Marketing Sherpa's chart of the week shows the 2009 priorities for B2B organizations with more than $250M in revenues.
My commentary on the chart is below. A few thoughts to help marketers make some of these priorities easier...
Traditional vs. Web 2.0 Content Development:
I'm not quite sure how they're making this distinction, but I'm guessing that it's akin to company-focused content vs. customer-focused content. I agree that this is a big challenge for many companies. The problem is that they're so steeped in their own products that it's hard to look at them from the outside in and forget what they already know and believe.
The other problem is that, for some reason, B2B companies find it difficult to converse in a meaningful way. The recession is a perfect time to get that one right. Shifting your prospect's perception of your company from impersonal to human status can only help. If you're not getting into dialogues with prospects, you're out of the game.
But beside the conversational aspects, marketers need to increase content relevance. They need to learn that interest isn't driven because they sell product X, but rather by what product X helps their customers achieve. Just start talking about that in a context that matches your prospect's situations and you'll see a difference in response.
Identifying New Audiences and Quality Lists:
The farther you can spread your content around online where your prospects and customers spend their time, the more attention you can attract - well, if your content is relevant and valuable to the audience. The point here is that quality lists come from opt-ins not buying them or sourcing them and going for the opt-out route.
If you want new audiences, think about the problems your products solve and then learn who else has those problems. In this economic climate it's helpful to think about an iterative process where you can help a customer gain small, but important, wins and then expand their business with you. Lower the risk.
Syndicate content designed for these new segments and attract them back to you by talking about things that interest them--not you.
Retention Marketing Plan/Tactics:
Help your customers get increased business value from your products. Talk to them. If you don't know, find out where they are and where they want to be and help them keep moving forward. You need to think about what retention is worth to you.
Marketers get so focused on generating new prospects that their existing customers get shorted. Your demand generation content probably won't bring the results you want from your customers. But a souped up version that includes insights customers can benefit from because they already have your products likely will.
Marketing Analytics:
Analytics have gone wild. Technology has almost made it possible to measure how many breaths your website visitors take while viewing your content. But, unless those numbers help you take action to increase engagement levels through added relevance, they're not that useful.
The exception is knowing how many prospect opportunities marketing generates that sales accepts and then how many of them become customers. The rest of your analytics need to help you improve effectiveness. If you try to look at too many statistics, you'll lose your mind.
Analytics make it possible to monitor prospect and customer activities in near real time. If you're only looking at them monthly or quarterly a lot is happening in between. Benchmark the things you choose to measure and then measure those things often to gauge improvements or catch something that's slipping before it's hard to recover from.
Analytics should be pivotal in helping you optimize your marketing processes for best outcomes. Consistency is important. It doesn't help to measure apples against oranges. Set goals and then measure the things that help prove you reached them or show you how to make improvements that get you there.
Focus on the numbers that can show you increasing interest. So they clicked on the link in an email. Did they spend enough time with the content to read it? Scan it? Did they click on another related resource, leave or look at a totally different topic?
Which topics are getting the best response? From who? Can that direct your content development to keep those people's attention?
How many touches does it take to move a prospect from opt in to sales ready? What type of content did the prospects access who converted faster than the others? By looking at how each of them accessed the content can you determine buying stages?
Mapping Content to the Sales Funnel:
See that last paragraph above, but also consider that your buyers have a buying journey of their own which may not map to your sales funnel/cycle. Interface with your salespeople to learn which information they're providing during sales activities that could be provided during the nurturing process.
Close the loop after each customer acquisition. Look at which marketing resources and interactions the new customer participated in prior to sales hand off and what was used during sales activities. Map what you learn. Keep refining as you learn more. Map by segment instead of trying to fit everyone into one map.
Hopefully these tips will give you some food for thought. What would you add?
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