Johnny Mone: ‘Engaging Content Makes Customers 61% More Likely to Buy’

Johnny Mone: ‘Engaging Content Makes Customers 61% More Likely to Buy’:
Brightfire’s Business Development Director on working with technology companies, the benefits of inbound strategies and the future of digital marketing
- Johnny, you joined Brightfire in January as Business Development Director after a five year stint in Boston, MA. What attracted you to Brightfire?
- I have always worked with digital content technologies and became aware of HubSpot some years ago when I lived in Boston. They were creating quite a local buzz with their approach to helping customers get found, generate leads and convert sales. It made a lot of sense to me and I began to follow their meteoric rise. So it was a no-brainer when I reconnected with Brightfire to jump at the opportunity to be part of the rise of Inbound Marketing in the UK.
- What do you find to be the most appealing aspect of Brightfire’s inbound marketing philosophy?
- The technology companies I have worked with all had the same problem which was that they generated leads through their website but they were typically not valuable. As a result they spent too much time and resource on outbound tactics such as cold calling, direct mail and trade shows, which made them feel busy but pushed up their cost per lead to a level that the whole company was under severe pressure to grow faster than it could afford. Brightfire’s philosophy of driving down the cost of leads and customer acquisition by attracting and nurturing them with great content offers companies like the ones I used to work for real solutions to the outbound vicious cycle.
- What is it about inbound marketing that presents a compelling business opportunity?
- There are a number of things that are compelling about inbound marketing (getting found, lowering cost of leads and customer acquisition, analytics that enable you to make smart decisions about your campaigns) but if I were to sum up the main one it would be the fact that it maps the marketing process to the way in which your customers want to buy. Customers now inform themselves about technology products way before they are ready to have a discussion with a sales person. Engaging them with great content at this stage makes them 61% more likely to buy from you.
- How do you see the future of digital marketing in a landscape characterised by accelerated convergence and more active, empowered consumer base?
- Marketing agility will become a competitive advantage to companies that have built a well-run inbound ‘engine’. Using the right combination of search, social and content will enable businesses to adapt quickly to consumers changing behaviours, and to speed-test messaging and product ideas at a low cost.
- You wrote a piece for the Brightfire blog, entitled Managing the Sales Cycle in B2B: Best Practices. It attracted a lot of reader attention in February. What advice would you give B2B technology companies wishing to improve their sales cycle?
- Marketing and Sales own the same funnel – just different parts of it. So they need to be aligned at the very top and that alignment needs to translate into standard metrics and processes all the way down the funnel from first contact to beyond the sale.
- And finally, where do you see Brightfire in five years’ time?
- I have this vision of a kind of ticker-tape counter online and on our wall that runs in real time showing us generating millions of visitors to our customers’ sites, hundreds of thousands of leads and thousands of customers for them.
You can follow Johnny Mone on Twitter: @johnnymone.