Latest from the Intellegentia Blog

I presume you got to this page because you want to know more about sales & marketing alignment.  Perhaps you’re interested in a quick audit – some gem to prove your suspicion that your team simply could do better?

That’s OK, most business people feel the same.  We take up the mantle of sales and marketing jobs because we want to make things better – whether you’re on the sales side focused on more and bigger sales, or on the marketing side wanting to make a bigger impact and drive more leads.

Oops, I said it….

I mentioned “two sides” – the sales side and the marketing side.  Well, that’s how it is in most companies, and that’s what needs fixing. MarketingProfs stated that “Companies that have sales & marketing alignment have 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates.”  And we’d all like that, wouldn’t we?

Are you frustrated with the amount of time you’re spending on qualifying and weeding out your genuine buyers from the time-wasters?

Sifting through and identifying your genuine leads can be an incredibly arduous task that eats into expensive sales time which, in turn, ultimately detracts from revenue. It can also result in some genuine opportunities being lost.

Unfortunately, it’s a common mistake we’ve seen many businesses make over the years. But it’s a mistake that can easily be rectified if you have the standards and processes in place to enable you to properly nurture and manage your leads.

For the Financial Services sector, the inbound methodology provides a really interesting way of thinking about marketing. It’s about educating and informing. It’s about retention. It is not about overt selling. All of which fits entirely with the ethics, rules and regulations governing the financial services industry.

How does marketing automation help financial services marketing ?

The industry is made up of quite different organisations – for example membership-based networks, client facing advisers and intermediaries. Each have their own marketing needs and ways of going to market.

Whether you are a client-facing financial adviser marketing yourself in a defined geography, targeting particular types of consumer or business, or a network looking to recruit and retain members across the country, your marketing needs can be similar:

Remember when marketing was a matter of contacting enough people, no matter how intrusively, or whether they were in your target audience, hoping that eventually some leads would come rolling in? Unfortunately for some marketers, the modern buyer is a lot more intelligent, and these once common practice marketing techniques will no longer cut it.

The buyer is constantly changing. Their journey and behaviour is influenced by advances in technology, cultural trends and rising demand for and availability of products and services. As a result, the way we do marketing has had to adapt as well.

With 70% of B2B decision-makers employing social media to research and glean information about their purchases, it is becoming an increasingly essential aspect of any business’ B2B marketing strategy – but it is of particular importance for technology companies. If you are going to stand out from the crowd in an already crowded marketplace, you need to make use of all available resources to shout your marketing message as loud as you can. It is absolutely mission-critical for any respectable technology company to have a watertight inbound marketing campaign, and in order to maximise its success, you must know how to leverage this channel.

Here are 6 reasons why B2B technology companies should be making use of social media in their inbound marketing strategy.