Marketing Insights

Last week, I attended the Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit in San Francisco, CA.  It was a pretty active event with Twitter conversations at #sherpaB2B09 and live streaming courtesy Hubspot TV. I just wanted to take a few minutes to recap some of the highlights from my perspective and hope to continue the discussion that we were having on site with this community here.

“It’s just marketing.”
Best quote of the event, courtesy Jeff Taxdahl owner of Thread-Logic. This comment came from his presentation on whether to work with or not work with an agency to manage his PPC Campaign which currently drives 95% of his sales. At the end of the day, there are no tricks. The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer; deliver a compelling message to the buyer. And, if it is important to your business, you may be the best person/team to make it happen and you may need to ramp up the knowledge in house.

Continuing this line of thinking – we spent several hours on social media on Day 1. And, I have to say, I am “kinda over” social media. I am tired of us talking about it with shiny penny syndrome and marketers’ utter confusion on “How does it fit? Is it worth it?” It’s just marketing! The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer and deliver a compelling message to the buyer. Build the relationships, don’t force the brand.

“Relevance requires major data”
Second favorite quote. This came from Thomas Hayden, Director of Marketing for Sage Systems. So true Thomas, so true. In the way that an in-person conversation requires excellent listening skills (human data processing), an automated conversation demands pristine data quality. Your data quality represents your ability to listen to your customer effectively.

“Be Helpful.”
OK, this is actually a quote from Chris Brogan who wasn’t at the event but I love the quote and it sums up an important theme in terms of content and delivery of that content. I really enjoyed the session that featured Troy Monney from Novell (and not just because they are an Eloqua client) but because they clearly demonstrated how they mapped out content for buyer personas at different stages of their buyers’ evaluation process (v. the internal selling process). I thought all of the sessions on Day 2 that focused on content and buyer personas really helped us to think in the shoes of our customer v. the mindset of just pushing our brand.

“Can you tell us about the ROI on that example? Ummm…”
Many marketers are still struggling with key metrics and demonstrating ROI. Yes, it is a controversial subject in terms of the HOW, but I think that a clear understanding of Campaign impact on revenue is still a struggle for most. It is still a very anecdotal and correlation game.

“Marketing is still from Venus. And, Sales is still from Mars.”
I can’t believe we are still so siloed in our areas of focus on the funnel. Marketing focusing only on “sales ready” with no clear “acceptance/rejection” points along the way to gain objective feedback on lead quality. The one presentation on Scoring seemed to even accentuate this further. To truly drive sales and marketing alignment – there needs to be a clear mapping of process, communication touch points, and responsibilities at every step of the funnel, not just the top.

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In this brief video Jen Horton discusses the importance of answering the following 4 questions in order to keep your website visitors engaged:

1. Am I where I expected to be?
2. Is it relevant to me?
3. Do I believe you?
4. Is it easy to take action?

Click to watch now!

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Anyone who can leverage a hair band as part of their marketing campaign has to be interesting, right? Next up on our roster…

Kris Shorter: Marketing Manager at Roche Diagnostics

How did you get where you are today?

4 Words – Path of Least Resistance

What’s interesting in marketing for your space right now?

The entire Life Science Research Community is trying extremely hard to capture as much of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds coming from the NIH as possible. Companies and institutions that do a superb job of this will have a giant advantage over their competition.

How do you get good ideas and inspiration?

I constantly ask myself, “What would Jack Bauer do?”.

What campaign have you seen recently that really blew you away?

Samsung LED TV Series campaign.  Samsung’s recent television ad portraying a digital  humming bird is extremely interesting from a creative and visual standpoint.  I also think their messaging does a nice job of trying to distinguish themselves from the competition.  When you visit their website, they maintain the same look and feel of the ad and have a very cool and dynamic product selection guide.

The Clip

The Web Site

If you were a font, which font would you be?

Chiller.  Because it sounds cool.

Please share with us a nugget of your marketing wisdom for our readers.

It is very important to understand and be able to stratify your current customer base – as well as the prospects that you are either not working with or do very little business with.  I always try to develop a contact strategy based on these segments and then allocate a higher percentage of budget towards the top prospects and less towards prospects with low potential.  For instance, a high-end direct mail campaign with telemarketing follow-up may be utilized for top prospects and a simple nurturing email campaign may suffice for those prospects with low potential.

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I haven’t met Aaron in person. Although I hope to soon as we both do live in the fine city of Austin, TX. I have always been impressed with the quality of content that his marketing team at Powered delivers to its audience.

I also have been following Aaron on Twitter for some time and have really enjoyed his insights and blog posts.  So well, in fact, I am blatantly stealing his idea with this Marketing Masters series. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and so I see it only fitting that Aaron is featured first on our humble imitation.

Aaron Strout: CMO at Powered Inc.

How did you get where you are today?

Well, for an old guy like me, that’s a “bigger than a breadbox” type question. But in fairness to your project, I’ll give it a shot. It all started with waiting tables and bartending. That’s where I learned a TON about customer service and multitasking. I taught myself what I know about the Web back in the early 90’s (which had roots back to my dad’s computer programming career in the 70’s and 80’s). Fidelity Investments taught me nearly everything I know about marketing. And then in the early 2000’s, I took the people skills I acquired from aforementioned waitering/bartending jobs and started down the online “social” path with LinkedIn and Facebook. Oh, and then along came Francois Gossieaux who taught me a ton about marketing 2.0. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Barry Libert, my last boss, who taught me how to properly channel my thought leadership skills.

What’s interesting in marketing for your space right now?

The intersection of “social” and “marketing.” There are two keys to this phenomena… a) great content and b) measurement and insight. Social marketing in my mind is the future of business.

How do you get good ideas and inspiration?

From a number of different traditional and new media-esque sources like NPR, marketing blogs and Twitter. Most importantly though, getting together with friends like Dave Evans, Kyle Flaherty, Bryan Person, Peter Kim, David Armano, Jim Storer and Tim Walker – along with my super smart colleagues at Powered – helps me distill these new ideas into “implement-able” tactics.

What campaign have you seen recently that really blew you away?

Hmmm, I’m not sure there’s anything that’s blown me away. However, I’m a big fan of what smart CMO’s like Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak and Barry Judge of Best Buy are doing. Those guys are good people to watch.

If you were a font, which font would you be?

As boring as it sounds (love the question though), probably Calibri. It’s simple, clean but easy to read. I always try and keep things simple and make any of my recommendations to others prescriptive.

Please share with us a nugget of your marketing wisdom for our readers.

I’m a huge believer in Karma. To me, that means that I try and do nice things and be respectful of anyone and everyone, irrespective of what they might offer back to me. What I’ve found is that in the grand scheme of things, this always pays back in spades. It also makes people happy and grateful which are nice traits to see in people. I also am a big fan of work/life balance although I’m not always as good at practicing it as I would like.

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[Photo Credit: Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us]

No, I’m not talking about the 265 channels you can get on DirecTV, I’m talking about Marketing Channels.  In the last few years we’ve become (overly?) reliant on email because it’s comparatively cheap and fairly measurable.  Sometimes we throw a little direct mail into the mix, especially for those folks we don’t have email addresses for. But have you thought about reaching your prospects and customers via other methods?

In my role at Eloqua I work with a lot of customers every week. Over time, I’ve learned which ones like to communicate via email and which ones prefer a phone call instead. This hit home to me this week when one of my customers had not responded to the last several emails I had sent to her. When I picked up the phone, we ended up having a great chat and now I’ll remember that she prefers that method of communication instead.

Next time you’re kicking off a campaign, consider making it multi-channel. Perhaps some of your past non-responders would do better with an automated phone message this time around? Do you have an opt-in list of SMS contacts? If so, send them a text message with a URL to register for your event or learn about your offer. Don’t forget to add Twitter and Facebook to your next campaign outreach as well.

Your prospects are listening on different channels, so make sure you’re talking to them in the places where they’ll hear you.

[Photo credit: RickMacMerc via Flickr]

According to MarketingSherpa, webinars are “one of the top two lead-generation tactics for B-to-B marketing”. That, with the current economic climate, gives you a great reasons to include webinars in your marketing strategy. So… Where do you start?

• What should your topic be and who should present it?
• When is the best day to host the event?
• Who should you invite?

WHAT
First you need to determine your topic. You may know exactly what your prospects and customers are looking for in an online event, but if you don’t… surveys can help discover content they are seeking. Post a survey on your website or include in your newsletter to help you identify topics your audience finds significant.

Once you have your topic, you need to find speakers. We all know that using a 3rd party expert will add credibility to your event. But in addition to inviting industry experts or analysts to speak, consider inviting your customers as thought leaders – they can share how they’ve been able to drive success, what lessons they’ve learned, as well as discuss where they stand on critical issues.

WHEN
Now, what is the best day to have your online event? In Bulldog Solution’s Marketing Watchdog Journal, Ken Molay, President, Webinar Success, shared results from his survey on Best Webinar Times. When asked, Ken’s typical answer is Tuesday through Thursday, a little before lunch or a little after lunch depending on your time zone. The results of his survey, when people were asked to pick a single day they would most likely attend a webinar, showed that he was right for the most part. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s were clear winners… but Friday came in a surprising third at 18%. Timing may be different for your audience, so test various days and times to determine when is most effective for you.

WHO
Once you’ve determined what and when, you need to figure out who. Who is your target audience? Consider the relevancy of the content as you develop your list. Is it focused on a specific industry, or product, or role within an organization? Is it more relevant to someone who has attended a previous event or downloaded a white paper on the same topic? Does it align to where an individual is in their buying cycle?

In the end, the quality of your list will affect the results of your online event attendance, so don’t BATCH AND BLAST, be relevant!

WHAT’S NEXT
Once you’ve figured out WHAT, WHEN and WHO, you’ll need to focus on driving registration. Check out Steve Wood’s recommendations in his post on Four Practices to Increase Webinar Effectiveness.

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Today I was reading Sirius Decisions’ latest press release (”SiriusDecisions Benchmark Data Reveals: Best-in-Class Companies Positioning for Better Days“). This sentence stood out to me: “…the firm has found that marketers are changing the make-up of their programs to be closer to field activity, shifting the focus more on clients and current deals.”

It’s interesting to see the reporting data back-up what I’ve been noticing anecdotally. I spend my days guiding Eloqua’s small-medium business customers in their marketing automation projects. One refrain I’ve been hearing over and over is “lead nurturing”. It’s not about lead acquisition right now, it’s about mining the leads you already have, warming them up and getting them ready for sales.

However, it’s definitely time for a shift even further down the lead funnel. Sales cycles are now longer because of the economy and that gives marketing more of a chance to get involved in the sales process.

Alden Cushman, SiriusDecisions’ research director and benchmarking analyst says:  “From discussions with clients we’ve benchmarked, we estimate b-to-b companies are doubling their number of pipeline acceleration programs. Instead of focusing on generating new leads, these programs represent a more effective way for marketing to impact the extended sales cycle by helping to move deals that have stalled in the pipeline. Without question, the economy is driving this trend…”

What Can You Do?

• Re-engage Stalled Opportunities: Consider a short nurturing campaign to all contacts that have been sitting in the same Opportunity stage for more than 30 or 60 days (or whatever makes sense for your business). What can you offer them that will give them a nudge in the right direction? Customer testimonial videos are an excellent choice, or perhaps a “Top 10 things to consider when purchasing a…” checklist.
   
• Nurture the Account: For large deals that involve multiple contacts at one account, think about building a customized landing page for them. You can offer links to the collateral they’ve already seen and maybe some they haven’t yet (add green checkmarks to what they’ve been sent in the past). Be sure to give prominence to the name and number of the sales person for the account. Then add in some exclusive content that is normally only available via a form on your site. This is your chance to show them how well you treat your customers by giving them VIP treatment even before they’re a customer.
   
• Share “Privileged” Information: Maybe it makes sense to show your late-stage prospects a sneak peek of your upcoming product features or new service offerings?
   
• Food for Thought: Do you have a lot of ’stuck’ prospects clustered in a geographic area? Host a breakfast and invite those prospects along with two or three of your current happy customers and let them mingle.

I’d love to hear your ideas! Are you moving down the funnel and focusing less on new leads and more on maturing the leads you already have?

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Photo credit: Slowburn

At three recent user group events I’ve attended for my company, the topic of social media has been a hot one, with Twitter being the hottest topic of all. The Big Question is: Would it be valuable for my company to be on Twitter? My colleague Chad Horenfeldt recently wrote a great post on social media success stories that helps answer this question and based on my own knowledge of what I’ve seen work for our company so far, I would definitely encourage you to go for it.

Kai Turner recently posted an excellent article on Mashable that I would highly recommend as you’re ready to get started. His eighth and final point is actually something I would have listed as #1: get started on Twitter by listening. This is easy to do with TweetDeck because you can set up searches on keywords that interest you (for example, your company or product name). See what people are saying and how they’re saying it, then when you’re ready to jump into the stream, you’ll understand the flow that you’re becoming a part of.

TweetDeck - b2b search

Here is an image of my “b2b” search term that I set up this week just to see what kind of chatter appears there. It’s a broad term (”b2b marketing” might be better…I’ll try that next) but I like the eclectic mix of items that pop up on it and I’ve found a few interesting folks on there that I’m now following. (By the way, I’m sure there are a ton of great tools out there that accomplish the same goal of searching the Twitterverse – I just happen to like TweetDeck.)

Another interesting point that Mr. Turner makes is the idea of having a casting call for your brand voice: “Most likely it will be someone from the marketing or the PR team. Maybe even a junior intern who has been given a list of things to post on Twitter. A more successful tactic would be to find someone, internal or external to the company, who is already on Twitter and speaking naturally in a tone of voice that matches your Brand Voice.” I just love this idea! With Twitter you’re learning to think outside the usual marketing and branding box, so you might as well go all the way and continue thinking outside the box when you find your “speaker”.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Have you recently stepped into the Twitter waters and have some tips to share with the rest of us? Are you considering it but still have concerns?

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Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We’re all familiar with that phrase from an environmental standpoint, but have you thought about it from a marketing point of view?

As marketers we spend a lot of time and effort creating campaigns. We have to prepare our target list, write our messages, design our landing pages, alert the sales team on what we’re sending out, etc., etc. It takes a lot of momentum to get something like this out the door. In environmental terms, we use a whole lotta energy. But for many of us, it’s a one shot campaign, whether it performs poorly or exceptionally. We’re usually thinking about the next campaign and moving on to the new cycle of preparing our target list, writing our messages….you get the idea.

However, if you look back at your campaign results from 2008, I’m sure that you’ll see a few campaigns that are worthy of a repeat. My friends, there’s no shame in this. Be green! Recycle those high performing campaigns and squeeze some extra life out of them! You can re-run the campaign to the same audience as before, just focus on the new leads that have joined your database since the original campaign. Or consider a new target vertical and tweak your message as needed.

When you’re a green marketer you can increase your productivity. If your goal was to run one campaign this quarter, you can increase that two – one shiny new one, and one recycled proven performer.

(My thanks to Chris Petko, Eloqua’s Director of Marketing Operations, who first introduced me to the term Green Campaigns.)

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And, to conclude our series: Myth #4 – Analyzing campaign and marketing ROI is not worth the effort required. Reality check – any metrics that provide you actionable insight to improve performance is worth it.

Remember, you are looking for trend points to make educated bets on campaign optimization. Ultimately, the demand generation team that can demonstrate and confidently predict, in terms of revenue, what happens when they spend a single marketing dollar earns the right to ask for increased budgets and resources. Data points actually give you the confidence to try new campaign approaches, test messaging, and focus on ways to sustain and build long-term relationships.

Automation and systems integration can sure make the entire process less time consuming and may even increase accuracy. These elements, however, are certainly not required. As long as your lead capture systems are getting what you need to report on in the front end – then you can always export the pipeline data from your CRM systems and, with your sales team, tie the data points together – it just takes more time and effort. Once your process is documented and in place, automation and integration can really help to facilitate time to results. And, integration between sales and marketing systems helps facilitate building detailed reports and dashboards that both organizations can believe in.

All metrics need to be considered within the larger context. Your marketing ROI should facilitate the right set of conversations around what is working, what is not, so that you can make identify what to test and optimize. And, once you have a baseline of performance metrics over a period of time, then you can set goals to decrease cost per conversion and increase conversion ratios to realize year over year improvement in marketing campaign performance.

Get started today. Clearly benchmark what your campaign conversion ratios look like on average. You will need to define “conversion” for your organization and the types of campaigns you are running. But, define it nonetheless and document what your baseline is today. Next, benchmark where you are in terms of ability to influence revenue. How you define “influence” will be largely determined by that attribution method that you have adopted. And, if you do not know what the total influence really is – your benchmark today is 0%. The good news – it should be easy to improve upon if you can get your measruement definitions and processes in place! Then, as you adopt more sophisticated campaigning techniques – you can start to really deomonstrate marketing effectiveness improvement. Wouldn’t you like to show trend lines like the following image?

Demonstrating Marketing Effectiveness Improvement

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