Truth is I’ve been busy.

I started my own company in November and have been heads down nearly everyday since. I’m happy to share Harbinger Labs with all of you.

Harbinger Labs is a small marketing shop focused for software companies. Rather than be a marketing agency for every kind of company, I wanted to focus on a space I’ve been involved in for the past 6 years. SaaS companies have similar problems on the marketing side, problems I’ve personally worked through and been exposed to and helped solve. Problems are just opportunities – @jonathanherrick

Rather than repeat myself and risk a duplicate content issue with Google, I’ll point you to harbingerlabs.com/introducing-harbinger-labs/ where you can learn about the origin, the meaning and how to contact.

What does this mean for travisarnold.com? I’m not sure exactly. Most of my time and thoughts will be focused on Harbinger Labs and creating content peers in SaaS companies will find useful. My initial thoughts are that a restructuring of the site will occur, but I’ve not had the time to consider what I’d restructure to. Rest assured, I’ll find something to do with the site.

Thank you all.

Travis.

They are brothers or sisters and must exist in harmony to get things done. Historically, however, sales and marketing teams either: a) don’t talk, or b) hate each other, but don’t know why. The key is alignment and communication which in this case is the responsibility of marketing.

Why is it the responsibility or marketing? Because, let’s face it, sales isn’t likely going to say “hey, come take a look and learn about what we’re doing and what our processes are”. It’s not because they don’t want to share, it’s because they are focused on closing business (hopefully business you brought them).

The first step is to get buy in from sales leadership. You’ll need to ask for access to the sales pipeline, the sales process and any data not currently available to you. Why not just use your marketing automation tool? Because they can leave out details that can help you work better together in the future.

Next, take a look at actual sales data to understand how marketing qualified leads (MQL) are faring. Are the leads marketing sends getting past the sales qualified lead (SQL) phase? Are there good reasons for that?

Find out those answers by looking at the data first and then approaching your buddies in sales and present solutions to the problem.

Sometimes it’s an easy fix like arming the sales folks with a relevant piece of content. Sometimes it involves setting up lead scoring and only delivering leads when they’re ready. Whatever the case; find the problem, fix it and help sales close business.

What about sales helping marketing, why does marketing have to do all of the work?

We (marketers) have to do it because we know the buyer better than a sales rep (gasp!). That’s right. We understand the buyer as a whole and look at data to make our decisions and recommendations; not a single deal or single customer. We help them by delivering the right buyers; they help us by closing business we send – the perfect circle of life.

How are you aligning sales and marketing? Do you have your own story or thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

photo by: Sberla_

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

Leonardo DaVinci

We can first look at the product team. It’s their job to take the market’s problems, hypothesize the best way to solve them, get a designer involved and kick it over to dev and eventually QA. So does the designer define simplicity, the QA team, development the product owner? Is a product all there is?

What about marketing? The marketing team understands their buyer, takes the product features and binds them to buyer problems, they design collateral/websites/whathaveyou that convert, write copy that is easy to understand and take action with, worry about SEO/CPC and whole bunch of other stuff. The marketing team surely wants to keep things simple enough to be easily understood by buyers and customers, do they alone carry the simple torch?

I guess what I’m getting to is this: Do we need someone who looks at the whole simple picture and brings it all together?

From the product through marketing would it benefit to have an overlord with technical, design & marketing chops to align simplicity? There are a lot of people that get their hands on the product and marketing which can always lead to mis-alignment. What do you think, is it necessary, is there someone who should own simplicity over another?

photo by visualpanic

Graphic designers have practiced the art of reduction for some time: eliminating un-needed elements and breaking down type and artwork to a pure, recognizable level.

For marketers, reduction can be a hard pill to swallow. On one hand you only have a short amount of time to engage a prospect; on the other you’ve got a feature list that needs facetime with your prospective customers. It’s a common problem and has resulted in bloated messaging and descriptions for a long time. Good thing there’s a solution.

If you’re having trouble ‘fitting’ everything together you need to step back and ask, “What problem am I trying to solve?” – sounds simple, yet we marketers struggle with it constantly.

If you’ve been handed a product that has 10 new features, then ask yourself how each one helps your buyer solve their problems. Sometimes we have the need to cram it all into one big product description, but avoid this and break it out; give your buyer a digestible nugget that speaks to them. Reduce it to it’s essence.

Also, when it comes to copy, keep it short and sweet. Just because they made us all write 10 pages of BS in college doesn’t mean we have to carry that practice to our marketing jobs. If you can’t boil down the problem you’re trying to solve and the benefit to your customer in 2 or 3 sentences then start over. Less is more.

Again, reduction isn’t easy. Boiling down a feature into 2 or 3 sentences that clearly explains how it solves the problem and why that’s important to your buyer is hard work. It takes practice, it takes discipline.

Remember, you’re doing the hard work so your buyer can quickly understand the essence of the message and make a decision.

Anne Kreamer, author of the book It’s Always Personal: Emotions in the New Workplace, conducted an informal survey, asking friends over 35 in a number of different work environments who wore headphones. What she found is that the younger workmates were strapping on headphones and inadvertently isolating themselves from their workmates.

As my interviews revealed, when we put on our headphones and fire up our messenger client of choice, we effectively make ourselves remote telecommuters even when we are physically present.

Anne Kreamer

From my experiences and perspective it isn’t the headphones or the people, it’s the behaviors you allow on your team. For me, we had morning and afternoon standups with ample time in between to focus on our work. If we’re working on solo projects then I’d want them to focus and limit the distractions of office hustle+bustle. If we were working on a team project then headphones needed to be put aside so we could effectively collaborate.

What are your thoughts? Do you like having people in your office on headphones or do you find it lowers the communication between team members?

photo: photosof.org

Marketing isn’t unlike fishing

Now some may say “this is bs, fishing is nothing like marketing. Fishing is all chance, marketing, well marketing is science!”.

There is science to marketing, that is no question. But, the fisherman is using science to make the best possible offering for his prize trout. He knows what time of year certain flys hatch and creates a lure that mimics this, he knows where his trout is most likely to hang out, he presents the lure at the right time of day, when it’s relevant and ultimately sets, or doesn’t set the hook.

As marketers weren’t not blindly fishing, we’re strategically fishing. We use data to help support our decisions and put together campaigns that will most likely generate a response from our buyers. We test, we try and we think about what our buyers need to make a decision and put the plan in motion, if it doesn’t work we analyze and use what we learned and test again.

So, the next time someone says fishing is just guesswork, just let them know it’s a lot like marketing – you know your target, you know what they like and you test, test, test.

One morning on the way to work I noticed my gas light was on, but since I was running late (and had no frickin’ clue where a gas station was) I let the yellow gas pump shine and continued on. That night on the way home I got that terrible, punch in the gut feeling when you get when your car jerks a little, then sputters, then just rolls to a stop.

I had run out of gas.

What’s a car without gas you ask? Well it’s a 2000lb hunk of steel, aluminum and plastic. What’s with the out of gas story you ask? Because it’s exactly like a marketing automation system without content…worthless.

You see, without content your marketing automation tool will just sit on a digital shelf and suck money from your budget w/o proving it’s real value which is automating the process of driving suspects to prospects, prospects to leads, leads to opportunities and opportunities to customers. This process depends on delivering the right content to your buyers at the right time in their buying cycle. By this I mean you don’t want to send them a contract when they don’t even know who you are.

“But I have content in my marketing automation system now, lay off pal!”

That’s great, but is it the right content? Think of it like this – there are 4 different kinds of gas at the pump, some for certain cars and some for others. If you’re driving a Honda, then you’re likely not going to pump a tank full of diesel, it’s regular ol’ unleaded for you.

Understanding the right ‘gas’ for your marketing automation tool revolves around the buyer’s persona or role (vp of marketing, director of customer retention etc…) and where they are in the buying process. Different buyers have different problems or concerns at different stages so do your research and learn about their concerns.

Loading up your marketing automation tool with the right content is just like filling up the tank with the right kind of gas. If you do your research to understand your different buyers and their problems and create the right kind of content for their buying stage you’ll have plenty of fuel to keep the engine humming.

The problem is thinking that you are your buyer. You’re not. Your buyer has a specific set of problems that require a specific set of solutions. By ignoring these problems and interjecting your own opinions you’re doing yourself & your buyer a disservice.

Understanding your buyer(s) is probably the most not-done activity in a marketing department, but it’s one of, if not the most important thing you can nail. Deep-diving into their problems gives you a very clear direction of how to address their needs with your product or service. Take a look at the questionnaire below.

What this questionnaire does is give you a better picture of who your buyer is when they’re at work and purchasing software or services. It also clues you in on other personas that could be involved in the buying process. These could include a boss who signs the check, an IT person who would have to implement the solution or a general user who would need to give their buy-in. For each of these personas a short write up is ideal. This way you can address their problems and your solutions with the right collateral.

For example, buyer A is a general user and has problems with the current CRM’s user interface and thinks that is a big reason for productivity losses. Your piece of collateral connects buyer A’s problem with the beautiful UI and thoughtful UX your designers have built…problem solved. However, buyer B, the IT guy, could care less about the UI or UX, they’re major problem is lack of integration between the systems he manages. You counter this problem with a spec sheet about your current integration partners and the API that lets your solution ‘talk’ with other systems…different buyer but problem solved.

Remember, getting to know your buyer is an important part of the planning process. Understanding what your typical buyer(s) do, feel are problems, how they’re measured and how they think they could be better help you form a clear picture of how your solution fits with their work life.

The infographic speaks for itself, “marketing people vs. normal people”, enjoy.