A number of Marketing folks would have you believe that inbound leads (or sales opportunities) are superior to outbound. (They generally are.) And that inbound (or content) marketing is virtuous and outbound is primitive and disreputable. (This position is pretty much as silly as it sounds!) I’ve pointed to problems with the definition of “inbound”… “Why you probably want fewer than 30% of your leads to be “inbound””
I’m getting tired of battling marketing departments over their irrational devotion to Inbound (and Content) Marketing. It seems that marketing folks can’t help but fall violently in love with these concepts, rendering them useless to the rest of the organization. Here’s my beef. I know, from personal experience, that the content marketing thing works, in… “Inbound Marketing: Retards Growth and Turns Marketing Folks into Zombies”
I love webinars and, increasingly, our clients are learning to love them too! In this post I’ll share some of our experiences with webinars over the last 7 months and show you why we’re so enthusiastic about them. The results In a previous post, I told you how we build our list (generate new relationships). … “The wonder of webinars (our stats revealed)”
A little over a year ago, I posted on our initial experiments with “social media” (or, more specifically, with pay-per-click advertising). That post was well received so this one is an update. Actually, it’s more than an update: it’s a review of our entire US lead-generation machine. I hope it provides you an idea or… “Our experiences with Lead-Gen in the USA (a self-liquidating promotional machine)”
If you’re not in the fortunate situation where promotion is easy, then the odds are that it’s really difficult. If you’re in the latter category, this chapter will introduce you to the magnitude of the promotional challenge ahead and explain why (fortunately) moderate success is probably more than sufficient in the early stages of your… “The Machine > Part 2 > Chapter 9: How to generate sales opportunities”
We have disbelievers in our midst! Among our loyal flock of AdVerb subscribers there are those who profess to embrace our principles but who flout at least one of them conspicuously. I’m referring to those executives who claim to be Relationship-centric Marketing aficionados but who, nonetheless, invest their scarce promotional dollars in golf days, boxes… “Why there’s a silent ‘$’ in ‘Relationship: and why the integrity of your sales process depends upon it!”
How to develop an ideology-based business marketing strategy. So you think you’re going to publish a newsletter? Hey, that’s not a bad idea! If you make it an e-mail newsletter — like the one you’re reading now — it’s a particularly cost effective exercise. Your distribution costs are nil. Your publishing costs are equivalent only… “The importance of ‘getting religion’”
A message for those business people who insist on competing on price: go ahead! That’s right. If you have a cost advantage, flaunt it. Cut your prices, build marketshare, consolidate that cost advantage and annihilate your competitors. So what’s the catch? Well, to successfully compete on price, you need to be able to manufacture, market… “Go ahead. Compete on price!”
