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

What scares you? What challenges or obstacles from your professional life occupy your dreams (or haunt your nightmares)?

Hopefully handing over the reins for this week’s blog post won’t keep Rick up at night…

I’m Marlene Keay, and I’ve worked with Rick at Virtual Causeway for 16 years, managing hundreds of lead generation campaigns that help our clients’ sales and marketing teams achieve success!

Give this Freddy-inspired song by Dokken a listen as we share some tricks that help our team and clients sleep soundly and treat you to what the experts are saying this week.

Meeting No-Shows – The Stuff of Nightmares

Those prospects that have committed to meet with you – they look like a great lead on paper – persona, ICP, need, and pain. You’ve done your homework and are all set. You’re a pro, so you join a few minutes early and then… wait… and wait. What happened? Where are they? What do you do now?

With so many virtual meeting platforms used every day our computers just can’t seem to keep up. Use this as an opportunity to serve your potential customer and give them a call directly. We suggest waiting 5-7 minutes and then reaching out by phone.

Here are our top tips for scheduling meetings so that maybe tonight they won’t be gone:

• Schedule calls as soon as possible, preferably within 5 business days.
• Follow up if the prospect hasn’t accepted your invite within 24 hours of sending.
• Call the prospect rather than having them join a conference bridge.
• Send a reminder a few hours before the scheduled meeting time.
• Use a strong, direct, prospect-centric title in your calendar invite – not “follow-up” or “check-in.”
• Sell the meeting, not the product! Focus on the value of investing their time in meeting with you, not more product features. For example, “My colleague Don will join this call and he is an expert in companies going through similar challenges as you.”
• Avoid scheduling calls during high no-show rate times like Monday AM and Friday PM. Track your own data as there may be differences based on the industry and the role (such as avoiding meetings with finance roles at month-end).
• Develop a process for rescheduling “ghosted” meetings. In my experience, you’ll be able to reschedule 50-75% of the no-shows.

What do you think? What strategies have you found work to make your meetings stick? If you have some ideas, come my way and let me know – I’d love to hear them!

How to Scare a B2B Marketer

According to this article from MarketingWeek, the number that strikes fear into the hearts of B2B CMOs is… 16%.

The LinkedIn Customer Insights Team recently analyzed the sales and marketing overlap of 7,046 companies, and found that the average overlap between marketing and sales reach is only 16%. That means in most companies each department is talking to a different buyer.

So how do you break the spell? When sales and marketing overlap, performance booms. The data shows that buyers are much more likely to respond to sellers if they’ve been exposed to marketing within the last 30 days. In fact, on average, they’re 19% more likely to accept a LinkedIn connection request and 15% more likely to open an InMail message from sales.

Don’t leave your sales and marketing teams standing in the night alone. The LinkedIn analysis found that high alignment can increase marketing-generated revenue by 208%, increase customer retention by 36%, and reduce sales and marketing expenses. Now those numbers will help you sleep well tonight!

Horror Movie Songs to Give You a Fright

Do you have your Halloween playlist ready? Horror movies and heavy music just go together so well, don’t they? So get your speaker ready to play these horror movie songs guaranteed to scare you (and the neighbours) this Halloween!

And don’t hesitate to call me (Marlene!) to brainstorm or just say hello!

Looking forward,
Marlene

Marlene Keay, Senior Project Manager, Client Services | marlenek@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/marlenekeay

The post The Haunting of Meeting-Ghost House 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!

It’s hard to believe it’s late September already. The days are still sunny and warm, but things get a little bit back to a routine. School is back in session, trips have been taken and we’re starting to gear up for fall – and many of us can’t stop thinking about Q4!

Give this song by Red Hot Chili Peppers a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week…

Addicted to the shindig?

Last week was the first ‘live’ #dreamforce conference in three years. I’ve been to my share of these events, and boy can Salesforce throw a party! The first time I saw Foo Fighters was at Dreamforce way back in 2008. As someone that’s been a Salesforce user since the beginning, I’ve followed their rise closely.

With a reported in-person attendance of 40,000, it was significantly smaller than the peak pre-pandemic numbers of over 150,000, when every hotel in San Francisco would sell out, but it was still substantial. And if you count the 110,000 who watched some part of the event online (including myself), the numbers are pretty impressive.

Is it lingering COVID fears? Economic worries? Complexity of foreign travel? Whatever the reason, the numbers were closer to Dreamforce attendance from 10 years ago – when the Red Hot Chili Peppers (this year’s entertainment) first played at the conference!

How ’bout you? Were you at Dreamforce this year? And if not, what kept you?

Music the great communicator

We’ve all misheard lyrics before. Even searching lyrics online for favourite songs can bring up inaccurate transcriptions. But when you listen to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” have you ever heard Kurt Cobain sing…

With the lights out
It’s Las Vegas
Hear me all now
Entertainers

According to WordFinder by YourDictionary, it’s incredibly common for people to mishear lyrics, a phenomenon known as a “mondegreen.” The concept first came around in 1954, as defined by writer Sylvia Wright as “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung.” Some of the most common examples include “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” and “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.”

How does this apply to B2B? When you go write your message on the pavement, are you sure your message is clear… that your audience knows exactly what you’re saying? It’s always a good idea to take a step back and review – you might find something in need of clarification!

Have plans tomorrow? Join me!

Outbound Isn’t Dead (You Just Suck At It) – that’s my session at breadcrumb.io’s Hot Takes Live online event on Sept. 27.

But more importantly, there are 30 other top SaaS leaders dishing out hot takes and harsh truths on product-led growth, RevOps, marketing, and sales. Trendy marketing and sales strategies emerge seemingly every day, but – far more shocking than anything I ever knew – many of them don’t really live up to the hype! It’s free, and you can register here.

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 The B2B Live Event – A Comeback Story 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!

Things really are a team effort around here. I’m sure it’s the same at your organization – collaborating on content, customer activities, and marketing programs, to name a few. Nothing is more satisfying than being part of a successful, high-performing team, right? Hmm, perhaps I should be signing these posts ‘the Royal We’…

Give this song a listen as we see what the experts are saying this week.

The Ever-Elusive Alignment of Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing alignment. It’s been preached to death, hasn’t it? There’s no question how important it is – yet rarely do we see it happening!

SiriusDecisions found that companies with sales and marketing teams aligned achieve 24% faster growth rates and 27% faster profit growth. Are you struggling to get to that point? Well, here are a few more stats on why this ‘royal we’ is better together…

A collection of statistics that ZoomInfo compiled reflects 10% or more of revenue left on the table when B2B companies can’t align their sales and marketing on the right processes and tech (among many more findings – check out the full list here).

MarketingProfs shares a handy infographic with some pretty compelling numbers. Aligned organizations can:

• Increase revenues by 34%
• Increase customer retention by 36%
• Improve win rates by 38%

You said you believed it but believing won’t fly. It’s great to talk about sales and marketing alignment, but talking about it isn’t enough! If you’re still working to achieve that alignment, what’s holding you back?

Fake Artists, Passive Streams and DSPs

Whether you’ve stayed up-to-date with Spotify’s constant changes and announcements, it can’t be ignored – streaming services are top of mind! This article caught my eye, as it explains the “digital cesspool of greed” that is the world of Digital Service Providers (DSPs).

In particular, ‘fake artists’ comprise about 3 billion of Spotify’s streams. These are employees of production houses that generate songs at royalty rates lower than those normally paid to artists. Apparently, much of this music is generated in Sweden – and one production house in particular is responsible for creating songs for at least 62 fake artists on Spotify representing 7.7 million listeners per month!

This process is particularly rampant on Amazon Music, where around 70% of all activity is instigated via Alexa devices. The vast majority of streams are ‘passive’ sessions: users ask Alexa for some general kind of music and are channeled to pre-curated stations or playlists, all concocted by Amazon. And – you guessed it – a lot of this music comes from these production houses.

Does this really matter? There are always mass-produced content providers. In the context of B2B this is probably like hiring a larger firm that pumps out huge amounts of content vs. a freelance writer. Yes, these production houses are taking streams away from other artists, but is this just the natural behaviour of a free market?

You tell me!

As always, don’t hesitate to call ‘the royal Us’ to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

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

The post Marketing Content Mass Production appeared first on Virtual Causeway.