Recently, Kevin Joyce published a blog post on the Business
2 Community (B2C) website which talks about how he would turn inbound
marketing into a ‘revenue marketing’ organization. In the post, Joyce
recommends that all of marketing should be measured on sales qualified leads
(SQLs) and nothing else. It reminded me of the similar experiences I had in the
past when I turned my marketing team into a ‘revenue marketing’ entity.
On two different occasions, I took
an approach which was quite similar to Joyce’s - I put the entire marketing and
the inside sales teams on the same goals - Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and took away all other goals. Of
course, this announcement shocked everyone and it took almost two quarters for
the teams to successfully collaborate, streamline the process, and hit the
mutual goal. In one instance, I had a 15% turnover in staff that included those who could not
adjust to the new way of thinking. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, as
it gave me the opportunity to hire people with the right mindset.
The concept of revenue marketing meant
that my PR team had to change their focus. With the introduction
of this concept, PR now had to ‘integrate’ their activities with the marketing
team versus writing articles or case studies on any topic that was ‘easy’. This
meant getting a view into the events and campaigns that were being planned and
developing content on THOSE topics in order to provide ‘air cover’ for the
demand generation team.
Naturally, if the PR team is
publishing articles and case studies focusing on the same topics as the demand generation
team, you will eventually see an increase in webinar attendance, email
responses, and ultimately qualified leads. Recently, I wrote a blog post that provides some interesting statistics on this topic where I talk about experiencing a 300% increase in the
cost per lead for products that do not have PR ‘air cover’ versus those that
do. The ‘air cover’, along with the higher quantity and quality of marketing
content coming from PR, also helped the demand generation teams develop deeper
campaigns and improved nurturing.
As Joyce also mentions, the mutual
SQL goal forced the teams to work together. The marketing team carefully listened
to the feedback provided by the inside sales team with regards to both lead
quality and campaign ideas. And, over time, the inside sales team religiously
followed up on each and every lead that marketing delivered.
Have you had similar experiences
turning your organization into a revenue marketing entity?
References:
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