Marketing Interactions

Welcome to the Revenue Revolution!

I had the extreme pleasure of a conversation with Jon Miller, VP of Marketing for Marketo, the other day and got an inside look at their new Lead Insight for Sales tools.

But, let me back up for a minute to this revolution bit. Marketo is convinced (kudos to them) that in order to recapture the $1 trillion annual loss that results from sales and marketing misalignment nothing short of a Revenue Revolution will bring success.

They've even taken a bold step and invited sales and marketing professionals to sign their Revenue Revolution Manifesto and put their own stake in the ground for alignment. In their words, "The Revenue Revolution occurs when marketing and sales stop pointing fingers, cease working within their own silos, and unite to create dramatic improvements in marketing ROI, sales productivity, and most importantly top-line growth."

Marketo has put their money where their manifesto is by launching Lead Insight for Sales to complement and extend their other marketing tools and focus both sales and marketing on the Revenue Cycle. The Revenue Cycle is a comprehensive look at how all the singular components of the marketing-to-sales process integrate to produce measurable revenue outcomes. 

It's also about ramping up collaboration to improve the coordination and contribution from all the separate components or steps that lead to revenue generation.

“When marketing and sales teams coordinate their activities as part of a unified revenue process, companies get better at properly identifying and prioritizing opportunities,” said Barry Trailer of CSO Insights and a strategic advisor to Marketo. “This is important since better quality leads result in easier and better quality sales cycles, with more wins and ultimately more revenue."

What I like about Lead Insight for Sales is that it's designed to work with salespeople, not make them adopt something else. We all know how tough that is. The beta version has an integration with both salesforce.com and Microsoft Outlook. But the Marketo system becomes the system of record for the lifetime of the lead.

Visibility is greatly enhanced across the entire process from lead generation to revenue, meaning everyone can see what's happening, regardless of where the interactions initiate. The ability to close the loop on this process plays a key role in unifying your marketing-to-sales efforts.

And finally, the drag and drop interface incorporated throughout drip campaigns, scoring and routing leads is intuitive and easy to use. There's not going to be a long ramp-up period before your company can see, as well as actively participate and collaborate, deep inside the revenue cycle. By putting the focus squarely on profiling the lead's interest, activity and progression throughout the cycle, the benefits of marketing and sales alignment should become glaringly obvious.

It doesn't hurt to also include some additional insights from a recent report, “BtoB Lead Generation: Marketing ROI & Performance Evaluation Study,” showcased in an article on Demand Gen Report. You can go read the article, but I'll leave you with this tidbit:

"Of the respondents who projected they would outgrow their competition, those sales organizations gave higher marks to their marketing team’s performance and the alignment of sales and marketing. In addition, comparing those who rate their marketing effective to those who rate their marketing less effective shows higher positive rating for quality of leads (56% vs. 20%) and for conditioning leads to create higher preference and conversion rates (46% vs. 13%)."

Go check out demos of Marketo's tools here. Take a spin for yourself and start thinking about how your Revenue Cycle can be improved.

The beauty of a niche

A niche is particular. It's a slice of the whole picture with a narrow focus of interest.

A niche is appealing to a specific set of people - not everyone and their brother.

A niche may be narrow, but - oh boy - is it deep. Expansion is infinite, just differently than you may expect.

A niche will make you think you're leaving other areas unmet. If it doesn't, you haven't narrowed your focus enough—which is the whole point.

A niche, by its very nature, catches the attention of those it appeals to. These people are the ones who will go out of their way to participate and interact with it. And with others who have the same interests.

A niche is a relationship generator.

A niche creates a more personal connection due to high relevance for its audience.

A niche is an incremental step toward 1-to-1 interactions. It sets a common foundation.

A niche makes you (your company) more accessible.

You can have more than one niche, but you cannot combine them without a trade off in effectiveness and introducing a probability factor for defection.

The next time you want to make sure your content, communications and brand speak to everyone, perhaps you should reconsider. Time constraints, fragmented attention, overwhelming workloads and shifting economic realities make it hard enough to engage your market.

Think about the beauty (and the potential payoffs) of a niche.

Get Content. Get Customers. Get the Book!

I've just finished reading Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett's new book, Get Content. Get Customers.

Anyone who is responsible for creating communications and content to engage customers and buyers with your company should read this book. Whether you're a marketer, a salesperson or an entrepreneur who does it all, this book will give you some keen insights about how to compel interactions with your company through the use of great content.

In the beginning of the book, the authors set up the principle motivator: "[People] want to make up their own minds based on their information gathering." This means content.

Content marketing is defined as "the art of understanding exactly what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way." Doing so will evolve your company from a product-focused entity into a trusted resource.

And, just in case you're wondering how important content marketing is:

"All the rules have changed. You need to relearn the marketing game with a brand-new marketing mindset. Those who can adapt will flourish. Those who don't...well...think of dinosaurs."

Part of the problem companies have today is that their customers are already so well informed (isn't the Internet great!) that it's harder to sell to them. The answer to this conundrum lies with content marketing. "You begin as a source of information and continue as a source of products and services." Instead of trying to sell people who don't want to be sold, you use content marketing to position your company as the obvious choice.

The beauty of this book is that it's not just a pie-in-the-sky theory book, but a hands-on guide that shows you how to employ content marketing in a variety of ways. Their foundation is what the authors call the B.E.S.T. Formula. It's ingredients are:

• Behavioral - Purpose. What do you want them to do?
• Essential - High Value. What information do they really, really need?
• Strategic - Integral. How does your marketing fit with your overall business strategy?
• Targeted - Precision. Hone in on relevance.

Many of the chapters in the book are dedicated to case studies of a variety of companies from an Inn to a huge manufacturer to a software provider, a chamber of commerce, a global bank...and so many more.

The set up for the chapters gives you that relevant, high value information they speak of in the B.E.S.T. formula above.  For each one, you learn:

• Type of Organization
• Major Marketing Objective
• Content types they used
• Unique Element
• Results

Get Content. Get Customers. also includes a load of screenshots and examples to help you visualize exactly how what they're talking about looks like in application.

And finally, they have a chapter that takes you through a step-by-step process for creating a content marketing program (for a fictional company) so you can practice before you try it out on your own company.

Go buy Get Content. Get Customers. I guarantee you'll learn something that will help you deliver better results than you've gotten before. Thanks for writing the book, guys!

Lead value differs from sales to marketing

Leads are often considered the crux for company growth. But, salespeople and marketers often have very different interpretations about the value of leads. Often this has to do with expected outcomes and who gets credit for what.

Lead generation is a priority for marketing. But, more often than not, they're given credit for the number of leads they generate, not necessarily the quality. Marketing cares about leads. Sales cares more about what buying stage they're in.

In fact, sales doesn't want leads, they want opportunities ready for sales conversations. Unfortunately, in many companies, sales still spends time generating their own leads because they don't trust that the leads they get from marketing will play a big enough role in generating deals.

The origination source of leads is important, depending on who you are. If you're a salesperson, do you trust a lead generated by your marketing department? If sales generates the lead, do they give it to marketing for nurturing if the lead isn't ready to buy in the short term? Did that lead opt in, or were they "acquired" with an assumption of interest?

Lead profiles are becoming more prominent. Information collected about leads ranges from demographic basics to online activities, email responses, webinar attendance and phone calls made. Is all this information kept unified and viewable by both marketing and sales? Do both departments maintain a comprehensive view throughout a lead's lifespan, or is it limited to whoever has control of the lead?

Lead nurturing is an interesting issue. What happens when a lead "looks" like they're ready for a sales conversation, but they haven't actually said they want one? Is this a marketing task, or a sales transition? Can sales hand them back if they say "not now?"

Do leads that transition from marketing to sales stop being nurture to, or is there a nurturing plan integrated with sales activities to keep pulling the lead forward in the process?

Have you ever put yourself through your lead generation, nurturing and sales processes to see how smooth the transitions are? Is the dialog connected? Or is the shift from marketing to sales jerky with a readjustment period? And, if you say no to sales, are you jolted when the next nurturing message arrives? Is it on target, given the interests you expressed during sales conversations?

Based on the difference in perspectives between sales and marketing about the value of a lead, what can you change in the way your company deals with leads to smooth it out? If we start treating marketing to sales to marketing to sales as an integrated, interactive and cooperative progression for growing lead value, what might happen?

The Customer Collective Gives Back

Many of you may know that I participate on The Customer Collective - a social networking community for marketing and sales experts. I'm in terrific company with many of the top sales and marketing experts, including:

• Jill Konrath
• Jonathan Farrington
• Colleen Francis
• Paul McCord
• Elana Anderson
• Brian Carroll
• Leslie Buterin
• Greg Verdino
• and so many more

BusinessWeek – in partnership with CNET, Oracle and Social Media Today — has created an online community where senior sales and marketing executives discuss/share/debate strategies for impacting the customer experience. The online community features fresh insights every day from some of the best bloggers in the world discussing how to penetrate the market and close the sale. It's a great place to find solid information from a variety of experts—all in one place. Not to mention the connections you can make and the discussions you can have.

Because of the success The Customer Collective is experiencing, they want to share these terrific insights with more people and generate more conversations. The stronger the community gets, the more impact we can all have in working together to answer today's complex marketing and sales challenges.

I'm pleased to be able to extend this free special offer from The Customer Collective to my readers - Just by joining, you'll receive a box full of great stuff:

• Book: Sales Blazers by Mark Cook
  The author called on top sales earners at leading organizations worldwide to discover their secrets for sales success. The results revealed trailblazing strategies for dramatic growth — which can be repeated by salespeople at any level and used to lead sales and support teams in any industry. You'll find out how to apply these strategies to your own sales efforts to achieve high-level growth on an annual basis.


• Subscription: Business Week Magazine
  Receive a free trial offer for BusinessWeek, where 4.9 million success-minded professionals get information and inspiration they can’t find anywhere else.


• Useful Stuff
  Hey, they want to leave some goodies for you to discover when you open the box.

How can you possibly pass this up? You'll find a wealth of valuable information on the site, plus you'll get some great gifts just for joining.

In case you're still not convinced, here are a couple of posts I've found really valuable recently:

Why online communities fail - and how many succeed by Francois Gossieaux
The 2008 Tribalization of Business Study that was released last week led a lot of people to conclude that online communities do not work and that companies are spending too much money on making them happen. Well - there is some of that and then there is a whole other side to the story...

Fusing Relationship Marketing and Online Marketing by Elana Anderson
She talks about how the offline and online channels are converging. Elana has an interesting perspective and her post will give you a lot of things to consider as you evolve the way you market. What's interesting is that companies are trying to reinvent the wheel instead of repurposing skills they already have.

And that's just a taste of what you'll find. So take advantage of this generous offer and join the forum for sales and marketing excellence at The Customer Collective. Do it today...the offer won't last forever.

That Gaping Void between Marketing and Sales

The CMO Council has taken on the seemingly unbridgeable divide between sales and marketing with a new research report, Closing the Gap: The Sales and Marketing Alignment Imperative.

This report carries on the theme of the continuous lack of consistency in perspective between companies and customers. Companies think they found their customers, but customers insist the opposite. Companies think customers defect over price, but twice as many customers say they leave because service is lacking.

There seems to be a lot of difference in belief going on these days. Let's take a look at the dichotomy between sales and marketing in the CMO Council report:

Salespeople think:

• marketers don't understand the customer & market environment
• marketers don't effectively support sales efforts
• most marketing collateral is useless
• they are indispensable [yes it's really in there]

Marketers think:

• salespeople undermine their efforts at consistent messaging
• salespeople's lack of consistency undermines brand
• salespeople fail to leverage the qualified leads they generate

The reality the report found is that "neither sales or marketing is effectively leveraging customer data to form deeper, more connected relationships with the customer." In fact, 60% of customers said that if a vendor failed to win their trust, they'd either scale back the relationship or leave the vendor.

What's really surprising is that executives like to believe that a collaborative partnership exists between sales and marketing when what they have is not even close. Even though a majority of respondents to the study agreed that customer acquisition and retention was critical to their continued success, they admitted that effectiveness in accomplishing that goal was lacking. [We could talk about why only a majority of respondents think customer acquisition and retention is important, but that's another conundrum for another post.]

Despite continuing evidence that collaboration between sales and marketing can produce shorter sales cycles, more valuable deals and greater sell-through, companies still cannot manage to get the two disciplines to play well together.

I'd suggest that this misalignment of goal and reality is due in a large part to how each of them is evaluated in terms of the effectiveness that can make all the difference to your customers—not to mention your company's success.

Marketing is focused on lead generation - not necessarily the rest of the process or how the end result of customer acquisition is achieved.

Sales is focused on closing deals.

But the most interesting bit of information I found in the Closing the Gap report is that "85% of the purchase decision is impacted by the direct interaction between the sales force and customers."

Stop. Breathe. Go read that statement above again.

Considering that only about half of all salespeople make quota, the idea that the relationship sales has with potential customers carries that much weight is alarming. Even more so when you discover that salespeople spend 40% of their time reinventing marketing collateral, less than 20% of which is compelling to customers or consistent with corporate messaging.

The ray of light is that marketing has the opportunity to impact this situation. They can have tremendous impact on engagement up to the purchase decision. They can also collaboratively work with sales to produce collateral to improve the effectiveness of sales to get that purchase decision to swing in their company's favor.

But, until sales and marketing can unify their approach to customers and share the responsibility for generating revenue results, this lack of alignment will continue to frustrate all concerned. However, once the two of them align, watch out, because their companies stand to be hell on wheels in running over their competitors who can't get there.

Content without a goal is unemployed

Is your marketing content unemployed? What I mean by this is that content, to be of value to anyone, must do something. If your content is not written with the express intention of helping your audience learn, understand or take action about something (or all three), it's just sitting there on your web page, taking up space.

And, quite possibly, driving people away from your website.

A lot of content I come across doesn't live up to its billing. How many times have you read a headline and thought, "yes, just what I'm looking for," only to click through and be disappointed to learn that the headline was geared for generating click throughs but nothing more? That's just one example of useless content.

I come across a lot of content that isn't employable. This condition is usually represented by:

• blah, blah, blah, so what - it's all about them stuff
• content that tells me about a subject but leaves the reader stumped as to what to do next to actually utilize that information effectively
• content that starts off on a good tack and then veers wildly in a direction that deviates from its implied promise
• content that's not in the least engaging to the audience it's attracting
• content obviously written for someone who's not your audience (different role, industry, interest)
• jargon filled content meant to generate search optimization but not audience comprehension.

Really irritating, unemployed content can be found on website homepages and consists of a description of what the company does that is so jargon-filled that no reasonable person can ascertain what that might be.

If you want to find your content highly employed, try a few of these pointers:

• write for your audience
• provide something they consider high value and relevant
• teach something
• clarify an issue
• make it easy to understand
• engage me with your style and tone
• make me feel welcome
• ensure I'm glad I clicked through
• give me a call to action that's about me, not you
• get to the point, then expand so I get something meaty that gets me involved

Highly employable content is:

• working hard in search results for audience-centric terms
• stayed with long enough to be read from beginning to end
• positioned to invite further engagement from the audience
• referred to others with similar interests
• interactive - meaning it invites response, generates conversation, etc.

Content has got to be more than words on a page. If it's not employable, boot it and "hire" other content that works harder for your audience. Yes, this means your content won't engage everyone. Then again, everyone is not your market.

Success Stories are Sales Tools

Most companies have what they think are success stories on their websites. They call them case studies. Generally, they're more about telling everyone how great your company is and getting your product names in the text as many times as possible. And, they include customer testimonials that rave about your company or products—or both.

A company-focused case study may be a validation point to push an end-stage purchase decision, but it's not compelling enough to drive early momentum and extended interest. Great testimonials are expected, therefore the impact is somewhat diluted. If they were bad, would you publish them?

A success story, on the other hand, is all about your customer. And, if you want to get as much traction as possible, consider writing multiple stories from different angles and personalizing the story to match the needs of specific segments and thinking tracks.

Success stories can also be written as conversational briefs for use by your salespeople.

Below are some elements that transform the memorializing of customer projects from case studies to success stories. Hint—It's all about your customers.

• Set up.
  Why did the customer seek out your solution? A good success story not only sets up the description of who the customer is, but tells readers about the business problem that existed to compel them to seek change. Done well, this allows your reader to put themselves in the situation as their own. Don't forget to talk about the impact or cost to the customer due to the persistence of that problem.


• Action.
  How did you help the customer solve their problem? Yes, the success story should include an exposure of the expertise your company applied to the customer's problem. (Notice I didn't say product.) Talk about how you worked with the customer to help them choose and accept the change. You can even include options considered and show why they weren't chosen. Think about this stage as helping your readers evaluate pros and cons. Remember to keep the focus squarely on the customer, even though you're showcasing your expertise.


• Outcome.
  What impact did the change have in your customer's business? This is the section focused on success. How did your customer's business outcomes change after project completion? Once that problem was eliminated, what shifted for them? What new opportunities were available for growth that didn't exist before the solution was implemented?


• SideBar.
  Display product components. If you have to mention products within the story, do so sparingly. If the story is relevant to your readers, they'll  become involved in the progression because the context addresses what they're interested in—solving a high-priority problem. Once they've embraced that, they'll want to know what was included in the solution to drive those results—so tell them. But don't distract them from the story by putting product names with trademark symbols and services marks all throughout your text.


• Quotes.
  Customers talking about the impact in ways their peers can appreciate will get attention and be more believable than outright raves about your company. You are not the only one who can solve their problem. There are many ways to achieve change. Some are better than others, depending on what the customer wants to achieve. Focus on quotes about your expertise, ability to listen, dedication to getting the promised results, etc. Ask customers to talk about new opportunities the solution has opened up and how they're capitalizing on them.

Consider talking with several different stakeholders with vested interests in the project and writing success stories from each perspective. People want to read about people like them who have the same concerns they do about problem and solution impacts. Success stories, just like content, are not at their most effective when written as one-size-fits-all resources.

Solving a problem requires change. Change is scary. The status quo is comfortable, even when it's causing stress. Which sounds strange, but we all know it's true. A success story can put prospective buyers into situations they may be experiencing and show them a way out. These types of stories will pull prospective buyers in during their research and consideration phase and help move them toward taking action to disrupt the status quo—with you. Which is the whole point.

Is Your Email Purposeful?

If our inboxes are any indication, email has become the marketer's drug of choice. I don't know about you, but I'm bombarded repetitively by vendors who have nothing new to say, but keep sending messaging anyway. I'm getting really fast at that delete button. And, lately, some of them have annoyed me so much I've sent their email to Junk, reported them as spam or unsubscribed—although sometimes that process is too difficult to deal with. Clicking spam is easier.

Email is a wonderful tool—when used correctly.

If any of these behaviors are indicative of your email practices, you need to rethink your email marketing strategy:

• You send me stuff without regard to my past behavior, unconcerned about my interests.
• You send the same message repeatedly the same day, week.
• You don't recognize that I've registered for your email or downloaded your white paper, so you keep sending that message - over and over.
• Your downloads are analyst papers from several years ago that haven't been updated and are no longer relevant.
• Your opt-out rate is increasing.
• Your click through rate is decreasing.

Here are some tips about how to be purposeful about email:

• Focus on a long-term nurturing strategy, not random hits.
• Do unto your list as you would appreciate done unto you.
• Segment your list based on interests.
• Make sure you communicate relevant, high value immediately - answer "So what?" fast!
• Talk to me, not about your products and solutions.
• Think problem - solution (see above)
• Create a series of emails that accomplishes a goal and increases your credibility.

Email is a nurturing tool that can be very effective in keeping your company top-of-mind with prospective buyers. But only if they're reading what you send. And that will only happen if what you send is relevant to your audience.

When to dump a marketing event

Sometimes that great idea you had about how to launch a product, get more attention from prospects or create momentum in the buying cycle is not going to fly. It can be the best idea in the world, but if the execution is faulty, it's better to dump it before it costs you more than you can afford.

And, I'm not necessarily talking about dollars, although the ramifications of spending for a so-so return are also a key consideration.

Here are some of the things to look out for:

Balls are getting dropped and your timetable is getting squeezed. This is not unexpected, but when you start having to compromise your plan because of consecutive misses in execution, it can either spur you on to pull the initiative off successfully, or indicate that failure looms.

The intention for the event is not what's being realized. If what you envisioned is not what you're seeing as the event takes shape, then you need to reassess. Ask yourself the following:

• Is the impression we'll make going to help us or hurt our company's credibility?
• Will key stakeholders be disappointed in the outcome?
• Realistically assess probabilities - given where you stand today in the execution plan, can you realistically expect to turn it around in the time before launch?
• If you recast your goals, is the event still worth the effort, cost, time and impact you'll produce? Or, are you better suited to let it go and move on?

A market or industry development has reduced the expected impact.
Things happen and priorities change. If the reason or urgency (from your customer's perspective) for holding your event has shifted to something else, can you shift the event to stay in line with that change? If you can't, it's better to stop and create a new plan. The worst thing you can do is continue and leave the impression with your prospects and customers that you're out of step with what's important to them.

The invitation list doesn't include the right audience.
You've planned an event focused on attaining strategic growth for C-level executives. Upon reviewing the lists of prospects and customer contacts submitted by your sales team you realize you'll have a room full of line-of-business managers or IT system managers. You have a couple of choices, depending on time and resource constraints - You can either generate a new list with the appropriate audience for your presentation, shift the content of the presentation to deliver a high-value, relevant event for the list you have, or dump the event.

There are many variables in planning and executing events, but moving forward when the odds are against you and time for adjustments is limited is a bad choice all the way around. Don't just think in terms of hard costs to your company, think in terms of market cost.

If the impression you'll make is not good for the long-term, it's probably not worth pursuing. That audience you disappointed is likely to carry that memory for a long time. Not to mention the impression you'll leave with management and your sales team if the event flops or the leads you hand off never become opportunities.

Set a drop-dead date for forecasted outcome assessment and don't be afraid to dump the event in favor of the next initiative that will be better served with your full attention.