Cartoon: Who is creating content for your company?

Today's my first attempt at cartooning (okay, not really, all the hard work was done by gifted cartoonist Brady Bonus). I hope you enjoy it!

First posted this morning on It's All About Revenue:

The Changing Dimensions of Lead Flow

One of the more interesting ways of assessing the revenue performance of an organization that we looked at in thinking about revenue benchmarking was via an overall plan (whether just an adjustment of historicals, or a forward-looking revenue projection). However, in building an end-to-end plan for managing your overall revenue performance, it is important to stay aware of how the “dimensions” change over time. As a marketer or salesperson interacting with a prospective buying audience, how that audience is defined changes as a more direct connection is made with them. While this change is unimportant if each stage is dealt with separately, it becomes important to understand and model correctly as the entire process begins to be viewed with the same lens.

- At the earliest stages of interaction with buyers, as they are just entering into the awareness and education stage, the metrics that are trackable are around interactions and views. Whether it is views of a banner ad, anonymous visitors on a website, or searches being performed against key phrases, these views are often anonymous and may occur multiple times for the same individual.

- As individual prospects become known, uniquely identifying them by an identifier such as an email address or other id becomes possible. At this point, multiple interactions with one person can be tied together and that individuals actions can begin to qualify them as potentially being a marketing qualified lead.

- As a marketing qualified lead is handed to the sales team, and an opportunity is created to explore the interest that is expressed, the opportunity is generally with the purchasing company, with multiple interested individuals associated to it.

- The opportunity itself, as it is explored in further detail, will begin to have an approximation of size associated with it. Depending on what is being sold, this is associated with an annual contract value, total deal size, or other measurement of bookings.

- When a deal is closed, and services begin to be rendered, this bookings number will translate to a flow of revenue, based on the appropriate accounting standards being used.

At each point in an overall plan that a change in the "dimension" of what we're measuring will take place, this transition must be taken into account. If a conversion rate between website traffic and inquiries, or between leads and sales opportunities, is being benchmarked against as part of the plan, it must take this change in dimension into account. In most cases, this shift in dimensions can be built in as part of any conversion rate that is used in an applicable situation. For example, if 15 opportunities are created out of 1000 leads, a 1.5% conversion rate can be quoted (although I'm sure that the more rigorous mathematicians amongst us will cringe), and planned against without problem.

However, it’s important to realize that this change in dimensions did take place, and if any change in buying pattern or marketing approach takes place, a change in the number of individuals involved in a deal could shift this number without any underlying change in the likelihood of an opportunity to be created.

In your planning, are you clear on what the "dimension" is that you're measuring at each stage? An individual? A company? A dollar?

5 Things You Shouldn’t Expect from Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is becoming a vital tool in today’s B2B space, as more marketers need to gain a better understanding of their customers’ buying cycles and increase their ROI from every campaign.

However, many marketers become enamored with the latest technology and jump into marketing automation without considering the human investment and business processes needed to make their efforts successful. If you focus on the technology over the planning, you won’t have the backbone necessary to support your marketing automation efforts and convert more leads into sales.

Whether you’re considering marketing automation or have already begun the process, you must understand exactly what you can – and can’t – achieve with the software. Here are five things you shouldn’t expect marketing automation software to do:

1. Model how your buyers buy. A key to marketing automation is reframing your thinking to focus on your customers’ buying process rather than your selling process. Before you implement a marketing automation program, you should map how your customers move through every stage of the buying cycle and become aware of their questions and concerns throughout each stage.
2. Define buyer personas. For your marketing and sales efforts to succeed, you need to understand your buyers’ challenges. One of the best ways to get inside a buyer’s head is to develop a profile of your ideal customer that includes his/her demographic, firmographic and psychographic details. You can even give your ideal customer a name and hang a photo of him/her near your computer.

   Buyer personas enable you to create targeted marketing materials that speak to your customers’ exact needs. If your marketing automation program sends your buyers information that is off-target, they will ignore your messages.

3. Get sales and marketing to agree on what a qualified lead looks like. How often does your sales department complain about the quality of the leads you send them? Unless your marketing department has sales intuition (the ability to read your prospects’ behaviour and anticipate their next actions), defining a good lead will be difficult to do on your own. Meet with your sales team and discuss what makes a lead “qualified.”
4. Create interesting and relevant content. Many marketers fail to consider the amount of educational content necessary to address their buyers’ concerns. For example, a customer in the early stages of the buying cycle might want to read articles and white papers, while someone who is closer to making a purchasing decision is more likely to request sales literature or product demos. While a marketing automation system will deliver the content, you’ll still need to develop a content strategy and create engaging communications.
5. Engage with others through social media. Marketing automation allows you to communicate with your leads without human interaction. However, human interaction is vital to your success with social media. Although some aspects of social media can be automated (such as inserting sharable links into emails and landing pages), you still need to personally interact with your online communities. One-on-one conversations with buyers can help you discover what messages are the most relevant to them.

After you lay the initial groundwork, marketing automation software can help you eliminate repetitive marketing tasks and increase your ROI. Here are three things marketing automation can do for you:

1. Understand individual buyers. Marketing automation software collects powerful data about your buyers to help you understand their interests and needs. The software follows the footprints buyers leave on your website and shows you what content they have accessed. This means you can gain a deeper understanding of your customers and have an advantage over competitors who are not using marketing automation.
2. Deliver the right message – at the right time – to each buyer. One of the biggest benefits of marketing automation software is its ability to deliver targeted content to your leads throughout every stage of the buying cycle. For example, if a lead responds to a campaign about your XYZ solution, your program can send her a case study about a customer who achieved strong business gains after implementing your solution. Imagine how this targeted information can educate your leads and convert more of them into customers.
3. Identify the right leads for sales. Once you and your sales team identify what makes a lead “qualified,” marketing automation can help you deliver those leads to sales. Your sales team can view specific data about your prospects, including the links they clicked, the registration forms they completed and their lead scores. This detailed information makes it easier for your sales team to reach their quotas.

A successful marketing automation program involves more than just implementing the latest technology. Have you considered the sales and marketing processes you’ll need to make it work for you?

(this post originally ran as a guest post on Astadia's marketing automation blog)

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