Why? Because the strategic plan is what binds all the different parts of the organization together so that each group knows what It needs to do to move the business forward. It is what the entire leadership team should use to define what success looks like in the future. This picture of the future is derived from a shared base of knowledge created by analyzing market, customer and competitive trends and the organization’s strengths and weaknesses. The process provides a disciplined approach for looking at external forces, such as economies, markets, competition, customers, suppliers, etc, considering a variety of potential scenarios, and exploring new opportunities for growth. As part of the process, the organization can determine how to best use its strengths while mitigating any weaknesses and examine the impact of new markets, products and services in order to achieve future success. By formulating a picture of the future, the organization is defining success and how success will be achieved and measured.

Based on the analysis and the vision, we recommend that the leadership team select a manageable number of key objectives - typically no more than 7 to 10, and less can definitely be more - to accomplish over the next 18 months to 3 years. These are the key objectives that if accomplished will enable the organization to achieve success. These mission-critical objectives provide the foundation for the work to be performed and the parameters by which success is measured. They define the company’s priorities and enable the rest of the organization to allocate resources accordingly.

These objectives in the strategic plan become the business outcomes and serve as the stakes in the ground around which each part of the organization builds its operational plan. Whether you’re in sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, customer services, these initiatives are the basis for your plan. This is why the strategic plan is so important - it is the cornerstone for action. Many of you tell us you are revisiting your marketing plans in light of the current economic environment. As you solidify your plan, be sure you have the strategic plan front and center so you the marketing objectives and performance metrics are aligned around what matters most to the organization.

VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.

A quick reaction:

I don’t get how a blast of small messages not necessarily intended for you is better than email. I can see it being complementary at best. At worst, a huge distraction.

If you are needing something specific, an answer to a question for example, then absorbing a stream sucks. Asking the stream is better. But a person-to-person message (e.g. email) to a known answer source is best.

Streams seem to excel when you want to get a sense as to what’s happening in general.  And, there is a place for that.

But, no one can sell what we already have in enterprises, email. Perhaps something new has to be created so that there is something new to sell.

The one idea that struck a chord with me was how to make email better in the workplace.  This is near and dear to my heart because of the work I did at Fuser where we tried to innovate how a user communicates via email, social networks, micro-blogs, etc.

We were focused on aggregating all these sources of information into a clever new interface, and we were trying to be very complete, so that all a user’s messaging sources were available to them in one place.  A one stop shop.

Because of the space we were in, we were aware of others like Xobni.

I was reminded of Xobni this morning as Lili described some experiments Microsoft was doing around helping email users be more productive.

She brought up the concept that email is still the center of social interaction within many companies.  I agree.  All of these cool social media technologies are interesting and fun, but few have or will supplant email anytime soon.

So, with that in mind, how can email be bettered by following the lead of social media?  Lili showed some of what Microsoft was thinking.

They’ve created a prototype side bar for Outlook that allows a user to see relevant information about the person who has emailed you.  It shows their picture, emails they recently sent you, etc.  Sound familiar?  I’m not sure which came first, but the prototype looked a lot like Xobni’s sidebar.

As I recall, Microsoft tried to buy Xobni a while back.  They should have.  Xobni is all over this concept.  At the very lease their fresh thinking will be complementary to Microsoft’s, but I think that the Xobni product should become a feature of Outlook.

I’m not saying anything earthshaking here.  I think anyone who has used Xobni has thought to themselves “why hasn’t Microsoft done much of anything to innovate Outlook over the years?”  It’s a very reasonable question, and I’m glad Lili was here to inform us.

Email is begging for true innovation.  Like a friend of mine, Seth Levine of Foundry Group, recently said, email innovation needs to be done incrementally, otherwise user’s heads will spin.  Witness Google Wave.

What Microsoft is experimenting with and Xobni has already completed, is a great step-wise, incremental gain for email.

Many of us would love to see Xobni-esqe technologies become a part of Outlook.

And, since Microsoft is already thinking this way, we may get our wish.

I’ve thought about blogging for years, yet never found the right moment or topic.  Today that changes.

I’m at the 2009 Defrag Conference, in it’s third year.  My third year too.  Each time I come here I meet interesting folks who’ve been thinking interesting thoughts.  Like via my favorite novels, my brain is fed fresh new ideas to think about.  I bet this year will be no different.

If you never experienced Defrag, you should come.  But, not too many of you.  Part of what makes this conference so special is that it’s big enough, but not too big.  You feel like you can wrap your head around it.

Stay tuned as I give you a taste of what will make Defrag 2009 so great.

If you’re wondering which you should measure and improve first effectiveness or efficiency – it’s not a chicken or egg question -choose effectiveness.  This may seem counterintuitive since financial pressures often take you down the efficiency path, but improving how your marketing effectiveness is about generating incremental sales and customer value as opposed to efficiency which focuses on reducing waste.  It’s hard to make decisions about where to cut when you don’t know what is and isn’t working.  This choice is about doing the right things and then focusing on how to do these things right. Only by starting with effectiveness can you demonstrate marketing’s impact  on the achieve key business outcomes and make a strong case for playing claim a strategic role.

Of course to measure effectiveness takes data.  One of the primary reasons we fall short of being a strategic partner is that we lack the data, analytical models and right metrics needed to demonstrate our contribution and connect marketing back to the business.    To drive effectiveness you will need analytics and data that can be used to tease out the causal relationship between particular marketing efforts and such business outcomes as customer acquisition, customer loyalty, and customer profitability.  The more you can show the impact of marketing efforts and investments on the bottom-line the more influence marketing will have on company business decisions and future business strategies.

VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.

Everyone we speak with is concerned about the economy, battening down the hatches, hunkering down.  Many of us in marketing are seeing our budgets sliced, diced, and chopped faster than an infomercial gadget.  But if your strategy is sound consider being a contrarian and refuse to participate in the downturn.  We’re not suggesting you be rash with your money; but when everyone else has decided to go into idle mode, there can be a unique window of opportunity.  The PIMS research has shown those companies who continue to market during the downturn come out on the other side in a better position than their competition.  If you’ve done your homework and your products and service meet the needs and preferences of the market and you can demonstrate you deliver tangible value to your customers, then it is just as important to promote your company during business downturns. And if you’re been doing marketing performance management and measurement you can have the data to make a strong case for how your investments are going to add value to the company. Continuing your marketing efforts will help you build brand preference and support an image of strength in the market when times are tough.  Here are some that are good to do regardless of the economy:

1. Stay top of mind with customers.  Existing customers may consider changing suppliers when there is volatility and uncertainty in the market.  This is not the time to go silent with existing customers.  Develop and execute on customer marketing programs that will keep existing customers engaged.  It may also be the right time to conduct some customer research.  According to a recent survey of European businesses conducted by SPSS, about a third of companies consider customer retention their number one priority in the current economic climate, compared to only 8 percent of companies whose main concern is customer acquisition—a sharp drop from previous years, when about 40 percent of organizations cited customer acquisition as their primary concern. Not surprisingly, nearly 70 percent of the survey’s respondents said that gathering and analyzing customer feedback will be vital to their success over the next few years, as they work to boost retention by better understanding their customers.

2. Redouble your new business efforts.  Your sales people and channel partners are swimming against the current and are probably finding it challenging to make their numbers. With fewer opportunities, salespeople will have more time to invest in every qualified lead.  . This isn’t the time to try and do more with less, rather this is the time to do better with less.  Rerun demand generation programs that have proven to have high returns in terms of both effectiveness and payback.  Revisit your definition of the ideal customer in terms of personas and scenario marketing, rather than just demographics and other traditional profiling.   This may provide new ideas for how to connect with these opportunities.  If you didn’t do post-mortems are programs in the past due to lack of time, do them now.  This way you can examine what worked and what can be improved.  If the program looks like it is still relevant make the improvements and leverage your learning curve and the investments you’ve already made.

3. Benchmark your marketing performance.  If you don’t’ know how you stack up and you’ve never had the time before to find out, this may be a good time.  While measuring and managing marketing is always a good discipline; it is even more critical in tough times. Executives are more receptive to making an investment if you can quantify the results.  Benchmarking will help you understand whether your performance targets are in line, better, or behind your industry set.  Use this information as part of your marketing planning, performance target setting, strategy development, and budgeting.

VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.

The marketing operations function enables the marketing organization to operate more like a business, with formalized processes, infrastructure, and reporting. Best-in-class marketing operations organizations develop a performance measurement process that cascades from corporate objectives to marketing objectives to marketing programs.  A best-in-class marketing operation organization should tackle three areas:  the measurement of marketing ROI and demonstration of value, balancing marketing strategy with tactics, and tying marketing success to the goals of other groups. As you evaluate your marketing operations function, you want to make sure that at a minimum it:

1. Drives the processes for budgeting and investment decisions and more effective strategic planning

2. Leads the charge for marketing performance measurement processes.

3. Identifies and implements the required infrastructure to maintain the consistent implementation of processes.

If you’re ready to take your Marketing Operations to the next level, here are five things you should tackle:

1. Collaborative and transparent planning processes to ensure alignment between marketing plans and business outcomes.

2. Increased visibility and accountability in the budgeting process and expenditure tracking that ensure alignment between investments and impact.

3. Detailed project plans that link tasks to deliverables to outcomes and define the workflow for the approval process for the deliverables to improve predictability, on-time deliverability, and cost management.

4. Systems for storing and easily searching marketing assets along with guidelines outlining usage parameters and templates that enable field marketing, sales and distribution partners to localize and customize any content for specific geographies, customer segments and customers that promote sharing and reuse and ensure that sales and field organizations can find and use these assets, resulting in better return on investment.

5. Development and deployment of dashboards that enable marketing organization to gain instant visibility into key outcome-based, operational and activity metrics.

VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.

But it is working. Entrepreneur after entrepreneur have told me of their success stories in generating revenue and even reaching profitability. Now with such achievements, it is that much easier to get calls returned from Angels and Venture Capitalists (with a better negotiating stance).

This begs the question. If they had been focused on revenue and profitability from the beginning what might have been different? Would they have reached both milestones that much earlier? There is no way to answer that definitively. However, I do believe it to be true (though I am biased).

The focus on revenue and profitability is a positive outcome of the last 12 months. Lets hope that it continues.

CEOs face challenges every day. If you’re the CEO of a small or medium size business (SMB) your challenges not only include prioritizing the numerous demands on your time, balancing short-term opportunities with long term goals, managing cash flow and long sales cycles, solving resource shortages ranging from funds to people, but also the variety of hats you wear as the CEO. The SMB CEO is often responsible for closing key deals and serving as the company’s primary marketer. Sound familiar? Then build this simple CEO marketing toolkit, designed to save you valuable time and money.

Every toolkit should have six basic items:

- A hammer, to use as a lever

- A wrench, to turn things

- A screwdriver, to attach or close things

- Pliers, to bend things or hold on to small stuff

- Screws, bolts, duct tape or super glue, to connect things

- A measuring tape, to – you guessed it! – take measurements

Let’s translate these everyday tools into marketing tools.

In the world of marketing, the hammer is your company’s value proposition. What’s a value proposition? Simple – it’s the basic reasoning for why people should consider your product or service. Your value proposition shows you understand who the customer is, and what they want and need, and that you understand their purchasing criteria and supplier evaluation attributes. It answers the question, “Why should someone buy from you?” It addresses pain points and buying motives while serving as the basis for your positioning.

Here’s an example of a weak value proposition: ‘Company A is a leading provider of real-time mobile network intelligence solutions that are creating the foundation for a successful mobile data experience.’

This is a stronger value proposition: ‘Company B tailors and integrates web-based solutions that automate business processes so broker-dealers can increase rep and employee loyalty.’  Which example best reflects your value proposition?

Your second important tool is your wrench. Generating more sales leads is one of the top three business goals. How do you turn on lead generation? By developing market-centric actions tied to incremental behavioral commitments – we call this the Buying Pipeline.  How do you control the pipeline flow? By optimizing the marketing mix (offer, price, placement and promotion) to address your prospects needs, wants and buying process.

You need an all-purpose screwdriver for closing and tightening. In the business world, the screwdriver represents your proposal and contract templates, customer references, and how accessible you can make your products and services to prospective customers. Having the opportunity to try your products or services before buying is key to accelerating the adoption process.

Use these six questions to gauge the speed of adoption of your product or service:

1. Does the target perceive that the product/service adds value?

2. Is the product compatible with current practices and processes?

3. Is the product/service easy to understand and use?

4. Can the product/service be sampled and/or trialed?

5. What is the risk factor in buying/using the product? (Tip: lower is better)

6. Is it easy to communicate the advantages of the product/service?

No toolkit is complete without a set of pliers, which allow you to hold onto small delicate objects. In the business world, these delicate objects can be your prospects. Pliers also offer flexibility – as do your product/service roadmap, product line, product configuration, purchasing and financing options.

Screws, bolts and glue allow you to connect or hold things together. To connect your business operations together, make a contact management and/or relational database system that supports sales, customer support and marketing, which should be one of your first considerations (not something you install once the task has become formidable and expensive).

Although listed last, the business equivalent of the ruler or measuring tape is one of your most important tools. Use metrics in your company’s business, marketing and sales plans to clearly identify how success will be measured, and to track your business’ progress towards that success. Metrics can include securing a specific set of customers, a certain number of deals each quarter, a certain amount of repeat business from existing customers etc. These business outcomes serve as the basis for your strategies and tactics.

These six simple tools will:

- help you clarify why people should buy from you

- make it easy for people to adopt your product or service

- give you and your prospects room to maneuver on product and pricing

- enable you to establish sales and marketing processes and systems

- help you establish clear metrics that indicate how well you are achieving your business objectives

With your CEO marketing toolkit in place, here are three tips on using it for maximum impact:

1. Remember to repair things that are broken quickly – the longer you wait, the worse and more expensive it can get.

2. Use the best materials you can afford.

3. And wise words from my father apply, “Do the job right the first time.”  Rework is expensive in both time and money.

VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.