Bad Marketing

CMO Council research: 2/3rds of us are not effective

The "Bad" - trying to compete with half a team

The CMO Council released research, "Driving the Bottom Line from the Front Line" (exec summary here and Marketing Charts summary here), that shows most companies still don't get it when it comes to Sales and Marketing effectiveness and go-to-market strategy.  While the study covers multiple issues with companies' go-to-market capabilities, I was particularly interested/saddened to see that less than 20% say their sales and marketing organizations are extremely collaborative, and moreover less than half have taken any steps to integrate and align the two functions.  That strikes me as a huge opportunity to improve effectiveness and hence competitiveness which ultimately translates into improved market share/revenue/profit/stock price. 

Note the image of the Indy car team on the cover of the CMO Council report.    Per my prior post on this subject (Marketing is a Pit Crew), the pit crew (Marketing) and the driver (Sales) must work seamlessly as one unit in order to get around the track faster than the other teams.  Its a simple concept but takes a lot of planning and hard work to accomplish (otherwise there would be ties every week in NASCAR).  It might be heresy to suggest, but in order to win the race for revenue Sales and Marketing need to be structured, measured and incented as one team, not two.  This idea scares both sides (each fearing subservience to the other) which is probably why so few have taken any steps to formally integrate the functions.

Cool PR Tool

The "Good" - using a tool to assess your press releases

I've got a PR team that does a super job of cranking out press releases and pitching stories.  The problem is that we have a press hungry executive team and therefore we don't always have enough time to perfect a release before we have to write/pitch the next one.  I'm in the same boat when it comes to having enough time to review all the content.  Therefore I thought it was cool when I saw this free Press Release Grader tool by HubSpot.  It's not perfect but does enable us to do quick checks of our releases for common mistakes such as too few links, too much content and "gobbledygook" words.  I know we're definitely guilty of using too much generic IT jargon like "scalable" and "flexible" in all our content so it's nice to have the tool point it out.  While we're on the subject, check out "The Gobbledygook Manifesto" by David Meerman Scott and his blog too.    Sadly, we regularly use 8 of the top 20 gobbledygook terms.  Maybe I should have labelled this as a "The Bad" post ;)

More mindless marketing

The "Bad" - capturing interest, raising expectations and then not delivering

I know this isn't a B2B example but I had to share it given my last post on mindless marketing. I got this email from CitiBank last week.

The subject line caught my attention..."A Message from Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citi" and got me to open the email which I rarely do.  It must be important if the CEO is sending it to me.

The first sentence kept me interested ..."I want you to be among the first to know about the bold steps we are taking at Citi to be the premier, global, fully integrated financial services firm."   Wow, this really must be good stuff to follow.  I can't wait to hear what bold things they are going to do for me the customer!

Oooooops, no bold steps, just their lame marketing drivel ...  "Our objective is to create for our customers an experience in which services are seamless, payments and transfers effortless, and distances meaningless."  Truly inspirational stuff ;)  I'm so happy to be a customer of a company that delivers bold services like seamless payments and transfers! 

Seriously, what was the Citi email marketing team thinking when they put this together?  Why in the world would they use their precious CEO equity to send this type of lame message?  What did they want me to take away from this?  Where are the calls to action?  Even assuming they thought this was a meaningful customer communication, why waste the opportunity to take me to a landing page with some cross-sell / upsell offers?  Or, at the very least a customer feedback survey on what services I'd like more info on.  So instead of the intended effect, this email actually gave me a worse impression of the company.

It just goes to show you that even the big companies with the best dedicated staff and agencies can practice mindless marketing. 

Are you a mindless marketer?

The “Good” and the “Ugly” – sending an educational guide to prospects vs. sending a press release

As a marketing leader at my company I receive dozens of email and direct mail vendor communications every day.  Most are just average, many are awful and a select few are excellent.  Usually I give each a 5 second review and toss them before I even leave the mailroom.  One day last week I got two marketing pieces that I thought I’d share. As background, I’ve never heard of either company.

The first was a direct mail piece with a press release from BZ Media that explained in detail the executive  moves/appointments at their publication Systems Management News.  Several questions came to mind as I opened the letter.  Who is the publication and why/how did I get on their database?  Why in the world would they go to the trouble and cost to print a press release and send it to me via snail mail when an email would have been free? [ They have my email address since I also get numerous emails from their sales rep but to my knowledge I have never opted-in.] Why, since I’ve never been a customer would they assume I know who they are?  Why would they think that I would remotely care about their internal management shuffle?    This is classic brainless marketing on so many levels.  Hopefully someone at BZ Media comes to their senses and actually engages me with some type of marketing of value…how about starting with a brief email or letter explaining who they are and how their service would benefit me?  I guess they, and a lot of others, forgot the first lesson of Marketing 101 which is always, always remember to answer the WIFM question!  If a reader can’t discern the value you provide or problem you solve in the first 5 seconds you’ve lost them.

  In contrast, the same day I opened a direct mail package with a 40-page full color guide to direct marketing sponsored/written by MetricaDirect.  It immediately caught my attention as a high-end piece worthy of more than the usual 5 second review and toss.  They rightly assumed that I did not know who they were, so rather than just sending me info on their services they started with a thought-leadership approach to build credibility.  The cover letter was well written and succinctly reviewed WIFM...explaining how the guide would provide proven strategies for solving some of my most pressing marketing pain points.  I’m usually a skeptic when it comes to guides as they typically are company brochures in disguise, but this one is excellent….full of very useful information on demand generation strategy and tactics.  You can download it here.  I was left with a great impression of their company, checked out their website and bookmarked it in my “good vendor” folder (where I keep the only the few vendors I would call when I have a project).

Unfortunately, many in our profession either aren’t trained properly in direct marketing, or are too lazy to do the job right, preferring the spray and pray approach which is a total waste of their budget, and worse, creates a negative brand impression.    It may seem obvious to say, but we need to take the time to understand the prospect’s pain points and quickly communicate how our product helps them relieve the pain (i.e. the value of our solution).  Why do so many people forget/skip this basic tenet of marketing?

How do you measure PR - objectively?

The "Good" - building a simple PR dashboard that measures your effectiveness without costing a lot

We've been challenged by our CEO to ramp up the effectiveness of our PR efforts. Given that many execs view PR effectiveness subjectively, and with a recency bias as to whether we/they got good coverage, the team decided to create an objective-based dashboard.   We've used outsourced PR metrics in the past, but given our given our limited resources we wanted to spend our budget on coverage producing tactics instead of tools. 

That said, you can't manage what you don't measure so the PR team came up with a simple homemade dashboard (see graphic) that tracks interviews, bylined articles secured, coverage, press releases, speaking engagements, and pitches across the business, government and trade press.  The first tab provides a summary of all activity and each subsequent tab contains the underlying details.  For example, the feature coverage tab contains the details of all coverage including publication, headline, reporter, spokesperson quoted and URL of the article.

We're just getting started with this tool but I find it to be a great way to set goals for each tactical area of PR and then track the effectiveness of our efforts...all without costing us much except for some staff time.  Now we can measure our effectiveness on a week to week basis and make course corrections more rapidly. 

I'm interested in what metrics you use so please shoot me an email with any suggestions.

Email Newsletters: Calling a Foul on My Own Team

The "Bad" -  sending a newsletter to your customers/prospects that is all about you instead of them

I just reviewed our corporate newsletter today and was disappointed in the approach we are taking so I'm calling a "Bad Marketing" foul on my own group.  This problem is that it is a one-way push of news about us with little useful content for the reader. Here's the link so you can see for yourself, and below is my email to the project manager of the newsletter.

"The formatting looks good but I question the content plan.  I didn't realize you were going with captions from press releases, awards, white-papers, etc. versus writing new content/articles.   We need to re-evaluate the objective of the newsletter.  I think it makes more sense to have customer-focused content on how we help them solve business issues/pains.  We want/need to be perceived as thought leaders and I don't think we'll get there by just pushing out updates on our news releases and white-papers.  Sorry to be so harsh, but these articles beg the questions "so what" and "what’s in it for me" by the reader.   Once they have that reaction I doubt they will open our next communication.

 

Let's discuss the content strategy of the next newsletter and work toward a more educational/thought leadership approach.  For example, we could have done a lot more on the TreasuryDirect story, explaining the pain/solution/results in a way that would have helped others see how they could apply the strong authentication in their businesses.  Another example would be to build a story around the pain point of data leakage and explain how one or several of our customers solved it with our technology.  Then the reader can resonate with the pain and get tips on how they might address it...hopefully contacting us to find out more.  We should have 2-3 of these customer pain stories and then the sidebars can be used for updates on press releases, awards, and calls to action.

 

Make sense?  I think a good first step would be for you to identify the couple of newsletters you really like to read and ask yourself why?  Then take it from there."

Coincidentally, I just received the MarketingSherpa report "Dirty Dozen:  Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes."  Mistake 5, "Institution to One Messaging," really hit home with me given my recent post "Its about the relationship stupid."  We are definitely need to change the voice of our newsletter and write as an individual to an individual.   There are other great tips in the Sherpa study so be sure to check it out and optimize your own email campaigns.  Also, I'd appreciate if you could send me some B2B newsletters you think have a customer-focused content approach and tone.  It will help my team with our makeover project.

Marketing is a Pit Crew

The "Good" - fostering sales/marketing partnership using the analogy of a champion auto racing team.

I just finished presenting the 2008 marketing plan at my company's global sales meeting and I used an analogy that really resonated with both marketing and sales.  If you're trying to more closely align with Sales then try thinking of the combined unit as an Indy Racing team, and marketing as the Pit Crew.   Here's the analogy...

Team Owner (President/GM) - Owns several teams (sales regions) and expects a return on his investment in the form of racing championships (exceeding revenue targets).   

Driver (Sales Representatives) - Competes aggressively in weekly races in order to earn points toward the championship (exceeding quota).  Must be able to perform on his own out on the track, but also needs the pit crew (Marketing) to make adjustments to the car and provide fuel at regular intervals.

Auto Shop (Product Marketing) - Works with the engine designers (R&D) to build the car (product).  Must have regular input from the driver in order to enhance the design and make the car competitive week-in and week-out.

Business Manager (Corporate Marketing/PR) - Builds brand awareness with the fans by promoting the driver/team through all media outlets.

Pit Crew (Corporate Marketing) - Provides race strategy (marketing plan) and supports the driver throughout the race by delivering fuel (leads), changing tires (sales tools), and making adjustments to the car (competitive comparisons/demos).

• Crew Chief - VP/Director of marketing that analyzes the competition, develops the race strategy and regularly makes tactical adjustments to the plan.  Also develops relationships/deals with other drivers (channel partners) to work together against other teams.   
• Fuelers - Integrated marketing managers that execute lead generation programs via the web, events, direct marketing, teleprospecting, etc.
• Tire Changers - Field marketing managers that develop/deliver sales tools, collateral, demos, RFP responses, etc.

The pit crew must work seamlessly as one unit in order to be faster than other crews and give their driver a competitive edge.  Moreover they must be in constant communication with the driver in order to make real-time adjustments to the strategy and tactics.   The bottom line is that the driver can't win races without the pit crew and there is no reason to have a pit crew without a driver.  Sales and Marketing must partner to win the race for revenue.

It's about relationships stupid

The "Bad" - marketing to companies not humans

I just read an awesome post by Dr. Flint McLaughlin of MarketingExperiments.com.  The post called "The Prospect's Prostest" lays out an issue that is endemic in the marketing world...treating prospects like inanimate objects/companies instead of as humans.  In Flint's words, "I am not a target; I am a person: Don’t market to me, communicate with me."  The bottom line is that we need to scrap all the marketing fluff and communicate with honesty and integrity in order to develop a relationship of trust with the customer.  (take note all ad agencies and PR firms)

B2B New Year Resolutions

The "Good" - taking time to think about how to improve in the new year -- some simple resolutions that will benefit all B2B marketers (in no particular order)

Review the events plan for 2008 and cut all the shows/conferences that you have to go to because "we have to be there".  Then review the rest and cut the ones that aren't highly targeted since events take a big chunk of the budget and you'd rather spend the money on higher ROI tactics.

Get competing bids from web agencies to do a total health-check on your web sites including benchmarking them against leading tech sites and top competitive sites for usability, content and use of the latest tools.  Simultaneously ask the product management team to review all the product content for freshness and relevance. Then use the results to develop the 2008 web action plan and budget.

Review the marketing/customer database for completeness ... do you have the right contacts (with email addresses) in the right verticals in the right countries.  Then challenge the database team to purge the junk and find new data sources that reach your target audience.

Do a deep dive on your SEO and pay-per-click results for 2007 and set stretch goals for 2008 traffic and conversions.  Challenge the team to evaluate your list of key words to make sure they are still relevant to your marketing goals and then cut/add where necessary.  Challenge your SEO agency to deliver higher page-ranks.  If they have been in place for longer than a year get some bids from other agencies since your current one may have already exhausted their toolbox.   

Carve some budget out to post your most valuable white-papers, webinars and technology guides on industry sites (for example Ziff Davis and TechTarget/BitPipe) so you generate awareness and leads when buyers are searching for products in your space.  Out of sight, out of mind.

Meet with the Sales VPs to review their needs by region.  Then review your lead-generation machine to see where it needs tuning (or in my current case where the engine needs to be rebuilt).  Encourage the regional teams to give you their territory plans with lists of top verticals/prospect accounts and then tailor your 2008 lead-gen programs accordingly.

Work more closely with your inside sales team...create a joint plan for executing a regular series of highly focused installed base up-sell programs. This is low hanging fruit that often gets overlooked in the push to find new customers. Also, make sure you jointly create a plan for lead nurturing with at least one useful (non-salesy) email per month to each contact plus a phone call. 

Go through your collateral cabinet and see which boxes are empty and which are full.  The empty boxes represent useful pieces to sales and the full ones are clearly not valued.  Empower your staff to rationalize the collateral to only the useful pieces and toss the rest since collateral can be a time and money drain.

Challenge your PR team to layout a proactive plan for getting you coverage in the new year since it is too easy to get sucked into a reactive/damage control mode.  The plan should include a list of industry issues that you want to be thought leaders on, the key pubs/reporters/bloggers covering the issue, the messages you want to get across and the assigned execs who will be the spokespeople. And, most importantly the plan should be in calendar format with the tactics to be completed in each time period (e.g. media tour in February on new product launch, exec speaking slot at trade show in March, CTO comments on industry expert blogs every week, etc.)

Are you forgetting to partner with Sales?

The "Good" - driving more true sales opportunities out of your demand generation program by partnering with Sales

I just rejoined a software company after a 2 year stint elsewhere. As such, nearly all of the sales execs are new.  As I started to re-establish the demand gen engine at the company I made sure to spend lots of time with the Sales team to mutually identify the targets, outline the lead process/flow and create detailed lead definitions.  We've only just gotten started but already I can notice a huge difference in the effectiveness of the joint teams over prior regimes that remained in separate ivory towers. 

It really is quite simple but so often we get too busy/lazy to communicate what we are doing, or are hindered by disparate locations, but we must make the effort to engage Sales upfront and on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Kirk Crenshaw at DemandBlog wrote a great post that summarizes some simple steps that will get you started.

Calling all integrated demand generation agencies...

The "Bad" -  trying to find a full service integrated demand generation agency.

I just took over marketing at a small software company and want to create a demand/lead generation engine in order to help build the sales pipeline.  The problem is that we are very light on marketing staff and don't have decent marketing automation or CRM systems.  My choices are to buy a slick system (e.g. Eloqua, NetSuite) and hire a staff to build the capability in house, or I can go the outsource route by hiring a full service integrated demand agency who can run the programs for me.  The problem I am running into is that there are lots of B2B teleprospecting firms and even more direct marketing agencies but very few vendors who provide both...i.e. integrated demand generation.  I've talked with many of the top B2B teleprospecting agencies, and while they are quite good at dialing for leads they have virtually no real direct marketing capability.  Most say they do, but I found that it usually means their tele-agents send emails to the people they just spoke with.  That is hardly what I would call direct marketing. 

I'm looking for a firm that can provide a truly integrated capability where they profile the segments, build the database, develop the messaging/communications strategy, and then execute the demand gen programs (themselves, not through subcontracted partners) utilizing the full spectrum of channels including a minimum of email, direct mail, web, and call center to drive qualified leads.  Moreover, the firm I'm looking for will develop and execute a lead nurturing program for the other 90% of the prospects that are not immediate sales-ready leads.  And, they will use their CRM system and its inherent analytics to refine and optimize the campaign messages and tactics on an ongoing basis.

Maybe there are some firms like this out there and I just haven't found them yet. There certainly is a market need for this type of outsourced marketing since there are lots of other companies in the same boat as mine that would love to utilize best practice integrated demand generation programs but can't afford to build it themselves.  If you know of any vendors that fit this description please shoot me a note.

Who else thinks that most press releases are a waste of time?

The "Bad" - thinking that B2B press releases get read, or in the remote chance they do, that it's by a customer

As a B2B marketer whose worked in numerous technology companies I've worked with people who think that a marketing launch consists of a press release and a brochure.  I'll bet most of you have had the same experience.  As if that isn't funny enough, these same people think that customers actually read press releases.  Maybe a few financial analysts who track the stock scan the releases for relevant info (usually finding nothing of any real consequence) but customers, come on, who are we kidding?  How many times do you read the releases of your suppliers?  Hardly ever I bet, and sadder still, when you do read them you find loads of vague claims, industry jargon, and silly superlatives.

Kuddos to my buddy David DeRosa, a true PR professional, who sent me this article by Scott Baradell in MarketingProfs ... 8 Telltale Signs Your Press Release is Bullshit.  A must read for any B2B marketer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming PR.  It is an essential tool for marketers.  Rather, I'm pointing out the folly of focusing so heavily on releases.  I'd rather get one good bylined article placed than crank out a dozen press releases that few, if any, customers read.  This seems like pretty simple logic to me so I'm continuously amazed by the fact that senior execs spend incredible amounts of time word smithing releases over and over (and over) again.   

The Launch and Marketing of Microsoft Vista

The "Good" - developing and executing the marketing plan for one of the biggest new product introductions in history ... WOW ;)

I attended an interesting presentation about how Microsoft launched Vista and Office 2007. John Roskill, Microsoft's US Business and Marketing Officer gave an overview of the marketing plan (audio, video and slides can be found here).  As you can imagine with a launch of this magnitude the marketing team faced many challenges including:

• Reaching and persuading an incredibly wide range of customers from novice consumers to developers, IT gurus and business decision makers in the largest enterprises and governments. (B2C, B2G, and B2B)
• Covering a wide range of product lines with an extremely broad value-proposition (Windows Vista, Office desktop, Office System Server, and others).
• Managing the timing of multiple staggered launches on a global basis.
• Competing against a large and determined group including Apple, Open Office, Apache/Linux.
• Overcoming the "good enough" mentality of current Windows owners.
• Managing a wide array of partners including hardware vendors, software developers, systems integrators, VARs and resellers.
• Changing market perceptions such as "its been a long time coming" and "weak security."

The launch objectives are similar to what you and I have written in numerous marketing plans ... Ready the channel, Build awareness, Create enthusiastic advocates, Generate revenue opportunities / sales pipeline, and drive partner-customer connections.  However, the execution of the plan was anything but business as usual as they "touched" over 100 million consumers in less than a month in the U.S. alone and developed 15 million enthusiastic advocates that spread the message. 

Mr. Roskill shared great insights on the strategy which are too lengthy to describe here, but one thing that I took away was the need to move beyond transactional marketing to relationship marketing.  Microsoft has finally gotten it and this launch marked their shift from...

• Point in Time Marketing to Continuous Conversion
• Single Product to Solution Stack
• Hitting the Masses to Targeting/Sub-segmenting/Measuring
• Generic Call-to-Action to Customized Call-to-Action
• Disconnected from Sales to Connected with Sales/Partners/Services
• Offline to Online (blogs, wikis, reviews, etc.)

These are good points to keep in mind as we develop our own marketing plans. Its easy to stay true to the old way of doing things, especially since relationship marketing is a lot more work.  But, as professionals we must continually look for ways to take our game to the next level.  If we don't, our competitors will!

Did you know?

The "Bad" - trying to apply current/old marketing approaches to rapidly shifting markets

Not my normal type of post, but this video really made me wonder how I can keep up with the pace of change and how markets and marketing will be impacted. 

The End of Marketing as We Know It

The "Good" - understanding that marketing is an investment not an expense, and a science not an art

I recommend that you read Sergio Zyman's first book, "The End of Marketing as We Know It."   Sergio is infamous as the guy responsible for the biggest flop in the history of marketing....New Coke.  He's come a long way since then and now runs one of the top marketing consultancies in the country.  While his book is primarily about consumer marketing, the lessons within are applicable to B2B marketing as well.  I was hooked by the first sentence of the first chapter.

"The sole purpose of marketing is to get more people to buy more of your product, more often, for more money."

It's a simple but powerful definition of marketing, and I love it because it reminds people that marketing is a critical strategic function and not just a tactical group that does advertising, promotions and PR.  Here are some other key takeaways from the book.

• When you understand that marketing is what you do to sell stuff, then the money that you lay out is an investment instead of an expense.
• The marketplace today is a consumer democracy. Customers have options, so marketers have to tell them how to choose.
• Plan your destination.  Make it where you want to be, not where you think you can get.  Once you have your destination, develop a strategy for getting there.
• Marketing is a science.  It is about experimentation, measurement, analysis, refinement, and replication.  You must be willing to change your mind.
• Figure out what is desirable and make that what you deliver; or figure out what you can deliver and make it desirable.  But remember, the former is a lot easier than the latter.
• Sameness doesn't sell.  The value of your product will be determined by its differentiation from the competition in ways that are relevant to customers.
• Measure constantly but use the right yardsticks; focus on profit, not volume; on actual consumption, not share of market.
• Don't be blinded by visible demand.  Preference is perishable.  Keep selling the sold.
• Strategy is your job, not the ad agency.  You agency's job is to communicate it effectively.
• Find the best available marketing professionals and create jobs around them.  You've got to have the best people, not the best organization chart.
• Make sure everyone in your organization understands the destination, the business objectives and the strategy.  Then let them execute.