Shouldn’t all Marketing Programs Generate a Return?

Making the move from cost to profit center marketing is not an overnight switch, it’s a journey.

As the old saying goes, there is no such thing as a magic bullet when it comes to marketing, through this blog we are going to define the various stages of a standard B2B marketing journey and different elements we recommend incorporation to help move it from a cost center to a profit center.

The roadmap from cost to profit center.

The Marketing Department Operating as a Cost Center

Majority of businesses at the start of their marketing journey have no marketing, or are doing some activities and seeing no return, and confused about why that is.

In this scenario, marketing is really just a “make it pretty” department, producing materials like sales collateral, proposals and presentation decks. The main job of marketing in these situations focusses on putting sales in the best position when they are infront of a prospective client, but does not place emphasis on inceasing the amount of leads coming in.

Sound familiar? Good news is, with some pro-active action, you can move away from a cost center and get on the way with becoming a profit center.

Moving into a Lead Generation Stage of the Marketing Journey

This is where things start to get interesting because suddenly a shift has happened and your marketing is charged with proactive outreach.

At this stage, your getting A into G and there are tactics such as emails, social media, PR, and virtual events, but still the marketing activities are still a bit scattershot. You know the action is somewhat working because marketing is bringing in some leads, but at the end of the day there’s nothing strategic about what you are doing.

I like to call this stage the “break even” phase, as it involves outreach, which is a great starting point for lead generation, but there’s not optimized system in place, no automation, and no real visibility into what’s working or what could be working, and whats definitely not working.

The Demand Generation Stage of the Marketing Journey

When you get into the demand generation stage of the marketing journey, you’re entering the profit center stage. In this stage, the marketing team has dialed in on what’s working and there is consistent, effective outreach, resulting in a significant amount of lead capture.

Here, you have the core pillars of any effective marketing program in place - strategy, technology, talent and processes. There’s new leads coming in through gated content and there are lead nurturing workflows in place to recognise what prospective buyers are interested and feed them more content around that topic.

This personalized, smart automation tactic not only builds trust and credibility in the eyes of the prospective buyers, but also provides valuable insight and clarity to both the marketing and sales departments.

Profit center marketing involves moving cold leads to a state where they have intent, what is known in the marketing world as sales qualified leads (SQLs). Those SQLs are passed to the sales team to turn into opportunities. This “closed loop” funnel with the sales team – where no leads ever leak out – results in a positive and significant marketing ROI. 

The Marketing Department Contributing to Enhanced Valuation

Enhanced valuation is where marketing begins to predictably generate revenue. The program has been “optimized” through careful testing and measurement.  There’s an understanding of how many new leads per month come in and how they move through the funnel. 

At this stage, marketing understands conversion rates and so the revenue pipeline becomes predictable. Having a “lead generation machine” enhances a company’s valuation.

So what stage of the journey from cost center to profit center is your business’ marketing? If you are ready to take action, get in touch with us today.