What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

During these scorching summer days, let’s take a moment to check our collective B2B temperature. Just as monitoring your body temperature can help detect disease or sickness, so can monitoring various factors in your B2B sales and marketing strategies.

With the seesawing conditions we’ve encountered over the past few years, it’s crucial to maintain a deep understanding of your B2B health and wellness. Doing so helps you make informed decisions and positions your team for success – are you consistently inconsistent or on track?

Give this song by Hot Hot Heat a listen as we stay cool and see what the experts are saying this week.

Heat Alert! B2B Marketing Trends in 2023

Despite the looming threat of recession, 92% of marketers expect their budgets to increase or stay the same this year (at least for now). 86% say that data privacy regulations have impacted their marketing strategy over the past year. And most agree there’s one tactic that’s the biggest trend, has the highest ROI, and tops the to-do list for this year.

Those are just a few of the takeaways from HubSpot’s recently released The State of Marketing: Marketing Trends in 2023 from AI to Z report. This 46-page report is packed with stats and insights on all aspects of marketing from HubSpot and partners including Wistia and Litmus.

While the entire study is worth a read, here are some key takeaways and points of interest from the report:

1. SEO: Surprisingly Enticing Opportunity
   Given that organic search is one of the top two sources of traffic for business websites (at least on the B2B side), and has high conversion rates, it’s surprising that this research reports, “29% of marketers use a search-optimized website and blog to attract and convert leads.”
   Only 29%?! That doesn’t sound right. It’s also inconsistent with findings elsewhere in this study…
2. Video Marketing: Hotter Than Ever
   Video marketing is huge and somehow keeps getting huger. It’s been “the year of video” every year since 2017. Per the new HubSpot report, “Video is the most popular and effective media format for the fourth year in a row.”
3. Influencer Marketing: It’s Social (But Pick Your Platforms Carefully)
   Influencer marketing continues to grow in importance across industries, though priorities, platforms, and practices are much different between B2B and B2C influencer marketing.
4. The Last Word (Acronym, Actually) on Marketing Trends for 2023
   Likely because of the timing of the study, the research doesn’t say a lot about the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on marketing this year and beyond. It does note that AI is where everybody’s hanging out… marketing tools are now everywhere; they’ll help marketers with the perennial demand to “do more with less”; and “Content creators and marketers now have a new skill to learn – getting good at using AI.”

Streaming – Communism vs Capitalism?

I think sometimes we expect simple or quick answers to problems when the real solution is a horribly complex mess of contradictions that’ll chew you up and spit you out anyway. With that in mind, there was a weird peace of mind to be found in reading Will Page’s very interesting thoughts on the state of streaming.

Page likens the friction around streaming remuneration as being like communism meeting capitalism. The ‘communism’ view is that every song is worth the same. The ‘capitalism’ view is the opposite.

Seems that artists need to find other ways to generate revenue now, and need to be getting more adventurous, more inquisitive, and more playful in how they are connecting fans with music.

I don’t believe music’s cultural heft has diminished. But at some point, it’s like we all accepted that it’s just worth less now, and that was that. But like share prices, these things can move up as well as down, and perhaps we’re approaching a point where the value of music needs to be focused on a bit more.

What about B2B? As marketers and B2B professionals, unpredictability’s our responsibility. The value of certain things – including the goods and services that we provide – can go up and down unexpectedly. Things like a State of Marketing report can help mitigate some of that unpredictability, though.

So get more adventurous, more inquisitive, and more playful! How do you leverage data from reports like HubSpot’s to connect (or reconnect) with your fans?

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello!

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Have You Done a B2B Temperature Check? appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

I was at a concert the other night. The singer, Edwin, told the audience it was five years to the day since they had last played at that venue. And then quickly followed up saying it’s really only been three years since we all lost two years of our lives due to COVID.

That got me thinking – is that how most of us feel? Have we lost two years of our personal and professional lives? I’d just like to reach the point where we’re looking forward and focusing on the NEXT two years.

Give this song by I Mother Earth a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week!

HubSpot sales trends – Not Quite benchmarks

I’ve spent much of the past two years highlighting findings from HubSpot’s benchmark data in these emails. Since they’ve stopped publishing those benchmarks, I found some other interesting B2B sales data of theirs that should help you as you plan for 2023.

• Top Sellers spend an average of six hours every week researching prospects.
• Need and budget are the two biggest factors in whether a prospect connects with a rep.
• 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes.
• 80% of sales require five follow-up calls, whereas 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up attempt.
• 69% of buyers have accepted cold calls from new providers.
• 57% of C-level buyers prefer to be contacted by phone.
• 30% of sales leaders track scheduled meetings as a productivity metric.
• The average outside sales call will cost $308. Meanwhile, the average inside sales call costs $50.

Interested in learning more? There are tons more stats – you can see what you want here.

Not Quite whistling while you work

As many workplaces get ready for the holidays or have employee holiday events, you’ll hear music echoing through the office (or the home office!). We know music stimulates multiple areas of the brain and can help you focus and feel happier. But does it make you more productive? And if so, do different musical genres affect productivity differently?

While ambient noise is great for improving concentration and creativity, pop can help you accomplish tasks more quickly and with fewer mistakes. Classical music is also great for improving accuracy, and dance music can improve proofreading speed by 20%.

It kinda makes you think… Though music can help you get in the zone and drown out noisy distractions at the office, it’s sometimes beneficial to change the station or turn off the music completely. Learning new things requires your brain to remember instructions and facts, and listening to music with lyrics can interfere with your ability to process and retain new information.

In addition, if your job requires deep focus, it’s best to choose familiar songs, since new songs can surprise you and distract you from your job.

Do you listen to music at work? Do you use it to get pumped up or to mellow out? Hopefully, these blog posts help!

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello!

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Reviewing B2B Sales Benchmarks appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

First things first, why are we obsessed with Mondays? Monday mornings – the subject of many a song or story. Why such pain? Maybe it’s the rush to get the garbage out to the curb in time or to get the kids off to school. Or maybe the rush to get a weekly email newsletter (or blog post) written and ready to go before the work week starts!

Give this song by Imagine Dragons a listen with me if you’re also a believer in procrastination as a great motivator!

B2B for the Holidays

Second thing second, ’tis the season to scale back your marketing and prepare for 2023, right? Wrong! Getting high-quality leads and generating steady demand through this holiday season doesn’t have to be a struggle. Keeping your campaigns running is a great way to ensure steady lead flow and a predictable Q1!

As economic worries continue to trouble B2B execs, many companies are worried about price hikes, labour shortages, and cutting costs. Scaling back on your marketing activities can be short-sighted and detrimental to your 2023 pipeline. Your sales team is (hopefully) focused on closing those year-end deals – so marketing needs to pump up its efforts. The holiday season is a GREAT time to get in front of qualified leads. In the 25+ years I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen the proof!

Here are just a few sources of holiday B2B lead gen ideas – give them a try!

• Keep your B2B leads & sales flowing over the holidays
• B2B marketing content trends for the holidays
• Email marketing for Christmas

When HubSpot published their B2B benchmark data last year (Why did you stop, HubSpot? WHY??!?), it showed that response rates to marketing and sales conversations continued at a healthy pace in December and January. I’ll do my best over the next few weeks to share other data sources that can help you make your case… so you can show your team and make them a believer!

Spotify Billion Club

Last things last, in tech we like to talk about unicorns – those startups that are valued over $1 billion. What are the ‘unicorns’ in music streaming?

Check out this graphic illustrating all songs (by decade) that have been streamed over a billion times on Spotify (Imagine Dragons’ “Believer” was at 2.3 billion streams at the time of writing this post.)

So the next logical question is: how much do these streams represent financially to these artists? We’ve all read the stories outlining how Spotify pays much less per stream than many believe is fair.

If you’re interested, check out this calculator to see how much your favorite artist may have generated from those billion+ streams…

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello!

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post ‘Tis the Season to Keep Leads Flowing appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

I’ve been looking at a lot of data this week. Sometimes after staring at spreadsheets too long, I see these data points as a thousand points of light – what do they tell us? What trends do they reveal?

Give this song by Neil Young a listen with me as we see what the experts (and the data) are saying this week…

HubSpot CRM Data

It’s all about the data, right? In looking at the HubSpot data through December 2021, we can see some interesting results compared to previous months:

• Just about all sales and marketing activity was down in December – not a big surprise for year-end, and consistent with December 2020.
• Sales Emails Sent remain below benchmark, as they have since the pandemic began – though Responses continue to sit well above.
• While Deals Closed took a small dip in December with everything else, there was a drastic drop in Deals Created (down 90% from November!), bringing them the lowest they’ve been in 2+ years!

Some troubling statistics here – and we continue to see that an omnichannel approach to marketing is required to compete in today’s marketplace. Maybe there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead – what do you think? What are you seeing with your teams as we enter the new year?

A Man of the People? Neil Young, Spotify, and Numbers

You’ve probably heard the latest Spotify/Neil Young news (if not, you can get caught up here). Joe Rogan and Spotify may feel like Satan to Neil Young’s camp, but not to their own fans. Seeing how this has played out really got me thinking about audiences and target markets. You may remember I looked at Spotify’s ‘wrapped’ back in December, and Joe Rogan’s podcast was the top streamed for a second year running. So if Neil Young’s streaming numbers were higher, would Spotify have made a different decision? Of course!

Music subscriber market share data was released recently. Amazon Music once again out-performed Spotify in terms of growth (25% vs. 20%), but the standout success story was YouTube Music, growing by more than 50% in the 12 months leading up to Q2 2021.

YouTube Music was the only Western DSP to increase global market share in this period. It particularly resonates among Gen Z and younger Millennials, which should worry Spotify, as their core base of Millennial subscribers from the 2010s is now beginning to age.

How does this impact B2B? As always – make sure you’re targeting the right content to the right audience on the right platform. With competition on the rise, we’re seeing Spotify keep hope alive by assessing two opposing parties and making a business decision based on what the largest portion of their target market will consume (and where they have a vested interest).

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Data and Numbers and Stats, oh my! appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

Who advises you? Do you have an advisory board? Mentors? Colleagues that help you with your day-to-day decisions? What about in your personal life? I hope you get value out of our relationship, and every once in a while you get something real and helpful! Why? Just because…

Give this song by Jane’s Addiction a listen with me and kick the week off right as we see what the experts are saying…

When Was the Last Time…

… you checked out the HubSpot CRM data?

It seems like things are picking up! Normally when reviewing this data, I pick out a few notable statistics that I think will be of interest. But this time, let me summarize it: all activity has improved!

Since the end of summer, just about all measured activity – deals created and closed, sales emails and calls, contact growth, conversations – have been increasing month over month. Not only that, but with the exception of sales email responses, they’re all performing WELL over the January 2020 benchmark.

This bodes well for the rest of Q4! Tracked on a pre-COVID benchmark (that was a long time ago), we’re seeing that many companies were resilient and are feeling fit coming out on the other side, and are looking to finish 2021 strong! Are you there with them?

If I Were You…

… I’d look at TikTok as a channel.

We’ve discussed TikTok’s presence in the social media space, and how it’s an integral part of any new artist’s success. It’s not only survived, but it’s challenging the big boys of social media. If you’re an artist and you don’t have your music available to TikTokers, you’re missing out on a LOT of cash.

As of this week, Led Zeppelin (@ledzeppelin) has made its music available to TikTok users and has shared all sorts of other content. Heck – even the Beatles (@TheBeatles) have an account now!

And speaking of Zep – you’ll remember that this week is the 50th anniversary of their fourth album. They’ve released a cool video series focused on the anniversary – check it out!

Are you on TikTok? Do you feel that this channel can help you out in the B2B world? And if you think it’s just a fad – are you running the risk of everyone telling you, Oh, you really should have known?

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Who are Your Sources for Advice? appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

Marketing is all about timing. The right message to the right audience at the right time. So – is sending a weekly email on a big public holiday a bad move? We’ll see! But I guarantee that you’ll always get SOMETHING out of the emails (which is why you should get them direct instead of waiting for the blog post)! I promise I’ll keep it short this week, but there’s some great info below…

Give this song by Blondie a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying.

Call me anytime? Well, not quite…

What’s the best time for a sales call? If you’re a sales rep, you might say anytime… but what about your prospect/customer? Factoring in the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the way many people work and engage with businesses, flexible work locations and schedules have made sales call trends more unpredictable than before. Let’s look at HubSpot’s research on the best times to call buyers in 2021!

1. Best Day for Sales Calls – Wednesday and Thursday remain the best days to call prospects. By mid-week, people have had enough time to settle into their working week and take care of pressing matters without your call feeling like an interruption.
2. Best Morning Time for Sales Calls – The highest likelihood of answered calls is 10-11 am. The last hour of the workday, 4-5 pm, is also good to reach prospects as they wind down for the day.
3. Worst Time of Day for Sales Calls – Calling before 10 am can cause uncertainty about whether your prospects are ready and willing to take your call.
4. Best Response Time – There could be a 450% difference in response time for leads receiving a follow-up call within an hour of submitting an inquiry and those that didn’t! Call those leads ASAP!
5. Persistence Pays Off – Over 30% of leads never receive a follow-up call after initial contact. But salespeople have a 90% success rate on making contact with their lead on the SIXTH call. Make more attempts and you can experience a 70% growth in contact rates!
6. Speed-to-Call Trumps All – Responding quickly to a lead can make or break your ability to close the sale! 78% of buyers buy from the first company to respond; sales teams that don’t respond within five minutes experience a lead qualification decrease of 80%.

So what have we learned here? Be smart about your calling – when you call, how many times, and how quickly! And if you can’t handle the volume or be consistent, talk to an outsourced provider to see how they can help – anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any day, anyway…

I hope you’re enjoying your Labo(u)r Day weekend and wish you and your families all the best. Let’s finish the year strong!

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post You CAN’T Call any Day or Night – Best Calling Times for Sales Reps appeared first on Virtual Causeway.