Is it time to remodel your marketing strategies?

If you’re not sure why you aren’t getting enough pipeline, it’s probably because you aren’t going about marketing the right way. But this can also cause you to be hesitant to say no to anyone. You feel like you shouldn’t reject anyone when you don’t have enough pipeline to begin with.

But you need to start changing your way of thinking.

All marketers sort of have this false sense that we shouldn’t choose a niche.

It’s scary to learn to say no, but you need to narrow in on who you’re marketing to. It’s not a good play to try to market to everyone. You have to choose a niche.

On the flip side, you don’t want to limit yourself too much. For example, if you say, “We do performance marketing for Saas,” it would be a little bit restrictive. Something better would be “We help demand gen marketers solve their most complex problems related to growth.” Do you see how you need to maintain a balance? You want to find your specific niche, without limiting yourself too much.

In a recent podcast on Digital Conversations with Billy Bateman, Garrett Mehrguth, President and CEO of Directive, talks about the importance of choosing a specific market, making data driven decisions, and providing value to your customers.

How to Find Your Niche

Finding your niche is actually simpler than you may think.

The bottom line is to just use common sense! There’s no need to go about it in the most new and transformative way.

Consider the following questions:

• Which customers pay the most?
• Which customers have the best retention?
• Who is least serviced by the overall market?
• Which group of prospects have the highest close rate?

So, for example, if you answered software clients to all of those questions, then make yourself a software agency! It’s not rocket science!

Garrett states, “The question is: Do you have the audacity to trust common sense?”

After going through those questions, you might realize that you need to make a shift. Just trust the common sense!

Go with what makes sense for your company financially.

Make Data Driven Decisions

Besides speaking to too broad of an audience, another common mistake is thinking you’re making data driven decisions when you’re actually not.

Basically, Garrett explains that “most demand gen marketers still don’t have a financial model that gives them confidence of where they should spend their next dollar, or how much their current dollars are making.” Are you aware what your cost per SQL is? And MQL?

You should not be going off your gut!

Align Marketing and Finance

We’ve discussed the importance of aligning your sales and marketing teams before, but have you considered how crucial it is to align marketing with finance?

Marketing needs to build a relationship with finance.

To do so, marketers should read up on finance and learn how they determine where to spend the next dollar.

Let’s be real. No one wants their budget cut. What you need to do is get all of your statistics in order so that you can approach the finance team with plans and models of how you’re going to make the marketing dollars multiply.

You need to get good at syncing with Marketo, Hubspot, and Pardot, and integrating with Salesforce. This is how you can determine how much you pay per lead, and how much you should be paying per lead.

We know that you marketers are great at coming up with new and creative ideas, but it all needs to be based off the numbers! If it isn’t, then chances are that it won’t work out, and your budget will get slashed.

Give Your Customers Something In Return

Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about the money you put into ads.

If you think about it, running ads gives no value back to the consumer. You’re just giving money to Google or LinkedIn or whatever you use to run your ads. All the money is going to the platform. But it doesn’t need to be like that. Have you ever thought about how you can give something to the customer?

Billy and Garrett agree that it is a great marketing play to incentivize prospects to book meetings with you.

At the end of the day, you can’t get a meeting booked from nothing. It may seem that way when you get a meeting booked that was generated from your Google Ad, but remember, you are paying money to run that ad. What if you took some of the money out of the ad and put it towards a Starbucks gift card for the customer?

Everyone is hesitant to be okay with giving people things. It makes us feel weird, but trust us, it works!

The best practice is to give $100 gift cards.

You will realize that incentivizing customers to book a meeting is cheaper because you are leveraging so much on your conversion rates. $100 may seem like a lot, but you may not even realize that a cost per lead is more than that. It will be cheaper and more effective in the end.

Once you know the data, you’ll realize it does make financial sense to spend $100 for a meeting when you’ll be getting thousands of dollars when that prospect converts.

Still not convinced? Think of it like this: You will not be spending more money. You will be splitting your budget between ads and the customers. Instead of spending 100% on ads and giving 0% to customers, you could be spending 75% on ads and give the remaining 25% to the customer.

Gift giving is just a way to leverage reciprocity. It’s simple human psychology.

It will go something like this:

• A potential customer sees your Google Ad which says they’ll get $100 gift card if they book a meeting.
• $100?!? So, naturally, they book a meeting and get the gift card.
• Then you say, “I know you’re not here just for the gift card. You’re way too sharp of a marketer for that. What can we really help you with?”

See what we did there?

Try it out! It works!

Conclusion

You need to step back and rethink your marketing strategies. Sometimes we become so caught up in old ideas and our current perspective. It’s worth reevaluating what plays you’re using to drive results.

In conclusion, find your niche. Who should you market to in order to see the best results?

Don’t be afraid to do a 180 if you realize you’re marketing to the wrong group. And make it all data driven. Let me repeat this. Do not just go off your gut! Take the time to gather and analyze all the data. And once you’ve done that, present your new models to the finance team so that you’re both on the same page. And remember, it pays off to incentivize clients to book meetings with you. You put money into ads, so why not give some of that to the customer?

For further insights and helpful tips from Garrett Mehrguth, check out his Youtube channel.

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