B2B Marketing Best Practices

New Job, Upcoming Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Good afternoon everyone,

It's been quite a while since I last posted and I apologize for the lack of content. Alot has happened over the past few months; new position at a new company (www.cmdagency.com), which has taken the vast majority of my time but things have been going really well. I'll be getting back to the contributing to the blog over the next week and look forward to hearing from you again regarding your thoughts on the ever changing world of business to business marketing and marketing auotmation. Keep you eyes out for a upcoming post on integrating marketing and the affect of social media in the space.

SiriusDecisions Summit Discusses Demand Center Concept

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:41:00 +0000

Good morning,

Last night I attended a Social Media event and found it AMAZING how many people not only attended but also engaged... I was one of those people who have had a LinkedIn profile before people started asking "are you LinkedIn?" Now it seems almost commonplace to have someone come up and ask not only whether you are LinkedIn but also how do you use it? The overwhelming growth of soocial media is just staggering.

One recent event that I wanted to spot light was the Sirius Decisions Summitt, where the same experience I discuss above happens but you see very different audiences than those events where people are there to discuss social media. The recent conference built on an already important concept of not just aligning sales and marketing but also driving adoption of technology. For those of you that have read my blog in the past these are both concepts that have been discussed.

Here are a few past posts that may be of interest:

Marketing Automation -From a Sales Perspective
The 5 Keys to Lead Nurturing - #1 Customer Buying Process

At a time when most marketing and sales executives are searching for ways to accelerate the speed of their pipelines, the SiriusDecisions Summit once again helped to provide some direction on how best-in-class BtoB organizations are still driving demand and closing deals.

The Summit, held last week in Scottsdale, AZ, drew a packed house of leading executives from both sales and marketing teams, and helped to introduce several new concepts and terminology which will help to shape the priorities around sales and marketing alignment.

Providing a look ahead to the changing needs and priorities for sales and marketing over the next five years, SiriusDecisions Managing Director and Co-Founder

John Neeson, Managing Director and Co-Founder

John Neeson introduced the concept of a ‘Demand Center,’ which will bring a more integrated “portfolio approach” to demand creation. As evidence of this trend, Neeson pointed to the following research and trend data:

Investment in demand creation has increased every year for the past 8 years, according to SiriusDecisions data, and is expected to continue growing through 2015;
With metrics for best-in-class companies showing almost 50% improvement in conversion rates, and significantly decreasing their cost per lead on closed deals, SiriusDecisions projects the penetration of marketing automation systems will expand dramatically over the next five years from less than 10% in 2005 to more than 50% of BtoB marketers by 2015;
As the marketing mix continues to shift at BtoB organizations, SiriusDecisions expects web-based marketing initiatives will drive more than 70% of inbound leads by 2015, growing from 55% of leads in 2009.

Neeson predicted that these changing dynamics will force BtoB organizations to migrate from single, “one and done” marketing tactics to an “integrated, multi-dimensional” model. “As companies move to having more of a digital relationship with prospects and customers, new resources and skill sets will be required in order to be successful with a portfolio approach to marketing,” Neeson said.

As an example of the new approach, Neeson pointed to the need to design campaign and “message maps” which match the “demographic triggers” and “buyer journeys” of specific markets.

To respond to this new portfolio approach, Neeson predicted a “leveraged services models,” will evolve, providing a centralized point for BtoB organizations to share “skills, infrastructure and process,” throughout a global BtoB organization. “Ultimately, the demand center model will evolve as a company grows and increases in complexity,” Neeson said.

In a separate presentation titled “The Dynamics Behind the Demand Waterfall,” SiriusDecisons VP of Research Tony Jaros offered insights into accelerating the later stages of the pipeline. Jaros suggested companies avoid turning to financial levers and discounts too quickly and look at “information voids” which may be causing deals to stall. He pointed to tools such as online configurators, gap templates and feature/functionality side-by-side comparisons as stimulus offers which can successfully match the desire of the prospect.

Demand Generation, "Whats Next in Marketing"; Interview with CTO and Founder Steve Woods of Eloqua

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:02:00 +0000

The following innovations have made marketers better: scoring, lead nurturing, marketing automation and lead management. Whether you like it or not, Eloqua Corp. is one of the reasons we are where we are today. The company has spent a lot of time and money educating the market, creating a marketing automation install base and helping launch the lead management revolution. I couldn’t in my right mind do a thought leadership series and not have Eloqua represented. And by the way, I got a great interview out of it.

The interviewee is Steven Woods, co-founder and CTO of Eloqua. As you’ll see from this interview, he’s one of the smarter guys in the business and has written great stuff on topics related to demand generation and the current transitions within the marketing profession. His book, “Digital Body Language,” explores demand generation and the current trends in marketing. He regularly writes on his blog, which has the same name .

Steven is also deeply involved with the Eloqua user community, with whom he regularly interacts through the discussions on his Eloqua Artisan blog.

This is a GREAT interview worth reading more than once.

1. What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

I think the overarching trend is a shift in marketing to thinking of things in terms of a buying process rather than a sales process. This is really fundamental to engaging with today’s buyers as, given the information resources available, they truly are in control of their own buying process. As part of that, we’ll likely see lead scoring begin to evolve a little bit in 2009. Historically, as marketers, we’ve typically used lead scoring to identify when a buyer is ready to engage with sales. This is important, but it’s only one stage of the buying process. Using the same techniques we’ve used in lead scoring - of looking at buyers’ digital body language to understand their level of interest - we’ll now begin to understand exactly where in the overall buying process they ar e.

Similarly, throughout the year, I believe we’ll continue to see marketers deepen their thinking about lead scoring. There’s a tendency, for example, when we start thinking about lead scoring, to mash together information on the “who” (right executive, right company, right revenues) with the “how interested” (right activity and interest level). This doesn’t allow us to differentiate between an uninterested CEO (right “who,” but not interested) from a keenly interested summer intern (wrong “who,” but right level of interest). Obviously these are very different people, and I think we’ll see a continuation of the trend in marketing to ensure that these two dimensions of lead scoring are looked at separately.

To enable all of this, we’re already seeing a trend toward a clearer emphasis on data management in marketing, which I suspect will only increase throughout 2009. Marketers realize that to score leads, route leads, personalize communication,or understand market segments, they need clean underlying data – whether on title, industry, revenue or location. Standardizing and normalizing the data continually, whether it comes from Web forms, lists, uploads or a CRM system, is quickly becoming a mandate that we’re seeing today’s best marketing leaders give their marketing operations teams.

2. What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

Obviously we’re all experiencing a tough economy. Buyers are more hesitant and more thoughtful. The challenge for today’s marketer is to ensure that potentially good opportunities are not discarded because there isn’t a buying event happening at that very moment. Putting energy into marketing campaigns focused on lead nurturing and mid-funnel activities is critical in order to ensure that you stay top-of-mind until there’s a buying event.

The silver lining of the economic turmoil is that there is less emphasis on the big budget outbound campaigns, so there is more time that can be focused on ensuring that lead nurturing campaigns are well-tuned, data is managed correctly, leads are scored and routed well and a clear analysis picture is in place.

3. What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

B2B marketing is interesting in that it involves long buying cycles, multiple people and numerous campaign touch points. Although it’s possible to analyze the effect of a marketing campaign on revenue, often the length of the buying cycle makes the analysis nonactionable. Instead, coming to an agreement with sales on an objective definition of a “marketing qualified lead,” and then analyzing marketing efforts against that definition is both relevant to revenue and also very actionable.

With that in place, you have a good base upon which to map the buying phases that are higher in the funnel. From raw inquiry through to MQL, whether you have one or a few intermediate steps, you have a good structure to analyze.

I always suggest to marketers that they adopt a similar discipline to sales or finance in analyzing and reporting their numbers. If you know the stages in your buying process, you can adopt a “balance sheet” and “income statement” view of the world. What is the current state, or phase of the buying process, of leads in your marketing funnel? That’s a “balance sheet” view. In the last quarter, what motion in the funnel (up or down) have you driven? That’s your “income statement” view. With that discipline in place, you shine a new light on your marketing effectiveness.

4. What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

A lot of marketers are very focused on net new names, whether it’s a new list to be purchased or an initiative to drive new interest. This overlooks the value of existing names in your database. If you focus on the middle of the funnel, with people you already know, and work to understand their interests and communicate to them in a relevant way, you can often drive more revenue more effectively than through a continual focus on net new names.

5. What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

First, think in terms of your buyers’ buying process – we’ve talked about that one at length. Second, map your information assets to the phases of the buying process to understand where you offer valuable information and where you need to develop more information assets. Third, set that information free – your prospects will acquire information somewhere, whether from you or from your competitors, so you might as well become the source they trust.

Fourth, don’t be shy about asking for a very small amount of information reciprocity; if you give them a valuable information asset, you can ask for a few pieces of information in exchange. However, build a modular profile that you can progressively add to over time. Each time you interact with a prospect, ask two or three questions, no more. By progressively profiling, and not asking the same questions multiple times, you can build a good set of information on each potential buyer without ever asking them for more than a few pieces of information.

6. What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

Of course, no technology is going to work magic. There are always a lot of people, processes and content elements to think about when shifting your marketing to be focused on the buyer’s buying process. However, a good demand generation platform that can provide the right nurturing, score leads across not just “who” but “how interested,” manage your data and provide a good analytics framework. I would of course recommend Eloqua for that, but everyone should make his or her own decision.

In terms of social media, the social media sources that work differ from business to business, so it’s hard to pick a specific recommendation. The best recommendation is to dive in and begin listening and learning, and evolve your strategy as you know more about where your customers and prospects, as well as influencers in your industry, have conversations. To that end, I would say the simplest way to get started is to begin listening to the online conversations using Twitter and Google blog alerts. From there, if you have knowledge to share with your market, begin writing about it on a blog of your own as well as joining the conversations on other blogs, if only to better understand where the discussions are happening in your industry. Once you get your feet wet, you’ll quickly be able to see which venues are relevant for your audience, and which aren’t.

7. What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

I think that marketing is in the middle of an incredible transformation toward becoming a discipline that presents objective metrics to executive teams and boards of directors, in a similar manner to finance, operations and sales. I think that the ability to truly understand marketing’s affect on the pipeline will also begin to remedy the imbalance in compensation that exists today between great salespeople and great marketers. So, my only hope for the year is that this transition continues at its current pace, and we take some bold steps towards a new way of thinking about the discipline of marketing.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Optimistic CMOs: Budgets & Jobs Stable, Need More Digital Focus

Global top marketers report that their budgets and staffs are holding up fairly well despite the recession, but they are feeling more pressure to sharpen their focus, grow market share, show ROI and prepare their organizations to meet digital marketing and measurement challenges, according to a new report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

The CMO Council’s Marketing Outlook ‘09 study finds that customer anxiety and cutbacks are the biggest factors influencing marketing budget allocation in 2009. However it also reveals a somewhat alarming disconnect between management mandates for 2009 and marketing’s limited plans to invest in automation, collaboration and process improvement.

More surprising, according to study, senior marketers express limited aspirations to elevate their positions within their organizations and to forge tighter links with line-of-business executives, finance, the CIO, and IT groups.

Half Say Budgets Holding Firm

Half of marketers surveyed report they’re either holding firm on budgets or anticipating increases. Nearly one third plan at least a small budget increase, with 8.2% planning a hike of more than 10%. At the other end of the spectrum, nearly half say they will decrease spending at least somewhat, with 18.8% anticipating cuts of more than 15%.

Staff Keep Jobs but Need to be Digital

While there are some signs of retrenchment, marketers - at least for now - are committed to their personnel, which represent 42% of budgets, the annual study said. Overall, survey respondents plan to invest in retraining employees for the digital age, rather than replacing them with new ones. They also report increased efforts to milk greater efficiency from current operations by sharpening and aligning internal processes, rather than initiating broad restructuring or cutting ties with current agencies.

These responses indicate that marketers are not running scared from the economy, according to Donovan Neale-May, the CMO Council’s executive director.

“Broad concerns about the economic, stock market and credit downturn are not the leading forces shaping this year’s budget planning process,” Neale-May said. “Instead, marketers are paying close attention to their customers and responding to changes in the selling cycle. The emphasis is on building internal efficiencies and strategic cost cutting, increasing customer insight, and strengthening integration with sales to drive revenue and market share.”

Neale-May added that the study results also spell good news for agencies, since it does not appear that marketers are viewing cutting agencies as key to cost reduction.

Of the agency changes they plan to make, the most are anticipated to come in the areas of web design/development, interactive marketing, and public relations:

Marketing Must Deliver

Senior management is mandating that marketing contribute to the bottom line by retaining and growing market share and lowering costs through greater go-to-market efficiencies, the study found. In response to these demands, 81% of marketers say they are confident they can deliver by focusing on execution and having clearly defined goals, improving operational controls, and stepping up analytics to help guide resource allocation. While hunkering down, marketers are also gaining increased confidence in the effectiveness of digital marketing as it begins to comprise the majority of spending.

“Digital marketing has moved well beyond search as social media and experiential marketing continue to grow and evolve,” said Dave Couture, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, one of this year’s study sponsors. “Savvy marketers are applying collaboration marketing methods as a central component of their efforts to maximize customer lifetime value in the digital economy.”

Marketers Must Up Their Digital Game

Despite marketers’ general confidence in their own success, their investment plans in simple, task-specific marketing software applications - such as email applications and online surveys - and a corresponding lack of spend in comprehensive operational and data management systems, suggest a critical disconnect in how they hope to achieve executive goals, the CMO Council said.

Additionally, despite the acknowledgement that digital marketing is growing, only 9% of CMOs say they are looking to work more closely with their CIO and IT department.

“Senior marketers clearly need to elevate their game when it comes to integrating IT and data management into their operations and insights,” said Neale-May. “At the same time, this year’s study indicates senior marketers may be failing to build line of business and executive suite relationships required to build their status and influence in their organizations. In fact, only 7.4% of respondents are even considering positions on their corporate boards.”

Additional study findings:

Global marketers say realigning operational processes and capabilities to better support sales and drive demand generation was their top accomplishment for in 2008. This was followed by improving performance and accountability for their organizations.
Customer anxiety and cutbacks are the number one force impacting budget allocations in 2009, followed by slower selling cycles and reduced consumer spending. Only 14.9% cite financial market disarray as a determining factor.
Retraining and developing existing staff is the leading strategy for acquiring or sharpening expertise in digital marketing competencies, with 62.9% of respondents electing training over recruiting new talent (28.6%) or outsourcing (17.1%).
Tactical capabilities are the most prevalent planned investments in marketing automation. The top two target areas of investment for 2009 are email marketing (44.9%) and online surveys and research (33.2%). Only 10.1% are investing in master data, 12.8% in marketing operational systems, and 9.3% in marketing resource or process management solutions.
Growing or retaining market share is the leading executive mandate for marketers (47.6%), followed by lowering costs and improving go-to-market efficiencies (43.5%), and improving customer insight and retention (32.5%).
8.2% respondents plan to build new linkages with line of business executives and just 7.4% are seeking a board member position, suggesting limited aspirations to rise within the corporate hierarchy.

Digital Media Measurement Slowly Improving

Online media and digital channels of engagement are taking center stage like never before, according to the research, which finds that marketers overall are universally looking to enhance talent, expand competencies and sharpen measures and metrics for performance, according to the study.

“This year’s survey shows increased spending in online and digital at the expense of traditional media budgets will continue in 2009,” said C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology, another of this year’s study sponsors. “Digital marketing metrics such as page views and click-through rates give at least the perception of accountability, making online marketing increasingly attractive as the industry focuses on performance measurement.”

The majority of marketers are sticking to old online measures like page views and registrations (64.6%), site traffic and volume (58.4%) and search prominence (45.2%). However, a growing number are measuring customer engagements including translating online traction to the acquisition of new accounts and customers, tracking content consumption transactions or subscriptions and measuring word-of-mouth advocacy.

Digital marketing and new media dominates demand generation and advertising spend allocation priorities for the coming year, with budgets aimed at online and Web 2.0 initiatives almost 50% higher than spend earmarked for traditional media.

A very small percentage (9.3%) of marketers rate their e-metrics and measurement capabilities as excellent, while 35.6% of marketers are questioning spend, struggling to quantify value or report they are not doing a good job of converting visitors to leads or to customers.

“Marketers are continuing to struggle with applying business metrics to online media and digital marketing, with such limited measures as page views and site traffic sources dominating the mix,” said Kevin Akeroyd of Jigsaw, the third of this year’s study sponsors.

About the study: The survey was conducted among more than 650 marketing executives worldwide across a wide range of industries. Respondents were asked 28 questions. This year’s report was sponsored by the sales and marketing practice of Deloitte Consulting LLC, the Jigsaw business community, and Ad-ology. It is available for download through the CMO Council.

Digital Body Language

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:23:00 +0000

Good evening,

I recently saw an interview with Craig Rosenberg on the Digital Body Language (www.digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com) Blog that I wanted to pass along. For those of you that are not familiar with the concept of Digital Body Language, Steve Woods, founder and CTO of Eloqua, introduced this concept through a book he recently wrote. A great read if you have not had a chance to read it.

Here is copy of the exchange between Steve and Craig:

Friday, February 13, 2009

Interview with The Funnelholic

I had a great chat the other day with Craig Rosenberg, better known as "The Funnelholic", based on his popular blog The Funnelholic (and of course to all of us on Twitter as @funnelholic). Craig is a great guy, fun to chat with, and smart as a whip when it comes to the challenges of managing the top of the funnel.

Our conversation ranged across a number of topics, from the evolution of social media and its B2B marketing applicability, to measurement and the challenges of today's CMO. I got a lot out of our conversation, and I hope you will too.

From my conversation with Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic:

Steve: Will social media scale? As it increases in popularity, the 1 to 1 conversations become increasingly more difficult to maintain, and the top names in social media are evolving towards a bit more of a 1 to Many communication model (although many are exerting great effort to maintain as many relationships as they can). Where do you see this evolving to?

Funnelholic: This is a complex question not only for me but for everyone. As I mentioned in my post, Fear of a Twitter Planet (http://www.funnelholic.com/2009/02/04/fear-of-a-twitter-planet-the-11-things-i-know-about-the-twitter-phenomenon/), if I could give the state of the union on social media, I could achieve “internet fabulous” status. I am not there yet.

But your question has a number of interesting elements to it. First of all, is the 1-to-many model bad? Yes, platforms like Twitter are becoming 1-to-many, but that is the whole point. I never thought of a Twitter as a place to house my 1-to-1 connections, although as a result I have had a number of them. To me Twitter is a new broadcast platform. Let me put this in perspective, I spent a year getting hundreds of readers to my Funnelholic blog (http://www.funnelholic.com/), 5 years getting 600 connections on LinkedIn, and a year getting 600 members to my LinkedIn group “Friends of the Funnelholic.” It took me 1 month to get 1,000 followers on Twitter and growing. My buddies in audience development are saying that blogging is dead and sites like Twitter is where it is at. From a promotional aspect, the 1-to-many benefits are great.

Whatever 1-to-1 communication that is lost will be picked up by someone. The Internet runs like a free market -- if there is demand someone will fill it. Facebook continues to have great 1-to-1 relationship capabilities, and LinkedIn has a ton of potential in this area.

As far as b2b marketing and social media, there is the promotional aspect I mentioned above. I can see marketing automation software watching b2b buyers’ social media behavior and incorporating this into scoring and sending customized, relevant tweets or messages.

Steve: Many B2B organizations are getting involved in social media, but as they do, the media shifts and becomes much more commercialized. There have even been recent reports of teens leaving Facebook. Do you think that there will be a clear distinction between purely “social” social media sites and sites where there is more commercialization as we evolve? Or will these lines remain blurred?

Funnelholic: First of all, I haven’t seen reports of kids leaving Facebook. All I see are kids (and by kids, I mean from preteens to 20s) using Facebook and using it ALL the time. I watch the twentysomethings in my office and they live in Facebook -- that is, message their friends, trade links and videos, sign for events, etc. In many ways, for that generation, Facebook is more important than Google.

Commercialization is the biggest problem for social media. For all the traffic and frequent visits, Facebook and LinkedIn should be making billions of dollars but they aren’t. And Twitter hasn’t even shown the market that they have any plan for making money (except probably by getting bought). In your first question, you asked about scale. To me, the ability to commercialize is the biggest impediment to scale. If these organizations can’t figure out how to make money, then social media can’t scale. So, the lines have to blur, but visitors will resist if their social media platform is ALL commercial. If anything, LinkedIn and Facebook have risen quickly for a lot of reasons, but one of them may be their ability to keep the spammers out. The trick: make money without intruding on user experience.

Steve: As marketers continue to refine their ways of measuring their success at the top of the funnel, will we see more standard CMO reporting on their successes (similar to the standard reporting that sales, finance, and operations usually does)? What do you think those CMO metrics will be?

Funnelholic: For the record, I believe marketing will always have fuzzy math. No one can argue that brand and thought leadership isn’t vital to corporate sales success, yet it will and always remain difficult to quantify. And furthermore, the fact that today’s buyer takes 29 touches before they buy means marketing will have to continue to perform a lot of activities that aren’t specifically recorded in ROI. An example: you “buy” a whitepaper lead from an online media source, you begin your marketing automation processes and after watching 2 webinars, talking to a sales rep, reading your blog, etc., it ends up becoming part of the pipeline. As sales is selling, marketing is still working in providing sales tools, pushing the latest article about the CEO, and so on. These are critical elements to one’s marketing department and not easily quantifiable.

That being said, I think the key metrics are:

1. Cost-per-opportunity. Opportunity means pipeline opportunity.
2. Total pipeline dollars created by marketing programs

By focusing on these two metrics, marketing has essentially done “their” job. If sales isn’t doing theirs (closing business), marketing should not be punished. Also, by focusing on cost-per-opportunity and pipeline dollars, it gives marketing flexibility to spend on important, but less-quantifiable, activities that are critical to the marketing funnel.

We can’t ignore ROI. By ROI I mean, marketing spend that turns into real revenue for the organization. The problem with is ROI is that marketers are at the mercy of the sales team. It’s one of the metrics that aggravates the “Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus” dichotomy (http://www.funnelholic.com/2008/11/18/sales-is-still-from-mars-and-marketing-is-still-from-venus/). But I realize it is a reality, so if you must, keep one thing in mind: Time. If ROI is measured too early, than marketing will fail. This is the reason we put marketing automation into place in the first place is that buyers take a LONG time. (especially now). Nurturing has to be factored into ROI, so if you are watching ROI, make sure you watch it over time because it will grow.

What is most important is that marketers have moved away from the “look what I made” marketing strategy of judging oneself by beautiful design, copy, cool booth design at trade shows, etc. Those days are not over (as long as they convert), but aren’t the way to prove your value. The numbers are.

Steve: People still buy emotionally. As we push towards ever-increasing measurability of our marketing efforts, how do we avoid not investing in some of the marketing programs that are less measurable, but might generate the emotional hooks that motivate buyers.

Funnelholic: Well since the theme is social media, I will give this question a “LOL” -- laugh out loud, for the uninitiated. I talk about this above. Everyone assumes as a demand-generation guy, I don’t see the benefits of the entire non-quantifiable marketing mix. Well I do, and this why in the above I believe in creating metrics that can incorporate these types of elements. Here is what I believe every marketing department should have in place in 2009:

1. An optimized lead-management process: This includes humans AND marketing automation. None of your marketing elements will work as well as they should without both. So to recap, these are the elements:
a. A lead-qualification team: In place to convert and qualify leads before reaching sales
b. A marketing automation system: Designed to support the lead-qualification process with a coordinated nurturing program. (Nurturing in my mind begins the minute a lead enters your lead-management system.)
2. An aggressive lead-generation process: This is designed to feed the lead-management process and should include a diverse portfolio of lead sources. You should buy from a variety of different sources to feed your marketing funnel. Your ultimate gauge should be conversion and whether lead sources help you achieve your cost-per-opportunity goals not just CPL. These sources include online media sites, Google Adwords, and so on.
3. A diverse offer set: Offers support all of the processes above, and they include whitepapers, webinars, online video, etc. All of your prospects have different preferences for “how” they like their marketing, so make sure you have something for them
4. Branding and thought leadership support: Marketing departments should include blogging, social media, speaking engagements, and PR. By the way, there are marketing vehicles that incorporate a number of your marketing goals. For example, webinars are a great way to achieve all four goals above: quantifiable lead generation, nurturing, thought leadership, and branding.

I think trade shows should come out of the sales budget. They don’t drive leads and cost a lot of money. They are really good for face-to-face contact with current customers and to create business development deals. Print is dead, too, and shouldn’t be part of one’s mix anymore.

Steve: As marketers focus on responding to buyer interest at the top of the funnel rather than large outbound campaigns, the need for different skillsets in marketing is growing. Where do you see the biggest change in marketing skills/roles in the next 5 years?

Funnelholic: Metrics has changed every business in the organization and marketing is the big one. I have already seen marketing departments start to have more “geeks” in the organization. There are essentially three kinds of “geeks”:

1. SEO/SEM geek – Everyone has one now, and I don’t blame them.
2. Lead management geek – As the marketing automation revolution continues on, it has created a new role in the organization to manage these processes
3. Metrics geek – A lot of times, the person who does No. 1 or No. 2 above also does overall metrics, but the point is, a lot of organizations have a metrics and optimization functions now.

I’m using “geek” as a term of endearment here, by the way, not as derogatory. All in all, every marketer will have to be metrics-centric to survive. I am seeing more and more, consumer-focused Internet marketing folks getting jobs in b2b organizations because they can bring the type of rigor that is needed to be compete.

Convergence - Next Great Marketing Book

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:40:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

I hope all is well getting ready for Turkey Day! I wanted to pass along a recommendation for a "must read" book that comes out in February. Richard Rosen, a world renowned marketing strategist is publishing his first book called Convergence Marketing - combining brand and direct for unprecedented profits. I've known Richard for quite some time and he has been a great inspiration for many of my foundational concepts as it relates to integrated marketing and direct marketing principals. I've always been impressed with his work and I'm sure will be equally impressed with the upcoming book. It is being published February of 09 and can be found at at most books stores. Here is a link to Barnes and Nobels:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Convergence-Marketing/Richard-Rosen/e/9780470164938

I've also included below a summary of the book:

A revolutionary marketing methodology that dramatically increases demand

In today's world, customers get to decide how and when marketers can reach them. Marketers must understand consumers and engage them early in an empathetic dialogue with respect to their specific concerns. In Convergence Marketing, Richard Rosen introduces Brand-Interaction™ Marketing, a sophisticated convergence of brand marketing and direct marketing developed with more than 20 years of experience, customer knowledge, and business school analytics. Today's global market demands nothing less than this fully integrated approach, wherein all online and offline channels, direct marketing, and brand advertising work together, in design and function. Brand-Interaction Marketing is the key to shifting marketing communication efforts from a cost-based to a profit-driven model.
Richard G. Rosen (Portland, OR) is founder, President, and CEO of AlloyRed, an advertising agency that specializes in building brand-interaction prior to sale. He speaks to and consults on convergence marketing with clients around the world.

Have a great holiday!

Robert Moreau

Focus on YOUR value in this economy!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:15:00 +0000

Wow! I spent last night, like many of you, watching the news and hoping for a great result in the election. For those of you who hate politics, I'm sorry. Yesterday was truly a great day for America. Not because Barak Obama won (although that was the highlight of my evening - first time in my life I did not vote Republican), but because I think the American people truly had a voice and I've never seen people get more involved than they did in this election - I think people TRULY cared and it showed in the way BOTH candidates performed. Regardless of the result I think America is going to be much better for it.

It's also been an interesting (and concerning) couple weeks. While the Presidential Election has taken the vast majority of the local and national media attention things that affect us everyday folks continue to get worse. E-mails from colleagues who have been layed off, press releases on company downsizing and many of my fellow agency friends calling concerned about their customers cutting budgets have become almost a daily occurrence.

There has never been a more important time for you as an individual to focus on how YOU can provide value within your organization (if you are on the client side) or for your clients (if you are on the agency siide). This means taking a step back and asking yourself; "If I were not here what affect would it have on my company and/or clients? What value would they NOT get with my absence?"

There was a recent article "Recession Data On The Value of Marketing Through Downturn!" that gives some historical perspective on how marketers have been affected during other economic downturns. You can find it at:

www.gtms-inc.com/tip_marketingrecession.htm

I also wrote an article on this in the Sales Lead Management Associations e-newsletter:

www.salesleadmgmtassn.com/July2008Newsletter.htm

It was on "Creating Opportunity in a Down Economy". I touched on the importance of lead nurturing, marketing accountability, understanding your customers buying process and overall effective marketing in a down economy.

Both I feel do a good job of communicating the fact that this has happened before and if you look at this as an OPPORTUNITY you will come out of it much better than you went into it.

Additionally, I hit on marketing accountability multiple times in my blog as well. Just search for marketing accountability and you should find plenty of content to help you become more accountable and thrive in this kind of an environment. Just want to do my part! Good luck!

-Robert

Marketing Automation and Strategy: Thought Leadership Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:34:00 +0000

Hello all,

It's been a little while since I last posted (shame on me, I know) but I was recently interviewed by Co-Founder and CMO of Marketo about marketing automation and strategy. There is some good content here and thought you would be interested in reading it.

October 28, 2008

Marketing Automation and Strategy: Thought Leadership with Robert Moreau

The next interview in the B2B Marketing thought leader interview series is with Robert J. Moreau, author of the B2B Marketing Best Practices blog and EVP Sales and Marketing for Rubicon Marketing Group, a marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon that specializes in defending marketing investments with marketing automation, marketing strategy, and demand generation expertise.

1. Tell us a little bit about how you got into B2B marketing and what you like most about it.

I originally started my career in direct marketing where I worked with some of the largest B2B and B2C companies in the world. To give you some context, I began my career with the feeling that B2B was "behind the times". The B2C marketplace (as it related to marketing) always fascinated me due to how you could truly craft a message to the "individual" vs. the group and track so many different variables to consistently improve results and create "predictable" ROI.

But over the last 7-10 years, B2B has really evolved to practice many of the same principals B2C has been practicing for quite some time, and now, with the introduction of technology (like Marketo) the gap is really closing between the two.

I now believe that B2B and B2C are not that different. Whether you are building a brand, managing direct marketing or driving leads for a large technology firm's sales team, you must understand:

Analytics and demonstrating marketing’s value
The core objectives of what you are trying to accomplish
How creative and messaging works together

I've always been a sales person first and a marketer second, so as B2B continues to evolve it is exciting for me to focus on this area. The dynamics of how marketing and sales should work together is something I am very passionate about.

2. From reading your blog, I see that you write a lot about B2B marketing innovation. What are your top 3 tips to help companies tackle the art of innovation?

Keep an open mind and don't let people in your organization say you can't do something. If you hear this, it probably means it hasn't been tried before or that the benefits of what you are trying to accomplish were not positioned properly. If you have a new idea, go for it.
Never stop learning! Marketing is changing faster than marketing departments (or executives) can keep up with. Take time out of your schedule to read the research reports and articles, go to some of the better conferences and most importantly, make sure you get the same commitment from your marketing teams. It does no good to educate yourself if you are not demanding the same of your team.
Learn and adopt new marketing technologies. What current marketing technology tools enable you to do is truly awesome and they bring a level of capability never before seen in the B2B space. If you want to be perceived as innovative, you must understand the importance of technology and embrace it. Don't get caught up in trying to do everything, just roll the technology out in phases and create value little by little.

3. A recent post on your blog speaks to sales and marketing alignment. What advice do you have for marketers and sales professionals as they develop integrated demand generation campaigns?

I have three key pieces of advice.

Customer Buying Process. Study your customers buying process and make sure both sales and marketing understand the integration between the "sales process" and the "customer's" buying process. It's unrealistic to expect marketing and sales to each only communicating in certain phases of the buying process. It is imperative that each function know the type of communication that is happening during each phase of the buying process. See The 5 Keys to Lead Nurturing - #1 Customer Buying Process for more detail.
Lead Nurturing. Understand that all your marketing and sales initiatives should complement each other. Dialogue with customers and prospects should be about sales and marketing providing the right content to the right people at the right time, and not one or the other controlling the conversation. This mindset change is one of the biggest transformations I see when working with sales and marketing executives in the technology space.
Consider your data to be one of your most important assets. We often recommend to clients, prior to starting a demand generation campaign, that they first clean their data, develop a data hygiene plan, and consider adding or appending information to records that can help drive better campaign results. Appended data may enable greater degrees of segmentation permitting sharper focus in the campaign messaging. An related benefit of marketing automation platforms is the personalization of messages to each prospect versus sending the same content to everyone. This personalization can be done based on behavioral and demographic data.

4. What do you see as the biggest hurdle to effective managagement of leads within the sales pipeline?

Making sales understand the importance of their role in the lead management process. They are not accustomed (or compensated) to keep good data or contribute to this process. You must make them understand how it benefits them.

5. What do you think is the biggest oversight by marketers in terms of demand generation?

It's almost always analytics. Sometimes because they don't know how, but other times because it is just too time consuming to aggregate data from all of the different places in order to get dependable, accurate information.

6. With the multitude of promotion channels today (ie: social, blogs, email), what is your advice for B2B marketers striving toward marketing ROI?

Identify and evaluate your marketing department from a people, process and technology standpoint.
Develop benchmarks of success.
Make sure you have a solid lead management process in place first - it really won't matter what tactic you are using if this is not done correctly.
Examine each of your marketing campaigns on the basis of what their objectives are: Awareness, lead generation, lead nurturing, loyalty marketing, sales tools development
Draw from your web analytics, marketing automation analytics AND sales force analytics to develop dashboards that can provide the kind of information necessary to truly measure the sales and marketing departments effectiveness.

7. Wild Card: Anything else you'd like to add?

It is extremely exciting to see how far B2B has come over the past five to ten years. The idea that we would be able to profile customers based on online and offline behavior, map content and campaigns directly to the individual based on where they are in the buying process would have been something reserved for only the most savvy consumer marketing companies 20 years ago. Technology, along with a shift to marketing accountability, brings marketing executives an incredible opportunity to begin to show their organization’s value at a level they never have been able to before.

Todays CMO = Business & Marketing Executive

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:51:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a great article I saw this week in the American Marketing Associations' Marketing News. The article was an interview with CMO Council Executive Director Donovan Neale-May and he was asked a variety of questions about a recent study, "Driving the Bottom Line from the Front Lines". I thought it provided some great insight into what the NEW executive level marketer and CMO most address in most cases but also the kind of person you must be to effectively fill that role.

Here are some key nuggets I thought were really insightful:

83% of respondents to this study consider marketing and sales capabilities to be the top priorities for commercial success, only 6% of respondents consider the companies marketing efforts to be "extremely good", and27% call then "quite good".
CMO's believe their focus areas of critical importance today are in databases, customer data integration, customer analytics, customer intelligence and customer insight.
There is also a huge focus on improving competencies in pipeline cultivation or qualification of leads before hand-off to sales - so demand generation and nurturing programs have become very important and are getting a lot of visability.
Marketing initiatives must be measured from a business standpoint, not just in impressions and web-visits! Accountability is king!
50% of newly hired CMO's are brought in to "fix" the marketing organization - meaning improving marketing operations, analytics, development of KPI's that a CEO can understand, and the introduction or optimization of technology were at the top of the hit list!
Their biggest challenges in accomplishing their initiatives are: First: cost. Second: complexity. Third: talent, and finally competency.
CMO's need to be able to communciate the business value of the investment they are asking for. It must be supported and validated, just as any other department in the company must deal with. They need to be right and left brained - not just successful marcom or Ad executives!

I really liked this article - which you can find at http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Publications/MarketingNews, just click on "current issue".

I think it does a great job of communciating the importance of why marketing must truly change its way of thinking. It's not something most veteran marketers are use to but the idea of accounting for everything, using technology and solid analytics to drive decisions, and the types of people that must be a part of your marketing organization to make this happen create some additional challenges many marketers are not ready for. Creative still looms very bright but to break through the ceiling to the C-suite (or EVP/VP level in many cases) it's becomming increasingly important to bring both a creative and analytical mind to the table! Have evidence to back up your strategies and request budget that will generate a return!

Demand Generation Quiz: How Good Are You?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:42:00 +0000

Great post by Jon Miller of Marketo.... It speaks to the new dynamic of looking at demand generation as truly its own marketing budget item. We are starting to see a great deal more firms allocating a lot more dollars to demand generation, while cutting back on a great deal of the general advertising initiatives. If you are a company looking to drive an effective demand generation initiative I strongly suggest you take a look at this post. it will be worth the read!

by: Jon Miller

How do you know if your demand generation is good enough or when it’s time to take your lead management processes to the next level? Here are 14 important questions that indicate whether or not you can benefit for more sophisticated marketing automation.

Ask these questions to ask yourself, your boss, your direct reports, your head of sales, and any other stakeholders in your demand generation process.

Lead Generation

Are you happy with the number of leads in your pipeline? Is your sales team?
How many more qualified sales leads could you generate if you had the ability to nurture relationships with qualified prospects and automatically identify when someone is ready to engage with sales?
Do you get a lot of leads that seem good but are not yet in an active buying cycles? What do you do with them today?
How many more sales-ready leads could you create if you had the ability to develop relevant and personalized relationships with early-stage prospects before passing them to sales?

Lead Follow-Up

Does sales follow-up on all your marketing leads today?
Do your leads ever get dropped on the floor? Are you confident that every lead gets appropriate and timely follow-up?
How much more effective would your lead generation be if you could ensure no lead got dropped and everyone got appropriate and timely follow-up?
How much more effective would your marketing programs be if sales followed up on twice as many leads as they do today?

Marketing Efficiency

How long does it take you to design and create a new campaign? How many people do you need to get involved?
Do you ever feel like you have too much to get done in a day? Do you ever feel like you get stuck in the weeks managing all the detail of your demand generation campaigns?
If you could design and create every aspect of a new campaign in just a few hours, how much could you improve your marketing results?
How much time could you save if you had a software tool that helped to automate the boring, manual aspects of campaigns? How much could you improve ROI if you could spend more time focusing on the strategic and creative aspects of campaigns?

Demonstrating Marketing ROI

Do you wish you could better understand and demonstrate how all your marketing activities impact pipeline and revenue?
How much could you improve the ROI of your marketing programs if you understood how each program is influencing pipeline and revenue, and could adjust budgets accordingly?

Interpreting the Results

Perhaps your current demand generation processes are just fine. If so, congratulations! If not, there is dramatic ROI to be gained from better lead management. According to Forrester Research, B2B marketers who make this shift are 2X more productive — plus companies with mature lead management processes are almost twice as likely as average to act on 75% or more marketing leads and are 230% more likely than average to follow-up within one day (Laura Ramos, B2B Marketers Lack Lead Management Maturity, October 2006).

Are you ready to take the next step?

Original Post: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2008/09/demand-generati.html

New CMO Council Study: Only 40 Percent Have Formal Programs, Systems and Processes to Integrate and Align Critical Sales and Marketing Functions

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:22:00 +0000

For those of you looking to continue the goal of aligning your sales and marketing teams the CMO Council has recently come out with a new research study and report on closing the gap between marketing and sales. It has some great information I think you should all read. You can download the full study by going to the CMO council website

(http://www.cmocouncil.org/resources).

Below is a great summary of the results as well (prepared by CRM today):

The new global study by the Chief Marketing Officer Council shows that many companies worldwide still lag in their ability to integrate and align sales goals with marketing activities, thus reducing the overall business performance of their organizations.

Over 55 percent of some 506 sales and marketing professions surveyed by the CMO Council and its CLOSE community say their companies have yet to, or are only planning to, implement formal programs, systems or processes for unifying sales and marketing functions. In contrast, of those who have, nearly 50 percent report success in synchronizing and optimizing these often-polarized areas.

While many recognize the benefits of better partnering across these key demand-generating functions, they are being stymied by lack of processes and systems, siloed operations, insufficient management mandate, and ineffective reporting and organizational structures. Still more respondents seem to be stuck in corporate culture-biases about sales and marketing roles, making alignment and collaboration a treacherous bridge to cross.

When marketers were asked how they viewed sales, 40 percent said they had some top producers but there was mostly a need for improvement. In comparison, sales professionals tended to have a very tactical view of marketing with only 10 percent seeing marketers as market-savvy and on-target with demand-generating campaigns. The vast majority, 41 percent, rated marketing marginally on their ability to provide good content and the right sales support materials. However, respondents agree that the top three measures of sales performance and productivity are lead quality and ROI, conversion and close rates, and level of action on opportunities -- all very tactical and all tied directly benefited by a deeper alignment and integration between sales and marketing.

"Global businesses continue to suffer from a seemingly unbridgeable 'divide' between their marketing and sales teams -- a gap that undermines the efforts of the crucial corporate functions necessary to generate demand, capture revenue and gain competitive advantage," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "There's a critical need to educate management about where and how marketing should be powering both the go-to-market process and every step of the lead generation, qualification, closing and account reactivation cycle."

Key findings from the CMO Council's "Closing the Gap: The Sales and Marketing Alignment Imperative" report showed that:

-- Less than 20 percent of respondents say their sales and marketing organizations are extremely collaborative; most felt the two groups had intermittent relations and interactions.

-- In looking at ways sales could add value to marketing messaging and communications, survey participants felt engaging strategically with customers to better understand issues and needs was the most valuable contribution.

-- In contrast, two of the most important roles marketing could play in optimizing sales performance were fielding campaigns that generated and nurtured leads and opportunities, as well as providing customized value- selling content and presentation materials.

"We all understand and accept that the customer must be at the center of any organizational relationship. However, neither sales nor marketing is effectively leveraging customer data and insight to form deeper, more connected relationships with the customer," commented Neale-May.

Barely 12 percent of sales and marketing professionals say they have a well-integrated, real-time view of all customer interactions, while only 37 percent report good visibility into prospects, pipeline, deal flow and conversion rates. By comparison, 20 percent indicate that marketing hands off leads to sales yet marketing has no insight into conversion and close outcomes, 13 percent say most leads are never captured, qualified or acted upon, and about 11 percent report they have no on-premise or on-demand CRM system in place.

-- Among those who have CRM applications, only 13 percent view the application as highly valued and widely deployed, while 42 percent see growing acceptance and adoption.

-- While CRM systems tend to be mandated and adopted across the sales organization, they tend to be more selectively embraced by marketing teams in business units and departments.

-- Data analytics, reporting and forecasting tend to be the biggest deficiencies in optimizing the functionality and usability of current CRM solutions. The top three areas highlighted by nearly 50 percent of respondents were the ability to easily create analytic reports, customization of the application and forecasting capabilities. Real-time and historic analytics placed a close fourth (40%) adding to the call for more analytics and user friendly tools.

-- While 50 percent of those surveyed said they had pretty good or extensive visibility into customer accounts and business activity, the other 50 percent said they had trouble finding customer account data, did not have enough information, or none at all.

Respondents to the survey were drawn from all industry sectors with over 43 percent in companies with annual sales of $100 million or more. The average sales cycle is 2 to 6 months (36 percent) with 14 percent of respondents claiming a sales cycle of 1 to 2+ years. Nearly 70 percent were drawn from BtoB companies. Virtually all companies operated in North America, over 50 percent in Europe, 47 percent in Asia, 30 percent in Latin America, 26 percent in the Middle East and nearly 20 percent in Africa. Over 35 percent of responding companies had more than 1,000 employees and 65 percent had less than 1,000 employees.

Marketing in a Downturn

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:53:00 +0000

Hi all,

I hope ths summer is treating you well! I saw a really good post on the Spark Marketing Team blog (www.sparkmarketingteam.com/blog) I thought I would share. It's discusses strategies for marketing in a down turn. Some of the key leanings include some more practical (and tactical) strategies I thought you would be interested in. A lot of what you read today tends to be very strategic but they have done a great job of boiling it down to some specific things (like optimizing landing pages. focusing on your house list/current customers and using lead management) you can take action on inthe near terms, which I always appreciate. Enjoy!

What’s Your B2B Downturn Strategy?

An economic downturn creates opportunities for companies that are most efficient at turning marketing investments into revenue. We have seen that spending on branding and other forms of push marketing declines in a down economy, while direct marketing tends to rise. Author, Jon Miller of MarketingProfs.com, recently discussed 7 strategies for B2B marketing during a downturn:

1. Use lead management to maximize the value of each lead.

Know which of your leads are sales-ready and which need further nurturing. Engage in relationship-building with qualified prospects who are not yet ready to be approached by a sales rep. It is noted that even simple automated lead-nurturing programs can yield a 400% improvement in the conversion of qualified prospects into sales opportunities over time.

2. Focus on your in-house list.

Rather than spend money finding new prospects, spend more time with people you currently know. Nurture your existing leads, create new and better offerings for existing prospects, and extract all the value you can from your current list.

3. Build and optimize landing pages.

If you’re using Google AdWords, banner ads, online sponsorships, or email campaigns, a dedicated landing page is a great way to turn clicks into prospects. Take this opportunity to maximize your return on the money you’re already spending in online marketing by sending prospects to a well-planned landing page with a relevant message and offer.

4. Content is for later in the buying cycle.

Focus your content on issues that appeal to someone who is actually ready to buy and currently looking for a solution. So, for example, you might offer a whitepaper on “Top 5 Questions to Ask a Potential Vendor” or create a Buyers Guide for your particular offering.

5. Ease the nerves of your potential customer.

Strategically, a recession leads to your customers being more averse to risk-taking. Therefore, you want to skew your message toward a more pragmatic audience. Using customer references, reviews, expert opinions, awards, and other validation as part of your marketing can help to ease the perceived risk.

6. Align sales and marketing.

Increasingly, customers are interacting with marketing and online channels long before they ever talk to a sales rep. For this reason, there needs to be a strong tie between sales and marketing to share a single revenue pipeline. An example: I am currently working with a specialty motor manufacturer that uses online marketing to generate leads. Leads are passed to the sales team for follow up and the effectiveness of the marketing program is tied directly to the quality of the leads and determined by the sales team’s success in turning those leads into sales. Without a strong tie between marketing and sales, there is no way this program would be as successful as it is.

Marketing Automation Technology - SALES Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:54:00 +0000

Good day everyone,

I hope you had a great 4th of July. The 4th of July is the time of year when friends and family come into town so it was a non-stop get together/party on my end. Always something you look forward too, but glad to see everyone leave as well! ----I'm sure many of you know how it feels!

Anyway, on to the topic at hand! Since I began posting to this blog most of the topics have revolved around marketing strategy, marketing technology and tactics you can use to drive qualified leads into your sales pipeline. My personal experience started in a sales capacity so at many levels my "marketing mind" normally starts with this question: "how can marketing contribute to sales AND our organization to drive more revenue".

Now I did not come up with this question personally, this was a question my CEO asked me when I took my first executive level position (2001, as EVP Sales & Marketing of a large direct marketing firm) and at the time I had really not considered it in the way he was asking the question. Recently (over the last two years), I've had the opportunity to really get to understand the value of this question and with the tools now available to marketing and the new found committment of many CEO's to truly optimize the work of BOTH departments, it has become an objective for many of the worlds most respected business to business companies.

Today this is one of the first questions I ask many of the executives I meet in all capacities. The responses I get vary, as you can probably imagine, but one thing is certain. This is a question everyone is looking to answer! It has also become increasingly important to0 recognize how technology more often than not must be used to enable marketing the ability to really close the loop between marketing and sales.

Enter marketing automation!

But in order to really explain the benefits of this technology and WHY a company should make the investment I would strongly suggest making an effort to work with sales as it will make the roll out and "time to value" much more attractive to your senior management.

To accomplish this you must start at the most basic level and see marketing in a different light than that of sales. The personalities are different, motivations are different and compensation structures are normally very different. Compounding that is the nature in which each department views the other. As someone with first hand experience managing both to accomplish the core objective (generating revenue) I thought I would provide some insight as you look to embark on this sales and marketing alignment nirvana "journey".

I've prepared a fun "top 10 things you must know about sales people" for marketing to get sales buy in on a sales and marketing alignment and technology initiative!

1. ALWAYS keep in mind that sales is about closing deals, not about getting leads! If leads turn into sales you win with sales. But they don't get paid for working early pipeline leads, only for closing deals!

2. Sales will ALWAYS focus on the latter stages of the sales pipeline. If you want to get sales support, make sure you clearly state how you will help them build their EARLY pipeline so they can FOCUS on the latter stages of the pipeline. A good rule of thumb is to NEVER expect a sales person to follow-up on inquiries that do not have a high probably of closing (in other words, it's qualified).

3. You only get one bite at the apple! This absolutely true in larger sales organizations. if you roll something out to the sales team and a couple of the top performers don't like it, it has bugs, or it is not supporting by the VP, you risk loosing traction on the whole initiative before it even starts. No beta's, tests or "pilots" unless you work with certain people individually. A failed test or pilot rolled out to the whole company can turn the actual roll out feedback into "oh this is that initiative marketing launched last quarter that did not work, I don't have time for things that don't work"

4. Sales people like spiffs! Just like gifts at Christmas time, sales people like to be given things. Just look at the rewards structure set up in most sales organizations. Top performers get cars, trips, large bonuses, time off, dinners, etc... They are also use to giving these types of things to customers, partners and business associates in return for value they are provided. Don't expect a sales force to just jump on board unless there is something in it for them INDIVIDUALLY!

5. Sales people live on individual accountability! Even the most senior sales executives will tell you that if a sales person is making their number, chances are they are happy with them. The 'how did they do it?" question is never as important (unless ethical issues are involved of course) as "did they do it?" as it relates to making sales and reaching forecasts. Many sales executives are also paid based on their ability to not only make their number, but also to meet a forecast. The company will normally do what it can to support its sales people but in the end it is up to that individual to make their sales numbers. Even the nicest, most organized sales person will be fired if they are consistently below their sales targets. This is very important as you position what any new marketing initiative will do for them. Sales people are skeptical of things "the company" is doing to help them so be clear, concise and keep what motivates sales people top of mind when communicating to them!

6. They "believe" the best leads come from their contact/customer install base! Even if you believe this not to be the case, don't even try making that argument with your sales team. You may get through to some of your newer team members but to most of your seasoned sales executives this will set you back. sales people pride themselves on their ability to develop and sustain relationships. In their mind, they don't need help! No matter how creative, personalized or unique you think your marketing teams communications are, to a sales person it is probably just "noise". Instead make sure your take the position of enhancing their ability to communicate vs. replacing their "tried and true" methods. Be very focused on new leads vs. leads they believe they could get from their current list of customers.

7. Involve sales early in the process. I don't mean in the technology selection process, but in developing your business requirements for the technology. This will give you invaluable insight into what sales would like and how marketing can use the technology to accomplish these objectives. if they feel a part of this, you stand a much higher probability of multi-department adoption of any initiative.

8. Be prepared for initial pushback! Know going in that the initial reaction from sales will probably be "marketing wants another $100K to launch an initiative that will not help us, but drive more awareness, increase our admin time, etc". In the sales world (for all you sales people) there is a saying that the sales process doesn't really start until you hear the first "no". Any good sales person will tell you in order to become good, you must be able to address customer objections. This goes for marketing as well. If you get initial push back from sales (and you will), do your best to address their objections vs. just pushing it through. Pushing it through will lose you a lot of credibility, where dealing with the objections head on will gain you respect.

9. Commit to the end result and remind, remind, remind! Sales people have a very short attention span. If your initiative is going to take more than a quarter (and it will) be sure you ask to have some time each quarter to provide a status report. And, if possible, get sales engagement in these updates. Sales people will always listen first to other sales people or people on the sales team (sale ops, sales engineering, etc).

10. Be patient! I've always liked to remind our clients that just like training staff, make sure you offer on-demand access to your content. Don't think you can just give a 20 minute spiel at their annual sales kick-off on why this marketing technology initiative is the right thing for sales to support and everyone is going to jump on board. Be targeted with your communications, add it to the corporate intranet, and remind them that it is there and why they should take the time to read it. You will not get overnight support, but by getting a few sales people to see the value, and further more to realize the value first hand, just like sheep, they will follow if it makes sense or they feel they are missing out on something that can help them close more deals!

Have a great July!

2008 B2B Lead Generation Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:01:00 +0000

I recently received an e-mail from b2B Magazine that offered a new Interactive version of the 2008 B2B Lead Generation Guide (http://www.btob-digital.com/leadgenerationguide/2008). This is a new publication for them and it stated that it was in response to the changing needs of the B2B marketer. I think it's a great idea to dedicate the resources to focus a publication specifically on lead generation (and lead management). I wanted to share a chart from the publication that discussed lead generation tactics and their effectiveness.

A couple things to note:

#1: E-Mail, PR and Tradeshows continue to be the tactics most used by marketers to generate leads. Notice that they are not perceived as the most effective tactics though...

#2: Executive Seminars, Webinars and Inside Sales are those tactics considered most effective.

#3: TV Advertising as well as radio is slowing becoming a lost art in many B2B companies tactical lead generation aresenal. the costs of these mediums as well as the lack of accountability with regard to showing ROI makes it hard to justify there effectiveness beyond just name and brand recognition.

The publication also has articles by Brian Carroll of InTouch (www.intouch.com), James Obermeyer of the Sales lead Management Association and a number of other articles discussing lead generation and lead management.

MarketingSherpa (www.marketingsherpa.com), also recently released the 2008-2009 Business Technology Benchmark Guide, which also offers some great new statistics, best practices and a number of NEW case studies that will help very insightful and helpful as we begin planning our 2009 budgets.

I'd suggest making sure you review both of these valuable publications and let me know what some of your thoughts are. Have a great rest of May!

Robert

Marketingcharts.com!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:10:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

I hope you are getting ready to relax over Memorial Day! I recently found a website that for any marketer that appreciate stats (which is everyone, right?) would love. It's called www.marketingcharts.com. Check it out!

I particularly loved the variety it brings, including B2B, B2C and the depth of both online and offline research and content. One study I found particularly interesting was a study done by leading marketing automation provider Eloqua (www.eloqua.com), it discussed the online/print budget shift. Take a look and let me know what you thoughts are!

Marketers: Print Budgets Down, Online Ad Spend to Grow Rapidly

Marketers are continuing to put their ad dollars online at the expense of print advertising, according to the 2008 “State of the Marketer” survey report from Eloqua, which found that 55% of marketers anticipate a decrease in print ad spend three years from now.

Spending Trends

Online advertising spend is expected grow at a rapid rate, with 90% of marketers saying they will continue to increase their direct online advertising budgets - and 15% saying they will “radically” increase online ad spend.

Moreover, some 78% of marketers say they will increase their social media spend; 74% say they will increase their direct email spend; and 65% say they will increase their mobile texting/SMS spend.

Overall, more than 40% of marketers have radically increased their budgets for online advertising from three years ago. Also…

Some 23% of all marketers surveyed say they have increased their spending on Google AdWords.
26% of marketers say they have increased their direct email spending.
60% said they have kept their text and SMS spending on par with spending three years ago.
In general, print advertising, direct mail and broadcast spend remained the same vs. three years ago

Additional Findings

Accountability pressure is growing: 86% of marketers say pressure has increased on them to account for results; no one said that the pressure has decreased. Moreover, 68% of organizations are measuring the quantifiable contribution of marketing to the bottom line.
Marketers believe they are getting more effective - 64% say their marketing programs are more effective now than three years from ago.
Sales & Marketing are bridging the divide: More than 90% of marketers surveyed say the relationship between sales and marketing departments is OK or excellent, with 54% saying it has improved in the past three years, and 58% saying blame is shared equally.
Marketing budgets have increased over the past three year: 72% have had an increase in marketing budget, with nearly 50% increasing more than 10% and 11% increasing more than 50%
Marketers view prospects’ needs differently from their own: 60% say text messages are not effective for themselves, though they will increase their spending over the three years by 65%.
Marketing growth is continuing despite a down market: 95% say they will maintain or increase their marketing staff over the next three years.
Marketers are not always familiar with “do not track” lists, but most would opt in: 32% of aren’t familiar with the list, but 47% support it - and 67% would opt in to it.

About the study: The Eloqua survey was conducted with nearly 200 US marketing professionals at companies covering a variety of industries and ranging in size from $10 to $500 million in annual revenues and including industries such as business and professional services, high technology, manufacturing, retail and hospitality.

Marketing Automation BIGGER than CRM?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:18:00 +0000

Hi all,

Sorry its been so long since the last post, we just had our best quarter ever here at Rubicon and we can't find good people fast enough! Yes, I know, good problem to have, but a vacation wouldn't be a bad thing with all the weird weather and hail we have been dealing with here in the (beautiful?) Pacific Northwest.

On a more constructive front I wanted to share a thought with you that I found interesting. It was a news brief I found on www.thewisemarketer.com.

Automated marketing to be 'bigger than CRM'?	29 Apr 2008

Automated marketing solutions that provide sales with automatically qualified leads will be 'bigger than CRM' according to Mardev, a UK-based B2B information company. Mardev, which will be revealing the details of a major link up with Canadian automated solutions provider Eloqua at this year's IDMF, believes that the time is right, and points to companies like Cognos, Nokia, Borland, Dow Jones and EMI Music Publishing, which have already adopted such systems.

http://www.mardev.com/

I found it interesting primarily because of the fact that marketing automation should be viewed as part of your overall contact relationship management, not as a stand alone technology like many view it. BOTH are much more effective when truly integrated. The success of the salesforce.com appexchange is a primary example where integration with other technologies brings greater benefit vs. as a standalone solution. There has also been news of salesforce.com, google and other firms looking to a possible merger.

Eloqua and salesforce.com have focused on having great integration because it is key in bring marketing visability to how they contribute to the sales pipeline. Marketing automation and quality database management is the key for many companies getting a true look at exactly what marketing contributes to the bottom line.

Cheers!

5-Tips to Marketing in a Down Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:38:00 +0000

As the news continues to come in that we are slipping into a recession, company executives are preparing for the inevitable: tighter budgets, higher levels of accountability and a need for greater efficiency. Everyone from the CMO council to Business Week have echoed these sentiments which heighten the importance of aligning sales and marketing and focusing on accountable marketing as a “must do” during tough economic times. Marketing executives that wish to thrive in this environment must embrace the opportunity that a downturn represents and not dwell on the doom and gloom of the impending financial challenges. If we fall on economic hard times at home what would we do?

Measure: We would start to monitor the monthly budget and spending more closely.
Borrow: We might even mortgage the future to cover some important current outlays, safe in the knowledge that we can pay off these debts once the crisis has passed.
Drive efficiences: Figure out ways to stretch our dollars (“we can combine cable, telephone, and internet into one smaller bill?”)
Focus: We would trim out all the spending that was unnecessary, focus our budget on what was truly important and known to be effective.

Examine your marketing budget in the same way. Are you measuring the effectiveness of your marketing investments? Are you focusing your budget on marketing programs that show accountability? Have you considered the use of technology to improve marketing efficiency? Do you really “need” to be at all of the tradeshows and conferences on your calendar? And for those shows where the answer is yes, do you have a strategy to maximize their ROI?

For many marketers the need for accountability and efficiency should come as no surprise. For at least the last three years these goals have been at the top of the list when marketers were asked about their annual objectives. Now the pressure is on to step up and make it happen. Below I have provided six tips to help you better position your marketing organization for success in a down economy.

#1: Measure: Focus on metrics that link to the top line goals

In any economic downturn corporations increase their scrutiny of all spending. Marketing must re-evaluate not just what they are measuring but how they are presenting it. It should have an economic foundation and provide clear linkage to how marketing is contributing to the company’s top line revenue goals. Present measurements that are clearly linked to company success such as the number of qualified leads provided to sales, sales pipeline coverage (marketing should be measuring the early part of the pipeline), sales funnel value for opportunities sourced by marketing. Campaign analytics that demonstrate the efficacy of marketing investments are a must in showing the value marketing is providing to the organization.

#2: Borrow: Prioritize lead generation over awareness

In a recent study published by IDC, lead generation is the top priority for tech marketers this year. Marketers plan to allocate 52% of their marketing budget to demand generation, up from 48% in 2007. “Be prepared to withstand a budget reduction”, said Michael Gerard, VP-research director of IDC’s CMO Advisory service. “If your CEO or CFO hasn’t come by asking you to make cuts, be prepared for that.” So, the question we have all had to ask ourselves is “what do you cut, while still keeping your marketing team productive?” My recommendation is to focus more of your budget dollars on programs and marketing initiatives that generate qualified leads for your sales force. Evaluate your tradeshow and conference calendar, and consider what the attendance is likely to be in a down economy. Consider trimming this part of the budget immediately if increased awareness is not your number one marketing goal. The ROI for shows where you “need to have a presence” starts at zero too. We call these ‘ego shows’ because some execs feel the company has to be seen there to be credible in the marketplace. Most prospects will care less. Shifting budget from awareness to lead generation is mortgaging the future to cover the costs of near term growth. It is the right strategy to ensure you exit the recession with growing revenues and deep enough pockets to repay this mortgage one or two years hence.

#3: Drive Efficienies: Leverage Marketing Automation technology

For many marketers, the time required to manage programs can be overwhelming. Add to that the need to aggregate multiple data source like web statistics, e-mail campaign responses, form submissions, and CRM information to provide “somewhat” accurate reports and you can easily need a small staff of people just to manage these components of your marketing organization. And in a recession the CEO wants you to “do more with less”. Enter marketing automation! Many analysts predict that by 2010 over 80% of marketing organizations will be using marketing automation technology. With the economic downturn, now is a great opportunity for your organization to begin the process of evaluating, adopting and integrating a marketing automation technology.

#4: Drive Efficienies: Optimize your lead management process

When we encounter economic hardship we invariably figure out what we can live without, what fat we can trim from the budget. We get lean. It is survival of the fittest for programs in the marketing budget. But what if the process for handling, nurturing, and qualifying leads was inefficient? What if Sales was only looking at 30% of the leads passed to them by marketing? With the amount of money you spend to generate leads and potential business opportunities it’s imperative that you avoid the “lead leakage” pitfall, especially during a down economy! In a recent Gardner study it states, “Up to 70% of sales leads are not properly leveraged or are completely ignored, thus wasting marketing program dollars”. This speaks directly to the importance of getting the most out of each and every lead you have invested in acquiring! If your company is not already doing so, adding a lead nurturing program can be tremendously helpful in realizing the most from your marketing program investments. Having specific lead stage definitions, lead scoring, and consensus between marketing and sales to what a “sales qualified lead” actually is can make a huge difference to your results. And documenting your lead management process makes it much easier to produce monthly reports that link marketing spending to the sales funnel. A documented lead management process is the basis for sales and marketing alignment.

#5: Focus: Drive for continued success in your established markets

Prior to the recession you may have been driving to open up new market segments, or broaden the geographic reach of your products and services. Naturally this requires significant marketing investments that will not have the same short term return as investments in your existing markets (unless they are saturated). In an economic downturn even your prospects are going to scrutinize their purchasing decisions more thoroughly. If your bread and butter markets aren’t saturated, and you are not the dominant player, it is best to re-trench and do a better job honing the strength of your value proposition to the existing markets. This may postpone the meteoric increase in revenues you were planning prior to the recession, but it could also save you from losing market share in your existing markets, and prepare you for market share increases. So perhaps the best investment is in tools to help your sales team prove the strength of the economic value proposition to prospects even in a down economy – ROI calculators, more case studies with a focus on ROI etc.

By looking at this economic downturn as an opportunity to get lean and fit, to focus and drive efficiencies, and not an overwhelming challenge you will not only thrive in this environment but be even better prepared when the economy starts to improve. Your marketing team will be stronger and more focused as a result. It’s survival of the fittest and the recession will weaken some competitors leaving more market share for the strong. This is your opportunity to distance yourself from the competition. Grab it and have a great 2^nd quarter!

New Online Resource for Top Online Content!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:48:00 +0000

Brian Carroll just posted a great resource on his blog for identifying the top blogs and online content in the marketplace. Here is a snippet of his post:

"If you don’t have time to search though multiple blogs I recommend you check out Alltop. The site was launched by marketing wiz, blogger, author, entrepreneur & venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.

What's different about Alltop? It’s really a selection of the top 50 RSS feeds (i.e. mostly blogs) in 20 categories. All that information is collected listed in a single page. Personally, I’m finding Alltop useful for keeping up with other topics I'm interested in but don't want to spend a lot of time on.

The small business section includes the B2B Lead Generation Blog along with publications like Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Forbes and some of my favorite bloggers like Jill Konrath, Patrick Schaber, Seth Godin, John Jantsch, and Yvonne DiVita."

I hope you find this valuable!

The 5 Keys to Lead Nurturing - #2 Content!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 06:35:00 +0000

If you are like most marketers you either have too much content or not enough. Larger firms struggle with their vast library of content with very little idea of what works or what doesn’t, what’s new vs. old or what should be updated vs. scrapped all together. Many smaller companies have a hard time finding the time or the resources to consistently develop compelling content and in many cases neglect key pieces of necessary material that can have a substantial effect on the bottom line. In today’s information age, it’s never been so important to make sure that you not only develop quality content but that you also maximize the use of it once it is created. Regardless of your specific challenge, here are four tips in getting the most out of your content.

#1: Write FOR your audience

It’s not enough (or in some cases not as effective) to just write good English when you are developing content for marketing campaigns or sales support. Before you write your next whitepaper or send your next direct mail piece take a moment and think about your audience. Are you marketing to the owner of a small business, an IT director or a CEO? How and when are they involved in the buying process? Knowing the answers to these questions can provide some extremely valuable insight and enable you to begin tailoring the type of content you provide based on the individuals profile. Knowing where they are involved in the buying process tells you the type of content they may be interested in receiving. You will probably find that earlier in the buying process content like sales sheets, data sheets and informational webinars are effective in educating the potential customer on your product or service. However, later in the buying process case studies, customer references, and ROI focused content assets are normally more effective.

#2: Be Compelling

If you want people to take action after reading your content it must be compelling, give your audience a reason to respond and provide them clear direction on what you would like them to do. There is too much marketing content out there that does a very poor job of this. If you outsource copywriting, take a look at the variety of content (sales sheets, script writing, case study, etc) your writer (or agency) has provided to their other clients and make sure they have some experience in your industry doing what it is you want to accomplish (i.e. generate leads, investor communications, education on a specific product or solution). One website I think is pretty good for finding tips on writing compelling content is www.bly.com. You should find some great resources there.

#3: Know what’s working

Just as with any marketing campaign you should also be able to identify how well your content is accomplishing its objective. I realize this does have a subjective component to it; however, you should not overlook the importance of tracking what people are downloading, why they may be downloading the specific content asset and where exactly they are in the buying process when they downloaded it. It’s also important to track how well certain pieces perform as offers in campaigns vs. general information made available online to be downloaded at a person’s leisure. The more valuable the content the more you should ask of the person before giving them access to it. For example a 100+ page analytics report might require that ten questions be answered before giving access, where a sales sheet might require only an e-mail address. You should also take a look at the customers buying process and where they are using certain content assets. Knowing how well things are working will enable you to better understand what you need more of and more importantly what pieces are just creating clutter.

#4: Leverage multiple channels

With all the time, money and resources involved in developing quality content it’s very important you find ways to leverage it using different channels. Start by deciding what message or result you wish to accomplish by developing the specific content you are looking to create. Then decide how many different channels you can use it (I would shoot to always include at least three channels!). Once you’ve decided on a topic begin thinking through how you might use the content. For example, a whitepaper can be turned into 3-20 minute podcasts and used over the course of a three touch campaign. You could then take that content and post it to a blog or develop a 1-hour webinar. I realize you may need to revise it across the different channels but by leveraging your content this way you will get far more out of the multi-channel approach than you would just developing a whitepaper and moving onto the next project.

The key when developing any content asset is to find additional ways to use it that is both effective and efficient. By looking at your content assets in this way you are sure to get much more out of the time and energy you spend creating them!

The 5 Keys to Lead Nurturing - #1 Customer Buying Process`

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:52:00 +0000

For many of us in the business to business marketing space we are consistently looking for an edge that will help our companies better communicate to prospects and convert more qualified leads. There are many things now available to marketers to help in these initiatives but the foundation for everything one to one marketing related must start with the Customers Buying Process.

For years consumer marketers have researched, analyzed and refined their approach to better understand and communicate to their customers and many like Amazon.com, Google, Dell and BMW have nearly perfected it (although like any good marketer they would say they still have a lot to learn). By leveraging both their online and offline properties they have been able to bring their brands to a level only 10 years ago we couldn't of dreamed. Even more traditional brands like McDonalds and UPS have reinvented themselves over the last 10 years with great results.

So what does this have to do with the B2B Marketer? Alot!

Just like consumers, those businesses you communicate with also have their own unique buying process. The process they go through to buy is affected by five or more attributes:

#1: Cost of your solution or service
#2: The type of people or departments involved in approving the purchase
#3: Is your solution is a technology (SaaS, hardware, onsite software solution)?
#4: Whether it affects current business process
#5: The amount of outside support or consulting services necessary

It's also important to recognize that this is not necessarily a question of your sales process. An argument can be made that the sales process should support if not directly follow the customers buying process; leaving marketing to manage the early stages and sales to take on the latter stages. In many of todays business to business organizations the sales teams are using S.P.I.N. or Solution selling strategies which does take into account where the customer is in their buying process. The challenge in many organizations today is that marketing is not aware or does not use effectively the stages in a customers buying process to drive their content and marketing communications strategy.

Lets take the process below, which happens to comes from a large technology firm ($2B+ technology firm, that sells software).

You can see from the above graphic that the stages in this buying process range from awareness to loyalty and that in this case you can see that marketing and sales converge during the consideration stage. In your company you probably have unique stages but in many cases they are similar. Your customers start by being aware of your company, then move on to interest, followed by research and consideration. Marketing should be capable through various means of communications and content of driving your prospects through to the consideration stage but their job does not end there. You must also have content that is leveraged later on in the buying process like case studies and customer references.

By looking at marketing first as it relates to the customers buying process and not what "you" think as the marketer, your campaigns and overall ability to drive sales pipeline coverage will be much more effective and provide a much greater ROI on your marketing spends.

Welcome to B2B Marketing Evolution!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert J. Moreau) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Well I've taken the step to start a blog! After two years of going back and forth between "no, its going to take too much time" and "Yes, I really should just do this!" I've decided to make the step. It's been a real fun experience getting it started and for those of you that have been on the fence I say, just give it a try. There are lots of really good people out there to ask and as I realized some REALLY GREAT blogs!

A quick thank you to Brian Carroll, Seth Godin and Ryan Buchanan for providing some of the inspiration for this blog. I've been reading these blogs for quite some time and seeing how far its come is really great.

This blog is going to be dedicated to the exciting evolution of business to business marketing discussing

Marketing Automation Technology - Cool stories about what people are doing with it!
Strategies in Demand Generation and Nurturing
Marketing for Sales!

When I was doing research into what kind of blog to start I found that while there were a great deal of B2B marketing blogs and some sales blogs, there wasn't necessarily one (that I found...) that focused on technology for marketing. So I also added a couple other topics I think many of us marketers and sales execs want to discuss. Yes, I know I may be breaking one of the cardinal rules of staying focused, but I figured I'd give it a try.

An article; "Bottom-line pressure forcing CMO turnover" in the December 10th edition of BtoB Magazine it discusses the issue of turnover in the CMO position. At some level this article and the new CMO Council Outlook study (you can download your copy by clicking on the link) that was published pushed me over the edge... Here I was again reading about accountability (or the lack there of) and the CMO wanting more and more control and responsibility. But as the CMO study showed, there continues to be a gap between marketing and the rest of the organization (although things are improving).

Why?

After at least three years of reading about the same old story (need for accountability, lack of marketings perceived value, need to improve efficiencies - sound familiar?) marketers now have the tools to begin showing accountability and greatly increase the perception of their value within their organizations. Technology, specifically marketing automation technology as well as the addition of truly integrated demand generation strategies have now given marketers the ability to track prospect behavior and tailor creative and messaging very similar to their counterparts in the B2C world. If you look at each and every department in an organization; sales, operations, finance, production to name a few.... virtually all have some level of automation that has improved efficiencies.

We'll as marketing automation comes of age and the integration between sales and marketing becomes more and more a requirement, marketers can finally begin to satisfy the need of the CEO. That being: Show accountability to bottom line revenue! You can't look at things like branding, lead generation and PR as individual silo's. Instead you must look at what each contributes to the bottom line and where each fits in the short and long term strategy of the organization. Here are a few thoughts.

#1. B2B Branding is alive and well but its a LONG TERM strategy!

The brand in a business to business firm is what sustains your organization in the long haul. Companies like GE, Siemens, and AT&T have all dones some really greats things over the last two to three years. However, they have a luxury that many small to medium sized firms do not have. The ability to invest millions into their brand and market positioning. For those of you who work in small or mid cap firms you know that your customers interaction with your brand consists mainly of your web presence, trade shows or events, targeted campaigns and the interaction with your sales staff. This means you must look at your brand, and your customers interaction with you brand in a far different way than your B2C or fortune 500 counterparts.

#2: Integration is upon us!

As I spoke to many of my colleagues at a recent marketing event the topic of the new Dell/WPP agency agreement came up. Wow! I never would have thought I would see the day where a client decides to build a new agency because we in the agency community could not figure out how to satisfy the needs of the client. Yes, I know that may come off as a bit harsh, but really, if we as a business to business marketing community really listened to our clients, would this be necessary? This is an opportunity for many of us not managing a multi-faceted agency conglomerate though! Take inventory in what you are providing your clients, from a value perspective and sit down and ask them what it is they want out of their agency relationship. You may be surprised at their answers. If integration is what they are looking for a great way to grow your capabilities may be to partner, merge or acquire a smaller more specialized agency that does well in the areas your agency may not.

#3: Make Demand Generation a Priority!

More and more we are seeing titles pop up like "direct of demand generation" or lead generation manager". This is really a significant change in many marketing departments, where brand managers and marketing coordinators have graced the halls for over half a century. But many marketers still struggle with exactly how to integrate this function into their departments.

Anyone have any thoughts on ways you integrated this into your company?

On thing is for sure they must be a sales advocate - The job of a demand generation executive is to drive "qualified" sales leads and build and sustain the marketing & sales pipeline. It's really one of the easier jobs to measure. If you look at your sales pipeline before this person starts, you should see a significant improvement within 6-9 months!

Technology - You should also empower this person by giving them the ability to leverage technology and integrate that technology between your marketing database and CRM or SFA platform. Today there are many technologies available that can do this, many of which are extremely reasonable in cost.

Keep your eyes and ears open this year, because I believe this is the year where many companies not traditionally versed in many of the above topics I discuss will begin to see the need for opening their minds to the power of truly integrated demand generation!