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What do Your Leads… LEAD to?

By in Lead Generation, Sales

by Brian Basilico, The Bacon Guy If you are on LinkedIn, I am sure you have fallen victim to the connect and pitch. Chances are they got your name using Sales Navigator, a tool like ZoomInfo, or by looking at their connections and simply reaching out to their connections. You know how it works. Someone connects with you and says, “I am not trying to sell you anything”, and then keeps messaging you to act like they wanna be your friend. I had one guy the other day (who is a fitness coach) hit me up with a list of…

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10 Challenges Marketers Face When Implementing AI in 2023 [New Data + Tips]

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Information Technology, Marketing

by Zoe Ashbridge for HubSpot It’s no secret that embracing AI can come with a wide range of benefits for your marketing team — things like task automation, time and cost savings, increased productivity, and more. Despite these evident benefits, there is a lingering reluctance among many marketers to incorporate AI into their strategies. In our report, The State of AI in Marketing in 2023, we found that only 35% of marketers use AI in their role. So, we wanted to dive into the challenges that marketers face when working with AI and find ways to bridge the gap. Get Started with…

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Building a Virtual Training Program That Actually Works

By in Human Resources, Training

by Rebecca Riserbato for HubSpot In the past, onboarding involved sitting in a room and listening to your manager explain the role. Perhaps you’d take coffee breaks and grab lunch, but you almost always had to be on-site. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has changed. Virtual training has often become the default. There have been many benefits to this change — there are no geographic restrictions for who you hire and no need to pay for travel. Plus, you can be more inclusive, eliminating physical challenges that may affect employees. However, questions about effectiveness remain. Sales is a…

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The Best 30-60-90 Day Plan for Your New Job [Template + Example]

By in Human Resources, Self Improvement, Training Tag ,

by Erica Santiago for HubSpot I remember my first day at HubSpot. I was so nervous and had a million concerns swimming around in my head. Will I adapt to my new job? How long will it take for me to get the hang of things? Can I manage the workload and maintain a good rapport with my coworkers? Fortunately, my outstanding manager at the time prepared a comprehensive checklist to be completed over a few months, and it helped me slowly but steadily adapt to HubSpot. Fast forward a few years, and I'm a rockstar at my job. The…

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Why Do Salespeople Avoid Prospecting?

By in Human Resources, Sales, Self Improvement Tag

BY GEORGE BRONTÉN for MEMBRAIN If there’s nothing else to do, salespeople should default to prospecting. That’s a pretty decent rule of thumb, one we’ve all heard more than once. After all, effective prospecting is the key to keeping the pipeline full and sales results consistent. But do salespeople use their downtime this way? Not usually. In fact, making “cold calls” is often the most-avoided critical task in sales. We procrastinate, we delay, we get busy, and we ignore its necessity. The result is a roller coaster pipeline, up and down, and unpredictable sales forecasts. But why? Paul Fuller, our CRO, had an interesting conversation with Frank Kniekamp recently, and…

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For AI-Driven B2B Customer Experiences, You’ll Need These Four Strategic Investments

By in Sales Tag , ,

by Matt Roberts for MarketingProfs Generative AI is huge, and it's everywhere. Bloomberg predicts AI spend will hit $1.3 trillion by 2032. Microsoft is investing $14 billion in Open AI. And Netflix has hired a director of AI at $900K a year—which shows me I'm clearly in the wrong profession. And which corporate function will be most affected by AI, across all industries? You may (or may not) be surprised that it's Sales and Marketing. How will the incredibly promising technology hit Marketing? Although some fear jobs will be lost to AI, most marketers are taking a rosier view. A full 71% of them say AI…

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Link Prospects’ Personal and Business Data to Engage and Convert: The Awesome Power of B2B2C Linkage Data

By in Uncategorized Tag , , ,

by Scarlett Shipp for MarketingProfs In today's complex and dynamic digital landscape, made up of countless advertising channels and disparate identifiers, achieving a reliable understanding of your ideal audiences can be a challenge for businesses and B2B marketers. Many solutions purport to have the ability to break down the often bewildering many-to-many connections into a manageable one-to-one identifier of individual customers. But B2B marketers must still overcome a considerable hurdle: connecting the personal and professional facets of a person's life and online presence, then tailoring their marketing based on the B2B2C insights that are uncovered. Linking those two aspects of your…

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Gmail Purge Alert: How to Avoid a High Gmail Bounce Rate

By in Email Marketing Tag ,

BY LIVIU TANASE for INC. It’s coming: In December, Google will start deleting inactive accounts to prevent security threats like spam, account hacks, and phishing scams. If an account has been idle for over two years, Google may delete it along with all its content across Google Workspace, including Gmail.  If your business uses email to stay in touch with customers, Google’s update means it’s time to investigate the health of your database. If you’re emailing subscribers who never engage, you risk getting high bounce rates starting this month-;and having your future emails go to the spam folder. Here’s how to be proactive…

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5 Crazy Weird Products From 2023

By in Uncategorized Tag ,

BY ALI DONALDSON for INC. Food and beverage brands got weird in 2023. Several companies rolled out truly wacky products this year, most of which were limited-edition brand collaborations likely designed to generate public buzz in addition to revenue. According to Samuel West, a psychologist whose corporate clients include Ikea, Johnson & Johnson, and Mars, these fun and playfully intentional self-owns by companies started popping up within the past decade, around the time Swedish Fish-flavored Oreos hit store shelves. West, who studies corporate failure and even founded a museum on the subject, says these purposefully strange products are designed to get our attention. That strategy certainly worked. Here are some of the…

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Google’s 2023 releases: A B2B marketer’s review

By in Marketing Tag , ,

by Laura Schiele  for Search Engine Land As 2023 draws near a close, marketers have to admit this about Google: they’ve been busy. Between Bard/SGE headlines and antitrust lawsuit admissions of auction gaming, Google has produced its usual share of releases. Sadly for B2B, most are either aimed at ecommerce/B2C or represent minor improvements that don’t make up for the advertising controls Google has stripped or the glaring lack of transparency behind auctions and pricing. With that as the backdrop, I’ll review some of Google’s bigger releases in 2023 before adding a plea for a few updates I think could actually help B2B marketing…

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