by Carol Springer | Nov 2, 2016
Digital marketers have an analytical issue when it comes to video performance on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia. How many times have you asked yourself this question – ”How many views means my video is successful?”
The “scorecard” that your video is rated on is the number of views. Unfortunately, doing an analysis on just “views” is not always the best way to track your brand’s progress on the goals you are trying to achieve. This is especially true if your goal to drive real sales opportunities’ into your closers pipe (which is our top priority as an outsourced sales and marketing company).
So instead of asking yourself the previous question, ask yourself – “Which KPIs should we be tracking to understand if our video campaign is successful moving deals into the pipe?”
Question #1: How Do I Identify My Primary Outsourced Sales Video Goals?
Marketers typically want video advertising campaigns to increase awareness about their product and influence online sales. While buyers no longer have a simple experience with your brand anymore thanks to product reviews, mobile engagements, social media, etc.—most marketers and salespeople agree their target audience fits into one of three categories: unfamiliar, on the fence, or ready to buy.
With each new campaign, it’s important to know where your audience lies in these three areas. Which of the three possible brand goals is your #1 priority?
Question #2: What are the KPIs for that marketing goal?
The next stage after identifying your goal is to take a closer look at the data that is being mined for each video.
Here is a breakdown of what KPI to analyze for each goal:
Awareness goal KPIs:
- Views
- Impressions
- Unique Users
Consideration goal KPIs:
- View-Through Rate
- Watch Time
Action Goal KPIs:
- Clicks
- Calls
- Signups
- Sales
Question #3: Where and How do I properly analyze my data for my videos?
Now that you have identified your primary goals and your KPIs for those goals, you now need to identify the tools that you going to use to help you become more data-driven as a marketer.
Depending on the platform, analytics usually comes with these video platforms, and spearheading the Big Data field with its extensive metrics and capture points is Google’s YouTube. Vimeo and Wistia have great metrics platforms to run reports on analysis, and even heat mapping for what part of the video the viewer engagement was highest. Google Analytics will help you measure clicks and conversions for sales KPIs.
You can also use other platforms proprietary to the video service to measure clicks and engagement if they are not being seeded with an Adwords campaign. But nothing is more valuable than correlating videos viewed to what is occurring in your opportunity pipeline.
Question #4: Now that I have done the marketing analysis, how to I correlate videos to sales analysis – deals hitting the pipe?
Now that you have identified the KPIs for your video campaigns and where and how to measure them, the next step in this exercise is to identify what impact is video having on my sales pipeline. This is where automation software like Pardot that integrates into a video platform like Wistia is critical (and one of the reasons we love a company that specializes in outsourced sales and marketing).
One of the key features of the combined Wistia and Pardot Integration is the ability to see what videos are:
- Producing the most conversions
- Drill into that videos individual performance
- Drill into how early it is driving that conversion
This level of analysis allows to you do three things:
- Identify what videos you should consider pushing harder into the market
- Identify what content you should create more of
- Identify what videos are predictive of buying that need to have their score increased in your lead scoring engine.
Gabriel Sales specializes in aligning our outsourced sales and marketing efforts around driving more sales qualified opportunities’ into our client’s sales funnels. We can help with refining your existing programs with content production workshops, we can launch a full blown engine for companies just getting started or we can run a turnkey pilot lead scoring and sales automation starter campaign to help you decide if lead scoring is right for you. To learn more about our philosophy, what we believe and who we can help we recommend checking out our About Us page.
by Carol Springer | Sep 19, 2016
B2B sales is always going to be about building relationships and creating trust. This has dramatically increased over the past three to four years. Social media, marketing automation, content marketing and other modern technology platforms have enabled a new and more efficient way of selling, while at the same time, making the process more complex for inside sales.
This new landscape of online education requires synergy between sales and marketing teams, and a steady flow of digital content and data analysis to track and measure your efforts. For some companies, making this transition can be difficult to implement and involves a steep learning curve. Many companies find an advantage in leveraging B2B outsourced sales and marketing companies to help them adapt to this new way of selling faster and more efficiently.
Here are three outsourced sales and marketing services that can help:
Amplify Your Use of Content in the Sales Process
Most B2B companies know that creating quality marketing content is essential in the sales process. Unfortunately, some companies struggle with creating content that is both relevant to the buyer, and contributes to moving prospects through the sales cycle.
An outsourced sales and organization has the experience to know what content works and what doesn’t. An outsourced marketing and sales company also knows how to create and deliver content that speaks directly to your buyers’ needs or pains. In the beginning, your content should prove to your buyer you understand their needs. Later stage content should then let your prospects decide whether or not they have any interest in how your solution helps them meet their needs. A sales outsourcing organization can help you create a content strategy aligned around this goal. This replicates the same process that an inside sales executes with a well-planned sales process.
Outsourced Sales and Marketing Can Help Get Technologies Productive Faster
Until about a decade ago, it was very difficult for marketers to measure their direct contribution to P&L. Today, technologies like customer relationship management (CRM) programs and marketing automation platforms make it easy track leads through every part of the buyer lifecycle, helping to measure marketing and sales efforts. This includes the buyer’s engagement with content and the buyer’s engagement directly with sales reps.
For companies that have yet to implement these types of technologies, the learning curve can be rather high. It can often take a year or more for B2B companies to see the results immediately because:
- The sales cycle will not change immediately (it will shorten over time)
- Using content requires a new systematic strategy
A sales outsourcing company that offers sales technology implementation and support services can help streamline the implementation process. And more importantly, they can integrate these technologies into a proven sales process faster.
Keep up with increasing demands for marketing content
Marketers today are increasingly expected to act like publishers; creating quality content for sales people to pass along to prospects. While content demands for the B2B universe may be slightly less than for B2C, they can still be quite overwhelming for the average B2B company with limited resources.
Outsourcing your B2B content creation can help you keep up with the increasing content demands your buyers place on your inside sales reps. It is easy for companies without a full-time content creation staff to get sidetracked on other initiatives. By leveraging an outsourced sales and marketing company, companies can continue to create quality content their readers will find relevant and valuable.
Conclusion
An outsourced sales and marketing company, with the right technology and content production expertise can help companies shift to the new buyer centric sales landscape faster and with less costs contact us today to schedule a meeting with one of our outsourcing specialists.
by Glen Springer | Apr 19, 2015
Outsourced Sales and Marketing at Orchid Bay
A Real Estate LLC developing an eco-conscious community in the Caribbean that blends the infrastructure of a town based on the principals of “New-urbanism” with the amenities of a resort. Company had extremely talented inbound and brand marketing executive and seasoned sales professionals working remotely across the United States. This case study outlines how outsourced sales and marketing helped their business.
The Challenge
Company wanted to build a systematic outsourced sales and marketing engine to nurture and develop qualified sales opportunities.
- Company selling to high net worth individuals
- To attract top sales talent company needed to keep their pipe full with qualified leads.
- Orchid Bay attracted a great deal of tire kickers that would never actually buy.
- Orchid Bay attracted another segment of buyers that were genuinely interested but could take years before making a final decision.
- The final purchase decision could be driven by multiple needs and financial goals.
- Company needed to segment buyers early in sales process to prioritize where to focus closers time.
- Sale requires gaining a deep understanding of the goals and needs of the buyer.
- Sales requires building a high level of trust between the buyer and the seller.
The Solution
Marketing Automation and Content Management Systems Integration, Lead Scoring Strategy and Outsourced Sales and Marketing Execution over 18 months.
- Defined buyer persona, buyers journey, business need and unique value props for 7 specific buyer segments.
- Created a nurturing strategy to automate the buyer education with digital content..
- Implemented Marketing Automation and integrated Digital Demand Center™ into existing website to create a system to prioritize leads based on digital engagement.
- Staffed inside buyer education to point buyers in the right direction and to further segment based on needs profile
- Set appointment for senior reps
- Staffed part time rep closing deals for $5K educational/sales tours
- Managed integration of automation systems to build automated lead assignments in easy to use lead portals to prioritize calling efforts of sales team
- Staffed blended marketing team to manage ongoing nurturing and marketing automation campaigns
- Performance reporting: marketing and sales pipeline scorecard (Traffic to MQL to SAL to SQL to Revenue), calling, content engagement, and marketing programs performance management
by Glen Springer | Sep 21, 2012
Outsourced Sales and Marketing can help you to achieve your sales targets faster and at a reduced operational cost. This is especially true if you are just getting out of the gate. In a previous blog we discussed the time and money it can save you in recruiting, sales management and marketing management. However you cannot expect to under fund your sales and marketing efforts and still compete in the market. This is especially true if you are a young company, a technology start-up or new to the market. An outsourced sales and marketing solution has the advantages of a fully functioning organization that is already in motion but you need to consider your competition and understand that if there is competition in the market that you need to invest enough to allow your sales and marketing team the ability to compete and win.
Some Strategic Issues that Shape Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing
Here are some of the areas you should expect your outsourced sales and marketing company to explore with you:
Market dynamics – What is your understanding of the market and selling dynamics of other companies – Do you understand your differentiators. What is your core value proposition? How deep is your understanding of the competitive landscape?
Do you have realistic goals – Do you have any existing conversion metrics and sales pipe history to support those goals? Is one of the top priorities of your sales and marketing outsourced vendor to help with this?
Key events in your sales cycle – What are the key events that occur during your customers buying cycle? What is your win loss ratio? Do you need your sales and marketing outsourcing solution to help you figure this out. In that case you may want to position this as a consulting engagement to your board. If any of the past several issues has left you wondering what is the difference between outsourced sales vs. sales consulting here is a quick overview from a past blog post…Sales Consulting vs. Outsourced Sales.
What does your existing customer set look like – The prospects an outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales will be targeting for you will want to understand who your current buyers are. Prospects will want to know what vertical markets you are in and you will need to be able to provide your outsourced sales partner with reference clients in other verticals if they are opening a new vertical or market for you.
Do you have the budget and the patience to successfully execute to a successful plan – While an external sales and marketing company can get you into the market faster and more effectively, a well executed plan takes time to ramp. Obviously using an outsourced sales and marketing company will allow you to gain traction quickly but they will not be able to dramatically change a company’s typical buying cycle for your product. If your typical sales cycle takes 6-12 month you can expect an outsourced sales and marketing company to shave a month or two off that cycle at best but you need to account for the initial 90-120 days to ramp the initial pipe. Do you have the patience to wait for the sales engine to ramp? We typically see our efforts take significant hold at 9-12 months. We do have some tactics to gain traction with key accounts quickly. To help on this front you need to have an ideal customer profile but realistic timing needs to be factored into the overall strategy.
The right level of funding approved– All this boils down to the right level of funding. Sales and marketing outsourcing help get you out of the gate faster and cheaper but it does not absolve you from the need to fund your efforts at levels where you can compete. You need to make sure that senior management and your board are aware of this and do not set false expectations. As with any strategic initiative you need to have buy-in and appropriate funding from the senior management team, and sales and marketing outsourcing is no exception.
There are many strategic decisions that you need to consider in executing a successful sales and marketing strategy. This blog addresses a handful that we work through with you. For additional tactics we use to ensure your long term success we invite you to check out a couple of our education series here:
Selling Smarter and Selling Faster White Paper
Build a Successful B2B Sales and Marketing Engine – Educational Resources
For more information on how Gabriel Sales has helped dozens of companies enter a market successfully please feel free to contact for us an initial review.
by gabriel_sales | Sep 21, 2012
Outsourced Sales and Marketing can help you to achieve your sales targets faster and at a reduced operational cost. This is especially true if you are just getting out of the gate. In a previous blog we discussed the time and money it can save you in recruiting, sales management and marketing management. However you cannot expect to under fund your sales and marketing efforts and still compete in the market. This is especially true if you are a young company, a technology start-up or new to the market. An outsourced sales and marketing solution has the advantages of a fully functioning organization that is already in motion but you need to consider your competition and understand that if there is competition in the market that you need to invest enough to allow your sales and marketing team the ability to compete and win.
Some Strategic Issues that Shape Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing
Here are some of the areas you should expect your outsourced sales and marketing company to explore with you:
Market dynamics – What is your understanding of the market and selling dynamics of other companies – Do you understand your differentiators. What is your core value proposition? How deep is your understanding of the competitive landscape?
Do you have realistic goals – Do you have any existing conversion metrics and sales pipe history to support those goals? Is one of the top priorities of your sales and marketing outsourced vendor to help with this?
Key events in your sales cycle – What are the key events that occur during your customers buying cycle? What is your win loss ratio? Do you need your sales and marketing outsourcing solution to help you figure this out. In that case you may want to position this as a consulting engagement to your board. If any of the past several issues has left you wondering what is the difference between outsourced sales vs. sales consulting here is a quick overview from a past blog post…Sales Consulting vs. Outsourced Sales.
What does your existing customer set look like – The prospects an outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales will be targeting for you will want to understand who your current buyers are. Prospects will want to know what vertical markets you are in and you will need to be able to provide your outsourced sales partner with reference clients in other verticals if they are opening a new vertical or market for you.
Do you have the budget and the patience to successfully execute to a successful plan – While and outsourced sales and marketing company can get you into the market faster and more effectively, a well executed plan takes time to ramp. Obviously using an outsourced sales and marketing company will allow you to gain traction quickly but they will not be able to dramatically change a company’s typical buying cycle for your product. If your typical sales cycle takes 6-12 month you can expect an outsourced sales and marketing company to shave a month or two off that cycle at best but you need to account for the initial 90-120 days to ramp the initial pipe. Do you have the patience to wait for the sales engine to ramp? We typically see our efforts take significant hold at 9-12 months. We do have some tactics to gain traction with key accounts quickly. To help on this front you need to have an ideal customer profile but realistic timing needs to be factored into the overall strategy.
The right level of funding approved– All this boils down to the right level of funding. Sales and marketing outsourcing help get you out of the gate faster and cheaper but it does not absolve you from the need to fund your efforts at levels where you can compete. You need to make sure that senior management and your board are aware of this and do not set false expectations. As with any strategic initiative you need to have buy-in and appropriate funding from the senior management team, and sales and marketing outsourcing is no exception.
There are many strategic decisions that you need to consider in executing a successful sales and marketing strategy. This blog addresses a handful that we work through with you. For additional tactics we use to ensure your long term success we invite you to check out a couple of our education series here:
Selling Smarter and Selling Faster White Paper
Build a Successful B2B Sales and Marketing Engine – Educational Resources
For more information on how Gabriel Sales has helped dozens of companies enter a market successfully please feel free to contact for us an initial review.
