I have spent over 16 years in B2B Marketing in the IT sector. Yep, that’s my niche, and I know it better than anything. The last decade or so I have been helping owners of technology companies drive their marketing strategies that complement their sales plans.
A lot of them often have some great ideas (and even greater expectations) in mind but their budgets often come from Tech Vendors or Distributors and that means they’re usually…
Ad Hoc + limited budgets + limited timelines + UNlimited expectations = EXTREMELY high chance of results nobody will be happy with (including us!)
Do we want to promise you many leads for these campaigns? We want to. We REALLY DO! But we can’t. And we will be the first ones to tell you that straightaway. We don’t want anybody to waste time on an effort-heavy, short-lived, short-deadlined ad hoc campaign that will leave everybody (including YOU!) feeling disappointed, angry at wasting money, time, and resources. That’s not what we do. Do some of these campaigns thrive and strike gold? Yes. Is it likely? No.
After doing 100s of campaigns over the years, I have heard the line “I hate marketing, it just doesn’t f*****ing work” and plenty of other one-liners that I can’t mention here because I’d have to bleep most of them…
Hence, I came up with a pragmatic solution on what we can do to fix this bloody mess. So today, I want to bring you my perspective on why some “Marketing Campaigns” strike gold and some fail repeatedly and end up in the “it just doesn’t work” bucket. It’s not about criticising people or campaigns but reviewing what works, what doesn’t, and what progressive changes could be made for your campaigns to work and make everybody happy with the results (including us!)
1. Lack of realistic expectations: The most, most, most important point is setting expectations. I am still going into meetings where it shows results like the ones below yet the campaign is still not considered successful due to lack of SQLs.
The main problem? We are NOT a sales company; we are marketing company. Our job it to drive attention to your brand/reps/company AND capture who exactly is paying attention. We can bring you MQLs and other opportunities through creative means, BUT the sales team has to take it from there. QUICKLY.
But where is the Sales team in all of that? Well, when we run campaigns like the one above, we are bringing your sales team enough people to call that they should barely have enough time for a lunch break. You want to reach that stage. You want someone to take ownership, someone with skin in the game who is really invested (on multiple levels) in a successful outcome. It will NOT work otherwise. I can show you how to set expectations for all of that by December and come January 2023 we can have a great combination in place to make your marketing investment a fraction of revenue for the next 12 months. But the expectations need to be set on who will take over following up the leads – and can do it as soon as they come in, while they’re still hot.
2. Lack of Consistency: Again, not rocket science, but ad hoc campaigns are like going to the gym for a week and looking in the mirror and saying “I hate the gym, it just f***king doesn’t work”. Or expecting to hit hole in one with just a single swing of your golf club. Yes, you have to invest time, energy, money, and be CONSISTENT. Or else you are going to keep playing the hit-and-miss game with your marketing. We have perfected a plan that could help you launch consistent campaigns that will drive drip leads consistently and automate the heck out of every process so that it saves you time, energy and MONEY. We call it the $10 Million Pipeline in 365 Days Program You have to keep hitting the market every day, consistently and that’s what we can help you do through our program. I can sit down with you to see if our program will suit your business and its main objectives for 2023.
3. Lack of Grand Slam Offers/CTAs: Imagine this: We need to get this done every month. Grand Slam Offers that are hyper-targeted to 50-100 accounts (up to 300 contacts) each month, dedicated to a sales rep’s ACCOUNT PLAN. These offers need to be So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No. How do you come up with Grand Slam Offers for your clients? I ask that you to read the book $100 Million offers by Alex Hormozi. Believe me, it will blow your mind and completely change what you think about what a compelling offer is like.
4. Lack of commitment: Firstly, let’s talk about the time commitment. Another line I have heard repeatedly is “We don’t have time for this! I have money from my vendor/distributor to run this campaign, so just get it done. All I need is leads.” Well, you can probably already tell how these campaigns went. I am not asking for 40 hours a week from you, but I need 3-4 hours of time commitment every week to spend on brainstorms, ideation, reviewing, approving, and following up on leads every week. We won’t be able to ensure CONSISTENCY or meet the EXPECTATIONS otherwise. It just doesn’t work and I can give you many more examples if you want.
Then there is the commitment of money. No one wants to put hands in their pocket to finance “Marketing that doesn’t work” . Well simply put, this all comes down to your business goals and targets. If you are happy growing at the rate where any new business is coming mainly based on referrals, or just the 2-3 main accounts, then maybe spending money on content creation through ad hoc projects is all you need. BUT if you want to grow on YoY X% then you will need to complement that with a consistent, committed strategy that will empower your sales teams with new leads to follow-up on a regular basis. We can surely work on mix and matching program budgets with MDFs that you receive from other vendors to reduce your cash commitment, but it’s not guaranteed to work.
There are plenty other issues that I have not covered here like lack of in-house skills, lack of market intelligence and so on which could also add on to limited success of your previous marketing campaigns, BUT the issues above are the most common and create the biggest damage in the long term so today I focused only on them.
So why am I batting for the Tech B2B Marketing Community with such vengeance? Because I really want this to work for you! I don’t want to be involved in ad hot activities that are sometimes a hit and mostly a miss. Based on all my experience, we have created a $10 Million Pipeline in 365 Days Program where we commit to this pipeline for you at a cost of 2% for the entire pipeline generated. This program won’t suit everyone and we can only do 10 of these a year too so it’s good for both of us to be sure it’s the right fit. There are no strings attached to see if it could work for you BUT, if you don’t like it, can you please be open enough to tell me that to my face? And I promise to do the same as time is important for the both of us.
If this all sounds fair and you are one of the those who wants to find our if this could work for your organisation, then hit me up on my personal email here: Sandeep@measurableimpact.com.au. OR you could also register your interest on our landing page after checking out how we do it what we do.
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