How does a brand acquire an audience? Not just by fulfilling a need. Not even just because people fall in love with the product. A loyal audience, the first 1000 fans, fall in love with the company because of the people behind it. Because of the human story: their genius, their passion, their care, their courage, their integrity, intellectual honesty, their journey. But also: their flaws and failures.
Many companies have a great opportunity to grow their business with a more integrated marketing & sales programme, whereby salespeople benefit from the intelligence that marketing gathers about leads, and marketing benefits from the intelligence that salespeople feed back from their conversations with customers and prospects.
When salespeople start feeding back the intelligence they gather while talking with prospects and customers so that the marketing team can create more valuable content and more meaningful online interactions, those salespeople become important contributors to the marketing effort.
In order to discover and formulate a focus and a strategy, businesses should identify (1) what their people (would) most love doing, (2) what they are – or could become – better at than anyone else, and (3) where market demand for their output is – and will be – the greatest. So, next time you iterate on the direction, positioning and focus of your business or brand, I suggest you take a good look at what your people love and could excel at.
The buying process is changing so radically that the selling process has to evolve with it. Service design has to be tuned to the digital market place. Efficiencies of scale change pricing structures and give birth to entirely new categories. So, how could this not touch the C-suite?
Statistics provided not only by HubSpot but other marketing solution providers and research organisations as well, suggest that inbound - if done well - is significantly more cost-effective than outbound, or at least outbound alone. Selected stats from Impact Branding & Design, SmartBug Media, as well as some of my own. Categorized by (1) Inbound versus outbound, (2) Buyer preferences and behavior, (3) The impact of content, and (4) Marketing automation.
The terms 'inbound marketing' (coined by Brian Halligan) and 'permission marketing' (coined by Seth Godin) refer to various practices that brands can apply to build positive relationships with their intended audiences, particularly on-line. The term 'content marketing' is also very closely related, although it may have a slightly stronger connotation with off-line content, like customer magazines.