Marketing & Branding

Marketing is an art, a process and a science. It is your left brain ... right brain ... common sense and soul.

I was talking to a colleague yesterday about branding. When a client says that they need "branding," what do they REALLY mean:

• A new name, logo and/or color scheme?
• Branches that are all designed consistently?
• One consistent message that resinates with every communication they send out?
• A well trained team who can provide consistent service from location to location ... from day to day?

The answer is ... YES! It's all of these. Your brand is every interaction - be it face-to-face, brochures, ads, ATMs, facilities, parking lot, online access or word of mouth - that an individual has with you. Ultimately it's the way a customer feels when they walk into your front door ... and more importantly, how they feel when they walk out!

Think about every possible way someone can come in touch with your institution ... try to see it from your customer's point of view. When you look at the sum of the parts, what is your personality? If your bank or CU was a person, what would they be like? Fun? Serious? Sloppy? Are they the life of the party, or do they shy away? Are they introverted or extraverted? Do they try to help? Are they a volunteer in the community?

THAT is your brand.

Take care,

Eric

On the Clock...

If you are a football fanatic, you were in 7th heaven over the weekend! 

The NFL Draft!

Think about the draft...lots of information and statistics surrounding each player, but truly they are untested against the ranks of other NFL players.  Some highly touted players never reach their potential and yet others, like Jerry Rice, rise to prominence from obscure small schools.

So what is the lesson to be learned?

It's all about heart!

We hear it all the time...we have big competitors that we cannot compete against.  Our markets are too big to be effective.  Our budgets just cannot match our competitors.

To each of these statements, I answer "where there is a will, there is a way!"

• Find the way to be different in your markets...
• Find staff that are hungry to compete and WIN...
• Find customers that want a different experience

They are ALL out there...you just need to find them!

The challenge for this week...you are ON THE CLOCK!

Your time to "draft" new customers, "select" new staff, acquire new "free agent" customer deposits and loans....is now!

Get a plan...get a focus...get momentum...and be on your way to results!

You are now ON THE CLOCK!

Make it a great draft for your team!

Cheers!

Bruce

Measuring Marketing Takes More Than ROI

Over the next several days, I'll be posting articles here about measuring the performance of marketing, including the use of marketing return on investment, or MROI.

This may not be one of the sexiest marketing topics out there, but it has become an extremely important one.  For the past several years, CEO's and CFO's have been demanding greater financial accountability from the marketing function, and they are now pressing marketers to prove the value of marketing activities and programs.  Many years ago, John Wanamaker is reported to have said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the problem is, I don't know which half."  CEO's and CFO's expect better from marketers today.

I'm also writing about this topic because, even though there is a large volume of literature about how to measure the performance of marketing, there are many misconceptions floating around, even about some of the most basic principles.  For example, you can find many marketing campaign "ROI calculators" in use today that calculate ROI based on revenues or sales instead of profits (in one of its various forms).  If a marketer presents one of these kinds of "ROI calculations" to a CFO, his/her credibility can be undermined.

Another issue is that in recent years, MROI has become the "gold standard" for measuring not only the overall performance of the marketing function, but also the performance of individual marketing activities.  Some experts argue that this approach is both possible and essential.  But, like any metric, MROI has limitations, and we need to understand those limitations in order to use the metric in the right ways, for the right purposes.

In my next few posts, I'll start by explaining the basic idea of ROI, and I'll describe how ROI has been used to measure business performance.  Then, I'll look at the components of the ROI formula and describe how each of the components should be defined and calculated and what issues that may present.

And finally, I'll argue that, while MROI is an important metric, we need a more holistic approach to get a comprehensive view of marketing performance, especially in B2B companies with complex marketing/sales processes and longer revenue cycles.

When to Outsource

As I write this blog, I have contractors in my house finishing my basement to make more room for the kids to play (and, hopefully, a place to hide their toys!!!). Over the last week or so, I've been reminded exactly how much work goes into building a simple room: framing, wiring, lights, moving plumbing, drywall, flooring, etc., etc., etc.

Now, I'm a fairly intelligent guy and I have a lot of the tools that these guys are using. I know how to use a tape measure and a saw and I can read Do It Yourself websites. What I'm trying to say is that I might have been able to do this job myself ... BUT...

I simply don't have time. Between the important day-to-day work like mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, house cleaning, basic home maintenance, taking care of two kids and the like, I simply don't have time to do the bigger jobs. Besides:

• It would have taken me ten times longer because I don't have the same skill set as a contractor
• I don't have ALL of the tools that I'd need
• IF I was able to finish the job, the quality wouldn't be nearly as good

Does this sound like your situation at work? Between dealing with changing regulations, squeezing margins and internal management issues, the important day-to-day work can take time from the bigger strategic picture that will drive business and impact the bottom line.

The way I had to find the right contractor, it may help to find a marketing partner that has:

• The experience of creating and implementing strategic plans, building differentiating brands, segmenting and targeting the right customers and training sales staff to deliver on the marketing promise, ...
• The marketing tools that you may not have, be they creative, PR, media, strategic planning, etc., and ...
• A proven track record of quality specific to your industry.

What I've learned this week is that having the right people help you get the job done, makes for a better end product, a more restful nights sleep and more time for me to do what I want to do, like hang out with my kids.

Take care,

Eric

The Biggest Marketing Challenge of the Next 10 Years (Part 4)

The final response in this series of posts belongs to Julie Peeler, a close friend and expert arts marketer. Prior to her current position at Americans for the Arts, Julie headed the National Arts Marketing Project, which was where I met her in 2004. She is a wealth of knowledge, and someone that I look to for advice when I am navigating particularly difficult marketing decisions. I hope you enjoy her insight below.

Julie Peeler
Vice President, Private Sector Initiatives
Americans for the Arts

I would be happy if I could figure out what’s going to happen in the next 6 months. After all, very few people could have predicted in 2008 that we would be in the shape we’re in right now, facing the issues we are facing. But if we’re to learn anything from the current conditions, we know that we cannot be as insular as we have been as an industry and a profession. The arts are as bruised by this recession as any other business, and we are positively and negatively affected by the same social, economic and demographic factors as any other business. The recently published National Arts Index by Americans for the Arts points to just that thing.

And we need to become more nimble as organizations and managers than ever before. Shrinking funding and a fracturing of the American demographic mean less behemoth organizations and smaller, service oriented groups. No one department holds the crown for Nimbleness. I have worked with as many arts groups where the executive director was nimble but the staff was rooted in “this is how we always do it” as is the opposite case. There is no room for tradition any more. Not in the art on the stage or the wall or in the classroom, not in the management of our organizations and especially not in the way we reach new audiences.

And speaking of audiences, they are more and more becoming customers, and co-creators, rather than a passive body of viewers. They don’t need us to curate and direct but to facilitate their own personal arts experiences. Organizations must continually look for new ways to connect people to the arts: virtually, by being embedded in the community, by working though community issues, etc. We will be seeing more virtual organizations in nontraditional spaces, a greater blurring lines between professional and avocational, and less of a quest for a building where the building manages us rather than us managing the building.

The big challenge for marketers will be to think outside of marketing and consider how shifts affecting the world at large will translate into how their organization is run, how it connects to audiences and how they in turn, market.

Four Ways to Jumpstart Content Development

Successful B2B marketing depends largely on the quality of marketing content.  To break through the marketing clutter that fills the environment and create real engagement with potential buyers, you need relevant and compelling content that helps buyers address important business challenges.

Although this "new" approach to marketing is quickly becoming a competitive necessity, it's not an easy transition for many companies to make.  The volume of content needed can seem to be overwhelming.

For example, suppose that you sell to only one type of company.  Your buying group typically contains three individuals so you have three buyer personas to address.  Your buyers usually move through a four-stage buying process, and you believe you will need to interact with each buyer at least three times during each stage of the buying process.  This means you'll need at least 36 "pieces" of marketing content to fuel your marketing effort (3 personas X 4 buying stages X 3 interactions per buying stage).

The good news is that getting started with content marketing is usually the most difficult step.  Once your initial base of content is created, the job becomes more manageable.  So, is there any way to make getting started easier?  These four tactics will enable you to jumpstart your content development.

Narrow Your Focus

If you sell to more than one type of business, pick your largest, most profitable, or most attractive customer segment and start by developing a full set of content materials for that segment.  You can add content for other types of customers later.  When it comes to content marketing, you are better off having the content you need to take some of your prospects all the way through the buying cycle than having content that will take all of your prospects only part of the way through the buying cycle.

Use Existing Marketing Materials

OK, I'll admit that most of your existing marketing materials probably aren't suitable for the kind of customer-focused marketing you need to be doing today.  I include this tactic for two reasons.  First, at the right time in the buying cycle, your potential buyers will want and need to learn about your company and your products, and your existing marketing materials should be able to perform this function.  Second, even if your existing materials aren't suitable in their current form, you may be able to make some of them suitable by making relatively minor changes.  At least you won't be starting from scratch.

Follow the "Rule of Five"

The rule of five says that whenever you develop a significant content asset, you should try to create at least four "smaller" content pieces from the original asset.  For example, say you write a white paper.  You then use the content in the white paper to create one or two short articles and two or three blog posts.

Outsource the First Wave

Even if you follow the first three suggestions, you may still find that you don't have the time or internal resources to create the content you need as fast as you need it.  If that's the case, you should consider outsourcing some or all of the content development work.  Once the initial wave of content is developed, you may find that you can build on that foundation to create the additional content you need.

Can Customers and Prospects Talk to You?

As you can imagine, in my role with MarketMatch, I spend a great deal of time on the telephone talking to (or should I say trying to talk to) banks and credit unions. Often, I have only the main telephone number of the institution and have to depend on the quality of their telephone system to allow me to reach the appropriate person.

I have found the process frustrating at best. Many times I have navigated through the automated options only to have my call dropped just after I select what I think is the final option before I get the individual I am trying to reach. Other times, I have found the only way to talk to a live person is to talk to customer service and then asked to be transferred. Even then, half the time the call get dropped.

When I do encounter a telephone system that is either answered by a "live" person or a system that allows me to key in the last name followed by the first name of the individual, you would be amazed at how the call is answered. More often than not, the individual does not identify themselves or the institution. Even more rare is the greeting "how may I help you."

Don't even get me started on voice mail messages. Voice mail messages are "all over the place" from very rude to very helpful.

How long has it been since anyone at your institution has taken a look at your telephone system?

The cost of telephone systems has dropped dramatically over the last several years. Every institution can afford a quality telephone system.

How long has it been since your institution has discussed telephone etiquette?

Institutions spend a lot of money on branding, web sites, merchandising, etc. but often overlook what is in many cases, the first customer/prospect touch point an individual has with the institution.

Does your institution have a standardized voice mail message?

If not, creating one would probably be a good idea! If you decide to create a standardized voice mail message, refresh it frequently. Remember it is OK to "sell" via the voice mail message!

Bottom Line - Make sure your telephone system represents a "great" customer/prospect touch point because your institutions reputation for quality service is "on the line." No pun intended.

Have a great week!

Mike Witsken

5 Ways to Better Marketing Performance with Marketing Operations

By Holger Schulze

In my last post “5 Steps to B2B Marketing Success” we established a simple approach to improving success in B2B marketing, starting with understanding your audience, building a strong value proposition, mapping out the buyer’s journey, building compelling messages and content, and finally, investing in robust marketing automation.

Increasing Pressure on Marketing

But how do you ensure that all this happens at peak efficiency, you are meeting your goals, and providing solid quantifiable return on your marketing investment? Today, in many organizations the executive suite is demanding proof of ROI and CEOs are asking the marketing function questions like: What is your economic value add to the company? Where is the return on the millions of Dollars invested in marketing? What happens if I cut your budget by 20 percent? Or add 20 percent? Many CMOs inability to answer these questions in a satisfactory manner has lead to their average tenure of less than 2 years in US companies, the shortest of any C level executive role. The old adage that 50 percent of marketing budget is wasted, the question is which half, just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Contrast this with your sales organization - typically the most measured and performance oriented part of the company. No wonder you get a culture clash between marketing, often focused on activities without clear link to the bottom line, and sales determined to make quota by selling product. The result is misalignment between CMO and CEO, marketing and sales, marketing goals and company goals. Absent strong alignment behind a set of clear measurable objectives, nobody in marketing is really accountable.

Marketing Operations to the Rescue – A 5 Step Program

I believe this challenge is quite healthy as it provides strong incentives for marketing to become a truly performance driven and business critical function of the company. This is where the field of marketing operations (MO) has received a lot of attention lately as a new marketing function designed to create cross-company alignment, performance visibility, and the foundational systems and processes that enable marketing to scale, become more effective and efficient, and contribute to company goals. Such a systematic marketing operations approach brings structure, process and accountability to the marketing function. It also establishes institutional knowledge on how marketing is done - this is important considering the high turnover in many marketing departments and the resulting loss of institutional knowledge. Marketing operations is basically injecting left-brain thinking into the traditionally right-brained creative marketing function. This can be intimidating at first. So let's take a look at how we can break marketing operations into smaller steps and tactics.

Step 1 - Establish a Formal MO Function
Marketing is getting more complex with new technologies such as social media, new tools like marketing automation, and higher performance and ROI expectations. A formal MO function can make sure that best practices and systems are implemented marketing wide so that marketers can take on more sophisticated projects, such as campaign automation, without having to worry about underlying processes, analytics, and metrics. The analytical skill set and experience required for marketing operations are hard to find in marketing folks that have entered the field because of their creative talent, so having a dedicated MO person, and eventually MO team, with the required analytical and marketing process skills makes perfect sense.

Step 2 - Define the Scope of MO
MO adds value to marketing by creating an ecosystem that enables marketers to excel and allows them to focus on their core competencies while being in sync with the requirements of the company and its stakeholders. MO typically includes planning & budgeting, performance measurement, reporting and dashboards, marketing best practices, sales alignment, and automation of processes such as campaign management, to name a few. While marketing operations focus is on the overall performance of the marketing department, it would be a mistake not to include the other departments marketing interacts with. MO has an opportunity to align marketing goals and processes with departments such as sales, finance, and development for example to make sure that critical dependencies and expectations are managed, that goals are aligned and marketing provides value to the company.

Step 3 - Align MO Goals with Biggest Sales and Marketing Challenges
In order to establish MO, justify the investment and show its positive impact on the company, MO has to address the biggest sales and marketing challenges and bring about change. A survey by Gary Katz, CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, shows the marketing priorities in many organizations. First, "measuring marketing ROI and demonstrating value", with 73 percent of respondents selecting this issue. This goes back to the premise that current lack of demonstrated marketing ROI is causing problems for marketing departments in terms of budget funding and CMOs staying power. Second, "balancing marketing strategy and tactics" - over 60% of survey respondents say that they are having trouble aligning day to day activities with big-picture strategy and company goals. MO is designed to address this issue. And third, 57 percent of respondents said that "creating common goals for marketing success that are tied with the goals of other groups in the company" is a major challenge. Here, marketing operations can help by creating a goal framework that starts with corporate goals and cascades them into department and individual goals, and aligns goals across the organization with departments that have a stake in marketing's success, particularly the sales function.

Step 4 - Get Buy-in from Senior Executives
Without senior level buy in from the company's C-management, MO is not going to be successful. MO requires support and collaboration not only within marketing but with other departments to be effective.

Step 5 - Conduct Regular Performance Checks and Improve MO over Time
This ties back to the idea of continuous improvement that the Japanese perfected in manufacturing with Kaizen and other quality management systems. With regular reviews of actual performance against goals, marketing operations can quickly identify areas for improvement, opportunities for resource re-allocation, process changes, and further education. Dashboards, as the "glue" between strategy and execution, can provide leading and lagging indicators to correct issues and take action before they grow into bigger problems downstream.

What is your experience with marketing operations? Does your marketing organization have a dedicated MO function, and if so, what are your success stories?

A Lesson From A "Sandwich"

By now, I'm sure you've heard about the abomination from KFC called the Double Down. In case you haven't heard about this beast, it is a bacon and cheese "sandwich" housed between two pieces of fried chicken. It's essentially calories, cholesterol and fat ... it's a heart attack in a sack.

I in no way endorse this product or encourage you to eat it - in fact, I see it as another reason why we have one of the fattest and most unhealthy countries in the world. But, there is one marketing lessons that can come from this product that should have it's own chapter in the Healthcare Bill.

Rethink Your Existing Packaging

Since the aristocracy, we have considered a sandwich as anything that is jammed between two pieces of bread. KFC said, "Why not chicken - it's what we do best?"

Likewise, in banking, our bread-and-butter account has always been checking. Well lets scrap the rules for a second. It's 2010, the prime driver of these accounts is less and less about the check book and more about electronic access, right? Wouldn't our staff be more likely to promote and our customers be more likely to accept key products like e-statements, debit cards, online banking, text alerts and online bill pay if we dropped the "C" word and called these "Access Accounts" instead?

I'm sure we can apply Double Down thinking to many of our traditional products and help "fatten" our products per customer numbers. Have an idea? Share it in the Comments section of this blog.

Take care,

Eric

The "Other" Jobs of B2B Marketers

A lively discussion is underway in the Marketing Communications group at LinkedIn.  The question that started the discussion was: "In one sentence, what is marketing?"  In less than a month, this question has produced 145 comments.  As you might expect, the comments have included a wide range of definitions, but I think it's fair to say that most have focused, in one way or another, on the "persuasion" aspect of marketing.

Because of my work, I read almost everything I can find about B2B marketing.  For example, I regularly follow over three dozen B2B marketing blogs, and the list keeps growing.  There are some wonderful B2B bloggers sharing insights and ideas - Seth Godin, Ardath Albee, Steve Woods, and Jon Miller, just to name a few.

The hot topics today in the B2B marketing blogosphere include the use of social networks, inbound marketing, content marketing, lead management (lead scoring, lead nurturing, etc.), and marketing automation.  All of these topics also relate to how we communicate with and persuade potential buyers.

It's understandable why we devote so much attention to marketing communications.  Most B2B marketers spend most of their time developing and executing marketing communications programs of various kinds.  Marketing communications are extremely important, but they are only part of the "promotion" component of marketing.  And promotion is only one of the "four P's" of marketing.

Peter Drucker once said, "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only two - basic functions:  marketing and innovation."  I might not go quite that far, but I do believe that B2B marketers can and should play a broader role that just managing marketing communications.

Let's consider just two examples.  First, marketers should have a strong voice in the development of new products and services.  Marketers (in collaboration with salespeople) are best suited to be the "eyes and ears" of the company in the marketplace.  Gathering information about the changing needs and challenges of customers and prospects should be an ongoing priority for marketers, and you should create a systematic process for collecting and evaluating this information.  This kind of market intelligence can be vital for developing new products or services that will win in the marketplace.

Marketers should also play a significant role in making decisions about pricing.  I realize that pricing is a sensitive subject in many companies and is often the source of contention among marketers, salespeople, and financial/accounting professionals.  Research has shown that pricing is the single most powerful profit lever that managers can use on a daily basis.  It's up to marketers to understand the real economics of pricing decisions so that they can bridge the gap between those who view pricing as a tool for closing a sale and those who believe that your company's costs should dictate its prices.

Managing the marketing communications effort is important, but B2B marketers also have other critical jobs to perform. 

It's Here!! Monday!

Greetings and HAPPY MONDAY!

Today is a great day...spring has sprung, the weather has turned and I have actually mowed my grass 2x already!  The best times in grass mowing?  The 1st time of the season...and the last time of the season!  However, each time in between adds to the look of your home and displays your attitude toward your neighbors.

To that end, I share my blog for today...

Action is required by everyone.

Monday's are all about action.  You had the weekend to rest and relax (or have a crazy schedule with baseball, soccer, dinner's cookouts, etc...but still relaxing stuff!) and think about the coming week.  So, today's action has to be to put your thoughts INTO action!

Just like mowing your grass is a reflection on you and your neighborhood, so is your Monday actions! Your actions reflect on your attitude and desire to be successful as well as your attitude toward your co-workers, your company and your customers.

Come out firing away and getting things done...it sets the tone for a GREAT week and let's everyone know that you are ONBOARD with success--- your's and theirs!

So...put your weekend thoughts and considerations on the front burner and get them INTO action.  You will find success comes, the week speeds along, and people gravitate to you.

Afterall, success (like honey) attracts good things!

Have a great MONDAY and even better week...

Cheers!

Bruce

The Biggest Marketing Challenge of the Next 10 Years (Part 3)

Part three of the series features responses from two experienced theatrical marketers--one that works at one of the finest training institutions in the nation, and the other works at a top Broadway marketing and advertising firm.

Anne Trites
Director of Marketing & Communications, Yale Repertory Theatre
Assistant Professor of Theater Management, Yale School of Drama

Technology! I think the biggest marketing challenge facing arts organizations is related to the impact of technology on communication with audiences – current and prospective. We used to rely on print and radio advertising, snail mail, email and the telephone to communicate. A great deal of time was spent developing just the right message to be delivered at just the right time to each segment. We would develop tactics to stimulate positive word of mouth to encourage sales. Marketers were largely in control of the message. Technology has already tipped the balance and audiences are quickly gaining that control. Individual audience members offer their opinions frequently and with immediacy on a growing number of platforms. Some have online followings that rival those of professionals. And, the voice of the audience has more authenticity and therefore more clout with their networks than any marketing message.

It’s hard to think about ten years from now only because of the speed at which technology is stimulating change to marketing tools and consumer behavior. Whether it is two or ten years from today, I believe we will become `somewhat’ more transparent marketers working in partnership with loyal fans in our audience. I say `somewhat ‘because I also believe we will use the information we glean about audiences through their online activities. We will still be segmenting audiences and crafting targeted messages which we hope will become viral. In other words, it will be the same but different!

I think the biggest challenge is not about what it will be like in ten years, but how we will get there. Can we be nimble organizations? Can we keep up with the fast pace of change? Can we be proactive and get in front of change? Can we measure our efforts and make wise choices during this period of change?

One more thought … I wonder if our art form will become increasingly unique because it is live. We’re already using the slogan “there is no app for this” at Yale Rep for next season.


Ilene Rosen
Director of Business Development, SpotCO

I wanted to respond to the question Chad posed with a challenge I think we can tackle. The issue is this. Today’s marketing and advertising environment has not only changed drastically in the last five years, but it is continuing to change, and it is more cluttered than ever.

So, how do we stay focused on SELLING TICKETS?

With the economic downturn and the explosion of new media, we face some tough questions:
What are the most effective forms of advertising now?
How best to use new and social media?
Does print advertising still provide value?

As new media continues to grow as an industry, this list of questions will only expand, and these questions leave me with some concerns:

• I worry that as marketers, we will get so overwhelmed with ‘the clutter’ that it will become more difficult to make good marketing decisions.

• I worry that as more forms of social media become available, we will spend more and more of our marketing energies trolling the Internet aimlessly trying to find/engage audiences.

• I worry that with all of the new and traditional media options to choose from, our attentions will get diverted away from making strategic marketing decisions. As a result, we will make less effective choices about where to focus our dollars and resources.

As we move into the next decade, I hope that we can stay macro: focus on selling tickets. If we make choices based on STRATEGY, I think it will help us be more effective in this elusive marketing environment.

As marketers, we do need to try new things, but we should be strategic about what we are doing or the efforts are wasted. We should repeatedly ask ourselves – could this yield a ticket sale, either directly or indirectly?

We will want to stay on the frontlines of new media, but when we post things on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., we have to be thoughtful about it and ask ourselves what the strategy is behind every post. We should be able to answer that question.

Over the next decade, we will need to explore, experiment, and take risks, but I believe we can be successful only if we make decisions based on strategy. If we can use macro strategies as guides, it will help navigate us through all of the questions we face moving forward.

TGIF...Getting ready for TGIM

Greetings and Happy Friday!

Today is a great day...and three specific reasons:

1. It's Friday...
2. Client work is rolling great
3. Monday is only 2 days away!

I know....sounds crazy right?  Well, when you have the benefit of working with great clients, both bank's and CUs, you have the best of the best in all facets of the work we can produce.

So...I have two items to share with everyone today...

(1)  Make today count!
(2)  Make those around you feel counted!

Simple words...but VERY impactful!  I just completed a proposal for a large potential client that deals with realigning their internal communications and the entire process reminded me how important those two simple steps can be to supercharge an organization.

Making Today Count!
We only have 365 days in a year...so we HAVE to make each on count!  How?  Put your best efforts forward, do things that are relevant, and MEASURE what you do.

Making Those Around You Feel Counted
This is all about empowerment.  We have all worked with people that have a "job" versus a "career"  Being the marketer, it is your mission to make sure everyone takes their job and their impact and sees it as a"career" while they are at your institution.  Share info, thank people for their efforts, communicate needs, ask for help...all small actions that make those around you feel counted!

Have a great Friday...and see you for a supercharged Monday!!

Cheers!

Bruce

5 Steps to B2B Marketing Success

By Holger Schulze

Major shifts are taking place in B2B marketing that started a few years ago but have accelerated in recent months – in the marketplace as well as inside vendor organizations.

Prospects and customers are becoming more sophisticated and better informed than ever before. They are tuning out a lot of the marketing noise they receive which makes it harder for marketers to reach audiences the old fashioned way. Customers are are in the driver’s seat today. This has profound implications on marketing and the way companies engage with prospects.

In the “old days”, the mainstream marketing approach was to interrupt and engage prospects, educate them on the vendors offering and move them through the sale cycle towards a transaction – a very vendor and product centric approach. Contrast this with the sophisticated and networked and community-embedded buyer today, who conducts research and talks with their peers in online communities long before identifying and narrowing down the list of potential vendors that can solve the problem.

These buyers and decision makers don’t want to get interrupted by a product promo email or a cold call that likely doesn’t come at the exact time they have a specific problem the caller can help with. And today’s customers are busier than ever. They want to be able to engage with a vendor when they are ready and actively seek out advice, often very late in the buying cycle, and have the vendor guide them through a complex buying and problem solving process - outsourcing part of the buying process to the vendor community if you will.

A simple 5 step program can help you refocus your marketing efforts and adjust to the new requirements for B2B marketing success:

Step 1 – Understand Your Audience
Customer focus begins with understanding your customer and their market environment. What business problems do they face? What are the drivers in their industry that impact profitability? Also make sure you segment your target markets according to demographics, psychographics, and business environment to identify the segments that are the best fit for your company's offering; segments that have the most to gain by becoming your customers.

Step 2 – Build a Strong Value Proposition
Build a strong customer-centric value proposition that puts your product and services in the context of the customer's problem, communicates the value you provide and your differentiators vis-a-vis competing alternatives.

Step 3 – Map Out Buyer’s Journey
Map the customer's buying cycle from problem awareness, identifying generic solutions, identifying potential vendors, selecting vendors that make the short list, evaluating solutions in detail and ultimately selecting a solution. Build a simplified model of your customers’ world, the journey they take from problem to solution. This exercise will help you understand how your customers are progressing through the steps of the buying cycle. What are their goals, concerns, what data do they need to move to the next step, where do they look for information?

Step 4 – Build Compelling Messages and Content
With this information you get a pretty good idea for how to influence the prospect along every step, how to educate them, how to guide them to purchase. Build a simple matrix of messages, marketing collateral and sales tools mapped against each phase of the buying cycle. Also add how you want to get your information to your audience - how will they find you. Focus on social networks and Google and special interest sites for the early phases; that's where buyers will often look first and find your content to make sense of their problem and the solution space and identify potential vendors. Make sure your content is problem and solution focused and doesn’t only talk about your product.

Build call to actions into each content piece to encourage your prospect to keep engaging with you as they move through the buying cycle. Also, make content easily accessible, especially in the early phase of the buying cycle where prospects don't care about specific vendors but want to understand their options and the implications of available choices to solve a problem. So let your educational content (white papers, Webinars) go free so it gets consumed and shared by prospects across social networks, don't hide it behind registration forms, but add a strong call to action into the content asset to move your prospects to the next interaction with you.

Step 5 - Invest in Marketing Automation
One size fits all mass email blasts, for example, don’t provide the level of return you are looking for. Marketing automation will allow you to have very targeted digital conversations with your audience triggered by prospect profile and behavior, driven by their buying cycle. Help prospects follow paths that you have defined to guide them, offering content that matches every step of their buying process from white papers and webinars in the early discovery stages to case studies, ROI studies and competitive comparisons during vendor selection at which point your sales will be heavily engaged in the relationship. With each interaction, you collect more data about the prospect which allows you to build a score to identify the hottest leads that you want to engage with directly and focus your time and sales resources on. With sophisticated analytics and reporting, MA tools will also give you insight into what is working and what not so you can adjust and improve your campaigns.

Buyers expect vendors to help them make sense of the options they have available to solve a particular problem, their pros and cons – a very consultative, solution, and customer centric approach to marketing and sales that is very different from yesterday’s paradigms. For marketing teams, this means engaging with prospects much earlier in the buying cycle, educating them long before prospects consider specific vendors, and matching each phase of the customer buying cycle with appropriate message, content and marketing tools designed to ease the buyers journey - from problem to solution and carefully steer them to the favorable outcome - to be selected by the buyer.

It also means using new ways to reach the buyer, including social networks. This approach requires much greater domain, industry and business expertise on the vendor side, to really understand the customer, which in turn requires more targeted segmentation, more intelligent messaging, better sales tools, etc. Time to get ready.

The Biggest Marketing Challenge of the Next 10 Years (Part Two)

The series continues as more experts weigh in on what they believe will be the biggest marketing challenge arts organizations will face in the next 10 years.


Jim Royce
Director of Marketing and Communications
Center Theatre Group

"Word of Mouth is Just Too Important to Ignore"

This is an economic time when every business and arts organization needs to look intently at its core audiences, ask yourself: what can I do to bring customers closer or more frequently to our product? How can I leverage their experience to generate more word of mouth or get it going faster and wider?

Oscar Wilde’s famous remark, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,” is even more relevant in the age of social networking and ten-second sound bites. And the rules of spreading chatter have not changed: ya gotta have something interesting to spread around, it must be easily talked about, credible, respectful and satisfying.

People love to talk and when they have information or an opinion they think is worth sharing; they won’t stop talking. Your mavens are key talkers, because mavens thrive as influencers and need constant content. Often friends see them as informed and therefore they earn respect and attention. What do your best friends do to inform you of the cool things they’ve experienced or get you to experience?

There is plenty of evidence that shows if you can influence 150 people to spread enthusiastic chatter online, it will move faster than a newspaper circulation with a million readers.

It’s our job to educate, inform, and build interesting chat. Make no mistake: you can’t decide what’s remarkable to someone else. You can only hope your stuff is what other people think is remarkable and want to talk about.

Accommodate your core loyalists and mavens with new perks and incentives to keep their attention. Offer payment plans, free parking, extra tickets, cookies, anything customers may not expect that send signals we are in this tough time together and we want to reward “your” loyalty, especially now.

Spend more time on relationships with people who are infrequent attendees. They can be influenced by your evangelism in these tough times. Evangelism brings out the passion in your work.

Revisit or revitalize the attributes that make your brand stand out. Now is not the time to make big changes unless you see major advantages at the end of the recession. Consumers want stability and trust that says we are capable of delivering high quality and engaging productions.

Remember Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point? He spoke about ideas working like social or viral epidemics. They start small and grow because a few connectors or see something unique, but other people, tastemakers, spread them to gain wider attention and “remark-ability.”

It is the power of a lively context in which most people accept interesting products, events or ideas. Make them gain stickiness and their attraction grows exponentially.

I love Andy Sernovitz and Seth Godin. Both practice what they preach about word-of-mouth marketing and good strategic values. Andy’s classic remark haunts me every day: “People love to talk. They are talking about you and your stuff right now.” Yes they are. And Seth Godin’s famous book Purple Cow, made me a fan of him for life. (If you are driving down a long country road past herds of common ordinary cows, and all of a sudden one is purple, what would you do, think or feel? Do you have a purple cow?)

People talk to each other for advice, confirmation, and validation before committing to a significant decision or purchase. Value is a centerpiece in the customer’s mind and confirming value is critical to the sale process, particularly for high-cost experiences, like ours.

If you get excited about an arts event and you want to go, the next action is to talk about it with someone who will go with you. And you have to come up with a good reason to start the conversation. It’s up to us to help supply you with those opening lines.

WOM is more than just word of mouth. We have word-of-e-mail, word-by-blog, by Facebook, text messaging, YouTube, online search, and reader reviews in newspapers and Web sites. And this is all happening with a landscape of social networking options that have dramatically changed the way people chatter and inform themselves.

Sernovits says, “You’re getting talked about whether you like it or not. The conversation has started, so you might as well get involved. Word-of-mouth marketing only works if you have good products and services. It works if people like you and trust you. The best part, I’m convinced, is the more we participate, the more the conversation grows, and the more it becomes about us.”

It is our responsibility to provoke the chatter. Make sure tastemakers are an integral part of your audience makeup from the very beginning.

Make the chatter interesting and remarkable enough to spread. Participate through advertising, blogs, social networking, and the creation of online content to help fuel the word-of-mouth. We’re in the business of providing experiences people want to be engaged in and talk about.

Remember one of the key values of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page: “Do no evil. Deliver more than expected.”

Finally, make your Web site rich with content – especially video – about your events and company brand. Spark meaningful word-of-mouth and participate honestly in the dialogue, even if it is controversial. For the consumer, make your e-mail a trusted and useful source of information, service, and most of all, full of sticky news people will want to pass along to their – not just promotion. Build stronger social networks and deeper connections in your community.


Eugene Carr
President
Patron Technology

The biggest marketing challenge arts marketers will face in the next decade is not technology, budgets, or audiences – it’s THEMSELVES. As the Web continues to evolve, arts patrons and consumers will have more choices and options literally at their fingertips. Will arts marketers step up and innovate, or be left behind?

A decade ago, in the middle of the dot-com crash, few would have predicted the rapidity with which the Internet would not only rebound, but forge unexpected and profound changes in how we now communicate with each other. In a short decade the very fundamentals of marketing have been challenged and reshaped.

During these past 10 years, the corporate world embraced this transformation much more quickly than did the arts. It wasn’t simply because they had more money, because the truth is smart Web-based marketing doesn’t need to be expensive. Those entities that the arts compete with for consumers’ time quickly recognized the potential that new technology could afford them, and made huge strides in improving their Web sites, generating paid Web traffic, selecting easier to use e-commerce technology, and investing time and effort in leveraging social media.

In fact, the commercial entertainment industry was one of the first to embrace social media. Even Broadway producers (not often known for innovation) are catching on. Though a few forward-thinking arts organizations have made strides in improving their online presence, not enough have.

According to our 2010 Patron Technology National Arts Patron Survey (March 2010), in which 10,000 arts patrons responded, only 20% indicated that they “always, or almost always” rely on arts organizations’ Web sites for their arts-going planning. And just 39% indicated that arts Web sites had improved in the last year. There’s a lot of ground to be made up here.

Looking ahead towards the next decade, I think it seems obvious that the rate of change wrought by the Web will continue to accelerate. In the next few years, the computer monitor will morph into your home television screen. Watching a live theatre performance or concert produced by a cultural organization streamed over the Internet will become commonplace. The Met Opera has already proven what that kind of thing does to generate demand for the live event itself.

Geo-location technology will also be a game-changer. Your mobile device will be able to tell you (while you sit at a restaurant checking your e-mail) what movies are starting within a mile of your location, in the next hour. Will arts events be listed as well?

Will arts leaders embrace changes like these and be like the creative entrepreneurial people they clearly are when they focus on producing for the stage? Or will they lag behind on the technology front and watch other forms of entertainment race ahead, as has happened during the last decade?

If arts marketers decide collectively to convince their boards and funding community that it is imperative that they get ahead of the technology curve, then there's a chance that the arts industry can blaze a trail that other entertainment art forms will envy.

The biggest challenge is not the change itself, but whether we've got the guts as an industry to embrace the change and go after it.

B2B Value Propositions That Resonate With Buyers

One of my favorite definitions of value proposition comes from Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies.  She says that a value proposition is, "a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services."

Value propositions are a core element of your marketing strategy.  They describe how you create value for customers and, therefore, they are the ultimate source for your marketing content.  In fact, you can't create compelling marketing content until you really understand how you create value for customers.

Despite their undeniable importance, most companies don't do a good job of formulating and communicating compelling value propositions.  A recent survey of decision makers in B2B companies conducted by the Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board found that 86 percent of the "unique benefits" touted by sellers were not seen by potential buyers as having enough impact to create a preference for a particular seller.

In their 2007 book, Value Merchants, James C. Anderson, Nirmalya Kumar, and James A. Narus identified three basic types of B2B value propositions.

All Benefits - Essentially, a list of all the benefits that managers believe their solutions might deliver to target customers.  This type of value proposition requires the least knowledge about specific customers or competitors, but it has one major drawback.  This approach can lead managers to claim advantages for solution features that actually provide little real benefits to target customers.

Favorable Points of Difference - When managers use this type of value proposition, they attempt to differentiate their solution by identifying favorable points of differrence between their solution and the customer's next-best alternative.  While better than an All Benefits vallue proposition, this type of value proposition still has a major drawback.  It can lead managers to assume that all favorable points of difference will be valuable to a prospect, while the reality may be that many points of difference contribute little value to a particular prospect.

Resonating Focus - The third type of value proposition is called Resonating Focus.  Anderson, et. al. say that in a world where potential buyers are extremely busy, sellers must use value propositions that are both compelling and simple.  The basic idea behind a Resonating Focus value proposition is to identify the one or two points of difference (between your solution and your competitor's) that deliver the greatest value to the target customers.

Resonating Focus value propositions dovetail nicely with content marketing.  To begin with, companies that use Resonating Focus value propositions develop customized value propositions for various customer segments.  This is necessary because the elements of value that matter most are likely to vary based on the type of customer involved.

It's also possible to extend the Resonating Focus value proposition concept from customers (organizations) to individual buyers or buyer personas.  And when you develop Resonating Focus value propositions for each of your buyer personas, you will have taken a large step toward identifying the marketing content you need.

Nature Quotes to think about this Monday

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle--when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

~Roger Bannister

First man in history to run a sub-four minute mile

"Wolves do not aimlessly run around their intended victims, yipping and yapping. They have a strategic plan and execute it through constant communication. When the moment of truth arrives, each understands his role and understands exactly what the pack expects of him."

~Twyman Towery

Wisdom of Wolves

The thoughts for this Monday?

• Are you the lion or the gazelle?
• Have you hit this Monday running?
• Are you running around your competition "yipping and yapping," or are you following a plan?
• Are you constantly communicating your strategic plan to the rest of the pack?
• What is YOUR role in the hunt?
• Does your entire team know what the pack expects of them when the moment of truth arrives?

Thank God it's Monday!!!

Take care,

Eric

The Limits of Marketing ROI

For the past several years, B2B marketers have faced growing pressure to prove the value of their activities and programs.  CEO's and CFO's are increasingly demanding that marketers monitor and measure the results of their activities and calculate the return on investment (ROI) produced by those activities.

ROI is now seen as the "gold standard" for measuring the performance of marketing programs.  ROI has been used for decades to evaluate all kinds of investments, and it's widely accepted by financial professionals.  Some marketers believe that calculating the ROI of marketing activities will enhance their credibility in the C-suite.

Marketing ROI is certainly an important metric, but like any tool, it must be used in the right way for the right job.  There is no single "magic metric" that can fully capture the effectiveness of marketing.  So, it's important for marketers (as well as CEO's and CFO's) to understand the limitations of ROI for measuring marketing performance. I'll talk about some of the limitations and complexities here, but there are many others.

The basic ROI formula is extremely simple:

ROI = Return / Investment

The basic formula for marketing ROI (MROI) is almost as simple:

MROI = (Return - Marketing Investment) / Marketing Investment

Unfortunately, however, this simple formula hides a number of complexities.  For example, what does the term "Return" mean?  Total gross revenues or incremental gross revenues?  Total gross margin or incremental gross margin?  Total contribution margin or incremental contribution margin?  The best answer is incremental contribution margin, although incremental gross margin is also widely used.

But now I've introduced a new term - incremental contribution margin - that requires a definition.  Contribution margin is easy to define.  It's total revenues less variable costs.  The incremental part of the term is more complex.  Marketing ROI experts tell us that, ideally, a marketing ROI calculation will measure the incremental (new) returns produced by incremental (new) marketing investments.  So, supposedly, we can use marketing ROI to calculate the return on investment of an expanded TV advertising program, or a new direct mail program, or a new social media program.

Or can we?  How can we really know which marketing program actually produced the incremental (new) contribution dollars, especially when we are running several marketing programs simultaneously.  This won't always be a huge issue.  For example, if we run a direct mail campaign that incorporates a discount coupon, we can count the number of coupons that are actually redeemed.  But even this may not provide a completely accurate answer.  What if a new customer had already been predisposed to buy because of an earlier marketing program?  Should the discount coupon campaign get all of the "credit" for the new contribution margin associated with this new customer?

I am not suggesting that calculating marketing ROI is the equivalent of putting on a blindfold and throwing darts at a target.  There are, in fact, well-accepted methods for dealing with the kinds of issues I've just described.  I am trying to make the point that most marketing ROI "models" are based on numerous assumptions and judgment calls about the definition and the "allocation" of both returns and costs.  This does not mean that marketing ROI has no value.  It does mean that MROI often appears to be more precise than it actually is.

Use an Importance - Performance Matrix to Get Marketing and Sales Talking

In my last post, I discussed the importance of building a collaborative relationship between marketing and sales.  The first step toward achieving this objective is to establish where your marketing/sales relationship is today, and one useful tool for describing the "current state" of the relationship is an Importance - Performance Matrix like the one shown below.

This matrix is used to capture the opinions of individual marketers and sales personnel about specific marketing and sales activities.  Each activity is evaluated along two dimensions - the importance of the activity and how well the company (marketing and/or sales) is performing the activity.

The vertical axis of the matrix is used to describe the importance of the activity.  Less important activities are placed in the lower portion of the matrix, while more important activities are placed in the upper portion.  The horizontal axis of the matrix is used to describe how well the company is performing the activity.  Activities that the company performs poorly are placed in the left side of the matrix, while activities that the company excels at performing are placed in the right side.

An Importance - Performance Matrix will often reveal wide gaps in the views of marketing and sales personnel and point to the issues you need to focus on in order to improve the marketing/sales relationship.

To illustrate the kind of information that an Importance - Performance Matrix can reveal, I'll use a highly simplified example.  Suppose that we want to capture the opinions of marketing and sales personnel regarding the quality of leads provided by marketing to sales.  Also suppose that our company has four marketers and ten salespeople.  All fourteen people would complete a matrix, and then we would combine the responses in a single matrix.  Individual responses are not personally identified, but we do identify which responses come from sales and which come from marketing.

The results of this hypothetical example are shown below.  As you can see, both marketing and sales personnel view generating quality leads as important, but they differ significantly about how well marketing is performing this activity.

An Importance - Performance Matrix won't tell you how to resolve conflicts between marketing and sales, but it can identify the issues you need to address.