How to Create a Data-Driven Culture for Growing Your Business

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In today’s world of advanced analytics and dashboards, creating a data-driven, decision-making culture has become a popular topic of conversation for business leaders and marketing professionals. However, there can be a lot of challenges when trying to implement a culture where data is the diplomat when it comes to making strategic decisions. While there’s always a balance of quantitative data and qualitative experience, businesses that use data to drive their strategies and decisions see tremendous growth. Companies who adopt data-driven marketing are six times more likely to be profitable year-over-year. And yet, 87% of companies say data is the most underused asset in their marketing efforts. How to Create a Data-Driven Culture for Growing Your Business So, how do you change that reality and create a data-driven culture in order to grow your business? Here are a few keys:
  • Make sure key stakeholders are ready to embrace fact-based decision-making. It’s unlikely that everyone will naturally embrace the shift toward data-driven decision-making. For some, it won’t seem natural. While you don’t need everyone’s buy-in to start changing the culture, you do need the key stakeholders to get on board. It’s very important that the commitment to data-driven decision-making permeates from the top down.
  • Pick one objective or area to start improving first. Figuring out where to start can be the most overwhelming aspect of making the shift. Business leaders can often suffer from paralysis of analysis when trying to figure out where to start. If you’re trying to become a data-driven culture, it is important to think of things in stages. Start small with one area that might be a priority for the entire organization that has enough data.
  • Don’t forget to communicate “what’s in it for them.” People are more accepting of change when they understand how it makes their lives better. Whenever you’re trying to shift the culture in your organization, don’t forget to communicate how data-driven decision-making will specifically help each person. It could be that data helps them close more deals or prioritize their time more effectively. Answering “what’s in it for them” is essential for getting buy-in from people who might seem resistant.
Many business leaders still rely on their gut to make important decisions. Rather than leveraging the data they have a source for objective insights, they’d prefer to rely on their intuitions when developing their strategy. However, creating a culture where everyone understands the value of data is crucial as things become more competitive.

How to Tell Stories That Your Customers Actually Want to Hear


Stories help us understand the world around us. They are the mental shortcuts we use because we are overwhelmed by the details about a person, product, or service. As marketers, we rely on storytelling as a way to engage and inspire customers. If stories are authentic, consumers are more interested in what we have to say about our products or services.

The challenge in today’s world is telling our stories in ways that actually get heard. Today, brands market and sell their products in an environment that is more competitive than ever.

So, how do we rise above the noise?

Brands who are successful will treat people as an audience whose trust and attention must be cultivated rather than imagining them exclusively as consumers with choices that should be immediately influenced.

How to Tell Stories That Your Customers Actually Want to Hear

So, how do you go about cultivating the interest of potential customers by telling stories they actually want to hear? Here are a few key steps:

  • Define your audience. First and foremost, it’s important to define who you’re trying to reach (and who you’re not). Unless you’re Amazon, you aren’t trying to sell your product or service to the whole world. Knowing your ideal customer is foundational for telling stories in ways that resonates with them. Everyone on your sales and marketing teams should know (and agree) on exactly who you’re trying to reach.
  • Get an in-depth understanding on what they’re really thinking. There’s a difference between knowing about your audience and truly knowing them. The brands that are known for storytelling are ones that tell stories in ways that communicate what we’re all secretly thinking. If you want to tell stories that resonate, take time to truly get inside the mind of potential customers. Listen to the pain points you hear in sales conversations, interview current customers to understand what a typical day is like for them.
  • Tell a story that matches the audience’s current reality. Potential customers must be able to see themselves in the story you’re telling. If they don’t, your story won’t resonate. One easy way to accomplish this is to tell a story about a personal experience or client success.
  • Find ways to make an “emotional” connection. I’m not talking about bringing a potential customer to tears with your story. Rather, find ways to connect with all of the emotions potential customers experience—joy, excitement, longing, hope, etc. Tell stories in ways that make your audience laugh or brightens their day. Invite them into a tribe of their peers through the way you tell stories. Remembering to create an emotional connection will make sure your storytelling doesn’t fall flat.

In today’s increasingly noisy world, perhaps the only competitive advantage remaining is having a deeper, better understanding of and relationship with potential customers. Effective storytelling is the best way for capturing that advantage.

2 Simple Marketing Metrics Shifts That Could Make a Huge Difference

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There are literally hundreds of different marketing metrics that businesses and agencies measure on a regular basis. From website traffic to keyword rankings to the number of marketing qualified leads—businesses spend countless hours breaking down the metrics to determine the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. The real challenge isn’t the amount of information; it’s knowing what to do with it all. Many organizations are constantly measuring their marketing efforts, but they just don’t know how to use their data to achieve their objectives. While marketing reports might be helpful in evaluating campaigns—the real question is how you’re going to use that information to reach your ideal customer. 2 Simple Marketing Metrics Shifts That Could Make a Huge Difference As an agency, it’s easy to get caught up in “reporting the numbers” when we send over a weekly or monthly report. However, here are two shifts we’re trying to make with our clients when it comes to measuring marketing effectiveness:
  1. Always look for ways to translate data into actionable insights. Rather than spending all our time crunching numbers, we should focus more on translating our marketing results into actionable insights. We should take time to truly understand what’s going on and what we’re doing about it. What are the 2-3 things you’re going to continue because of the results from last month’s marketing efforts? What are the 2-3 things you should think about changing? At the end of the day, we should approach marketing like a learning lab—constantly evolving our strategies based on what we’re learning as we go.
  2. Find your North Star Metric. If you could only measure one metric to evaluate your marketing, what would it be? This is the idea behind the North Star Metric. The idea originally emerged from Silicon Valley and has become a popular concept among startups and growth hackers.
In order to determine the single most important metric for your marketing efforts, you should look at how your product delivers value to your customers. For example, the North Star Metric at Facebook is the number of daily active users. Everything they do is built around increasing that number. In many cases, identifying a North Star Metric creates a level of focus and intentionality that helps everyone prioritize the things they’re working on and improve your ability to achieve that goal.

3 Ways Most Companies Get it Wrong with Marketing and Sales Alignment

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The importance of creating a culture of collaboration between your sales and marketing teams can’t be overstated. But, in case you needed a reminder of how important it is, consider these facts…
  • Aligning both departments can help generate 209% more revenue from marketing (Marketo).
  • Aligning sales and marketing also leads to 38% higher sales win rates (MarketingProfs).
  • B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieve 24% faster three-year revenue growth. (SiriusDecisions).
I’ve written a lot about the collaboration between sales and marketing over the past few years. However, I see a lot of the same challenges when talking with leaders from various industries. Here are some of the most common reasons companies struggle to create synergy between their sales and marketing teams. Where Most Companies Get it Wrong with Marketing and Sales Alignment Here are three common ways organizations hurt themselves when it comes to creating a culture of collaboration between sales and marketing:
  • Sales and marketing teams have different objectives. While each department might have specific goals they’re trying to reach, both should be working together on one objective: generating revenue. When each individual goal is tied to that single objective, it creates a greater focus and filter through which you make decisions. Creating alignment around a shared objective to drive revenue helps hold both teams accountable to the projects and tasks that truly move the needle.
  • Sales and marketing teams aren’t meeting together regularly. Collaboration can only happen when both teams are getting together on a regular basis. When sales and marketing teams aren’t meeting together regularly, you’ll often find the organizational struggles with inconsistent messaging, battles over lead quality, and an “us vs. them” mentality.
  • Your sales or marketing teams are afraid to fail. When someone is afraid to fail, they’ll do everything they can to make sure they look good. Sometimes, that means fudging the numbers or making excuses about why they’re not meeting their goals. If one side is afraid of what might happen if they fail, they’ll often get very defensive about their contributions and point fingers at the other side. Collaboration between sales and marketing teams requires open and honest communication. If one side isn’t willing to face the “brutal facts,” true collaboration isn’t possible.
Whether you’re in marketing or sales (or leading both teams), it’s important to always be on the lookout for ways to improve collaboration between the two teams. If you’ve struggled to create synergy between the two teams in the past, consider if one of these challenges might be the reason. And, more importantly, get both teams together to discuss how you can begin addressing the issue as soon as possible. The future of your business depends on it.

How Marketing Can Become a “Secret, Strategic Weapon” for Sales

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One of the best definitions of marketing I’ve heard was that marketing exists to be a secret, strategic asset for business development. Whether it’s building brand awareness or developing strategies to accelerate the sales cycle, everything you do in marketing exists to grow your business. The good news (for marketers and sales professionals) is that such a broad definition creates new ways of thinking when it comes to the role marketing plays. Rather than compartmentalizing marketing into its traditional definition of primarily advertising and brand awareness, we can discover new ways in which marketing can play a more “behind-the-scenes” role in business development. How Marketing Can Become a “Secret, Strategic Weapon” for Sales Here are a few of my favorite ways in which marketing can become a secret, strategic weapon for business development:
  1. Write story-driven case studies for your sales team. Someone once said the best stories happen to brands who know how to tell them. And, marketers are natural storytellers. That’s why story-driven case studies are so valuable. Crafting case studies that help prospects see themselves in the work you’ve done with clients is one of the best ways to equip your sales team to be successful.    
  2. Create a repository of easily accessible, relevant statistics. Statistics and numbers can play a significant role in the buying decision. As marketers, we have the opportunity to sit at the unique intersection of having insights on industry-related statistics and data points that are specific to our business. By compiling all the relevant statistics into one easily-accessible location, marketing can help sales teams save a tremendous amount of time.
  3. Research and report what your competitors are doing. Salespeople want to know what competitors are doing and how your organization compares. As a marketer, you can make them more confident and informed by conducting competitive intel. This includes anything from one-pagers that outline competitors’ weaknesses and strengths to links of unfavorable reviews about competitors.
None of these projects require a lot of heavy lifting, but each has the potential to make or break a sale for your business. If you want your marketing to have a direct impact on your business development goals, consider how you can start investing a portion of your week fleshing out one of these three ideas for your sales team.

3 Leading Indicators Your Marketing Is (or Isn’t) Working

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There are a lot of different marketing metrics you can use to measure success. However, many businesses don’t pay attention to whether or not their marketing is working until sales numbers are slipping. And, by that point, it’s too late. Because a lot of marketing is about generating leads and peaking the interest of potential customers, it’s the tip of the spear for your business development efforts. The question is, how can you measure whether or not your marketing is working before it’s too late? 3 Leading Indicators Your Marketing Is (or Isn’t) Working Here are three ways you can determine if your marketing is effectively supporting your business objectives before you’re in desperation mode:
  1. Your messaging isn’t resonating with people. As a marketer, it’s important to know what messaging works and what doesn’t. If the content you’re creating (eBooks, infographics, blog posts, etc.) isn’t resonating with potential customers, they won’t consider you as someone who can help them solve their problems. Paying attention to which messages resonate (and which don’t) will help you create content that actually leads people towards the path of becoming a customer.
  2. Your sales team is spending a lot of time clarifying your unique value proposition. If your sales team is having to spend a lot of time explaining how you are uniquely positioned to help potential customers solve their problems, it might be a sign your marketing isn’t doing a great job of answering those questions. In a world where potential customers are already halfway through the buying process before they engage with an actual human being, it’s important that your marketing is effectively communicating what you do and how you can help.
  3. You’re generating a lot of low-quality leads. Your marketing efforts should be focused quality over quantity when it comes to lead generation. If you’re generating a bunch of leads that don’t fit the profile of someone who buys, you’re creating a fan base, not a customer base. This is why it’s important to define the exact buyer personas you’re trying to reach.
Whether you’re a business leader, sales professional, or marketing director, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. However, if you can embed these three indicators into your thinking, it will help you keep a pulse on your marketing efforts before it’s too late.

One of the Easiest (and Most Effective) Ways Marketing Can Support Sales

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As the buying process has evolved, the clear-cut lines between sales and marketing have started to blur. Potential customers are significantly further along in the sales process before they ever connect with a salesperson. In the same way, marketing plays an important role in the sales process by equipping the sales team with tools to support and accelerate the sales process.

While there are a variety of ways in which marketing can become a strategic asset for business development, one tactic is so easy that it can often get overlooked.

One of the most valuable things your marketing team can do to support sales is to create email templates your business development team can copy, paste, and customize for conversations with prospective customers.

3 Sales Templates Marketing Can Help Write

If you’re interested in equipping your team with pre-written email templates, here are three you should consider:

  1. Emails for Sharing Lead Generation Resources. You spend a lot of time and energy creating lead generation resources or hosting webinars for your sales team. But they’re incredibly busy, too. Most days, they don’t have time to read the entire resource, summarize it, and craft an email to share it with current or prospective customers. One of the easiest ways to maximize the reach you get from your lead generation resources and webinars is to also craft email templates your sales team can copy to quickly share it with their contacts.
  2. New Products or Solution Announcements. As a marketer, you’re at the center of knowing about the direction your company is going. Whether it’s a new product or important announcement from your leadership team, having a few templates in the sales team’s back pocket provides flexibility and helps them stay on top of communicating the latest and greatest information to customers and prospects.
  3. Answers to Common Challenges and Pain Points. Your sales team is constantly communicating with people about how your business can help solve their greatest challenges. As someone in the marketing seat, you have a perspective into all of the various pain points and challenges they hear. You also have the ability to constantly test and tweak messaging to see what resonates most. Based on what you find, you can easily create sales email templates built around common challenges and pain points with the messaging you’ve found to resonate most.  

Creating email templates your sales team can customize not only saves them a great deal of time, it also allows your marketing team to control the messaging. This means potential customers are getting the same message about your brand, products, and services, regardless of who they might be engaging.

How Can You Find the Right Agency Partner?

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Let’s face it: Finding the right agency partner can be unnerving. You spend a lot of time, energy, and resources researching various agencies, putting together a brief or request for proposal, and meeting with potential partners. But, what if you choose the wrong one? Speaking from an agency perspective, I’ve met with hundreds of business leaders looking to partner with our firm over the years. And, the ones who end up turning into the most mutually-beneficial relationships have specific things in common. The businesses that end up finding the best fit all take certain steps before signing on the dotted line. A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Agency Partner If you want to increase your chances of finding the right agency partner, here are three essential steps from businesses that have done well:
    1. Make sure your team is on the same page. It’s essential that key stakeholders on your team have aligned around the same expectations. Are you in agreement on the type of agency you need (e.g., agency size, category expertise, capabilities)? Have you set clear goals? Have you defined characteristics to know whether or not an agency would be a good fit? What are your long-term expectations for the relationship? These are all questions to be answered before you start the search process.
    2. Make it easy for agencies to know exactly what you need. While a formal RFP might not be necessary, it’s important to set clear expectations for potential agencies on the front end. This includes a summary of the challenge you’re facing, specific objectives, deliverables, expectations for the relationship, budget, and timing. It’s worth taking the extra time to ensure you’re providing clarity before you meet with potential partners.
    3. Make time for a face-to-face dialogue with prospective agencies. Once you find a few agencies that fit your criteria, it’s important to get a better sense of the agency style and culture. Setting up a time to meet face-to-face with an individual or team at the agency will make it a lot easier to decide if you are a good fit for each other.
Whether you’re looking for an agency to partner with for all your marketing efforts or needing help on a specific project, finding the right agency is not easy. You want a partner who is energized by your challenges, passionate about your brand, and motivated by your business. Taking these steps will ensure you’re doing as much as you possibly can on the front end to choose an agency that will become an indispensable partner for your business.

3 Ways Senior Leaders Can Strengthen Collaboration Between Sales & Marketing

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Everyone within your organization wants sales and marketing to work together like a well-oiled machine. This is especially true for CEOs and other executive leadership—and for good reason According to a recent LinkedIn study, 65% of business leaders believe a lack of collaboration could directly lead to missed business opportunities. But we all know it’s not as simple as telling the two teams they should work together. As a senior leader, you play an active a role in making sure collaboration exists. There are things you can do to strengthen the collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. The same LinkedIn study found that leadership actively encouraging collaboration is the number one characteristic of organizations with strong alignment. 3 Ways to Strengthen Collaboration Between Sales & Marketing So, what can you do as a senior leader to support greater collaboration between sales and marketing? Here are a few tactics to consider:
  • Provide clarity around business objectives. Clarity allows sales and marketing to focus on the goals and objectives that will help you get where you ultimately want to go. Without absolute clarity on the business objectives or specific products/service lines you want to grow, both sales and marketing are left guessing what will actually move the needle.
  • Get buy-in from leaders on both sides of the business. Problems arise when one side of the business (sales or marketing) feels left out of the conversation around your business development strategies. Getting buy-in from key stakeholders on both sides of the business not only prevents one side of the business from feeling handcuffed by something they didn’t agree to, but it also gets people excited about coming together around a common goal.
  • Help teams stay focused when things get tough. There will be times when things go wrong or when it looks like you’re not going to hit your goal. In those times, it’s your job as a senior leader to help both teams stay focused on working together to reach the agreed-upon objectives. Some marketing initiatives take time. Sometimes, you lose a sale for reasons outside of your control. Submitting to the pressures to shift gears and respond to every varied outcome is a great way to give everyone whiplash that leads to burnout.
While you may not be involved in the day-to-day activities of your sales and marketing teams, you set the tone for the collaboration that is created between the two teams. Embracing these ideas will allow you to create greater trust between the two teams, build a track record of results, and create an environment optimized for success.

Do You Need Some Marketing Inspiration? It’s All Around You.

Man at work trying to find inspiration
We live in a world that’s noisier than ever. Between the hundreds of emails, countless advertisements, and dozens of commercials we are exposed to each day, one would think that finding new marketing ideas and inspiration would be easy. But, if you’ve spent more than two weeks in marketing, you know that isn’t always the case. Whether you’re a CEO, business development leader, or advertising professional, marketing is part of your job in some way. You’ve got to find new ways to increase brand awareness, close more deals, or build stronger relationships with customers. 3 Places to Find Inspiration for Your Next Marketing Idea So, where do you turn when you’re looking for marketing inspiration for a new campaign or project? Here are a few of my “every day” sources:
  1. The Emails You Actually Read
We all have those emails that immediately get deleted. But what about the ones you actually read? What makes you open them? Is it the subject line, the content of the email, who it’s from? Taking time to consider what inspires you to actually open one of the dozens of marketing emails you get a day can teach you a lot about how to create content and messages that stand out in a noisy world.
  1. Your Favorite Restaurant
More than likely, the food isn’t the only reason you love your favorite restaurant. More than likely, it invokes an experience you enjoy. Whether it’s a fast food chain or a high-end steakhouse, great restaurants know how to elevate the brand experience beyond the food. How can you do the same for your customers and potential clients? What kind of experience can you create that provides value beyond the services or products you offer?
  1. The Questions Customers are Asking Online
The best marketing campaigns are ones that help your customers solve their biggest challenges. With social media, brands have the opportunity to “listen” to their customers in a way that wasn’t possible before. Whether it’s identifying the common questions you receive online or following keywords and questions related to your industry on Twitter, you have the opportunity to easily identify the real-time obstacles your customers face every day. All of us are inundated with thousands of marketing messages each day. In some ways, these messages only serve as an annoying distraction. But, if we’re intentional about using them, we can easily find inspiration for our next marketing idea in one of the hundreds of messages we hear each day.