How to Align Your Sales and Marketing Efforts | With Greg Gifford

How can improved customer experience result in more sales and better customers? That's what we're discussing today with a lady who has 25 years of experience in the B2B media industry, working on many large accounts, including IBM, HSBC and Oracle.She recently founded Realm, a dynamic and modern B2B media agency that puts clients’ businesses’ needs first.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Izzie Rivers.You can find Izzie over at RealmB2B.com. Topics discussed on this episode include:How easy is it to measure the financial impact of improving customer experience?You say that an improved customer experience allows for an increased rate of self-selection - what do you mean by that?How do you target users that are likely to be high-usage customers?How does marketing better work with other departments, such as product, to enhance targeting?How do you make your marketing more efficient, so that you’re spending money on the right areas?How do you ensure that your brand experience appeals to the optimum target customer?

What makes customer experience great, and what makes it not so good? And what can big companies learn from small companies about customer experience?That's what we're discussing today with a lady who has 12 years of experience in customer-centric roles, both in France and the UK.She has worked mostly in luxury and tech, and her main driver is the positive impact her work has on others. She is currently the Customer Journey Director at MySense.ai.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Swanny Henry.[You can find Swanny over at MySense.ai.]Topics discussed on this episode include:What are the key elements that create great customer experience?What makes customer experience bad?You’ve worked in both large companies and small companies - Why is the approach to customer experience different in a startup versus a bigger company?What can big companies learn from small companies about customer experience?How are customer expectations changing?How do you build great customer experience into a marketing strategy?How do you measure the impact of great customer experience on the business’ bottom line?You have a case study that you’d like to talk about where going the extra mile proves to be extremely worthwhile.

What email copy is likely to resonate with your target market and what's likely to turn them off? And has this changed much over the years?That's what we're discussing today with a lady who was the copywriter behind winning emails for eight and nine-figure eCom and SaaS darlings like Four Sigmatic and Shopify.She's the former Head of Email at Copyhackers and the current Founder of the Nicki Elbaz email consulting firm.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Nikki Elbaz.You can find Nikki over at NikkiElbaz.com.Topics discussed on this episode include:Is email more or less important than it used to be?Why is that?How has it changed?What’s an example of a successful style of email for different stages of the buyer journey? - Awareness - Consideration - Conversion - Loyalty - AdvocacyWhat’s an example of a firm that’s making great use of email at the moment?Not necessarily thinking about what we’ve been talking about so far, what's the number one thing marketers need to incorporate into their strategy?

How much do you know about which lead or inquiry led to a purchase? And are you able to tell which steps were key along the way?That's what we're talking about today with a lady who, last year, was named in the BIMA 100, a list of the top 100 People shaping the future of the digital industry.For the last 12 years, she has been helping global brands and eCommerce businesses to unleash their digital marketing potential through her own agency, Reflect Digital.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Becky Simms.You can find Becky over at ReflectDigital.co.uk.Topics discussed on this episode include:Why is the customer journey key?How does understanding the customer journey better measurably impact the bottom line?What kind of metrics are important to be tracking?How else can you gain more knowledge of the customer journey: - Asking the customer at the point of purchase - Website behavior software - Focus groupsHow does the customer journey fit into a marketing strategy?How do you build a more cohesive cross-channel strategy aimed at helping the user?

How many martech subscriptions do you have that you struggle to justify? And how do you decide what martech you really need? And how do you maximize the impact of the martech that you keep?That’s what we're discussing today with a seasoned marketing professional who's led multifaceted teams of customer experience, data, CRO, and technology experts to deliver amazing customer experiences.She currently helps brands to define their optimum martech architecture as the Martech Director for digital agency Digitas.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Kerry Dawes.You can find Kerry over at Digitas.com.Topics discussed on this episode include:You say that organizations are currently reporting utilizing only 42% of their MarTech investments (down 16 percentage points since 2020) - why is that?Should firms be reducing the number of martech platforms that they use?How do you get more use out of a martech platform?How do you better connect data & tech so we can finally deliver connected acquisition, conversion & retention journeys?How do you decide on the martech that you should be using?What’s a brand that’s using martech really well at the moment?How do you stay on top of evolving martech technology?

Content is an essential part of building engagement into your marketing activities. But, it's getting harder to get your content seen by the right audience, and AI might be making this even tougher. So, what does highly engaging content look like? And how is this going to evolve in the future?That's what we're discussing today with a lady who works with brands including, Indeed Sitecore, and AWS, helping shape their content strategies around online experiences that engage the right audiences.She’s a Content Manager who heads up all the strategic content production at Inbox Insight.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Natasha Vickery-Orme.[You can find Natasha over at InboxInsight.com.]Topics discussed on this episode include:How would you describe the purpose of content within a marketing strategy? - Brand awareness - Building trust - Authenticity - Simply being usefulHow do you get your content in front of the right people?Is it possible for your content to appeal to multiple channels at the same time?What role should AI have in creating content?What is Insights for Professionals doing to take advantage of AI?How is the role that AI plays in content production likely to change in the future?What do marketers need to do now to plan for this

How do you know if your content is likely to resonate with your users? And how do you decide on what content you should be publishing?That's what we're discussing today with a lady who believes that demonstrating experience, expertise, authority, and trust should be at the core of everything we do online.She's a former Senior Digital Strategist at Optix Solutions and current Head of SEO communications at Wix. A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Crystal Carter.You can find Crystal over at Wix.com/SEO/Learn.Topics discussed on this episode include:What do you mean by user-centric content?How do you measure the value of user-centric content?How do you create user-centric content?How do you establish the questions that you should be answering? - Sales - Customer service - 3rd party websitesHow do you identify the stage of the buyer journey that you should be targeting?How do you establish content gaps?

Is marketing automation just a way that you execute your marketing tasks? Or should it actually be part of your broader strategy? And if so, how?That's what we're discussing today with a marketing automation and lifecycle marketing expert who helps companies build unified, customized, and personalized experiences across different channels and touchpoints.She is a former PwC Marketing Automation Manager who flew all over the globe to train marketing teams on cutting-edge marketing automation tools, helping companies to fully leverage their tech stack capabilities.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, the current Senior Lifecycle Marketing Specialist at Bolt: Daria Kravchenko.You can find Daria over at Bolt.eu.Topics discussed on this episode include:Why should marketing automation be part of a wider marketing strategy?You’re also a Lifecycle Marketing expert - what does that mean?How does marketing automation play a key role in: - retaining customers - maximizing their lifetime value - creating exceptional customer experiences - retaining customersHow do you know what to automate?How do you select marketing automation technology?Why is Netflix a good example of a brand that does marketing automation well?

How do you decide which marketing tasks you should outsource and which tasks you should keep in-house?That's what we're discussing today with a lady who takes a strategic and data-driven approach to identifying a business's primary goals and translating them into actionable KPIs that move the needle.She's had her clients featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post, and her agency is a Facebook-verified marketing partner.A warm welcome to the Strategic Marketing Show, Ashley Monk.Topics discussed on this episode include:If a business can afford it, and they can have as big a marketing team as they want, shouldn’t they just do everything in-house?How do you go about selecting which tasks to outsource?How do you ensure that communication is as clear and effective as possible, to ensure that the negative aspects of silos don’t occur?As an agency, how do you cope with being the silo?How has what is outsourced changed over the past few years, and how do you see this changing over the next few years?

On this episode of the Strategic Marketing Show, David is joined by a man who claims that you either use data, or get used by the data.His current freelancing projects include helping content-driven websites and publishers better harness the power of data as part of their content marketing strategy.A warm welcome to The Strategic Marketing Show - Marco Giordano.[You can find Marco on LinkedIn or on Twitter.]Topics discussed on this episode include:Do you need to have tracking metrics for every piece of content?What are the types of metrics that you like to track for different types of content?How do you audit your content success?What systems do you use?What are some more efficient ways of managing content?How does this feed into deciding on the type of content that you should be making?How do you segment the purposes of your content?As an example, you say that Wise.com are doing a good job?