The Marketing-to-Sales Map

The Marketing to Sales (M2S) Map was designed to help B2B agencies organize an efficient action plan based on the customer lifecycle. In this episode of B2B Marketing Agency Insights, CEO of ATAK Interactive and creator of the Purposeful Marketing Method, Austin LaRoche, explains how to use this granular document to help your company get the results you want with your clients.

Video transcription below:

Welcome to B2B Marketing Agency Insights. I’m your host Austin LaRoche, CMO, now CEO, at ATAK Interactive. Today, I want to talk to you about one of my favorite creations: Marketing to Sales maps, also known as M2S maps.

This granular document is based on the foundation of what we call a customer lifecycle. Attracting the prospect, connecting with the prospect, closing the prospect into a customer, and delighting the customer. With the customer lifecycle as our foundation, we then start outlining a couple of different things.

The first thing we do are actions that we want to take in each stage of the customer lifecycle.

The next column we have is the purpose, goal, or function. This is where we identify why we are taking those actions. This is really important because sometimes you’ve got the best of intentions, but maybe the wrong action. Maybe you are advertising on Facebook when you should be advertising on Instagram – and that’s okay. You’ll learn as you start executing these maps where you need to change things. But you always need to know why you are doing them. That’s why the intention is so important and the purpose, role, or function.

Next up, we have success metrics. Every action that we are doing needs to have a success metric tied to it. Let me give you an example: if you’re doing search engine optimization, then you are probably going to look at a success metric, like organic search traffic, and you want to be able to track this. You want to have the metric tied to the action because once you have that, then you can create the next important part of the plan, which is the weekly goal.

The weekly goal is essential because it ties right into the success metric. The weekly goal not only tells us what metric we’re chasing but also tells us where we need to hit every single week.

Next up, the responsible party. Listen, you can’t be accountable to a Marketing To Sales Map without knowing who’s in charge of every action you’re taking. That doesn’t always mean they have to do all the work. But they are the ones who are in charge and who are overseeing that that part of the Marketing To Sales Map is being executed.

Lastly, we have costs. We have to work everything pragmatically and within budget. If we identify how much we want to spend, then we can really put the right dollars to the right actions in these Marketing To Sales Maps. We are making sure that we stay on budget.

When you look at the Marketing To Sales Map – as a whole – you have the actions you will take in each part of the customer life cycle. You know why you are doing them because of the purpose, goal, or function of each action. You have a success metric tied to each action that you are doing. You have the weekly goal for each action to ensure that the work is actually effective and is getting you the results you want. You have the responsible party, so you know who’s in charge of ensuring everything at every step in that lifecycle. And lastly, you stick to a budget by identifying the costs of each action.

It’s a very granular process that will help your marketing efforts tremendously because it outlines everything you need to do, why you need to do it, how it can be successful, who’s in charge, and how much it costs. You can’t ask for more than that.

Thank you so much for your time today, and as always, good luck growing.