Jifflenow CMO Ravi Chalaka is a featured guest on the DemandGen Report podcast

Ravi Chalaka sits down with host Klaudia Tirico to chat about the importance of MQMs in today's work-from-home world.

B2B marketing professionals are well aware of the toll the coronavirus has taken on in-person events. From mega trade shows to intimate in-person customer and partner briefings, our inability to stage and host B2B events means that an important element of the sales and marketing funnel has been completely eliminated.

A problematic outcome from this: marketers cannot book the crucial follow-on customer and prospect meetings that are staged at, around, and after these events. The product demos, customer briefings, Meet the Expert briefings, executive briefings, and so on. These in-person customer meetings served to advance the prospect along the sales cycle and convert prospects and visitors into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).

So, what should B2B demand-gen marketers do in response?

Jifflenow, the company that automates the B2B meeting process, has seen a huge increase in B2B customer meetings scheduled on its platform. In effect, we're witnessing the emergence of a new marketing metric: the marketing-qualified meeting (MQM).

“CMOs can no longer be satisfied with generating MQLs as a KPI, they want marketing-qualified meetings from the marketing investments that contribute more to top-line growth,” says Ravi Chalaka, CMO and VP of product management at Jifflenow. “At the same time, prospects and customers won’t wait for sales to call them—they are in the driver’s seat and want more control of their journey. Marketers must therefore adapt or risk losing customers to those that cater to their expectations. MQMs are now a business imperative to drive attendee engagements from virtual events, webinars and demand-gen programs.”

Following a report that Jifflenow published about this phenomenon, ZingPR pitched the top marketing journalists to pique their interest. Securing an interview slot on the DemandGen Report podcast was one valuable outcome.