4 Strategies to Drive Marketing Results with Limited Resources

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Every team of marketers needs to drive marketing results that matter, and as my guest on this episode says, “I’ve never heard a marketing team say, ‘We’ve got all the budget we need!’ “ That’s especially true for small teams. On this episode, David Buffaloe, CMO of Vertical IQ shares the steps marketing leaders can take to drive marketing results despite having limited resources.

Vertical IQ provides insights into what’s happening on a variety of levels in over 500 industries. By tapping into the data available through Vertical IQ you will quickly become an industry expert; which equips you to find, connect with, resource, and close new customers and nurture relationships with existing customers. You’ll enjoy hearing the insightful strategies David has for assessing your marketing approach, choosing and using automation effectively, locating the right talent and nurturing their success, and producing marketing results that drive the bottom line profitability of your company. I invite you to listen!

The First Step To Optimizing Your Small Marketing Team Is...

...Assessment! David has only been in his present position as CMO of Vertical IQ for 7 months at the time of this conversation, but he’s been in marketing for over 25 years. His approach when stepping into leadership at any organization is to assess the state of the company and the current marketing approach. This includes understanding the needs of the company and the needs of the audience they are selling to. He asks questions about the content currently being produced and what is missing. He considers the opportunities for driving demand, building brand awareness, and how thought leadership is being used and can be used more effectively to build expertise in the industry. 

When this kind of assessment is done you’ll better understand how to make best use of what you have in place and what skills are needed on your team to utilize those resources and drive marketing results. There is so much here, you won’t want to miss what David has to share.

Prioritizing Tasks That Drive Marketing Results

For small marketing teams a clear set of priorities must be established so that the real limitations that exist can be optimized. As David says, “You can’t do everything and you can’t do everything well.” Choosing the right priorities and balancing the difference between long-term needs and the short-term impact you can make is essential. It’s your assessment that will help you identify and drive the right priorities. 

Once you’re clear on what you need to be doing, you should set up your processes and systems in agile ways. This is important with a small marketing team because things change too quickly for a “set it and forget it” approach. Adaptable, flexible teams and systems can make the most of every situation and continue driving qualified leads to the sales team so they can generate closed-won deals.

Learn To Balance Automation With The Need To Remain Adaptable

Since David emphasized the need to be agile, it was interesting to hear that he also encourages the use of automation. When I asked him to clarify how the two fit together he said that marketing automation is great but that you can have too much. When overburdened with automation options, a marketing team can hamper its own efficiency and effectiveness. 

David recommends you start sorting out your automation needs by asking yourself “WHEN is the best time to automate within our current marketing and sales alignment sequence?” He encourages you to understand your audience intimately, understand the typical buyer’s journey, and THEN you’ll see clearly WHEN is the right time to automate.

Some suggestions for where automation typically fits best are...

• Adding automation to the initial touches with prospects so they receive helpful, value-adds immediately upon showing interest.
• When a prospect comes into the funnel but is not entirely ready to have a sales conversation, you can add automated sales enablement and industry-specific pieces that will add value to them and address questions or reservations that are common with people in their position.

What Metrics Indicate Marketing Results That Matter?

Metrics are vital for any marketing team. Without them, how are you going to know which of your efforts is effective and which needs to be improved or abandoned? David agrees and emphasizes that you need to focus on the right metrics. What he calls “vanity metrics” are to be avoided. What are vanity metrics? The typical questions asked around vanity metrics are…

• How many leads came in this month?
• How many followers do we have on social?
• How many website impressions are we seeing? 

While these questions will undoubtedly have numeric answers, they are not specific enough to be truly helpful. Instead, David says we should be focusing on what he calls “Impact metrics:” 

• How are we doing at moving people from one stage of the buyer’s journey to another?
• How many opportunities have we created and how many of those have turned into pipeline?
• What marketing activities are directly attributable to closed-won deals?

Listen to hear David describe these important distinctions and how to use them effectively to drive marketing results that will make a difference in the bottom line of your organization.

Featured on This Episode

• VerticalIQ’s website: https://VerticalIQ.com/Covid-19
• Follow David on LinkedIn
• Connect with David on Twitter: @dbuffaloe

Outline of This Episode

• [1:12] Why industry intelligence is beneficial to sales and marketing teams
• [4:14] What’s the role of a marketing team in getting things done?
• [11:14] Finding a balance between adding automation and remaining agile as a team
• [16:09] How to identify the skills needed to focus on your top priorities
• [20:25] What about measurement? What needs to be measured, what doesn’t?

Resources & People Mentioned

• VerticalIQ’s FREE COVID-19 Resource site: https://VerticalIQ.com/Covid-19

• The Modern Selling Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr

Connect With Bernie and Modern Marketing Engine

• https://www.Facebook.com/modernmarketingengine/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/
• https://twitter.com/bernieborges
• https://instagram.com/bernieborges
• https://Twitter.com/MMEnginePodcast

 

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