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Archive for Demand Generation

Marketing Operations Specialists & Experts – Essential Skillsets

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Monday, July 11th, 2011

The days of a “marketing communications” team focused on and measuring success on activity-based efforts are long gone.  Fair warning to the marketing managers and directors who build empires with people – your days are numbered! The organizations that will throttle the competition are leaner, smarter and know how to use technology to engage customers to drive revenue.  Marketing teams that focus their demand generation merely by producing brochureware, random email campaigns, and tradeshow activity will lose.

Marketing departments are expected to do more with less.  Most importantly, these Revenue Marketing Teams are measured more on impact to revenue than anytime ever before.  (Or at least they are expected to measure impact to revenue.) The best people to staff these teams will possess unique skills and attributes that combine creativity and hard-nosed business sense.  Think of these unique teams and experts like Marketing SEALs or Marketing Special Forces.  Smart, tough, tightly knit small groups, focused on well orchestrated steps to accomplish a mission.  Empire builders who measure their success and egos by hiring tons of people won’t survive in the era of Revenue Marketing.

Here are some critical skills and attributes we recommend for recruiting the best marketing operations expert for your revenue marketing team.

Ability to Envision a Business Process

Marketing automation platforms enable the business process of demand generation and revenue marketing.  A marketing operations specialist must be able to design a process with the vision of end to end results.  Additionally, a marketing operations specialist must coordinate a process outside of the department with Sales and Support teams.  A marketing operations specialist must envision the steps a potential buyer will follow.

Implementation of a Business Process with Marketing Automation

Envisioning a business process is one thing.  Implementing the business process with a marketing automation platform is a special skillset that requires business savvy and technical acumen.  Sophisticated workflows require a powerful engine to support the steps, especially when lead nurturing and scoring programs are involved.  All are enabled and supported when properly implemented with a marketing automation platform.

Strategic Data Management, Analysis and Interpretation

One of the most critical roles a marketing operations specialist has is managing customer data in a marketing automation platform and in some cases, the CRM platform. (Politics aside, owning the customer data makes perfect sense.  Sales can still “own” the relationship.)  Data management is critical from the types of information captured, how much is captured, when in the buying process, where, and how.  This information helps build profiles and shapes the ultimate success of customer marketing efforts.  A marketing operations specialist can help build and shape this overall strategy.

Organizational Communications

Effective communication skills help set proper expectations on strategic initiatives and tactical execution. Additionally strong communications help report results and ensure executive-level support.

Hands-on Marketing Automation Platform and CRM Experience

Eventually CRM and Marketing Automation platforms will be available in a single platform.  Before this market convergence occurs a marketing operations specialist must understand the intricacies on how data and information flow between the marketing automation and CRM platforms. Basic levels of technical acumen are a must-have skillset.

Think Strategically and Execute Brilliantly

Strategy without execution is hallucination.  Marketing folks are great at talking strategy with great ideas and grand visions.  The ones who succeed will put the strategy into action with brilliant tactical execution.  A marketing operations specialist must see the big picture and use technology, content, and process to make a revenue marketing process work.  Avoid the people who merely want to attend high-visibility meetings and merely “own” the usage of a marketing automation platform.  Find the expert who has strategic brainpower and makes great things happen!

Content Curation

Without content, marketing automation platforms lack the fuel to drive campaign efforts.  A marketing operations pro may not be THE overall curator for content.  But they can work to mobilize an entire organization to support content creation for customer marketing efforts.

These are some of the most critical skills and attributes we see with the most successful marketing operations specialists and marketing automation experts.  Don’t be misled by the tag of “automation”.  There is a ton of heavy lifting involved with these special people who help drive revenue for an organization!

We’d like to know your thoughts on skills and attributes you find most valuable!

Categories : Marketing Automation, Marketing Operations, Revenue Marketing, workflow
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5 Steps to Take Before Buying a Marketing Automation Solution

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Monday, April 25th, 2011

Zephyr 47′s Brian Hansford recently wrote this blog for Matt Heinz with Heinz Marketing.

5 Steps to Take before Buying a Marketing Automation Solution

Marketing automation follows the trends similar to the early stages of other business automation technologies including Customer Relationship Management to Supply Chain Management to the pre-Web 1.0 era of client-server development projects before that. All those technologies were promised to solve problems, make jobs easier, and generate revenue.

But even today, the successful utilization of CRM solutions is low, regardless of current SaaS services and technologies. Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret, Inc., reports 47% of CRM implementations in 2009 are judged as failures. The good news is marketing executives can learn from the mistakes and best practices of predecessor systems in business automation. Marketing is generally the last department in an organization to automate business processes and faces many of the same challenges other departments and functions faced.

However, DemandGen Report quotes Jonathan Block, Sirius Decisions, estimating that the success rate for companies adopting marketing automation is approximately 18%. When used primarily as an email engine, adoption is “probably more than 50% (DemandGen Report, October 5, 2010). There are many reasons for partial utilization or outright failure and system abandonment. Most of the issues come from people – simple as that. Don’t let this be your company!

When executed well, marketing automation platforms enable a well planned demand generation and lead management process and help organizations connect with customers at the right point in buying process.  Higher quality leads are sent to sales with sales cycles that are accelerated which drive more revenue.  However, implementing workflow and business process tools are difficult. Proper strategic planning and organizational mobilization can greatly enhance the value and revenue driven by a marketing automation platform.  Don’t make the mistake of using a marketing automation platform purely as an expensive e-mail marketing system. Here are 5 steps to follow before buying a marketing automation solution.

  1. Secure Executive Sponsorship

Any successful business strategy requires executive sponsorship, support, and even enforcement and marketing automation initiatives are no exception. Marketing automation impacts an entire enterprise and these champions are critical because they help mobilize the hearts and minds of people across the organization.  To get the CEO and CFO on board, you will need to explain the “why”—the business case for a marketing automation initiative. This is the time for executives and marketing managers to focus strategically on how to directly grow revenue through sophisticated and measurable demand generation. Build the business case that shows how marketing automation drives revenue.

2. Develop a Demand Generation Strategy and Lead Management Process

Before even beginning to evaluate marketing automation solutions, the marketing and sales managers must develop an initial demand generation strategy and lead management workflow. Every organization will do things differently and the better defined the demand generation strategy with supporting lead management process, the greater the chance of success using the right marketing automation system.

A marketing team won’t flip a switch and magically have a funnel of highly qualified leads instantly flowing into the sales department. The workflow should identify where inquiries come from and how they move through a buying cycle and different treatments. A well planned marketing automation implementation can cultivate or nurture these leads to a point and then hand off to sales for direct follow up. The process should map how campaigns will support the required flow of qualified lead flow which ultimately leads to revenue generation. The strategy provides the direction and vision which will be supported by the rights tools and people.

3. Establish a Collaboration Channel and Service Level Agreement with Sales

Before a marketing team even engages in an automation solution evaluation, the sales management team should be involved along with the support of the executive sponsor. Marketing automation enables new levels of revenue generation by helping develop high-quality leads more efficiently, while preventing funnel leakage.  Marketing has the fantastic opportunity to hold themselves and sales accountable for revenue generation.  Collaboration and buy-in from sales management is a critical success factor. This step should also include coming to agreement, as much as possible, on what a “marketing qualified lead” is and the expectations, or service level agreement, by which sales will contact those leads and track opportunities or pass back to marketing for nurturing.

4. Test and Evaluate the CRM Integration

Generating high quality leads without a systematic way to hand them off to sales is pointless.  Cloud-based CRM systems like Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are prolific and many marketing automation systems provide efficient technology integrations with most of the major CRM players. This is where organizations derive massive value from the advanced heavy lifting of developing a lead management process.  To be clear, this step is not as easy as mapping fields. The process must be in place at least 80% of the way for this to work. Sales management and the sales representatives must buy into the process. Sales must follow up on the marketing qualified leads and provide data back to help measure whether the right leads are flowing, or not.  Marketing automation integrated with CRM supports the full cycle of developing and managing leads and measuring effectiveness. Marketing executives can directly measure their performance on revenue generation. Both marketing and sales are held accountable with this integration, and that is good! This critical information must be captured within a CRM system.

5. Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy

Content is often the most overlooked and underestimated ingredient for a successful marketing automation strategy.  A well run marketing organization must have an annual campaign strategy and calendar, regardless of whether or not a marketing automation system is employed. Without a strategy and calendar, lead flow will be inconsistent and the content requirements will be unknown. Without content, the campaigns won’t get off the ground and the investment in marketing automation will be wasted.  Consider the content required to run campaigns for leads at various stages in the buying cycle. And from there additional content will be required to support nurturing campaigns that help prevent leakage in the marketing funnel. Depending on which industry in B2B marketing, there will be different individuals at a target company that will require content suited to their roles and influence. Develop the right content for the right audience to be delivered at the right time using a marketing automation platform.

Marketing automation platforms and solutions provide a powerful resource for organizations to drive revenue and strengthen customer relationships. The unstructured methods of activity-based marketing behavior are extinct—at least for those marketing executives who want to continue their careers and help organizations grow revenues. Marketing executives and Chief Marketing Officers must show how they will use their people, process, budget and technology to impact revenue cycles. Marketing automation solutions provide the foundation to accomplish this mission. Strong planning, preparation, process development, and creativity will greatly enhance the magnitude of success using marketing automation.  The 5 steps here are a great steps before buying the marketing automation solution.

Categories : Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Communications, SOSTAC, Strategic Marketing
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Content Marketing Strategy – Fuel for Marketing Automation Success

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Monday, April 11th, 2011
Ed. Note: The following content and nine additional tips for marketing automation success are available in our latest white paper.  You can download the paper here.

Content is often the most overlooked and underestimated ingredient for a successful marketing automation strategy. A well run marketing organization must have an annual campaign strategy and calendar, regardless of whether or not a marketing automation system is employed. Without a strategy and calendar, lead flow will be inconsistent and the content requirements will be unknown. Without content, the campaigns won’t get off the ground and the investment in marketing automation will be wasted.
Consider the content required to run campaigns for leads at various stages in the buying cycle. And from there additional content will be required to support nurturing campaigns that help prevent leakage in the marketing funnel. Depending on which industry in B2B marketing, there will be different individuals at a target company that will require content suited to their roles and influence. Develop the right content for the right audience to be delivered at the right time using a marketing automation platform.

Educational Content—Information designed to help prospective customers better understand the segment and solution. Well developed content that educates also establishes credibility. Industry reports, webinars, keynote event presentations, blogs, social media user groups, and white papers are excellent formats for educational content.

Awareness Content— As prospective customers become more educated on the segment and solutions they will evaluate how vendors address their needs. In addition to the formats used with educational content, customer evidence through case studies is fantastic in this area. Also, content that focuses on “how-to” or “best-practices” is a perfect fit in this area.

Affirmation Content— As leads are nurtured into opportunities for sales follow up, they need information that helps lead them to a confident purchase decision. This is the area where vendors can define the terms of an evaluation that competitors must follow. Develop an RFP model or template. Provide more case studies and best practices. ROI models are also valuable and help develop a business case. The goal here is to build confidence that YOU are the right one to work with.

Loyalty Content— The sale has been won but now is not the time for complacency. Develop the content and delivery channels that help your hard-earned customers squeeze every drop of value from your solution. The more value you provide with strong communications and content, the stronger the relationship and the less chance of a defection.

Not all content is created equally. Make sure the right content is provided to your customers and leads at the right time in their buying process. When done properly using marketing automation, you will build credibility, awareness, and set the standard your competition must react to in order to keep up. That’s a position of strength!

Categories : Content, Content Marketing, Content Publishing, Content Strategies, Marketing Automation
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With Marketing Automation – Analyze the Data that Impacts Revenue

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Monday, February 28th, 2011
Marketing automation platforms help marketing professionals identify revenue opportunities based on interactions and behaviors with a prospective company. Using the right metrics in demand generation will show how a marketing automation strategy drives revenue and connects with customers.

Find the right data on the dials to measure marketing performance

With companies adopting Web 1.0 technologies in the 1990’s and the Internet reaching the masses, marketers struggled to learn how to measure their impact to the business.  Email marketing reached a fever pitch with the promise of promoting e-commerce Web sites to consumers and businesses in the New Economy. Marketing teams still measure bullet point items like click-thrus, impressions, open rates, number of site visitors, and more. Even senior-level marketing executives could not connect the path between these activity metrics and impact to revenue.  Even today marketing managers and executives just look for higher activity numbers – more site visitors, more webinar attendees, more tradeshow leads and on. This type of analytical behavior places higher values on quantity over quality.

Now it’s more important to have higher quality leads that are ready for sales to engage versus a bucket of thousands of contact names with no identified or qualified interest. Marketing automation can help marketers identify the campaigns that produce the highest quality leads that generate the most revenue with the lowest cost.  This informational is powerful and empowering.

Here are some general examples of data to analyze and build the complete picture of how a marketing automation strategy impacts revenue.
1. Inquiry conversions – Measure conversion performance from initial contact through nurturing, opportunity, win/loss.
2. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) – Leads that meet agreed on qualification criteria that move to sales for further qualification and prospecting
3. Sales Qualified Leads – Track the percentage of MQLs that develop into Sales Qualified Leads. Also track the percentage of leads that sales disqualifies.
4. Sales follow up – Track the percentage of MQLs that are contacted by sales
5. Fallout – Track the percentage of leads that drop out of each stage of the marketing funnel and sales cycle. Identify opportunities to minimize dropoff
6. Conversion to Revenue – What is the overall picture of revenue generation from demand generation. Revenue per month, quarter, year.
7. Revenue per Campaign – Analysis that combines qualitative and quantitative analysis. Too often the old school method of direct marketing permeates marketing that more is better. Revenue per campaign may show the most effective campaigns produce the fewest number of leads. But, those leads may produce the highest revenue.
8. Cost per Campaign – Again, the lowest cost campaign may produce the highest revenue or highest volume of qualified leads.
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Using Web 1.0 metrics will focus on incomplete data and miss the whole story a strategic marketing function needs to tell. The list above provides ideas on the metrics to analyze to determine impact to revenue and the overall support of strategic marketing objectives. Focus on combining the quantitative data with qualitative over a period of time.~
Additional Resources

Categories : Demand Generation, Key Performance Indicators, Lead Management, Marketing Automation, Strategic Marketing
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Social Media Marketing Does NOT Replace Demand Generation

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Thursday, February 10th, 2011

{Note:  This entry was recently published by Zephyr 47′s CMO Brian Hansford on his personal blog here.}

Recently I had a very interesting meeting with a new B2B Zephyr 47 customer in the Puget Sound area.  This company recently engaged with a pure social media consulting firm which revamped the company’s web presence and implemented a social media marketing strategy.  I do believe the company’s web presence is nice and the social media tactics are manageable.  As much as possible they build their blog and Twitter account which should ultimately help a bit with SEO.

Here’s the rub and our customer said it best.

“I’m not seeing the needle move.”

The agency who consulted and led the social media marketing engagement with this company didn’t set expectations properly and focused exclusively on inbound marketing.  Additionally they didn’t implement a true demand generation program.  Also, the agency created more work for the customer through the use of peripheral tools which took away from sales and operational details.  The social media marketing effort appears to have been sold as a silver bullet solution to replace sound practices in demand generation and sales.

Social media emotions and swirl are redlined now.  However business still operates on the principles of ”creating customers.” Social media marketing is NOT a silver bullet and does NOT replace focused sales efforts and demand generation marketing.  For the right business in the right scenarios they are potentially complementary.

Now before the fanatics and activists get twisted panties, think about our new customer’s statement. THE NEEDLE HAS NOT MOVED. The web presence looks good but it has NOT made any difference in sales over the last 12 months.  This is where the social media “guru’s” and “ninja’s” have fallen off the rails.

Yes, Zephyr 47 advocates the pragmatic use of social media and as an organization we utilize several social media channels including this blog, Twitter, CinchCast, Facebook, Gist and LinkedIn. etc.  Social media provides interesting ways to learn, engage with old friends, connect with thought leaders and exchange ideas with industry experts.

Yes, I have developed many strong and special personal and professional relationships through social media.

No, I am not saying social media will die.

No, I do not care how many followers I get on Twitter.  Sorry.

No, I do not believe all social media activity should be directly tied to or measured in revenue. (unless it’s sold that way.)

Social media marketing does NOT matter to a business if customers aren’t there.  Remember, a business exists to create customers.  It’s a simple as that.

Go to Where Your Customers Are

The bottom line is social media provides a “channel” for some businesses to engage with customers or potential customers. For some businesses social media may work well at moving customers through a buying cycle or bringing customers to the site or in the door.  For others, it’s a waste of time, money and resources.

Where social media can help is providing high value content to customers at the right time and place.  But outbound and targeted marketing efforts along with strong sales will ALWAYS be required to drive and build a business.

To execs, business owners and social media activist alike, keep your wits about you.  Find the balance and avoid the snake oil.

Brian Hansford, President & CMO, Zephyr 47

Other Related Entries and Resources

Categories : Brian Hansford, Demand Generation, Social Media, Social Media Marketing
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BANT Lead Scoring With Marketing Automation

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Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

In the  Era of Stronger, Faster, Smarter Marketing with Automation, organizations need to understand how and when to engage with prospects and customers.  Marketing automation tools integrated with CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Salesforce.com provide sophisticated resources to enable a workflow to score and prioritize leads for sales follow up and continued lead nurturing.

Lead Scoring Definition and Objectives

First, let’s define lead scoring.  Not all leads are created equally.  Depending where your leads are in their buying cycle (or lack thereof) and who they are, they require different types of engagement with various forms of high value content. In general, lead scoring is a method to assign value on marketing and sales leads based on profile and engagement behavior.  Based on the values, or score, priority is given to the type of follow up activity either by marketing (nurturing) or sales (prospecting and engagement).

The objective of lead scoring ultimately is to help drive more revenue through sales in accelerated cycles.  Lead scoring helps a marketing team rate the leads to nurture and the ones that need immediate follow up and engagement with sales or channel partners.

Benefits to Lead Scoring

Lead scoring when employed with a marketing automation system can provide multiple benefits that all impact revenue generation.  Firstly lead scoring helps marketing evaluate and improve the effectiveness of a campaign and content strategy.  Scoring helps sales focus on the priority opportunities that have the best chance of closing in the shortest period of time.  Scoring impacts how effective sales forecasts are as well.

Scoring with BANT in Mind

Lead score models can be simple or grow sophisticated.  As organizations grow more sophisticated in their lead scoring, different models can be applied to different categories of prospects, customers, accounts, companies, etc.  Our recommendation is conducting a thorough preliminary analysis on the ideal customer profile.  From there an organization can build lead score models against the BANT model of Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe. Lead scoring is all the rage right now, especially in the marketing automation community.  Thought leaders and vendors are clamoring and debating their own models. Keep it simple to start.  BANT is a perfect launch point for lead score models.

Determine a Threshold Value for a Marketing Qualified Lead

Marketing and sales both need to agree to the definition of a marketing qualified lead.  Each organization will have different definitions.  Marketing should not do this unilaterally in a vacuum.  The BANT model can help here.  Based on activity and engagement, a contact can provide different levels of profile information that help fill out their BANT profile.  This information can be gathered using different forms, emails, events and programs.  At a different stage in the buying cycle, more information may be asked for and provided.  A contact may not provide as much information earlier in their buying cycle.  But as they progress and consume more high value content, they can provide more information on their need and project.  And frankly it is fair to ask for this information at the right time and for the right content.  Each point of engagement and contact adds to a score.  As the score builds, a threshold will trigger handoff to sales as a marketing qualified lead.

Budget

- Is budget available for project?

- If no budget, will budget be provided

- No budget

Authority

- What is the contact’s title?

- Are they a decision maker?

- Are they an influencer?

Need

- What problem are they trying to solve?

- Are they just researching?

- Are they job seekers?

- Are they college students?

- Are they trying to sell YOU something?

Timeframe

- When do they want to make a purchase decision?

Based on these basic questions you can easily see where a lead scoring model can place priority for some leads and lower priority for others.  For example, a VP with final vendor selection authority and a million dollar budget who will decide in 3 months is better than some who is simply a job seeker but downloads tons of whitepapers and podcasts.

Establishing Lead Score Weight and Sizing Against Each BANT Criteria

Organizations may view and weigh each element on BANT differently.  A BANT threshold model may have a a 100 point scale, or a letter scale with A,B,C, where the score levels fit within each letter grade.  ut even then weights don’t tell the whole story.

Organizations can have a highly qualified BANT lead but the size of the opportunity may be relatively small.  This is where simple sizing criteria can complete a scoring model such as qualitative scores such as 1, 2, 3.

Zephyr 47 works with a number of B2B enterprise software and serivces organizations.  This is a scoring model commonly applied with these organizations.  The X and Y axis can show qualitative and quantitative values, respectively.  In this model, A leads have higher BANT ratings than C leads.  Leads with 1 have a larger revenue opportunity than 4 leads.  A1 leads are the premium rated leads.  C4 leads would have the lowest rating.

Sample Lead Score Matrix Commonly Used in B2B Marketing

Treatment and Process

A lead score model like this is very simple to develop and adopt.  Most importantly the sales organization can easily consume this model as long as the qualitative and quantitative criteria are agreed to with marketing.  A marketing automation platform can manage escalation processes based on score thresholds.

Sample Scenario: the inside sales team directive may be to work with leads from B2 to A1.  Everything else below B2 must either be nurtured using a campaign implemented with the marketing automation platform.  As leads are nurtured to a minimum score of B2, they are automatically escalated to sales for direct engagement.

Resources and Third Party Information

Zephyr 47 White Paper – Maximize Your Marketing Automation Investment

Wikipedia – Lead Scoring Definition

Manticore Technology – Three Components to Lead Scoring

Eloqua Grande Guide to Lead Scoring

Gartner Podcast: Setting Priorities with Lead Scoring

Categories : Customer Marketing, Demand Generation, Lead Definition, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce.com
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Teamsource to Meet Content Marketing Challenge

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Monday, January 24th, 2011

Developing content for  for demand generation and marketing campaigns presents one of the largest challenges our clients face. Marketing automation platforms provide a shiny fast and luxurious jet to deliver powerful messages in style.  But without any fuel the jet can’t take off.

One of the more popular terms to emerge lately is “Crowdsourcing” which openly calls for a group of people to help meet a challenge and solve a problem.  In the past these tasks and objectives may have been limited to employees. Crowdsourcing is an excellent approach to developing content for demand generation and customer engagement programs.  Especially when employing a marketing automation platform.  (Without getting into semantic debates, Crowdsourcing almost has chaotic connotations, especially when developing high value content for demand generation and customer engagement campaigns. Teamsourcing seems better coordinated!)

We recommend a Teamsource Approach for developing content.  Their are two areas marketing managers and marketing operations experts can source content.  Inter-sources and Intra-sources.

The bottom line is marketing departments are slimmer with fewer personnel.  Yet the demands are higher than ever before to produce a high quality lead flow through the funnel. (versus high quantity) Where can these marketing managers develop and marketing the content required to launch their marketing campaigns?

Content is The Fuel for Your Marketing Campaigns

Jet Fuel Depot #1: Intra-Teamsource

  • Internal subject experts such as product marketing and product managers
  • CxO and VP executives (no ivory tower mentality allowed with the big shots. They SHOULD contribute content.)
  • Product support and engineering

Jet Fuel Depot #2: Inter-Teamsource

  • Channel partners – many B2B companies have channel, VAR and distribution partners.  These firms are staffed and run by subject experts in their particular industry or segment.  These experts are ripe sources for providing high value content from papers, presentations, case studies, deployment guides, podcasts, and more.  The channel partners benefit from the exposure and credibility.
  • Customers - The power of strong relationships with customers provide opportunities for sources of high value content.  Customers can provide testimonials, presentations, case studies, white papers, interviews, and more.  Get creative!

The days of a single marketing communications writer or manager producing all content for an organization are over.  Teams from inside and outside an organization must all contribute high value content to help connect with customers.

Categories : Content Marketing, Content Publishing, Content Strategies, Crowdsource, Demand Generation, Teamsource
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Q4 Funnel Fiber – 4 Steps to Accelerate End of Year Revenue

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Friday, November 12th, 2010

The fourth quarter of a fiscal year for any organization is commonly the best performing in terms of sales and revenue generation.  It doesn’t matter if the fiscal year follows a calendar year or a variation like Microsoft’s that ends in June.

The challenge for marketing and sales is filling and clearing the funnel with the most qualified opportunities to meet sales expectations.  If managed properly, this process should begin proactively early in the annual planning process with a campaign schedule.  Sadly, too many organizations still operate with a sense of panic in the last fiscal quarter, when a sense of focused urgency is better.

So how can an organization work to nurture the best opportunities in the shortest period of time and clear the funnel for end of year success?  Here are four ideas to consider.

1. Focus on Accelerating Evaluation Cycles and Validating Purchase Decisions

Well designed demand generation strategies should include ongoing lead nurturing campaigns.  Statistically however prospects in the early awareness stage may not bring the accelerated sales for some B2B organizations in the fourth quarter.  Of course this depends on the length of the buying/sales cycle.  The demand generation team should collaborate with the sales teams to focus efforts on the leads that are further into the sales funnel where an evaluation is fully underway and a purchase decision is pending.  The tipping point for these opportunities may be high value content that helps conclude an evaluation and validates the purchase decision as the right one.  This leads to the second point….

2. Re-purpose & Re-use Existing Content

Q4 may not always be the best time to kick off major content development projects such as white papers, new development of flash demos, etc.  However there may be existing high value content that can easily be re-purposed and re-used in multiple formats.  For example, re-purpose, edit and reformat white paper content into blog posts, webinar, podcasts, simple YouTube videos or Slideshare presentations.  This content can be targeted to the leads further in an evaluation stage or a purchase validation stage.  Don’t reinvent the wheel or kick off major content projects if the time, people, and money don’t allow for it.

3. Reporting and Analysis

The saying “if you can’t measure, you can’t manage” applies here.  Proper reporting should be an ongoing practice but it is especially important in the fourth quarter.  Demand generation teams and sales management can both benefit from increased reporting frequency in the fourth quarter.  Reports from marketing automation and CRM systems can identify bottlenecks in forecasts and funnels.  Additionally, reporting can highlight performance issues with individual sales representatives and channel partners.  (I do not mean to imply Big Brother monitoring. Reporting can identify positive opportunities for performance coaching and improvement.) Focus on the right data.  Click-throughs and impressions are meaningless unless presented with an explicit direct correlation to how they impact revenue.

4. Chicago ‘Voting Style’ Communication – Early and Often

One of the single biggest causes of collaboration and relationship breakdown between sales and marketing teams is poor communication.  The marketing and demand generation teams should always prepare sales for upcoming promotions, campaigns, supporting content and tools.  The communication should reflect up to minute reporting and analysis of funnel flow should be reported frequently as well as the sales forecast.  Don’t rely exclusively on email or portals for these communication sessions.  With the right frequency, these session can be brief and (ideally) should be in person or on conference calls.  (And sales managers, don’t blow off these meetings without notice.  Sorry to typecast, but I have to call that out because it happens a lot.) With the proper focus on influential and purchase-validating content, the funnel and forecast should reflect progression.

Let us know your thoughts on these 4 Steps to Accelerate End of Year Revenue.  What practices does your organization use? What are your lessons learned?

Categories : Content Marketing, Content Strategies, Demand Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Metrics
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Expert Guest Blog: Marketing to the “Demand Generation”

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Thursday, November 4th, 2010

I am pleased on honored to have this guest contribution from demand generation marketing expert, John Muehling.  (Twitter @JohnMuehling) John’s bio and LinkedIn profile link are included at the end of his article.  Enjoy!

-Cheers, Brian Hansford with Zephyr 47


Let’s face it; we live in the Demand Generation. The Baby Boomers, Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers have all become accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it, and often in real-time. Today’s businesspeople demand information about your company, your product or services, and your solutions.  But here’s the rub, if you don’t give it to them, they will find it elsewhere, and that place could be your competition.

For B2B marketers, the new challenge is meeting that demand, or better still, creating it! Many of today’s marketing experts agree that, if your marketing efforts are creating demand for your resources or engagement by a salesperson, you are on the right track.  The question is, how do you create demand? What works, what doesn’t? Without the key elements of a solid demand generation program, you may find yourself frustrated by the process.  So what are some of those key elements?

Integration

Before you launch your demand gen program, you should ensure it is integrated; integrated with your company’s channels of communication, integrated with your CRM system and, thus, integrated with your sales team.

It is important to recognize that people have a preferred way to communicate, whether it’s face-to-face, by telephone, through the US Mail, via email or SMS, within social media or anonymously on the Internet.  If you start by asking your prospect, “what channel do you prefer”, then tailor your content to reach them in that channel, the prospect will likely gain a sense that you “get them” and it will feel more natural for them engage you. Companies with unlimited budgets can afford to deliver their messages across many or all channels.  But for those companies, with limited resources, communicating in a prospect’s preferred channel is a more economical way to go, and you will find that it creates a stronger relationship.

I recently posted a question on Focus.com, asking simply “Are the lines that separate marketing and sales becoming increasingly blurred?” Within a few days, there were almost 40 experts who had voiced their opinion on the subject – a productive debate had been sparked.  The relevancy to demand gen is that any good program requires marketing to be aligned with sales, at least in some capacity.  As several experts pointed out during the debate, a marketer’s job is to provide qualified leads to sales; it is sales’ job to close those leads.  That is true.  However, if there is no interaction between the two teams, further defining the request for information and sharing the resulting dialogue between prospect and salesperson, the success of your program could be diminished.  This is where integration with CRM and sales plays a crucial role.  Feedback that is recorded can be segmented into future communications, communications that “magically” answer a question posed or guide a prospect down the path they have defined.  When this is accomplished by a marketing automation system, it allows your marketing team to nurture larger quantities of leads, scoring them and then releasing only those deemed “sales-ready”.

Content

Once you have an integrated program, the focus should be on offering relevant and timely content.  There is a reason why companies are shifting more and more of their resources into content development; content is critical.  This is also a central concept in marketing to the Demand Generation.  Search engines like Google have made finding the answer to a question or accessing information about a specific topic, easier than ever. And because we now have the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, competition for positioning content is evermore intense.   Want to “win the battle”?  Here are three easy steps that will get you started:

  • Find out what your prospect is seeking (use landing pages, surveys, polls, etc.)
  • Identify the “path” that has led to successful lead conversion in the past and duplicate it (use lead scoring)
  • Create content that is insightful and useful to your prospect (come from their point-of-view)

The last point may be the most important. The old days of “boilerplate” and self-serving pages of your company’s history are just that, history!  People don’t want to buy your product; they want you to solve their problem.  And if you provide the content that speaks to them about your solution to their problem, you’ve opened up a dialogue that is more likely to end with a new client and new revenue.

I believe the timing of content delivery is as important as the content itself.  Take for example the concept of “real-time communication”.  As David Meerman Scott pointed out on a recent webinar, “it used to be that if you had a big budget, you could control your marketplace. I am now convinced that speed and agility are the decisive competitive advantages.”  By spending an equal or greater amount of time listening to the marketplace, companies are able to deliver messages and content relevant to current events, real-time inquiries or even in response to negative PR.  Social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, can provide tremendous insight into the psyche of your prospects and the marketplace, making them great door openers to opportunity.

Longevity / Evolution

We all know that successful marketing, the creation of demand and the evolution of relationships all take time. Ensure that this is taken into consideration when developing your program.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  It will take time to find the best path; it will take failure to find out what doesn’t work; it will take team work, starting with the executive suite on down through your marketers, your sales team and the CSRs, to evolve your program into something that generates ongoing revenue.  As the Demand Generation continues to evolve, so should your marketing efforts.  New channels of communication will open, content will become more interactive and prospects will become more educated.

The question is, will you be the one educating them?

About John Muehling:

John is an accomplished, 14-year marketing veteran who possesses a solid command of traditional and progressive marketing strategies and tactics. His strong background in sales, combined with his knowledge and passion for marketing has helped him master techniques for aligning marketing with sales. As a consummate CRM and data analytics expert, he is able to identify market and buying trends which lead to more successful targeting and higher conversion rates.

John also embraces the close relationship between marketing/sales and information technology and feels we are on the cusp of a great convergence between human intelligence and automation.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmuehling

Categories : CRM, Demand Generation, Expert Guest Blog, Marketing Operations
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Contact Cadence with Marketing Automation

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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Marketing automation with systems like Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Marketo, Pardot and others are like driving an amazing Ferrari, or even a powerful tractor trailer rig.  They offer fanstastic capabilites to develop new and profitable customer relationships and tools to measure marketing ROI.  With all of these capabilites comes great enthusiasm and one that must be tempered with discipline and planning.

Cadence:  “A recurrent rhythmical series”

Most parents wouldn’t let an inexperienced teenage driver at the wheel or a beautiful Italian sports car without some solid ground rules, policies, and training.  The same can be said for how organizations use marketing automation systems.  Contact Cadence is critical to make sure all of the power is used effectively and customer relationships and repuations are kept strong. (We discuss complementary Contact Governance in another blog post.)

Contact cadence is very important to measure and manage marketing campaigns throughout the course of a year.  Cadence starts with a strategic plan on implementing and using a marketing automation system.  A core component of this overall strategy is developing and managing a campaign calendar that plans contacts over the course of a year.  Who you are contacting with the right content and how often.  This helps build the proper cadence and keeps your database and relationships healthy.

Cadence Benefits: A well planned annual campaign calendar with the proper target audience lead to  increased conversion/response rates, better qualified opportunities with shorter sales cycles and strong credible relationships.  If you execute a well planned campaign schedule with high value content in measured sequences, not only will your campaigns increase in effectiveness, you may find your database contacts actually look forward to your contact.

Risks with Poor Cadence: With random, excessive and unplanned marketing campaign contact, an organization risks dramatically lowered campaign conversion rates and damaged perception.  Customer may perceive that you are simply “spamming” and not really providing high value content at the right time in their buying cycle. If you exceed  cadence with customers, they will disengage. Very simple.

Ideas for Developing Proper Cadence with Marketing Automation

  • Develop an annual campaign calendar and share with your entire organization and partner channel.
  • Segment your audience based on their needs and place in their buying cycle.  Provide the right content to the right audience at the right time.
  • Provide a balance of “free” content downloads and high value content where contacts fill out simple forms.
  • A well-planned marketing schedule allows your database “rest” to build anticipation and increase conversion rates with your next contact.

Contact cadence using a marketing automation system enables an organization to manage customer contacts and increase overall effectiveness and conversions.

Additional Resources

Categories : Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Marketing Automation, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Operations
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