Commercial Excellence Forum

How can you transform marketing from a cost centre to a profit centre? How can you align marketing and sales to deliver measurable pipeline value?

The core themes of the day will be lead generation and nurturing, lead scoring, B2B digital channels, orchestrated digital marketing plays and how to align top and bottom-of-the-funnel metrics.

Early customer engagement through digital channels

In most cases, B2B sales is very relationship-driven. Consequently, many B2B companies devote very little energy to digital marketing. But what if the consequence of this is that you don’t even get the chance to build a relationship with a potential customer?

Research shows that the buying process of customers is already 57% complete by the time they reach out to sales reps. To engage with customers early in the buying process, you need to engage through digital channels (as well as physical channels).

According to Forrester:

• 74% of B2B buyers research at least half of their work purchases online.
• 62% of buyers say they can develop selection criteria or finalise a vendor list based solely on digital content.

Unparalleled traceability with digital marketing

This means that if you are not present digitally with the right content, in the right formats and in the right channels, you might be missing out on a lot of potential customers. This is, in part, due to the “great divide” between sales and marketing.

All too often, marketers focus on top-of-the-funnel metrics, like traffic and brand exposure, instead of the downstream value created. In traditional marketing, top-of-the-funnel metrics may be all that is available, but digital marketing offers unparalleled traceability throughout the funnel and enables cost-effective, scalable lead generation, nurturing and scoring.

This can help you:

• Attract more leads
• Qualify leads = higher sales efficiency
• “Warm leads up” to increase meeting conversion rates
• Grow share of wallet/deal size through continuous value proposition exposure

… But it’s not easy. The field of digital marketing is littered with buzzwords and ill-understood technologies. Consequently, it can be challenging to derive value from it.

We want to change this, and we will start the journey at the Commercial Excellence Forum in November, where you will receive a toolbox to help you succeed with digital B2B marketing and get inspired by two real life cases.