Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association

Inbound Marketing Automation Overview

CMA on behalf of Eric Goldman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

My post last week introduced the idea that Outbound Marketing techniques are no longer cost-effective in reaching B2B buyers, and suggested that we use Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation to replace it.

This post provides a brief overview of what Inbound Marketing is, and then outlines the software techniques used to automate it. The third and final post in the series, coming soon, will provide 5 steps you can take to implement Inbound Marketing Automation in your company.

Inbound Marketing Overview

The major thrust behind Inbound Marketing’s success, is that done right, your ideal prospects come knocking on your door and give you permission to sell them something. It’s a lot like the Field of Dreams: If you build a great website, the buyers will come.

And because the buyers may number in their hundreds of thousands (perhaps even millions), you will need some software tools and techniques to manage it all. But please note: This is an all or nothing approach. Automating a part of the whole process, is akin to speeding up the flow of water in the middle of a river. It makes that part rush for sure, but the overall throughput doesn't change. In the case of Inbound Marketing, there are a great many tools and approaches already on the market and new ones arrive daily. But the mechanics of the process remain the same and the basic set of tools you need is not beyond your reach – albeit, perhaps, with help. How much help depends on your comfort zone with technology moving at this pace. If you’re hesitating to take the plunge, think of the huge increase in conversion rates and reduced cost.

Imagine visitors, attracted by your excellent keyword and SEO strategy, arrive on your site. They find your amazing content and register to get it. They read it and hustle back for more. From their first visit, till the moment they pop up as a red-hot prospect in the sales CRM system, these people are managed automatically. Nurtured and cared for, according to your best practices; flawlessly, repeatably and 24/7. And with each automated drip-mail element of every campaign, provided with just the right response to nudge them to the next step in the sales cycle.

Components of Inbound Marketing Automation

1) Your Content. A subject unto itself, but the whole process depends on having content that makes your site the destination of choice for people interested in your field. Tools here help create it, display it, play, disseminate, promote and catalogue it. Our blog offers some ideas on how to create such content (website details at the end).

2) SEM Tools. Search Engine Marketing includes tools for Organic Search (SEO) and those for Pay-Per-Click (PPC). There are tools to help you devise the right Keyword strategy; others to assist in developing your advertising campaigns; yet more tools score your website, analyze its traffic share, determine your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking, assess incoming and outgoing links, and on and on.

3) Reputation Analytics monitor the social networks to determine the “buzz” around your products/services and company. These tools help you to find the most authoritative or influential blogs and websites for your area. The better tools not only point these out to you, but automatically scan them all each night and give you a count of how many mentions you earned, and then use their natural language ability to determine whether the sentiment is positive or negative so that you can focus your attention in the right places.

4) Demand Generator packages capture, score and grade visitors on their profiles and digital footprints, and then nurture them from cold leads to hot prospects.

5) The hot prospects feed into your CRM system and your sales people place those effective sales calls.

Next week I’ll give you the 5 steps you can follow, to implement these exciting techniques in your company.

Our website introduces Inbound Marketing Automation, and through its glossary of terms, white papers and tools, details the way it works, its advantages and cost benefits.

Eric Goldman is CEO of Gossamar Inc.

Setting the Record Straight: Wireless in Canada

CMA on behalf of — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

This opinion piece by Ken Engelhart, Senior Vice-President, Regulatory, Rogers was first published in the National Post on Thursday Nov 12 - we think it's worth sharing here.

Canadians in recent years have been reading about studies that claim our communications sector is slipping below world standards. The latest study to reach that conclusion was performed by no less an institution than Harvard University's Berkman Center. It is time for a rebuttal. I believe that Canada has great communications networks and internationally competitive prices.

It is often argued erroneously that Canada has a poor take-up of wireless services. The statistic commonly referred to in support of this notion is the penetration rate for wireless services. This measurement takes the total number of wireless phone subscriptions in a country and divides it by the total population. According to this measurement, Canada trails most countries in the OECD.

About 66% of Canadians have a cell phone and we are badly behind countries like Greece where 200% of the population have a cell phone. The foolishness of this measurement should be apparent already. 200% of a population does not exist. What these figures indicate is that there are two phone subscriptions for every man, woman and baby in Greece. In Canada, and in most advanced countries, most adults and teenagers have a cell phone. In Greece however and in many European countries, many people have one cell phone and several subscriptions.

Because Europe is on the GSM system, people have multiple SIM cards that they put in and out of their phones, depending on where they are and what time of day it is, to get the best price or service. These multiple SIM cards are generally a sign that there is something wrong with the cell phone market in that country. They certainly are not a good measurement of the take-up of phone service in an economy.

The best measurement is minutes of use per capita. A report by Merrill Lynch on Sept. 28 showed Canada to be the eighth best in the world using this metric. It is sometimes noted that the U.S. has a much higher level of usage than Canada and this is true. However, the point I am trying to make is that we are well ahead of Britain, France, Germany, Spain and most other countries in terms of the usage of wireless phone service.

More confusion exists with respect to wireless pricing. Many of the studies that the press describes involve "basket" analysis. For example, a study might look at the price of a "basket" of services such as 300 minutes of voice calling and 200 text messages. The latest study of this kind was a recent OECD study. The OECD study showed that the U.S. has the highest prices in the world. Clearly this finding is absurd. The U.S. wireless market is the envy of the world and has the lowest prices. Something is clearly flawed in this OECD analysis.

The OECD uses very small baskets even for their "high" users. The average Canadian uses almost twice as many minutes per month as the OECD's "high" user. Since North American wireless packages are much larger than even the "high" OECD basket, the OECD study erroneously shows that Canadian and American prices are high.

The standard and correct way to compare prices among countries is to take total voice revenue and divide it by total voice minutes. On this statistic (called "average revenue per minute"), Canada has some of the lowest prices in the world. Canadians pay on average 8 cents per minute for phone service. The cost is 12 cents in the U.K., 14 cents in France, 15 cents in Italy, 16 cents in Germany and 24 cents in Japan. (It's just five cents in the U.S.) Canada has very low prices internationally. This is particularly impressive given that we have much more network capacity per customer than most countries including go the U.S.

Canada is in 10th place in the world and first in the G8 in the number of wireline broadband subscriptions per capita. That is pretty good for a country as geographically vast as Canada. However, individual people do not buy wireline broadband services; households do. So the best way to measure broadband is by looking at the number of subscriptions per household. Since Canada has larger households than most European countries, we do much better when looking at this metric. When subscriptions per household are used, Canada's ranking jumps to fifth, sixth or eighth best in the world, depending on the data source. This should be a source of pride for a country that does not have the population density that many of our trading partners have.

Canada's communications companies spend $8-billion to $10-billion each year to compete with each other, in the process making Canadian networks among the worlds' best. Rogers was among the first six carriers in the world to introduce a wireless broadband network operating at 21 Mbps. Our two main competitors, not wishing to be left behind, have followed suit. Canada now has three high-speed wireless networks while the U.S. has none. I think that is something to be proud of.

"Confirmation Bias" and Brand Loyalty

Merril Mascarenhas — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Our minds hate change. Several studies have shown that people are twice as likely to seek information that confirms their beliefs than they are to consider evidence that contradicts them. This "confirmation bias" can influence how consumers and marketers make decisions.

Henry Ford famously said, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse." In other words, the road to true innovation is rarely illuminated by customers telling you what to do next; they may often not know what they want next or rely on a "confirmation bias" about their preferences.

Most innovative marketers say that fighting confirmation bias is a never-ending battle. But if you can't conquer this gremlin of your own mind, you don't stand a chance of outwitting your competitors.

We see this behaviour in all our decisions. A case in point is how retail investors hold on to stocks in a falling market, believing that the markets will rise, without any empirical evidence that this is likely to happen. Consumer confidence is a big driver of purchase behaviour. If consumers believe this recession will last a lot longer than it will because they recently lost their jobs, they are likely to scale back discretionary spending even after they find a new job because of a "confirmation bias".

In short, the human mind acts like a compulsive yes-man who echoes whatever you want to believe. Psychologists call this mental gremlin the "confirmation bias". A recent analysis of psychological studies with nearly 8,000 participants concluded that people are twice as likely to seek information that confirms what they already believe as they are to consider evidence that would challenge those beliefs.

Why is a mind-made-up so hard to penetrate?

Psychologists say its easier for consumers to repeat decisions than to take new ones. Whatever decisions consumers are inclined to make, are the decisions consumers are likely to go about justifying. It's simply easier to focus our attention on data that supports our preferences, rather than to seek out evidence that might disprove it. "Confirmation bias" is one of the biggest drivers and often under reported influencers of brand loyalty. It transcends the usual influencers such as product performance, emotional empathy and brand recognition.

It also is easier for people to rationalize than to be rational. Consumers and marketers are very good at cooking up post-hoc explanations of why our predictions didn't work or why we made some decisions. We tend to reinterpret our failures as near-misses.

The more you learn, the more certain you become that you are right. While gathering more data makes people more confident, it doesn't make their predictions much more accurate. Each new fact makes you more inclined to find another fact that resembles it, reducing the diversity and value of your information.

Confirmation bias contaminates the thinking of brand preferences of consumers. A lot of psychological traps can be combated with humility, but on this one, that doesn't help. For example, several North American auto companies missed the significant growth opportunity in fuel efficient cars because they clung to outdated strategies for gas guzzling SUVs and eroded brand value with carrots such as 'employee pricing'.

So how can marketers counteract confirmation bias?

A way to approach it is to imagine that you have looked into a crystal ball and have seen that your strategy has gone bust. Next, come up with the most compelling explanations you can find for the failure. This exercise, which some of the most innovative and successful marketers have integrated into their research process, can help you realize that your beliefs regarding why consumers might or might not prefer your brand might not be as solid as you thought.

Try estimating the odds that your analysis is wrong. Let us say that you reckon there is a 20% chance of an adverse outcome; that is like saying you will be proven wrong one in every five times. This way, if the investment does go awry, you will be less likely to dig in your analytical heels and desperately try to prove that you are still right. This procedure provides "psychological cover for admitting that you're wrong."

Show your ideas and strategies to another person you respect whose ego isn't already invested in the decision. Ask: If you didn't have to take this decision, would you still agree with it?

Run an imaginary strategy alongside your real one. There, you can change it at will, with no risk to your brand portfolio. On that blank slate, would you do more—or less—of your existing approach to strategy and consumer engagement? Some organizations require each team member to run a stress test of their brand portfolio and to justify any differences between their paper strategies and the company’s real-world plans. It helps senior executives know what people really think.

Before you decide on a marketing or business strategy in the first place, write down a statement of what would compel you to change your view of the strategy. If any of those influencers come to pass, the written record will make it harder for you to pretend nothing has changed or that you don't have to do anything in response.

Please email me if you would like to receive Arcus Consulting Group's series on "Better consumer engagement strategies".

Coffee Talk

Shelley McQuade — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Now that the recession is officially over (well maybe not officially over but certainly a marked improvement compared to this time last year) it’s time to refocus, regroup and engage your team. That’s right, engage your team. Why? So they in turn can engage your customers. According to Gallup, organizations that achieve both customer and employee engagement are rewarded with customers who deliver a 23% premium over an average customer. Hmm a premium, music to my ears – couldn’t we all benefit from more customers that deliver more $.

So what’s the magic bullet, how do you engage your team? Well, it’s not a magic bullet but it is proven; firms that communicate effectively are 4.5 times more likely to report high levels of employee engagement versus firms that communicate less effectively. This stat is courtesy of the folks at Watson Wyatt.

The challenge, all of us are doing more with less and squeezing in effective communication time is tough. Behold the power of “Coffee Talk”. Short but sweet; this meeting is best held on a Friday morning or afternoon for 15 to 20 minutes- tops.

As the leader, you bring in or supply your team’s favourite beverages – coffee, tea, lattes - you get the idea. Depending on the size of your team you sit, you stand, whatever works in your space. Here are the:

5 Coffee Talk Rules

Rule # 1: Kudos - Each person on the team shares something that went right this week. It could be a new client, accolades from a client, a tough deadline that was met – the sky’s the limit!

Rule # 2: Mission Critical aka Did we drop any balls? - Using a round table format figure out what went wrong. Next discuss - Did we fix it? Does it still need to be fixed? How can we prevent this problem from happening again? Can we systemize the fix?

Rule # 3: Heads Up - This is a recap of what’s on the horizon for next week, next month whatever works within your organization. This is designed to bring potential problems to the forefront. Is someone swamped? Who can lend a hand? Is someone stuck? Who has a solution? This informal brainstorming and planning goes a long way in getting everyone on the same page and building team cohesion.

Rule # 4: Parking Lot It - Is there a problem to big to solve in a short session, a process that is broken and needs repair. Many meetings get unwieldy as people go off on tangents about every bugaboo they’ve experienced since the dawn of time. Don’t squash it, just parking lot it. Put it to the side and schedule another meeting to prioritize and deal with Parking Lot items.

Rule # 5: Give a little bit - If time permits get everyone on the team to share something about them. To level the playing field, have each person answer the same question. What was your best vacation and why? What was your favourite childhood story? This simple process builds trust and helps people to get to know each other, both precursors to creativity and innovation – something every workplace could use more of.

So go ahead, pour a cup ‘a jo, share the coffee talk rules and watch your workplace transform from a “he said she said” finger pointing place (well maybe this isn’t exactly how it is at your place of business but you get the idea) to a “we’re all in this together, making a difference” mode.

Bold or Brash?

Robin Whalen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:07:51 -0500

While researching competitive ads in the not-for-profit category, our team came across a campaign that literally stopped us in our tracks.

The stark, contrasting, powerful imagery did such a good job at conveying a message that very little copy was needed to communicate the story. Regardless of how we individually felt about what we saw and the campaign overall, we believe that the ads delivered the message that was very likely set out as an objective in the orginating creative brief.

To be clear....I haven't seen the brief....but everyone knows that you should be able to guess what the creative strategy was if the ad was designed and written effectively.

I'd bet the farm that it went something like this:

Project Requirements: Develop a national print campaign

Communication Objective: Increase awareness of how little it costs to contribute to life saving, sustainable solutions to aid the poor in developing countries

Business Objective: Raise $XX funds to support programming for basic human needs: food, water & shelter

And if this was the brief - then this ad DELIVERED. In this business we talk about taking risks, being bold and getting your message out there by being innovative and smart and interesting. But it is quite often easier said than done.

These ads did all of those things. And to add to their credit, they have some enviable industry accolades as well. I can't vouch for whether or not they actually raised awareness funding - but I strongly suspect they succeeded on both accounts.

So I'm curious....are these ads bold? Or are they just brash? If they work to solve the stated objectives, but make you feel uncomfortable and just a little bit icky - is the creative strategy still working? I vote yes...but am interested to hear what you think.

Marketers, have you appreciated contact centre employees today?

CMA on behalf of Patricia Palumbo — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Customer Service Week is a nationally recognized event in the United States that runs the first week of October every year. Many Canadian companies have adopted this event within their own corporate culture as a means to formally recognize how critical a customer contact centre is within an organization. The ICSA-Toronto Chapter sent out a newsletter to various companies providing tips on how to celebrate this event. The Toronto Chapter went as far as to hold a Staff Appreciation night so that companies could recognize their staff in a more formal setting. This alone shows how serious some companies are about recognizing and celebrating the importance of contact centres and the people within them.

How is the contact centre relevant to the marketing world? Marketers have long sought the services of the call centre to boost their sales via direct marketing initiatives, lead generation or cold calling. Not only can representatives assist customers with questions about a piece they have just received in the mail but can also provide callers with a needs analysis to ensure they are purchasing the product that best suits their needs, making a customer feel at ease with a potential purchase decision.

Marketers have come to realize that the contact centre is also a retention tool to keep the customers they have, as well as an additional revenue source, especially if more than one product is offered within an existing portfolio. By supporting the contact centre in terms of motivation, incentives, and thorough product training, it ensures the team is well-equipped to deal with any type of situation a caller may present. Marketers know that when customers are satisfied, it opens and paves the way to introduce other sales opportunities.

How can marketers support their contact centre teams not only during Customer Service Week but throughout the year?

• appreciate the amount of knowledge the contact centre is expected to retain
• pass along praise when you hear it from a customer
• be there to provide explanation if needed on product details
• provide incentives or treats to thank the team for well-launched campaigns and strong sales results

Keeping the contact centre engaged and well-informed of all marketing initiatives simply makes good business sense.

By Patricia Palumbo, Director, Customer Service, Manulife Financial-Affinity Markets and a member of CMA’s Contact Centre Council

Marketing to Women Must Change with Evolving Role of the Sexes

Lina Ko — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0500

The Maria Shriver Report, compiled with the Center for American Progress, was released a few weeks ago. It culls decades of research to assess the changing role of the sexes in work and home life. Marketers should pay attention because marketing to women now should take on a new direction.

The report indicated that for the first time in America’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. This is a dramatic shift from just a generation ago (in 1967 women made up only one-third of all workers). The report went on to say that “quite simply, women as half of all workers changes everything.” We also learn that the battle of the sexes is now replaced by negotiations at the kitchen table to share the load such as household chores. There is evidence that the most stable, high-quality marriages are those where men and women share both paid work and domestic work. This is a shift from generations ago when the most stable marriages were those where husbands specialized in paid work and wives did all the domestic work.

A recent Rockefeller/Time poll of over 3,000 people nationwide in the U.S. takes a broad and deep look at what men and women think of their changing roles in society and their attitudes toward each other as spouses, parents, bosses, and co-workers. The poll results reveal a truce in the battle of the sexes, demonstrating that men and women are in agreement on many of the daily work and family issues.

In Canada, the same trend is occurring. According to Statistics Canada, more Canadian women than men were in paid employment during the first half of 2009. The employment data, published in the August issue of StatsCan’s Perspectives magazine, show women made up an average of 50.6 percent of Canada’s 14 million waged or salaried workers during the first half of this year. That’s an average of 160,000 more women than men.

Most marketers have always been targeting women as influencers. But now, as more and more women take on the primary breadwinners’ role, we should perhaps change our marketing strategy to reflect this evolution?

The True Meaning of Going Above and Beyond for Clients

CMA on behalf of Glen Eisenberg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

What does it mean to be absolutely committed to a client? After 20 years in sales and marketing, it has become clear to me that we need to move beyond long hours and exceptional copy and design. True commitment can only be shown by taking a client’s business and treating it like it is our own.

Over time it can be easy to take a client for granted. Our focus can shift from building an exceptional brand to building our own portfolios, bringing in revenue and winning top awards. This mindset is counterintuitive to what our industry really needs to be about.

Selling relationships rather than products

We are in the business of building brands and relationships. When I launched Precision Marketing and Communications in 1997, I started in the basement of a bungalow. Certainly hard work and creative talent brought the firm to where it is today, but the crux of what led to its success was the ability to build relationships by putting ourselves in our client’s shoes.

One relationship building strategy has been to travel with clients. For us, this means traveling to over 25 industry trade shows in five different countries each year along side our clients. This allows us to market their brand directly beside them. It also moves the relationship beyond a simple client-agency agreement and into a strategic partnership.

The strength of a relationship is what will make a client stay with you during tough economic times. It is the basis for an inherent trust that we must protect and value above all else. A trusted advisor takes calls after hours and on the weekend. They are a part of family celebrations and there in times of personal tribulation. Becoming part of an inner circle is what it’s about and what needs to be the goal of every client commitment.

Providing support not just collateral

Marketing firms that invest well beyond the creative and become part the inner workings or an organization are far more valuable. Bring an agency to sales meetings. Or, help present marketing strategies to a client’s stakeholders during major presentations. This shows the ability to go the extra mile and connect with clients on a level beyond the delivery of basic service. It also proves that you see the bigger picture of their business goals and objectives.

Showing an understanding of time management and timing

No matter how far a campaign is planned in advance, time will be the biggest enemy – there will never be enough of it. Establish a critical path that hits the client’s objective, shows time sensitivity and an understanding of industry seasonality issues. Be honest about achievable goals. This level of transparency can not only be appreciated, it can be rewarded with longevity.

A well timed and disciplined approach is often the most difficult thing to get clients to buy into, but arguably the most valuable. What is really going above and beyond? Taking a risk that your client is going to stick with you for the long term and, when necessary, telling them to hold on spending now and save the budget for later in the campaign. If it’s in the client’s best interest, then it is yours as well.

Glen Eisenberg is President of Precision Marketing and Communications

Four Things Marketing Cannot Do.

Jim Estill — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Marketing can solve any problem - right? Wrong.

1 - Marketing cannot create repeat customers. Once a customer has experience with your company, they will judge you based on how that interaction went. Marketing can help to get the first sale but after that, the company, product or service speaks for themselves louder than any marketing.

2 - Marketing cannot fix bad service. No amount of marketing can convince a customer your company is good if your service is poor. I almost laugh when I see hugely expensive advertising campaigns for companies I have dealt with that leave me on hold for an hour without solving a problem they created.

3 - Marketing cannot change who you are. For example, would Wal-mart win by saying it sells fine wine? Would Saks Fifth Avenue be able to convince customers they are the "lowest price"? Customers will simply not think it is plausible. Over time you can change the customers' perception of your company but that takes a lot of time. Marketing alone though cannot change who you are in the market. You need to be who you say you are.

4 - Marketing cannot hide the truth. In this day of the internet, it is very short sighted for any company to think they can market away the truth long term. And trying to do so would not only be virtually impossible but outrageously expensive.

In the end, marketing can enhance a good product or service but can do little to make a poor product or service sell or be accepted in the market. I am a big believer in marketing (or why would I write for CMA?) but believe spending time and money on delivering excellence should be the first step for any entrepreneur or business.

Excellence first - marketing later.

Inbound Marketing Automation - The Time has Come

CMA on behalf of Eric Goldman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Introduction

The pervasiveness of digital technology no longer surprises us; what does amaze us as marketers is the size of the digital marketplace. Facebook has more than 300 million subscribers. If it was a country, it would be the 4th largest. And LinkedIn would be bigger than Canada.

But for some marketers, this digital revolution spells uncertainty. Where do you stand on this digital divide? Are you still committed to the traditional, Outbound, approach to marketing? Have you embraced Inbound Marketing and its suite of Automation tools, or are you still thinking about which way to go?

If you’re a B2B marketer, the choice has been made for you. More than 90% of business buyers today begin their search for a solution online. And the overwhelming majority of them use Google to find their solutions. More than 85% of these people don’t progress beyond the first page of Google’s results: If your company’s website isn’t in the top ten results for its field, you may as well not be in business. If you’re still relying exclusively on Outbound Marketing, you soon won’t be. (For the experts among you, yes, there are other ways to drive traffic to your site, such as Pay-Per-Click ads and referral links, but organic search, the non-paid-for search results, is the best).

Strong words? Perhaps. But it’s hard to fault the theory below on how Outbound Marketing became irrelevant. And for those of you who agree with me, the rest of this post is about why its replacement should be Inbound Marketing.

My next post will describe what Inbound Marketing is, how its Automation works, and provide the 5 steps you can take to harness the power of Inbound Marketing in your company.

Outbound’s 3 Strikes

Outbound Marketing broadcasts a message to as many people as possible, hoping that it will resonate with some of them. Ads in print, direct mail, tradeshows, email blast campaigns – each one a steamroller trying to crack a nut. I believe Outbound Marketing is broken because:

1) Digital transactions have shifted power from the seller to the buyer. We all prefer to buy things rather than be sold to, and the Internet has not only enabled this, but made it compulsory.
2) In Recessionary times, the least defensible budget is the first to suffer cuts. With their notoriously difficult to calculate ROIs, traditional marketing programs are prime targets.
3) Attention Deficits caused by the overuse of Outbound techniques. Viewers, readers and listeners are tired of the noise, cynical of the claims, and fed up with the interruptions. They have simply tuned out.

A little more detail on each point

Before the rise of the world-wide-web, the seller controlled the dissemination of information to the people in his or her sightline. Today, buyers surf the net to find all the seller’s information, and their competitors’, without talking to sales professionals. They enjoy the freedom to set their own pace and to explore more and more details until they feel they know enough to make the right decision.

As for ROI, Inbound Marketing automatically calculates the Return on Marketing Investment for all your campaigns. By showing you, in real time, what each campaign is contributing to the bottom line, you can stop doing what doesn’t work and spend more on what does.

And Attention Deficits? Well Inbound solves this issue by listening instead of shouting.

For more detail on the demise of Outbound, read my blog.

In with Inbound Marketing

How Inbound works

Imagine your website has been setup to take advantage of Inbound Marketing and is fully Automated to handle it. Further imagine that Joe Visitor arrives on your website after clicking a link in Google. Let’s assume that your site matches the keyword phrase he entered to initiate the search, so he doesn’t bounce off immediately. He discovers that your content answers his questions. He finds a white paper promising to give him some information he values enough to give up his name and email address to get it. He registers, downloads the white paper, reads it, and returns for more. Each time he answers a few more questions about himself or his company, building up his Profile. And right from his first visit, and on every visit thereafter, the system:

1) Tracks his digital footprints around the site: pages visited, time on page to judge if he read it, length of visit, and many other micro-analytics.
2) Handles his requests for information, and sends him reminders and links to new information based on his previous choices. And continues to ask questions, adding to his Profile.
3) Uses all the above to grade his Profile (which indicates how interested you should be in him), and score his online footprint behaviour so you can see how interested he is in your solution.
4) Feeds his name into your Customer Relationship Management system when he reaches a predetermined grade and score.

Inbound Marketing Automation’s benefits

Inbound Marketing, and its suite of Automation tools, provides the following benefits to your organization as a whole:

More Leads: 60% of B2B buyers start their online research with search engines. Of that, 64% click on organic search engine results listed on the first page. If your website ranks on the first page for your targeted keywords, you can drive almost 40% of all potential sales leads in your industry to your website.

Higher Quality: B2B companies with “best-practice” lead management systems deliver a 250% increase in closing rates.

Lower Cost: Savings of 30% are common.

And Inbound Marketing Automation provides marketing with the following additional benefits:

1) By automating the drudge or routine tasks of lead generation and management, the system frees up your marketers to create one innovative campaign after another. And these higher quality leads, graded and scored till they are sales ready, allow your sales people to focus only on hot prospects, ending their complaints about poor sales leads.
2) The digital footprints and the person’s profile information yield priceless market insight into your prospects, for free. Even paid-for market research doesn’t yield this kind of insight: it’s provided in real time, literally while you watch your prospects interacting with your website, observe their performance on multivariate tests, and record their reactions to your latest offers.

To learn more, feel free to download these white papers:
How to gain Priceless Market Insight for Free

7 Ways to boost Profits using Sales and Marketing Automation

Next week, a brief overview of Inbound Marketing Automation and the 5 steps you can take to harness its power.

Eric Goldman is CEO of Gossamar Inc.

Watch This...

Bryan Tenenhouse — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Are you in?

What's Wrong with B2B Advertising? -- Not as Much as You Think

Ruth Lukaweski — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

“We’re not saying all business-to-business advertising sucks – many achieve mediocrity and a few are excellent”.
Dave and Alex

A few years ago a pair of young advertising executives (Dave and Alex) rated 200 B2B print ads: only 5% were rated as excellent; one-fifth as mediocre and the large majority (79%) as poor. Dave is still around and is currently paired with someone called Eddy (of the Dave and Eddy show) but the evidence shows that B2B advertising has matured substantially in just a few short years.

Dave and Alex received a lot of attention for their opinions – but by their own admission they admit that their approach was not very scientific: they basically selected an assortment of ads from six trade magazines. Nevertheless business advertising executives would agree with a number of their conclusions about what constitutes a poor or mediocre business ad:

No creative concept
Business ads with a simple product photo shot and headline with a poorly worded selling proposition: Everything you need is a router at half the price...Why not cut costs without cutting corners. Compare these to another ad for a healthcare company targeting HR personnel in small companies: Cut costs, not coverage – a captivating headline in bold white copy or red background which meshes with the selling proposition.

The trite analogy
B2B ads riddled with clichés such as: canyons (symbolizing depth); geysers (dependability); lurking wolves (competitive threats); bouncing balls (flexibility).

The creative misfire
Usually refers to tasteless ads such as one targeted at the beef trade featuring a live cow over the image of a cooking fire with the headline: Smoke gets in your eyes.

Sponsors of the five excellent ads mainly included large and well known companies: Microsoft; EDS; Internet Security Systems to name a few. In most cases the production values tended to be described as competent and noted for their clarity: single message and easily understood; their creative indivisibility (where the headline and visuals work well together); their restraint (simple graphics and tight copy).

Reality check
Even though this study was conducted a few shot years ago, the measly 5% of B2B ads classified as excellent would easily climb to 40% or more today:

-B2B advertisers include some of the biggest companies in the world – Intel’s Intel Inside campaign continues to be regarded as one of the best campaigns of the 20th century; and the gold standard for B2B ingredient advertising.

-BtoB Magazine in its monthly feature called 'Chasers' probes into the mechanics of B2B ads and has no trouble finding both the poor and excellent examples.

-Chasers recently compared two airline ads targeted at business customers offering 'comfort': one featured a stylized visual of a woman blissfully at rest on a flight but the rest of the copy failed to exploit this theme; the second ad featured the business class section (of a new airplane) floating on clouds and displaying extra wide comfortable seating and luxurious in-flight service.

Surprise

Bryan Tenenhouse — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Not many things surprise me after so many years in this business, but I have to admit, this did:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Since starting my own creative consultancy two years ago, I've written many websites for clients who think that key words actually matter. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in their web search ranking. Obviously this isn't as earth-shattering as learning that cigarettes are bad for you or that Balloon Boy was a hoax, but it does raise an eyebrow given that Google hasn't exactly advertised this news. Thoughts?

Demand Creation Trends for 2010

Albert (Ally) Motz — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

As 2009 begins to wind down, most of us feel like we just need a breather. A breather from the breakneck pace of change over the last year. A breather from what at times seemed like a non-stop torrent of bad news. And a breather from feeling on many days like things were simply out of control. Planning season is a perfect time to take that breath, not only to reflect on what is now behind us, but more importantly to consider what is to come. In this post, I explore three core demand creation trends for 2010 that should be top of mind when key strategic discussions begin.

One: Proactive Waterfall Management
The rapid, steep decline in business over the last year has convinced most marketers that a role for their function throughout the demand waterfall – vs. only at its top – is anything but optional. In a growing number of organizations, sales is requesting help with pipeline acceleration, lead nurturing and account-based marketing (ABM), pinpoint programs that when put into place help organizations actively control waterfall performance rather than passively observe (and try to react to) the results that come out of it. Still hindering progress in many companies is the lack of common nomenclature around the types of ABM, pipeline acceleration and lead nurturing potentially at the disposal of an organization. Simply starting by understanding their options, sales and marketing can work together to determine which will address specific issues within the waterfall best, leaving others to be pursued at a later date.

Two: Automation Takes the Next Step
Though SiriusDecisions estimates only 8% to 12% of b-to-b organizations (up to 19% in the high technology space) have implemented a marketing automation platform (MAP), we do expect this number to grow to nearly 50% by 2015, fueled by an increasing number of options available as well as everexpanding functionality. Following recent briefings with a number of organizations within the MAP vendor community, we have honed in on some of the more interesting advances that will be driving the category in the near term. These include ties between social media monitoring tools and the MAP to capture and score these interactions; support for multiple scoring models (both by product and for individual prospects interested in multiple offerings); and greater predictive capabilities. For larger organizations that require it, the tighter integration of marketing resource management (MRM) functionality with the MAP adds a more robust layer of budgeting, planning and tracking. At this point, it remains troubling to us that a number of organizations that have purchased a MAP are still struggling to implement core functionality, including basic lead scoring, lead routing and portfolio marketing. With features being added regularly, these organizations risk being left far behind if they do not get help from external MAP partners, or bring in human resources that have implemented this functionality in other organizations.

Three: Measurement Missing Links
Despite all of the advances in b-to-b marketing technologies over the past 10 years, key areas of measurement that help field marketing, operations and the executive function make better tactical and resourcing decisions have been elusive. Lack of visibility into and connection with CRM/SFA systems; weaknesses in these systems that “credit” only the first or last touch with a prospect; and a weak (if any) closed loop are just three reasons why many marketers still feel like they are operating with one hand tied behind their back. Over the last 12 months, however, a growing number of marketers are finding ways to break through these barriers, typically using a combination of back-end manual processes and lighter-weight, desk-top-based business intelligence (BI) tools to do so. Though these processes help directionally, it is in the greater use of this next generation of BI by marketing operations and field marketing analysts in conjunction with sales operations that we believe the most actionable results will be generated.

For many, 2009 was frankly a year to forget. For those organizations that had put the right people, process and technology in place to drive systematic demand creation in place before the bottom fell out, however, it made all of us remember how best-in-class companies became what they are in the first place.

Recessionary Marketing, Theme #3

Patricia McQuillan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Canada’s Emergence as a Marketing Leader

Canada has produced many award-winning marketing strategies recently that are being duplicated else where. Moving forward, Canadian marketers will have an opportunity to be innovative and creative as US markets become increasingly conservative.

Although the Canadian market is relatively mature with slow growth rates, experts believe that the recent economic turmoil created as a result of the global credit crisis will force US marketing departments to act more conservatively, thus giving global brands the opportunity to innovate and lead new marketing initiatives (through testing and metrics) in Canada. For example, BBDO worked with Frito Lay to develop the ‘Doritos Guru’ campaign, which involved the brand working with consumers to generate a name for the new flavour of Doritos as well as product marketing communications for the flavour. This brand-consumer partnership (co-creation) was launched in Canada but is now being used by other brands around the world.

As marketing programs become increasingly complex and integrated, the Canadian marketplace offers brands more simplistic measurement capabilities, compared to the larger population and logistical challenges posed by such a large geographic scope in the US. Canada also has the opportunity to own ‘green marketing’ by creating strong branding/communications models thus getting the attention of the US.

There has been a new found respect for Canada, as one executive in a recent recessionary marketing roundtable stated “we haven’t screwed things up badly”, referring to our relatively strong banking system. Five years ago there was a lot of negativity surrounding ‘Canadian’ branding, but recently there has been a shift. Focus groups conducted by RBC in the US found that American consumers wanted to have the company Canadian-branded.

Overall, American marketers are beginning to understand that there are significant differences that impact consumer behaviour in Canadian and American markets, thus beginning to buy-into the belief that Canadian markets require unique marketing programs.

What are your thoughts on the topic of Canadian marketing leadership?