Dan Galante

I asked my LinkedIn audience If the Sales and Marketing function were merged and run by Sales, What would be your main focus? Why?

As you can see, 68% of those surveyed said that increased lead generation and demand generation was a top priority. What this means is that people see Marketing as a vehicle to increase Sales and Revenue.

Marketing also serves as an Enablement for Sales Teams, Customer Success, support, and even employer branding. Many companies have created a dedicated enablement function. Companies sit employer branding and Recruitment Marketing in HR. However, there are still a lot of companies without dedicated enablement and employer branding functions.

Everyone looks to the marketing department. The lines between product, marketing, sales, and customer success are blurring. Marketers need to be able to serve different parts of the organization.

Marketers do traditional work of branding, advertising, market research, content creation, and enablement, but these tasks support the larger goal of increased Sales and Revenue. Marketers impact Sales by filling up the Sales pipeline, pre, and post-sale. In the end, Marketers need to make a business case to justify their existence.

Why do People use Marketing?

People use Marketing for different reasons and they have different sets of challenges concerning the Marketing they do. I conducted two surveys of my LinkedIn audience.

I asked the following:

1. What do you hope to gain from your marketing efforts?

Based on the survey, most people want the marketing mix of brand awareness, leads, sales, and revenue in exchange for their marketing efforts.

2. What is your biggest marketing challenge? Why?

Based on survey findings, 56 percent of people use Marketing for a mix of brand awareness, lead generation, and revenue. In terms of Marketing challenges, 70 percent said that Content Marketing was the biggest.

What should be the main priorities of Marketers? What do you hope to gain from your marketing? What is your biggest marketing challenge?

Share your thoughts.

Additional places to find my content and blog

WordPress: http://dangalante.me/

Tumblr: http://www.askdangalante.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/DanGalante

Medium https://medium.com/@DanGalante

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/trendsettingsm

Anchor https://anchor.fm/dangalante

About Me

I’m a Strategic Marketer with Field Sales, Sales Enablement, Content Creation, and, Classroom Teacher/Trainer skill-sets using Marketing to drive Sales/Growth.

As a Marketer, I’ve worked with Start-Ups, a Political Campaign, and a Digital Marketing Conference.

I’m certified in Inbound Marketing with classes in Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, SEO, SEM.

Before teaching, I was an Outside Sales and Marketing Rep. selling and marketing dental products to Dentists using consultative selling, trade show marketing, field marketing, and market research.

I publish Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today a blog covering industry events and trends.

I’m seeking a full-time role in:

Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement Enablement, Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing.

Open on title, industry, company, location, and level. Reach out on LinkedIn or at dan@dangalante.com to start a conversation.

I covered the Digital Agency Expo in New York. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this event, Digital Agency Expo is a conference focused on how to build, grow and scale a Digital Agency in 2019.

Ryan Deiss, the co-founder, and CEO of Digital Marketer opened up Digital Agency Expo.

In his opening talk on how to recession-proof a Digital Agency, Ryan identified three Key skills that agency owners and marketers need to master for success.

1. Master the skill of Copywriting

2. Master Email Marketing

3. Be able to create Partnerships

Ryan challenged the concept of a Full-Service Agency. He also argued against the notion that a bigger Agency is more profitable and can consistently produce high-quality results.

Ryan also recommended books to read along with a model for a successful agency.

It was an insightful talk.

Another great talk was delivered by Keap CEO Clate Mask. He outlined the five Stages of Agency growth. Clay also shared how he struggled to get his business off the ground. He kept going despite being told to get a job. His advice for when things get tough:

Evan Radisic of Proposify shares the State of Proposal research. Proposify examined 1.6 million proposals creating a blueprint of a winning proposal.

One of my favorite talks was the Keynote by Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary shared how to create, grow and scale a digital agency. He shared how he built multiple businesses on a shoestring budget despite his humble beginnings. Gary also took questions from the audience. I have included a portion of the talk here.

Additional resources for Agency Owners include:

The Digital Marketer Certified Partner Program and War Room.

I want to thank Digital Agency Expo for having me as their guest.

There were so many great speakers at the event. I will post supplemental pictures on Facebook and Instagram.

Additional resources for Agency Owners include:

The Digital Marketer Certified Partner Program and War Room.

I covered The AI Summit in New York last week because I wanted to learn more about AI and Machine Learning.

According to Tractica, AI is being implemented globally.

AI and Machine Learning used in many verticals and processes. For example, when I compose an email using GMAIL, I received suggestions on how to finish a sentence. To use the GMAIL suggestion, I can tap the right arrow button on my keyboard.

Think about your routine and your processes, I bet that AI influencers your decisions from where to eat to what to watch.

It is important not to fear AI; use it as a tool to be more productive and live better.

Data Privacy

There are many issues on Data privacy with legislation such as GDPR, CCPA among others. Right now we’re are at the level where AI can understand customer behavior and make suggestions.

AI In the Home

I attended an LG Labs event on AI in the home where it was suggested that companies need to collect more customer data to make better products. To convince customers to provide more data, companies need to provide customers with a ROD analysis or Return on Data. The return on Data should measure customer benefits against the amount of data they are providing. For example, in exchange for providing X amount of Data, we improved our product By Y i.e. increased functionality and better user experience. Think of an ROI or ROAS analysis.

The next evolution for AI is to go from predicting current user intent to future user intent based on user actions. Eventually, AI devices will be consolidated and work cross-functionally.

How AI will impact Sales, Marketing and the Customer Experience

Mark Beccue of Tractica opened up the Sales, Marketing and Customer Experience part of the Summit.

Matthew Quinn of Columbia University shares his insights on AI’s impact on Sales and Marketing.

Companies will not have just Salespeople or Machine Learning in the sales process. Instead, to increase Profits companies will have a hybrid model.

A business’s reason for using Machine Learning and AI is to become more efficient, get better insights and better ROI and profits.

Businesses need to think globally by applying cultural diffusion to their business through localization and language translation.

Marketing

AI will improve Marketing KPIs by allowing brands to measure improve linguistic effectiveness.

Shared by Smith Yewell of Welocalize

Customer Segmentation

Shared by Ranjit Jangam of Comcast

How ML can improve Customer Segmentation Data

AI will improve the customer experience by allowing customers to control their buyer journey with less interaction from the seller.

Shared by Priyanka Tiwari of Interactions.

Conversational AI will help power a self-service model according to Gartner.

What is Conversational AI?

Where AI needs to improve

I want to thank The AI Summit for having me as their guest. If you want to use AI to improve business outcomes, sign up for the AI summit in your city.

What do you think is next for AI?

Comment and share below.