I Hate Marketing. It Just F@#$%ing Doesn't Work
I have spent over 16 years in B2B Marketing in the tech sector. Yep, that’s my niche, and I know it better than anything. For the last decade or so I have been helping owners and marketers of technology companies drive their marketing strategies that complement their sales plans.
A lot of them often have some great ideas (and even greater expectations) in mind but their budgets often come from Tech Vendors or Distributors and that means they’re usually…
Ad Hoc + limited budgets + limited timelines + UNlimited expectations = EXTREMELY high chance of results nobody will be happy with (including us!)
Do we want to promise you many leads for these campaigns? We want to. We REALLY DO! But we can’t. And we will be the first ones to tell you that straight away. We don’t want anybody to waste time on an effort-heavy, short-lived, short-deadlined ad-hoc campaign that will leave everybody (including YOU!) feeling disappointed. That’s not what we do. Do some of these campaigns thrive and strike gold? Yes. Is it likely? No.
After doing 100s of campaigns over the years, I have heard the line “I hate marketing, it just doesn’t f*****ing work” and plenty of other one-liners that I can’t mention here because I’d have to bleep most of them…
Hence, I came up with a pragmatic solution on what we can do to fix this bloody mess.
So today, I want to bring you my perspective on why some “Marketing Campaigns” strike gold and some fail repeatedly and end up in the “it just doesn’t work” bucket. It’s not about criticising people or campaigns but reviewing what works, what doesn’t, and what progressive changes could be made for your campaigns to work and make everybody happy with the results (including us!)
ONE: Lack of realistic expectations:
The most, most, most important point is setting expectations. I am still going into meetings where it shows results like the ones below yet the campaign is still NOT considered successful due to lack of SQLs.
All the focus is on those 6 people that showed interest to meet and not the other 100 that could potentially meet too in the next few rounds. Now, multiply that by 12 months and you have 72 Meetings and 132 nurture leads in a year. Even at a 100K avg deal size, that's over 7 Million in the pipeline. Even if you convert 10% that is 350K and the rest is all bonus.
But the remaining 11 months generally don't see the sunlight.
Another main challenge is that we are NOT a sales company; we are a marketing company. Our job it to drive attention to your brand/reps/company AND capture who exactly is paying attention and get you in front of them. We can bring you MQLs and other opportunities through creative means, BUT the sales team has to take it from there. QUICKLY.
The success of a conversion rate goes up by 200% if they are followed up within the first 10 mins. Your lead management has to be leakproof and timely. You want someone to take ownership, someone with skin in the game who is really invested (on multiple levels) in a successful outcome. It will NOT work otherwise. I can show you how to set up these workflows and sequences for all of that by December and come January 2023 we can have a great combination in place to make your marketing investment a fraction of revenue for the next 12 months. But the expectations need to be set on who will take over following up the leads – and can do it as soon as they come in, while they’re still hot.
TWO: Lack of Consistency:
Again, not rocket science, but ad hoc campaigns are like going to the gym for a week and looking in the mirror and saying “I hate the gym, it just f***king doesn’t work”. Or?expect to hit hole-in-one with just a single swing of your golf club. Yes, you have to invest time, energy, and money, and be CONSISTENT. Or else you are going to keep playing the hit-and-miss game with your marketing. We have perfected a plan that could help you launch consistent campaigns that will drive drip leads consistently and automate the heck out of every process so that it saves you time, energy, and MONEY.
We call it the $10 Million Pipeline in 365 Days Program You have to keep hitting the market every day, consistently and that’s what we can help you do through our program. This program is NOT for every business but I can sit down with you to see if this could be a good fit for your business. And if it does, I will also run a free trial for you you can try before you commit. That cost is completely on me.
Three: Lack of Grand Slam Offers/CTAs/Lead Magnets:
Imagine this: We need to get this done every month. Grand Slam Offers that are hyper-targeted to 50-100 accounts (up to 300 contacts) each month, dedicated to a sales rep's ACCOUNT PLAN. These offers need to be?So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No. How do you come up with Grand Slam Offers for your clients? I ask that you to read the book $100 Million offers by Alex Hormozi. Believe me, it will blow your mind and completely change what you think about what a compelling offer is like.
FOUR: Lack of commitment
Firstly, let’s talk about the time commitment. Another line I have heard repeatedly is “We don’t have time for this! I have money from my vendor/distributor to run this campaign, so just get it done. All I need is leads.” Well, you can probably already tell how these campaigns went. I am not asking for 40 hours a week from you, but I need 3-4 hours of time commitment every week to spend on brainstorms, ideation, reviewing, approving, and following up on leads every week. We won’t be able to ensure CONSISTENCY or meet the EXPECTATIONS otherwise. It just doesn’t work and I can give you many more examples if you want
Then there is the commitment of money. No one wants to put hands in their pocket to finance “Marketing that doesn’t work” . Well simply put, this all comes down to your business goals and targets. If you are happy growing at the rate where any new business is coming mainly based on referrals, or just the 2-3 main accounts, then maybe spending money on content creation through ad hoc projects is all you need. BUT if you want to grow on YoY X% then you will need to complement that with a consistent, committed strategy that will empower your sales teams with new leads to follow up on a regular basis. We can surely work on mixing and matching program budgets with MDFs that you receive from other vendors to reduce your cash commitment, but it’s not guaranteed to work.
There are plenty other issues that I have not covered here like lack of in-house skills, lack of market intelligence and so on which could also add to the limited success of your previous marketing campaigns, BUT the issues above are the most common and create the biggest damage in the long term so today I focused only on them.
So, why am I batting for the Tech B2B Marketing Community with such vengeance? Because I really want this to work for you! I don’t want to be involved in ad-hoc activities that are sometimes a hit and mostly a miss. Based on all my experience, we have created a $10 Million Pipeline in 365 Days Program where we commit to this pipeline for you at a cost of 2% for the entire pipeline generated. This program won’t suit everyone and we can only do 10 of these a year too so it’s good for both of us to be sure it’s the right fit. There are no strings attached to see if it could work for you BUT, if you don’t like it, can you please be open enough to tell me that to my face? And I promise to do the same as time is important for the both of us. But if it works, then for limited clients, I can even run a trial at my cost and show you the dream outcome.
If this all sounds fair and you are one of those who want to find out if this could work for your organisation, then hit me up on my personal email here: [email protected]. OR you could also register your interest on our landing page after checking out how we do what we do.?