Going Old School

Like many other marketing people, over the past month, I’ve been planning my next activities for the first half of 2012. I work in an industry of rapid technological change and, as much as I like to plan for at least a year, often many of my plans are three- to six-month campaigns. Branding and longer-term messaging I can plan for a year or more but lead generation is usually two quarters out at best. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

For my upcoming campaigns, among the mix is a revival of some marketing old school techniques. In particular, direct mail. Email has become less and less effective. Open rates are sliding lower and click thrus are even worse. Some of my more targeted emails are very effective. But I need to generate more interest than those tactics provide. I segment my audience based on personas. I try a couple of different subject lines and email content. But I am running into several issues. Primary among them are:

• Just TOO much email – everyone’s inbox is overloaded. We all know the noise.
• Email not getting delivered – particularly acute in my industry, aerospace & defense, where prime contractors’ servers are blocking a lot of mass generated email.

So our marketing group is working with our sales team to develop comprehensive campaign that will involve direct mail. We are targeting by job role and company and will be doing something high-end (dimensional) for our top persona.

Going old school. Despite the cheerleaders around inbound marketing, as someone with a need to create demand for my sales team and a limited budget, I don’t ignore any channel that can do this effectively. I’ll be doing inbound, social, email, content, video, events – almost any other tactic you can think of. But I’ll be throwing direct mail back into the mix this year.

Marketing Automation updates

The latest issue (November 7) of B2B Magazine has a couple of interesting articles on Marketing Automation. The first, “Lack of Resources Impedes Marketing Automation Adoption,” reports on the results of a survey conducted in August and September. The survey was conducted by B2B and Aprimo, a supplier of a marketing automation solution. So the highlights are:

• only 44% of b2b marketers have implemented some sort of automation
• a scary 11% are not aware of marketing automation

11%? Really? What, do you live under a rock? But maybe the 11% just didn’t understand what was meant by marketing automation. Still, that is a rather high percentage considering how long these systems have been around.

Of the 44% of “users,” here’s some interesting findings:

• 52% use it for automatic distribution of leads
• 19% leveraging more advanced features such as lead nurturing programs, closed-loop automation (not really sure what they mean by that) and sales/marketing alignment

An interesting part of the article quotes Jeff Ernst, an analyst at Forrester, who says that “full-featured” automation is only being used by about 5% of b2b marketers. Since the survey had a relatively low 276 respondents who likely are B2B magazine readers and more engaged in this area, I believe Mr. Ernst may be closer to the true number. I would be interested in people’s thoughts on this.

As a side note, a little over a year ago, I wrote a blog article on “Evaluating Marketing Automation vendors.” I’m thinking it may be worth re-visiting that article and updating it. There are several new and impressive vendors in this space.

The second article in the issue is “Marketing Automation Requires Buy-In to a Different Way of Thinking.” This article covers some important things to know about implementing marketing automation and the changes/benefits it can deliver.

Both of these articles are worth the read.

ROI and Marketing’s Best Blogs

I read the Editor’s Notes of the November issue of Target Marketing magazine with interest. What first caught my interest was the DATA BYTES sidebar. Pulling from IBM’s interviews with 1,734 CMOs, it highlights the increasing focus on return on (marketing) investment.

This is something I’ve pushed for the past 10+ years at the firms I’ve worked for. Too many times, I’ve been at companies where they see marketing as a “spend” as opposed to an investment. And marketing is to blame for that. If you never prove what you do drives revenue and results, then you will be viewed as a “spend.” As a result, you are among the first for cuts to budget when times get tough. Marketing leaders need to be know more than marketing. They need to understand business.

The primary part of the Editor’s Note was on the new feature they are developing – Marketing’s Best Blogs. Looks promising. And maybe some of you readers with blogs should consider contributing. You’ve got some good ideas out there!

So called experts

While at a recent B2B marketing summit, I took advantage of having several of my company’s efforts (web site, email campaigns, landing pages) critiqued. For the most part, I was happy. But one review (by one of the vendors trying to sell their services) had me just shaking my head.

He was quick to be a critic but never asked about my market, customers or unique issues I had to deal with. Basically, he was not too smart. He had some good comments in general on our stuff but “in general” is not what I deal with. I have a specific audience. And specific needs for my niche. I don’t need some “best of practices” sermon. I like to keep up w/ best of practices but you need to tweak them to meet your specific needs.

I’ve been an independent consultant so I’ve been in his shoes. And he just doesn’t get it. He didn’t listen to me at all.

While I was consulting, I had a potential client (who really wanted to hire me) ask me about what I could do to increase her lead generation. Now, I’m an expert at lead gen. But I asked her to take a step back and think about her target market. I told her, I could generate 100′s of leads in a heartbeat. But I tried to tell her, that’s not what she wants or needs. She needed a limited number of quality leads. She just couldn’t focus down on a targeted segment where we could really get quality leads. 

At the end of the day, I gave her a lot of advice and I’m not really sure what she did or where she went. I feel really good about the engagement because I helped her better understand what she wanted and was trying to do. 

For me, the lesson was do your best and don’t sell out. I could have easily just taken her money and delivered “leads.” But it wouldn’t have helped her business. A more thorough strategic overview would have helped. Plus, a business plan.

MarketingSherpa B2B summit

I’ve been in B2B marketing for about 15 years. Ever since my MBA days, finding learning experiences that were relevant and applicable to me as a B2B marketer – well, there just weren’t many. I can count on one hand the number of conferences and “training” seminars I’ve been to that actually taught me enough to make it worth  my while. And my company’s money. This conference was four of the five fingers on that one hand. From the first session on day 1, I was engaged and learning. I’ve been on the bleeding edge of high-tech marketing for over a decade but, not only did I learn a substantial amount of new stuff, I also has the “slap in the face” moment of things I know better about but just haven’t spent the time on.

#1 from this conference – the VALUE PROP – the basis off of which almost everything you do depends. It needs to be a clear and succinct value proposition. It has to answer “why should I care about you?” and “how are you different/unique for your competitors?” Here’s a link to one of the many free pieces of content you can get on MarketingExperiments.com:

Do You Have the Right Value Proposition?

So much more to digest from this. Hopefully I’ll get time to spread some more in future posts.

Boost Email Engagement

Evidently, the September 19, 2011 issue of B2B Magazine is a lesson in re-using content! Most of the articles are recycled from earlier this year. But it works. And the content is still very relevant.

One of the articles, Using Email to Boost Customer Engagement, has some good points. I was very happy to see that I already do many of these things. But I do like the idea of segmenting by “engaged” versus “unengaged.” I do struggle with the unengaged part of my database.

And, to be truthful, that segment far outnumbers our “engaged” segment. So I’m going to try some of the ideas in this article – change up the subject and content for emails to the unengaged. And try to re-engage them. And if they don’t, cut them loose. They have no interest and I don’t want to bother them with email.

So I’m looking to use the unengaged list to see what the problem is. Is it the subject lines? Content? No match for what we offer? I’d like to know.

Embrace Rogue IT

My technical background keeps me interested (though not always involved) in IT issues. Like most “consumers” of IT services, I always think about what I can do in the consumer market and compare it to the ancient technology most companies provide. I fully understand the pressures most, if not all, IT departments are under. They face daunting and often contradictory demands.

Working in the Defense industry, security is a paramount concern. That being said, I found this article in CIO magazine enlightening. It talks about how people will use new technology no matter what IT tries to do. And that can cause some serious organizational problems. But IT can’t stick there head in the sand – like they do at my company. You are missing the boat.

http://www.cio.com/article/688906/What_CIOs_Should_Do_About_Rogue_IT

Unfortunately, you may need to register to get the full article.

Hiring Marketing People

Lately, I’ve been pretty busy interviewing people. I love it because I really like working for a company that is growing and inviting in new blood. However, this article by James Rogers in B2B Magazine hit a nerve. I just interviewed someone this week who had all the technical skills. He was very competent. But walking out, I knew it just wasn’t a fit. A big part of it was cultural fit, but another bit part was what James brings out in this article. I need someone to work with who has “innovation and agility.” Even in this wide open market (from a hiring perspective), it can be a hard thing to find.

Marketing Accountability

Finally getting around to the June issue of B2B Magazine (the issue I was quoted in and article on Social Media ROI) and found this article on Marketing accountability particularly interesting. It’s about the latest SiriusDecisions’ annual event. I like SiriusDecisions and have been following their advice at both of my last two companies.

The one quote I love from the article is from Megan Heuer of SiriusDecisions. She says, “You have to determine what it’s worth to give marketing a dollar, because marketing is either part of the solution or a cost center.” Tying marketing to business success is critical. It may seem scary at first because you are moving to the big people table, but if you don’t, you are seen as a cost center that gets cut during tough times instead of an investment center that provides a return.

It all comes down to metrics. You need to figure what you do in marketing that drives business success. Not things like open rates – those are fine for measuring the effectiveness of an email. But I’m talking about what you report to execs. Those one or two key metrics that drive revenue. I’ve written a few earlier posts on metrics for those with more interest. For more, check out Marketing Metrics.

CORE Marketing

Forrester is touting its “CORE” marketing principles. In my opinion, it’s just re-packaging common sense – and maybe proliferating the problems that arise from naming and creating silos. That’s ironic since one of the quotes in the article is about breaking down silos.

I understand the need to name stuff and put it in buckets but there is a drawback to that. Every time you name something, you may be creating a silo. And Forrester is doing just that with its CORE principles and interactive marketing. For the last 15 years, I’ve been what I would call a “marketing manager.” A generalist position responsible for growing a business through intelligent and effective marketing. I use whatever technique is best to reach my target audience and gives me the best ROI. I don’t care what you call it. It may be:

• “inbound” marketing
• “outbound” marketing
• “interactive” marketing
• “direct” marketing
• social media
• advertising
• SEO and SEM
• digital marketing

Etcetera, ad nauseum. A marketing person needs to use whatever works best in the particular situation and to reach the specific target audience. We need a really big toolbox with a lot of tools. And we probably won’t throw one out even if it is “out-dated.” Hell, I’ll use billboards if it makes sense.

Take direct mail. I need to reach executives. Let me tell you, you won’t reach many of them with email. But you likely will have better success with traditional mail. Or even very targeted TV ads. It all comes down to these questions:

• who is my target?
• where do they go for information?
• what are the best ways to influence them?

I understand (and heavily leverage) the need for specialists. Someone who gets SEO or copywriting or email best practices. But those “silos” should be integrated as needed into an intelligent marketing campaign. However, sometimes giving names to things creates those silos we really don’t want.