Assigning budget to marketing activity has often been seen as laborious, un-scientific and seemingly arbituary. Whilst spend for other business areas such as HR and IT can see return on investment almost immediately, marketing spend is a dark art. Whilst no two businesses are the same, our combined experience in B2B organisations of over 50 years has shown some trends in how marketing budgets are managed.
As you are no doubt fully aware, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force this week.
This is a significant piece of legislation, but some businesses aren’t yet prepared, and it can be an overwhelming prospect knowing where to start and what your organisation needs to do to avoid breaching the rules.
If you’re trying to transition away from spreadsheets, have outgrown your current CRM or are just plain fed up with your existing system, then it’s time to look at alternative solutions!
Increase sales qualified leads by 50% in your software company
Lead generation for software companies can be unpredictable. If you need more leads to feed the sales engine, read on. SaaS products have driven the proliferation of new entrants into the market which means your buyers no longer have a shortlist of providers and instead start their search online for software solutions.
Consumer habits are changing … drastically. That’s the driving force behind inbound, after all. What your customers want today is different than what they wanted 10 years ago. That means we must change the way we market and sell to match the way people actually want to shop and buy.
As the countdown begins towards year-end, CEOs, Sales Leaders and Financial Directors are in a furious race to ensure that in-year targets are achieved by their sales and marketing teams. There are two key challenges that business leaders are facing to achieve this objective; not enough momentum, and not enough of the right leads.
To get on the shortlist, you will be competing against other organisations offering a product or service that is very much comparable to yours on the exterior.
As a business leader, the importance of the impending changes to data protection regulation will be no surprise. The digital economy is growing and so is the need for international consistency around data protection laws, safeguarding individuals’ personal information.
The changing behaviours of people mean that traditional marketing campaigns such as cold calls, cold emails and snail mail are being tuned out. This disruption in marketing means that customers are opting to seek out the information we need ourselves.
Imagery plays an important role in design, but the cost of some stock imagery sites has created a barrier. Moreover, affordable stock photography can result in cliched and tacky images.
Thankfully, there is an increasing number of websites offering beautiful photography for free. This is made possible as they use images that are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain dedication.
