How to maximise marketing’s business value

On episode 15 of The Insiders Podcast, hosts Richard Lane and Simon Hazeldine were joined by Catherine Dutton (VP of EMEA Marketing) from Pegasystems.

In her 18 years of working for large B2B tech companies in various senior roles, Catherine uncovered a passion for marketing and its execution. She is currently the Vice President of EMEA Marketing at Pegasystems.

From sharing metrics that matter to meeting your customers’ needs and practicing effective lead qualification, nurture and development, Catherine shares how marketing can help win more new business opportunities and positively impact revenue growth.

Be a data-driven storyteller 

When it comes to marketing, Catherine argues that metrics matter. These metrics have to demonstrate marketing’s impact, which can be measured in various ways: revenue generation, increasing pipeline, sourcing new opportunities, return on investment, building relationships, building engagement, and more.

Catherine points out that for the impact to resonate with the wider business, marketers must adopt the language of sales when sharing these metrics:

“Ultimately, sales are interested in the opportunities and how it helps them win more business. I think it’s really important that you use the same language [as sales] and talk about those strong ROI metrics that you can prove and use examples of previous campaigns or activities you have done to drive that ROI.”

Marketers are creators at their core. While measuring impact is important, so is storytelling, and this is a skill marketers can harness when presenting data:

“We need to promote what we are doing… We need to talk about our successes – even if they’re small wins, we should make a big deal out of it. The more storytelling you do, the more resonance it starts to have internally and the more people you want to engage with want the marketing you’re delivering.”

Qualify your leads appropriately  

Catherine reinforces that not all leads become opportunities, and that it’s extremely important to identify where your customer is at in their buying journey and appropriately define the term ‘lead.’ For example, marketing and sales may have generated one hundred ‘leads’, but those leads might actually just be people who have skimmed your content.. Approaching customers too early in that journey can be detrimental to the overall outcome of a sale.

“Leads are great from a marketing perspective to understand where people’s interest is, but I think that the term ‘lead’ is misleading, because it’s not necessarily an opportunity – it’s not a business conversation to be had. It’s just a small bit of insight that you get into an individual who started to engage with your organisation.”

There is also a risk of neglecting the nurturing of current customers or prospects who are ready to buy. Catherine argues that while you may think you have one hundred leads, you may actually only have two that are close to closure.

That’s not to say that you should disregard potential leads. Catherine states that there should be an ongoing ‘stream’ of activity to nurture individual relationships:

“That can be anything from building a form or campaign where we are drip-feeding them content every couple of weeks or months around a topic of interest, or we could invite them into a user group. Or, we could put them in contact with different peers that are working with other clients…

“I think there are lots of different tactics and channels that you can use to help nurture those individuals, but you must think about them as an individual, and making sure that that nurturing is right for them in terms of campaign activity.”

Build and maintain relationships with your customers  

In Account-Based Marketing, putting your customer and their needs first is integral. Whether you have been working with a client for years or you are nurturing a prospect, your approach should always match the customer’s needs. Catherine says that marketers should assign themselves as the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of their target or high-value accounts:

“Marketers are the CMOs of their accounts; they are bringing in people when it’s relevant, they’re thinking about the wider picture for the client… They’re thinking: ‘How is the content? How are the campaigns? Will this messaging resonate?’

They are taking the time to understand the client and the organisation, then bringing in that insight to challenge the business and to work with the account teams to execute a fully integrated strategy.”

Ultimately, marketing should communicate with sales to ensure that they are on the same page regarding client goals and objectives. Communication is the key to unlocking long-term sales and marketing alignment.

Listen to The Insiders podcast for more insights into the world of business-to-business sales and marketing.