Are you a marketer feeling discouraged that your department is thought of as the cost center at your business? Or perhaps your department is respected and you are dreaming about someday having that CMO position, but you may feel intimidated about where to start?

Ever thought of marketing as a game of chess? A Lecturer, Public, Speaker, Radio Personality, and the CMO of VanillaSoft, Darryl Praill, turns on the lights for the match and provides professional insight on how to plan your strategy for victory among the many moving pieces of marketing.

Takeaways:

  • Marketing now owns the technology stack of marketing automation software and CRM. They have earned a respected seat at the table and can report the ROI on every campaign.
  • The sales funnel has shifted. Buyers are getting smarter and they do not want to talk to sales representatives until the very end when they are ready to negotiate. Now, marketers have the buyers for two-thirds of the sales funnel.
  • When you close a big lead, consider: where did the lead come from, what was the campaign, how many touch points did they have? Then celebrate those touchpoints. They DO make a difference.
  • Marketing can be viewed as a game of chess. No one piece will win you the game. Consider taking one bigger piece of content and running smaller campaigns from it. Look at how all your pieces can work together.
  • When strategizing marketing, consider: What’s the category that our business is in, where do we fit?
  • Keep the answers of what you do simple.
  • Once a marketer knows their business category, they know the influencers they need to be reaching and who they should be following, the pain points that their buyers are facing, and how their messaging and propositions should be defined.
  • “The whole point of [creating] notoriety is making sure that you’re in the conversation.”-Darryl Praill
  • When influencers are mentioning your brand in conversation, you are now a trusted player.
  • Every single sales cycle starts with a pain point the prospect has.
  • When nurturing prospects, do not spray and pray! This only dilutes the frequency that you are in front of your target market.
  • “Learn to listen to your gut it is an important input into the decision making process.” -Darryl Praill

 

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Busted Myths

  • Marketing is about picking the right color, producing awesome parties at trade shows, and press releases. These activities are NOT what marketing is about. These are simple tasks done in the pursuit of what a marketer is mandated to do.
  • Marketing is not held accountable and does not generate revenue for the company, they are a cost center. Marketers now have the technology to track the success of every touchpoint to determine the level of ROI for each activity. They are held accountable for the leads they generate and the amount of return they get for their efforts put in.