Revenue Marketing, that’s the latest buzz word doing the rounds. Fair enough, everyone loves “Revenue” and wants more of it. “Marketing” still has many enemies. So the smart (sneaky?) thing to do is marry the two together and build popularity. And oh, you can give them a lovechild too—social media.
So now here is what the “social media gurus” are saying in the world of B2B marketing:
Social media can accelerate revenue marketing. Can it really?
Let’s Consider These Simple Facts, Pros, Cons And Fears About Revenue Marketing
- FACT: Here’s the fundamental difference between traditional marketing and revenue marketing.
The lead funnel in traditional marketing starts off with marketing handing over qualified leads to sales. It’s the progression of MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to SALs (sales accepted leads). Revenue marketing places revenue accountability alongside demand generation responsibility equally on marketing and sales. Lead generation programs now need a process that can be repeated over and over to create cadence. The aim is to be able to scale lead generation programs and get sustainable, consistent results, a.k.a. conversion. - PROS: An integrated marketing approach offers the opportunity to guide your customers gently, meaningfully through the sales cycle.
Sales and marketing can align under one umbrella to focus demand generation efforts on content optimization and social media participation. By adding real value instead of pushy sales pitches, you can be more successful at attracting, engaging, and compelling prospects to take positive action. As you start to see more meaningful relationships develop, you can feed and nurture these relationships to ultimately work your way to where qualified B2B leads convert into sales. - CONS: There are too many “social media experts”, revenue marketing “theorists” and right wing conspirators!
Social media is only one element of B2B marketing. In the overall context of pragmatic marketing programs, you can’t rely solely on a tool (social media) that is still lacking a conversion engine. Marketing automation and channel partner lead generation programs are, by and large, fundamentally flawed. They depend on the partners to communicate their success or failure with conversion. Typically, these systems do not have the right kind of reporting tools, measurement metrics and tracking mechanisms in place to show exactly which MQLs become SALs or when they undergo the transformation. What happens to these leads thereafter? Why do quality leads suddenly drop off the radar? And that billion-dollar question—why is sales not able to close on leads generated by marketing? A lack of accountability is the problem that revenue marketing needs to fix. This cannot happen unless there are sound, proven practices in place to track, quantify and convert leads.Does your B2B organization have access to lead generation programs and systems that can deliver on these data points? Send me an email or call me, Louis Foong, at (905) 709-3827. I’ll be happy to share some interesting insights on the subject.
- FEARS: Value will decline.
As B2B marketers, most of us agree already that social media is so freaking hard. Now, with this latest scramble to ride the revenue marketing bandwagon, there is, in my opinion, a valid fear that the value factor will be compromised. As the mad frenzy to generate loads of (meaningless) content gathers momentum, we are likely to see innovation fall by the wayside. Mindless, automated social media marketing will trample all over relationship building, community nurturing and tribe leadership. The right wing conspiracy of “social media can accelerate revenue marketing” may find too many blind followers to whom I can only ask, “If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?” My personal fear in this? I may hear a lot of blindfolded social media fans say “Yes”. So here comes Zod all over again. Somebody please call Superman!
What are your thoughts on whether social media is capable of accelerating revenue marketing? Leave me a comment below.
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