Is your current marketing spending setting you up for failure in the next recession or unexpected downturn? We were pondering this question on why so much of the marketing budget as of late is targeted on improving technologies to improve lead nurturing such as CRM, and marketing automation solutions that work closer together when companies are showing down results on revenue. It appears to us kind of what happens when you only exercise but forget about improving your diet. Everything appears great but deep down the arteries are clogging. Sales are no longer getting great opportunities in small bursts, but the CMO can report incredible lead volumes, fancy acronyms for the leads being produced and amazing scoring models. Also the CMO supposedly has a larger budget than the CIO now to reinforce this model?
At what point does Wall Street make companies grow revenue instead of simply cutting expenses or does the CEO of a privately held company realize that they have to get back on the offensive? Are inbound strategies not a defensive strategy vs. an offensive strategy? Think about it you don’t communicate with organizations that don’t digest your content that sounds like the old brick and mortar model of waiting for folks to come through the door? Who isn’t in threat of competitors unexpectedly taking market share if they are focused on growth and taking some risks to achieve it? We think a lot of folks are being defensively conservative and that a lot of marketers believe they have enough demand generation going that they can focus the next four to six quarters on improving their funnel through technology, scoring, and other activities on the inbound side. If you aren’t utilizing teleprospecting to call your customers and having conversations with them, who is today?
Where is your sales leadership when it comes to this challenge? What are they contemplating? We think based upon recent conversations that Sales leadership is really starting to look at focusing on targeted outbound calls and telling us that the cost of inbound leads has really risen dramatically due to so much competition on the cost of Keywords and search strategies.
Listen were not conspiracy theorists just realists based upon the market and the conversations we have day in and out. Yesterday afternoon IBM missed revenue earnings, but beat expectations primarily based upon apparently a tax break. From the wall street journal article posted today “IBM has told investors that the company is capable of generating low to mid-single-digit revenue growth, but it hasn’t achieved such growth since 2011”. So based upon our thoughts what is necessary in your marketing and sales budget to help you go win new business or grow existing customers? If it isn’t focused on that simple strategy is it worth keeping in place or is it simply frivolous spending?
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