The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

I am often asked by salespeople, “How do you know which is the right digital capability to pull into a solution?” or, “What is the right budget to recommend for a prospect or client?” The answers to both of these questions stem from the same place – understanding the client's challenge and their goals.

Let’s face it. If you are managing a business and you don’t have access to data regarding how your business is doing, you are essentially flying blind. Without benchmarks and numbers to indicate how you are doing, it’s tough to know what the score is and who is winning. That’s why analytics and data have become so important to business owners and marketers over the past few years. Knowledge is power, and the same now can be said for understanding and being able to analyze and interpret data.

HubSpot understands the need that businesses have to analyze large amounts of data for the purpose of making sound business decisions, and they have recently launched a new Research blog. The HubSpot Research blog provides in-depth insight and information for marketers and business owners that are looking to make data-driven decisions.

A co-worker of mine recently posted a fun quiz on our employee Facebook page, called “Are These Marketing Buzzwords Real or Fake?” While taking the quiz, I couldn’t help but think some of the words I correctly answered were in reality just made up for fun, so I did little digging to investigate and found lots of buzzwords worthy of defining in plain English! Digital terms went from being a bunch of illusive acronyms to being a combination of words made up to define the new digital landscape. To help clear the muddy waters of digital marketing buzzwords, here are 5 defined in plain english: 

The total-revenue budget is historically a media property’s single most important measure of success. If that number is hit, the pressure to make some of the lesser targets is greatly relieved. But that pattern has been changing in recent years.  

Today, the digital-revenue budget is often the one that gets the most scrutiny—from the boardroom all the way down through the organization to the newest seller on the team. It’s not only because the total-revenue number is getting tougher and tougher to hit, but because everyone knows that revenue related to digital offerings represents the future, and most everything else is part of a past that is destined to decrease over time.

Over the past couple of months, I have read numerous blogs and articles regarding the increased focus from marketers on proving ROI in 2014. The stories have ranged from specific advertising platforms to overall marketing efforts.  The demand to prove a positive return on investment is high and difficult. Part of the challenge is that while marketers are looking at individual metrics for each platform they are utilizing, the consumer is typically being influenced and engaging with multiple platforms in their path-to-purchase. 

So how do you help to prove ROI in a world where consumers are more connected than ever? 

If you work for a media company that sells digital advertising, you no doubt are following the buzz around Native Ads. There is an important point for all salespeople related to Native Ads that I don’t want you to miss. The dictionary shows several definitions for the word native. A few that are relevant for this conversation are; belonging to a person since birth, living or growing naturally in a particular region.