Three inquiries to make your marketing more effective
Nowadays, the planet has a quite distinct appearance. Companies are shifting away from the “growth at all costs” mentality of last summer, when growth rates of 70% and burn rates of 30% were acceptable (and even preferred), and towards a far more conservative objective of, say, 40% growth and 0% burn. It’s a change towards “sustainable growth.”
This puts a stronger emphasis on efficiency and targeting for B2B marketing. Prior to the onset of the economic downturn, there was already mounting need to demonstrate how marketing helps businesses achieve their sales targets. Revenue-driven marketing is now even more crucial in light of increased client acquisition costs, more competing channels, and restricting budgets.
Instead of concentrating only on growth, B2B marketers must also consider efficiency. Marketers may deepen the relationship between the marketing and sales teams, transform marketing into a profit centre rather than a cost centre, and show how marketing initiatives produce revenue by developing a sustainable go-to-market (GTM) engine that drives hyper-efficient growth.
The first step on the road to more effective and profit-driven marketing is to consider the following three issues:
1.Who Are Our Ideal Clients?
Adopting a revenue-driven strategy to marketing requires defining a consistent ideal customer profile (ICP) across sales and marketing. In order to generate as many leads as possible, a lead-centric marketing model places a strong emphasis on activity-based indicators, such as event attendees, conference leads, or email opens.
An ICP-centric marketing model places emphasis on prospects that are most likely to become customers who generate long-term business value. It’s OK if an ICP evolves as the business changes (it should!), but all functions should agree on the factors that define their ICP, creating both a common language and lens to look at each lead.
Prospects that are the best fit for an organization’s ICP are those that marketers should spend the most effort to reach, engage and close. From messaging and ad campaigns to their website, revenue-driven marketers should deliver personalized experiences for ICP prospects, especially if they’ve shown any buying intent. At Clearbit, we call this activating the ICP — and it is key to linking marketing more closely to revenue.
2.How Can We Interact With Sales & The C-Suite More Effectively?
As B2B marketers, we frequently speak in our own language, which makes it challenging to explain the value of what we do for the company. With all the acronyms and jargon, marketing can appear to non-marketers as a mysterious black box. Additionally, the lack of a shared language between marketing and sales can result in revenue-generating silos.
The first step is to have a common definition of an ICP, and it’s crucial that marketers use the same business indicators that revenue leaders are aware of and are interested in. These include the cost of client acquisition (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and recurring revenue on an annual and monthly basis (ARR and MRR). CEOs and CFOs are aware with and understand these metrics, thus they should be front and center in how companies track and measure their marketing activities.Not only will this make it easier to get buy-in for marketing spend, but it will demonstrate that marketing is both committed to and accountable for driving revenue. The result? Stronger alignment between marketing and sales as they work together toward the same revenue goals.
3.How Do We Make Better Use Of Our Data?
“Collect as much data as possible and we’ll figure out what to do with it later” is an easy trap to fall into. Although B2B marketers have more data than ever before at their fingertips, they struggle to make it actionable either by choice or lack of technology. Today’s marketers need access to automatic, fresh, accurate and consistent data across tools and functions to contribute to revenue growth in measurable ways.
This data, which ranges from firmographic to technographic, can help organizations dial in their ICP and optimize targeting, messaging, positioning, content, scoring, routing and all other processes. With added intent signals, marketers can focus campaigns and content on high-priority, in-market buyers for even more efficient marketing.Even as the current economic conditions make for a less certain outlook, there is still reason for marketers to be optimistic — and proactive — about growth. With greater access to data and intent signals than ever before, and more ways to put that intelligence into action, B2B marketers are primed to not only survive the current environment but thrive in it.
