Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

The Reasons People use Marketing & The Challenges & Priorities of Marketers

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

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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?

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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?

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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.

Posted 137 weeks ago

Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

Trends in AI & Generative AI: Insights from The 2023 AI Summit New York 

Last week, I covered the AI Summit in New York. I was excited to learn about the trends in AI and generative AI and to see some commercial applications of these new technological advancements. 

Patrick Murphy of UAB led the AI Exhibitor hub. Patrick shared insights from his research on Entrepreneurship. He shared how start-ups use AI, and Generative AI to scale up and bring products to market. 

Generative AI is being used in the following eight ways:

  1. Content and Asset Generative
  2. Automated Processes
  3. Ideation
  4. Financial Management
  5. Project Design
  6. Optimized Structures
  7. Acceleration and incubation
  8. Ethics and Risk Management. 

There was a pitching completion where start-ups did pitches in multiple rounds. At the beginning of the competition, they received advice from judges on best practices. 

One of the start-ups that was of interest was Botwise. Jan Nowak shared how his team shared a use case on how they leveraged Language Learning models (LLM)using statistics and GPT solutions for rapid automation in customer service for Mylead.global is a platform that allows influencers to earn money. As a result, MyLead.global was able to screen influencers faster and better for their big brand clients.

AI-Powered Use Cases from across the board panel discussion

Leaders Saira Kazmi Ph. D. (CVS Health), Matthew Blakemore (Creative Industries Council) Taha Mokfi (HelloFresh), Kriti Kohli (Shopify), and Kris Perez (Data Force) share how they use chatbots, improving both the buyer and seller experience using AI. How AI can be used in video games to identify levels of violence and how AI can improve in healthcare and Radiology reducing the amount of time images are read while improving accuracy and detail. 

Another interesting Panel was by Tim Delesio CTO of techolution

Tim asked What’s driving the explosive rise of AI all of a Sudden?

The answer is the economics of the labor market.

On the demand side, he cited labor shortages and persistent high inflation. 

On the supply side, he cites the rise of ChatGPT and, major scientific and Technological breakthroughs in the past five to seven years. 

He shared trends in AI for 2024 that include:

  1. Physical Labor with AI to help deliver small batch sizes with high-precision quality control
  2. Improved customer engagement by providing a new generation of customer service agents using Generative AI 

Tim demonstrated some of these trends when he ordered a soda using an AI-powered robotic arm. 

The booth had another machine showing how AI can enhance inventory management when items are ordered. 

I was amazed to see some AI Tech that techolution brought to the marketplace.

On that note, I saw an AI-powered Kiosk by Graphen where a man ordered his food and paid. This company is using AI to revolutionize all industries.

Man orders food AI Kiosk

Man pays for food at AI Kiosk

There were so many great talks and exhibits. 

Additional pictures can be found on Instagram. 

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

What do you think is next for AI and Generative AI?

Comment and share below.

Additional pictures can be found on Instagram

Posted 46 weeks ago

Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

What makes Product Marketing Difficult? What Product Marketers do

What is the hardest part of Product Marketing?

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LinkedIn poll of my audience

Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy. It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.

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What is the role of a Product Marketer?

I covered the Product Marketing Community workshop to find out.

Workshop Topics included how to:

  1. Build and execute go-to-market plans
  2. Develop actionable buyer insights
  3. Create effective Messaging and Content for buyers
  4. Enable Sales and Product Teams

Businesses should identify their ideal customer.

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Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.

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To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.

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Product Marketing involves more than Marketing and Product Team support. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales, and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all grow the business and serve customers.

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Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.

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What is Product Marketing?

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Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragmatic Framework.

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Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities

Product Marketing needs a separate brief.

Just as Marketing has a plan or brief, Product Marketing does.

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SmartSheet.com Product Marketing Template

Here are nine things to address in a Product Marketing Brief.

  1. What does your company do? Does your product offering align with your business goals?
  2. What are the features of your product? Do others understand what you are building and why?
  3. Does this Product address gaps in the Market? Include an overview of a Competitive, win-loss and, SWOT analysis.
  4. Who is your ideal customer or target market? Include an overview of findings of demographic, psychographic, and buyer persona research. Does your product solve customer pain points?
  5. How will you measure product success?
  6. What are can go wrong? Can failure be anticipated and corrected?
  7. What is the roadmap and schedule of the product? Who’s responsible and in charge?
  8. Who needs to be included in the project and who needs to approve deliverables?
  9. How will goals be tracked? How often will they be monitored? What insights are you trying to glean from the data?
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Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.

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The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyer types.

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Product Marketers, what’s the hardest part of your job?

How do you know if you are successful?

Share your thoughts.

Posted 174 weeks ago