In this week’s In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris tackle a mailbag full of marketing questions, such as:

How do you define the differences between prospect, lead, marketing qualified lead (MQL), and sales qualified lead (SQL)?

What do you do to find inspiration for agency proposals and pitches?

How important is personal brand in an agency?

What are best practices for SEO in a merger/acquisition?

How can B2B marketers skill up on LinkedIn?

Listen in for the answers to these questions and more.

Listen to the audio here:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-november2019mailbag.mp3

Download the MP3 audio here.

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Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.

Christopher Penn

In this week’s In-Ear Insights, we have a mailbag have a bunch of different questions folks have asked. So Katie, let’s dig into what people have questions they have. Ashley asks, we’re redefining our funnel definitions of lead MQL SQL, how do you define these in your organization’s? And how do you make sure that everybody Marc in marketing and sales is on the same page? So marketing, qualified leads, sales, qualified lead and prospects and stuff? How did what advice do we have for Ashley?

Katie Robbert

Well, we actually just had this conversation last week internally about what those definitions were. And so fortunately, for us, it’s a little bit easier because we’re just three people and I’m the keeper of the data. So what I say goes, and that makes it super easy. No, but I did get consensus from both you and John because everybody has to have a shared understanding. And so for Ashley, you know, I don’t know how large your organization is, but it might be worth just bringing sales and marketing together at least, you know, the department heads together in a meeting, you know, grab some donuts, grab some coffee and say, put on a whiteboard, here’s what I’m thinking, our funnel looks like and here are the data points that go into MQL and SQL. Do you agree? If not, please help me come up with an alternative so that we can all be on the same page and then put it in a spreadsheet and then have the definitions with each of those things. So that if someone else is picking up the slack and entering the data, that they’re like, okay, it’s this and this equals this kind of a thing. So I you know, just have a conversation with the team’s. I’m making it sound overly simplistic. It may take more than just one meeting with donuts and a whiteboard. But that is the best way to start. Because if you don’t bring everybody into at least say their piece, they will never get on board with something that they didn’t agree to.

Christopher Penn

Yep. And in terms of the overall marketing operations follow our recommendation there is focus on intent, so In a lot of organizations a prospect or a lead, the difference is whether or not someone has said I’m interested in you at all. Like I sign up for your newsletter versus I’m interested in hearing more about specifics about the product or services solution. So you have that intent that says, Yeah, I’m, you know, don’t have your salesperson call me the moment I sign up for a newsletter because that, you know, for a lot of people like that’s, that’s not why I’m here, as opposed to filling out the Contact Us form. It says, Yeah, I really do want someone to call me.

Unknown Speaker

Okay, great.

Christopher Penn

Okay. Next, Stuart asks, I am looking to beef up our agency’s proposals, and I’m looking for inspiration. Where do you go for your proposal format? What kinds of aha moments Do you like to include in your proposals, inclu