7 Min Marketing With Pam Didner

I had an epiphany talking to Rob Clarke, co-founder of Strala, at Martech West in early April. His company created a turnkey platform that allows you to standardize UTM parameters to track all your online and offline marketing outreach. He told me that marketers like to ask 3 questions: who, what and when. Marketing focuses on Who, What, and When  Who are they? What did they do throughout their buying journey? When did they do it? If you have a standard tracking system that is integrated to your marketing automation, CRM, POS (point of sales), eCommerce and other platforms, you can see a series of actions that prospects do through their journeys. With all the information in one place, hopefully, you get some insights to determine the next steps to nurture and drive better conversions. If you tie that information to your budget, you can see which marketing channels perform better and adjust your marketing budget accordingly. My conversation with Rob prompted me to think what sales people would like to know w

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.  In my previous episode, I talked about the importance of keeping up with marketing technology. One of the best ways I mentioned is to talk to various vendors at marketing conferences. When I went to Martech West in the San Jose Convention Center early April, I did my rounds and talked to different vendors. I am not affiliated with any of these vendors but I want to tell you about 3 vendors that caught my eye and share with you what they offer. Voicify You can use their platform to create a voice-enabled application which can be downloaded to Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana and your chatbots. It allows brands to seamlessly create and manage their voice content across any number of smart speakers & devices. This is similar to Libsyn, which some of you may use to manage your podcast episodes. Libsyn lets

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.  In my workshops, one of the key points that I emphasize all the time is the importance of understanding marketing technology. In my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement, I even dedicated one whole chapter to technology and its impact on marketers supporting sales. We all know technology is important, we use it every day. But, as a marketer, we are overwhelmed by the continuing evolution of technology and have a hard time keeping up. Here are 3 ways that you can keep up with martech. Pick up a field that you want to understand more It doesn’t matter if it’s social media, search, events, email or what not. Martech vendors are constantly exploring the latest technologies to refine and improve their platforms with additional features. With more features, they can be more competitive and, of course, they can also charge mor

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.  I was listening to Kyle Porter, CEO of Salesloft, deliver his keynote at SaaStock17. It was a great keynote. The key take-away: let’s not forget that sales is about building human-to-human connections. He was saying that AI and technology are not here to replace sales people. If AI or technology is done right, it’s about bringing more humanity to the overall sales experience. It’s about giving insights so that you can better serve your customers. That’s the irony of AI. Using artificial intelligence to augment real human connections. Build that 1:1 experience with empathy and caring. I love the way he thinks and approaches AI and other technologies. I understand that AI and technology is about automation and scalability. That’s how I think about it as well. When I talk about AI, I tend to focus on what AI can do to aut

Tatianna knows that I’ve updated my website 5 times in the past 4 years. She is going to lead her company’s website overhaul this year. This is the first time that she is taking on a project like this. She asked me what she needs to pay attention to before she starts.  I asked her if this is a complete overhaul or a partial overhaul. Tatianna told me that her company is a start-up and has grown very fast. They’ve not refreshed the website for over one year. The CEO wants to refresh the home page, products, and customers pages. Here are the elements I told Tatianna to focus on:  Design Content SEO Site Migration There are many things that she needs to pay attention to, but I prioritize these four as the key focal points. Design I went to her company’s website. Since it’s a partial overhaul, I asked her if the company is interested in a big overall haul in the near future. If they are, are they thinking about updating the current design elements?  The current design is very photo-stockish and business-like. A

Someone filled out a question card at my workshop without leaving a name, but I like the question: “How to Reduce the tension between sales and marketing over timely follow up to qualified leads?” Whoever wrote the question, I just want to let you know that it’s a common issue across industries and companies. You are not alone. Marketing works hard to get leads, but sales says that the leads can’t be converted or are not ready to act on. Sometimes, they don’t even follow up… I get it. I think there are three ways to address this issue: Agree on actionable MQL definitions Focus on quality of leads, not quantity Establish a Service Level Agreement (SLA)  Agree on Actionable MQL Definition I am using myself as an example here.  I do a lot of research for my clients on messaging framework, SWOT analysis, persona creation, and content writing. So I download white papers, trends and reports from many websites. After downloading certain types of content, I’d get an email or a call from that company’s salesperson t

A fellow marketer from the B2B Marketing Exchange, Regina asked: “How do I get my marketing peers to shift their thinking so they focus on helping sales achieve their goals?”  I’ve discovered that, in enterprises, budget, business goals and measurements influence how marketers behave and function as a team. If your marketing peers are not supporting sales, one of the possible reasons may be that their marketing objectives or success measurements are not set up to motivate that behavior. So my first question to you, Regina, is, how are success metrics are established in your marketing organization? The next question that I want to ask is more philosophical: Should all marketing functions support sales directly? Well, my thought on that question is probably not. Some marketing functions are very much aimed at the top of the funnel, focusing on as social media posts, traditional TV commercials, and even big billboards you see on highways or big shopping centers. These types of marketing efforts are still critica

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.  I launched a brand-new workshop titled ‘How to leverage existing marketing elements to enable sales’, at B2B Marketing Exchange in February. The workshop was sold out. For it, I created a list of questions and a series of templates to guide marketers to think creatively about ways to help sales using existing marketing elements. Overall feedback was positive for the framework, questions, and templates, but several people requested more case studies. Ok, that’s good feedback. I’ll certainly incorporate that accordingly. In addition to private client training, I am doing 3 more workshops this year as of now. Interact19, April 9-10 in Columbus, Ohio. My workshop is called sales and marketing alignment. This will be a 6-hour long session in which I’ll touch on sales/marketing collaboration, service level agreement, MQL def

At B2B Marketing Exchange, a fellow marketer, Matt, asked me “Pam, what tools do you recommend providing the sales team with updated content? They are always asking where I go to find X or Y?” I know… It’s hard. For sales to find any content, it’s easier for them just ask marketing directly. We’ll tell them, anyway. There are many ways to address this, but three options have worked well for me: Upload content to a sales content management library Make sure that you have a sales-centric content library that only salespeople use. Upload your content there, tag them well by-products, geos, keywords, technologies and other categories so that it’s easy for salespeople to search. Nowadays, some platforms offer auto-tagging which makes content marketers’ job easy. When you source tools, you should check if they offer that feature. Typical content management library platforms are Highspot, Showpad, Seismic, Attach and more. Some tech companies have built their own content management library for both direct and indire

Early in December, Victor, a good friend, referred a potential client to me. This client is not my typical B2B technology and global enterprise clients. It’s a mid-size and regional accounting firm based in Northern California. The founder was able to grow his business through events and referrals. While they recognized that digital marketing and outreach is necessary to continue growing, they didn’t know how to start. What they did first was to update their website, that was good. Then, they did a re-branding of their logo. I didn’t know why they did that in that order, but OK, that’s fine. During the re-branding, they hired a marketing agency to conduct a complete audit and create a comprehensive marketing plan. Well, that should be good, right.  After the plan, it’s execution. It should be easy, right?  Well, it didn’t go well. The agency was not able to get traction during the execution since the content was needed to come from subject matter experts like partners and managers. In addition, partners and m

Many people downloaded my eBook, A Quick and Easy Framework for Marketers to Enable Their Sales Team. I usually follow up with a personalized email to thank them for downloading the eBook. I also ask them to send me any questions they may have after reading the eBook. Whether it’s related to the eBook or other marketing topics, I always encourage people to reach out and send me their marketing questions. If you listen to my podcast, you know that’s how I enjoy my podcast. One of the eBook reader, Robert, has a rather unique last name, so I looked him up on LinkedIn. He is managing director for an engineering company in the UK. His company does mechanical engineering designs, materials science, and analytical verification and testing for different industries, like automotive, aerospace and more. Cool stuff. When I sent out a personalized email, I also mentioned that I like his company’s website, but, from a user-experience perspective, there are a couple of things I’d do a little differently. He sent an email

Andie from the UK sent me a LinkedIn messaging:  “Hey Pam, I've been following you on Twitter for a while, and have recently heard your Marketing Book podcast, thought I'd reach out as sales enablement is a big problem right now: Where to start?!   Actually, several people approached me about this question since I published my book in October 2018. Given that the sales enablement effort from the marketing side is different from company to company, let me address this based on the 3 different roles of marketing professionals,.   Where to start to enable sales   as an individual contributor  as a marketing director with a small team  as a VP of marketing  As an individual contributor:  Say you want to take the initiative to support sales as an individual contributor. The best way to start is to clearly articulate your own roles and responsibilities. Are you doing email marketing? Are you managing social media channels? Are you a content creator? Or, if you are wearing multiple hats, what do you

B2B buyers spend just 17 percent of their time meeting with potential suppliers, while 45 percent of their time is spent researching independently, according to Gartner.  Out of that 45%, B2B buyers spend 27 percent of their time researching independently online and 18 percent of their time researching independently offline. With approx. 62% of buyers time spent on research and meeting with suppliers, what can marketers do to help buyer’s research and sales efforts?  There are plenty of things that marketers can do. I want to share 2 tactics that marketers can employ to help buyer’s research efforts  1 recommendation to support sales teams The two tactics are search optimization and content marketing: Let’s think about how B2B buyers do research. First of all, they type problem statements or keywords into Google or other search engines to get relevant links and content. Buyers will generally click on different links to view content. So, first and foremost, marketers can facilitate buyers’ research by focu

A friend’s friend, Ryerson, reached out to me and wanted to know how to make the transition from a corporate marketer to an independent consultant. How did I build my personal brand? How did I get speaking gigs? How did I get interview opportunities? Here is what I shared with him: don’t worry about what I did. Work on four things first.  These four elements will shape what you should do next. Focus on small wins: If money is an issue, you need to have income immediately. The best way is to contract with former employers. There are always things that need to be done. Assuming that you left on good terms, contracting back is an option to keep you afloat. Network, network, network: Go through your contact list. Set up coffee meets to let everyone know that you are available, and you are looking for opportunities.  I told Ryerson that he needs to reach out to past colleagues and agencies and let them know that he is available for hire. Meeting face-to-face is more powerful than short email exchanges.  Craft you

This event is it! #B2BMX For B2B marketers, the one B2B marketing conference that you can’t miss is B2BMarketing Exchange. It’s jammed packed with all the B2B topics from customer-centric experience, demand generation, account-based marketing, to marketing insights and more.  More than 1000 B2B marketers and over 90 sessions in 3 days. In addition, it’s in Scottsdale, AZ on 2/25-2/27. Who doesn’t like to go Arizona in February? Palm Trees and the Sun. It’s just perfect!! Workshop: How to leverage existing marketing programs to support sales I did a global content marketing workshop and messaging framework session last year. This year, I created a brand-new workshop and session. The workshop is about sales enablement: How to leverage existing marketing programs to enable sales. All right, a very lengthy title, but it does explain what the workshop is about. Although my book covers different topics on how marketers can better support sales, I created a framework to talk about how marketers can support sales usi

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.   While being interviewed for a podcast, I was asked a great question: “Hey, Pam, you wrote a sales enablement book from a marketer’s perspective. That sounds good. But how can marketers really benefit from supporting sales?” Ok, I’d like to answer that at two different levels: At the micro level: Like I said, with the rise of digital, the boundaries of sales and marketing are disappearing. In the past, email marketing was done exclusively by marketers. Now, sales can run their own customized and personalized mini email campaigns straight out of their CRM systems. Another example is social media. Social media is not a marketers’ tool anymore. Sales are using it for social selling and social listening, even customer services are using it to answer customers’ questions real-time. Through supporting inside sales and post s

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.  Through speaking and consulting, I was fortunate to make friends around the world and I keep in touch with them through texting. But I use different messaging apps depending on where they are and what messaging apps they use. For friends in the US, I use the phone texting app on my iPhone. Quick and easy. To communicate with friends in China, I use WeChat since the majority of Chinese are on WeChat. For talking to friends in South America and Europe, I use WhatsApp. That should not be a surprise to anyone. Interesting enough, for friends in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and some part of Southeast Asia, I use Line, which is the largest messaging app in Japan.  So, guess what I used to connect with customers and friends when I was in Taiwan in December? Line!! While I was there, my friend took me to the Times Square of Taipei

I was fortunate to be invited back to do a workshop and a session at the Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland, Ohio for the 8th time. When you go to an event like this for 8 years straight, you start seeing familiar faces and begin forming a circle of friends that you hang out with from year to year.  As always, it was wonderful to see Kelly Hungerford, Jeff Julians, Amy Higgins, Jay Baer, Michael Brennen, Robert Rose, and many other friends. I don’t know about you, but as much as I see them on FB or Twitter, I still prefer a meaningful hug and in-person catching-up. I’d like to challenge myself so I present a different topic each year, and I was excited to create a new one for 2018’s conference. My session title was 5 Creative Ways Marketers Can Enable their Sales Team, and it is no surprise that it’s closely related to my new book, Effective Sales Enablement. As a speaker, I can tell you that the content needs to be solid throughout, but the most important part is the opening. I like to come up w

Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.  Alicia asked a question: With all these new trends, the ways that sales and marketing teams operate and collaborate will continue to evolve. How is the role of content producer going to change? Alicia, content producers usually create content for inbound and outbound communications. So, let’s look at the sales side to understand what types of content they usually need. In general, there are three types of content that sales need. Maybe there are more, here are the 3 types of content on the sales side are: Onboarding and training content Content used by sales to present to customers Content used by sales to pass to customers People may not realize that some marketing content can be used for onboarding and continuous training. Amy Pence, Global Sales Enablement Manager, shared her a typical on-boarding agenda with me.

Jim posted a question: User-generated Content (UGC) is becoming part of every brand. How should a marketer approach the challenge of UGC in various languages? To use UGC or not to use UGC is a corporate policy discussion. The legal team will request you to get permission from the user to use it. So, you need to track down who owns the content. Then, the marketing team might say that the user-generated content doesn’t align with the corporate brand guideline, then you probably can’t use it. However, your social media team will probably say ‘OMG, this is great’ and want to move forward quickly. There is a lot to sort out between various stakeholders before you can use UGC. This is especially true in enterprises. Many companies decide not to use UGC because the hassles that they have to go through. There is another reason why enterprises are not keen using UGC, they are concerned to dilute the brand, or they can lose control quickly. Think about it. If you allow one country to use UGC, then, every country can do