Demand Gen Report

By Bonnie Crater, CEO, Full Circle CRM

Funnels are a terrific tool for understanding how a sales and marketing operation works. In fact, when I would join a new company, getting the data and creating the funnel would be one of the first things I would do as the new VP of Marketing. The reason funnels are so critical as a tool is that they provide three pieces of very valuable information which can help you understand where your business is and where you might make investments to improve: Volume, Conversion Rates, and Velocity.

The challenge with the funnel data was that I could never get complete and accurate metrics and of course, as a marketing scientist this annoyed me incredibly.

By David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates

My previous column described a trend toward predictive modeling systems in B2B marketing. I’ve since decided there’s more going on than that. What we’re seeing is an entirely new category of system: the Customer Data Platform (CDP).

By Debbie Qaqish, Principal Partner and Chief Strategy Officer, The Pedowitz Group

In the world of B2B marketing today, if you don’t already have some kind of direct revenue accountability as a marketing executive, don’t worry, you will. As I’ve watched and helped many marketing organizations make this transition, I’ve also seen a lot of marketing executives completely ignore this fundamental shift in the role of marketing. We’re talking about head-in-the-sand behavior, at worst, and delegating this obligation to a lower level role and treating it like a tactic, at best.