The Marketing Id has blogged previously about how a proactive B2B always finds light at the end of the tunnel.  It’s called Revenue Performance Management and it helps a B2B to more predictively manage its revenue cycle across an integrated sales and marketing funnel.  Nonetheless, there are many steps that a B2B marketer must take during the course of the revenue cycle to ensure that an inbound visitor is effectively engaged in their journey from fuzzy awareness to a fully informed state, in which they emerge as an enlightened customer:

1. “SEO IT the money.”  The B2B marketer needs to champion Search Engine Optimization of all of the B2B’s related inbound digital properties and have this activity performed on a regular schedule.  If you assume that IT will automatically take care of this, it’s just not going to happen in a timely manner.  As a B2B marketer, you must set a target for IT to get each of your top keyword searches within the top 5 results of their corresponding SERPs.  Incentivize IT if you have to – SEO IT the money – because it means more customers and enhanced revenue potential that will result from your marketing efforts.
2. “Tweet it like a sound bite.” The B2B marketer must construct every tweet – the message – as if it were a sound bite, albeit, an inviting one!  One that will attract a visitor’s attention, arouse their immediate interest with a commensurate desire that instantly compels them into action – to seek more information related to what you have to offer.  The Marketing Id recently blogged about “The Art & Science of the B2B Tweet and Strategic Intent!”  It’s imperative for a B2B tweet to resonate like that quintessential TV or radio sound bite, propelling visitors onward in their inbound journey to relevant landing pages that inform, engage and help initiate the conversion process.
3. “Character of your content.”  The Marketing Id has previously made this memorable reference by “reversing terminology that Dr. Martin Luther King made famous to emphasize the point.”  After a visitor has landed on the page that you, the B2B marketer, directed them to, they need to be mesmerized by its subject matter expertise.  Thought leadership is critical to the conversion process – the character of your content is going to be key to influencing, in turn, the thought processes of your visitor!  So it is of vital importance that the B2B marketer serves as the content champion and ensures that it is always topical, trendy and thought-provoking.
4. “Take a stand on the brand.” In a previous post, The Marketing Id had postulated that “the social enterprise could become the holy grail for B2B marketers when it comes to sales enablement, demand generation and a truly integrated sales and marketing funnel with one vision of the truth.”  However, The Marketing Id needs to caution that a B2B needs to establish the equivalent of a “Social Enterprise Guidelines Manual” akin to a corporate branding guidelines manual, before establishing an employee social network.  The B2B brand can get quickly compromised if employees do not have a standard set of rules with which to engage customers, partners, vendors and other employees in an extended employee social network.  It’s incumbent upon the B2B marketer to drive for the establishment of these guidelines, so that potential customers are encouraged not skeptical about doing business with you.
5. “Let inbound marketing drive the B2B marketing mix.” In an August post, “How Inbound Marketing Is Driving the B2B Marketing Mix–Viva La 4Ps!” The Marketing Id suggested that in its CRM-integrated Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), a B2B has a vast repertoire of information that is very pertinent to its marketing mix.  That repertoire of information is being fed by the B2B’s inbound marketing strategy that includes its social media efforts. The Marketing Id concluded that “inbound marketing has become a rather useful driver of the traditional B2B marketing mix – in fact; the 4Ps have become more reliable and effective within the new marketing paradigm!”  Thus from a customer acquisition standpoint, the B2B marketer needs to coordinate inbound marketing strategy closely with the product marketing team by sharing that one vision of the truth available in the CRM-MAP database.

If a B2B marketer adheres to these five key measures during the RPM lifecycle, there is a higher probability that a visitor’s journey will result in a customer at the end of the funnel!