Jeremy Weisz 15:04
We’ll talk about some best practices, kind of like to highlight some specific examples. And I know there was a b2b SaaS, health tech company. What did you do with them?
Arti Sharma 15:19
Yes, so I think when they approached us, there was a need for a clear understanding of their objectives. We grafted the strategic go to marketing, you know, strategies and plans for them that are essentially really important for us to understand their ICP. They really had their ICP nailed down, which was good, but at the same time, we were venturing into this new space, so we had to train ourselves and train our team into. So what we worked with them was to create a complete roadmap towards how does our engagement with them will look like? What will it look like? What will be our role? What will be the bottom line business objectives? And how will we be measured in terms of that? So what we did was we looked at their data, their past data, we looked at, you know, also their current goal market plan, how could we, you know, evolve it, and then we activated the program based on their goals and objectives, and then looked at some sales acceleration strategies. But predominantly where we played a bigger role was, demand creation and demand capturing.
And then, just after two years, we started work with them on their demand conversion aspects, kind of in, you know, bringing the metrics from their Salesforce, and working with them and kind of using offline conversion tracking, etc. And some sophisticated ways to double down on there, you know, attracting more of those audiences that they want to be in front of, and working with a third party in their ABM campaign as well. So, they’re more in the, I don’t want to give out, they’re more in the health tech space, if you will. So our role was more at the high quality MQL to the first year. And then we started to kind of change the narrative to more sales ready leads in the second year. So what we did was created that demand through search engine optimization strategies, performance, based paid marketing, and programmatic ads, display ads, as well as some other offline conversion tracking with their existing client database and client data to kind of combine the two, to create more of that pool of customers that their sales team could work with. And on the back end, we worked on optimizing their attribution and how they track their numbers on the demand and lead side.
Jeremy Weisz 17:41
I could see on the generation side, and by the way, if someone’s watching the video, we’re looking at a few of these things that you’re talking about here with the ICP building, the strategy, the execution, data reporting, and then the attribution part. I could see some mistakes people would make with the generation part, the creation part, which is, maybe they’re just going after the wrong customer. Like, if they haven’t mapped this out with their ideal customer and the buyer journey, then they get these people who maybe aren’t a fit, and they’re wasting their time. Yeah, but let’s assume that’s in place. And we get to the capture part, what are some of the mistakes people make in that part?
Arti Sharma 18:22
That’s amazing. So you know, in the demand capture side of things, they probably do not have, what happens when somebody fills the form, right? Those are the challenges that can generate a pipeline, let’s say, if they have the right kind of customers that are coming to them, but then they’re not able to address the needs of those customers and engage them. So engagement is a big gap in the capture stage. Predominantly, when they are not able to either engage them through the right messaging, or their sales team, they’re not really trained to kind of go into those conversations and get their interest in the product or the service. Now, or even online. You know, sometimes we find that websites have clunky processes to even fill the form out. I mean, you may have 100 fields, on the web form where the customer is really in a rush to kind of get to speak to somebody, or your AI robotic chatbots are not as humanized. And they probably are so defeating for that entire purpose when somebody is really wanting to speak to somebody and get in touch with a real body who could possibly service them. So I think those are some little nuances of understanding your user, their motivation, their interest in your product or service and capturing the demand and making it seamless and easy. And eliminating all those friction points for them. Right.
So that’s where we also come in with their UX UI plan, the overall buyer journey and how to make it really seamless. And that experience has to be so good that the time to value for their entire buying cycle is really systematized. So there’s a lot of several things that, you know, we do it, and engage part is that part where we look at collaborating with our clients to not just understanding their buyers process, but also kind of matching their sales process to the buying process, and kind of bringing that cohesiveness or that collaboration so that the overall experience is very delightful, which is where the conversion really happens. And during that capture model, so if there’s a longer sales cycle, and how do you keep that lead, or that prospect engaged through lead nurturing, through those engagements, through automation, through a variety of different other content pieces and content touch points, if you will.
Jeremy Weisz 20:42
So we get to the conversion part, what are some mistakes people make with that?
Arti Sharma 20:48
So the top mistakes that I’ve seen, especially in the digital marketing side of things, now, I’m going to talk about just the marketing in this state, because if somebody has come to that stage with you, then that means marketing has done their job. And now it’s a sales handoff, I would say, to kind of, you know, the brand of trust, everything has been established. You kind of got to get into that convert stage and you want to make sure that during that stage, the follow through is important. If you don’t have your martech, and your sales tech completely in alignment, sometimes those technologies could fail you, right? It’s not the people, it’s the technology, sometimes that fails you.
You could be sending wrong emails or wrong messaging to the buyer at that stage, or you probably don’t have a sales team who’s really moving them and leading them towards that conversation that can lead them to a conversion, or most of the times I’ve seen, especially in e-commerce spaces, you know, where your shopping cart is so clunky, that you’re about to sell, the customer is interested, they want to buy, but your your shopping cart experience is so bad, that you kind of get are shifting that attention to your competitors. So that’s mostly in the e-commerce space. But in manufacturing and SaaS space, I would say where there’s a subscription model, the same issues happen. But the majority of the time it is the misalignment of what marketing and brand promise promised. And then how does the sales team really create that experience I would say, during that last stage of the deal.
Jeremy Weisz 22:24
Let’s talk about manufacturing, because obviously you deal with a lot of b2b, which is probably going to be a much higher client lifetime value than someone buying something off of an e-commerce site, if I’m generally speaking. So in the manufacturing space, there was one that you worked with specific in custom size, and what were the things you did there?
Arti Sharma 22:52
That’s one of our niches, we work with a whole lot of custom signage companies across the states. And we work with companies and every stage of their, I would say a revenue cycle, if you will, or you know, how they’re building their companies. But this one was, I got to that I am really proud of how the team took them to their goals very quickly. And you know, the time to value was really short and it was accelerated for them. One of them is a customer that’s based out of the Dallas area. And they were already about $4 million when they first hired us. And about two years ago, when they first hired us, there was a need for us to kind of revisit their brand, who they were focusing on, what was their most profitable products and whatnot. And then after doing that ICP and business strategy analysis, we defined what are the marketing techniques that we really need to go after, in order for us to attract more of that profitable business. We just talked about the demand capture, you could capture wrong demand, you don’t want your sales team to be wasting their time, right, or your phones to be ringing for the wrong reason. So in that state, we kind of, you know, really hone down to what they really want to do and where they want to go. And how does marketing come in and support that.
So that’s where we had a rehash of their entire website. We didn’t do a complete overhaul, but we kind of tweaked the website messaging calls to actions. We narrowed down their focus from which kind of products will be most profitable, and who’s buying those products, to identifying key phrases, key terms for both search, paid media, and our LinkedIn advertising to see what would really help them get to that audience base faster and really resonate and engage them at a higher level. And people will be more interested in you know, having a conversation with them about their visual communications, their visual branding needs. So that’s where we came in. And with that, and last I heard from them, it was recently actually we had a top line impact of about $1.6 million for them in 16 months, which was kind of, you know, pretty cool to learn and obviously their conversion rates and their profit margins are really high. Their profit margins or the gross profit margin is about 60%. So, you know, they’re pretty profitable with the program.
Jeremy Weisz 25:12
What I love about what you said, is, and I’m sure that part alone, even if you didn’t do all of the lead gen stuff, that would have left them in a very, I think most companies in a very good spot because thinking about who is the ideal customer, but who’s the ideal, most profitable customer? Because like, as you could have helped them identify things that maybe those customers are generating revenue, but maybe there’s not profitable revenue for them. So that’s a really important first step in that phase, I think, and for me, that hits home. It was like, Okay, how many times is a business really sit down and think through these pieces? Right? And you kind of help them do that?
Arti Sharma 25:59
Yeah and I think that’s a really good observation and thank you for highlighting that. Because Jeremy, our team is a team of marketers, but they’re also business strategists. So when we onboard our team members, we think of them and say, have they run businesses? Have they been involved in startups? Like, what is their MO? Do they understand the pain points of real businesses, real C suite marketing professionals? If they were on the other side, where they were engaging agencies, what was keeping them up at night as a marketing professional? What was important to the board? Right? So those are the kinds of questions we ask and see, how do they handle that? And how do they kind of make, not just any, everybody else look good, but also make sure that they really have an impact. It’s an important aspect of how major marketing roles, and our culture is to be able to influence, inspire and impact the lives of everybody we work with and we touch.
Jeremy Weisz 26:50
Arti, one last question, and before I ask it, I want to point people to check out measuremarketing.com, so they can learn more. Check out more episodes of the podcast. My last question is about your favorite resources. It could be books, it could be software, I know we were talking before we hit record about, you’re always thinking about growth and technology for yourself and for your clients. So what are some of your favorites, it could be software, tools, books, some of your favorite resources?
Arti Sharma 27:22
That’s great. You know, we’re in the era of digital transformation. Obviously, as a digital marketing and performance based agency, we’re always at the helm of it. I think one of the things that I always want people who are new to this space, or who want to learn more about digital is to go look at the Google blog, you know, that’s a force for you to start, you know. Google has tons of resources, go look at that. My favorite tools for business owners is I get inspired by my coach and mentor, Michael Hyatt, you know, he’s been really influential for me to understand the vision, clarify the vision, and be able to create a very inclusive company for everyone to thrive and, and do well, so we kind of, you know, use that. On the book side. Another favorite of mine is Traction. And I love the book. We’re kind of, you know, a combination of great Michael Hyatt and Traction and combination, we’re not one of either or, but we’re a good combination of those two. And there’s several books, but I can go to some tools that I like to use.
For those who want to really learn search and want to kind of you know, get into the space, I think, start toying around with GPT, GPT4. Spend the $20 per month, look at what it can do kind, create your own GPTs and work through that. But also on the server side, I think, you know, Uber suggests Neil Patel’s little tools and software that he keeps bringing it up. Just just explore. There’s so many of them to name a few would be a disservice to the others. But I think Neil Patel, he offers some great advice on his blog as well. And HubSpot blog is a great resource to go after and to learn from. And those are the few that I know, those are my go to sources, but at the same time, there’s so many thought leaders that are putting out some amazing content online. My friend Chris Walker, I would say I really follow him. He’s a great rise media. He’s really an authority on GTM. And again, Sangram GTM Partners, he’s putting out some good content out there. So those are a few that I have mentioned.
Jeremy Weisz 29:39
I love it. Yeah. Do you have a favorite Michael Hyatt book? You mentioned Traction? Actually people can check out the podcast I did with Gino Wickman of Traction, another good one. A favorite is Rocket Fuel with Mark Winters and Gino Wickman. Michael Hyatt has some great books out there. I don’t know if you have any favorites.
Arti Sharma 30:01
One of the things that if you are in a mode of as a business owner and a CEO, you really want to strike and find your purpose and find a balance between your, not balance. Balance is not the right word. I would say harmony in your business and life. I would say Living Forward is a great book. I’ve been doing my life plan every year. I look at it, you know, April 5 is the day when to do that. So for me, that’s like a no brainer. I’ve been doing it for eight years. And, you know, he’s got some amazing tools on focus. I mean, my team is pretty, I think in line with. I didn’t put them through the Michael Hyatt program, but I’ve trained them on full focus planner and the full focus mode that Michael talks about the big wins, and, you know Traction talks about rocks, and he talks about, you know, your top three, you know, big threes, so there’s a very synergistic approaches to both of those. But yeah, so those are the two things that I would say.
Jeremy Weisz 30:56
Yes, I think he’s got Free to Focus and Living Forward and The Vision Driven Leader. Those three stick out. He probably has more books than that, but check those out. But Arti, I want to thank you. Everyone, check out Measure Marketing, more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time and thanks again.
Arti Sharma 31:13
Thank you so much, Jeremy for having me. It was a pleasure.
