Marketing is often described as a complex game with elusive success formulas, challenging marketers to cut through the noise and capture the attention of potential customers. This episode, part of a series exploring 12 essential marketing levers, focuses on two pivotal elements: brand identity and awareness, and content. Understanding and fine-tuning these components can significantly enhance the performance of marketing programs, offering valuable insights for companies striving to optimize their marketing strategies.

Mastering brand identity and awareness, along with creating compelling content, are crucial steps in the journey toward marketing success. These levers, when properly adjusted, can drive impactful results and elevate a company's market presence.

(00:43) - The importance of brand recognition
(03:19) - Potential brand issues that can hinder your company’s success
(13:31) - Creating a content strategy to align with the buyer's mindset and buying process
(19:36) - Understanding the buyer's pain points and tailoring messaging to resonate better
(20:34) - Assessing and categorizing existing content for strengths, gaps, and weaknesses
(24:35) - Creating pillar content strategies and content loops that keeps the audience engaged
(26:30) - The critical role of these marketing levers in driving optimal marketing results

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

Marketing is a challenging game to play. And figuring out the magic formula to success is not an easy feat. As marketers, we’ve got a hard job: break through the clutter of a noisy market to get the attention of prospects and win them over.

The reality is marketing is a very nuanced element of a company’s success. If just one component is not dialed in, it can throw everything off. That’s why we’ve defined 12 marketing levers to dial in. Each one plays a role in how your programs perform. In this episode, we talk about the importance of scale and the contact database in optimizing your company’s growth potential.

(01:55) - Indicators and challenges of scaling marketing efforts within an organization
(02:12) - Insufficient resources, budget constraints and time-consuming programs impact ability to scale
(07:24) - Documenting standard operating procedures to systematize processes for rapid growth
(16:21) - Considerations for building and implementing a marketing technology stack
(18:46) - The importance of your contact database the potential pitfalls of neglecting it
(21:15) - Challenges in organizing and cleaning up contact data – and what you need to consider
(27:27) - The importance of assessing and adjusting all of the 12 marketing programs to optimize for success

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

AI isn't just a buzzword. Over the last year, it's become a pivotal component in almost every HR solution, with many companies integrating AI into their technology platform to enhance their offerings. Marketers are keenly positioning AI at the forefront of their strategies, hoping to capitalize on this trend to stand out in the highly competitive HR tech arena.

However, amidst this rush, it's crucial to understand how HR tech buyers are reacting to these AI-driven narratives. Are they convinced by the promise of AI, or is there skepticism about its practical benefits?

This episode is part 2 of a 2-part conversation where we dig in on this topic with Bennet Sung, fractional CMO at HR tech company, MeBeBot, to talk about how the market is responding to AI and what that means for the marketing approach.

01:10 - Buyer hesitation: AI solutions have a more complex and lengthy sales cycle 02:16 - CIOs and CISOs are getting involved in the purchase decision
06:39 - Marketers need to creating impactful marketing tools and a sales playbook to support the needs of buyers
14:12 - Helping HR teams understand where and how AI can provide value
17:24 - Focusing message positioning on addressing pain points to differentiate AI solutions

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

AI has been around for years, but it has really taken off in the last year within the HR tech market. It seems nearly every solution includes some level of AI baked into the capabilities. And many marketers are leading with this technology in their message positioning as everyone tries to ride this latest wave in the quest to win more market share in the very crowded HR tech landscape.

But how are HR tech buyers responding to this positioning? And what makes this sale different from that of past HR tech solutions?

This episode is part 1 of a 2-part conversation where we dig in on this topic with Bennet Sung, fractional CMO at HR tech company, MeBeBot, to talk about how the market is responding to AI and what that means for the marketing approach.

00:20 - Exploring the increasing use of AI in HR tech solutions and how marketers are positioning it
01:10 - The pivot in the sales experience when AI is at the heart of a solution
06:41 - The buying process now has delays in sales and the need for responsible AI governance
08:37 - The trust factor: The challenges of embracing a technology HR leaders don't fully trust
10:41 - The shift towards a co-led buying experience involving HR, the CIO, the CISO 13:38 - The ethical and legal considerations of implementing AI in HR – and what that means for the buying process
19:52 - Promoting a risk-free pilot program to help organizations understand AI

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

Effective marketing is multifaceted, requiring dialed-in alignment across various components to truly optimize your demand generation programs. Each lever is a critical piece of the marketing puzzle, capable of transforming the results of your programs. If your company is struggling to meet revenue targets, it’s crucial to examine a series of 12 strategic levers we've pinpointed that influence performance and drive results.

The 12 levers:

• Audience
• Positioning
• Strategy
• Budget
• Scale
• Contact database
• Brand identity + awareness
• Content
• Marketing tactics
• Marketing & sales alignment
• Sales processes
• Measurement

Each lever needs to be dialed in to optimize your marketing. If just one is off, it can have a major impact on your ability to support your organization’s growth plans. So if you are looking for bigger results, it’s time to dig into each lever to determine where adjustments need to be made.

In episode 58 of The Demand Gen Fix podcast, we talked about the 3rd and 4th levers – Strategy and Budget. In this episode we’re going to dig into the next 2 levers. And in future episodes we will cover the remaining 8 levers.

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

The key to effective marketing is making sure your programs are dialed in to the behaviors and needs of your target market and the strategic objectives of your business.

Beginning in this episode, GrowthMode Marketing introduces how we define 12 marketing levers that impact your initiatives and bottom-line results. They are:

1. Audience
2. Positioning
3. Strategy
4. Budget
5. Scale
6. Contact Database
7. Brand Identity + Awareness
8. Content
9. Marketing Tactics
10. Marketing & Sales Alignment
11. Sales Processes
12. Measurement

Listen in as we dig in where all good marketing should start, with audience and positioning. We talk about important considerations for each lever and how to dial in and adjust what you need to succeed.

Watch this space for upcoming episodes that will cover the next 10 levers and how they’re important individually and collectively—so you can tune in the right settings for your business.

02:20 - Lever 1: Audience—market validation, research and audience personas to ensure you’re aligned to behaviors and needs
05:10 - Conducting audience research via surveys, focus groups, interviews and data analysis that helps validate your assumptions
10:56 - Lever 2: Positioning—clearly and consistently communicating your value proposition
14:25 - A clear and distinct positioning statement to differentiate your company and solutions
18:37 - The critical link between positioning and revenue goals
19:14 - Exploring each lever and how businesses can use this helpful philosophy to uncover actionable insights to adjust marketing strategy and improve performance
21:50 - A review of the 12 marketing levers and what’s coming on upcoming episodes

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

The sales team is working actively with a hot prospect. They watched demos, enthusiastically engaged in communications and requested a proposal … then suddenly, nothing. They stop responding. It’s frustrating for sure, but there may be many reasons why it happens. Don’t automatically assume they went with a competitor and stop pursuing.

Listen to this episode to hear our conversation about why some prospects go dark, what to do and how to work with marketing to help revive talks that go silent. Hear why successfully re-engaging a prospect involves demonstrating ongoing value and relevance to their business without pressuring them for an immediate decision.

00:20 Reason prospects go dark and how to re-engage them
01:32 Shifting priorities, lack of urgency, indecision and information overload
06:58 Early warning signs that a prospect might go dark and how marketing can help 09:23 What strategies sales reps can use to keep prospects engaged
10:47 Why personalized and relevant content is important
12:46 Continually demonstrating value
15:00 How marketing programs can help sales re-engage
18:49 Getting feedback on lost opportunities to improve future prospecting
20:01 How to have patience and demonstrate value without pressuring an immediate decision
20:29 Developing content that speaks to buyer needs

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

With just 5% or less of B2B buyers in the market to buy at any given time, marketers need to get creative to drive leads and meet revenue goals.

Your middle- and bottom-of-funnel prospects are the most likely audiences to have buying intent. Check out this episode for ideas on how to zero in on these prospects with informative content, nurture campaigns, targeted digital ads and more.

Hear why marketers need a balanced strategy of short-term tactics that drive, and nurture leads with long-term brand-building that raises awareness with the other 95% of your total addressable market—your future buyers.

00:20 The challenges of reaching prospects in the high-tech industry
04:24 Why it’s important to balance short- and long-term strategies to meet revenue targets
09:06 Leverage content that attracts high-intent buyers
15:50 How to use intent data technology to identify companies that may be in market for specific solutions
18:25 Using nurture campaigns to identify buying intent
19:51 Digital advertising and retargeting that drives engagement
22:31 Why you need to establish credibility and trust before expecting prospects to engage
24:21 Balancing short-term lead tactics with a long-term marketing strategy

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.