Posted by Jonathan Block on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 @ 10:42 AM
We've seen it happen in the realm of demand creation; marketers have realized that being more analytical about their activities has led to more measurable results. Understanding your marketing data leads to better targeting, segmenting and the more optimized pairing of tactics and offers to drive better results throughout the waterfall. More and more organizations are realizing the importance of the marketing operations role to make this a reality.
Now it's time to see a similar role (and more) that applies the same analytical discipline to the seeding of demand, typically the responsibility of the reputation function in driving engagement and awareness. When it comes to social media specifically, we continue to see a lack of insight and analytics both in the processes companies use to measure and in the capabilities of the technologies that are designed to assist in defining, collecting and analyzing metrics without employing expensive services. You may gain some depth of information regarding your share of voice, sentiment and engagement, but how wide does this knowledge go and what is it telling you about moving the needle for driving business?
Organizations need to take the solution into their own hands. Whether social operations becomes a specific role or a responsibility spread across a number of employees, the key is to take all the data and metrics you can collect to follow the social media breadcrumbs and connect the dots in ways that existing technologies and agencies can't provide beyond traditional brand measurement. Sure, it's useful to understand the demographics, habits and preferences of your networks and communities within Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but you need the insights that go across these multiple communities (and more) to not only better understand and serve your customers and prospects, but to be able to market to them more effectively as well.
So, who is responsible for social operations within your company and how do you see such a role evolving?
Posted by Megan Heuer on Fri, Jul 30, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Are your marketing programs attracting the right kinds of prospects? Only your data can tell you. While it’s tempting to stop at reviewing email response rate, opt-out percentages or unique visitor growth on the website, understanding and optimizing B2B marketing tactic effectiveness requires a little more digging. You need to look into the details behind those numbers and how tactics impact the overall health of the contact database. Here are some guidelines for using the contact database to shed light on what works and what doesn’t.
Define Who You Need to Attract. It’s hard to know if a tactic is encouraging interactions with the right contacts if a clear goal has not been set as to who the desired audience is. Who exactly is your desired audience for the tactic and what goal are you supporting with them? One this is defined, if you are pursuing an outbound tactic, take a look in your database to see how many of these individuals you already know. If the universe in there is smaller than you know it to be, consider targeted contact acquisition. If the tactic is inbound (meaning not sent out to specific names but positioned where the right kinds of contacts go to encourage them to respond and identify themselves), then define the baseline of contacts that meet your criteria so you know when additions are made. The initial goal is to estimate a rough size for the segment you want to reach and what percentage of it you already know so it’s clear when gains or losses happen in the database.
Build a Segment Data Snapshot. For your target segments, track overall contact gains and losses monthly to see what the net impact of marketing programs is on building the contact database. As part of your normal database reporting, compare the number of names and the percent of total database added each month (de-duped from existing contacts) to the number of contacts lost or no longer usable. This not only shows whether the database is growing or shrinking, but at how rapid a pace movement is taking place. The calculation also can be used to determine incremental return on investment for specific addition efforts; for example, a demand creation program might contribute 100 leads, but if it also added 500 new names to the database and helped with the completion of 250 more records as well, there is incremental value that should be identified and reported.
Put together, these elements provide a warning system for changes that could hurt down the road. They’re also a way to identify highly successful approaches that should be shared and emulated to boost others’ contact acquisition results.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 08:58 AM
While methodologies and approaches abound for understanding where customers or prospects are in the social channel and how they use it, we've found no better guide than our buying cycle. I'll use this post to cover our buying cycle concept and the roles within it, while a future post will discuss how these notions should play a key role in your social strategy and execution.
If an organization doesn't understand — even at a basic level — the way prospects buy what it sells, it will never be able to use social media outlets and marketing to facilitate these decisions. This is due to the fact that as prospects move toward a purchase, the tone, message, offer and even communicator for a specific marketing effort should be altered.
Buyers don’t go through a straight-line process of getting information through the Web or social outlets, weighing one solution against another and finally making a decision. Instead, a typical B2B buying process comprises a series of smaller decisions involving a variety of audiences that move into and out of the buying process.
SiriusDecisions has created a model that describes six macro stages that B2B organizations typically go through (see diagram, below). These six stages can be rolled up into three higher-level phases: education, active buying and closing.
As you are identifying the distinct activity phases within a buying cycle, you should also be uncovering who the key “actors” are in each phase and the specific roles they play. Typical actors include champions, CXOs, influencers (can be external or internal to the company), users and ratifiers (usually purchasing, procurement or negotiations). It is common for groups to enter and leave regularly, and to play multiple — and very different — roles depending on the type of product or service being sold. While a CTO might play a significant role during the Exploring Possible Solutions stage in one case, he or she will wait for the Justifying the Decision stage in another. Users may be brought in early or late, while other executive groups play no role whatsoever.
An understanding of actors and roles by stage is a tremendous advantage to your sales and marketing teams; not only will they know whom to target (and who to ignore) and what channels (social or otherwise) to use, but messaging, programs and specific content can be developed and delivered at the right time. You also will avoid common mistakes such as targeting the CXO level with Loosening of the Status Quo and Committing to Change messages and demand creation efforts when these executives do not play any role at the beginning of the buying process.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, May 21, 2010 @ 10:42 AM
We'd like to thank all the attendees and sponsors for making our 2010 Summit such a success. I had originally planned on providing a recap of some of the content we presented, but a number of folks have already done a fantastic job at that so I'll just provide links to the summaries out there.
Adam Needles (@abneedles) has written the most comprehensive report on the Summit, which we encourage everyone to read:
Click here for Adam's summary
Here's a few more links to other insights:
From Kate Maddox (@kate_maddox) at BotB Magazine Online:
Click here for Kate's first article
Click here for Kate's second article
From Andrew Gaffney (@agaffney) at DemandGen Report:
Click here to read Andrew's article
From Bill Lee (@bill_lee) of the Customer Reference Forum:
Click here to read Bill's blog post
Thanks to all who took the time to write down their thoughts and if you know of any other, please post a link in the comments below. We look forward to seeing you in 2011!
Posted by Jonathan Block on Mon, Apr 26, 2010 @ 11:08 AM
I'll start off saying by way of a disclaimer that this post will mainly be an advertisement for our upcoming Summit, May 12-14 in Phoenix, so feel free to hop off now if that rubs you the wrong way.
With that out of the way, I've heard a number of comments recently about the lack of B2B content at many marketing and social media conferences. This isn't too surprising as it's a lot easier to determine the value of a marketing program that is essentially a transaction rather than the months-long sales cycles that typifies a B2B deal. And when B2B marketers tag either the first or last interaction as the magic tactic, it's tough to get a clear picture of the optimal marketing mix.
Which brings us to our 2010 Summit. We've assembled a great cast of guest speakers that will share case studies and best practices on the ROI of optimizing marketing and sales through function alignment. Our guests are senior-level marketing and sales leaders, including:
- Maxine Graham - senior director, global integrated marketing and operations; Blue Coat Systems
- Peter Johnson - senior manager, marketing operations; Blue Coat Systems
- Heidi Melin - senior vice president and chief marketing officer; Polycom
- Andrew Miller - executive vice president, global field operations; Polycom
- Rene Saltzherr - senior director marketing, global demand marketing services; Oracle
- Doug Sechrist - vice president of demand marketing; Taleo
- David Shirk - executive vice president of global marketing; Siemens PLM Software
We hope to see you in Phoenix! If you can't make it, be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter by using the tag #sds10
Posted by Megan Heuer on Mon, Apr 19, 2010 @ 10:51 AM
One topic dominated conversations during my travels and on client calls the last several weeks: marketing tactic return-on-investment (ROI). This is hotly debated by analysts and consultants, not to mention pretty much anyone who has ever had to run or defend budget for a marketing program. Like any good question for the ages, the answer is “it depends,” but we can offer some clarity around what it depends upon and what can be measured.
Let’s start with the definition of a lead, because that’s where the ROI calculation trouble usually begins. For the record, we don’t believe every inquiry is a lead. It’s an inquiry, which means someone who has raised his or her hand to take some action you have made available. An inquiry can be anything from a newsletter sign up to a whitepaper download to an event registration and more. On its own, an inquiry does not signal readiness to buy, which means it is not a lead (yet). Our years of benchmark data show companies who treat every inquiry as if it is a lead and send it to sales do not perform as well as those who have a process to nurture contacts from inquiries until they are properly qualified and ready for sales. When marketing teams follow this pattern of sending every inquiry to sales, they reduce potential to deliver against goals in the most effective way possible, and by extension this reduces potential for sales to be more effective and efficient. Now in the rare case where an inquiry says “call me I’m looking to buy,” the qualification process is a lot shorter, but this type of inquiry is less common than, say, a whitepaper download. Case in point: this week alone I got two calls from companies after I completed forms to download whitepapers in which I clearly stated I was an industry analyst and not looking to buy. In both cases, a competent and polite sales rep called and asked me about my inquiry. If they had read the form, they would have known the call was a waste of time. Calls are not free, so sending an unqualified contact to sales also wasted money.
Based on this thinking, let’s tackle the tactic ROI question. Specifically, marketers want to attribute dollar return based on closed deals to a single tactic, when no single tactic deserves that much credit. If you know your sales cycle involves multiple touches from marketing before you can consider a lead qualified and ready for sales, then it is impossible to attribute revenue from a closed deal to any single tactic. Some systems are set up to attribute a first or last marketing touch to each lead that is passed to sales and that’s the tactic that gets credit for the close. This results in a flawed view of what really works because all you see is one touch, when in fact there may have been tens of touches over a long period of time that in combination supported qualification of a lead. It’s just not that simple in B2B, and trying to make it simpler can hurt marketers’ ability to allocate resources. Instead, take a more realistic and practical view of the role of tactics by monitoring cost per response (from new or existing contacts) and cost per contact added to the database. Next look at the appearance of those tactics in the buyer’s journey. First look at the number of touches it typically takes to qualify and what those are, then look at the touches present all the way from qualification to close. This will provide a more accurate view of the relative success of various tactics vs. their cost. The key is not to confuse tactic ROI with overall marketing ROI, because doing so sells them both short.
Posted by Megan Heuer on Fri, Mar 26, 2010 @ 10:20 AM
If data is the lifeblood of demand creation, shouldn’t it have a heart monitor attached? I talk with many companies about their reporting and dashboards, and data is rarely part of the conversation. That should change. The best leading indicator of demand creation throughput is the effectiveness of tactics designed to add contacts to the database. When the focus is only on downstream results, including conversions and marketing qualified leads, it is more difficult to pinpoint problems upstream that clog the flow of data. Adding data to regular reporting allows another level of diagnosis, and some of the problems it finds can have a huge impact.
Take the case of an organization that invests heavily in inbound marketing activities to draw people to its website to request assets. The marketing operations team gathers reports from the web team, which show the number of visits to the site and the pages viewed. What they don’t see is how many of those web visitors hit a form page, completed the form, and were added to the database as marketable contacts. They also don’t see how many of the contacts who came in via inbound tactics fit the most desirable demographics for marketing to attract. Marketing ops may also get reports from the field marketing team or demand center, showing click-throughs and conversions on emails, and all leads created by campaign. They also don’t see how many of the individuals who clicked through an emails and saw a form, but did not complete it and were not added to the database; and if the name came from a list rental, then that’s money out the window. And, there’s no ability with this reporting to monitor on a cumulative basis how many of the most desirable contacts (or all contacts for that matter) are opting out and the impact that has on database growth.
The solution is adding at least one key performance indicator (KPI) plus a few key metrics around database health. Together, they provide the basic foundation:
- Net monthly database growth: Percentage of records gained minus percentage of records lost (opt-outs, bad data, etc.)
- Total percentage of usable records in the database
- Percentage of new contacts added each month
- Percentage of contacts lost each month, separated by opt-out/unsubscribe percentage vs. lost to data issues (bounce, bad address, etc.)
- Percentage of those who reach a form and complete it
If the organization described above was tracking these metrics, then the marketing ops team would identify the fact that specific web forms have low completion rates and need to be revised and tested for better results to improve database growth to take better advantage of good inbound traffic levels. They would also be able to see that specific inbound activities are attracting contacts from a different segment than the one intended. They might also sound the alarm on increasing opt-outs that appear to be tied to specific third-party data sources. This knowledge can save money and improve effectiveness, and that’s the definition of good reporting.
Your action item: Add data health metrics to your dashboard and let it be known the doctor is in.
Posted by Jay Gaines on Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 09:49 AM
What B2B company doesn’t want a powerful brand that draws customers and makes the competition green with envy? After all, a compelling brand can influence buying decisions, justify higher prices, transcend cultural barriers, and create deep and lasting loyalty among customers. But in the quest to find and project the perfect brand, many b-to-b leaders risk aligning their businesses with misleading and even false brand promises that simply don’t reflect their customers’ experience or the core competencies of the organization.
Marketers have experienced increased demand to deliver a continuous stream of highly qualified leads to a sales force under tremendous pressure. The inevitable result has been an intense focus on short-term revenue supporting efforts while longer-term strategies have taken a back seat. This shift from long-term growth strategies to short-term revenue generation means that many B2B CMOs have turned their focus away from (among other things) customer experience management at critical touch points, including products/services, customer service and web sites. While short-term cash flow remains critical, leading B2B organizations understand that ignoring customer experience management could be a recipe for disaster.
This decline in attending to customer experience can lay the foundation for negative perceptions that will last long after the economy picks up and spending increases. As much as B2B marketing is about doing what is necessary to achieve near-term financial goals, an equally important responsibility is creating and maintaining a lasting, powerful (and positive) perception of the company. That’s exactly where brand comes into play. It’s through the lens of brand and its associated promise that buyers measure their experiences with the company; therefore, brands that don’t align with the typical customer experience are doing far more harm than good.
Also, due to the explosion of social media, B2B customers and buyers have very visible channels for expressing their opinions, as well as increased access to the opinions of others — and as we all know, this new customer empowerment has changed the B2B world forever. For example, a Google search for virtually any company won’t just reveal links to the company website and relevant information pages; customer reviews, raves and rants will often pop up within the first page of Google results. It is increasingly clear that customers who have been given a voice through social media now have as much influence over how a company is perceived as marketers at the company.
While astute B2B companies can play this magnified customer voice to their advantage by identifying and closing gaps between their brand promise and customer reality, businesses that don’t take action are putting themselves at serious risk. The new transparency that exists in the typical business/customer relationship means that businesses with customer experience management strategies that aren’t aligned with their brand message risk damaging their reputation, their relationships with customers and their future sales.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jan 29, 2010 @ 10:31 AM
While more and more companies understand that a response to a campaign or program is not in itself a lead, the question still remains: when is a lead a lead? Marketing often interprets a prospect’s characteristics and actions as those of an ideal buyer, but sales refuses to act, believing the prospect requires more nurturing. In the end, the only way to view reality through a common lens is to develop a language that defines a “lead’s” place along a continuum.
Developing this language can be achieved when sales and marketing begin to understand and speak each other’s language, and build a common taxonomy that describes the state of a prospect. One way is to agree to gather necessary information about a prospect’s attributes. As a group, you must agree whether the information can be collected, and whether specific pieces truly contribute to lead definition (or are just nice-to-knows). This information can then be used to build a scorecard to help determine whether a lead is qualified or not based on a threshold of criteria that must be met. This needed information will be different by product or solution, but often contains the following:
- Demographics: Not only company data such as revenue size, industry, sub-industry, geographical region and employees, but also the prospect’s individual demographics, including title, function, power level and buying role.
- Attributes: What helps to determine the viability of one lead vs. another, such as functional budget allocations, parent vs. subsidiary or competitive situation.
- Activity: Specific activities that a prospect engages in, such as downloading of a white paper, attending a live or online event, or submitting a survey.
- Buying Status: This may include BANT (budget, authority, need, timeline) characteristics, but a critical consideration is agreeing what (if any) of this information can be reliably collected by marketing, and what needs to wait for interactions from either inside or field sales.
Even though sales and marketing often hear each other, that doesn’t mean they’re listening to what the other is saying. In the case of demand creation, without a jointly developed lead taxonomy, good opportunities (and revenue) will almost certainly be lost. Don’t lose ground to your competitors because you find your sales and marketing functions in a war of words; get working on your own lead taxonomy today.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Wed, Jan 20, 2010 @ 09:22 AM
Social media monitoring is a popular topic these day, and deservedly so. From our perspective monitoring is one of the four cornerstones of an effective social media strategy, which consists of Monitoring, Engagement, Awareness and Demand Creation. But where vendor functionality regularly outpaced a B2B organization's skills and process capabilities, users are finding such monitoring tools lacking in some key areas. This is not unlike the the marketing automation platforms (MAP) space; it's only in the last couple of years that B2B marketers have evolved to the point where they can take full advantage of MAP capabilities.
Let's look at what we're hearing from clients on two fronts:
- Integration: Again, not unlike MAPs, ease of integration of social monitoring platforms with other enterprise systems will become a differentiator for many customers. And we mean true integration, not just importing and exporting data. If you're only interested in tracking mentions, keywords and sentiment, as well as some indication of your level of engagement, then a standalone monitoring tool will be sufficient. But most B2B organizations look beyond communication goals to social media marketing, which requires tracking all customer and prospect interactions (what we call "following the social media breadcrumbs"), and integrating this data into MAP and CRM systems is critical. This explains why social tools are finding their way into such systems, either through partnering, acquisition, or the vendors building such functionality themselves.
- From reporting to analytics: Most clients tell us that social media monitoring platforms are good at reporting what people are talking about, where they're doing that talking, and offering some indication of sentiment, but many B2B marketers are disappointed at the lack of analysis they get. To be fair, agencies are still a significant user base of monitoring tools and many provide this analysis as a value-add to their customers, but more and more marketers are interested in leveraging these tools themselves. If monitoring solutions don't provide the analysis customers need, they'll need to integrate with systems that can such as a web analytics or business intelligence solution.
Social media monitoring is a still a relatively new market and growing pains are to be expected. While some users complain about usability issues (whither the concept of robust online help?), B2B organizations realize they must continue to evolve from a skills and process perspective to best take advantage of social monitoring tools. But these solutions also need to evolve from data aggregation to a solution for insight and action, providing not just activity information (read: who, what and where) but some indication of the impact these activities.
How would you like to see social media monitoring evolve?