Partner Content
If you’ve just been focusing on the top of the funnel, that’s okay. With the advent of marketing automation platforms about 20 years ago, B2B marketers became obsessed with “inbound marketing” and trying to hit MQL goals to fuel their sales team. Things are a lot different now. Modern CMOs are no longer measured on qualified leads but revenue generation. Mature Account Based Marketing (ABM) programs are generating 78% of all sales opportunities and 73% of revenue. Only 10% of those programs consider “leads” to be an indicator of success.
Hot leads are great– no one would ever say no to those. But they’re an unreliable way to scale a revenue program. A clear focus on revenue means a focus on the full-funnel: growing brand awareness efficiently by focusing on best-fit future customers, creating opportunities with them based on engagement data, accelerating those opportunities to closed/won, and retaining and growing those customers. Let’s take a look at the entire revenue funnel that today’s revenue-oriented marketers need to focus on for growth, from awareness to customer expansion and everything in between.
Awareness
Today’s buyer is doing their research entirely online. 62% of B2B buyers develop their selection criteria or vendor list based solely on content. By leveraging firmographic and intent data, modern marketers are able to put highly relevant messages in front of their best-fit future customers via targeted display and social advertising. This generates initial interest and edges out competitors vying for the same attention. If they get good at creating tight segments and associating personalized messages with them, they can experience huge lifts in display ad performance.
Opportunity Creation
Here’s where teamwork makes the dream work. By sharing real-time engagement data with their sales teams, marketers can alert them to the accounts that are seeing those ads and taking action. When that happens, your sales team can start reaching out, trusting that the people they’re contacting are already familiar with your brand and solution.
Pipeline Acceleration
If a sales team member loves it when marketing connects them to buyers through chat, then they’re going to love how marketing can deliver personalized, mid-funnel content to buyers to expedite the sales process. It all starts with “progression rules”. By aligning relevant creative and content to discrete sales stages, accounts can automatically be targeted at every stage of your opportunity cycle.
Customer Retention and Expansion
The new rally cry for CMOs is not only revenue, but overall customer lifetime value (CLTV). With a shrinking economy comes tightened budgets for both you and your customers. CMOs that focus on CLTV will weather the storm much better than those who stay focused on top line growth.
Over the course of three years, a company with a modest -3% retention begins to plateau. Conversely, a company with a modest 3% expansion rate sees revenue begin to spike after three years, putting them in unicorn territory.