Marketing Interactions

Survey Shows Online Customer Engagement is Essential

The Online Customer Engagement Report 2009 is hot off the presses from E-Consultancy and cScape. This year is their biggest survey with over 1,300 companies and agencies responding in September and October, 2008.

First, some highlights:

• 87% said engagement was important or essential (52%)


• Only 45% have a defined customer engagement strategy


• Top 5 reasons for interest in customer engagement by companies:
• • Increasing long-term customer value
  • Increasing value delivered to customer
  • Deepening, enriching product offering
  • Gaining customer insight
  • Strengthening emotional investment in brand
  
  
• Most important outcome of engagement is willingness to recommend or refer others


• Other desirable outcomes for companies include:
• • convert to customer more easily
  • buy regularly
  • less likely to switch brands
  • less focus on price
  
  
• 52% say they aren't advanced at mapping customer experience or need to start doing so.


• Top 5 attitudes companies say they need to address in 2009:
• • price sensitivity
  • focus on quality
  • desire for simplicity
  • intolerance of poor customer service
  • prolonged decision making

These responses are pretty much what I'd expect to see. It's also interesting to note that eNewsletters were seen by 69% of companies as providing a tangible improvement to customer engagement. My guess about this is that response is more easily measured for this tactic.

When only 30% say they've seen improved engagement via micro-sites, and only 25% from blogging, it makes me wonder if they've evaluated the content they're providing and how well it fits their prospect and customer needs. Or perhaps they're not measuring. But I'm sticking with the bet that it's the lack of valuable and relevant content they provide. To justify that opinion, see my post about boring corporate blogs.

It's encouraging to see that companies have increased interest in social media, but I'm hoping they stop and think about what's in it for the customer more than they think about what's in it for themselves. Companies who've listened first and continuously learn from participation in social networks have seen improved engagement levels.

For insight about why it's also important to monitor your social reputation, see this article from 1 to 1 Magazine, Manage Your Reputation Daily - Or Your Customers Will Do It For You.

I'm happy to see that companies are realizing the importance of customer engagement and no longer taking it for granted. I'm hopeful we'll see companies make more progress in 2009. In order to start gaining on that goal, I suggest that focusing on knowing your customers really well is one key not to overlook. Knowing what they need and value, their priorities and how to interact with them effectively in "social" dialogues can go a long way toward building engagement.

Finally, you may also want to review my post about the impact of customer experience on your business. The two concepts are inter-related and you'll not be successful at one without addressing the other.

Thoughts?

What are you doing with user-participation content?

As more and more B2B companies venture into the interactive marketing realm they'll be inviting users to participate via comments, feedback, ratings, referrals and reviews. Your audience may tweet about you, blog about your content or company behavior and participate in email dialogues in regards to your nurturing campaigns. [Yes, that last one really can happen.]

[NOTE: This is of course dependent upon your content being relevant, fresh and valid from their perspective.]

Giving us all the benefit of the doubt on relevance, have you considered what you'll actually DO with what I'm calling user-participation content?

When marketing is out there creating interactions, they need to consider the value of each one. It's easy to respond and move on, but to embrace participation, you need to consider all the ways what you learn and experience can be used to enhance your emarketing strategy, the relationships and credibility you establish, and the progress your prospects make toward purchase.

The following are things you may want to think about:

Getting to Know your Audience: Every comment is derived from a response to your company - whether to a blog post, an article, the way your products are experienced, as well as their personal experience with your company.

Listening is a golden opportunity: You can learn a lot about the people your emarketing strategies are engaging.

• Are the interactions you're having with the audience you targeted - or have you found a potentially new market?
• Are you hearing positives, negatives or are people (gasp) neutral?
• What words are they using? Are those words the same ones you're using?
• Did your content or conversation raise questions? Do you have content that addresses them, or are you only responding to that one person with an answer?

Generosity and Grace: Are you acknowledging great ideas and interactions publicly where your community can watch and choose to jump in? Or are you taking them offline? Giving credit and thanks gracefully can earn points for authenticity. (you do have to mean it, though)

Tuning Personas: If you take an aggregate view of interactions, what do you see? Are similar comments showing up repeatedly? Are you seeing phrases used across the interactions that you haven't used in your content? Are the types of people you're attracting the ones you thought you'd get? Take a look at a good sampling of your interactions and see what you can learn to refine your persona and use those insights to improve the relevance of your content.

Here's a real example:

I just began working on an emarketing strategy process with a new client. Through a number of conversations they provided a list of titles and qualities about their target market and we discussed the problems that they believed were on that segment's radar.

We did some qualifying to double check our assumptions (you know how I feel about those, but we had to start somewhere). Here are a couple of things that became obvious very quickly:

• We'd missed a critical decision maker role - half the records we reviewed showed a title not on the list.


• We'd jumped in too far downstream in the problem-to-solution journey and needed to back up and add in some high-value educational pieces.


• We also learned some critical push-back points that we can proactively address to keep momentum moving forward, instead of stalling as we back up to handle objections we'd otherwise have been unprepared to deal with gracefully.

The point is that we learned these critical factors, and more, in less than a week. We reached out and invited dialogue before we developed content or set a plan into action. Now, we can roll up our sleeves and get to work with the knowledge that we're going in the right direction to connect with the audience we've got in sight.

Whether online, via email, or phone conversations, tracking what you learn and then really listening to the input can pay off in your ability to actively engage your prospects.

What are you doing with user-participation content?

Proof Online Marketing Content Builds Engagement

First, a thanks to Michael Stelzner who posted about the Tech Target 2008 Media Consumption Benchmark Report in regards to white papers - go read his blog post for the skinny on that.

The report is 47 pages long, so there's plenty of meaty insights.

I've talked a lot about the idea of mapping content to buying stages, setting expectations with your content delivery and that you can build engagement by connecting your topic-related content to probe depth of buyer interest. I've also railed against the one-off marketing touch and company focused content.

If you wanted proof that prospects find these methods effective, now you've got it.

The majority of buyers said their cycle's duration was 6 months, or longer. The problem is that most marketers stop and start their marketing campaigns in less than 6 month increments. When they stop and start, they forfeit the continuity, consistency and engagement they've built up to that point and start over with a new campaign.

93% of buyers are looking for information year round, not seasonally.

85.6% said that viewing valuable information from a vendor has caused them to view more information from the same vendor. This means information that helps them solve problems. Lest you think that product-focused content is not costing you engagement, consider that 47.5% of buyers said webcasts were disappointing because they were not problem-solving focused or too product oriented. Forty-three percent said the same thing about virtual trade shows.

What you may not realize is that 60% of buyers who attend webcasts say they are in the consideration stage of their buying cycle. Virtual trade shows come in as important across the board with a pretty even split between awareness, consideration and purchase. Definitely something to think about the next time you want to spend a bunch of time talking about your product, instead of the problem and how you help solve it.

71% of buyers said that viewing a certain media type has caused them to view information on the same topic in another media type. This means creating a flow from your webinars to your white papers to your thought leadership articles can pull mindshare if you've got a focused content strategy.

71% say the best way to follow-up with them once they've downloaded content is via online collateral. Their next favored follow-up method was via email. Additionally, 47% said they preferred online communications over print, or a combination of print and online.

Interesting to note is that buyers participate in blogs to get 3rd party expertise (36%) and to hear opinions from peers (34%).

There's a wealth of information in this report. Between Michael and I, we've only scratched the surface. It is worthwhile to note that the buyers represented are tech buyers - in case the report name didn't clue you in.

The takeaway is that problem-solution focused online content is important to your buyers. And, they do engage with content when it's valuable. Make sure you have a plan for how a buyer will find you and find all your related content by topic.

Oh, didn't I mention that? The top 3 ROI generators are white papers, trade shows and search engine marketing.

Status Quo is a Buying Stage

I just read and commented on a great post by Todd Cabral over at the Science of Marketing blog, Market Conditioning: A Tap on the Shoulder. Todd talks about how important it is to get on your prospect's radar by conditioning them to pay attention. He says:

"Market conditioning is more important in some markets than others.  If the problem your company solves is well known and extremely painful, there is less conditioning to do.  However, when a problem is lurking beneath the surface or not well understood, this marketing technique is critical."

This is where I started thinking about status quo. Status quo is essentially the way things are - what your prospects' business environment is today. This can include an abundance of frustrations and obstacles they must overcome to successfully complete their business objectives, or it may mean they never achieve the levels of success they aspire to.

But, until they understand that the problem is actually a costly one that need not persist, they will tend to proceed as usual. Hey, it's easier, it's non threatening and knowing the obstacles of today is far more reassuring than risking the unforseen consequences of undertaking change.

This is why thought leadership and knowledge marketing are so important. But, the only way these methods work is if you know your prospects really well. You need to not only know they have a particular problem, but you need to know what it costs them, why it exists and be able to clearly demonstrate the upside [business value] for embracing change.

Todd also points out that objections can bias your target market against your marketing if you don't address them from the start. A great observation, and one many marketers miss. We all think that our products rock and that as soon as we expose our prospects to them they'll be suitably impressed. But that's not necessarily true.

Once your prospects have taken a strong position about something, you will not get them to shift their thinking without taking the effort to prove why they should and present alternatives with validation. The "what's in it for them" principle in full swing. If you just jump in downstream from their objections and expect them to see the error of their ways, you're message is likely not even on their radar.

So, when you create your personas, profiles or however you get a clear view of who your target market is, pay attention to status quo. Learn enough about your prospects to ensure you can address their current mindset before you go about trying to convince them to change.

People don't like to be pushed. Pull them over to your side with a well thought out content marketing stream that begins at status quo and delivers what they need to know at every stage throughout their buying process.

Stories are Tools for Business

Kathy Hansen has been running a series of interviews with business storytellers, and I'm excited to have my interview included on her blog, A Storied Career, this week.

She's been interviewing a stellar lineup of storytellers who've tackled the concept of story within and for businesses, and their lives, in a variety of ways. For example:

Terence Gargiulo - as part of his answer to a question about story scrapbooks:

"The most valuable information in an organization is unstructured data. This is data that lives in the minds and experiences of people. It is not easily captured or stored in central repositories. Furthermore in most organizations there are few if any incentives to share knowledge. As a result knowledge sits untapped. People do not speak with one another in ways that enable knowledge to flow. Stories activate informal peer to peer networks."

Gabrielle Dolan - when asked why storytelling is growing explosively:

"I think it comes down to two things. Firstly people are inundated with information, they are overloaded and we have known this for a long time. I think leaders are starting to realise that it is not just enough to provide information, the very good leaders will help people make sense of the information, and story can help them do that."

Svend-Erik Engh - when asked about the possibilities for companies through stories:

"When I hear a story from a company I get much more information than the usual information overkill." and  "[A] story told with a lot of pride tells me more about that company than 20 pages introduction material I received, a video bragging about the virtues of the company, etc."

Jon Hansen - about the future trends of storytelling:

"The essential element is that it translates the complex into the everyday thereby widening the funnel of impact."

"In the end, effective storytelling is both the filter and translator through which a greater understanding of the complexities that define our world today can reach out to the broadest number of people. It is therefore the lynchpin of effective communication."

My interview is going up in installments all week. Storytelling is a crucial component for companies making the transition to customer-focused cultures. I'll leave you with a quote from Part 1 of my interview about why I love stories:

"I’m absolutely intrigued with the process of involving people in visualizing possibilities. After all, that’s what every company is selling. The more realistically a prospect can engage with a story — envisioning themselves playing a pivotal role — the more likely they are to reach out to that company to get the outcome they can 'see.'"

Part 2 is up today...

I encourage you to go read all the ways these insightful storytelling gurus are using stories in their work and their lives. It's inspiring—and you may just pick up a few tips about how to incorporate stories into your marketing content, your customer interactions and your companies.

Thanks, Kathy!

Sales Tips in Short Snips

is a professional development portal that gives salespeople on the go the insight they need to keep moving fast. Instead of interrupting your busy schedule and customer focus, grab a tip to help you perfect what you're doing, right now.

CanDoGo^TM is designed to help salespeople get fast access to the concise advice they need for motivation, presentations, prospecting, qualifying, marketing, and more. I'm proud to be joining CanDoGo^TM as one of their experts—watch for my snips to be out there soon.

To give you an idea of the expertise you'll find on CanDoGo^TM, here are a few examples:

Three Steps to Overcoming Objectives - video by Charles Brennan

Engage Your Prospect in Dialogue - video by Jill Konrath

Sales Slumps: Develop Selective Memory - video by Bryan Flanagan

Objection or Concern - text article by Jim Cathcart

Does Your Marketing Department Know What Your Sales Force is Doing? - text article by Huthwaite

This professional development portal brings together over 150 renowned experts who share tightly focused expertise with you in short video, audio or text increments. Choose the format that works for you and go grab your insights as you need them.

Focus Marketing Content with Wordle

If you're wondering whether or not your content is focused, or has veered off track, go paste it into Wordle and you'll get a visual of what you're actually talking about.

The Wordle above was pulled from this blog a few minutes ago. I do this every couple of weeks to see where my focus is. I also use it when I'm helping a client see what the've focused on. Often, it's not what they thought.

Sometimes, I paste in the content of a nurturing article I'm developing to make sure the piece has stayed on topic.

By visualizing your content in this way, you can get really clear about what's making an impression or if you've hidden the best part of your narrative under a rock. The Wordle will make it really clear if you're emphasizing or repeating words that may be distracting from the takeaway you want your prospects and customers to "get."

Go Wordle your homepage content and see what shows up. If you don't want to publish them for the entire Internet to see, print them or save them to a PDF to help you work on tuning your message. Go do another one when you think you're finished. Note the differences and then pat yourself on the back for being absolutely brilliant!

If you publish them to the gallery, come back here and post the script for the link in the comments, I'd love to see what you've got.

What happened to the sales funnel?

The traditional concept of the sales funnel is gone. If you're still thinking about numbers as a factor in the sales equation, you're missing the conversion to buyers being in control of their buying process.

The old way went something like this: Pour #X leads into the top of the funnel if you want #X sales at the end of the quarter. Rinse and repeat. To me, this was always a curious process as it had nothing to do with the leads as human beings dealing with problems, but played percentages.

The new way is about being found when a buyer goes looking. Being considered valuable enough for a dialog and then building that initial interaction into engagement through consistent, relevant exchanges of information that help buyers make decisions.

Marketing in this new era requires some shifts in thinking.

Instead of choosing your leads, they choose you.

If you try to control the information flow, they'll go find what they need somewhere else.

Instead of products, buyers want ideas and strategic insights.

The sales cycle is now the buying journey.

Pull is more important than push.

Outside-in trumps Inside-out

Peers are more integral to decisions than companies.

So what does marketing do now?

Marketing must flip their focus from their companies and products to their customers. A lot of companies say they are, but according to customers, they're missing the boat.

When you think about your lead database, for example, do you think about "Jerry" or do you think about SMBs with $50M - $100M in revenue and 100+ employees in the financial services industry?

Do you think about what your customers need to confidently deal with that new industry regulation, or do you think: "product X is what they need"

Product X may very well be an option to solving their problem, but you have to start thinking about how buyers deal with problems. They need to learn how to think about solving them, factors to consider and options and alternatives. Before they even get to thinking about your product, they need to develop a level of competence about the issue that gives them the confidence to make a decision.

That's an entirely different informational need than the feeds and speeds about your product.

If you continue to think of the sales funnel as a volume and percentage play, making the shift to marketing in a buyers' world is going to be harder than it has to be. In this kind of an economic market, can you afford to hold on to old thinking?

I submit that the funnel is now a cylinder. It invites your prospects in at one end and then creates a consistent delivery and exchange of strategic ideas, information and insights to help them progress from priority shift through purchase decision.

What's your view of the new sales funnel?

Marketing choices run amuck

I received an email today from a company I've never heard from before. Not really a surprise in that, but more in what they sent. It reads like this:

Ardath

Please click here to subscribe / unsubscribe the following:

• Company press release
• Company monthly newsletter
• Company webinar invitation
• Customer survey
• New product announcement
• Customer success story
• Tips of the Week
• Best practices
• Company technical support notes
• Company product tips

We respect your privacy.

Thank you,
Company name

Yes. I'm serious. Are they kidding?

There are 10—count em—items on this list. Eight of them are all about them—a company I've never heard of before. And, in case you missed it, I have to click on the link at the top to both unsubscribe or (in case I'm struck by lightning) subscribe. Already too much effort required. Where's that spam button?

Yes, I'm being really hard on them. They never for one moment thought about the recipient of this email. They gave me no reason to even want to give them my attention. There's nothing in this email for me. It's all about them. And now their reputation is mud, where before this I was blissfully unaware of them.

And the "we respect your privacy" bit at the end made me laugh out loud. They spammed me and they respect my privacy?

Not to mention that the email didn't even warrant a personalized signature line and the grammatical mistakes in the first sentence.

Now, all of that said, I know where this concept probably came from. This is likely a response to some recent marketing research that says people want to have a choice in what kind of messaging they receive, and the frequency they receive it. The point of that research is to give people who want to hear from you choices to further engage them. This is not a strategy for getting people to opt in. 

Take another look at the choices they've given me at the top. What do they think they'll learn about me should I select any of them? Asking your email recipients to expend effort to tell you things that tell you nothing to help serve them better is just a waste of time.

Instead, had they sent me an email telling me about this new series of articles they were going to be sending out about a topic I'm interested in and asked me if I would like to sign up to receive one article a week for the next month, I might have thought it interesting enough to take a look.

And, if I signed up, think what they might be learning about me. Not to mention if they follow my responses to the articles they send and gauge whether or not they peak my interest or lost me somewhere during the campaign.

Marketing research is great for directing your focus and consideration. But it's not a follow-the-dots map for blind implementation. If what you're doing doesn't help you gain insights that help you make better connections, why are you doing it?

Customer need or wishful thinking?

According to B2B Marketing Trends 2010, a report by the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the #1 trend getting the attention of B2B marketers is:

"Develop approaches and methods to better understand
what CUSTOMERS REALLY NEED, beyond what they can
say or articulate. Opportunities to CREATE REAL VALUE."

Among their concerns were being able to "tease out rare and valuable insights that lead to true competitive advantage" and the "ability to make the connection between customer needs and the core competency of the enterprise."

Those are two very admirable goals - goals, I might add, that B2B marketers won't be successful into the future without achieving.

So, why is it so hard?

The report indicates this is not the first time this trend for concern has been at the top of their list. This is a passion of mine, so I thought I'd take a shot at helping marketers get closer to framing how they think about what their customers need.

Here are a few points to consider when sussing out the needs of your customers:

• It's not your product, it's the outcome they get by using it.


• The words and phrases you use when you talk about your products, and what they do, are likely not the words and phrases your customers use.


• Issues you think are simple to solve—because you know how your products work—is probably overwhelming to your potential customers. Otherwise they'd have solved those issues already.


• Your customers don't have time to think strategically - they're running too fast with all their daily ToDo lists. Helping them learn how to think about solving their issues is a critical skill marketers need to hone.


• There's a fine line between jargon and helpful, easy-to-understand terminology—which are you using?


• Your customers are smarter than you think. They can smell self-serving sales hype a mile away. Are you focused on helping or hyping?


• People digest things in chunks, not all at once, so give them a little at a time and build the concept within a context that makes sense to them.

In order to align your thinking with your customers' needs you need to get to know them. And know them well. Guessing won't cut it. Extrapolating what you think onto them will fall on deaf ears. This is why changing the way you think about your customers requires that you change the way you think about marketing.

Marketing must be reformed into a conversation that has more pull than push. However you market, you need to involve your potential customers. Not just by getting them to click on a link in an email, but by monitoring and reacting to their responses in ways that generate ongoing dialogue about things they're interested in today. Things they may be interested in next month are too far off their radar, run off by other high priorities that come first.

Marketing Automation systems can help. In fact, I'd stipulate they're critical to helping marketers develop the intelligence they need to learn about their prospect's and customer's interests. As well as in assisting you to establish an ongoing dialogue.

Instead of trying to fit your customers to your solutions, the challenge is ensuring your solutions fit to your customers' needs. To get there, you'll need to get really good at walking in their shoes. How needs look from their perspective is very different than the way you're looking at them now.