The End of Blogs (and Maybe Websites) as We Know It

I started this blog five years ago as an experiment.  Over the years, I built a decent following, got listed on a few “best of’s”, and built up a solid bank of content.  I never wrote a post for money or allowed advertising; I was in full control of the site and the content.

That changed last week when Blogger rolled out its new Dynamic Views template. Almost instantly, I saw the future and it was an eye opener.  The new technology is a “game changer” and has the potential for causing a SIGNIFICANT “rethink” for marketers.  There are two features in particular that make this innovation noteworthy. 

The first is that you, the reader, can change the layout of the site.  Although dynamic content and websites have been around for years, this is the first tool that I’ve seen that has the potential to turn complete control of the user experience to the visitor.   It allows readers to organize the blog in seven different layouts (click on the tabs above).

The second, and most concerning, is the “Flipcard” view (click that tab).  In a sense, it allows you to “flatten” my website.  Suddenly, the majority of my content (good and bad) is visible above the fold and can be scanned in about 8 seconds (the average time spent to view a web page).  Readers can quickly sort through thumbnail images or blog titles searching for relevant content. 

This new disruptive innovation arrives at a time when corporations are just now beginning to appreciate and understand the value of content marketing and blogging.

According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing report, nearly 40% of US companies are now using blogs for marketing purposes.  And for good reason, B2B companies that blog generate 55% more traffic, and 67% more leads per month than those who do not.

Those blogs are reaching an ever-growing population of readers.  The global population of readers grew 65% last year, according to Hubspot.   And they are consuming more, 46% said that they were reading blogs more than one a day. 

To keep pace, more content is being produced.  Emarketer reports that there are 31% more bloggers today than there were three years ago, creating an estimated 160 million blogs on the Internet at the end of 2010. 

What does this mean for the content marketer?

The speed at which audiences move around online will get faster.  They will be more difficult to connect with, engage and keep.  Further we are going to have to be prepared to give control to readers in order to be successful.  Based on my experience, here are a few things marketers need to consider:

• Flag post  – An average reader spends 86 seconds on a blog.  To “stop” a visitor who is on the express train to “contentville,” we will have to rethink the titles and images used in posts, and we’ll probably have to live with higher bounce rates.  Suddenly, getting the reader’s attention is just as important as getting them to engage.  
• Relevancy - Turning control of the site over to the visitor also comes with the reality that we are now writing content the visitor wants to read and not, necessarily, just espousing our opinions or services.  Communicating the company point of view is still important, but now it has to be done using the audience’s language.
• Understanding the reader - Google Analytics gives us the demographics but that longer will be enough.   We’ll need to understand what appeals to the reader by monitoring comments, how they’re sharing links, and where they’ve come from, and where they are headed.  We’re merely a morning stop along the way and to get to engage we have to know how to get their attention. 
• Content production – Producing good quality content has long been a challenge.  Now with the ability to flatten sites the lack of content will be visible in an instant. Marketers will have to create a content calendar and rely on trustworthy sources for output. 
• Timing – According to Hubspot research, link-sharing among blog readers reaches a peak at 7 am.   Comments on blogs top out at 8 am, and by 10 am blog reading begins to decline.  As the data suggest, when content is posted and distributed matters.  New internal processes will have to catch up with external audience preferences. 

The real “game changer” is that this technology will quickly make its way into corporate website design.   And for years we have tried to figure out the “user experience.” Visitors can now create their own unique experience, actually seven of them, and do it in real time.  It is a great opportunity, as well as a great challenge, and it’s one that Marketers can’t afford to miss.

This post appears today on Forbes.com.

CIOs Are More Than Just IT Buyers

Even if you believe in love at first sight, the likelihood of a marriage proposal on the first date is highly unlikely. Committing yourself to someone without getting to know him or her first is a ridiculous idea. Yet far too often companies are asking audiences to “commit” at the hint of an interaction despite knowing little about each other.

Why?

In the tech industry and according to author Tom Grant, Ph.D, companies desire early commitment, due to the industry’s “voracious appetite for leads.” As Grant explains in his report, Tech Marketers Pursue Antiquated Marketing Strategies, the “high-speed innovation” rate drives a hyperfocus on product marketing and lead generation compared to other industries.

Developing a relationship with an audience takes time and resources and can often be perceived as a distraction to the task of finding “ready to marry” prospects.  This outward-in view of marketing ignores audience needs and assumes that all audiences are the same and that all searches must indicate intent.   

However, the key to driving demand and lead generation in today’s economy is not being more aggressive and pushing harder, but rather, taking time to develop and nurture relationships.  Audiences, like dates, can sense desperation.   Perhaps the way to go faster is by slowing down and shifting the focal point from the conversion to the conversation.

We have long known that relevancy drives conversion and that conversion drives revenue.   Getting to relevancy requires us to engage with the audience to understand their unique needs and motivations.   As a result, our role changes from dictating to facilitating and understanding that it’s now on the buyer’s timeframe, not ours. 

New technologies, such as Bizo allow us to know who the audience is at the first interaction. We also know where they’ve been for 30 days (who they’ve been dating) before the conversion point, via Google Analytics new Multichannel Funnels.

We can serve up custom content through re-targeting based on audience profiles, adapt for whatever device they are using, and deepen engagement by providing specific product or brand messages that align with their journey. 

“95% of prospects on your website are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep” Source: 2011 MECLABS research

We no longer have to interrupt a buyer’s journey to gauge their interest level.   We no longer have to call a prospect to qualify them.  This can, and will happen, at the buyer’s choosing, if we let it.  

By providing something of value (e.g. relevant and personal) buyers will share their interests, desires and needs, but only if we listen, nurture and respect the relationship. According to Forrester, this intimate information is critical to creating real opportunity (leads) for the sales force.  

In the Technology Buyer Insight Study, Forrester found that, although tech has done a good job of equipping their sales force to discuss their products, they have failed to provide reps with insight into buyer’s roles and responsibilities.  Only 29% of CIO’s said that sales reps could “relate to their role”, less than a quarter (24%) of business leaders said that reps were “knowledgeable about their business.”

Still too touchy feely for you? Consider Harte Hanks’ report, Mapping the Technology Buyer’s Journey which states that the relationship with the vendor is still a top 5 consideration driver.   The first and second most important drivers are what you’d expect: 1) Meets all needs, and 2) Cost. 

Competitors can match your price, but they can’t necessary match your understanding of the buyer’s need or the relationship developed through that journey.   

This post is featured on Forbes.com

The Social Media Squeeze in Hi-Tech

After much internal debate and in-fighting among departments you finally decide to put Social Media in  PR.  Well, don’t get too comfortable.  The risk, according to recent research on the technology industry, is that PR may get pressured to turn a vehicle for engaging in genuine conversations into a broadcast channel for generating leads.  

According to research from ExactTarget, close to 40% of Facebook users said that they “like” a brand to share their support of that brand with friends.

Why users “like” brands:

•  40% to receive discounts and promotions


• 39% to show my support for the company to others


•  36% to get a “freebie”


•  34% to stay informed about the activities of the company


•  33% to get updates on future products 

63% of FB users reported that they would “unlike” a brand if postings become excessive, and in particular, if they are too promotional or repetitive.  52% of Twitters users would stop following a brand if their tweets became repetitive or boring.  This is where the danger for hi-tech marketers exists.  

In a report titled Tech Marketers Pursue Antiquated Marketing Strategies, Forrester found that 42% of hi-tech companies have handed over Social Media to PR and Corporate Marketing. 

The research also showed that 76% hi-tech marketers say that lead generation was one of the two most important priorities for marketing compared to 53% of non-tech companies.   Non-tech companies also list customer relationship management to be a priority at 52% versus only 22% of tech companies. 

Because of the pressure for leads, tech has a tendency to want to turn any interaction into a sales conversation, by doing so it risk alienating what could be its best sales voice, the brand advocate.  It doesn't mean that PR organizations in tech can’t successfully execute social media programs, in fact, many of the best practices come from the industry.  But if not carefully monitored and controlled, PR and MarCom will be under pressure to use social media as a one way outbound spam machine aimed at anyone who hints at liking a technology brand.  

That squeeze will come from the product organization, which has P&L targets that will be made or missed according to the marketing team’s ability to produce leads. Forrester found that Product Development and Engineering (35%) has the most influence of any business function in the hi-tech industry. 

To put that into perspective, only 4% answered Marketing.  So you can expect Product to bring the heat.

Where should social media sit? 

The Forrester report went on to say that other industry respondents believe social media plays an important part in other marketing activities, as a result, it could be owned by a corporate marketing/PR (24%), web/interactive group (22%) or a brand or product marketing group (16%).

If you are in hi-tech and PR manages social media remember this - the top measurable benefit of social media, according to a recent McKinsey survey, is that it increases the speed to access knowledge; specifically, to understand the external environment, find new ideas, and experts which has resulted in improved marketing effectiveness.   Note that these activities are collecting information, not distributing. 

Why Sex Sells

This post is featured on Forbes.com
Years ago some colleagues of mine built what we thought at the time was the “holy grail” of business marketing.  A sophisticated analytical tool that could tell a marketer where to invest, why, and what the return would be in sales productivity.  It could also tell them where to cut dollars, why and what the impact would be on the business.

It was an incredible feat of analytical modeling and technology.  Built for one of the most respected and well known companies in the world, so the CMO could answer with absolute certainty the CEO’s question: “What am I getting for my marketing spend?” We thought that it was our ticket to the big time and the rocket to ride to explosive growth, but that was not the case.  

To continue reading click here.  

5 Ways Marketers Lose Credibility with the C-Suite

As featured on Forbes.com

Here is a hypothesis: Given the greater focus on ROI, marketing automation tools, and enhanced tracking of results, marketing is now more of a science than ever, therefore, marketers ability to defend and validate their value among peers should be easier than ever before. So why does the latest study by Fournaise state that CMO’s still lack credibility with CEO’s?

To continue reading click here 

Social is Intriguing, However Search is Proven

It’s tough to know anything for certain nowadays; there are so many sources of the “truth.”  Questions abound about the value of social media and how much to invest time and resources.   You would think that having a “sure thing” would be a welcome relief.   So here it is….

Recent research by Base One, 2011 Annual Survey of B2B Buyer Behavior, as well as others, continues to show that although social media adoption and usage will continue to grow, no absolute conclusions can be made as to its effectiveness in B2B marketing efforts.

The real insight in the report is the growth in importance/usefulness of what they referred to as "Traditional online" in the buying process.  Search and Corporate (Supplier) Websites “Traditional online,” will grow 2-3X in comparison with "New online/social media."  And that growth is seen at each stage of the buying process.

"The nearer the buyer gets to signing on the dotted line, the more influential the information sources become."

The conclusion, social media warrants experimentation.  And I suspect to understand it’s true value companies will have to discover their own “killer application” just like they’ve done with other new technologies.  

However, with limited time and money, business marketers need to cover off the basics, and that is “traditional online.”  Don’t let social media distract the focus from getting your corporate website, and search, both organic (SEO) and paid (PPC), optimized.  Social may pay off in the future, but Search is a sure bet today. 

B2B Marketers Take Their Seat at the Table

This post appears on Forbes CMO Network today.  I'll be writing a monthly post for the site.   

In 2004, I was part of research project with a professor at the Kellogg School of Management and the CMO Council that sought to understand what CMO’s believed to be critical for their success.  The most common response was a seat at the table with other senior executives. 

Four years ago, I was part of another research effort focused on the CMO’s top priorities, and number one on the list was to be viewed by their peers as strategic thinkers.   Finally, I believe the day has come for that to happen.  To continue reading click here

The World's Most Famous Press Release

Post was featured on Forbes.com on July 4th. 
It was written over 230 years ago, 200-300 copies were printed for towns up and down the east coast, and a few made their way to Europe. Contrary to popular belief it contained no signatures and what it promoted was completely unique, new, and flawed.

The Declaration of Independence is arguably the “world’s most famous press release”, according the curator at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where it was written and approved in its final form (unsigned) on July 4^th, 1776.  The signed copy we are familiar with was created in August for ceremonial purposes.  

I found it interesting to hear one of the world’s most famous and important documents being referred to as a “press release” during a class field trip with my son.  The curator used the analogy because he said that there is confusion regarding the purpose of the Declaration; “...the goal of the document was to only articulate “What” and “Why,” not “How.”

As a marketing guy in the audience, I found this history lesson to be an interesting “best practice” from the founding fathers; focus on effectively communicating ONLY “what “and “why.”  How many times have you written and/or read a press release that tried to say too much, and/or lacked clarity on its intended objective?

Another interesting point gathered during our visit was the struggle to form a new federal government (the “How”) under the Articles of Confederation.  At the time, the new federal government had no revenue source (taxation), and no real authority over the states.  

The states operated as their own “countries” deciding on their own currency, religion, and diplomacy with other countries.  Again the marketer in me saw the similarity to the power struggle between corporate marketing and other sales/marketing organizations (Product, Field, Region, etc.).  Would history provide another lesson for marketers?

Congress struggled with governing under the Articles.  Instead of revising the existing document, the Federal Convention decided to draft an entirely new frame of government.  According to the curator, three key issues hung up the approval of the Articles; 

1. Religion
2. Slavery  
3. The power given to the federal government, which many saw coming at the expense of the states. 

Addressing the religious issue was easy; they left it out of the U.S. Constitution.  It was later covered under the Bill of Rights.  On slavery, they reached a compromise by outlawing slave trade in 1808, twenty years in the future.  But the single most important change was the shift from states to the individual in granting the federal government its power.

“We the people…do ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States.”  The federal government now answered to citizens and not the states.  State representatives and congressman now represented the views and best interests of the people within their districts.  By putting citizens first, the founding fathers established a focal point that transcended state interest.  

Could this be the time for a B2B marketing revolution?  With the rise in social media adoption, marketers can now better gauge the needs and desires of their customers.  Customers for their part are showing a willingness to engage like never before.  

As a result, marketers are now presented with an opportunity to shift focus from solely addressing and satisfying internal “states” needs to anticipating, engaging, and serving the needs of customers.

Although I'm a proud Virginian, I'm no Patrick Henry but I say marketers, it's time for our own declaration...marketing by the people, for the people! 

Legacy Thinking: How We Define “At Work”

What do you think of when someone says they are “at work”?  An office building? A typical work day (9am -5pm or 8am-6pm)?  A typical the work week (Monday-Friday)?  How about the workplace (an office with a desk and a computer)?

We still hold on to these perceptions of work, despite research and our intuition telling us that this is no longer true.  Management workers are increasingly working outside the office and spending more time in that capacity - 16% of the work week on average.

These “knowledge workers,” as Peter Drucker coined them, are also increasing the time they work at home.  38% of managers, information workers, and professionals spending some portion of their time at home during the workday, and 34% spend time on the weekend working (an average of 3.75 hrs).

The workplace, office hours, and work week are changing and will continue to change, so as marketers how should we be thinking about this change?  I recently spoke with the head of a customer analytics company who mentioned that one of his clients discovered that targeting customers at their home address was more effective than reaching them at their office location.  

Knowledge workers are also more likely to be business decision makers.   In addition to logging time from their home, they are also the ones who are most likely to be mobile.  As a result, they are heavy technology users: 93% saying that mobile technology makes them more productive.   So is that the answer?  Do we try to reach these business buyers on their smart phones and shift to mobile advertising?  

 

Not so, according to Nielson in a McKinsey Quarterly report that found that it would take “a technology breakthrough to make mobile screens a more inviting environment for direct marketing and wireless commerce.”

Although technology will need to evolve, and it will, we should recognize that we are in middle of a significant change.  The mobile movement is on, but it hasn’t reached critical mass yet.  Behaviors are changing, but it isn’t a majority.  The era of Business-to-Person (B2P) is evolving, but it’s also being viewed as a distraction.  

As these technologies and work habits continue to evolve, what is certain is that businesses will continue to lose control over the message, the channel, the engagement, and the timeframe.

Customers can and do, decide on what and where they want to consume information.  Americans now consume five times the information they did in 1980, averaging 11.8 hours a day.  According to a recent Harvard Business Review article we’re now able to pack in, thanks to multitasking, 12 hours of media usage into 9 hours (think watching TV and surfing the net at the same time).  

Our world is changing.  The concept of “work” is no longer defined by a physical location, title or time, but rather it is a state of mind.  Businesses are no longer an entity, but rather, a trusted individual. Legacy thinking is the idea of a business targeting a business buyer (by a title), at a business address, during “business hours.” 

In this new world, sophisticated marketers have to embrace this change by understanding how to identify unique behavior segments of decision makers and influencers, where they congregate and how they want to consumer information, and that includes who they want it from, and when. 

Creating a Corporate Value Proposition

In my experience, one of the most difficult tasks for an organization is defining their corporate value proposition and their key differentiators: The ”Why Us” question.  We were in a meeting recently with a company and they told us that the last agency resigned from the account because they went through 400 iterations (not making this up) on the value proposition and still couldn’t agree on one.  

Organizations fail for many reasons when developing corporate value propositions: too little collaboration yielding no buy-in, a meddling CEO, a lack of a disciplined approach, failure to properly test externally, etc.  But in this particular case, the company’s past success was now causing confusing among executives as they plotted their future course.  

The organization enjoyed 25 years of strong growth and profit performance (prior to the recession).  A portion of this success was attributed to allowing the business units to operate nearly autonomously. However, that freedom came with a price: it formed separate cultures, brand identifies, logos, sales collateral, even the “language” that was used varied when talking about “what the company was, what they stood for, and what it should be in the future”.

As a result, tying the organization together under one umbrella message and value proposition was a huge challenge.  

Defining Value

Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema, in their ground-breaking book The Discipline of Market Leaders, suggest that there are only three ways an organization can define it’s value and hence, how they define themselves in the market:

Each type requires different operating models, corporate cultures, and marketing communication strategies. While companies may be able to provide value beyond one category, they must first define their primary value definition through a competitive and self-analysis. Part of this review includes an evaluation of an organization’s ability to deliver the value that is defined through its core-operating model.

An assessment revealed the company to have good products, but it was not a product leader, in the example that it employed no Product Managers. It also had strong relationships with customers, but could not be considered “Customer-Centric” since it had just launched an Account Manager role a few months prior.

It was clear.  The company's success was built on a core-operating model that emphasized scale and efficiency.  The model delivered operational excellence, however, too many in the organization equated that with being "Walmart."  Because they were in they were a professional services firm this view appeared to lack the important customer intimacy component, with was true, given their customer retention and satisfaction rates.   

Being presented as “Operationally Excellent” despite the performance it could deliver (EBITA 20+%), wasn’t viewed as “sexy” enough.  For someone who interfaced with the customer on a daily basis to solve complex problems, that value proposition seemed inadequate and incomplete.  While these points were accurate, they were secondary value propositions. 

And this became a key insight.  Treacy and Wiersema point out that to determine the right corporate value proposition you have to look at how the company is delivering scalable and sustainable value to customers.  What we learned was that employees have a tendency to perceive the value the organization delivers through their own experiences (that are generally not scalable), and not based on the core business model.  

In some cases, companies have been able to successfully shift their core value delivery model, for example, from delivering a product to a service, and as a result need to redefine their value proposition and how they communicate it.  In other cases, executives can get caught up in trying to define the company’s value from their personal point of view even though the core business model has not changed.  There is nothing wrong in wanting company to be more than it is, the problem is communicating and delivering on it.  

If you find yourself in that situation, take a look at what customers value and how you are delivering it.  It usually starts with understanding what built the company in the first place.  Starting there will guide you to your destination with most of your colleagues in agreement…and in less than 400 rounds.

Best of the Blog 2010

Last year I put up a “best of” post to buy some time on a career change.   It’s now become one of my favorite post to write.  It gives me a chance to look back over the year and reflect…and it’s been a very interesting year. 

The transition from being a management consultant to an agency guy, caused about half my audience to disappear within the first two months.   Even though I ended the year with slightly more visitors than last year, much of that audience is new (77%).   As new visitors explored the content, time on the site almost double from 1:19 minutes to 2:30 minutes (the average blog visitors stays 1:15 mins.).  Pageviews also increased significantly as well. 

Top blog posts for the year included topics that had social media and customer experience themes.
The Top 6:

1. B2B Social Media and the Upside Funnel – also named as one of the Top B2B Social Media  post of year.
2. The Price/Value Equation and the $1 Razor – a classic, written in April 9, 2009 in the midst of the recession.  It’s also the #1 search term for the blog.
3. Inside the Ritz Customer Experience Model – the most fun I’ve ever had researching a post.
4. Channel Strategy and the Recession – seems to have hit a nerve. 
5. Top 10 Laziest Sales Tactics  - by far the most fun to write.  
6. The Social Manifesto – my “Jerry McQuire” moment, despite being written in December, it managed to make the TOP 6, by having the highest first day and first week views. 

This year I’m using multiple sources of data, and as a result, I've seen the shortcomings of using Google Analytics, more on that later.   My new favorite tool is Post Rank Analytics which ranks the post based on visitor engagement.

Referral sites played a much bigger role, including a media site based in Russia.  The number of visitors from the US declined, but large increases from Europe, especially in Norway and Germany, has pushed up page views up (over 40,000) from the previous year. 

What I’ve learned this year:

• Personal stories and "frameworks" - I assume readers relate to my situation or the fact that I writing on real world experiences.  Stories where I provide a "framework"or an "approach" also do well.  
• Perception matters - for the past four years I was a management consultant writing a blog, but I changed my career.  I'm still the same person, with the same experiences, but what I do has changed, and for a portion of my audience that matters.  
• Commercialization – this is my biggest concern for bloggers, and for the medium as a whole.  Agencies and companies realize the power and influence of blogs, and are out to get involved.  Although bloggers have been approach by these groups in the past to endorse products, new services, like Business 2 Blogger are bringing scale to the “blog for cash” business.   And in this case, you don’t even have to endorse the product and/or have a target audience to get paid.  They just want you to mention the product. 
• Analytic issues – the blog service I use now offers analytics, and as I mentioned I’ve started to use Post Rank.  For the other bloggers in the audience, triangulate your results data.   Google Analytics under represents page views, especially from those visitors using an Opera browser, in particular visitors from Nordic countries. 

Along the way the blog has received some additional recognition in the B2B space.  In addition to recognition for the Upside Down funnel post, it was named to a Top 15 list, and added to the B2B Social Media landscape, although I have no idea where it is on the map.

One of my goals last year was to pick up a reader in Wyoming, and despite getting new visitors from Macedonia and Mongolia, that goal still remains elusive.   Maybe it’s an analytics issues, perhaps Opera is the preferred browser in that state.  Oh well, maybe this year.   

Turning Data into Dollars

Last month I had the chance to be a panelist at a forum hosted by Wolfgang Jank and the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.  The topic was on Informatics – Data Driven Decision Making in Marketing.

Per my usual M.O., I agreed to participate without knowing what I would discuss.  As I was looking through past project work I made the discovery that this was a topic that I had spent two years working on. 

What’s interesting about the topic is that everyone will agree that they should be more data driven, or fact based, with their decision-making.   Heads will nod when it’s discussed, it’s intuitive, and so the question…and the problem, is why doesn’t it happen?

The company I was working with had an abundance of data but were faced with two consistent problems related to the use of it:

• Reps wanted better insight
• Customers wanted a POV

The first issue we probably spent a good six months on defining what an ‘insight” was, how to create it, and who was responsible for doing it.  The second issue was more complicated and took much longer.

Over that two-year period I learned how challenging it is for an organization to use one source of data effectively across the enterprise.  Some of the challenges we uncovered were typical such as lack of resources, process, and funding.  Others were more challenging: People funded their own resources and research to support their strategy, budget or group. 

To begin to solve this complex problem we created a “data value chain” (see below).   The starting point was having one centralized source for data.   As we discovered, as data flows from across the organization to the customer, enhancements were needed to make it more valuable, like growth rings on a tree. 

As data became more customized, and localized, it grew more valuable.   This helped to identify why, for example, research that was being produced at corporate was not often used by the sales teams…it lacked relevancy, especially in regions outside of the US. 

Once we got everyone on the same page the next challenge was to align the various groups in the organization across the value chain.   We learned there could be as many as five different groups involved in handoffs as the data moved across the value chain.  This help to explain why product groups were developing solutions without market insights, and regions were not leveraging corporate insights for business development.  

As a result, we had to design process maps, hand-off points, engagement process, etc.   The elephant in the room, and one of the biggest challenges was wrestling with the budget.  The solution for that last huddle was turned out to be pretty simple.  

The corporate “insights” team would work with those regions that wanted to work with corporate.   Those regions had to be willing to fund resources to finish the “last mile”…building solution or customer business cases and solutions.  Even though everyone wanted more relevant insight, and more defined points of view, not all regions were willing to put up the money. 

Finally, to secure the funding to make the fixes we had to be able to answer a very simple question; “how does being more data driven provide value to the organization?”

The answer was getting the data closer to revenue or a sale….”turning data into dollars.”  The epiphany wasn’t that the value was found at the end of the chain but the number of groups, and the coordination needed to be involved to reach that destination. 

The Shift to Social Media - Section 2 of the White Paper

The following post is taken from the soon to be released white paper entitled: The Effect of the Great Recession and the Rise of Social Media on Sales & Marketing Integration 

THE SHIFT TO SOCIAL MEDIA //

The migration towards the “connected” world can be witnessed by the millions of individuals flooding to sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This has in turn created a robust cache of potential customers for marketers to interact with and engage. Indeed widespread social media use pervades much of the B2B space as a recent Forrester Research piece outlines how B2B buyers have very high social participation and provides relevant statistics such as the fact that 88% of decision makers at business technology firms use social media for business decision-making[i].

As Figure 1 demonstrates, recent statistics reveal that marketers, in large numbers, are following prospects and customers into the digital and social media world for two primary reasons[ii]:

·       Prospects and customers have exhibited a desire to use these platforms.

·       Recent economic conditions have made this targeted and inexpensive marketing method very appealing to marketing and sales forces with declining budgets.

As evidence of the depth to which “The Great Recession” has slashed marketing budgets, in a survey in 2009, 75% of B2B marketers reported a decrease in their budgets, while 67% of marketers complained of being expected to do more with less by driving higher sales with these diminished budgets[iii]. 

Figure 2 demonstrates the degree to which average total advertising expenditure has decreased from 2007 to 2009 as a result of smaller marketing budgets. In addition, the figure reveals the shift in focus of this advertising spend away from traditional forms of marketing in favor of the internet and online media. Despite budget cuts, the recession has actually accelerated the adoption of social media marketing as companies have increasingly turned to social media as an inexpensive, measurable and direct method over traditional approaches.

---

[i] Burris, Peter, Josh Bernoff, Bradford J. Holmes, and Zachary Reiss-Davis. The Social Technographics of Business Buyers. Rep. Forrester Research, February 20, 2009.

[ii]The B-to-B Marketing Leadership Study”. American Business Media, Association of National Advertisers, and Booz & Co. August 2010. 

[iii] Maddox, Katie. "Survey Finds Budget Cuts Easing." BtoB Magazine 14 Sept. 2009: 1+. Print.

The Effect of the Great Recession and the Rise of Social Media on Sales and Marketing Integration

Yes, I know it is a mouthful.   For the past three months we have been researching how those two simultaneous events have impacted sales and marketing.  The recession, and its downward pressure on marketing spend, and the increased adoption of social media both by B2B customers and organizations.
The research is now complete and is being packaged into a white paper which will be the second in our Channel Insights series.  Over the next several weeks I will post various sections of the paper.   Today I've posted the executive summary to give you a preview of what is to come.

Executives Summary 

Business-to-Business organizations have often struggled to fully integrate sales and marketing; whether it is merely speaking the same language or adequately aligning against common goals, the two groups have often operated independently of each other despite the fact that success, more often than not, is predicated on their collaboration.

Two recent events have heightened the need to align these two groups. First, the recession has caused organizations to be more precise with their investments, making it more difficult for marketers to procure and defend their budgets, and for sales, to find buyers. 

Second, the adoption and utilization of social media platforms is providing marketers with a low cost opportunity to interact directly with customers and track their success. For sales, this means a new vehicle for gaining insight into customer buying behavior and understanding the influencer network. For marketing, this has elevated their role in helping convert identified leads to customers and provided the opportunity to manage ‘back-end’ customer relationships.

The imminent question is: How should corporations respond to these recent economic and technology trends and use new competitive advantages that increase sales, build brand equity and customers’ loyalty, and reduce costs?

The key lesson? Despite social media offering the potential to deliver an insightful customer experience with meaningful business impact, failure to properly integrate sales and marketing leaves organizations at risk of being more disconnected than ever before.

Avaya Helps Partners Learn How to Market

The Business Marketing Association (BMA Colorado) is producing a book later this year entitled: “Advice From the Top – The Expert Guide to B2B Marketing.   I'm authoring a chapter on collaborative partner marketing.   As part of my research, I was fortunate to interview Patti Moran, Worldwide Channel Marketing Director at Avaya.   Patti shared with me how Avaya is helping partners improve their marketing capabilities, competencies and outcomes.   It's a good success story worth sharing.  

The Situation 

Because of their traditional focus on converting, rather than creating demand, Avaya’s partners lacked an understanding of how to effectively manage customer accounts, nurture relationships, build awareness and create new opportunity by marketing their business services and solutions.  Not only did they lack the marketing insight to generate demand but even apart from this gap in knowledge, partners also lacked the marketing tools, resources, skill sets and experiences to market, sell and deliver their solutions. 

According to Patti Moran, Senior Director of Worldwide Channel Marketing at Avaya, 90% of their channel partners lacked a dedicated marketing support individual in-house.  Noting this dire situation, Moran contends that ultimately “It’s not enough to just be a sales organization.  To be successful at growing and adapting to the market condition partners have to have a marketing functions."

The Solution 

Recognizing the need to educate, train, and then arm their partners with the necessary materials and resources to remain competitive, Avaya created a series of global workshops titled Marketing Masterclass with distributors to educate and provide resources and tools to enable mid sized and small partners.   During the workshops, Avaya helped partners evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to better understand how to position and differentiate themselves in competitive markets.

To continue the momentum generated by these workshops, Avaya created an education curriculum called provided partners with “How to Guides,” covering marketing topics ranging from delineating how to write marketing plans to delineating how to build websites or leveraging social media.   Finally, Avaya developed a spectrum of shared services to support their partners’ marketing efforts, both full and self service. 

Avaya providing access to supporting services, databases, events, content, and preexisting templates and pre-built product pages, either for free or at highly discounted costs. Avaya, for example, created a self-service “Partner Marketing Central” portal that provides free and easy to use email blast technology, seminars and whitepapers, and access to over 200 customizable marketing materials with a full range of media. 

Avaya also created “MarketLeaders" a full service campaign program that delivers integrated campaigns with end-to-end support in order to achieve a range of goals from relationship management, demand generation to customer engagement, enabling partners to use MDF or BDF funds to drive leads, nurture relationships, and build awareness.

Financially, Avaya even sought to ease their partners’ cash flow concerns by invoicing and debiting against their funds rather than insisting partners pay up front, thereby increasing partners’ speed to market by providing more current resources.

The Results

The success of Avaya’s efforts, characterized by full classes, newly engaged partners, and efficient MDF and BDF spending, has been met by requests from partners for even more education.  Furthermore, the global breadth and overall extent of participation speak volumes to Avaya’s success—and because of this success, components have been provided in multiple languages, and offerings such as the self-service Partner Central have been utilized across country borders by over 2,500 worldwide members to create over 33,000 highly customized and targeted marketing materials to date. In addition, in the Americas alone over 1,200 partner companies have taken advantage of MarketLeaders Campaigns to generate over 1,950 of their own strategic campaigns. 

Xerox's Real Business Campaign - Too Much of a Good Thing?

Yesterday Xerox launched a new global marketing campaign titled, Real Business.  Xerox is calling it their most ambitious and innovative campaign ever created. Realbusiness.com includes interactive billboards, innovative media, video, and what they are calling “attention-grabbing digital units” showcasing Xerox’s clients, featuring brand icons, such as P&G’s Mr. Clean.   

The launch of the website will be followed by TV ads and a global roll-out...Europe is up next.   It has all the “bells and whistles” any good digital campaign could want with Twitter Tags, Multi-media, and cookies for display advertising.  If you visit Realbusiness.com and then a business publication site like Forbes.com, keep an eye out for Xerox’s placement ads with the Marriott, Notre Dame, and NY Mets commercials.  This is not a coincidence.

The website and the campaign are really well done from a creative standpoint.  The campaign is multi-media, multi-channel, multi-tactic and multi-message.  And that's the problem, the messaging seems to be the Achilles heel of the campaign.  I’m sure that this campaign, by Y&R, will win many awards, especially digital, however, they nearly overdo it.  See for yourself: Visit the website, watch the videos and ads, and then ask yourself what did you retain.  

After spending much longer than I expected on the site, I remember the fighter pilot blasting through the ceiling, the Ducati bike racing around, and the Mets mascot burying his head in his hands…but I do not recall how Xerox helped those customers, or what they have to offer me.

I’m also sure that the campaign will meet its targeted objectives for engagement levels and interaction times but does style overwhelm substance?   It raises a relevant concern for marketers, how do we keep the focus on enhancing and ensuring the delivery of the message through digital tools, and not get caught up in all the interesting and entertaining things they can do?  

I truly enjoyed the site and most likely, stayed engaged longer than the Agency would have predicted, but can a digital campaign be successful if the audience doesn’t hear and retain the message?   No doubt, it is entertaining, but will it be effective?  

The New Partner Marketing Model

In the “good old days” companies like IBM built a ubiquitous brand with unique products and then dictated their terms and funds to sales channels. Brand advertising was typically done on one of the three major TV networks aimed at the mass market to create a “pull” that would have customers do whatever it took to get those products regardless of price, location or availability.

Product marketing teams would assemble sales and marketing material, and route it to partners via partner portals or directly to their offices assuming that the partner had everything they needed to sell the company’s products or services. And that worked, especially with those partners who were former employees.

Business was good and predictable, but then things began to change. More channels became available, and as a result, it was harder to reach and influence key customers; the window of having a truly unique product shortened, and partners started gaining a greater choice of products to recommend, with various incentive programs.

Gradually the power of the transaction was shifting further down the value chain leaving companies with less influence over the point of sale. Partners, now armed with options and leverage, became less willing to cooperate with the demands of the manufacturer.

In response, the manufacturers began exploring how to realign themselves as a key influencer and along the way they discovered the following:

• Inconsistencies in communication about marketing programs, incentives, service and who owned the customer, left partners confused and frustrated.
• Partners felt like they were getting little, to no, marketing support from manufacturers despite having piles of marketing material and funds.
• A concerning trend was starting to develop, in which partners were using less of the marketing development funds (MDF) available to them.

The old “push” product and programs through partners and “pull” customers to your products through mass marketing was no longer working. It was time to rethink the model.

To learn more about the future direction of partner marketing request a copy of the Channel Insight white paper by register for the live webcast by June 15th 2010 at www.gyrohsr.com/channelforum.

The webcast is scheduled for 12 PM on June 16th 2010 and will include a discussion of the New Channel Marketing model that is evolving in the Technology Industry.  I will be co-hosted the webcast with Bob Ray, President of the San Francisco office.   Hi-Tech clients managed out of that office include VMware, Sybase, Adobe, as well as others.