.

There’s I guess one question that I’ve been posed very recently or quite often is, you know, what is a, a channel that you’ve seen a lot of success with and more and more I’m starting to see. The social social media aspects of social selling is becoming very important. Social selling in short is just, you know, a way to engage and get to know your prospects through [00:19:00] social media.

We’ve seen LinkedIn be the primary source for us and for a lot of our clients as well. And it’s really important in the B2B space to have your outreach done there. And you know, on Crunchbase, I was reading this article that said that 80% of salespeople that are using social media are outselling.

Those who aren’t. So I think that if that’s something that you’re not doing right now, that’s it’s very, it would, you’re gonna find a lot of quick wins there and it’s a really important channel to leverage. If you’re not already. Yeah,

Courtney Kehl:

absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it’s, it’s drastically different from five years ago to the day.

And you know, just tracking the lead source from LinkedIn converting and the first meeting if 50% of our, our touches are coming through that channel alone. Yeah. That’s a great, great call out for sure. Yeah. Great question. Definitely on the social science side. What does that mean? And what does that look like?

There’s tools for that as well? It, it, [00:20:00] it definitely keeps you busy Vincent,

Vincent Sanchez:

very busy. There’s a lot of times where I’m like, oh, did I miss that? Because there’s just so many different messages rolling in. And it’s just a really good way to connect with people in the community. As well, even if you’re not doing any social selling or just networking in general and talking to other leaders and people in the community,

Courtney Kehl:

another area that we’re seeing come back, which is great to see as the physical events, so long to kind of keep on the radar.
And that’ll translate very quickly over to the social side. We’re putting for ourselves one event a month on the calendar, just for networking purposes. And of course, with the physical, we will translate that over to the link, our, our LinkedIn growing on our LinkedIn network. Yeah.

Vincent Sanchez:

I attended one actually just a few days ago.

And it’s just, it’s nice to see. I mean, obviously everyone wants to be cautious and careful with everything that’s going on in the world, but I think it’s nice to see that a lot of people are more and more [00:21:00] willing to go out there and you know, find other people in their industries. And and it’s just, there’s just a longing for.

Connecting in personnel. I think that’s, it’s becoming more, a bigger demand, I think.

Courtney Kehl:

Yep. Yep. Great. All right. Well, thanks everyone for your time. If we didn’t cover anything or if there’s anything that you ever want to talk about in general, I love talking shop. I’m certainly here to connect as well. So our contact at expert marketing advisors feel free to reach out as well.

And we’ll of course have. So thank you, Katherine. Appreciate it. All right. And anyone else as well, of course, feel free. Thanks so much everyone. We’re going to go ahead and leave it here. Thanks.

Vincent Sanchez:

Bye. Have a good one.

 

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