Technorati Tags: integrated marketing campaign planning, launch, launch boss, marketing strategy, new product introduction, NPI, product strategy

I often ask marketers to tell me about the integrated marketing campaigns they are running.  Here are a few common responses:

• We’ve been running a Google Adwords campaign for the past 2 years.
• We’ve got a new PR campaign kicking off next week.
• Our print advertising campaign has been reduced to 3 insertions due to budge cuts.

These answers highlight a common misunderstanding of the word “campaign.”  Is the “campaign” a singular tactic?  Or, is it something more?   Are there lots of campaigns, or only a few?  When it comes to integrated marketing, there are strategic as well as tactical connotations concerning this key word.  When the context of the word “campaign” is misunderstood, it can lead to some heartburn.

The strategic “Campaign”

If I were to use a military analogy, the general would direct his troops in a Campaign (with a big “C”).  ”Troops!” he’d say, “I want you to take that hill.  Figure out how we can do it.”  In this context, the strategic implication is regarding a central objective — a major initiative; a big deal with a lot at stake.  To achieve the objective a variety of tools and actions need to be coordinated and executed.  All of the activities and actions ultimately add up to accomplishing this central objective. Overlaying our marketing framework to this analogy, our integrated marketing “Campaigns” are driven by key sales and marketing objectives, such as capturing market share, squashing a competitor, establishing a foothold in a new market. The marketing activities and offers are then coordinated and timed so they reflect a common/consistent set of messaging that engages prospects in the desired dialog as they move through our sales process.

The tactical “campaign”

Unfortunately, to complicate matters, marketing automation tools like Eloqua and Marketo use a more tactical definition for the word “campaign” (small “c”).  So does Salesforce.com. In fact, Google Adwords can be mapped as a “campaign” into these, and other tools.  This is unfortunate because it may suggest to some that isolated, random tactics can be effective without understanding their role in the larger marcom mix (i.e. the strategic “Campaign”).  When marketers fall into the trap of silo’d thinking, we lose sight of the larger Campaign.  Tools like Eloqua and Salesforce.com are incredibly important to our marketing efforts — but they are tools to help us execute the tactics, not for driving strategy.

To avoid unnecessary confusion, here are a few tips:

1. Create a marketing glossary, defining key words like Campaigns, Programs, Activities, and Offers.
2. In practical terms, the use of the word “campaign” (small “c”) will continue to be used in Eloqua, Salesforce.com, etc.  We can’t change that.  So, when speaking with executive management regarding  the big picture, use the word “Campaign” in the strategic sense.  Don’t confuse it by including the word “campaign” as a tactical element.  (In other words, if you tell your CEO you’re running a Google Adwords “campaign”, you’ll likely confuse her.  She thought the “Campaign” as about squashing competitor X.)
3. The reverse is true when communicating to the rank and file.  In the context of Eloqua or Salesforce.com, it is appropriate to use the “campaign” (small “c”) word in a tactical sense.  However, make sure to acknowledge how each “campaign” adds up to reach the “Campaign” (big “C”) objective.

It can be a bit tricky, but it’s nothing marketers can’t handle.  After all, we’re messaging experts.

Technorati Tags: Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing campaign planning, lead funnel, marcom mix, marketing automation, marketing blueprints, marketing programs

Technorati Tags: go-to-market, Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing campaign planning, marketing planning, marketing strategy, Plan

Shortening the sales cycle produces “more sales in the same amount of time,” according to Janet Gregory in her article Shorten That Sales Cycle, and “accelerates every function in the company that touches customers.” In this blog post, I focus on the sales process of qualifying to shorten the sales cycle. Often times we refer to “qualifying” as a single step in the sales process. In fact, qualifying should happen continually. By constantly assessing the fit between a customer’s need and your product or service offering, and only pursuing those opportunities that are mutually beneficial, you can increase productivity and shorten the sales cycle. Sales reps can fall into the trap of continuing discussions if the prospect returns phone calls or their pipeline is weak. But results will suffer. Let’s take a look at how qualifying fits at each stage of a typical B2B sales process:

Target Market

Marketing, Sales and the entire organization should be aligned on which markets to pursue. This may be determined by industry/vertical segment, company size, company geography, or company infrastructure (i.e. SAP or Oracle shop). In addition, the appropriate target functions (C-level, VP HR, Director Call Center, etc.) and buyer types (economic buyer, technical buyer, influencer, user buyer) should be identified. This will prevent marketing and sales from chasing after the wrong accounts and contacts. In addition, marketing can craft compelling messages, offers, and sales tools based on industry, applications and/or function, thus improving the relevancy of these messages to the target audience. See Mike Gospe’s article Shortening the Sales Cycle with Persona-Driven Marketing and Mary Sullivan’s article Sales Playbooks Help Shorten the Sales Cycle.

Ruthless qualifying: Do the account and contacts fit the target market? There can be exceptions (as in an RFP for a big project from another market), but by and large try to stay focused to improve win rates and your beachhead in key verticals.

Engage

Marketing and Sales will need to identify and build relationships with multiple contacts at each account and nurture them over time to increase the likelihood that your company is top of mind when the prospect is looking for solutions. Also, expanding contacts improves the chances of engaging in meaningful conversations, rather than getting shut down by a gatekeeper and abandoning the account.

Once Sales has made contact with one or more buyers, they can probe to determine if there is a problem the prospect is experiencing that your product or service can address. Sales development teams often work accounts up to this stage to identify projects, budget, timeline and key players. If there is a fit, a sales opportunity is created and passed to an inside, field or channel rep to further develop.  Accounts that do not pass this stage are returned to the marketing bucket for ongoing nurturing.

Ruthless qualifying: Make sure the account meets minimum criteria before passing on to Sales to develop. This will prevent wasting time and resources and ensure that your company has a good chance at winning the business.

Develop
Once an opportunity is created, Sales works to dive deeper into the prospect’s business. What are the company’s key business initiatives? Are they in growth mode or downsizing? How can they be more nimble and competitive? In addition to understanding these key drivers and aligning your solutions, Sales works to expand contacts, demo the solution, bring in technical resources, and understand the competitive environment. Based on the information uncovered in this stage, the rep will determine if it’s appropriate to continue on with a proposal.

Ruthless qualifying: Sales should work to fully understand the project and buying process. Is there an incumbent vendor? Is the company already leaning toward a competitor or home-grown solution? Uncovering and addressing these red flags early on is critical to forecasting properly and improving win rates.

Proposal:
The proposal can be for a full solution, or for a trial or pilot.

Ruthless qualifying: Avoid creating a proposal for the sake of creating one (and avoid rewarding sales reps on the volume of proposals). Rather, shoot for quality and higher conversion rates. If possible, involve the prospect in collaborating on the proposal so that all requirements are covered and they take some ownership in the process.

Negotiation & Close

Ruthless qualifying: Terms should be a win-win for both companies. Avoid low-ball pricing since you will need to live with that decision when renewal time comes around. Be willing to walk if the account will be too demanding on internal professional services and support organizations.

In summary, ruthless qualifying should happen at every stage of the sales cycle to increase win rates, improve sales productivity and shorten the sales cycle.

Technorati Tags: qualifying, sales cycle, sales stages, shorten sales cycle

Lately, I’ve received many calls from executives looking to start up a customer advisory board program for their company.  Inaugural CAB meetings are especially important because it marks the first opportunity to not only introduce your CAB program, but to also put your best foot forward and make a good impression.

I’ve been running CAB programs for clients for 10 years, and I have played with a variety of agenda models.  For running a first CAB meeting, I’ve found the following type of agenda to be the most effective.  (Other agenda models are used for successive CAB meetings.)  This article concludes with 3 rules for your CAB agenda.

DAY 1:

• Afternoon arrival
• Informal event (golf, tour of customer facility, etc) – optional
• Reception
• Informal dinner

(Use this time to make introductions so you don’t have to spend agenda time on this on the following day)

DAY 2:

• 7:30 am – breakfast
• 8:30 – Welcome and CAB overview
• 8:45 – Discussion topic #1 (i.e. how customers see their world)
• 10:15 – Break
• 10:30 – Host company overview (a la a “fireside chat” works best, not a corporate pitch)
• 11:00 – Discussion topic #2 (i.e. an investigation of possible investment opportunities)
• 12:00 – Lunch
• 1:00 – Discussion topic #3 (i.e. a timely “hot topic” as defined by customers)
• 2:15 – Break
• 2:30 – Customer prioritization (i.e. a ranking of the most important issues and opportunities raised today; how would customers like the host company to spend their money?)
• 2:45 – Closing comments
• 3:00 – Adjourn

WHY THIS AGENDA WORKS . . .

Rule 1: the agenda is all about the customer, not the host company!

Customers attend CAB meetings because they are eager to network with their peers and to discuss key drivers, trends, and issues that shape their business.   Executives have few opportunities to do this, and vendors who take the time to build an agenda around customer-facing issues will be rewarded with high attendance.  With that said, customers want to talk.  They don’t want to be lectured.

Discussion topic #1 should be focused squarely on the customer.  What are the trends shaping their business?  What do they care about?  What keeps them up at night?  Share a slide summarizing recent trends or analyst predictions.  Ask the customers to respond to them.  Do they see the world as analysts and press describe?  Or, do they see something different?

Company overview: Since this is the first CAB meeting, it is safe to assume that the attending customers may not share a common appreciation to the value offered by the host company.  Customers also appreciate having some one-on-one time with the CEO. Have the CEO provide a 20 minute “fireside chat” company overview.   This is a presentation with only a few slides (3-4!) where the CEO  talks about how he/she sees the industry growing/changing and how the company relates.

Topics #2 and #3 will be specific to each company.  However, they usually encompass an exploration of potential new investment/service/product offerings. While it is NOT appropriate to focus on specific tactical features, it is appropriate to ask customers how they view and prioritize various problem statements that the host company might choose to address with new product/service options.

Customer prioritization: Imagine a meeting room surrounded by annotated flip chart sheets taped to the walls.  A lot of information and ideas have been covered.  If we leave the meeting now, the host company may have trouble separating out the most important opportunities.  Conclude the meeting with a prioritization and ranking discussion with the customers.  Of all the ideas covered, how would they like the host company to spend their money?

Rule 2: allowing time for “aha!” moments

As good as our agenda is (and it is very good!), often times the most interesting “aha” moments come during the breaks and over lunch.  That’s why lunch is never a working meeting.

Rule 3: An agenda that respects the customers’ time

Why does the agenda end at 3 pm?  Shouldn’t we go until 6 pm or even extend another day?  Good questions.  Answer: no.  The higher the seniority of the attending customers, the  less time they have in their schedules to offer you.  There is nothing worse than having one or two customers leave in the middle of a discussion to catch a plane.  It’s disruptive and awkward for the remaining customers who will then start looking at their watches.

For the first event, have the meeting end at 3 pm so there is ample time for them to catch a flight back home.  The best feedback I’ve received in many of my CAB evaluation forms is, “I wish we had more time!”  Always leave them wanting more.  This is a testament to an engaging agenda that customers want to participate in.  This is also an open invitation for marketing and sales folks to follow-up with CAB members to continue the dialog long after the CAB meeting has adjourned.

These are just a few tips for setting up a world-class inaugural CAB agenda.  For more information, or to ask a question, please drop me an email at mikeg@kickstartall.com.

For more on CABs, check out my CAB Resources blog post.

Technorati Tags: CAB, CABs, Customer Advisory Board, Customer Advisory Boards

Conceptually, the theories of persona-building, positioning, and messaging are easy to understand.  However, sometimes it’s helpful for a marketing team to critique a real example and then discuss the parallels to their own business.  An example that everyone can easily relate to, and that is separate from the business you represent, is also an effective way to diffuse any emotion that may hinder folks from seeing the lessons associated with trying to execute a poor go-to-market strategy.

The following is a true story: the case of a better mousetrap.  In 1955, an eager entrepreneur introduced  a revolutionary new product that was destined to change the world of “rodent control”.  In addition to producing leaflets, promoting through friends and family, this ad (click on the link below) ran in  a variety of publications at the time.

Ad for a better mousetrap, circa 1955

Issues and Opportunities

You can infer a lot regarding the marketing strategy by looking at an example of the execution.  While the product design clearly is creative (and not for the squeamish), the entrepreneur fell into several traps that are common today, especially in hi-tech marketing:

1) Failure to focus on a clear target segment/persona

Who is the target audience/user/buyer?  It looks like pretty much “everyone.”  For fear of leaving a sales opportunity on the table, the entrepreneur attempted to be all-inclusive.  In a single swoop, he went after farmers, restaurant owners, food processors, meet packers, ships, homes, and orchards.    Although the confusion of trying to address multiple audiences at once maybe obvious to us gentle bystanders, one wonders if anyone asked the entrepreneur the following questions:

• Who is most likely to buy your product? Who is the persona?
• Do all these audiences look alike? behave the same way? have the same concerns?
• What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
• How well do you really understand the target buyer?

2) Failure to properly position the product

Every product needs to have positioning statement.

What’s in a name? Clearly, not all “mousetraps” are alike.  In 1955 (and even today!), the top-selling mousetrap is the Victor snap-trap.  In 1955 the snap-trap sold for 5 cents.  Our entrepreneur’s mousetrap sells for $29.95.  Branding the product against a generic “mousetrap” nomenclature will not serve his marketing interests.  (Although, a branding effort would introduce its own set of challenges.)

A new category? He’s attempted to establish a new category of mousetraps, namely, the “sanitary, self-setting, portable” mousetrap.  This is good, and goes a long way to justifying such a massive price increase over the competitive alternative. However, what you can’t quite make out in the photos is the following:

• The mousetrap’s dimensions are 3 ft long, 8 inches wide, and 18 inches high.
• It holds 3 gallons of water, and is quite heavy (especially if loaded with 102 mice!).

NOTE: Years ago, when I developed my first Positioning Workshop, I had the opportunity to view and touch this actual, very real mousetrap.  Unfortunately, it is actually neither, sanitary, self-setting, nor portable.  We have a category mis-match.

Benefit?  Which benefit? There are many benefits floating around in the ad.  Which one is most important?  Some seem hard to believe.  Again, it’s the “everything for everyone” approach.

For a benefit to be meaningful, it must be relevant to the target audience.  It must also be single-minded, clear, substantiable (e.g. you can prove any claim with data), and differentiable.

Differentiation? We come back to the 5 cent snap-trap alternative.  If anything, this ad makes the competitor’s product look better.

3) Failure to have a crisp, clear “elevator pitch”

Because there was no positioning statement to guide the marketing strategy, the messaging is a confused mess.  The entrepreneur would have greatly benefited from the Message Box template where he could underscore 4 key messages:

1. An “engagement message” designed to establish relevance with the target audience and their primary “rodent control” pain points they are trying to address.
2. A “solution message” that illustrates why not all mousetraps are the same, and certain applications require something much more than the standard snap-trap.
3. A “reinforcement message” that shows how his invention is superior to alternatives.
4. A “value message” that describes how the target’s life will be better than before after using his new, revolutionary product.

Critique your own work

How well does your ads/direct mail/website stack up?  Use the mousetrap example as a teachable exercise.  Never be afraid to critique your marketing strategies with regards to your persona, positioning statement, and messaging.  It’s not about placing blame; it’s about reaching the “next level” of marketing effectiveness.  Otherwise, your success may be limited to selling 4 units to your brother-in-law.

Good luck!

Technorati Tags: Integrated Marketing, marketing programs, personas, positioning, strategy

The other day I was interested enough in a demo on a company’s website that I filled out a form to view it. Next day, I received a call from a very personable sales rep offering to answer my questions. Smart! They know that a person who checks out a demo is interested and perhaps a prospective buyer. And that’s the kind of lead that Sales wants — a prospect with a high likelihood of buying in the near term.

The demo was a piece of Content. We marketers have been talking about the importance of content in drawing prospective buyers in to the sales funnel. When I wrote newsletter articles about Content and about Inbound Marketing, I encouraged marketers to post digital content suited to different phases of the sales cycle and apply relevant tags and keywords so the content can be found via Search. And of course, we don’t leave it there; we use Social Media to invite people to view the content, because if it’s really good, people will share it with their friends and followers, increasing the volume of interested buyers who visit your website.

Nice! But once the visitor reaches your website and views the content, what’s next? How does a visitor become a buyer? Let’s consider some ways to keep the sales momentum going.

Different content for different stages in the sales cycle
Consider which stage of the sales cycle is served best by each piece of content. Here are some digital content types:
•    Blog posts – May be generated by Marketing or by someone else in your organization
•    Customer reviews – This type is generated by outsiders on other sites.
•    Proprietary research reports
•    Tools – ROI calculators and/or other self-qualifier tools
•    Video – demos, customer stories
•    White papers
Each must carry searchable keywords and tags and a URL pointing to more content. At some point, a prospect may drop from pursuing further information, probably because they have gathered enough for where they are in the buying process. But they know you better now and know how to get back to you when they’re ready.

Different types of content are more useful at different stages in the buying cycle. The vast majority of marketing messages aimed at people do not “reach” them because they are not seen at the right time in the individual’s buying processes. The beauty of Inbound Marketing is that, rather than trying to grab buyers’ attention, you draw their attention at the time when they are already curious, and you lead them to content that explains what they need to know at that stage in the cycle.
•    Attention – Content that is useful at the earliest phases of the buying cycle needs to be educational. Avoid being too promotional at this stage. You’re just helping the buyer sort out your qualifications, attributes and special capabilities. Consider using a White Paper here.
•    Consideration/Interest – Help your prospects identify the attributes that best meet their most important requirements. At this point, a demo video that shows buyers how they can use your product can elevate the prospect to the Desire stage.
•    Desire/Decision – Here is the time to bring in an honest competitive product comparison. Or offer compelling customer testimonials (in text or video, if you can get it). Because this is high value information, require them to register to reach it.
•    Action/Purchase – Provide a Call to Action and link to a landing page where the buyer can take action — buy (e-commerce) or be contacted by Sales. Set up a situation where the prospect can move on the decision. At this point, a promotional offer can seal the deal.

Registration forms – When is it a good idea to ask a visitor to register to see your content? Not until you pass the Attention (education) stage and, at the earliest, at the Interest stage. But keep it simple. Ask for too much information and you discourage people from looking at your content. Definitely gather information at the Decision stage.

Closing the loop – Make sure there is a “next” place for someone who is ready to go on. Use:

• A Call to Action – Include a “Contact Us” or “More…” link on every bit of content, even if you believe it is early in the buying cycle. Make sure the page or email you offer helps visitors move forward in the buying process if they’re ready.
• Share Buttons – Add a Share widget that let’s your readers share the content via email or on their social networks. It gives visitors an easy way to automatically include the URL.

Make sure your content is never a dead end. Make it easy for your prospects to move on to the next step, and always with appropriate content. If you don’t have relevant content for all the stages of the sales cycle, your first job, right now, today, is to make sure to produce and post it and make it abundantly available via SEO and social media.

Technorati Tags: content marketing, inbound marketing, lead funnel, SEO, Social Media

Last week I attended a SalesCraft roundtable hosted by Sharon Little, Director of Global Field Communications at VMware.  SalesCraft is a forum for Silicon Valley sales leaders to talk about strategies and trends for empowering successful sales teams. The topic: “PlayBooks – A Top Trend for 2010.”  Presenters included Larry Ball, Sr. Director of Global Sales Development at POLYCOM, and Jenine Young, Sr. Manager of Field Enablement at VMware.   Here is a brief recap of how these two Silicon Valley companies are deploying PlayBooks to arm their sales teams with information, processes and best practices to drive productivity and revenue.

POLYCOM, a global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions, is a $1B public company with over 700 sales representatives.

• Sales Enablement Challenge:
  • Improve consistency among its sales organization and implement a more prescriptive selling approach.
• PlayBook Vendor:
  • POLYCOM selected Kadient – an on-demand sales enablement application that combines Sales Playbooks, Dynamic Sales Content, and Sales Performance Analytics—all embedded within a CRM system.
• PlayBook Implementation:
  • POLYCOM had an aggressive schedule, launching Kadient with 12 PlayBooks in just 3 months. Each PlayBook has either a vertical market or strategic partnership focus.  Content is organized around the company’s selling stages and links to content stored in an online portal. Partners view the content in a separate partner portal.
• PlayBook Benefits:
  • Drives repeatability in the sales process
  • Pushes content at the right time based on the sales stage and vertical market or product focus
  • Includes “check-points” within each sales stage that reps should complete before moving to the next stage
  • Integrates into the Salesforce.com Opportunities tab
  • Provides management with visibility into the selling/buying process through standard Salesforce.com reports and dashboards
• Learnings:
  • Identify content owners to oversee and manage the content. POLYCOM is unique that it has a VP of Marketing, and owner of content, reporting into the Sn. VP Global Sales.
  • Develop templates to keep content consistent – down to the font size
  • Roll-out and reinforce the PlayBooks through ongoing training, communication and top-down executive mandates
  • Be prepared to revisit or revise corporate and product positioning and messaging and the sales process. In POLYCOM’s case, the project forced them to quickly develop solution-based content versus product-based.
• Results:
  • Although just released in February 2010, the PlayBooks have helped align sales and marketing and have become an invaluable tool for sales – especially in ramping new hires and getting reps up to speed on new solutions and competitive issues.

VMware, provider of solutions for business infrastructure virtualization that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes, had revenues of $2B in 2009.

• Sales Enablement Challenge:
  • With over 2,100 field reps and roughly one acquisition per month, VMware was looking for ways to help reps sell newly-acquired products and solutions outside their comfort zone. It started by consolidating content from over 700 SharePoint sites into one sales portal to make it easier for sales reps to find the information they needed to drive deals. The project was such a success that the Sales Enablement team rallied management support to develop PlayBooks as a next step in making the content more actionable and relevant based on the sales process.
• Playbook Vendor:
  • VMware selected SAVO, a sales enablement application that allows salespeople to be more efficient.
• PlayBook Implementation:
  • VMware implemented five PlayBooks based on product areas. The content is organized by sales stage. The solution is not currently integrated into a CRM system as the company is transitioning from Siebel to Salesforce.com.
• PlayBook Benefits:
  • Provides the most relevant and up-to-date content for a given sales opportunity
  • Flexible – content and layout are easily modified using HTML
  • Sales “Flight Plans” or summaries of key selling strategies are featured in each PlayBook
• Learnings:
  • Involve the sales organization in building the Playbook. VMware selected 10 successful reps to serve as a beta group to suggest content and identify content gaps. This “built by sales for sales” concept has also paid off during rollout and training to boost user adoption.
  • Set guidelines on the amount and length of content with content owners.
  • Have a solid rollout, training and communication plan. VMware’s process has included podcasts from the VP Sales, VMware Radio spots by Geo heads, discussions via conference call with regional sales teams, and newsletters.
• Results:
  • Feedback from the beta team has been very positive. Reps appreciate the structure and content and offer suggestions to make the PlayBooks even more useful.

Although POLYCOM and VMware have implemented PlayBooks in different ways, these two leading Silicon Valley companies are demonstrating that the days of the Sales PlayBook in a binder (that is out-dated as soon as it’s published) are over. Leading companies will continue to experiment with online PlayBooks that give sales the information they need when they need it so they can have meaningful conversations with prospects and ultimately, drive productivity and revenue.

Technorati Tags: sales enablement, sales guides, sales operations, sales play books, sales playbook, sales tools, sales training

For years I’ve talked about transitioning in tech from Sales through Product Management and ultimately to Outbound Marketing. But lately, I’ve been talking about inbound marketing and am frequently met with puzzled looks. People inquire, “What is inbound marketing?”

In fact, the term “inbound marketing” has been around at least since 2007. The earliest mention I can find is in a January 2007 Forrester Report, How Technology Enables Inbound Marketing by Suresh Vittal.   It spoke of using interaction management software and real-time analytics and was technology-focused.

Later in 2007 a company called HubSpot (founded in 2006) began using the term Inbound Marketing and branded their product Inbound Marketing Software. They pointed out how customer buying habits had changed. It was time, they said, for companies to begin “getting found” by potential buyers when they are already looking at products or services in your industry. In the past businesses began shopping by visiting trade shows; now it starts on Google.

A Venn diagram in a post from HubSpot blogger, Rick Burnes, really brought the concept to life for me. It shows how three of today’s familiar marketing techniques overlap and interact to create an integrated inbound marketing approach:

Image from HubSpot blog

• Content marketing – Content is the collection of interesting and relevant information that attracts potential customers to your site or to your business.
• Search engine optimization – SEO makes it easier for buyers to find your content.
• Social media marketing – Use of social networks (SMM) extends the reach, spreads and amplifies the impact of your content.

Rather than finding customers as traditional outbound marketing has done, inbound marketing helps customers find you. You need not interrupt your target customers to get their attention. They’ll be looking for you when they’re considering a purchase, although they may not even know who you are yet when they start looking.

When they search (SEO) on a search engine or on their social network using phrases you use to label your content (content marketing), you’ll be findable. Social networks (SMM) serve to spread and amplify the message to a broader audience.

Inbound marketing uses the magnet approach (pull) vs. the bullhorn  approach (push) of traditional outbound marketing. The intent is different, and so is the result. It’s a different way of growing demand.

For more on inbound marketing and how to use different types of content to reach potential buyers at different stages of the buying cycle, see Inbound Marketing: Just Another Marketing Buzz Phrase? in the KickStart Accelerator.

Why inbound marketing?

• Value – Inbound marketing is less costly. Freely placed content can be as attractive and successful as Pay-Per-Click, and when found organically via search engines is less expensive. The 2010 HubSpot survey reports that inbound marketing is 60% less expensive per lead than outbound marketing.
• Effectiveness – Outbound marketing messages are becoming less effective because, a) buyers are bombarded by a high volume of messages each day and either blocking them or turned off by them, and b) people trust social sources more than paid sources of product information.
• Self-qualifying – Rather than marketing trying to guess who might become a customer, potential buyers identify themselves. Inbound marketing’s messages reach prospects at the time when they are considering a purchase and are most receptive to marketing messages.

Beyond inbound marketing
Social media is not just for marketers. Other areas where your business should be using social media are:

• PR – Remember, there are two sides to social media — what you say about your business and what others say about your business. Reputation management belongs in PR (as in Public Relations!). Someone should be monitoring and responding to what various communities are saying about your organization, positive and negative. The rest of the world pays attention to how companies react to customer complaints that surface in social media.
• Customer service – A number of companies (notably Comcast, with @ComcastCares on Twitter) are putting social media to good use in their Customer Service operations.

Involve other functions besides Marketing in your company’s larger perspective on social media. Establish a Social Media Council in your organization that represents all the other functions that touch customers and the public, and make sure your company’s message and policies are reflected throughout their conversations on social media.

And finally…

…no, I do not work for HubSpot. I just believe their approach is very much to the point. The individual components of inbound marketing are just that — components. Together they are far more powerful than their sum.

Technorati Tags: content marketing, inbound marketing, SEO, Social Media

The DMA Northern California (DMANC) recently hosted a presentation by Scott K. Wilder, former GM of Intuit’s Small Business Online Communities. The topic: “Getting Closer to the Customer Using Social Media: A Case Study from Intuit.” Here are a few key “take-aways” from Scott’s presentation.

Leading companies, like Intuit, have a relentless drive to understand their customers. Intuit’s founder, Scott Cook, started the “follow me home” program in 1989 to observe real customers using Intuit products in their home environment.  It is part of Intuit’s culture to use every interaction with prospects and customers as a learning opportunity and to ask the “5 WHYS” – drilling down to the root of problems.

Based on this culture, it was natural for Intuit to embrace online communities with their customers. In 2003, Intuit started a Small Business online community then added Facebook and LinkedIN in 2008.  In 2009 the company built community right into their products. Users have become company ambassadors and today, 70% of users get their answers from the community site versus customer support – significantly driving down support costs. Intuit is also leveraging Twitter and observing customer-created videos on YouTube that showcase Intuit’s products.

Before you launch into your Voice of the Customer initiatives, consider Scott’s “Top 10″ list of tips:

1. Ask “what problem are you trying to solve?” Use objectives and metrics to build a business case. Be open to the unexpected.
2. Have a clearly defined learning plan including how feedback will be shared and used. Scott’s team reported on customer issues to cross-functional teams as well as externally on the community site. They captured the issue, a quote from the customer, a link to the customer’s post,  the action taken and the learnings.
3. Look at qualitative as well as quantitative feedback.
4. Understand technology adoption curve of your customers.
5. Understand how your products or services are being used in the customers’ environment  (ie: in their office)
6. Understand the ecosystem and persona of different types of users – their title, their job function, the type of company they work for, what’s important to them, how you can help them succeed.
7. Strive for continuous improvement in products and processes. Go for the unexpected “wow.” Scott often met with customers to have them help prioritize new product features by asking “tell me how to spend your money.”
8. Understand the difference between what customers “say” and “do.” Intuit uses Omniture to observe behavior as well as Radian6, Buzzmetrics and Google searches (which are free) to monitor what people are saying about the company.
9. Start simple. Don’t try to build every feature possible.
10. Learning can happen at any time. Learn => teach => learn.

At the end of the day, the best advice to truly understand your customer is to be humble and let the customer lead. According to Scott, “It is important to start simple adding only a few features at a time– and to be in a constant learning state of mind, listening to what the customer says, how they say it and the language they use.”

Scott recently accepted a new position as SVP and Social Media Architect at Edelman Digital. Edelman is the world’s leading independent public relations firm, with more than 3,500 employees in 51 offices worldwide. You can follow Scott on Twitter at skwilder.

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