In order to successfully move beyond the most basic drip marketing, it’s crucial for B2B marketers to effectively manage the data that they are working with. There are two main reasons that data has become more critical than ever before. First, it is with us for longer. As we engage with our prospective buyers earlier in the buying cycle, and nurture them throughout it, we are using the data for longer than ever before. Secondly, as we work to use marketing automation software to understand buyers, and then communicate with each buyer based on his or her unique needs, we end up using the data for various rules and automated systems.
When data is used by a marketing automation system for rules or automated systems, it needs to be clean and consistent. For example, in building a lead scoring algorithm, defining a target segment, or reporting on results, it is crucial that a title, an industry, or a country is represented in a consistent way so no contacts are missed.
In this quick but instructive video, Chris Petko, Eloqua’s Director of Marketing Operations talks about how we at Eloqua manage data, and how it is captured, cleansed, and analyzed. Chris introduces his 3 C framework and gives some great recommendations on how best to manage data as a marketing organization:
(if the video above does not load, please click here to watch Chis speak about marketing automation and data management)
Chris also discusses the Contact Washing Machine concept that automatically manages each and every data touch-point, and ensures that the data is cleansed and normalized. Chris discusses why this must be done inline, rather than as a one-time manual effort, given the way in that marketing data is continually updated via web forms, list uploads, and data flowing from other systems such as CRM.
I hope you enjoyed watching the video, and found Chris’s experience useful in your marketing operations. As someone who deals with marketing data on a daily basis, Chris has a lot of experience in exactly what aspects of data management matter, and how to approach it.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Sales and Marketing Alignment: Operational Challenges Might be a Good Sign
I often get asked how one measures success in aligning marketing and sales. Alignment is a fairly fuzzy concept, so it’s hard to find a definitive metric to look at in order to determine alignment. However, there are some very interesting signs of great progress that I have seen a number of times that are worth highlighting. One of those signs is when the different operational styles of marketing and sales become an observed problem. That is actually a symptom of growing alignment between sales and marketing.
What does that mean?
Sales and marketing are very different organizations with very different natural ways of operating. Marketing, even in forward-leaning organizations that have invested heavily in lead nurturing, is often organized around campaigns or events. Sales, being very much a people discipline, is organized around sales people’s time.
This operational style become very apparent when your sales and marketing teams become very closely aligned around the sales lead handoff process. In this process, leads from marketing are handed to sales for follow-up, and sales calls in to those leads to engage with them and work towards an opportunity. However, the natural propensity of marketing to run campaigns or events, which generate a point-in-time spike in leads, begins to conflict with the sales team’s ability to follow-up on those leads, which is governed by the number of sales people on the team, and the number of hours in a day.
It is usually very difficult to make instantaneous adjustments in the number of sales people available to call hot leads, and the number of hours in a day is even more difficult to adjust. This leaves a challenging disconnect. As we’ve addressed earlier, the ability to connect with leads successfully is very dependent on the speed with which you follow up, so this disconnect has significant implications on sales success.
If a marketing campaign generates a spike of marketing qualified leads on a Monday, for example, and those leads are passed to sales, there will likely be an overwhelming number of leads for that Monday. The calls will spill over into Tuesday, and Wednesday, where the sales team will face declining success rates due to the elapsed time, and by Thursday, the sales team will be out of leads.
A far better solution would be to “throttle” marketing campaigns so that a more steady stream of leads flows to sales. Not all campaigns can be throttled, but many can. If there is to be an outbound email marketing campaign that generates leads, it is better to split it into 5 equal sections and spread it over 5 days than it is to send it all at once. Not only will the sales team not be overwhelmed with leads on one day, but the increase in successful connections they make will keep them busier with the same number of leads as in the original scenario.
When marketing and sales begin to get more closely aligned, the operational differences between the two groups become more apparent. Many of the challenges your teams will face in shifting their operations to be better in synch are actually signs of a growing level of alignment.
What does that mean?
Sales and marketing are very different organizations with very different natural ways of operating. Marketing, even in forward-leaning organizations that have invested heavily in lead nurturing, is often organized around campaigns or events. Sales, being very much a people discipline, is organized around sales people’s time.This operational style become very apparent when your sales and marketing teams become very closely aligned around the sales lead handoff process. In this process, leads from marketing are handed to sales for follow-up, and sales calls in to those leads to engage with them and work towards an opportunity. However, the natural propensity of marketing to run campaigns or events, which generate a point-in-time spike in leads, begins to conflict with the sales team’s ability to follow-up on those leads, which is governed by the number of sales people on the team, and the number of hours in a day.
It is usually very difficult to make instantaneous adjustments in the number of sales people available to call hot leads, and the number of hours in a day is even more difficult to adjust. This leaves a challenging disconnect. As we’ve addressed earlier, the ability to connect with leads successfully is very dependent on the speed with which you follow up, so this disconnect has significant implications on sales success.
If a marketing campaign generates a spike of marketing qualified leads on a Monday, for example, and those leads are passed to sales, there will likely be an overwhelming number of leads for that Monday. The calls will spill over into Tuesday, and Wednesday, where the sales team will face declining success rates due to the elapsed time, and by Thursday, the sales team will be out of leads.A far better solution would be to “throttle” marketing campaigns so that a more steady stream of leads flows to sales. Not all campaigns can be throttled, but many can. If there is to be an outbound email marketing campaign that generates leads, it is better to split it into 5 equal sections and spread it over 5 days than it is to send it all at once. Not only will the sales team not be overwhelmed with leads on one day, but the increase in successful connections they make will keep them busier with the same number of leads as in the original scenario.
When marketing and sales begin to get more closely aligned, the operational differences between the two groups become more apparent. Many of the challenges your teams will face in shifting their operations to be better in synch are actually signs of a growing level of alignment.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Social Media Buzz at a Live Event
We just finished up Eloqua Experience 2009, which was a spectacular event all around. Marketers from around the world came to celebrate success, and we filled three days with great discussions, fabulous speakers, and new connections among the best marketers in the world. One of the aspects of the event that we were most excited about this year, however, was the concurrent online conversation and tremendous buzz that the event generated in social media. I was asked many times what we did to have that much social media buzz at a live event.
Of course there is no way to “manufacture” social media buzz at a live event, you have to have great content and things that people will talk about, but there are a few things you can do to facilitate and encourage the buzz.
In planning for the social media aspects of the event, our team used a 6 element framework:
Pre-Event Awareness
In order to ensure that everyone was ready to participate in the social media discussions at the event, we ensured that the pre-event communications began to seed awareness that there would be a strong online conversation. A Twitter hashtag (#EE09) was agreed upon by the events team over a month in advance, and was used consistently in any discussions of the event or tweets about it.
In order to ensure that the people most actively engaged in social media were well aware of the event’s social media elements, we spurred discussion of it in all relevant social media properties. A competition on the Eloqua Facebook page was created, with a Kindle as a prize, and that competition was then blogged and tweeted about, reinforcing the hashtag, and building awareness of the social media elements at the event itself.
Enablement
At the event itself, every effort was made to ensure that participants were able to join in the social conversation, and felt very comfortable doing so. As an obvious step, wireless access was available to all. However, often it is the more subtle social cues that help the most. Having a few of your own team with their laptops very visibly open and active at the keynotes and in track sessions communicates the message that it is okay to have laptops and cell phones out during the sessions.
For bloggers, a simple step is to have all relevant material that they might possibly need in order to blog about anything they saw at the sessions readily available to them. A blogger marketing resource site is a great way to do this, and we made the URL known through distributing business cards at registration with the URL clearly visible.
Encouragement and Bridges
The next step was to encourage people to participate and build a bridge between the conversation happening face to face at the event and the conversation happening online. In the main campground area, a large screen (the Tweetboard) was created that showed a continuous rolling feed of the online conversation and built a "bridge" between the online and offline conversations. Anyone nearby could immediately see the conversation that was happening and was encouraged to join in. (we'll be coming out with detailed instructions for how the Tweetboard was built very soon)
Each keynote then included references to the online conversation – the opening session with Eloqua CMO, Brian Kardon even presented the hashtag in letters over 8ft tall so there was no confusion. Subsequent day sessions each attempted to include a reference to a comment or observation that had been picked up online, continuing to drive awareness and participation.
Destinations and Discussions
Beyond the session content itself, the team worked to build a number of relevant destinations and discussions in order to keep the online conversation vibrant and flowing. These spanned many major social media properties including Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, and Twitter, and ranged from video channels to online contests. Each social media property then referenced the others, ensuring a continuously self-reinforcing cycle of discovery and engagement.
The vibrant Eloqua partner community was also engaged, and a number of contest, giveaways, and events added to the buzz and topics of conversation. As a few examples, a RockBand competition accentuated the “Rock Star” track theme, and contributed a lot of photos, and a creative Bingo game all done via a combination of marketing automation and text messages drove a lot of excitement and engagement.
Seeding
Even with that, ensuring that every track session was covered and not left out of the online conversation led to a careful “seeding” strategy whereby staff members were present in each session and would capture at least one or two salient points or quotes from the speaker if there appeared to be fewer active social media people in that session than expected. In most cases this turned out unnecessary, but formed a good starting point and fall-back strategy.
Post-Event Engagement
Ensuring that the rich social media buzz and engagement was not limited to the event itself, a series of post-event social media communications was planned to keep the engagement level high. Winners from the 2009 Markie Awards were first posted to this blog, pictures from the event will be streamed to Facebook, and videos from the event will continue to be presented on the YouTube channel.
Of course nothing is more important than interesting, cutting edge, and engaging content, but this 6 element framework helped us create one of the most talked about Marketing events of the year. 1000s of tweets, photos, videos, and new connections drove the community’s engagement and excitement higher than it would have been for those at the event, and allowed those not able to participate to have a better sense of the event without being there.
I hope this framework is helpful in planning your events, and if there are techniques you used to drive even more interest and engagement please do share in the comments below.
Of course there is no way to “manufacture” social media buzz at a live event, you have to have great content and things that people will talk about, but there are a few things you can do to facilitate and encourage the buzz.
In planning for the social media aspects of the event, our team used a 6 element framework:
Pre-Event Awareness
In order to ensure that everyone was ready to participate in the social media discussions at the event, we ensured that the pre-event communications began to seed awareness that there would be a strong online conversation. A Twitter hashtag (#EE09) was agreed upon by the events team over a month in advance, and was used consistently in any discussions of the event or tweets about it.
In order to ensure that the people most actively engaged in social media were well aware of the event’s social media elements, we spurred discussion of it in all relevant social media properties. A competition on the Eloqua Facebook page was created, with a Kindle as a prize, and that competition was then blogged and tweeted about, reinforcing the hashtag, and building awareness of the social media elements at the event itself.
Enablement
At the event itself, every effort was made to ensure that participants were able to join in the social conversation, and felt very comfortable doing so. As an obvious step, wireless access was available to all. However, often it is the more subtle social cues that help the most. Having a few of your own team with their laptops very visibly open and active at the keynotes and in track sessions communicates the message that it is okay to have laptops and cell phones out during the sessions.
For bloggers, a simple step is to have all relevant material that they might possibly need in order to blog about anything they saw at the sessions readily available to them. A blogger marketing resource site is a great way to do this, and we made the URL known through distributing business cards at registration with the URL clearly visible.
Encouragement and Bridges
The next step was to encourage people to participate and build a bridge between the conversation happening face to face at the event and the conversation happening online. In the main campground area, a large screen (the Tweetboard) was created that showed a continuous rolling feed of the online conversation and built a "bridge" between the online and offline conversations. Anyone nearby could immediately see the conversation that was happening and was encouraged to join in. (we'll be coming out with detailed instructions for how the Tweetboard was built very soon)
Each keynote then included references to the online conversation – the opening session with Eloqua CMO, Brian Kardon even presented the hashtag in letters over 8ft tall so there was no confusion. Subsequent day sessions each attempted to include a reference to a comment or observation that had been picked up online, continuing to drive awareness and participation.
Destinations and Discussions
Beyond the session content itself, the team worked to build a number of relevant destinations and discussions in order to keep the online conversation vibrant and flowing. These spanned many major social media properties including Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, and Twitter, and ranged from video channels to online contests. Each social media property then referenced the others, ensuring a continuously self-reinforcing cycle of discovery and engagement.
The vibrant Eloqua partner community was also engaged, and a number of contest, giveaways, and events added to the buzz and topics of conversation. As a few examples, a RockBand competition accentuated the “Rock Star” track theme, and contributed a lot of photos, and a creative Bingo game all done via a combination of marketing automation and text messages drove a lot of excitement and engagement.
Seeding
Even with that, ensuring that every track session was covered and not left out of the online conversation led to a careful “seeding” strategy whereby staff members were present in each session and would capture at least one or two salient points or quotes from the speaker if there appeared to be fewer active social media people in that session than expected. In most cases this turned out unnecessary, but formed a good starting point and fall-back strategy.
Post-Event Engagement
Ensuring that the rich social media buzz and engagement was not limited to the event itself, a series of post-event social media communications was planned to keep the engagement level high. Winners from the 2009 Markie Awards were first posted to this blog, pictures from the event will be streamed to Facebook, and videos from the event will continue to be presented on the YouTube channel.
Of course nothing is more important than interesting, cutting edge, and engaging content, but this 6 element framework helped us create one of the most talked about Marketing events of the year. 1000s of tweets, photos, videos, and new connections drove the community’s engagement and excitement higher than it would have been for those at the event, and allowed those not able to participate to have a better sense of the event without being there.
I hope this framework is helpful in planning your events, and if there are techniques you used to drive even more interest and engagement please do share in the comments below.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Winners of the 2009 Markie Awards
It was a great night last night in San Francisco with the Markies awards gala being the show highlight at Eloqua Experience. The competition was intense this year with submissions from all sizes of companies, all industries, and all regions of the world.
Congratulations to the winners, to the finalists, and to all the marketers who created great campaigns, deepened their alignment with sales, or achieved new heights in their analytics.
Sales and Marketing Alignment Award
For their work in providing their sales team with buyer insights, based on their online activity around Meridium’s annual user conference, that drove both new revenue and a new relationship between the sales and marketing teams:
Meridium
Marketing Center of Excellence
For a marketing operations center that smoothly handles the communication around over 10,000 products serving scientists and engineers in over 30,000 customers:
National Instruments
Most Creative Marketing Campaign
For their “I want my hour back” campaign at the change of Daylight Savings Time to promote their telepresence solutions:
Tandberg
Best Lead Nurturing Program
For a lead nurturing program in the ultra-wealthy set that not only decreased costs, but grew revenues in one of the most difficult economic times for luxury real estate in memory:
Exclusive Resorts
Marketing Visionary Award
For a worldwide implementation across all geographies and product lines, simultaneous with a worldwide implementation of their CRM platform, in record time:
NetApp
Best Customer Lifecycle Program
For a campaign that onboarded users, nurtured their adoption, and grew the usage of their loan origination platform:
Ellie Mae
Best Lead Scoring Program
For a picture perfect implementation of the Sirius demand waterfall that allowed a lead to be managed from first contact through to sales and through to close:
Omniture
Social Media Marketing Award
For a “Willy Wonka” style campaign that developed significant word of mouth and enable the rebranding of the TD Banknorth Garden to the TD Garden:
TD Garden
“Getting to Know You” Award
For a deeply personalized Flash campaign that presented a highly personalized and highly interactive experience to the VMWare audience:
VMWare
Eloqua API Connect Award
For a deep integration between their free trial process and their marketing database that allowed marketing campaigns to trigger off of actual user adoption and behavior:
Bomgar
Best Channel Marketing Award
For a great campaign called Let's Talk Business that allowed channel partners to manage fulfillment of Point of Purchase materials. In doing so, it not only reduced fulfillment time by 99%, bu also provided much richer visibility into the channel and ensured up-to-date information was being used by partners:
Intel Australia
Sales Impact Award
For implementing an end-to-end, metrics driven process that allowed their CMO to understand the exact flow of leads prior to sales, and to adjust resources accordingly, resulting in both cost efficiencies, and a significant uptick in qualified lead flow:
Infoblox
Marketing “All-Star” Award
For all-round excellence in marketing, across all categories:
NIIT (USA)
Congratulations again to all the winners, and I'm looking forward to seeing what next year's Markie gala brings
Congratulations to the winners, to the finalists, and to all the marketers who created great campaigns, deepened their alignment with sales, or achieved new heights in their analytics.
Sales and Marketing Alignment Award
For their work in providing their sales team with buyer insights, based on their online activity around Meridium’s annual user conference, that drove both new revenue and a new relationship between the sales and marketing teams:
Meridium
Marketing Center of Excellence
For a marketing operations center that smoothly handles the communication around over 10,000 products serving scientists and engineers in over 30,000 customers:
National Instruments
Most Creative Marketing Campaign
For their “I want my hour back” campaign at the change of Daylight Savings Time to promote their telepresence solutions:
Tandberg
Best Lead Nurturing Program
For a lead nurturing program in the ultra-wealthy set that not only decreased costs, but grew revenues in one of the most difficult economic times for luxury real estate in memory:
Exclusive Resorts
Marketing Visionary Award
For a worldwide implementation across all geographies and product lines, simultaneous with a worldwide implementation of their CRM platform, in record time:
NetApp
Best Customer Lifecycle Program
For a campaign that onboarded users, nurtured their adoption, and grew the usage of their loan origination platform:
Ellie Mae
Best Lead Scoring Program
For a picture perfect implementation of the Sirius demand waterfall that allowed a lead to be managed from first contact through to sales and through to close:
Omniture
Social Media Marketing Award
For a “Willy Wonka” style campaign that developed significant word of mouth and enable the rebranding of the TD Banknorth Garden to the TD Garden:
TD Garden
“Getting to Know You” Award
For a deeply personalized Flash campaign that presented a highly personalized and highly interactive experience to the VMWare audience:
VMWare
Eloqua API Connect Award
For a deep integration between their free trial process and their marketing database that allowed marketing campaigns to trigger off of actual user adoption and behavior:
Bomgar
Best Channel Marketing Award
For a great campaign called Let's Talk Business that allowed channel partners to manage fulfillment of Point of Purchase materials. In doing so, it not only reduced fulfillment time by 99%, bu also provided much richer visibility into the channel and ensured up-to-date information was being used by partners:
Intel Australia
Sales Impact Award
For implementing an end-to-end, metrics driven process that allowed their CMO to understand the exact flow of leads prior to sales, and to adjust resources accordingly, resulting in both cost efficiencies, and a significant uptick in qualified lead flow:
Infoblox
Marketing “All-Star” Award
For all-round excellence in marketing, across all categories:
NIIT (USA)
Congratulations again to all the winners, and I'm looking forward to seeing what next year's Markie gala brings
Monday, November 2, 2009
SaaS, Social Media, and the Economics of Smart Buyers
There are a few trends in the industry that are worth commenting on in that they relate in a very interesting way.
Economics Shifts towards Renewal/Retention: Software-as-a-Service and subscription-based revenue models in other industries have shifted the economic weight away from the upfront sale and towards the renewal in those businesses
Information Access becomes Free: The information resources available on the Internet have put buyer education in the hands of buyers, allowing them to educate themselves more easily than ever before.
Brand Reputation Control Shifts to the Audience: Social media has taken brand reputation out of the control of marketers and into the control of the audience, both in terms of good reputations and bad reputations
So, what is interesting about this? If we look at this from a purely theoretical standpoint it begins to become clear why it is the right strategy to begin to freely provide education, insight, guidance, and help to the audience at large through social media.
Looked at simply, the social media investment we make in providing guidance, best practices, pitfalls to avoid, etc, is an investment in buyer education. It is not a direct cash investment, in the same way that we historically would have made large cash investments in marketing campaigns. However, as anyone involved in social media knows, it is a significant investment in time and energy. Many times this investment of time and energy comes from key folks within your organization.
Buyer education can be a double-edged sword. More knowledgeable, sophisticated buyers know what they are looking for, they can easily determine what is right for their business, and what capabilities they do and do not need. They are more able to look beyond flashy demos and slick brochures and dig into less sexy things that will really matter; service levels, community depth, ability to map to their precise business process. This can wreak havoc on businesses that focus heavily on selling at all costs, as it allows customers to only purchase what is truly going to fit their business, and avoid surprises after the sale. However, customer satisfaction among educated buyers is generally much higher as they avoided these post-sale surprises and bought solutions that were well fit to their needs.
Customer satisfaction makes more sense the more your business is dependent on retention. If your business model is based on a one-time sell, with a single up-front payment, you are much less tied to customer satisfaction than if your business model is based on a long-term, recurring revenue stream. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and many recurring revenue model businesses are well aware of this. Whereas in the historical, on premise, model of software sales, post-sale surprises were the norm, with SaaS, they have a much higher economic cost to the vendor.
Social media acts as a magnifier on this effect as it puts control of brand reputation squarely in control of the audience. Products that do not deliver on their brand promise are quickly discovered and communicated, whether through structured reviews, such as in the travel industry, or one-off efforts, such as the United Breaks Guitars song-writing crusade.
An investment then, in the product itself, becomes the best marketing effort that many organizations can make. With this, I am referring to the whole product experience, including the service elements around the product and after the sale. We’ve seen many examples of this, with Frank Eliason at ComcastCares and Tony Hsieh at Zappos being among the more prominent examples.
Looked at from a high level, there are two very distinct cycles. In today’s businesses, with a reputation is easily shared through social media, and many with revenue models that are recurring, it makes the most economic sense to invest in educating buyers and in the product experience itself. This way, although you may end up with slightly fewer new customers, due to educating some in a direction that does not indicate that they have a need, you will end up with more satisfied customers over all. Contrast this with a historical model, that was dependent on a flashy demo, and great marketing, but not satisfied customers, the investments would be in significant marketing promotions and demo-friendly features.
In today’s market, especially in SaaS and subscription-based businesses, the recipe for success has changed, and it has done so based on the underlying economic drivers as much as anything. It is a change that is for the best as it aligns the interests of software vendors and software purchasers more tightly than they ever have been aligned before.
Economics Shifts towards Renewal/Retention: Software-as-a-Service and subscription-based revenue models in other industries have shifted the economic weight away from the upfront sale and towards the renewal in those businesses
Information Access becomes Free: The information resources available on the Internet have put buyer education in the hands of buyers, allowing them to educate themselves more easily than ever before.
Brand Reputation Control Shifts to the Audience: Social media has taken brand reputation out of the control of marketers and into the control of the audience, both in terms of good reputations and bad reputations
So, what is interesting about this? If we look at this from a purely theoretical standpoint it begins to become clear why it is the right strategy to begin to freely provide education, insight, guidance, and help to the audience at large through social media.
Looked at simply, the social media investment we make in providing guidance, best practices, pitfalls to avoid, etc, is an investment in buyer education. It is not a direct cash investment, in the same way that we historically would have made large cash investments in marketing campaigns. However, as anyone involved in social media knows, it is a significant investment in time and energy. Many times this investment of time and energy comes from key folks within your organization.
Buyer education can be a double-edged sword. More knowledgeable, sophisticated buyers know what they are looking for, they can easily determine what is right for their business, and what capabilities they do and do not need. They are more able to look beyond flashy demos and slick brochures and dig into less sexy things that will really matter; service levels, community depth, ability to map to their precise business process. This can wreak havoc on businesses that focus heavily on selling at all costs, as it allows customers to only purchase what is truly going to fit their business, and avoid surprises after the sale. However, customer satisfaction among educated buyers is generally much higher as they avoided these post-sale surprises and bought solutions that were well fit to their needs.Customer satisfaction makes more sense the more your business is dependent on retention. If your business model is based on a one-time sell, with a single up-front payment, you are much less tied to customer satisfaction than if your business model is based on a long-term, recurring revenue stream. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and many recurring revenue model businesses are well aware of this. Whereas in the historical, on premise, model of software sales, post-sale surprises were the norm, with SaaS, they have a much higher economic cost to the vendor.
Social media acts as a magnifier on this effect as it puts control of brand reputation squarely in control of the audience. Products that do not deliver on their brand promise are quickly discovered and communicated, whether through structured reviews, such as in the travel industry, or one-off efforts, such as the United Breaks Guitars song-writing crusade.
An investment then, in the product itself, becomes the best marketing effort that many organizations can make. With this, I am referring to the whole product experience, including the service elements around the product and after the sale. We’ve seen many examples of this, with Frank Eliason at ComcastCares and Tony Hsieh at Zappos being among the more prominent examples.
Looked at from a high level, there are two very distinct cycles. In today’s businesses, with a reputation is easily shared through social media, and many with revenue models that are recurring, it makes the most economic sense to invest in educating buyers and in the product experience itself. This way, although you may end up with slightly fewer new customers, due to educating some in a direction that does not indicate that they have a need, you will end up with more satisfied customers over all. Contrast this with a historical model, that was dependent on a flashy demo, and great marketing, but not satisfied customers, the investments would be in significant marketing promotions and demo-friendly features.In today’s market, especially in SaaS and subscription-based businesses, the recipe for success has changed, and it has done so based on the underlying economic drivers as much as anything. It is a change that is for the best as it aligns the interests of software vendors and software purchasers more tightly than they ever have been aligned before.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Top-of-Funnel Analysis - Net New Names, Inactive Leads, and Reactivated Interest
Analyzing marketing actions at the top of the funnel has some interesting nuances. This is a direct result of the fact that having a contact’s name within your marketing database does not in any way imply interest. You may have a name in your database that is from many years ago and has not shown interest in recent years, there may be names that were input as part of a list purchase, and have never shown interest. In looking at the top of the funnel, it is critical to be able to carve out these “inactive names” from the rest. Without that, the measurement of campaigns targeted at the top of the funnel, and also your overall funnel conversion metrics will be challenged.
The best way to account for this, is to have a rigorous process of eliminating inactive names from an “Interested” stage at the top of the funnel. If a lead, interested at one point, has made no inquiries, and taken no actions in a period of time, say 3 months, then that lead is placed back in the inactive lead pool.
Campaigns targeted at the top of the funnel then, can have three main effects:
- Generate Net New Names via Inquiries; a campaign that generates buzz in the market may generate net new names for your database that come in as active inquiries. For example, if a whitepaper is offered as the call to action for a campaign, and an individual who was not originally in the database downloads it, they are both a net new name and are now part of the “Interested” stage of the funnel
- Reactivate Inactive Names; a campaign may target Inactive Names in your marketing database, and by doing so cause some of them to re-engage. This is a very valuable transition as those are names that were otherwise not showing any interest in your organization.
- Acquire Inactive Names; A campaign that involves a list purchase or other name acquiring techniques may add names to your database, however these are not people who are showing any interest, and therefore must be deemed to be part of the Inactive Name pool until a campaign succeeds in interesting them
In measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns at the top of the funnel, it’s crucial to separate these transitions. If not, highly successful campaigns that re-engage large portions of your existing, but inactive, marketing database will appear to be minimally successful due to not creating many net new names. Similarly, campaigns that involve an element of list purchase may appear more successful than they truly were as they create many net new names, even though only a small percentage of these individuals will engage with your communications.
The best way to account for this, is to have a rigorous process of eliminating inactive names from an “Interested” stage at the top of the funnel. If a lead, interested at one point, has made no inquiries, and taken no actions in a period of time, say 3 months, then that lead is placed back in the inactive lead pool.Campaigns targeted at the top of the funnel then, can have three main effects:
- Generate Net New Names via Inquiries; a campaign that generates buzz in the market may generate net new names for your database that come in as active inquiries. For example, if a whitepaper is offered as the call to action for a campaign, and an individual who was not originally in the database downloads it, they are both a net new name and are now part of the “Interested” stage of the funnel
- Reactivate Inactive Names; a campaign may target Inactive Names in your marketing database, and by doing so cause some of them to re-engage. This is a very valuable transition as those are names that were otherwise not showing any interest in your organization.
- Acquire Inactive Names; A campaign that involves a list purchase or other name acquiring techniques may add names to your database, however these are not people who are showing any interest, and therefore must be deemed to be part of the Inactive Name pool until a campaign succeeds in interesting them
In measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns at the top of the funnel, it’s crucial to separate these transitions. If not, highly successful campaigns that re-engage large portions of your existing, but inactive, marketing database will appear to be minimally successful due to not creating many net new names. Similarly, campaigns that involve an element of list purchase may appear more successful than they truly were as they create many net new names, even though only a small percentage of these individuals will engage with your communications.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Service Economics in a "Something Failed to Go Right" World
I don’t think I’ve been to a conference lately that didn’t have a mention of Twitter and its effect on service teams everywhere. Frank Eliason from Comcast, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, and their teams, as well as a number of other great examples are shown as the “new way” of providing customer service. I don’t disagree, but the challenge here is that this must cause a massive shake-up of budgets and the way that organizations are structured if it is to succeed – and that is not a topic that is discussed in any significance.
What I mean is, the idea that Twitter and social media can, and should, be used to enhance our service offerings will almost certainly fail if we just think of it as a service team challenge.
Let’s look at the math.
If you look at an average service team, let’s say a call center, they receive calls that generally meet three criteria:
- Definable: a discrete problem that can be identified, discussed, and either resolved or not resolved
- Significant: enough of a problem that a person saw fit to pick up the phone, wait in a call queue, and bring it to your attention
- Solvable: a problem for which one can generally visualize a defined, near-term solution
If the problem is outside of that criteria set, we will likely not bother phoning support as they will not be able to help us.
Given these criteria, which I would call the “something went wrong” set of problems, we staff our support centers. Rarely do the teams in these support centers find themselves lacking work, and they are often very strapped for resources, as we manage the budgets for the call centers to maximize utilization and minimize costs.
Then, however, if you look at the set of problems that might surface in social media you see that these three criteria are not met.
- Definable: a complaint can surface without being discrete, or naturally resolvable. General dissatisfaction with airline flight delays, as an example.
- Significant: a negative Tweet about a company or its products requires less effort than calling a service center, so the bar of significance is much lower
- Solvable: many problems that are discussed in social media are not inherently easy to solve, and success may mean guidance, coaching, or training, as much as technical support
I’m not in any way suggesting that these are not important problems, just that they are a much bigger universe of problems than the problems that make their way to today’s call centers. This is the “something failed to go right” set of problems.
So, if we are to staff our service teams to proactively reach out and deal with the “something failed to go right” set of problems, rather than reactively deal with juse inbound “something went wrong” problems, we are dealing with many more problems. Whereas there may be some mild efficiency gains from connecting in an online environment, I would guess that these gains are far outweighed by the increase in size of the problem set.
Where will this budget come from? My suggestion is Marketing. I have long believed that social media is forcing marketers to think of their overall brand experience, including product and service realities, rather than just the visuals like logos, when they are considering brand. Rather than set your service team up with Twitter handles and send them an article on Frank Eliason and the Comcast Cares team, proactive marketing organizations should realize that this new approach to service opens up a much broader universe of problems that must be addressed. Doing so will have a significant positive impact on your company’s brand, but may require a significant investment in service people.
Next time you allocate marketing budget to “brand”, think about whether the best investment in brand that your marketing team can to is to hire an extra few people for the services team and start tackling more of the “something failed to go right” problems.
What I mean is, the idea that Twitter and social media can, and should, be used to enhance our service offerings will almost certainly fail if we just think of it as a service team challenge.Let’s look at the math.
If you look at an average service team, let’s say a call center, they receive calls that generally meet three criteria:
- Definable: a discrete problem that can be identified, discussed, and either resolved or not resolved
- Significant: enough of a problem that a person saw fit to pick up the phone, wait in a call queue, and bring it to your attention
- Solvable: a problem for which one can generally visualize a defined, near-term solution
If the problem is outside of that criteria set, we will likely not bother phoning support as they will not be able to help us.
Given these criteria, which I would call the “something went wrong” set of problems, we staff our support centers. Rarely do the teams in these support centers find themselves lacking work, and they are often very strapped for resources, as we manage the budgets for the call centers to maximize utilization and minimize costs.
Then, however, if you look at the set of problems that might surface in social media you see that these three criteria are not met.
- Definable: a complaint can surface without being discrete, or naturally resolvable. General dissatisfaction with airline flight delays, as an example.
- Significant: a negative Tweet about a company or its products requires less effort than calling a service center, so the bar of significance is much lower
- Solvable: many problems that are discussed in social media are not inherently easy to solve, and success may mean guidance, coaching, or training, as much as technical support
I’m not in any way suggesting that these are not important problems, just that they are a much bigger universe of problems than the problems that make their way to today’s call centers. This is the “something failed to go right” set of problems.
So, if we are to staff our service teams to proactively reach out and deal with the “something failed to go right” set of problems, rather than reactively deal with juse inbound “something went wrong” problems, we are dealing with many more problems. Whereas there may be some mild efficiency gains from connecting in an online environment, I would guess that these gains are far outweighed by the increase in size of the problem set.
Where will this budget come from? My suggestion is Marketing. I have long believed that social media is forcing marketers to think of their overall brand experience, including product and service realities, rather than just the visuals like logos, when they are considering brand. Rather than set your service team up with Twitter handles and send them an article on Frank Eliason and the Comcast Cares team, proactive marketing organizations should realize that this new approach to service opens up a much broader universe of problems that must be addressed. Doing so will have a significant positive impact on your company’s brand, but may require a significant investment in service people.
Next time you allocate marketing budget to “brand”, think about whether the best investment in brand that your marketing team can to is to hire an extra few people for the services team and start tackling more of the “something failed to go right” problems.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Marketing Automation Weekly Wrap-up - 2009/10/23
Some interesting posts this week from the B2B marketing and marketing automation universe. I haven’t yet seen the start of prediction posts for the coming year, but as it’s almost November, I’m eagerly awaiting those. I have had some fascinating conversations lately with some very smart folks in the industry, and the year ahead should prove to be interesting and very different than anything we’ve experienced before if those conversations prove accurate. I hope you enjoy this week’s selection of posts.
John Caddell on Customers are Talking with a quick but important reminder that B2B customers are very different than consumers because of the various constituents we must deal with. Feedback from the groups or individuals we deal with every day is not the same as feedback from the whole user base
http://caddellinsightgroup.com/blog2/2009/10/how-b2b-customers-talk/
Chris Henneghan on Schubert’s B2B Marketing Blog takes a contrarian view at the idea of Crowdsourced creative marketing campaigns, especially in a B2B marketing context
http://blog.schubert.com/2009/10/04/crowd-control/
Scott Brinker on Chief Marketing Technologist looks as the balance of automation and human insight within marketing operations and borrows some lessons from the military’s use of UAVs like the Predator – automation, but in the context of a dynamic, ever-changing, and unpredictable environment. Like marketing, but with missiles:
http://www.chiefmartec.com/2009/10/marketing-operations-and-the-predator.html
Jamie Wallace on Savvy B2B drew lessons from her toddler’s kindergarten’s ability to carefully nurture, build trust, and overcome objections with one of the most discerning demographics, that can be very relevant to our thinking about lead nurturing.
http://savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/296121/marketing-with-the-kindergarten-conversion-technique
Suaad Sait from the B2B Lead builds a three part marketing maturing framework that gives a comprehensive view of what marketers need to look at in assessing their own marketing maturity and effectiveness. The three posts work well together and give a lot of great topics to think about:
Measuring what Matters: http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketing-effectiveness-assessment-measuring-what-matters-assessment/
Effectiveness and Marketing Execution: http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketing-effectiveness-marketing-execution-assessment/
Marketing Database Assessment: http://blog.reachforce.com/database-marketing/marketing-effectiveness-marketing-database-assessment/
Michelle Bowles from the Online Marketing Blog set out a framework for a content marketing strategy. As a structure for thinking about what content you are creating, for whom, and why, this framework gets you thinking about the right questions and issues:
http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/10/content-strategy/
I hope you enjoyed the continueing conversation on marketing automation and B2B marketing as much as I did.
John Caddell on Customers are Talking with a quick but important reminder that B2B customers are very different than consumers because of the various constituents we must deal with. Feedback from the groups or individuals we deal with every day is not the same as feedback from the whole user basehttp://caddellinsightgroup.com/blog2/2009/10/how-b2b-customers-talk/
Chris Henneghan on Schubert’s B2B Marketing Blog takes a contrarian view at the idea of Crowdsourced creative marketing campaigns, especially in a B2B marketing contexthttp://blog.schubert.com/2009/10/04/crowd-control/
Scott Brinker on Chief Marketing Technologist looks as the balance of automation and human insight within marketing operations and borrows some lessons from the military’s use of UAVs like the Predator – automation, but in the context of a dynamic, ever-changing, and unpredictable environment. Like marketing, but with missiles:http://www.chiefmartec.com/2009/10/marketing-operations-and-the-predator.html
Jamie Wallace on Savvy B2B drew lessons from her toddler’s kindergarten’s ability to carefully nurture, build trust, and overcome objections with one of the most discerning demographics, that can be very relevant to our thinking about lead nurturing.http://savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/296121/marketing-with-the-kindergarten-conversion-technique
Suaad Sait from the B2B Lead builds a three part marketing maturing framework that gives a comprehensive view of what marketers need to look at in assessing their own marketing maturity and effectiveness. The three posts work well together and give a lot of great topics to think about:Measuring what Matters: http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketing-effectiveness-assessment-measuring-what-matters-assessment/
Effectiveness and Marketing Execution: http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketing-effectiveness-marketing-execution-assessment/
Marketing Database Assessment: http://blog.reachforce.com/database-marketing/marketing-effectiveness-marketing-database-assessment/
Michelle Bowles from the Online Marketing Blog set out a framework for a content marketing strategy. As a structure for thinking about what content you are creating, for whom, and why, this framework gets you thinking about the right questions and issues:http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/10/content-strategy/
I hope you enjoyed the continueing conversation on marketing automation and B2B marketing as much as I did.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Evaluating Marketing Automation/CRM Integration
In a recent post, we talked about the three key elements in the Marketing Automation/CRM integration stack; data, activity, and process. This gives a good sense of the key elements that need to be integrated in order to have a seamless flow of the business process between marketing and sales. The next challenge in evaluating an integration between your marketing automation and CRM systems is understanding how to approach the integration. Depending on what systems you are using, and how complex your requirements are, this can end up in one of 4 buckets, each of which has its own unique characteristics.
The way to think about this is a 2X2 matrix. The first dimension is whether your Marketing Automation software is natively “aware” of the CRM system you are working with or not. The second dimension is whether your business processes for the integration are standard, or customized.
The way to think about this is a 2X2 matrix. The first dimension is whether your Marketing Automation software is natively “aware” of the CRM system you are working with or not. The second dimension is whether your business processes for the integration are standard, or customized.Native Support of Chosen CRM System
There is much confusion in the industry on this point, as the claim to “be able to integrate with” a particular CRM system leaves much to be clarified. There are, to significantly simplify, two main approaches to an integration. In one method, the marketing automation system itself is natively aware of the API calls of the CRM provider, and can update data, make notes of web activity, or create leads as appropriate.
The second method, however, is a more passive approach. Instead of taking care of the calls directly and natively, the information is provided through an API, and is available for integration as needed, but a third party integration tool would likely be required. This approach definitely allows integration, but requires a more technical investment on behalf of the organization looking to perform the integration.
Standard or Custom Business Process
When examining the business processes for the integration, many businesses will discover that they have unique requirements that are outside of the standard and typical business flows. Unique sources of data for segmentation, lead scoring criteria that come from your CRM system, novel lead handoff or claw-back processes with sales, or data requirements based on analysis needs can all drive custom integration processes.
Depending on your approach to integration – native support or non-native support – these custom process requirements can be handled in different ways.
Integration Scenarios, and Questions to Ask
Each integration scenario leads to different integration considerations. Each allows integration, and each can lead to a very successful and viable integration, but the difference are important to be aware of.
Standard Business Process, Native CRM System
This is the best available option, as it combines standard business processes with a known, and natively supported CRM platform. This should be a very quick process, and ideally will incorporate best practices and experience into the standard integration processes that are enabled. If this is the situation you find yourself in, ask questions around the marketing automation provider’s experience with that CRM platform:
- How many integrated clients do you have on that specific CRM system?
- Are you that CRM vendor’s recommended provider of marketing automation?
- If custom business process requirements arise down the road, is there the flexibility to customize?
Custom Business Process, Native CRM System
Either on initial engagement, or after the initial processes begin to show their success, there is often a need to expand the depth of the integration between CRM and Marketing Automation. As your lead scoring, handoff, and nurturing process grows in maturity, you will need to expand how the two platforms coordinate. As you are dealing with a CRM system that is natively understood by your marketing automation provider, the flexibility of your marketing automation provider is what will govern your success here. Ask questions both around the flexibility of individual calls into the CRM system, and the ability to customize the workflow that governs when those calls are used:
- What entities within the CRM system are accessible; contacts, accounts, tasks, activities, custom objects, etc?
- Can any updates (ie creating a task), be fully customized to control exactly what is written?
- Can a workflow process be created to give you as a marketer complete control of the update process?
- Do you have full decision/branching control in that workflow process
Standard Business Process, Non-Native CRM System
If the CRM system you are using is not natively supported by the marketing automation provider you are considering, integration will be possible, but there will be a significant amount more work to be contemplated. Essentially in this case, both your CRM provider and your marketing automation platform will expose an API, and you will need to use either custom code or an integration platform to build the integration.
If this is the situation you are looking at, a few key questions to ask your marketing automation software provider:
- How robust and deep is their API? Does it cover all of the key functions you will need to replicate a standard integration with your CRM system?
- How much experience do they have with integrations outside of their most familiar CRM system? (If they only have experience integrating with one CRM system, you will likely find that the flexibility to integrate with other CRM systems is not present)
- Will there be an experienced best practice team to help you with the business process aspects of the integration?
- Is there a deep partner ecosystem with experience in building integrations that you can rely on if needed?
Non-Standard Business Process, Non-Native CRM System
This is the most interesting and challenging of all the integration options. With both a non-standard CRM system, and a custom business process, your integration project will likely be more challenging than the previous options. It is important in this situation to accurately assess your integration plan in order to avoid surprises as you move forward.
Some important questions to ask of your marketing automation provider:
- Does their API cover all key areas of interest? Has there been a community of partners and developers working with the API for at least a year in order to ensure that the necessary depth and robustness is present?
- Is there a workflow engine within the marketing automation platform that can work seamlessly with the API in order to allow marketers to configure unique business processes which are then easily integrated?
- Is there a community of clients and partners who have built integrations with a wide variety of systems – data warehouses, business intelligence, purchasing, CRM, etc – whose experience you can draw from
Integration Between Marketing Automation and CRM
The integration between a marketing automation platform and a CRM system is the technological underpinning of the alignment between sales and marketing. As such, it is a key area to understand and investigate in thinking about a marketing automation investment. Whereas many things are possible in looking at integration between two systems, understanding the scenario you are in and what that means for integration can make your marketing automation journey significantly smoother.
Standard Business Process, Non-Native CRM System
If the CRM system you are using is not natively supported by the marketing automation provider you are considering, integration will be possible, but there will be a significant amount more work to be contemplated. Essentially in this case, both your CRM provider and your marketing automation platform will expose an API, and you will need to use either custom code or an integration platform to build the integration.
If this is the situation you are looking at, a few key questions to ask your marketing automation software provider:
- How robust and deep is their API? Does it cover all of the key functions you will need to replicate a standard integration with your CRM system?
- How much experience do they have with integrations outside of their most familiar CRM system? (If they only have experience integrating with one CRM system, you will likely find that the flexibility to integrate with other CRM systems is not present)
- Will there be an experienced best practice team to help you with the business process aspects of the integration?
- Is there a deep partner ecosystem with experience in building integrations that you can rely on if needed?
Non-Standard Business Process, Non-Native CRM System
This is the most interesting and challenging of all the integration options. With both a non-standard CRM system, and a custom business process, your integration project will likely be more challenging than the previous options. It is important in this situation to accurately assess your integration plan in order to avoid surprises as you move forward.
Some important questions to ask of your marketing automation provider:
- Does their API cover all key areas of interest? Has there been a community of partners and developers working with the API for at least a year in order to ensure that the necessary depth and robustness is present?
- Is there a workflow engine within the marketing automation platform that can work seamlessly with the API in order to allow marketers to configure unique business processes which are then easily integrated?
- Is there a community of clients and partners who have built integrations with a wide variety of systems – data warehouses, business intelligence, purchasing, CRM, etc – whose experience you can draw from
Integration Between Marketing Automation and CRM
The integration between a marketing automation platform and a CRM system is the technological underpinning of the alignment between sales and marketing. As such, it is a key area to understand and investigate in thinking about a marketing automation investment. Whereas many things are possible in looking at integration between two systems, understanding the scenario you are in and what that means for integration can make your marketing automation journey significantly smoother.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Loose Coupling and Analysis of the Marketing Process
When analyzing the flow of leads through your marketing organization, and into your sales organization, how you design the stages in the process has a significant impact on both how you are going to be able to analyze it, and how you are going to be able to optimize it in the future. Without the ability to both analyze and optimize a process, you will find that errors begin to creep into the process due to the lack of visibility, and your ability to adapt the process as your business changes or grows is minimal.
The best approach, when you have a hand-off between one team and another, is one that is “loosely coupled”. Your marketing team, for example, may pass marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to your sales team. However, what the sales team accepts should not be termed the same thing – MQLs – as this does not allow the system to account for, and measure, a drop-off in the acceptance rate. Instead, these leads that are accepted by sales should be termed differently – in this case Sales Accepted Leads – SALs.
Even in a system where your current design parameters state that 100% of MQLs should be acted on by sales, you should still name and handle them separately. The reason for this is two-fold. For one, no system involving people can ever operate at 100% accuracy. Some of your lead will slip through the cracks due to bad data, absent employees, or inattentiveness. Without having both MQLs and SALs to measure, and thus a SAL/MQL acceptance rate, it is not possible to measure how close to 100% your system is operating at.
The second reason to avoid the tight coupling that is implied by having the same name in subsquest process stages is that most marketing organizations will change their processes over time. Perhaps your current design specification is a 100% acceptance rate of MQLs within the sales team. This may change in a quarter’s time if you decide to open up the funnel a little bit, and pass more leads to your sales team, while allowing them to selectively choose. You may reduce the design parameter to 60%. Without the “loose coupling” that having unique naming provides, it will require a full change of your marketing funnel process just to shift this one parameter. Instead, build in the flexibility up front by having the pre, and post-handoff leads named separately.
The example of MQLs being passed to sales is an obvious one, but this becomes a more interesting challenge when the names are not as obvious. For example, if you have an inside team focused on lead generation. They would take a lead at some level of quality, place a call, confirm interest, perhaps budget and authority, and deem the lead ready for the field sales team. If this team is part of the marketing organization (in some organizations, this team is part of sales), then you might wish to call the output of this team’s work an MQL. However, the question is, what is the input to this team?
Obviously, you will be scoring the leads prior to handing them to this team, so you might call them “Qualified Inquiries” to differentiate them from the raw inquiries you see on your website. The Qualified Inquiries that are then picked up by the inside team might be called “Qualified Inquiries Accepted” in order to allow you to manage the handoff between your marketing campaigns team and the inside team and allow that handoff ratio to be adjusted as needed.
The loose coupling provided by having unique names for each relevant stage of the buying process allows you to both analyze the operation of your process and also make adjustments as needed. Some upfront planning to define sufficient handoff points to allow the right amount of adjustment later can save you significant future rework.
The best approach, when you have a hand-off between one team and another, is one that is “loosely coupled”. Your marketing team, for example, may pass marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to your sales team. However, what the sales team accepts should not be termed the same thing – MQLs – as this does not allow the system to account for, and measure, a drop-off in the acceptance rate. Instead, these leads that are accepted by sales should be termed differently – in this case Sales Accepted Leads – SALs.Even in a system where your current design parameters state that 100% of MQLs should be acted on by sales, you should still name and handle them separately. The reason for this is two-fold. For one, no system involving people can ever operate at 100% accuracy. Some of your lead will slip through the cracks due to bad data, absent employees, or inattentiveness. Without having both MQLs and SALs to measure, and thus a SAL/MQL acceptance rate, it is not possible to measure how close to 100% your system is operating at.
The second reason to avoid the tight coupling that is implied by having the same name in subsquest process stages is that most marketing organizations will change their processes over time. Perhaps your current design specification is a 100% acceptance rate of MQLs within the sales team. This may change in a quarter’s time if you decide to open up the funnel a little bit, and pass more leads to your sales team, while allowing them to selectively choose. You may reduce the design parameter to 60%. Without the “loose coupling” that having unique naming provides, it will require a full change of your marketing funnel process just to shift this one parameter. Instead, build in the flexibility up front by having the pre, and post-handoff leads named separately.
The example of MQLs being passed to sales is an obvious one, but this becomes a more interesting challenge when the names are not as obvious. For example, if you have an inside team focused on lead generation. They would take a lead at some level of quality, place a call, confirm interest, perhaps budget and authority, and deem the lead ready for the field sales team. If this team is part of the marketing organization (in some organizations, this team is part of sales), then you might wish to call the output of this team’s work an MQL. However, the question is, what is the input to this team?
Obviously, you will be scoring the leads prior to handing them to this team, so you might call them “Qualified Inquiries” to differentiate them from the raw inquiries you see on your website. The Qualified Inquiries that are then picked up by the inside team might be called “Qualified Inquiries Accepted” in order to allow you to manage the handoff between your marketing campaigns team and the inside team and allow that handoff ratio to be adjusted as needed.
The loose coupling provided by having unique names for each relevant stage of the buying process allows you to both analyze the operation of your process and also make adjustments as needed. Some upfront planning to define sufficient handoff points to allow the right amount of adjustment later can save you significant future rework.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Relationships Salespeople's Biggest Competitor
Truly great sales skills are both rare, and genuinely valuable in the overall revenue creation process. The art of understanding the people, politics, and pains within an organization, and positioning your offering in such a way to navigate through to a closed deal is difficult and needed. In almost any situation, as you try to navigate the buying process, your competitors will be working to disrupt your progress and further their own.
This is definitely a threat, but many sales people seem to overlook an even bigger competitor to their efforts. Google.
Quite simply, the reason that you, as a B2B salesperson, are invited to meet with prospects is because you carry the promise of unique and valuable information. Whether it is insights into their business, unique perspectives of industry trends, anecdotes of what others in the industry are doing, or access to negotiation options on pricing, service, or terms. Only by providing that valuable insight do you earn the right to their time and consideration.
However, more and more, executives and mid-level decision-makers are becoming less willing to grant that time to salespeople. The reason is not economics, as this trend was here in good times and in bad. The reason is not even solutions that are competitive to yours, as this trend is affecting everyone. The reason is access to information. If a prospect can get information on your capabilities, understand the market’s opinion of your fit in circumstances close to theirs, and form an understanding of the effort and costs involved in making and investment, then the information you provide is not a unique value.
This makes Google your largest competitor for prospects’ attention. If you can’t add more value than Google (or Bing) in your sales call, then you should not go.
The major search engines do a great job of providing access to generally available information, opinions, and perspectives. To provide value, as a sales person, the level of information you provide needs to improve beyond this. To add value above and beyond the search engines, top salespeople need to provide unique perspectives on the prospect’s own situation, inside access to pricing, service, or terms, and intelligent commentary on which industry trends may be relevant to the prospect.
The early stages of buyer education are best done, in today’s environment, by the marketing team, using marketing automation and lead nurturing. This change in the roles of marketing and sales may be uncomfortable, but it is needed in today’s changing buying environment. The insights that might have been gained in the initial discovery conversation is best understood by observing the buyers’ digital body language.
Sales, as an art, will continue to be a key element of delivering revenue to a business. However, as access to information continues to increase for prospects, good B2B salespeople must continue to increase their ability to provide unique information and perspectives.
This is definitely a threat, but many sales people seem to overlook an even bigger competitor to their efforts. Google.
Quite simply, the reason that you, as a B2B salesperson, are invited to meet with prospects is because you carry the promise of unique and valuable information. Whether it is insights into their business, unique perspectives of industry trends, anecdotes of what others in the industry are doing, or access to negotiation options on pricing, service, or terms. Only by providing that valuable insight do you earn the right to their time and consideration.However, more and more, executives and mid-level decision-makers are becoming less willing to grant that time to salespeople. The reason is not economics, as this trend was here in good times and in bad. The reason is not even solutions that are competitive to yours, as this trend is affecting everyone. The reason is access to information. If a prospect can get information on your capabilities, understand the market’s opinion of your fit in circumstances close to theirs, and form an understanding of the effort and costs involved in making and investment, then the information you provide is not a unique value.
This makes Google your largest competitor for prospects’ attention. If you can’t add more value than Google (or Bing) in your sales call, then you should not go.
The major search engines do a great job of providing access to generally available information, opinions, and perspectives. To provide value, as a sales person, the level of information you provide needs to improve beyond this. To add value above and beyond the search engines, top salespeople need to provide unique perspectives on the prospect’s own situation, inside access to pricing, service, or terms, and intelligent commentary on which industry trends may be relevant to the prospect.
The early stages of buyer education are best done, in today’s environment, by the marketing team, using marketing automation and lead nurturing. This change in the roles of marketing and sales may be uncomfortable, but it is needed in today’s changing buying environment. The insights that might have been gained in the initial discovery conversation is best understood by observing the buyers’ digital body language.
Sales, as an art, will continue to be a key element of delivering revenue to a business. However, as access to information continues to increase for prospects, good B2B salespeople must continue to increase their ability to provide unique information and perspectives.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Natural Search in B2B Marketing - Analyzing Discoverability
Being discoverable by your potential buyers is critical to success in many businesses. As buyers control their buying process more and more, the need to be found when a prospective buyer is searching for a solution to a business pain is increasingly critical. One of the most obvious elements to this is natural search engine optimization. If a prospective buyer is searching for terms related to your business or the pains you solve, you want them to discover your organization.
If they are early in the buying process, you may want them to discover your thought leadership writings, and recognize you as a leader in the field. If they are at a vendor discovery phase or moving towards solution validation, you may want to have them discover writings that clarify how to think about important aspects of the buying decision.
Measuring this discoverability, however, is an interesting challenge, as there are many search phrases that might be relevant to discovering your solution. Against each of these phrases, your main web site, your social media properties, and your competitor’s web properties may be discoverable.
The first challenge is listing the search phrases that are relevant to finding your solution. For each phase of the buying funnel, you will have a different set of phrases, and this will differ based on the marketing challenge you face. If, for example, your main challenge is a Flying Car challenge, you may wish to focus mainly on the awareness stage, and think about search phrases that are related to, but not identical to, your solution. If prospective buyers are unaware that your solution category exists, they may be looking for solution categories that are peripheral to yours. You will want to be discoverable when they are looking.
At each stage of the buying funnel, list out the key phrases that buyers may be looking for. At the vendor discovery phase, the prospective buyers may be searching for more exact solution category names. At the solution validation phase, the searches may involve your product name directly, but be searching for specific capabilities or objections.
With the search phrases listed, it’s then key to understand where your main web properties, your social media properties, and your competitors rank against those key phrases. One of the simplest ways I have seen of presenting this, is a table that shows your best ranking against each phrase in the form of points on a grid.
On the left side, place your own web properties, both your main web properties, and any social media properties your team runs. For comparison, place your key competitors’ web properties on this side of the chart also. Along the top row, build columns for each of the following search ranks: First place, top 3, top 5, top 10, top 30, and top 100. Then, for each of the search phrases in your list, each property a point in the highest category it is discovered in.
For example, if “widget transportation” is a search phrase of interest, and your website appears as number 8 on the natural ranks on Google for that page, you would give yourself one point in the “top 10” category for your main website. Note, that if you use a marketing automation system or web analytics package to understand which search phrases are being used to find you, this will only show you the phrases where you are already successful. Be sure to include search phrases where you would ideally be found, but currently are not.
Complete this process for all the search phrases (around 100 phrases is often a useful number to gain a good perspective), and you will find an overall discoverability profile for you and your competitors. Note that the first page of search results is generally seen as the only page offering significant value in terms of traffic, so the results that are lower down than that can give indications of progress, but are unlikely to be driving traffic.
This view gives an easily digestible sense of your natural search engine discoverability. It should be noted, however that results will vary by search engine, geography, and over time. It is not a report that gives a definitive answer, but it is useful for providing a perspective as to where you are as a business and whether you are making progress in terms of being discoverable.
If they are early in the buying process, you may want them to discover your thought leadership writings, and recognize you as a leader in the field. If they are at a vendor discovery phase or moving towards solution validation, you may want to have them discover writings that clarify how to think about important aspects of the buying decision.
Measuring this discoverability, however, is an interesting challenge, as there are many search phrases that might be relevant to discovering your solution. Against each of these phrases, your main web site, your social media properties, and your competitor’s web properties may be discoverable.
The first challenge is listing the search phrases that are relevant to finding your solution. For each phase of the buying funnel, you will have a different set of phrases, and this will differ based on the marketing challenge you face. If, for example, your main challenge is a Flying Car challenge, you may wish to focus mainly on the awareness stage, and think about search phrases that are related to, but not identical to, your solution. If prospective buyers are unaware that your solution category exists, they may be looking for solution categories that are peripheral to yours. You will want to be discoverable when they are looking.
At each stage of the buying funnel, list out the key phrases that buyers may be looking for. At the vendor discovery phase, the prospective buyers may be searching for more exact solution category names. At the solution validation phase, the searches may involve your product name directly, but be searching for specific capabilities or objections.
With the search phrases listed, it’s then key to understand where your main web properties, your social media properties, and your competitors rank against those key phrases. One of the simplest ways I have seen of presenting this, is a table that shows your best ranking against each phrase in the form of points on a grid.
On the left side, place your own web properties, both your main web properties, and any social media properties your team runs. For comparison, place your key competitors’ web properties on this side of the chart also. Along the top row, build columns for each of the following search ranks: First place, top 3, top 5, top 10, top 30, and top 100. Then, for each of the search phrases in your list, each property a point in the highest category it is discovered in.For example, if “widget transportation” is a search phrase of interest, and your website appears as number 8 on the natural ranks on Google for that page, you would give yourself one point in the “top 10” category for your main website. Note, that if you use a marketing automation system or web analytics package to understand which search phrases are being used to find you, this will only show you the phrases where you are already successful. Be sure to include search phrases where you would ideally be found, but currently are not.
Complete this process for all the search phrases (around 100 phrases is often a useful number to gain a good perspective), and you will find an overall discoverability profile for you and your competitors. Note that the first page of search results is generally seen as the only page offering significant value in terms of traffic, so the results that are lower down than that can give indications of progress, but are unlikely to be driving traffic.
This view gives an easily digestible sense of your natural search engine discoverability. It should be noted, however that results will vary by search engine, geography, and over time. It is not a report that gives a definitive answer, but it is useful for providing a perspective as to where you are as a business and whether you are making progress in terms of being discoverable.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Marketing Automation Weekly Wrap-up - 2009/10/9
As with any week, themes seem to develop. This week's theme appears to be influence - measuring influence, developing influence, and understanding influence. Although a number of the posts don't have a lot to do with marketing automation this week, they are hopefully of interest to anyone working in B2B marketing in general. I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I did.
Laura Ramos on B2B Marketing Posts covers 7 degrees – a tool for mapping connections among people in your network that has a lot of promise in understanding who is able to influence whom:
http://b2bmarketingpost.com/2009/10/05/peoplemap-a-real-tool-for-sales-enablement/
Kipp Bodnar on Social Media B2B looks at some interesting tools for understanding influencers - although it is still a very nascent industry, there are some interesting developments that might have longer term implications:
http://socialmediab2b.com/2009/10/b2b-social-media-influencer-marketing/
Aaron Pearson on B2B Voices talks about using storytelling to draw in and ultimately influence customers – even in B2B marketing:
http://www.b2bvoices.com/2009/10/use-storytelling-to-draw-in-customers/
Kyle Flaherty on Dance With Strangers looks at the abundance of self proclaimed experts and sets out the requirements for truly being a Rock Star in an industry and having influence on people within that industry:
http://www.dancewithstrangers.com/2009/09/29/social-media-rock-stars-as-abundant-as-oxygen/
Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent, one of my long term favourite writers, list some insights she picked up at the inbound marketing summit:
http://www.conversationagent.com/2009/10/12-things-i-learned-at-the-inbound-marketing-summit.html
Roger Dooley on Neuromarketing reviews the book “How We Decide”, which, although I haven’t read it, sound like a great resource for understanding how decisions are influenced, both emotionally and rationally:
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/decide.htm
Rob Meyerson from Semantic Argument looks at elements of differentiation in B2B branding, and some of the approaches that can successfully be used to differentiate enough to influence buyer behavior:
http://www.semanticargument.com/2009/10/01/dimensions-of-differentiation/
Laura Ramos on B2B Marketing Posts covers 7 degrees – a tool for mapping connections among people in your network that has a lot of promise in understanding who is able to influence whom:http://b2bmarketingpost.com/2009/10/05/peoplemap-a-real-tool-for-sales-enablement/
Kipp Bodnar on Social Media B2B looks at some interesting tools for understanding influencers - although it is still a very nascent industry, there are some interesting developments that might have longer term implications:http://socialmediab2b.com/2009/10/b2b-social-media-influencer-marketing/
Aaron Pearson on B2B Voices talks about using storytelling to draw in and ultimately influence customers – even in B2B marketing:http://www.b2bvoices.com/2009/10/use-storytelling-to-draw-in-customers/
Kyle Flaherty on Dance With Strangers looks at the abundance of self proclaimed experts and sets out the requirements for truly being a Rock Star in an industry and having influence on people within that industry:http://www.dancewithstrangers.com/2009/09/29/social-media-rock-stars-as-abundant-as-oxygen/
Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent, one of my long term favourite writers, list some insights she picked up at the inbound marketing summit:http://www.conversationagent.com/2009/10/12-things-i-learned-at-the-inbound-marketing-summit.html
Roger Dooley on Neuromarketing reviews the book “How We Decide”, which, although I haven’t read it, sound like a great resource for understanding how decisions are influenced, both emotionally and rationally:http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/decide.htm
Rob Meyerson from Semantic Argument looks at elements of differentiation in B2B branding, and some of the approaches that can successfully be used to differentiate enough to influence buyer behavior:http://www.semanticargument.com/2009/10/01/dimensions-of-differentiation/
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Marketing Automation in Europe and Asia - for North American Marketers
Many organizations with a history in North America are legitimately concerned about what they need to consider when engaging with their European and Asian teams on the topic of marketing automation. In this information-packed video, Stuart Wheldon, Eloqua’s Director of Client Services for EMEA and Asia-Pacific walks through some of the important factors to consider.
Stuart looks at how data models may need extra consideration in modeling prospective buyer information, how language plays a role in more than just your marketing content, and the team structures that generally work best to achieve success.
(if the above video clip doesn't load, click here for the Marketing Automation in Europe and Asia (for North American marketers) video)
Stuart’s experience in both the North American and non-North American markets give him a unique perspective on what marketers from North American need to think about when considering marketing automation software rollouts globally. His views on how teams localize marketing campaigns, well beyond just translation, and how this affects both team structure and rollout planning are very insightful. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed talking with Stuart on this subject.
Stuart looks at how data models may need extra consideration in modeling prospective buyer information, how language plays a role in more than just your marketing content, and the team structures that generally work best to achieve success.
(if the above video clip doesn't load, click here for the Marketing Automation in Europe and Asia (for North American marketers) video)
Stuart’s experience in both the North American and non-North American markets give him a unique perspective on what marketers from North American need to think about when considering marketing automation software rollouts globally. His views on how teams localize marketing campaigns, well beyond just translation, and how this affects both team structure and rollout planning are very insightful. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed talking with Stuart on this subject.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Sales/Marketing Integration - The Technology Stack
Integration between Marketing Automation systems and CRM systems allows a very powerful and valuable flow of data, and business alignment, between marketing and sales. It forms the technology and data basis for a new relationship between your marketing team and your sales team. This is a very powerful concept, and worth digging into in some depth as there are a lot of questions worth asking as you evaluate potential solutions.
First, and most critical, is a look at what actually needs to be integrated between marketing and sales.
I think of it as a three-layer system, in order to keep things simple. This is obviously a somewhat simplified view, but it allows some clarity into the discussion of the integration.
Data:
The first layer is the data. Your marketing team and your sales team are communicating with the same audience in many cases. The data should be synchronized between sales and marketing in order to ensure that when a field is updated, both systems know about it. You will want to make sure that you can synchronize all key data; contacts, accounts, purchase history, etc. Any data that is meaningful for segmentation whether it is directly accessed (like contact data) or relational data (like purchase history).
Unless you have a very simple structure, you will want to allow flexibility in both what data passes between marketing and sales, and what data is tracked on each individual. The data model will share many common elements (name, address, title, etc), but most marketing and sales organizations begin to quickly evolve their data model with elements that are unique to their business. Marketing may store information on prospects’ campaign history, event attendance, meal selection, and communication preferences, while sales may store information on whether certain contract, budget, and commitment milestones had been met. Requiring both marketing and sales to use the same data model is a recipe for significant frustration.
You will also want good control on which data is moved to sales. Generally marketing deals with a broader universe of suspects than you want to pass to sales. If your CRM system becomes filled with this lower quality data, your sales team will become frustrated with invalid and poorly qualified entries. It’s worth keeping a “wheat and chaff” model whereby only the good quality data is passed to sales and the lower quality data is kept, and cleansed, in the marketing database.
In order to do this, and in order to manage a marketing database that sees data from many sources, it is also necessary to have good control over the priority of data that is flowing into your marketing database. If, for example, you have the same contact in multiple data systems, all of which are synchronized with your marketing database, you need to be able to select which of those sources will be treated as a priority in updating your data.
Activity:
The second layer of an integration between marketing automation and CRM is the marketing activity and the prospect’s response. This is critical to an understanding of the individual’s digital body language, and is key to allowing your sales team to understand the individual, the company, and their overall territory.
It’s key in integrating activity to have a very flexible model for configuring what shows up where. The main goal of providing the activity information is to provide for sales enablement, which involves ensuring successful sales adoption. Being able to show prospect activity in a rich, interactive, visual manner is as critical for sales rep adoption as the data itself is.
Similarly, being able to configure what data is presented, and how it shows up is key for sales adoption. In some environments, prospect activity can be presented in an activity history record within the CRM system, whereas in other environments it may be more successful to send real-time email notifications, and in other environments, a weekly report is found to be more effective. The key to this level of the stack is configurability in order to maximize sales adoption.
Process:
The third, and final layer of the integration stack is the process layer. This layer is where the lifecycle of a lead is defined. When a lead is qualified, how is it presented to sales? Is it presented through a task, through a lead record, or through a more customized way? Similarly, if a lead is not followed up on, or is not turned into a live opportunity, what happens next? Is a lead that is not followed up on clawed back and re-distributed? If a follow-up attempt only resulted in a voicemail being left, is the lead automatically nurtured for a period of time before prompting sales with another follow-up attempt?
This process layer is where there is a great opportunity to differentiate your business. By optimizing how leads are passed to sales, in a way that makes sense for your business, you can drive noticeable improvements in your revenue. However, to do this, it’s crucial to be able to have your technology match your exact business process. If it makes sense to create structured follow-up tasks for sales so you can manage and monitor follow-up times, you will need to be able to automatically create and allocate tasks. If you need to focus on clawing back leads after they go quiet in order to plug leaks in your revenue funnel, you’ll need to be able to pull in opportunity history data in order to ensure that your marketing is aware of the sales process stage that individual lead is in.
Sales Alignment and the Technology Stack
Aligning sales and marketing in a new relationship is a challenging task that relies on many changes in people’s daily lives, and your overall business processes. In order to be successful with this new form of alignment, you will need your marketing automation system and your CRM system carefully aligned. This relies on alignment and flexibility at all levels, from data, to activity, to process. If you build your sales and marketing processes on a technology and data foundation with sufficient ability to map to your business processes, it will allow you to learn and grow over time and continually enhance the alignment between your sales and marketing teams.
First, and most critical, is a look at what actually needs to be integrated between marketing and sales.
I think of it as a three-layer system, in order to keep things simple. This is obviously a somewhat simplified view, but it allows some clarity into the discussion of the integration.Data:
The first layer is the data. Your marketing team and your sales team are communicating with the same audience in many cases. The data should be synchronized between sales and marketing in order to ensure that when a field is updated, both systems know about it. You will want to make sure that you can synchronize all key data; contacts, accounts, purchase history, etc. Any data that is meaningful for segmentation whether it is directly accessed (like contact data) or relational data (like purchase history).
Unless you have a very simple structure, you will want to allow flexibility in both what data passes between marketing and sales, and what data is tracked on each individual. The data model will share many common elements (name, address, title, etc), but most marketing and sales organizations begin to quickly evolve their data model with elements that are unique to their business. Marketing may store information on prospects’ campaign history, event attendance, meal selection, and communication preferences, while sales may store information on whether certain contract, budget, and commitment milestones had been met. Requiring both marketing and sales to use the same data model is a recipe for significant frustration.
You will also want good control on which data is moved to sales. Generally marketing deals with a broader universe of suspects than you want to pass to sales. If your CRM system becomes filled with this lower quality data, your sales team will become frustrated with invalid and poorly qualified entries. It’s worth keeping a “wheat and chaff” model whereby only the good quality data is passed to sales and the lower quality data is kept, and cleansed, in the marketing database.
In order to do this, and in order to manage a marketing database that sees data from many sources, it is also necessary to have good control over the priority of data that is flowing into your marketing database. If, for example, you have the same contact in multiple data systems, all of which are synchronized with your marketing database, you need to be able to select which of those sources will be treated as a priority in updating your data.
Activity:
The second layer of an integration between marketing automation and CRM is the marketing activity and the prospect’s response. This is critical to an understanding of the individual’s digital body language, and is key to allowing your sales team to understand the individual, the company, and their overall territory.
It’s key in integrating activity to have a very flexible model for configuring what shows up where. The main goal of providing the activity information is to provide for sales enablement, which involves ensuring successful sales adoption. Being able to show prospect activity in a rich, interactive, visual manner is as critical for sales rep adoption as the data itself is.
Similarly, being able to configure what data is presented, and how it shows up is key for sales adoption. In some environments, prospect activity can be presented in an activity history record within the CRM system, whereas in other environments it may be more successful to send real-time email notifications, and in other environments, a weekly report is found to be more effective. The key to this level of the stack is configurability in order to maximize sales adoption.
Process:
The third, and final layer of the integration stack is the process layer. This layer is where the lifecycle of a lead is defined. When a lead is qualified, how is it presented to sales? Is it presented through a task, through a lead record, or through a more customized way? Similarly, if a lead is not followed up on, or is not turned into a live opportunity, what happens next? Is a lead that is not followed up on clawed back and re-distributed? If a follow-up attempt only resulted in a voicemail being left, is the lead automatically nurtured for a period of time before prompting sales with another follow-up attempt?
This process layer is where there is a great opportunity to differentiate your business. By optimizing how leads are passed to sales, in a way that makes sense for your business, you can drive noticeable improvements in your revenue. However, to do this, it’s crucial to be able to have your technology match your exact business process. If it makes sense to create structured follow-up tasks for sales so you can manage and monitor follow-up times, you will need to be able to automatically create and allocate tasks. If you need to focus on clawing back leads after they go quiet in order to plug leaks in your revenue funnel, you’ll need to be able to pull in opportunity history data in order to ensure that your marketing is aware of the sales process stage that individual lead is in.
Sales Alignment and the Technology Stack
Aligning sales and marketing in a new relationship is a challenging task that relies on many changes in people’s daily lives, and your overall business processes. In order to be successful with this new form of alignment, you will need your marketing automation system and your CRM system carefully aligned. This relies on alignment and flexibility at all levels, from data, to activity, to process. If you build your sales and marketing processes on a technology and data foundation with sufficient ability to map to your business processes, it will allow you to learn and grow over time and continually enhance the alignment between your sales and marketing teams.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Marketing Automation Weekly Wrap-up - 2009/10/2
I was thrilled to see an extremely kind accolade from Pete Jakob on his B2B Marketing blog about these updates, so hopefully this week's selections don't disappoint. The pressure is on now, I realize.
A few of this week's best posts tackled topics around word-of-mouth marketing. Who is most likely to be influenced to recommend you, and some new technology announcements that will change how we have to think about word of mouth, comments, and influencers.
Jim Novo on the Marketing Productivity Blog had an interesting post with some counter-intuitive thoughts on who in your audience can actually be positively influenced to recommend you more. It might have some significant implications for B2B marketers thinking about social media and influence:
http://blog.jimnovo.com/2009/09/23/awareness-versus-persuasion/
Interleado, on their company blog, wrote a good article on the importance of internal links (within your own web properties) to how the search engines see and rank you. Worth considering, as it is very much in your control:
http://www.interleado.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/01/internal-links-why-are-they-important-5-tips-for-improvement/
Louis Gray looked at Twitter's recent announcement on their Lists capability. This will likely have some significant implications to understanding who people *really* follow vs just having in thier follower list. Very interesting implications to understanding true influence:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/09/twitter-readying-public-lists-extending.html
C. Edward Brice at Marketing Gimbal looks at Google’s new SideWiki and its ability to bring the social element and word of mouth to any web page. A wake up call for marketers to engage with SideWiki, if nothing else but to understand it and listen to the conversation:
http://marketinggimbal.typepad.com/marketinggimbal/2009/09/marketers-wake-up-googles-sidewiki-brings-new-social-dimensions-to-your-companies-digital-doorstep.html
Scott Gillum from MarketBridge looks at some good techniques for embedding social media discussions into a live B2B event. Admittedly, this was a social media event, but the ideas are good for borrowing:
http://b2bknowledgesharing.blogspot.com/2009/09/insights-and-epiphanies-from-recent-b2b.html
Josh Stailey at the Pursuit Group takes on the myth of sales velocity. The buying process is slow and steady. You can influence it but not push it. A very cutting analogy with car manufacturers' deep discount policy and how it stole from future demand drives the point home:
http://blog.thepursuitgroup.com/Blog/bid/10631/The-myth-of-sales-velocity
Michele Linn at Savvy B2B talks about the SEO effects of FAQ pages (and other benefits), which makes a great starting point in thinknig about content marketing and SEO:
http://savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/279141/5-reasons-to-include-faqs-in-your-content-marketing-strategy
Dennis Dayman on Deliverability.com looks at privacy policies, fine print, and disclosure; where the letter of the law may not be enough. In today's world, any disconnect between your brand promise, and what your brand delivers, will be quickly exposed, both legally and socially. Fine print will not make up for that:
http://blog.deliverability.com/2009/09/privacy-policy-not-.html
Mike Damphousse on Smashmouth Marketing publishes some interesting data on the best time to call – not at lunch time – in continuation of last week's theme of the resurgence of the strategic relevance of the inside sales function:
http://www.damphousse.org/2009/09/lead-generation-tip-take-3-hour-lunches.html
Another great week, with lots of interesting posts. I hope you enjoy this week's selection of the best from B2B marketing and marketing automation writers.
A few of this week's best posts tackled topics around word-of-mouth marketing. Who is most likely to be influenced to recommend you, and some new technology announcements that will change how we have to think about word of mouth, comments, and influencers.
Jim Novo on the Marketing Productivity Blog had an interesting post with some counter-intuitive thoughts on who in your audience can actually be positively influenced to recommend you more. It might have some significant implications for B2B marketers thinking about social media and influence:http://blog.jimnovo.com/2009/09/23/awareness-versus-persuasion/
Interleado, on their company blog, wrote a good article on the importance of internal links (within your own web properties) to how the search engines see and rank you. Worth considering, as it is very much in your control:http://www.interleado.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/01/internal-links-why-are-they-important-5-tips-for-improvement/
Louis Gray looked at Twitter's recent announcement on their Lists capability. This will likely have some significant implications to understanding who people *really* follow vs just having in thier follower list. Very interesting implications to understanding true influence:http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/09/twitter-readying-public-lists-extending.html
C. Edward Brice at Marketing Gimbal looks at Google’s new SideWiki and its ability to bring the social element and word of mouth to any web page. A wake up call for marketers to engage with SideWiki, if nothing else but to understand it and listen to the conversation:http://marketinggimbal.typepad.com/marketinggimbal/2009/09/marketers-wake-up-googles-sidewiki-brings-new-social-dimensions-to-your-companies-digital-doorstep.html
Scott Gillum from MarketBridge looks at some good techniques for embedding social media discussions into a live B2B event. Admittedly, this was a social media event, but the ideas are good for borrowing:http://b2bknowledgesharing.blogspot.com/2009/09/insights-and-epiphanies-from-recent-b2b.html
Josh Stailey at the Pursuit Group takes on the myth of sales velocity. The buying process is slow and steady. You can influence it but not push it. A very cutting analogy with car manufacturers' deep discount policy and how it stole from future demand drives the point home:http://blog.thepursuitgroup.com/Blog/bid/10631/The-myth-of-sales-velocity
Michele Linn at Savvy B2B talks about the SEO effects of FAQ pages (and other benefits), which makes a great starting point in thinknig about content marketing and SEO:http://savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/279141/5-reasons-to-include-faqs-in-your-content-marketing-strategy
Dennis Dayman on Deliverability.com looks at privacy policies, fine print, and disclosure; where the letter of the law may not be enough. In today's world, any disconnect between your brand promise, and what your brand delivers, will be quickly exposed, both legally and socially. Fine print will not make up for that:http://blog.deliverability.com/2009/09/privacy-policy-not-.html
Mike Damphousse on Smashmouth Marketing publishes some interesting data on the best time to call – not at lunch time – in continuation of last week's theme of the resurgence of the strategic relevance of the inside sales function:http://www.damphousse.org/2009/09/lead-generation-tip-take-3-hour-lunches.html
Another great week, with lots of interesting posts. I hope you enjoy this week's selection of the best from B2B marketing and marketing automation writers.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Fit, Engagement, and MQLs: Mapping the Lead Handoff to Sales
Marketing organizations looking to only hand qualified leads over to their sales teams are faced with an interesting analysis challenge. Whereas it might seem to be a simple task to look at implicit data on a prospect and understand their engagement, or look at explicit data on a prospect and understand their fit, the reality is that this is often a relatively difficult task.
The first task is to look at the raw data in order to define a score between, say 0 and 100 points. This is not as simple as more activity leading to a higher score; some areas of activity may in fact be worth more score than others, and time needs to be taken into account in order to ensure that scores do not grow indefinitely over time. The machinations of this scoring algorithm, however should be kept separate from the sales organization.
For a sales organization to be comfortable building a process, they need a stable definition to be applied to the leads that are sent their way. This is where the fit/engagement matrix is highly useful. A value for the lead’s “fit”, in other words their title, industry, and size, can be mapped to a standard definition of A, B, C, D, where A is a high fit, and D is a low fit. Similarly for a lead’s “engagement”, or their activity on the website, a standard definition of 1,2,3,4 can be applied, again with 1 representing high engagement and 4 representing a low engagement.
The sales team can then understand leads as A1s, C3s, or B4s. The underlying scoring definition of what earns a lead points, how those points are adjusted over time, and which range of points maps to the each rank, does not need to be visible to the sales team at large. A core group of key individuals within sales and marketing can debate the definitions and make necessary adjustments each quarter.
With a clear definition of what makes each lead rank, the discussion can then progress to which leads should be passed from marketing to sales, and to which sales team if there are multiple teams involved. A1 leads will obviously be passed directly to sales, likely to a field sales force, but a mapping is needed for where each other lead rank goes. Some may be passed to an inside sales team, some may be passed to a partner channel, and some may be held back to be further nurtured. The set of leads that are passed to sales from marketing are deemed marketing qualified leads (MQLs). This higher level definition is useful in looking at a higher level view of your marketing analysis.
The first task is to look at the raw data in order to define a score between, say 0 and 100 points. This is not as simple as more activity leading to a higher score; some areas of activity may in fact be worth more score than others, and time needs to be taken into account in order to ensure that scores do not grow indefinitely over time. The machinations of this scoring algorithm, however should be kept separate from the sales organization.
For a sales organization to be comfortable building a process, they need a stable definition to be applied to the leads that are sent their way. This is where the fit/engagement matrix is highly useful. A value for the lead’s “fit”, in other words their title, industry, and size, can be mapped to a standard definition of A, B, C, D, where A is a high fit, and D is a low fit. Similarly for a lead’s “engagement”, or their activity on the website, a standard definition of 1,2,3,4 can be applied, again with 1 representing high engagement and 4 representing a low engagement.The sales team can then understand leads as A1s, C3s, or B4s. The underlying scoring definition of what earns a lead points, how those points are adjusted over time, and which range of points maps to the each rank, does not need to be visible to the sales team at large. A core group of key individuals within sales and marketing can debate the definitions and make necessary adjustments each quarter.
With a clear definition of what makes each lead rank, the discussion can then progress to which leads should be passed from marketing to sales, and to which sales team if there are multiple teams involved. A1 leads will obviously be passed directly to sales, likely to a field sales force, but a mapping is needed for where each other lead rank goes. Some may be passed to an inside sales team, some may be passed to a partner channel, and some may be held back to be further nurtured. The set of leads that are passed to sales from marketing are deemed marketing qualified leads (MQLs). This higher level definition is useful in looking at a higher level view of your marketing analysis.
There are two key questions that these efforts in lead scoring allow you to tackle in analyzing your marketing programs:
Does our scoring accurately correlate to a higher propensity to purchase?
- A lead scoring algorithm should be continually revisited in order to ensure that a higher score actually correlates with a higher propensity to purchase, based on both fit and engagement.
Which leads are worth sending over to sales based on the sales team’s ability to engage them in relevant conversations?
- Adjustments in your marketing, sales, and channel mix can mean that you may
wish to send more leads or less leads to sales. This adjustment comes into play
as you adjust which leads, A1, B2, C3, etc, are sent to sales as Marketing
Qualified Leads (MQLs)
In order to better enable analysis of what is working and what is not, it’s a good idea to keep the lead score and lead rank tracked. As these are values that change with time the best way to do this is to stamp the values at the point in time that the lead is passed to sales. This value pair can then be analyzed against later in order to understand whether the score and rank at that moment in time accurately indicated an intent to purchase.
Setting up a lead scoring and lead handoff process in a way that allows you to both analyze and adjust it as you learn and your business grows, sets you up for long term success.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Market Relationships, Social Relationships, and B2B Marketing in Social Media
I just wrapped up a great book – Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely – that discussed, among many other things, the different relationship types we have between people; especially market relationships and social relationships. Dan’s example was a great one for capturing the essence of the challenge; you have a great Thanksgiving dinner with the family at your mother-in-law’s place, and everyone has enjoyed the great food, drinks, and conversation. The meal ends and you pull out your wallet to pay your mother-in-law for the great meal she has provided. Obviously a very awkward moment, and entirely the wrong thing to do.Essentially, the situation becomes very awkward because you have flipped the relationship from one form (a social relationship) to another form (a market relationship). Neither type of relationship, by itself, is problematic. We provide and receive dinners based on our social relationships frequently, and we receive dinners based on market relationships each time we eat at a restaurant. However, it’s the flipping between the two that causes that feeling of awkwardness.
Social media, for all its promise, does not change the nature of the way we categorize relationships. It just makes those relationships more visible. One of the most common questions that comes up in discussions of B2B marketing is how social media can be used to drive revenue. It can, and there are many great examples of ways in which social media can be used to drive revenue, but none that I have heard of ignore the ways in which humans categorize relationships.
What I mean by that is that each of our presences on social media needs to fit neatly into a relationship category, or it will seem awkward. If we want to use social media to connect with friends, exchange photos, and share stories, great. If we want to use social media to educate, inform, and guide buyer behavior, that’s equally great. However, it is when we attempt to merge the two that awkwardness can result.
I’m not in any way saying that if you’re in a market relationship, you cannot be fun, engaging, and interested in a person’s family and personal life. You can, and it’s a great way to connect with people; in the same way that a waiter or waitress can be gregarious, social, and interesting. However, the relationship category is clear.
Many of the known successes in social media are clear market relationships. The team at Dell, ComcastCares, Chris Brogan, and the Kado Barbeque Truck are all clearly engaging us in market relationships within social media. They may be engaging, personable, and friendly, but there’s no awkwardness when they try to educate or guide our buying behavior, as we know from the start that it is a market relationship, and an ultimate goal is business.
If a social media strategy, however, relies on this boundary being crossed, it may face more of a challenge than you anticipate. Social media can be a great environment for ideas to spread virally. However, if those ideas would appear to change the relationship type, they will likely not spread. We forward viral videos to our friends that are funny, cute, inspiring, or provocative. These fit within a social relationship. We generally don’t forward videos that appear to be selling anything or promoting a product or company too strongly. This steps over the line into a market relationship.
Relationship types form an interesting framework to understand what allows certain messages to be forwarded and others to fail miserably. We have each seen examples of enthusiastic PR teams suggesting that we try to get everyone we know to pass along a great press release to their friends on Facebook. It does not work, as it is asking for a relationship (social) to flip to a different type (market). An interesting example, is the viral success that is seen in forwarding “friends and family only” discount coupons in retail scenarios. The sense that it is an internal only offer, rather than a sales promotion, allows people to pass it on in the context of a social relationship. Promotions that are just as strong economically, but do not have the “inside scoop” angle generally do not see the same level of success among groups in social media who mainly share a social relationship.
However, not all social media platforms are based on purely social relationships. People who connect on LinkedIn, for example, likely are sharing a market relationship, and may be more likely to share, discuss, and engage in pure business conversations. Twitter forms an interesting hybrid environment where both types of relationships exist.
Thinking about the relationships our initiatives are resting on allows us a new perspective on our social media campaigns. If the campaign relies on a social relationship becoming a market relationship, chances are it will not work. This transition is fraught with awkwardness and established etiquette, as much in the realm of social media as it is at Thanksgiving dinner at your mother-in-law’s.
Thinking about the relationships our initiatives are resting on allows us a new perspective on our social media campaigns. If the campaign relies on a social relationship becoming a market relationship, chances are it will not work. This transition is fraught with awkwardness and established etiquette, as much in the realm of social media as it is at Thanksgiving dinner at your mother-in-law’s.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Marketing Automation Weekly Wrap-up - 2009/09/25
It’s been more than a week since I wrote my last weekly wrap-up, and that is more a reflection on me than on the writing this week. There are again a lot of great posts out there this week, and I enjoyed reading many more than I was able to highlight here. I hope you enjoy some of this week’s highlights as much as I did
Laura Ramos (B2B Marketing Posts) published her long awaited, and very well thought out Lead Management Market Overview. If you are thinking about an investment in marketing automation or lead management, this guide is well worth reading. Laura’s insights and depth really show through well.
http://b2bmarketingpost.com/2009/09/22/lead-management-market-overview-published/
Dianna Huff (B2B MarCom Writer blog) writes about the challenges, but ultimate success, of a B2b video testimonial campaign with details on how to get approvals, how to plan, and how to structure questions in a non-salesy way to allow customers to speak freely.
http://marcom-writer-blog.com/2009/09/22/b2b-video-waters-customer-testimonial-campaign-a-hit/
Sirius Decisions reports on a trend that Inside sales is on the rise in 2010 – due to cultural acceptance, better technology, and budgetary constraints.
http://www.siriusdecisions.com/live/home/document.php?dA=C1522.78
David Raab (Customer Experience Matrix) reviews the recent Adobe/Omniture acquisition acquisition and what it means for marketers, Adobe, and Omniture. David takes the position that this will squeeze the marketing automation space, but most of the comments disagree with that view.
http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2009/09/adobe-buys-omniture-good-for-marketers.html
Brian Carroll (B2B Lead Generation blog), as part of his series on lead generation, talks about developing and intensifying your ideal customer profile – mostly based around pains you can solve for them, and their motivations, rather than demographics or firmographics.
http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2009/09/develop-your-ideal-customer-profile.html
Adam Needles (Propelling Brands) does a deep dive into the nature of the changing B2B buyer and the evidence for that change. As with all of Adam’s posts, this reflects his history as an analyst, and truly dives into the data and factual evidence.
http://propellingbrands.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/nailing-down-evidence-that-the-nature-of-the-b2b-buyer-has-changed/
Tom Pick (WebMarketCentral) writes a posts on Product Launches, and why a Rolling Thunder approach may be a better idea than the typical Lightning Bolt approach we often use.
http://webmarketcentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/better-way-to-launch-new-products.html
Andy Hasselwander (B2B Marketing Confidential) looks at the buying process, and our ability to facilitate it, from the perspective of a “barrier removal strategy” – with an interesting comparison of the B2C and B2B Apple strategy.
http://b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com/2009/09/barrier-removal-marketing-strategy.html
Carlos Hidalgo (Annuitas Group), writing on the DemandGen Report, gives an overview of the processes to audit in looking at a marketing automation investment. He makes a very strong case to look at the process first, and not assume that technology can fix a broken process.
http://demandgenreport.blogspot.com/2009/09/process-audit-needed-to-identify-breaks.html
Ardath Albee (Marketing Interactions) makes the case that lead nurturing is very different than stringing together existing marketing campaigns – it needs to lead buyers on a well thought out journey, rather than just communicating frequent messages.
http://marketinginteractions.typepad.com/marketing_interactions/2009/09/lead-nurturing-is-not-about-campaigns.html
Laura Ramos (B2B Marketing Posts) published her long awaited, and very well thought out Lead Management Market Overview. If you are thinking about an investment in marketing automation or lead management, this guide is well worth reading. Laura’s insights and depth really show through well.http://b2bmarketingpost.com/2009/09/22/lead-management-market-overview-published/
Dianna Huff (B2B MarCom Writer blog) writes about the challenges, but ultimate success, of a B2b video testimonial campaign with details on how to get approvals, how to plan, and how to structure questions in a non-salesy way to allow customers to speak freely.http://marcom-writer-blog.com/2009/09/22/b2b-video-waters-customer-testimonial-campaign-a-hit/
Sirius Decisions reports on a trend that Inside sales is on the rise in 2010 – due to cultural acceptance, better technology, and budgetary constraints.http://www.siriusdecisions.com/live/home/document.php?dA=C1522.78
David Raab (Customer Experience Matrix) reviews the recent Adobe/Omniture acquisition acquisition and what it means for marketers, Adobe, and Omniture. David takes the position that this will squeeze the marketing automation space, but most of the comments disagree with that view.http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2009/09/adobe-buys-omniture-good-for-marketers.html
Brian Carroll (B2B Lead Generation blog), as part of his series on lead generation, talks about developing and intensifying your ideal customer profile – mostly based around pains you can solve for them, and their motivations, rather than demographics or firmographics.http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2009/09/develop-your-ideal-customer-profile.html
Adam Needles (Propelling Brands) does a deep dive into the nature of the changing B2B buyer and the evidence for that change. As with all of Adam’s posts, this reflects his history as an analyst, and truly dives into the data and factual evidence.http://propellingbrands.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/nailing-down-evidence-that-the-nature-of-the-b2b-buyer-has-changed/
Tom Pick (WebMarketCentral) writes a posts on Product Launches, and why a Rolling Thunder approach may be a better idea than the typical Lightning Bolt approach we often use.http://webmarketcentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/better-way-to-launch-new-products.html
Andy Hasselwander (B2B Marketing Confidential) looks at the buying process, and our ability to facilitate it, from the perspective of a “barrier removal strategy” – with an interesting comparison of the B2C and B2B Apple strategy.http://b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com/2009/09/barrier-removal-marketing-strategy.html
Carlos Hidalgo (Annuitas Group), writing on the DemandGen Report, gives an overview of the processes to audit in looking at a marketing automation investment. He makes a very strong case to look at the process first, and not assume that technology can fix a broken process.http://demandgenreport.blogspot.com/2009/09/process-audit-needed-to-identify-breaks.html
Ardath Albee (Marketing Interactions) makes the case that lead nurturing is very different than stringing together existing marketing campaigns – it needs to lead buyers on a well thought out journey, rather than just communicating frequent messages.http://marketinginteractions.typepad.com/marketing_interactions/2009/09/lead-nurturing-is-not-about-campaigns.html
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Lead Handoff and Sales Measurement - Video
Scoring leads to determine which are qualified for sales is only valuable if the sales team works with those leads appropriately when they are handed off. This is complicated by the fact that in many cases, a sales attempt to connect with a lead can result in ambiguous outcomes, like leaving a voicemail, or discovering that the prospect is interested, but suggests speaking again in three months.
In this quick video, Eloqua’s Director of Marketing Operations, Chris Petko maps out the key elements of a process for handing leads to sales, providing sales with a way to easily take action on a lead, and then automatically handing each of the lead dispositions that are likely to happen.
(if the above video doesn't load, please click here for the lead handoff and sales measurement video)
The ability to select which leads, by both fit and engagement, are qualified for sales allows very flexible control of the flow of leads to sales, so the flow can be increased or decreased based on the propensity of the leads to close and the size of the sales force. Similarly, creating a task for sales for each lead allows very rigorous management of the overall process, as the task completion can be managed and measured very carefully.
This all follows from effectively defining which leads are truly ready for sales. This was covered very well in a recent video on lead scoring best practices that is worth watching if you missed it.
Marketing automation is of course a key element in handling the lead dispositions, as Chris highlights in the video. For each disposition option on the task presented to sales, a marketing automation program can handle the lead, nurture them as appropriate, and monitor them for signs of renewed activity.
Enjoy the video, Chris lives and breathes marketing operations, and truly knows his stuff.
In this quick video, Eloqua’s Director of Marketing Operations, Chris Petko maps out the key elements of a process for handing leads to sales, providing sales with a way to easily take action on a lead, and then automatically handing each of the lead dispositions that are likely to happen.
(if the above video doesn't load, please click here for the lead handoff and sales measurement video)
The ability to select which leads, by both fit and engagement, are qualified for sales allows very flexible control of the flow of leads to sales, so the flow can be increased or decreased based on the propensity of the leads to close and the size of the sales force. Similarly, creating a task for sales for each lead allows very rigorous management of the overall process, as the task completion can be managed and measured very carefully.
This all follows from effectively defining which leads are truly ready for sales. This was covered very well in a recent video on lead scoring best practices that is worth watching if you missed it.
Marketing automation is of course a key element in handling the lead dispositions, as Chris highlights in the video. For each disposition option on the task presented to sales, a marketing automation program can handle the lead, nurture them as appropriate, and monitor them for signs of renewed activity.
Enjoy the video, Chris lives and breathes marketing operations, and truly knows his stuff.
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