The marketing department is not typically considered a direct driver of revenue. But when marketing learns to becomes strategic about customer engagement in the ways Bernie’s guest on this episode describes, increased revenue is a natural outcome.
On this episode, Bernie speaks with Sandy Abraham, Head of Global Marketing & Brand Management at Forcam. Forcam provides shop floor management systems to manufacturers that enables them to increase productivity by 20% in less than 12 months. They are an industry leader that has worked with Mercedes Benz and other high profile manufacturing companies.
Sandy has led her marketing team in new directions by becoming a strategic contributor to the business. Her focus? Direct customer engagement and profitable partner events. It’s a novel approach for a marketing leader but has proven to be extremely effective. It’s one you’ll want to be sure you learn from. Listen now!
Marketing Can Be Evaluated by Conversion Rate, Revenue, and Number of Leads
Is there a revenue-based way of evaluating a marketing team? Sandy Abraham not only believes there are ways to do it, she feels it’s the best way to evaluate marketing effectiveness. In this conversation, you’ll hear how Sandy has led her marketing team into uncharted territory by focusing on direct interaction with customers in order to gain a marketing edge.
From sit-down meetings with the customer-operators of their systems to partnering with others in her industry to create effective demonstrations at industry events, Sandy’s approach has tried things unheard of for a marketing team. But more importantly, her efforts have been proven to increase her company’s revenue.
Marketing Power Tip: Focus On Direct Customer Engagement
It’s not typically the marketing department’s job to engage directly with customers. Most organizations leave that task to customer support, account managers or the sales team. But Sandy saw an untapped opportunity for her marketing team through direct customer engagement, so she stepped into what has become a very successful approach.
In this conversation, you’ll hear how Sandy has trained her marketing team to connect with customers in non-threatening ways in order to gather use-case stories, assess the true benefits and problems customers have with their systems, and provide data and intel to her company department-wide. This has enabled her to refine the company’s messaging, build greater trust with customers, and add to the bottom line revenue of the business in tangible ways.
Building Strategic Marketing Relationships Through Industry Events
Every industry has its high profile events. Sadly, some of them can be boring, low return activities that are not truly beneficial to those who participate. Rather than bemoan the unexciting nature of her industry’s events, Sandy chose to leverage them to serve her marketing goals. She reached out to companies in her industry who provided complementary services or technologies to her own and formed what she refers to as “affiliate” partnerships for the event.
Together, she and her affiliate partners demonstrated the effectiveness of her software solutions in hands-on, practical ways that brought both company’s solutions to life. In many cases, Sandy created an opportunity so appealing that her affiliate partners were willing to pay for the entire thing. You can hear Sandy describe her approach and learn how you can do the same thing, on this episode.
Featured on This Episode
Outline of This Episode
- [1:46] What is Forcam doing and what is Sandy’s role?
- [2:40] Why marketing should be integral to the organization?
- [4:23] Sandy’s approach to making marketing strategic
- [6:02] Marketing can build trust with customers like nobody else can
- [12:01] How Sandy has leverages affiliate marketing relationships in her industry
- [15:40] Those who are passionate about marketing need to take things to the next level
- [22:23] Tools used by the marketing department that generate revenue
Resources & People Mentioned
