Market Automation can make you a Spammer
It’s interesting to see companies try to implement marketing automation. Most can leverage the email engine built into most automation systems, and a few get to the level of segmenting their audience on various characteristics, but many can’t move beyond that.
Senior leaders that don’t accept the premise of relevancy and timeliness based on behavioral activity, end up forcing marketers to stay at the level of basic demographic segmentation. Worse still, the lack of belief by senior management will inevitably lead to the mandate that marketing continue to email everyone in the marketing database despite their lack of interest or behavioral response.
Make sure that senior management isn’t just buying into the efficiency of marketing automation, but its effectiveness of it by leveraging the behavioral aspects. Without proper usage of marketing automation you become a good spammer.
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2% of Your Data Base Becomes Outdated Per Month – What to Do?
The foundational elements of your data base erode slowly but surely without proper maintenance, and it’s costing you dearly. Sirius Decisions research points to the cost points of keeping your data clean. It costs $1 per contact upon entry to verify the data, $10 to clean it and verify it later and $100 per contact if left as is. This points to an ongoing need to make sure you data is maintained through deliberate and actionable effort.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t take the time to maintain it or don’t have the resources. Get the help by understanding what bad data is costing your firm.
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Being an “idea person”
I hear the term all the time. “They’re a great idea person. They will give you dozens of ideas in no time.” What most neglect to tell you is that 99% of the ideas are useless and don’t help solve the problem in front of you.
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How you educate yourself says alot about your future
Whenever I interview someone for a marketing position, I ask them how they educate themselves in the latest trends and happenings in marketing; not just the news, but tools and tactics that they try to implement. I find those that limit their learning short on skill and limited on growth.
The world of marketing changes so quickly, that you can only move forward if you constantly stretch your own learning. Reading one or two publications is fine, but making time to execute ideas and attend seminars or webinars is very important. Getting your certification shows you continue to learn and want to become expert in areas even if your current role doesn’t quite need that skill yet.
You’ve got to look outside your industry, your day to day and scour the knowledge base for new ideas – that is how you will stand out and move ahead.
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Really Earn Your Degree in the School of Hard Knocks
Most people rely on formal educational programs to gain an upper-hand in the market, their career and personally. Whether it’s a university, an association, an online group such as marketing Sherpa or internal CPE, they all can supply you with great ideas and ways to learn. What most of us miss is really learning from the school of hard knocks. You are tested every time you perform a marketing activity and with access to the many platforms and expert resources we have in the marketing organization, a little before-school-chatter can propel you farther than months in a classroom. As an organization we’re running hundreds of programs every month. Taking the time to learn from all of these real world effort and optimizing what you do is a great way to move to the head of the class.
If you’re not regularly reviewing the results of the programs you run to optimize results next time, then you’re really missing the best education you can get. if you want to get to a point where you’re valued as a true advisor to the firm, you need that education and the experience in order to be believable. But you truly have to understand the results. Pull in people you know understand a particular space and ask for their review and recommendations, and collaborate more.
You have the opportunity, wherever you are, to get a great education; we have some of the most sophisticated platforms for marketing. If you pay attention to results, direct, hard-line results your education will be propelled faster. If you decide to just handle the work and not pay attention to the results or live with “soft” results to just get the job done; you can succeed, but you won’t really grow.
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Bad Revenue?
I’ve been reading a book and it brings up the idea of “good” and “bad” revenue. Bad revenue being those ways of increaising profits that actually make your customers angry. Think about the cable company which continues to increase rates but never improves value, or all the extra bank fees that pop-up even though you’ve been a solid customer for decades; these are examples of bad revenue and based on what I see in the business world more and more are companies making short term profits based on bad revenue. Good revenue is derived when your best customers sing your praises and your company gains market share. You use profits to create more value for your best customer, who continue to sing your praises.
Good revenue, bad revenue, not all revenue is the same.
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The most effective hedge against job loss and career stagnation
Job search via the Internet is a lazy effort at best, compared to face to face networking. This is why taking the time to search groups and organizations that can help your career is so important to find a job when you really need one.
My last three positions came about because of people I know. And my friend’s recent job loss in August was scary to her. Older, and in a city not known for professional services marketing, she did what all of us should do even when we have a job – network. She went to all relevant networking events that made sense for her, connecting with new people and reconnecting with people she hadn’t seen in quite some time.
That effort resulted in a job offer in late October. She was out of work for less than 2 months and after receiving the job offer, took a month off and cleared her mind of the full time job search. This is just one example of how networking is a good hedge against job loss or career stagnation.
You just have to network on an ongoing basis. Don’t wait for when the job you have is no longer yours.
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Direct Marketing Knowledge Paramount to Internet Marketing
There is no magic to Internet marketing, other than the technical capabilities of different tools such as Social Media, Marketing Automation, Search Engine Optimizatino and Web Usability. What’s common among all these Web 2.0 tools is measurement; something direct marketers have understood for decades. Understand the metrics and you understand how best to deploy it.
It behooves anyone interested in Web2.0 marketing to also read some of the all time greats in direct marketing. To this list I would add “Direct” by Bob Stone, “Being Direct” by Lundstrum and some of the better copy writers out there including David Olgilvy.
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Financial Services Marketing – Nurturing is key
Out of all the industries I have worked for, Financial Services Marketing to businesses requires a nurture cycle. There’s a long sales cycle, you’re trying to reach the C-suite and the internet empowers the business executive to educate themselves. The old tactics of pushing out emails, mailings and phone calls will only gather the low hanging fruit. They do nothing to solidify a position in the prospects mind and over time can dilute your messaging and brand.
It amazing me how many marketers in this space continue to rely on push marketing, thinking their items are getting through. They spend more time on the creative and less on the strategy and list of the campaign which results in poor results and fatigued executives.
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Reactive Marketing – It Won’t Work but Measure it Anyway
What a shame; another reactive effort is beginning to build. The downturn in the economy is generating all sorts of ideas from the operations group, our executives and people in the field. Worried about pilfering from competitors (when did that really ever end) and the need to have some sort of activity my goup is suddenly involved in developing microsites, value proposition efforts and whole new in-field marketing tools.
All in 10 days! Crazy. The strategy may be right but the rush to get it done is the mistake. We’re jumping to old habits of pushing out “initiatives” and demanding that the field implement these immediately. We’re sending out alerts because our competitors are doing so or because that’s what we did in the past.
No one is taking a stepping back to ask “did this ever work in the past? What should we do now to really make it work?” I’ve been bringing those questions up and being that my group handles much of the implementation, I’m putting in measurement systems so I can share with these “idea generators” some of the analysis of these reactive programs.
So what’s the point of all of this tirade? Every program should at least be measured in some form so that you can begin to slow down poor marketing effort and show the results the next time someone comes up with a reactive program.
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When will it end – November Market Planning is Nuts
The month of November has been crazy. Now managing 5 departments, 13 people and searching to fill more FTE’s, as well as managing 67 projects, it’s been crazy. Our overhaul of our demand generation engine which included a new call center, lead management system and review and redoployment of our database is quite a workout. The Demand Generation team is doing a good job. The lead pipeline is smoothing out and the new lead nurturing system will do wonders to better segment and profile inquirers.
Our MROI tracking will also improve because of the lead management system. It’s a major undertaking with a goal of having the field up and running in January. There’s a whole lot of education required; not just on the system but on best practices in Direct Marketing.
If you are in an accounting firm, ROI is key for your marketing. Partners love numbers and it’s best to speak their language if you want to get the big initiatives implemented. If we can get the education in place and people certified in email and web based direct marketing that will be half the battle.
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80% of all leads go into a black hole – especially in accounting
So a prospect calls in, you hand it over to a partner or business developer and they tell you the person is just educating themselves at this point seeking some information. It could be months before they have a need. So what happens then? The prospect goes back into the cold lead list because that’s what they become unless you continue to nurture them along and manage the lead.
And that’s why 80% of all B2B leads in most companies go into a “black-hole.”
If you don’t figure out a way to manage those leads through the buy cycle, you will lose them; and that’s a shame when you apply the “Rule of 45.” The “Rule of 45″ states (and this proven research) that 45% of the inquirers that come to your business will be within 12 months. So think about how much more revenue you’d have right now if you just had 45% of the 80% that went into that black hole.
Create relevant and timely touches after someone inquirers not just to get them to inquire. Think about it – if you don’t take care of the person trying to engage you have to work harder to attract new ones.
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Marketing Activity is NOT Marketing without ROI
It’s interesting to note how many practice professionals and the marketers that support them fall prey to the need to have marketing activity without strategy or measurement. I was recently approached to help a practice group rush to market with a webinar. “Because it was needed and had to get out within the month,” was the reasoning.
I asked why the rush – explained the attendance rate will drop significantly with only a month’s notice; after all don’t most of us have our calendars filled for the next month. They still debated but I would not give up. “Instead, let’s get out a quick pulse survey,” I offered. “We can do a series and use it to gain understanding of the need and then develop a webinar with white paper as an offer. This will offer better continuity in the market place and we’ll be seen several times in the market place with useful information.”
They relented. But right after that, one of my own people sends me a draft letter to be sent to post-attendees that stopped by our reception. The letter was part sales piece and part letter and had a graphic picture on it that had no relation to the subject. And they already sent it to the practice lead!!!!
Stop the presses…no offer, no basic direct mail principles used! I had to quickly rework the letter to follow the most basic of principles and educate them about the need to engage a prospect a little at a time. Not try to push all this information about us down their throat. Engage them with relevant and impactful information and they will engage and “opt-in” to receive information.
The trash I see coming from most accounting firms is mind-boggling. Introductory letters – just throw it in the trash and save your costs for envelopes and postage. Alerts without analysis – I get that through my association already – what I want is advice and analysis from my provider. Don’t just summarize what is already out there.
Measure it! Place an offer in there to start tracking the effectiveness of your efforts. You can’t change what you never measure. The goal is to get better not just do it that way because that’s what we did before.
The point – relevant information is key in today’s relationships, and don’t push to fast, let them come to you. People hate to be sold but they love to buy.
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Is your database treated like a golden egg?
I’ve noticed a trend where marketers want to keep a database of suspects and call it their “house” list. Unfortunately, it can’t be that because those contacts have not tried to engage with you and you think that “pushing” newsletters and alerts to them somehow makes the database a valuable asset because you’ve invested all this money contacting them.
I had one executive comment that “even thinking about creating a status of “inactive” in our database would be a detriment to all we’ve worked to create this great list.” Unfortunately, he just didn’t have the facts. 50% of the database is full of bad data or wrong data. We get return mail and reach people who really don’t want to engage with us. That is costing us in reputation, money in wasted mailings and resources in people focusing on poor prospects – they can’t get to the “needles” in the haystack because there’s too much hay!
Regardless, I’ve broken our golden egg of a database and we are segmenting the data to include suspects, inquirers, marketing qualified leads, sales accepted leads and sales qualified leads. We can measure each stage, determine what is good about our marketing and not, and get the business developers to focus on “sales ready” leads instead of people just searching for information.
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The Internet has Changed Executive Buying Behavior
It’s probably not surprising to most people that even among senior executives, the Internet is becoming their source for exploring for solutions. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have become the new directories of choice. Yet, many professional services firms continue to insist on buying listings and ads in printed directories.
“It has shelf-life,” they lament.
“That’s right, a dusty shelf-life.”
The Internet has put the power of investigation and education in the hands of the executive. They no longer have to call a provider to educate themselves, or even search an old directory. There’s more thought leadership and answers on the Internet. Blogs, Forums and online libraries make it easy to an executive to ignore you. So what do you do?
It’s time to switch from having a “sales cycle” and create a “buy-cycle.” You have to think beyond the first, second or third contact and create a program that has 6, 7 or 12 points of contact. And you have to make sure those contacts are full of relevant and timely information. If the conversation starts with state and local tax, then you need to carry that conversation forward through offerings of more articles, white papers, web seminars, events that have to do that topic so you become an educator in a passive way.
They don’t want to hear from you unless you have something relevant and informative to say so make sure you undestand that. They will call you when they are ready. You can call them but it needs to be a “soft” approach with relevant ideas and information.
So as you think about sending a letter, email or direct mail, think beyond that – and don’t talk about you and your company! Talk about them, their industry and their pains!
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Does giving email to someone show trust in them?
We’re in process of installing a lead management system, and the organization that is helping us with the implementation explained that their system is “email-centric.” If someone hasn’t given you their email, they are not likely perceiving you as a trusted or person they want to freely connecdt with. That seemed to be an interesting premise since more and more people are communicating online.
As more executives perform their research and education in the early stages of a buy-cycle they clearly are spending more time online and if they want to get information from you, they probably will give you their email. So it is interesting then, that our database, having over 300k contacts, only about 1/2 have emails.
When we run reports to see who in the database shows engagement, those with email tend to show the most. So, is the premise true? Would you give your phone number more readily than your email?
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Eloqua Lead Management and Automation Improving Response Rates
Since we’ve implemented and trained regional staff on Eloqua we are hitting benchmark B2B averages of at least 2%. In some cases, we are hiting double digits. Is it the technology? No, the technology is facilitating a different process that is forcing better thinking around our demand generation campaigns. The platform is a collaboration point where all regions can see what is working and what is not.
The reality is that it’s never beeen about the technology this past decade. It’s direct marketing as it has always been, but the technology just gives you more insight. Understand direct marketing best practices is key.
What the technology does is provide results in real time or almost real time, and that’s what is exciting. We can actually roll this out by region and have improved programs throughout the week as we roll across the nation.
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My 8 year old proves the power of the community
My 8 year old son came running to me this morning screaming about the Batman game he just created through one of his online gamer services he enjoys. He went into great detail about how he was able to create the whole environment, the skills of the super hero and the bad guys he was to fight. The goal was to create the game and submit it. If the company likes it they will post it. They did and he just now screamed, “six people already played my game!”
If that doesn’t show how a company leverages the community to keep these kids coming back, I’m not sure what does. Imagine, not having to worry so much about creating many games, just hand over the tools and let the users do it – it’s free labor!
More companies need to think in these terms – create the tools that your customers or clients can use to achieve their goals and you will have success.
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Are we ready to lose control?
In an earlier post I spoke of the power of Eloqua to provide Decentralized marketing but provide centralized control. This is happening. Now I just have to make sure everyone is ready to handle losing control to the company community. I’m not sure we are.
Our most recent enewsletter went out to subscribers in two ways – via a local implementation leveraging the same system as the national implementation. It was up to the local marketing group to decide whether they wanted my team to do it or if they were going to do it. And I can see it all. I can see what when we released it and all the stats around it as well as which local groups (out of 15) have done it and their stats.
So I’m starting to transition my team away from implementing and concentrating on best practice template and program development. And that’s what I’m instructing our Line of Business dealers that they need to do as well. Empower the local managers to make the choice, just track, measure and report back to the community the best practices, what worked and what didn’t. The community will correct with the right information. There’s one thing that I wish Eloqua had, a built in community that could just be for my people. I have an extranet that does this but it sure would be nice to have it as part of the Eloqua tool set.
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Proof “push” marketing just doesn’t work
For the past 4 months I’ve been talking with one of our Lines of Business about changing the way they handle a monthly newsletter. It is a new newsletter and they’ve been developing it, and then sending it to the regional line of business partners to get to their clients and prospects.
This clearly has many problems; we had no view whether the email was sent, and if it was, did it make it to the individual and did they open and click on it. Absolutely no view.
They have started to come around and the latest effort was still a “push” effort but we atleast used our common email engine and didn’t rely on partners to email it out through Outlook. Because of this, I have some stats. I think they will be surprised on how many people are even looking at it, the number of bounce-backs (almost 10% hard bounced) and those that did click thru. I can also see who hasn’t emailed it to their clients. At least they will have a view now.
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Everybodies “a-twitter” about Tweeting
I’ve been receiving dozens of links and notes about Twitter, but almost every read relates to the consumer environment. I can envision Twitter uses for businesses for our own company but it’s not as easy as people seem to think.
Just because Zappo’s CEO has a following doesn’t mean that one of our practice professionals will. And while people in “consumer” mode seem to have time to read and follow people Tweeting, I’m not sure senior executives do, unless there’s some value for them to do so.
So maybe, during an audit, a client is interested in Tweets from the team working on the audit. I’m not sure that the client will be that interested in what a Client Service Coordinator has to say throughout the year – unless – they are actively thinking about that client and what could help them succeed. So maybe it’s more about quality of information (probably to links), rather than tweeting to everyone about the lunch menu.
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Tax Time perfect Opportunity to Win New Business
For an accounting firm, tax time is an opportunity to have multiple conversations about a company’s business, operations, where they spent and where they are investing. Unfortunately, most firms concentrate on doing the tax work and not expanding the conversation while they are there.
You can use tax information to create the discussion but your there for hours at a time and it’s only natural to talk about different business issues. You have to make that effort, but it is well worth it and clients will love you for inquiring and maybe offering some ideas.
If you are not taking advantage of the face to face time that is available you are missing a golden opportunity to get to know your client better, learn more about their business and offer them some unbiased advice in areas you may not normally be associated with; by doing this you increase your value and expand your credibility with them.
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Lead Management Program beating the Average
With the implementation of Eloqua, a lead management and automated nurturing system, we’ve already improved our benchmark response rate from what was an average of 1% to 3.9% overall, and regularly hitting the 5-10% response rate with our email programs.
It’s only been a couple months and the various regional teams implementing the system and using it are catching-on quickly. The lead management program has had other benefits as well:
More consistent branding as team just leverage existing templates, collaboration as teams share programs and templates, and more attention to ROI.
We put out a regular response, open, bounce-back report and the teams are now pulling their own and spending more time analyzing what they’ve done and trying to figure out what to do. Our reputational sender score went from 50 to 90! A dramatic improvement for us.
Even our national Lines of Business are concerned with delivery, content quality and click thru rate. We’re slowly moving out of the “push” marketing arena and into the segmentation and opt-in marketing.
As we start to make the connection to Salesforce.com the next step is improving our lead quality before we send it along to the business developers.
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Analytics the new credibility driver for Marketing
We’ve always known that measurement is key to getting the budget and making decisions. In the accounting industry it is especially true. Now instead of going back and forth with a partner about whether we should use this tactic or that or whether debating the use of one headline over the other, I just tell them, “let the data tells us.”
We test both and let the web analytics or the response rates from a test mail/email determine which way we go.
Decisions are so much easier now. Even when having that same debate with fellow marketers, I always ask, “is this your belief or you have the numbers to prove it.”
If they don’t have the numbers I tell them to go get them and then come back and we can discusss. You want more credibility from people that view marketing as a “cost center,” start measuring and you’ll gain a whole new level of credibility
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Sales Cycle vs. Buy Cycle – Where are you?
It’s interesting to look at how organizations in professional services market themselves. For decades professional services firms couldn’t market in some cases so they became complacent in learning how to really market themselves. The idea of networking was really the way professionals marketed themselves. Unfortunately, that’s not enough any more. So the next step was to develop a sales cycle and learn how to take a prospect through the sales cycle to a close.
Unfortunately the Internet has changed the sales cycle and it is really a “buy cycle.” People no longer have to pick up the phone and have a conversation with a tax expert or business consultant to learn more about potential solutions for their pain; they have the Internet and those wonderful search engines.
But we are not aligned to thier buying behavior; the idea that people take time to educate themselves about a problem, then begin to search for potential resources and finally consider vendors. The buy cycle is much longer and YOU have no control over the person educating themselves. All you can do is try to provide that education and have enough on various subjects that the contact keeps coming back. In this way you are nurturing their interest with relevant educational information and at the same time giving them a “taste” of how well you know the subject and how you solve problems.
That’s how you get them to consider you. You can’t really control it, except to get to know the market pain points and think like a school or publication and develop that content. Then make that content available. Do this and you will align to their “buy cycle” and accelerate the conversation.
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Eloqua “Power Users” Now Pushing us
I was on our bi-weekly “power user” call, and was surprised how quickly many are moving. Power Users are the people in our company that received a 4 day training course through Eloqua and their partner Cadria.
Out of the 18 or so Power Users we trained, a good third are already asking about lead notification, and lead scoring. This is after our 3rd month of operation! I’m not sure they are ready for it and I’d prefer not to get into it until we connect to Salesforce.com but it’s great to learn how quickly they’ve moved forward and how they are “connecting the dots” to the ultimate goal of accelarating sales.
The lead scoring and alert notifications applications of Eloqua really help the business developers and our “professionals” understand what clients or prospects are interested in so they can pick up the phone have a relevant conversation (without spilling the beans that we’re monitoring them of course).
The “community of power users” is really taking jumping in, wanting more training, in many areas, not just Eloqua; copy writing, email best practices and landing pages. It’s great to see the growth of this in such a short time. Needless to say, it stretches myself and my staff because we need to feed the demand.
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Linking Sales Performance to Sales Automation
As we improve our sales automation system, the sales group has also been reworking the sales process to help standardize the sales process. Four phases and dozens of questions/activities later the new process is born.
Unfortunately, without some way of recording the questions/answers the sales person is suppossed to get and the activities that show they are performing, the disparate group won’t really accept the new new process. So we’re inserting the phases and the questions into the program. Each phase will come up at the right time as they add a contact or an opportunity, requiring them to fill in a little more information before they move forward.
Will this slow the process? Some. Will we be able to monitor what works and what does? Yes. Find the common activities and information that increase the liklihood of success? Completely.
The technology can become the trainer if we implement it right.
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Change is difficult for everyone
We’re in the process of cleaning a massive contact database in which 2/3rds of it is out of date, bad or just plain wrong. Unfortunately, cleaning it and maintaining it are two different things and require some process changes.
People don’t like change and I found that out this past week when I invited a small contingent of inside sales people to give me some ideas about how they work so we can better refine the sales process to accommodate them and still keep the data clean.
The opening salvo from one of the people was a nebulous question to create a debate rather than seek resolution; “What’s the difference between marketing and inside sales?” was the question. I expressed that inside sales was making the personal contact in most cases and marketing was a step away from that, but that inside sales was a valid marketing activity to be used.
That didn’t satisfy this person but ultimately we had to move on – the real purpose of the question was to to just side-track the conference call and it almost did, but my vendor helped out and began discussing the process. I then asked the original question I had asked but of another group on the call and they went through their working behavior and the system. This served as a model for the rest.
And ultimately I had to ask people to check their emotional tie to the discomfort I had created by changing thier database world but to stay open minded as things would be better, more focused, measureable and better integrated with all marketing campaigns.
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Too busy to play with pictures?
Email marketing is a science, yet I’m amazed at the number of amatuer designers that insist that email marketing must contain a picture or be HTML. There clearly is evidence that pictures and good design can have an effect on open rates. My argument is that busy executives really don’t care – they want good information, fast, and pictures get in the way.
Marketing Sherpa’s email benchmark book states that 89% of all executives have their Outlook default set to NOT accept images. So an executive receives your email, they look in the preview pane and see a box with an “x” in it. No picture. No benefit line convincing them to keep reading.
As an executive I immediately know that you are not a friend, client or vendor unless I recognize your name in the “from” box, and if you were, I’d wonder why you are sending me this type of email and wasting my time instead of just a regular email with text. After all, that’s how all my other peers send me information – a short concise text based email.
So before you decide that what you see from your competitors and from consumer product companies is the standard, think about your prospect and how they generally get information. Executives want educational information first, the sizzle isn’t important.
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Decentralize Marketing Implementation While Maintaining Centralized Control
With the implementation of a lead management and nurturing system, the vision for providing a centralized tool to show transparency in the marketing system while allowing local marketing efforts to become more effective is happening. Our new system is already developing results in saving time, resources and money.
Different regions are leveraging programs developed by someone else and implementing them locally. Better still, the regions are working together, taking on a specific task within the whole campaign development; whether it’s pooling the lists, developing the creative or the automated program, our local markets are working together within a production line, moving faster and more effeciently, and then letting the system run. I and they can monitor all that activity, see the results, provide advice in real time and encourage them to try new features of the system. At times I’ve even inserted a consultant to help with the particular marketing effort.
Response rates are improving, time frames are faster and I expect once we connect to our CRM, sales will accelerate.
No longer do National marketing and local marketing have to be blind to eachother’s activity, this system opens up a world of real time collaboration, measurement and reaction like never before. I expect sales to increase by 30-50% in 6 months.
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Making an “Ass” out of “U” and “Me”
Our organization has made leaps and bounds around marketing, if I do say so myself. The accounting industry can appear to be stuck in the 90′s when it comes to marketing, and “professionals” tend to be very confident in what they don’t know.
I’ve had debates with accounting professionals around email marketing, advertising and other marketing initiatives, only to find out that their experience in the space is minimal at best. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have an opinion – and many have good ideas, but the idea of moving away from “push” marketing, especially with email and enewsletters, is something that’s been hard to move them away from.
“We just started doing this” is often the exclamation I get.
For pennies they can email thousands of contacts. To any business person, especially an accountant, that’s just too good to be true. So instead of debating an opinion, I now do what Google would do; I let the data tell them.
I convince them to move away from Outlook as their main sender and move their lists and email to Eloqua, which of course, is all measureable. I show them what is really happening – open rates, delivery, click thru and downloads. I combine web analytics and email analytics and show them.
Some have been discouraged by the facts. I tell them not to be, it’s a learning process and that we need to understand what’s relevant and what is not, because their audience is telling us by either clicking thru or not. Yet, some still just want to believe that everyone they “opted-in” to receive a newsletter really wants it. They don’t want to give the recipient the opportunity to “verify” (really opt-in) their information. It’s a tough sell to some. Even the leadership is afraid of their community of professionals, their functional leaders.
I tell them, let’s present them the facts so they understand what is happening, that closing their eyes is not an answer because they are hurting our reputation. They hurt our reputation by assuming that their contact really wants that enewsletter.
For them to assume that just makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me.”
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Mobile applications that actually do something will rule
I have a friend who develops applications. He was recently layed off from his job developing applications for a company. Being an avid pilot he decided to develop a weight and balance application for Google’s Android phone.
In less than a month he’s had over 2000 downloads! It’s amazing; the phone is truly becoming the tool for busy people. It’s a simple tool, with a limiited audience (pilots with Android phone) and yet at $30 per download, he’s made a nice profit and will continue with the long tail of the Internet.
Whether you are in accounting, product or some other service marketing, you really have to take a look at development of an application that clients or customers will find useful. It may be free to drive added value or maybe you sell it as a platform for doing business; but now’s the time to think about it.
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It’s still about a good list, good offer and then creative
I continue to work with data base teams that were trained on Eloqua. The system has helped them become good lead management people, but they have that skill because of the technology and some of the strict guidelines we’ve developed that align with direct marketing best practices. It’s important for this group not to sit back on the succes thus far, as they are only successful because of the way the system was set up. They still need to learn the strategy of direct marketing and direct mail basics.
As we move into electronic media and even social media, everyone seems to be in awe of the these new channels or tools. I am to an extent, but it’s still about speaking to your client or customer with relevant information that they are interested in. The direct marketing industry has been doing this for decades.
Years ago we could only react to response and orders taken from our efforts, but that’s all social media and online demand generation is as well; sure it happens in “real time,” but it’s not that much different. At the end of the day, the direct marketing industry learned from what worked and recorded the strategy behind the success.
Ultimately, it still comes down to a good list, good offer and then creative last. The Eloqua system allows us to control and templatize the creative, clean the list and then it’s all up to the offer.
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Passive Marketing for Professionals
There’s no doubt that marketing requires activity; at some point, every marketing activity boils down to a personal transaction. In professional services, that is a face to face dialog and interchange. It’s all the activity before the interchange that most professionals don’t have time for, nor are they trained to perform.
In the past, there existed very little tools that could still help a non-selling professional become a “rainmaker.” But there is now! Technology can help even the most sales adverse person become a “rainmaker.” The first step in doing this is to use Outlook or other CRM systems to your advantage.
You have to use the alerts and reminder tools in those systems to remind you that you should send a letter, pick up the phone or set a meeting. Let the system become your prompter.
Develop educational collateral, clip useful articles and use those items when you are prompted. Develop a simple “checking in” script to use when you call clients and make sure you are asking broader business questions and acting as an advisor outside of your technical expertise. These questions will help build your credibility as an advisor.
If you can afford it, develop find an automated lead nurturing system such as Vtrenz or Eloqua, even Salesforce.com has some limited lead nurturing tools. These systems monitor and track what people are downloading and doing on your website and then notify you so you can pick up the phone and have a relevant conversation or mail the person something that aligns with what they are researching.
It’s this timely and relevant connectivity that will help those that don’t like sales to become “rainmakers.” The technology can become your coach, assistant and implementer.
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Smaller Lists Show Better Response Rates
The Eloqua system reports are showing an improved response rates for smaller lists – 30, 50, even 71% response rate! It’s not too surprising as the process for developing these small lists has proven quite standard. I find that the Power Users of the system are taking a good bit of time to make sure their lists are qualified and have the right demographic information.
This, of course, results in higher level of response rates. I’ve acutally found that the pre-calling a list to make sure the contact information is correct, helps improve contact and response rates.
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Committees don’t rule without a decision maker
I’ve been on many corporate committees. They generally evolve because companies want to make sure they get the input and perspective of several constituencies within the company. The problem is that they also become mired in debate, inaction and a lack of leadership.
If you develop committees, you can’t give up leadership. I believe every committee is really an advisory group or most of them become ongoing debate with no end. I was brought in on one committee that had been floundering around a technology solution for over a year. Everyone on the committee was scared to move forward because one or two people basically philibustered the group in each meeting.
As the new leader of the committee, I just pushed forward with what the core issue was – “solve this,” I said, “and we will continue to solve bigger issues around this technology.”
The leader has to take responsibility. It’s easy to hide in a committee and then, if something goes wrong, you can point the finger at the committee – “wasn’t my decision” – is a famous line. I’ve taken responsibility, and have had small failures and successes, but they are based on my decision with advice from the committee. If I let the committee decide for me, I’d still get the blame if something went wrong, so I might as well accept the role of decision maker.
So, if you join a committee, make sure you know what your role is and that someone is the ultimate decision maker; otherwise you are likely in for a long tenure with little results.
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Newsletters leveraging Eloqua Trending up
It’s quite interesting to note that since moving from Exact Target to Eloqua our newsletter response rates have gone up. I don’t think it’s necessarily the difference of the systems but more so that we, as a firm, are much more integrated with Eloqua.
I had a beginner jump in and start managing all of the electronic production of at least 6 publications and they are gaining subscribers each issue. It may be that we are spending more time looking at the data which is easy to find. We’ve also dumped two publications that were not producing much results.
I guess the learning is that we’re improving on both ends of the spectrum.
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Creative Still Holding Back Online Marketing in B2B
I continue to run into marketers that treat online marketing like print advertising. The look and design of their electronic newsletter must contain a beautiful header, or pictures. They lament, “we can’t work with you because you won’t let us use our header.” I get calls from their bosses saying the same thing.
I then educate and explain the header is not what a busy executive is after – they want good content. Useful content. Pictures and headers that don’t show up in the preview pane of most executives email systems actually identifies your publication as something they probably didn’t want. After all, as a busy executive, do you worry about your email header when you email another executive – no!
What that executive sees is “Dear Frank;” Imagine a concept of sending a prospect or client an email much the same way they would send one.
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8 year old son quits his job
I found out my 8 year old son quit his job – which was a little disconcerting, especially since I didn’t know he had one. Apparently he’d been a pizza delivery boy, and also held a job delivering the ingredients from the manufacturer. I don’t believe in quiting, but since he’s 8 and it’s a virtual world (Roblox.com – think legos meets Second LIfe), I wasn’t too worried.
But I was amazed how he quickly jumped on the earning band wagon. Imagine, 8, and he was delivery lego type pizza to lego type Avatars. What did he do with all his earnings – why he bought a lego house in this virtual world.
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Eloqua Teaching Inexperienced Marketers
Give people the right tool and the tool can teach them how to work better and faster. Since implementing a review and analysis of the many campaigns run by our local marketing teams, and making it part of the Executive Operating Team’s report, our marketers are really learning from the system analytics.
The power of the measurement is a great tool for immediate feedback and then more experienced marketers help analyze the softer side of direct marketing – the offer, seeing the trends of a particular format.
There are some that still insist on pictures in the header emails and I’d love to hear from other marketers on their analysis of the header design in the B2B world. I don’t think it matters and that email really should look more like a regular email from another executive rather than a stylized HTML driven email. Give me your thoughts?
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Doubled our eloqua click-thru rate again!
It’s hard to believe; but we jumped from 2% to 4% average click thru rate in just 2 months. So in a matter of 5 months or so, our company has improved click thru rate from 1% to 4%. Doesn’t sound like much but in the direct marketing space, it is a major jump.
Another plus is our lead scoring; we’ll be there soon.
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Eloqua connecting to Salesforce.com
We’ve recently begun developing plans to connect to Salesforce and Eloqua so information can be shared. It will help align sales and marketing with a platform that crosses the chasm between the two systems. But it’s not too difficult from a technical aspect – it’s more about the business rules and processes that may have to change.
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“Closed” online Golf Community Creating 15% Click thru rate!
For the past 10 months we’ve experimented with an online golf community. It is a “closed” community – meaning – you must be invited in to participate. The goal of the community is to begin a dialog with a prospect or client through something that they enjoy.
That’s not new. Accenture, E&Y and KMPG all leverage golf professionals to try and do this. They advertise in publications and during events to make that connection and sustain their brand. But if you are not a well known brand, you can’t just connect and sustain, you have to have an impact.
This online golf community has a longer connection time than any medium I’ve worked with, and a 77% click thru rate when the prospect or client is asked to join! 15% of those that become members click thru to the our business pages and spend time there. That may not sound like a big deal, but when the average click thru rate for our “push” marketing is 3% (and that’s good), you can see why this is significant.
So how did we do it?
Unfortunately, I can’t divulge that as it’s one advantage we have right now.
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United Airlines asked me what is the role of “customer service?”
I was recently complaining to United Airlines via their website about the lack of communication which caused me to spend another $200 for the airfare. After I filled out the complaint a survey form came to me and asked what I felt the role of customer service is.
I responded with “the role of customer service is to advocate for the customer when the organization is doing something wrong.”
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Eloqua “Alerts” Excites Business Developer
Many of the Business Developers still don’t see the value of Eloqua, our automated lead nurturing and demand generation system. It’s no surprise. They haven’t been trained, nor have we quite connected to Salesforce.com. But we took the advice of a consultant and signed up a few to receive alerts when their clients or prospects were on the website.
And within a couple of weeks, a large Fortune 500 prospects was on our site, searching for information. The alert went to the BD. It just so happend that this executive was hard to reach because he was so busy – but now he could see – in real time – what the executive was reading!
He quickly made the call and made the connection, advancing the conversation and a meeting! There’s nothing like being “johnny on the spot.”
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I keep hearing, “we’re moving to all digital marketing.”
Implementing Eloqua as a consistent email system and automated lead nurturing system has many of our local marketers jumping in to the digital age enthusiastically. Unfortunately, not all business executives are easily reached online.
The fact is that the majority of business executives are more easily found via traditional mail lists rather than email lists; so by “moving all marketing to only digital” we are missing a vast percentage of our audience. Email lists are also suspect for their prospecting performance.
So while going all digital with your marketing is more efficient, less costly, you maximize your marketing by continuing to leverage traditional media as well.
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Social Media and Blatant Promotion
I sat in a meeting the other day around Social Media. It was interesting to hear a couple people discuss the success of some specific social media efforts. They exclaimed the had hundreds of followers, and the other chimed in that thousands of impressions would be obtained.
I started to feel like I was in a media planning course because we were concentrating on the number of people that were being “touched” instead of the depth of the conversation. Frankly, continuously pushing the latest promotion to a bunch of followers or network connections doesn’t sound very helpful to the community. I’d guess the majority of those people don’t do much with it – either mentally to process the information or explicitly to forward it.
Social media can be an engaging environment, one that allows the most ardent wallflower to become a networking fiend. 24-7, their network can work with them as long as they are giving back to the community. I don’t see a whole lot of that happening. It may be a maturity issue. Over time, I think the promoters realize they need to be involved and engaging, not just promoting.
I’m not against metrics that include impressions or the number of followers, I’m just not sure that is all we are after at the end of the day.
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Lead Scoring Requires Sales to Work the Lead
As my demand generation team and I work on lead scoring, there are many things we have to consider: What explicit and implicit behaviors to score, as well as creating new behaviors in the business developers.
Our business developers are used to getting marketing leads where people have expressed a “need.” With lead scoring they are going to get demographically qualified leads that have provided “clues” to their level of interest or need based on digital body behavior.
This is more important because we will be engaging executives earlier in the buy-cycle and will have to be prepared with programs and tactics that nurture them along.
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Boy Scouts of America needs sales management support
My son is into his second year of cub scouts and his second year of selling popcorn. I noticed that the boy scouts were also selling in the neighborhood; so we were competing against eachother.
If only someone at national would coordinate the sales, both groups could sell throughout the year and they would get more sales. Some neighbors are nice and buy from both, but during these economic times many won’t. Now, if they made a mandate for one group to sell in the fall and the other in the spring, you get more sales. Now some groups do other things such as a car wash, haunted house, or barbeque. I’d just coordinate the switch. While one group is selling the popcorn the other could have a car wash. With a little simple coordination at the national level, the local scout troops would perform better. The next trick is to get customers’ contact information in a national database. In the following year, Boy Scouts could email or mail the customer list to the boy scout that sold the customers and tell them to contact them for a repurchase. It’s easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one.
These kids and scout masters are not marketing and sales people. A national office of any type needs to make it easy for their clubs, distributors, franchisees to make the job of earning funds easier. A central organization needs to provide process and management to ensure improved success from year to year. With a little better organization and process, the Boy Scouts could do a lot better.
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Is email marketing making us dumber?
Over the past year, I’ve noticed hundreds of emails come to my inbox and hundreds sent from my company to senior executives across the country. There’s a clear tactic of sending to get something out the door, but I’m not noticing any real strategy; it all ends the same way – “come to our webinar,” “come get our white paper.”
Clearly “content” is king right now, but I’m wondering if we concentrate on the content so much we forget about really trying to help the person we are contacting educate themselves? I’m not noticing a stream of conciousness or path with these emails that might show me what was developed was a campaign that truly helps me solve a need or problem. I see quick hits as if someone is trying to get my attention but not sure how.
I’d suggest a different tactic – why not email an invite to run the webinar. Let your audience member(s) choose the topic and all you do is facilitate the webinar or conference call. It would be interesting to see what happens then – by listening you may actually learn more and be able to develop a strategy around what you’ve learned. Or by all means just keep emailing me and I’ll keep deleting them.
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Most companies “buy” their positioning, they don’t really live it
Many companies that are building brands are really searching for a position in the market place. Without a position it’s hard to understand what is truly believable by your clients. Just because you have a tag line doesn’t mean you have a position in the market place.
You really have to get the employees and all interactions with the client to provide the experience of what your tag line states. I read a lot of ad reviews and have seen big companies win major advertising accolades when what I see is a big budget campaign with simple statements. They are buying their position not really living it. At some point a competitor will either really start living their position or they will out buy them.
If your employees don’t “just do it” or “Customer Satisfaction” isn’t really important, the market will put you in your place. It’s better to live the position that buy it.
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Sales and Marketing Alignment Closer after Lead Scoring Meeting
I’ve found it interesting how one conversation around lead scoring as placed sales and the marketing group in pretty close alignment. We worked through the definitions, some expectations and everyone seemed pretty excited.
There’s more to do, of course, but it was interesting how one excercise has made an impact. While technology itself is not a substitute for training it sure can be the training wheels.
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Let the audience create the topic and run the webinar
Imagine instead of deciding what to present you sent out an email to your audience and asked them for what topics they want to discuss. Imagine taking the top 5 and developing the content for a webinar and white paper. You may not even have to find experts, rather just be the facilitator, let a certain few be panelist and let it rip.
It would run more like a conference than webinar – sort of a conferinar.
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I thought the need for popularity ended with Highschool
Remember the “popular kids” in highschool. I moved around a lot so never really had the chance to become popular lest I got in a fight or two, and that wasn’t the type of popularity you really wanted. The popular kids tended to help form the choices of the student population, they were on the committees, the student body government and the Year Book committee. And just when I thought, we, as adults no longer cared about popularity, I see websites now offering “most popular links.”
Do you really think those links are the most popular, based on number of click thrus or did the web team for that company decide to sneak in a couple topics they want to make popular? You look at an Amazon and I have to believe it’s based on click thrus because of the shear number of people coming through that site and the number of products they manage, but for a B2B company with limited products/services? I’m not so sure.
Once you put “Most Popular” in a heading people click there. We’ve been taught to go there, we want to be with the popular people, the choices and the crowd – we want to understand what all the comotion is about because the group, more times than not, is more correct than the individual.
“Most popular” is still very much ingrained in our mental construct, and for those companies that have found that out, I believe they are likely leading us through what they feel is most popular rather than the system automating it via real click thru numbers.
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Data mining vs. Social Media/web 2.0
Data mining a very important vestige of the direct marketing world may be falling behind the real time, behavioral tracking of social media and automated demand generation programs out there. I’ve had many recent conversations with database managers starting new positions, and they all want to go back through their various lists, combine them, clean them, get the historical “touch efforts” and then put that data to use.
In the couple conversations I had, I argued that the months of them going through the list could be useless in that the contact list will grow old very quickly. “why not start marketing and get the contacts to self-select, then let the demand generation system track their behavior?” I asked.
The retort, “we want to develop relationships.” Isn’t a behavioral segmentation, that is more recent much more useful that going 2 years back and consolidating all the separate histories. Sure, you could do that in parallel, but I think the concentration on this step is the result of years immersed in data.
We’re really both talking about data, but I’m not sure in a professional services industry, data collection beyond 2 years is really worth much, and the time it takes slows you down for developing engagement now with different media. Spending months pouring over data in this space and not really finding the trends just seems like a lot of work with little return.
I’d clean up the lists, but prioritize based on simple segmentation and start fresh. Bring in new lists to append important segmentation information and market to the list. Now you are getting immediate engagement and can add the long history later if there still appears to be a need.
With today’s newest automated demand generation systems you can track behavior and engagement, then segment based on that behavior and associated demographics. Database managers need to learn how to interpret actual sales cycle behavior as oppossed to just the transactional behaviors. If you are going to perform lifetime value then transactional history is important and can lead to marketing strategy, but an automated lead scoring system does this on the fly, based on strategies set early on.
At the end of the day, the ability to understand the historical data to develop future automated strategies is key. You just have to understand that the definition of history or historical data is now counted in days, not months or years.
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Moving into nurture programs slower than expected
We’re almost a year into our installation of Eloqua, and still need to building automated nurture programs that go beyond the simple reminders and thank you. There are some distinct hurdles: we need to be more proactive and less reactive, we need to think more strategically and less tactically, we need to think more like our potential clients and less like business developers.
We will get there, but it will take education and the national team developing some templates that people can just plug into.
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The next wave for the Internet is organizing all the connections
The internet makes it so easy to connect to useful information that I find myself with too many connections. And contacts! They are growing every day, even though I’m pretty selective about who I decide to make a direct contact, follow or friend.
The tools for organizing such things are amazing, but I see a day when we are “tagging” our links library to make it more searchable. There are some links I bookmark because I think it will be useful but then I look at the days later and I don’t even remember what it is. From there I will have to organize the data I use to organize the files I want to use; create a standard, a view, a perspective. Endless organization.
Ultimately we used to delete things that we of no further use, but now we don’t have to. Unfortunately, the useless items still appear there with all the useful stuff and it just makes it harder to find.
Wouldn’t it be great if I could just lose something like I could when I was a kid?
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The Frustrated marketer
The Frustrated Marketer is one that knows they could do more, if they just had the chance. Either they get no respect, have little resources to get much done, or the company they work for doesn’t really have a sophisticated market approach.
You have two choices in this scenario; leave to an organization that does give you that opportunity, or become a real student of marketing. Too often, the reason a marketer is frustrated is because they don’t have credibility among their organization, or the selling skills to convince their bosses to let them try something new.
Concentrate on self-education, and measurement and you will get your chance. And if you don’t, and you move one, you’ll be prepared for one that is ready for that idea.
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The best direct mail piece that almost caused a divorce
With the new year here I was reminded of the best direct mail piece I ever received. It was a number 10 envelop that was personalized and handwritten in ink. But before I go further I have to tell you how I came to find it.
I came home from work to find my wife in tears holding this letter. It was a love letter to me! It came from a woman that I vaguely remembered. And as she questioned who this woman was I reviewed the letter. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it and started to think that I had some alternate personality. Did I have a second life that was so well hidden not even I remembered it?
Then I remembered! The love story was from a particular artist I collected, and the woman was the sales woman from the gallery. She had written the love story in the new painting (from the Coyote Series), and once I overturned the letter to reveal a copy of the print on the other side.
I started to laugh which only pissed my wife off more. I revealed the print on the other side and she turned beat red and just hugged me.
I did buy the print. If you want to see the Coyote Series by Markus Pierson just Google his name.
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Developing the “infrastructure” for a better Internet strategy
Over the past two years, I’ve spent much time planning and implementing a program for building “thought leadership.” We’ve had people develop different social media engines or begin developing websites because they want to jump on the band wagon before it leaves town. Unfortunately, these quick-up programs lack the infrastructure to make them successful.
Pulling together the right infrastructure: web team, custom content writers, demand generation, database team and our industry vertical team; a program could be developed to support the social media, gain syndication, and start to build online communities. I’m convinced you need these various components to help support and build a better Internet Strategy. The integration of these teams develops a process that can quickly react and sustain a strategy.
The custom content team help our subject matter experts develop the content and the thought leadership. Once they are done, they hand it off to the web team, which builds the website components where the content resides. They also help syndicate the content via other social sites. The demand generation team, leverages Eloqua to build a demand generation template and offer the content to clients and prospects. We’ve found this builds the most attention to the landing page where the content resides. Our vertical industry group works with specific subject matter experts to develop conversations around the content. They act as “Listeners and Handlers” of the subject matter experts, finding stories and suggesting topics.
Our database team helps with the tracking and the sales activity generated from the content. Other components include our PR engine and online advertising that help pull people towards the content.
While there are many ways to support Internet marketing and social media, you have to have a planned infrastructure to have a consistent effort that is successful.
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Doesn’t Twitter make you a Spammer?
Twitter clearly has advantages to get information out quickly, can drive brand awareness, and create a loyal following. There are plenty of famous CEO’s and those made famous for using Twitter. They have adhoring followers. But are we getting what we expect?
Why do we follow? Is it who the person is? What they represent? Or do they expect sage advice from the person? Are they hoping to get some insider information that will benefit them? Maybe that is the expectation, but rarely does any of it come true.
I recently saw it happen first hand. A big announcement made, and the excitment of all these click thru’s coming to the landing page from Twitter. Praise Twitter! But you look at the landing page analytics and realize 80% of these click thru’s abandon the page. Clearly, the topic was irrelevant to the audience. Or they just can’t deal with anything that’s more than 140 characters in length.
In email marketing, that 80% might consider you a spammer. So is Twitter really just creating more spammers and spammees willing to be spammed in the hope of some sage advice and secret insight that never comes true?
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Step One for Developing the Right Infrastructure for Improved SEO/Web 2.0
In an ongoing effort to help others develop a process and systems that will make your Internet marketing effort a success, I am providing you a rought outline of what we did to get our program up and running.
All paths lead to your website, so it’s time to make sure it’s as good as it can be. Start by auditing the pages, the links, 301/401 redirects, outdated content and images. You can use Hubspot’s websitegrader tool as a way to get a sense of the marketability of your website as it is now and then use this free tool as you move forward to improve your website. The tool will give you examples of where you need to concentrate effort to improve your website.
Make sure you are designing your site so visitors can easily find what they came for. Concentrate on a simple architecture and make your design simple.
Content is king. Executives leverage the internet to educate themselves so think beyond the brochureware and develop content that is useful to your audience. Place that in the higher level of your website so it’s easy to find.
Concentrate on the website and content quality for now and in my next post I will go into more detail on how to develop a process to maintain the website and and engine for developing good content.
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Web 2.0 Infrastructure Building, The Website
The website is where all roads lead in marketing. No matter if you buy space advertising, broadcast or online, executives go check the Internet first. The Forbes and Google Executive Search Strategy Survey proved this.
I’d first advise any executive to think about whether they want to control the website internally or have an agency build it and control it. There are advantages to both, but I’ve always preferred to have it controlled internally. You can have an agency help with the initial design and build out, using a Content Management System (CMS) of your choosing. I haven’t had great luck with an agency running the various company websites I’ve been responsible for because it added an extra layer of time and resources to get the communication right.
Whatever your decision, it’s important to weigh the many benefits and challenges using an agency against paying for internal resources to get it done. While making that decision you should also understand what CMS you will be using to make sure that it is flexible enough handle all the things you want your website to do. Maybe you have an e-commerce need, or want to play video, carry a blog or online community. Whatever it is, choosing the right CMS makes all the difference.
As you think about the infrastructure of your website, you must think about usability and the ability of the system to help users search for content on your site. So don’t get overly beautiful with your site. It’s better to make the site easy to use than make it a pretty site that is slow to load, has a tone of video and is not well planned out. User testing is important too.
Get some employees or friends to go to a beta site and give them assignments to find certain things on the site. Then have them give you feedback. There are technologies and companies that can help you do this but I find a simple test and watching the analytics will give you what you need. Speaking of analytics, make sure your web pages have the coding for Google analytics or other analytics systems such as Omniture. Without the analytics you won’t be able to tell if your website is really performing or not.
And if you have a demand generation engine such as Eloqua that will allow for IP address tracking, you will want that coding on your web pages as well. This is important to take the aggregate reporting that Google provides down to the individual level. Eloqua coding on your website, allows you to track an individual and all their activity on your website.
So far we’ve thought about having the work done inside or out, the CMS, analytics and demand generation system coding. Most importantly, planning must occur. Whiteboard your website, a site map and then begin developing a timeline. Once you have the plan, you can begin to worry about content. We will cover this in our next session.
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Top things I learned at the Online Marketing Conference
I recently went to the Online Marketing Conference. It’s a well put together conference full on information around Demand Generation, Internet Marketing, Social Media and Sales. Below are a few of the things I learned:
Optimize your YouTube video by making sure you leverage all of the headline, tag and description fields. Most people forget to do this.
YouTube is the Second most used search engine on the Internet.
Pay attention to your landing pages. It was amazing to see the heat maps one presenter showed of in regards to landing pages. Remember that readers start at the top left corner of the screen and go to the bottom right. Draw an imaginary line and that’s where you need to concentrate your call to action. Don’t hide your call to action.
Establishing “comments” for your articles helps add to SEO. You can also add ratings or “thumbs up/down.”
Facebook and twitter are great for spreading news about your blog as is the Yahoo Directory.
Blogs are a great way to drive traffic to your site as they get more weight with the Search Engines.
PointRoll had an interesting case study with an interactive banner technology they used with Mustang.
There’s a lot more of course but I’m tired and need to look at my notes to remember it all.
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Internet marketers need media planning metrics
At the recent Online Marketing Conference in San Diego it was interesting to hear a present educate the audience around advertising and other more traditional measurement metrics. But what was really interesting is that the majority of Internet marketers didn’t know these metrics. Things like Gross Rating Points (GRP) received very little hand-raises and Total Rating Points (TRP) was not even mentioned. Even the presenter had a few of the traditional media planning metrics defined incorrectly.
It’s important to understand all media measurement metrics as all media must be used and leveraged. Internet marketing is the channel of choice because it’s almost free and with some basic understanding you can be on your merry way. But it’s a double-edged sword. “FREE” means that everyone is on there creating more clutter. Understanding how to compare media channels and when to use them is important. Not every audience will be on the web all the time.
For those of you who have never taken a media planning and buying course, I recommend “Media Planning and Buying” by Arnold Barban. He was at the University of Texas when I was there and he made us buy his book. It’s easy to understand and use – I’ve let employees borrow the book over the years and have had to replace it twice.
For those of you who have taken the courses or understand the tools, you may just need a calculator tool that will help you perform some of the calculations. Go to the Media Planning/Buying Calculator website. There’s a simple listing of the various metrics and the calculators that help you plug in the numbers.
By understanding the benefits and key indicators of each media you will be able to determine which media will work best for you in any given situation.
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Web 2.0 Infrastructure, Custom Content Development
Once you get your foundational layer, your CMS and website design, you need to begin to develop content that will be appealing to your audience. Usually this means “thought leadership” and “how to’s.”
The first step is to look at your website sections that are specific to a particular service line or product line and get a group of people with the energy to develop content that will be interesting to your audience. In a large organization a signular department in marketing can’t take on the task of developing all thought leadership, expecially in a service industry. You need your subject matter experts to join the writers on a regular basis to develop that thought leadership.
It’s a group activity. There should be a group of subject matter experts and one or two marketing people that meet monthly to review the calendar and analytics of how many downloads thought leadership gets each month. We recommend a group be involved so the burden of creation isn’t always on the same people. It’s wise to bring in outside experts as well.
I recommend starting with a Content Calendar, and plan for 6 months of content creation. Determine what content ideas should be developed each month, who is responsible as the subject matter expert and who the writer will be to help write the content. It could be an articles, white papers, case studies, webinars, and podcasts.
If finding a writer is a problem, look to freelancers and journalism students looking to fill a portfolio. The subject matter expert provides the technical information and the journalist helps make it readable so it isn’t just a technical piece unless it’s meant to be a technical paper.
As you develop the content, you should be thinking about headlines, keywords and make sure any use of PDFs leverages the “properties” fields to make it easy for search engines find the piece. But we put the individual articles in a singular HTML page with RSS feeds as well. Helps with concentration around keywords.
Understanding if your content is getting dowloaded is important – it’s how you will make decisions around what to continue to write about. Let the audience tell you what they want. Once you get on a roll and begin developing content on a regular basis, providing analytics for decision making, you will find that others want to join in and help.
Why do they want to help, because it’s the authors (the subject matter experts) that you promote through a short bio in the thought leadership. These experts become your “media darlings” for promoting to the press.
That’s what I will write about next, syndicating content and promoting your thought leadership.
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What Professional Services Marketers can Learn from Delta Airlines
I recently traveled on Delta Airlines; it had been maybe 7 years since I’ve used Delta and was pleasantly surprised to find an airline that had broken out of the typical airline mentality. Most airlines today are the same – they position themselves more on price than anything, not unlike the Professional Services Industry. Sure, attorneys, accountants and engineers try to extend their value beyond price but they all say the same thing.
“Our expertise is XYZ, and we are global. We have specialists in this industry…blah, blah, blah.” We all say the same thing and who is to say that 20 years experience is better than 30, or 50 clients in that industry has more meaning than 30. It’s not true positioning or differentiation – ask your prospects these questions and they will tell you, it’s not all that different.
The airlines are trapped in this same scenario with pricing becoming the overriding reason to go with one over the other. Convenience is out the window, because there is nothing convenient about air travel.
So I was surprised to find Delta is differentiating itself and turning the flying experience into something that is nice through technology and better quality environment. Most of us hate to fly, your herded around, the waiting areas are crowded, you can’t hear the gate attendant yelling whatever zone they are yelling. People bring on all their bags and then your left to stew on the flight. All amenities that used to make the experience nicer have been thrown out the window, unless you fly Delta.
Delta airlines’ gate was ensconced in leather-like, padded seats that had tables between each so you could sit comfortably. Large LCD panel screens hung in various spots. The gate area was clean with wide aisles (this was in Atlanta) and they had recycling garbage can that I believe compacted the trash (you could hear them compact the trash when you put trash in it). When the gate attendant starting announcing the “zones” the numbers flashed on the screen so you could hear it and SEE it.
The planes offered “wi-fi” access and the one I was on also had TV’s at each seat. You could watch FREE TV or pay for a movie or HBO or other cable show to watch. The flight attendants wore a uniform that beckoned back to the days when flying was a more formal affair; a nice touch in my book. One side of the overhead luggage bin has been extended to provide more space. A premium in these days.
I just realized that after flying for four hours in coach, that I had a nice experience on the flight. The technology helped me ignore the discomfort of flying on a long trip. The environment was clean and I was able to leverage the LCD TV’s to find out where I needed to go to catch my next flight. The screens at the gate show all the passengers that are catching another “leg” what gate they need to go to – so it’s very personalized or seems to be.
Basically Delta has decided to get away from the idea that you should choose them based on price and instead look to having a nice experience. They’ve repositioned their value from just getting you from point A to point B the cheapest way they can and are creating an experience that makes you want to fly them over another airline.
I’m sure Delta has its detractors, but I can tell you they are positioning themselves correctly. I no longer feel like cattle with Delta. So what should a professional services marketer learn from this?
Start thinking beyond “industry experience and years of experience,” it’s important but it rarely is a differentiator. You need to find other differentiators that will make the prospect pick you over your competitors. This could be in the way you engage clients, create networks of resources, leverage technology, educate – there are a lot of ways to re-position your firm. Find them.
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Infrastructure Step 3: Syndication and Promotion
The final step after developing content is to syndicate it. You can of course put it on your website, but there is more to do. You must look to spread your content to the rest of the world.
I recommend seeking to promote your new-found content via communities, Digg, and blogs. Even a PRWeb send can help syndicate your content. There are different web2.0 channels depending on how your content is developed. Written content must be exposed through the previously mentioned channels.
Podcasts can go to ITunes, YouTube, and other like channels to promote the content. You’ll have to decide which to target and how to create a process that you will stick with. Doing it once or twice won’t be enough. You’ll need to get out there and promote it.
Just because you create it doesn’t mean they will come. So promote the content just as you would yourself.
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The Top 5 Reasons Accounting Marketers Fail
1) Most accounting marketers are afraid to or are not empowered to say “no” to bad marketing ideas presented by partners.
2) They aren’t learning enough about direct marketing from direct marketing professionals or organizations such as the DMA.
3) Marketing strategy is replaced with reactive tactics.
4) Many are not career marketers – they are accountants who want to be marketers or feel they are.
5) They are not students of marketing.
There are many exceptions out there, but the list above is something that I’ve noticed over 8 years of being in the financial services marketing, after 15 years before that with manufacturing, sports marketing and Internet marketing.
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Positioning lost
It’s amazing how often I speak with professional services executives and they ask me about branding, new designs or the need to get noticed more, but miss the most basic of all marketing needs – positioning.
Positioning is easy to understand if you think about it; but not always easy to develop on your own. Ask someone what their core competency is and they have a hard time deciding. Then there’s the competitive positioning that affects what you decide as well.
That’s where a professional marketer can help. Through a series of excercises and discussions you can find your position. But most people don’t want to go through the effort, and not only lose the opportunity to differentiate their firm but will never be memorable to the market.
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Is Windows 7 Ad Campaign that effective?
Have you noticed the recent “Windows 7″ ad campaign? They have an actor tell a story how they “invented’ Windows 7 because they came up with some very obvious idea that already exists on an Apple computer. It’s a little disappointing. I don’t have an Apple at this point but I’m thinking of switching.
I wouldn’t switch for some of the basic reasons that the TV spots espouse but rather to just have a system that doesn’t start slowing down and constantly need to be rebooted. I have 3 different devices that use Microsoft Windows; my cell phone, and two home computers.
I’ve noticed that the home computers, even the previous computers owned all began to have problems the minute more than 50% of the hard drive was holding files.
My cell phone turns off and on inexplicably. My work laptop is now beginning the same issue because I have only 35% of my hard drive memory left.
So has Microsoft solved this issue? I don’t know, but doubt it and I’m tiring of spending thousands of dollars over the years for a system that is built more for the developer not the final user. The ads are somewhat annoying because of this; I’m tainted I guess, but I don’t see any of their ads really dealing with the issue Microsoft suffers a lack of: elegant programming. My personal experience and the trends I’ve noticed over the years is that they just don’t care as much about the ease of use or ease of having a reliable and stable platform.
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Developing a Growth Culture
Many firms take their growth culture strategy from the few “rainmakers” in the firm; unfortunately, most “rainmakers” have an innate ability to get business, engage others and win business, leaving the majority of the other professionals without a path of understanding their part in developing business.
A growth culture is one that leverages the strengths of every person in the firm, in some capacity aligned to business development. While you may not be a “rainmaker” out making the “deals,” you can be the technical expert that writes thought leadership, speaks at webinars, is the person on the phone during a call speaking to the regulatory issues. Everyone can have a job when it comes to developing business.
If you find ways for everyone to take part, you will have a “growth culture” instead of few “rainmakers.”
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Eloqua hard to describe to Senior Management
If something never existed before, how would you describe it to someone that has no understanding of what you have. That’s what it’s like when describing Eloqua to senior executives. In their minds demand generation is direct mail or email. Eloqua is so much more yet you can’t go to far off their belief or it becomes this “thing” that they may not care about.
So when I describe Eloqua, I’ll use words like marketing automation, but I pick and choose the features to explain the power of the system based on the audience I am speaking with; if business developers, I emphasize lead scoring and the alerts. If I’m speaking with senior management, I discuss the tools that help accelerate sales – delivery of relevant information in a timely manner, and the measurment system that shows what works and what doesn’t.
In both cases I get to all the features, but Eloqua offers so many, you really have to take it one bite at a time and be careful what you offer up as your first explanation, lest you lose their attention.
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When meetings get off track. “Squirrel!!”
I was in a meeting with some executives and got off track, as many meeting discussions do. Suddenly one of my co-workers began to laugh. She stopped and explained that going off-track of the discussion reminded her of the movie “Up.” In the movie, the dogs have these collars with a voice box that allows them to talk. During any interaction, the dogs suddenly stop and yell “squirrel!” It’s quite funny. So, occassionally, if someone started to take us off-track, someone would utter “squirrel!” It was quite fun and helped keep us on-track. I’m thinking of getting a stuffed squirrel and then handing it to the offender during meetings.
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Eloqua with Direct Marketing Expertise Important
In choosing a Marketing Automation system such as Eloqua, I have recently been reminded of the importance of direct marketing experience. Marketing automation has helped us increase our efficiency and effectiveness to one level, but I see certain marketers have even better results when they are thinking like a direct marketer and not just about the technology.
Direct marketing is about strategy, implementation and ongoing analysis. The best programs to date, which have hit response rates as high as 70% are those that take the time to really segment their list, making sure the offer is relevant and then dealing with the “creative” and technology implementation next. On the other spectrum I’ve seen the results of marketers that think about the technology first, have results in a much lower response rate because they are not taking the time to consider their audience.
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Learning Social Media Isn’t Enough – SEO, SEM, Web Analytics are Must Knows
I’ve had several discussions, both internal and with other marketers, around social media and whether everyone should just get in there and try it. After jumping in with some channels and holding back on others, I’d recommend people go take a few social media courses and really understand the media. Learn beyond the one media and learn more about web analytics, SEO and SEM.
If you only jump into a social media channel and don’t understand the other areas of Internet Marketing, you are going to be less successful on many fronts. Without truly understanding all areas of Internet marketing and the various channels’ advantages and disadvantages you will struggle with channels even if you do a good job.
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What’s the real issue with your clients?
So many companies concentrate their efforts on the benefits they bring instead of the insights they can bring to their clients or prospects. As marketers we tend to think in terms of features and benefits that we bring, but what if we didn’t do that and instead spoke to the issues of that market – providing true expertise to an issue.
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Strategies Become Tactics – Thinking Stops
Are we spending less time thinking and more time doing? There was a time when marketers developed highly though-thru strategies to meet business objectives. What I see more and more of is the replacement of strategy with tactics. People still call it their strategy but what they describe is a marketing tactic.
If strategies have become tactics then what are tactics? Moments of activity?
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Marketing activity does not a marketer make
I’m surprised by the number of marketers in the professional services space that hide behind marketing activity for “activities’ sake.” Instead of developing strategies that are supported by some form of KPI, I hear marketers talk anectodally about results.
“We had over 12 touches to the audience with that program” just isn’t that impressive to an accounting professional that wants to really know how campaigns and programs are affecting the movement of prospects through the sales funnel. Online marketing is ripe for improvement and showcasing what marketing can really do, but if we stay in the realm of “fluffy measurement” we will never truly get the recognition or the budget we really need to make a difference.
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Unique Cigar Marketing idea
I was at the University of Texas vs. UCLA Football game, tailgating and two young ladies showed up complete with ammo belts draped around their bodies. But instead of bullets the ammo belts contained cigars. The two ladies were promoting a Cigar lounge. They walked from tailgate group to tailgate group, offering various cigars and handing out a lounge business card.
I thought it was a unique way to introduce a new lounge and sell some cigars. There were thousands of people tailgating in a few block area, so giving people the idea that this lounge was a hip place with good looking ladies was probably a pretty good tactic; especially targeting the many young men tailgating.
I am quite a bit older their their main target, so their “wooing” had little effect, but the cigar was good.
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No more “BC,” “cc” or “Reply All” – please!
Imagine a world without being copied and reply all. One on one communication would be important again. “Covering your ass” with “cc” and “bc” would go away and people would have to cover themselves by making sure they collaborate, include others and actually speak with people instead of speaking at them.
Imagine if there was an application that would work with email and allow you to set preferences like “if “cc’d” don’t allow the email through and email back the sender this message -”My user will not accept an email where he is “cc’d.” If this is not a priority for my user, please just email him a summary of all outcomes and conversations when you are done – until then, don’t “cc” him/her.”
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Interpreting Your Bounce Rate, Click Thru and Open Rates
Many marketers implement email marketing without truly understanding how to interpret the metrics so that you can optimize your demand generation programs.
Eloqua is a powerful marketing automation tool but requires human intervention. Every week I review the campaign metrics of our firm. If the bounce rate is high, I know the database needs to be cleaned up. If the click thru rate is below 1% and the bounce rate is low, then it is likely a poor offer for the audience; especially if the open rate is high.
I then review each campaign for the same metrics and send specialists to speak with the marketer that implemented a campaign where metrics don’t fit best practices.
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