Are you generating enough MQMs?
ZingPR authored and placed this thought-leadership article for Jifflenow
This article was originally published on Demand Gen Report
Marketing qualified meetings (MQM) are the new marketing currency as theyspeed up the sales cycle and increase revenue pipeline. If you are not digitizing the last mile of your marketing campaigns, it’s time to consider the latest marketing innovation. We are well into a game-changing transition from the world of MQLs to a world where conversation-ready leads are the primary marketing currency.
The game is no longer just about numbers; today’s marketing landscape is about engaging customers in more authentic ways that build trust and, ultimately, stronger relationships. This will likely continue past the Covid-19 pandemic, as digital marketing must drive the sales pipeline, which is a leading indicator of revenue growth.
Demand gen experts are intimately familiar with the marketing and sales funnel. It succinctly illustrates the hypothetical journey that an unknown prospect takes from knowing nothing about a company to becoming one of its loyal customers. Equally, it can track cross-sell or up-sell opportunities with an existing account for a new product or service. No matter how much we debate the accuracy and efficacy of the funnel, one thing is for sure: It’s here to stay.
Covid-19’s Changes To The Funnel
The Covid-19 pandemic affects every stage and conversion throughout the funnel. The number of leads at the top is reduced due to lack of in-person events. However, this impact is prominently seen in the middle of the funnel, where the handoff between a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead happens.
It’s in this stage where the bulk of prospect and customer engagements happen — especially for a B2B business — and it’s where all the canceled events are negatively impacting lead conversion.
It’s just simple math: As you advance down the funnel, even a small drop-off percentage will diminish the number of wins — a huge problem for marketers.
Quickly Convert More Leads Into Wins
In response, digital marketing teams are stepping up their game. They are focused on generating hundreds and even thousands of MQMs. It’s no longer sufficient to just deliver anMQL.While MQLs are still important, as you can’t afford to stop your journey at generating MQLs from raw leads, you also need venues that enable customer interaction and promote education, answer questions, respond to objections and manage negotiations.
Virtual events, webinars and almost all demand generation campaigns can drive customer engagement strategies with qualified prospects to further their education, shape their consideration and advance them along their buyer journey. For that reason, I would argue that MQMs are even more important than MQLs in our current marketing climate.
MQMs are also extremely versatile because they can be defined as a virtual call to action across all your digital marketing programs and virtual events. Wouldn’t you rather have a customer meeting over a customer lead?
The Various Forms Of Customer Meetings
In normal circumstances, customers can see a demo at an event, roadshow or breakout session. However, for the foreseeable future, these activities will remain in virtual and/or hybrid models.
The same goes for roundtables with partners, distributors and customers, or just any situation where multiple people must convene to solve problems and have discussions.
Webinars are powerful tools in accelerating the entire buyer’s journey, and sessions with experts are always essential to convince customers to move into a new technology or solution. Partner meetings are also key for many companies to drive their business.
Think About How You Can Generate MQMs
Here’s the bottom line: If you want to grow your revenue, you need to grow your pipeline. The higher your revenue target, the more pipeline you need in place, as its the leading indicator of revenue (which is itself a lagging indicator of your marketing success).
The surest way to predict your pipeline is to focus on maximizing your scheduled B2B customer meetings and other interactions. In other words: MQMs drive pipeline, which in turn drives revenue.All of these B2B customer meetings are strategic for your company and can be generated by integrating MQMs into your digital marketing initiatives.
A successful MQM program will generate a high volume of meeting requests, which must be closely managed and tracked for effectiveness and follow up. Setting up a meeting with a prospect or customer can require as many as 14 emails and calls if handled manually, so enterprises that are serious about MQMs should consider investing in a meeting automation platform (MAP).
By adding a MAP to your marketing tech stack, you’ll be able to significantly scale your MQM capabilities by automating three major time sinks:Meeting scheduling, workflow management and post-meeting analytics.
Ravi Chalaka is the CMO and VP of Product Marketing at Jifflenow company. He is experienced in SaaS, software and enterprise IT systems from both startup and large companies with a track record of developing and executing strategies that enable companies to achieve leadership and accelerate their growth. Ravi is an expert in digital marketing, product management and marketing, branding, business development and GTM strategies.
