PDM LeadGen Day: PDM Keynotes

Welcome to the second post in our LeadGen Day 2018 blog series! I’ll be diving into each of the keynote presentations we heard throughout the morning. If you’d like more information about any of our speakers, don’t hesitate to get in touch with someone from our team!

Five members of the Power Digital executive team (and a few friends) kicked the day off with about 90 minutes of high-powered lead-gen learning. We covered everything from the philosophy of lead-gen marketing and sales to specific technologies that our team leverages for success. Overall, a great way to prime the audience for a day of networking and learning. Here’s a quick overview of the keynote presentations.

I’ll be highlighting the first 3 presentations from the PDM team in this article as they’re all different parts of the same message: building a successful marketing funnel can make a massive impact on your business

Drew Goodmanson, CSO of Power Digital

Introductions, attendee survey results, and how our perspective on B2B lead gen has shifted in the last few years.

Grayson LaFrenz, CEO and co-Founder of Power Digital

The recent merging of sales and marketing, how old methods are giving way to new, more innovative approaches, and some hyper-effective lead-gen methods

Julie Zubak, VP of Funnel Marketing at Power Digital

Importance of lead scoring, implementing lead nurturing best-practices, segmenting marketing & sales messaging to specific buyer personas

Our featured guest keynote presentations deserved their own blog post, because these guys really brought the heat. Jerry and Matt are some of the best in their field in the world, and we were lucky enough to have them as apart of this event. To top it off – we got to hear a bit about Jerry’s storied NHL career! Find that article here.

Jerry Rollins, CEO of Sage Executive Group

The fine line between winning and losing, what great sales teams have in common, and keys for effective leadership

Matt Garrett, Founder of TGG Accounting

How knowing and analyzing the numbers can give you the roadmap to success, and how accounting can and should be the cornerstone of any successful business

Drew Goodmanson – The Trackable Customer Journey

Drew started the day with an introduction to the high-level concepts that the attendees would be learning about and discussing throughout LeadGen Day. His message was focused on the “trackable customer journey” and how important it is for business customize that journey for their audience.

Marketing was never “one size fits all,” but customers are pickier than ever these days. With the technological innovations in the last few decades and the onset of the Mobile Age, the market demanding quicker, smarter, and more personal experiences from businesses. It’s the new status quo, and the question is how to meet and exceed that status quo.

A big part of leading the pack is taking advantage of the best marketing technologies the industry has to offer. Just like with marketing messaging, marketing technology is not one size fits all. There are thousands of solutions to leverage – and that’s no exaggeration.

He mentioned the MarTec 5000: a list of marketing technology solutions that covers nearly any use in any industry. It gets its namesake from the sheer number of tech solutions listed. The first list was about 5000 unique companies, but it has grown to nearly 8000 today.

The amount of recent innovation in marketing/sales in almost unparalleled. If you’re looking for a way to make your business that much more intelligent/agile/etc., this list is the perfect place to start.

Drew also touched on the concepts that we would be discussing throughout the day. The amount of business intelligence available to companies these days allows smart marketing and sales teams to find creative, effective ways to speak to their prospects and customers.

The most effective marketing campaigns sell the dream that can be achieved through the product or service instead of pushing how incredible that product/service is. As Drew wrapped up, he put it best: “sell the protection and security of the moat, not the shovel that digs it.”

Grayson LaFrenz – Bringing Sales and Marketing Together

Grayson’s talk focused mainly on the collision of sales and marketing in the last couple of decades. The innovations in marketing technology (see above) have bridged the gap between the two sides of business development. Communication between the two teams has never been easier, and that means these days it’s a necessity to stay competitive.

Your marketing team needs to constantly be talking to your sales team, especially in businesses with long sales cycles. Assuming a business has nailed marketing lead attribution (tough to do), marketing teams can’t wait 6+ months to understand which of their campaigns is bringing the quality prospects to sales. More on that later when I cover Julie’s presentation.

Grayson discussed strategies for revving up the quality of your prospecting. With the right email and advertising technologies, B2B sales outreach can be basically automated (again, see MarTec 5000 list above). Once teams “crack the code” in terms of who exactly they should be speaking to with messages and offers tailored exactly to that persona, it’s all just a matter of optimization.

I can’t understate the importance of proper tracking and business intelligence in the B2B space. You and your team need to know what the traffic, leads, and eventual closed business resonates with before you can start improving your strategy.

The other poignant message that Grayson delivered was that a business website can be its greatest asset or biggest hurdle. A good website should act like a top-tier salesperson. The nurturing of cold and warm prospects should be nearly automated, and set up so your team can easily segment the leads coming in. You should be offering thought leadership upfront, showing your traffic (and Google’s search algorithm!) that you’re experts in the space. Your traffic should have the opportunity to give as little as an email for some in-depth information on your solution – a whitepaper or webinar.. even an opportunity to ask your team a question.

A quality website allows you to diversify your online lead sources. You’re not as dependent on sales email outreach, trade show introductions, or partner referrals when you have a steady flow of quality leads from your website. It allows you to fully leverage all of the horsepower that digital marketing has to offer.

Google’s algorithm recognizes you as an authority in your space, awarding you with higher SEO rankings and more organic traffic. In the same vein – your Google Ads quality score will be higher, lowering your CPC and giving your ads a higher chance to convert. Traffic from PR hits and social media posts are given the best first impression of your brand as possible.

Hell – we can even say that it impacts the “old school” methods of generating business. Prospects that you meet at conferences or networking events are that much more impressed by your offer. Partners feel even more comfortable referring business to you – especially if your website makes that process just as easy as becoming a customer. Prospects that are already warmed up to your brand give your sales team the best shot of closing deals.

As much as I hear this cliche – it truly is a “rising tides lift all boats” situation.

Julie Zubak – Successful Communication Between Sales and Marketing

If Drew was the “What,” and Grayson the “Why,” then Julie is the “How” of our team’s keynote speakers. How do successful marketing and sales teams communicate?

Julie says that first and foremost, they need to be speaking the same language. What makes a qualified lead qualified? What’s the difference between a marketing qualified lead and sales qualified lead? Questions that need to be answered in detail, with both qualitative and quantitative metrics.

Julie talked through implementing a lead scoring system that allows your team to quickly get on the same page in terms of true opportunity being generated through their efforts. The longer the sales cycle, the more important this becomes. It can be easy to overcomplicate that process, so Julie advised to keep it simple.

You need to define 3 key metrics: lead fit, lead interest, and lead behavior.

Once you define the criteria of those metrics, you can create scores for MQLs and SQLs and disqualified leads, which gives your team multiple leading indicators of success. Your campaigns won’t be dialed in at first, but over time you’ll be able to shift your approach according to what’s generating the most qualified leads at each step of your marketing funnel.

The funnel is an embodiment of this optimization-focused approach to digital marketing. What prompts the most qualified leads to give their email address to receive a whitepaper, case study, etc.? How should the marketing team communicate with that prospect in nurturing emails and ad campaigns? Given enough time, your team will be able to create a steady flow of quality opportunities that can continue to be scaled and optimized.

She stressed the importance of segmentation, personalization and testing of messaging to prospects at each step in the funnel. Teams should constantly be testing how they speak to their audience at every level of the funnel. General messages don’t resonate anymore – people want a personal experiences when they interact with companies.

Julie said it best – “If you’re speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to no one.”

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This wrapped up the PDM team’s keynote presentation. The core takeaways: marketing is changing faster than ever, the market is demanding more from companies, and the only way to keep up is to constantly track, personalize, and optimize.

Next up, our to featured guest presenters: Jerry Rollins, CEO of Sage Executive Group, who talks about the DNA of winning teams, and how to cultivate that culturen in a business. After that, Matt Garrett, CEO and Founder of TGG Accounting who walked the audience through a few exercises to show just how impactful knowing the numbers (accounting) can be on business decisions.