GGC recently completed its slate of “midyear reviews” with clients, when we check into the analytics behind our programs and identify ways to improve them during the second half of the year. This ROI reporting is one of the best parts of our account management process at GGC, a great example of our “Measurably Better” core value.
So it was really interesting to see this chart in one of our midyears that shows that 26% of influenced revenue to date was tied to imported leads – leads we generate from our advertising partners at Food Processing, GlobalSpec, etc.
Clients always want to know about the impact of all of their marketing, but we’re frequently asked in particular about the value of the digital advertising that we do with industry websites. As we move toward focusing our spending more on activities that drive true later-stage opportunities, not just early-stage top-of-funnel leads, advertising has typically been questioned as perhaps too early-stage to make sense.
What we see in this particular example is that the paid webinars and white paper ads we buy actually WILL travel through the funnel to convert from early-stage lead to sales qualified lead. This chart indicates that 26% of advertising leads for this client converted to influenced revenue as tracked by their CRM. This gives us the data to show that the digital ads this client runs (not non-measurable print ads) do matter and will convert to the revenue opportunities salespeople are really after.
Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful recently said in a CNBC interview that the prime challenge he’s facing among his 54 businesses (which are all “on fire,” he noted twice), is finding people. The talent gap holding nearly all companies back shows up in nearly every study of business conditions.
To underscore the point, the CMO Council’s recent study on marketing performance pointed to two barriers to holding marketing back from top performance:
Problems in the martech stack. In the survey of more than 300 global CMOs, 55% said that a lack of systems that connect data silos and boosts access to data is their number one barrier to solve. That’s surprising, given that most surveys in the past pointed to proving ROI as their #1 barrier – still noted as important in the study, but not in the top spot.
In fact, this year ROI wasn’t even in the second spot – it’s access to talent to drive programs, as Kevin O’Leary indicated for his companies. Every business executive today will share similar stories of the difficulty in hiring people at all levels of their organizations as a critical roadblock to not only getting more orders but even fulfilling them on the factory floor.
We all complain about our email, but the fact is that despite all the competition for visibility in your inboxes, email marketing remains a powerful lead gen response tool. In fact, GGC sees more ROI from ongoing email marketing than any other component of digital marketing.
Does it matter when you send your emails? Of course! According to a recent HubSpot survey of US marketers, the 9-noon time slot on a Tuesday produces the greatest engagement.
Which day of the week performs best?
Monday 22.6%
Tuesday 24.9%
Wednesday 21.3%
What time of day works best?
9-noon 34.9%
Noon-3 27.6%
The two drop-offs we see – from Tuesday to Wednesday, along with the drop-off in the afternoon – are pretty sizable.
Build Your LinkedIn Audiences with This Simple Technique
LinkedIn’s impact is tied to building community. In many respects, it’s the marketers dream – customers and potential customers, all connected to you, in a network you can communicate with at any time at no cost!
Obviously, the bigger the network, the bigger the impact. One of the easiest ways to grow your audience is to make it easy for your salespeople to invite people in their networks to follow your company page. It’s just a quick button click that you can do, with up to 250 invites a month. Here’s how to do it:
Have salespeople and new top execs who join the company invite their existing connections to follow the company LinkedIn page.
As an employee, you can invite relevant LinkedIn connections to follow your company with an invite button at the top. On your home page (get a screenshot of your home page, and replace) you’ll see 2 buttons to use for invitations.
If you don’t see these buttons, that’s because the individual isn’t connected to the company’s page. Here’s a video to show how to make that easy connection, which you can share with any team members who may need it.
Easy and physics don’t always go together, but this TED Talk (just 8 minutes) from Google marketer Dan Cobley draws on his early background as a physics student to make a connection between the two. It’s a nice diversion, enjoy!
Newton’s Law – it requires force to change a mass’s direction – just like it requires force and effort to change a company’s message and get customers to switch to you as a new vendor! What that means for marketers is parallel to what we say about “switch” messaging, that it requires a VERY compelling message and marketing dollars to shift direction and momentum of a mass – your brand – to a new perception or to get prospects to switch to you as a vendor.
The scientific method states that it’s easy to disprove hypothesis. In other words, for marketers, you can spend years to build a brand, but you can damage it overnight with a bad product or poor customer service experience.
Looking for more physics (after all who isn’t!)? Watch his TED Talk.
GGC celebrated National Volunteer Month this past summer by giving people an afternoon off to volunteer in their communities, with whatever nonprofit they felt passionate about. And we truly saw some impressive displays of volunteerism:
Installing a new floor for a single mom and her family in a renovated Habitat for Humanity home.
Putting together 300 meals in an afternoon for seniors at a local food kitchen
Cutting a new path for hikers on the Buckeye Trail
Create a cigar box for a charity auction – that eventually went for $110 – to benefit Ferndale Pride in Michigan in support of the organization’s mission to support a local LGBTQ+ Community Center
Help with the school’s Science Fair program
After 10 years on the national bone marrow transplant registry, one of our people actually became a bone marrow donor!
