Marketing-Gimbal

What’s Old is New Again: The Return of B2B Account Based Marketing and Why You Need It Now Part III

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is not a Tactic nor a Technology.

This cardinal marketing rule goes all the way back to when ABM first appeared on the landscape. It was the undoing of ABM back then, and it will be the undoing of many ABM efforts now.

The goal with ABM is to ultimately deliver more profitable customers that stay with the brand longer. If I have to make additional investments in skill set, human bandwidth, and technology, then I better have a more profitable and happier customer as a result vs my current demand generation efforts. Therefore, if you treat an ABM prospect account in the exact same way that you do managing a general prospect inquiry, you will have the same conversion rate and time-to-value as your current demand management process, but now with greater costs associated with the deal.

 

To ensure ABM success it is best to view the program as a distinct process or framework as it relies on dedicated technology, coordination, and support across the organization in order to make it a success. Equally important is to support that framework with sufficient technology so that efficient scalability can be achieved across the ABM execution effort.

In this installment of the ABM series we will look at key elements of an ABM process and what technology should be considered in supporting this process.

The ABM Process

 While there are many process and framework models associated with ABM most will revolve around these general principles:

 

I. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)-Your ABM efforts will start with the need to define specific target accounts based on an Ideal Customer Profile: Those accounts that garner key characteristics that yield a higher propensity for to successful engagement outcome. A Successful ABM is all about strategy, and strategy is ultimately about sacrifice. The ICP amounts to your strategic “fishing net” that is cast into a sea of potential target accounts to help find those accounts in which to focus your ABM efforts on.

 

The ICP can be developed through several approaches but it is important that marketing and sales are intimately aligned as to the ICP. Marketing can add significant value in helping to define an ICP, but sales must also be involved as only they can bring other strategic criteria into account which also define the ICP. Your ICP profile should be a strategic document as well and engrained in the sales and marketing culture. ICPs can be defined by the following:

• Account Propensity Criteria-Analysis of What (Accounts) have purchased in the past?
  • Firmographic Data-employee size, revenue, vertical industry, revenue,
  • Deal size
  • Time to sale
• Share of Wallet Expansion Opportunity
• Advocacy Opportunity- Desired marquee brands and the potential of developing brand advocates and references.
• Buyer and Influencer Roles-Who do we need to target within the account?
  • Economic buyer roles and engagement within the buying cycle
  • Technical buyer roles and engagement within the buying cycle
  • User buyer roles and engagement within the buying cycle
  • Influencers roles and engagement within the buying cycle
• Customer Role Personas-Development of detailed insights of key roles related to your buying cycles and the emotional triggers that are impactful in driving effective messaging

II. Insight Driven Engagement-ABM is ultimately outside-in insight driven engagement. To support greater personalization in account communications insights across industry, technology, hot topics/trends, and the account itself will need to be analyzed for potential engagement opportunities and value proposition development. Key areas to focus on include:

• Relevant Context: market trends and, hot topics, technology developments, regulatory and compliance issues
• Account Level Research-Would include financials, annual reports, news releases, organizational structures and developments etc.
• Account-Contact-Engagement- Need to see who at the account has engaged with the brand and how.
• Real-time Account Intelligence-Real-time information and social feeds into your CRM that enable event driven marketing and sales engagements.

III. Buyer Centric Content-Generating the right content at the right time for the right roles.

• Adopting a Buyer Centric Model-A standardized view and understanding of how the prospect buys, and what their information needs are at each stage of the buying process
• Relevant and Contextual Content-Content delivered to prospects with the goal of moving the prospect along to the next stage within their buying process
• Role/industry Enhanced-Content enhanced and differentiated by industry and role based needs

 

IV. Personalized and Timely-Engagement with the brand is personalized and timely

• Coordinated and structured communications-all touches need to be orchestrated from the brand outward and across all internal departments.
• Customized Operating Engagement (sales, marketing, service and support)-What is the unique engagement model with the target account?
• Online & Offline Personalization-From web personalization and pixelation to personal 1-1 relationship building activities.
• Defined and Custom “playbook” Development-What are the relevant sales scenarios that will resonate with the account. 

 

V. Data Driven

• Predictive Analytics-Who else is in a buying process that you may not know about?
• Attribution & Reporting-What contact, at what account, consumed what content, and when.
• Segmentable-Firmographic and buyer centric criteria (in addition to firmographic criteria the ability to segment on buyer roles and stage in the buying process are advantageous)
• Contact enrichment-real time enrichment of account contact level information and account level intelligence

To ensure success It is key that both sales and marketing (and other functions such as customer success, services etc) agree to a specific ABM demand management process and engagement model that will give your organization the prioritized, personalized, and insightful touches it needs to increase conversion close rates with greater velocity.

While this is a relatively basic model more advanced, and developed ABM frameworks exist from the TOPO Sales Consultancy , ITSMA, and Sirius Decisions.

 

 

 

 

 

 The ABM Tech Stack

According to the Sirius Decisions 2016 ABM Study 58% of enterprises report that they are planning to increase their investment in related ABM technology and services. To do ABM efficiently and effectively requires a commitment to infrastructure investment. If your organization is not willing to invest in an ABM centric tech stack for sales and marketing than it may be in your best interest to maintain the status quo. Your competitors selling team (it’s a good chance they are doing ABM as well these days) velocity, fueled by these services, will leave you in the dust frankly. Here are some key areas to consider in regards to building an ABM technology stack.

I do not have any ties to any vendors mentioned, and only mention these vendor solutions as examples of evolving solutions that may be of assistance to your ABM efforts.

Segmentable Database-Strong Segmentable Data Management Processes and Taxonomy

The core of any ABM effort is to define an ideal customer profile, that will have a propensity to buy your goods and services, and then use this insight to target internal and external prospect accounts with your messaging. Therefore, your ability to segment your data across key areas becomes paramount to success (assumes all standard fields in place (address, email etc). Some segmentable criteria would include:

Required Fields

• Account Type (i.e customer, prospect, partner, etc.)
• Account Hierarchy (What is the parent company vs what is a subsidiary)
• Industry (requires a rationalized industry segment model)
• SIC code
• Account Size Criteria (1 or more of the following employee size, revenue, other criteria.
• Role (requires rationalized title-to-role model)
• Stage in Internal Demand Process (i.e Nurture, Inquiry, MQL, SQL,)
• Current Company Products and Services if a customer record
• Lead Sources
• Lead Status

Really Nice to Have

• Persona/Buyer Type (internal rationalized model i.e economic buyer, influencer, user etc)
• Account Level (not contact) Stage in Customer Buying Process (requires an internal buying model rationalized against offers consumed and engagement activity)
• Customer/Prospect Technology Deployed (i.e type of O/S, # Servers, #desktop, Software Applications-SAP ERP, Salesforce CRM)
• Competitive Solutions Deployed
• Account Classification (small, lower mid, mid, upper mid, large, very large-requires a rationalized account-segment model i.e what is small, what is large, etc.)

A successful ABM effort really begins and ends with strong database management, and quality data. To that end documented, standardized and rationalized data fields across sales and financial operations and pertaining to industry, company size, title/role, and account hierarchy are at the core of building a searchable, and segmentable database in support of ABM. In addition, periodic account and contact enrichment processes are vital in keeping data as complete, and as up to date as possible (B2B data decays at about 5%/month). While many of you will take some of these criteria for granted it’s been my experience that there are far more enterprises that lack basic rationalized and standardized data taxonomies and management practices than those that do not.

 

Today many companies provide enrichment support and many even provide an API interface so that you can enrich contact and account details in real time as a prospect converts on your offers. However; without agreed to taxonomies and standardized data classifications with sales and financial operations, efficient efforts to identify potential target lists could be hampered. Contact data that is old or inaccurate will also add to the challenge. When was the last time you cleaned out aging and unengaged prospects from your marketing database?

Often times your tele-vendors (i.e. ReachForce, Catapult, Televerde) are great resources in enriching data, and even in providing API’s for real-time contact-account level enrichment. In addition, there are several resources available for building and expanding target contact lists, not already active in your database (i.e. DemandBase, Kickfire, DiscoverOrg, Rainking, NetProspex, Insideview). These emerging services are now integrating real-time data enrichment and intelligence feeds along with predictive analytics to create “always-on” marketable data.

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is still a cornerstone of an efficient ABM infrastructure in order to manage personalized and multiple communication touches across various ABM prospect accounts. Your CRM and MAS should be viewed as your revenue management system holistically as both are required for successful ABM efforts. What is missing from a MAP and CRM is the account-to-contact context needed to drive insights, and personalized communications. Today more communication management and targeting solutions are being developed to support specific ABM processes, and many of these solutions are designed to integrate directly with your MAP (Marketing Automation Platform). Your MAP is also a core element in your personalization strategy and capabilities which is also a critical component of the ABM Tech Stack. 

ABM Engagement & Management Add-Ons (Emerging)

Today we are seeing a rapidly expanding field of specific ABM applications and services designed to enhance your core CRM and MAP systems. These emerging solutions can enable you to automate requirements for increased contextual visibility across accounts and contacts while managing engagement activity and communications across marketing, sales and target account- contacts. For example, Demand Base’s Partnership with Oracle- Eloqua enables its users to accomplish multiple tasks including:

• Eliminating online form fields by dynamically appending records with more accurate and standardize account data
• Appending historical lead and contact data with standardized account data
• Use Demandbase’s Account Score to trigger an ABM campaign workflow at the account level

Enagio’s recently announced integration between its Playmaker application and Salesforce provides for more coordinated and automated communications with contacts, while simultaneously adding visibility across account specific contacts to show additional activity and brand engagement.

The key consideration is to ensure that you have a capability to match lead-contacts with their respective accounts. This will underpin your ability to gain visibility across account-contact engagements and ultimately serve as the platform of being able to measure and optimize channels and offers.

CRM is not inherently designed with marketing in mind, and will often lack key native capabilities to support marketing requirements in a multi-contact, multi-engagement and non-linear buying process, that is our marketing reality today. With the reemergence of ABM there are ever increasing new solutions emerging that can help make overcoming these challenges a little easier, especially if you’re on the Salesforce CRM platform. Notable vendors here would include Engagio, Brightfunnel, and Leandata to name just a few.

Personalization 

Efficient and effective website and email personalization is now at hand thanks to increasing “Marketing-by-IP” capabilities tools, and services now available to marketers. Vendors such as Marketo, Optimizely and Demandbase can help enable you to dynamically provide custom content and messaging to your targeted account contacts as they visit your web properties. Communication channels can be personalized beyond a salutation and include the visiting accounts logo and industry imagery. This level of personalization is vital to ensuring strong conversion effectiveness, and it’s safe to be that your competitors are or have deployed some level of personalization beyond the salutatory email.

 Predictive Analytics

Probably the most exciting capability at hand for marketers is the use of predictive analytics, not only for identifying ideal customer profiles, but also in being able to proactively identify accounts in active buying cycles for your solutions that are not in your demand management process or radar. These new predictive capabilities are true game changers and really underpin your ability to serve right content at the right time. 

Predictive analytics shifts you away from reactive marketing to truly proactive marketing, and is the secret sauce to any successful modern ABM program. The field of vendors and technologies is growing rapidly, and some notable vendors would include 6sense, Bombara, Lattice Engines and Everstring to just name a few.

Retargeting Platform

Retargeting is an essential ingredient in any ABM program as it keeps your brand and messaging in front of your key targeted prospects. 68% of B2B enterprises are dedicating budget to these efforts in 2016-2017. (Sirius Decisions ABM 2016) You can enable retargeting automatically to those prospects that visit your, and your media partner websites as well as enable a proactive outreach to potential accounts based on your ideal account profile. In this effort a relationship with a media agency such as Just Media or direct retargeting platform providers such as Demandbase, and Retargeter are essential.

ABM Reporting and Analytics­­

What Are We Measuring For? Jeffrey Sands, VP Account-Based Marketing Practice ITSMA suggests that “When executed correctly, ABM enables a company to change the perception of the value they can bring to the target account.” Sirius Decision’s Megan Heuer suggests that the true desired outcomes of ABM are target account churn rate, average order size, and cross-sell-up sell.

In short our ABM efforts should deliver a superior brand experience to targeted accounts that result in longer term, more profitable customers, with a greater overall usage of our technology portfolio. This end goal now provides the context of what KPI’s and metrics we should identify to help us measure effectiveness and efficiency of our ABM effort.

Other ABM Technology Support: Social Selling Services

Social Selling is pivotal to ABM sales success as it enhances your ability to find and connect with targeted account prospects much more efficiently and effectively. Sales engagement is driven by insight and in the ability to position the company representative as a subject matter expert by sharing relevant industry content, commenting on breaking news, and of course building brand reputation as 62% of B2B buyers report responding to a sales representative that connects with relevant insights and opportunities (Linked-In). Linked-In also reports that companies with strong social selling capabilities generate 45% more sales opportunities, with more than half hitting sales quotas.

 

As we are in the era of social selling, one would want to make sure that the ABM infrastructure has some sort of real-time social and account intelligence services in place. From social media monitoring, keyword tracking, brand sentiment, and real-time market news will all be key in optimizing your sales and marketing performance. Inputs along these lines enable more personal and real-time communications to fuel that insight driven engagement. Prospects identified by a sales trigger event are 8x more likely to buy.  So think of these services as enabling “sales-by-event” within your ABM program. Examples would be Mention.com, Discover.org, and Avention. Note that many of these solutions also bring database enhancements as well.

In Part IV we will look at the steps required to building an ABM Program, what considerations should be given in determining marketing’s objectives, KPIs and metrics.

 

Nuff Said

What’s Old is New Again: The Return of B2B Account Based Marketing and Why You Need It Now Part II

87% of B2B companies (Sirius Decisions) now say ABM is extremely, or very important to their overall marketing. Why?

Changing Role of B2B Marketing

In times of improving business conditions sales focus will generally shift away from lead volume to lead quality, as a greater optimization of finite sales bandwidth is needed. However; coinciding with the recent economic upswing we have seen a nexus of several key trends converging to create a new B2B marketing environment, and one that I believe has fundamentally changed B2B marketing from here on out.

These trends will firmly cement ABM as a de-facto standard operating procedure for B2B marketing and sales going forward.

 

Marketing by IP

One of the single greatest advancements in the last several years has been the emergence of tools and capabilities that allow B2B marketers to market by company IP (internet protocol) address. While reverse IP lookup has been around almost since the beginning of the internet, it has only been in the last several years that tools designed specifically for marketers to leverage reverse IP look-up for more precise targeting and profiling have emerged. This has fueled the ability of marketers to gain unprecedented access, and visibility into the path that account contacts are taking within their buying cycles, and not just within the confines of the company website, but also across the internet, and other sources of information.

Most of us are now familiar with the main use-case of marketing by IP in utilizing account retargeting activities to place our message in front of a prospect-contact as they travel across the internet in support of their buying cycles.

Buyer Centricity-Marketing as a Revenue Center

While we can debate as to the exact point in time when the buying cycle shifted away from company-controlled to buyer-controlled, we can all agree that buyer-controlled purchasing processes are the dominant reality today. The path a prospect takes, in support of their buying cycle, is now omni-channel (many-routes to information) with the majority of activity taking place across online channels vs offline. In addition, the buying cycle for many B2B decisions is not linear, but consists of many roles (contacts) entering and leaving the buying process, at different times, and with different information needs.  

This shift to buyer centricity, has many questioning and even calling for an end to the traditional funnel view of demand management. What’s underpinning the questioning of the 19^th century funnel construct of demand management is the notion of discrete hand-offs between marketing and sales in a non-liner, and more complex 21^st century buyer-centric model.

 

 

The more accurate view may not be one of discrete handoffs, but rather one of whom has the lead engagement and intrapersonal dialogue with the prospect/customer within a particular stage of the buying process. In a world where +60% of B2B buying cycles begin with the initiation of online activities, the marketing department is actually the number one sales person during the early stages of the buying cycle.  As the prospect moves to later stages of their buying process the primary engagement and intrapersonal dialogue would naturally shift more towards sales.

However, if we look at the buying process in a more holistic way, and from a buyer lifecycle point of view, the “buying process” would actually continue through to after-sale engagements and dialogue.  At these stages, service and customer support, are actually in the lead selling role, in terms of building customer advocacy. So the reality is that we really don’t operate in a linear demand funnel, with a start and stopping point, but rather more of a continuous customer engagement cycle designed to deliver a superior customer experience, and increasing number of customer brand advocates.

 

In this view of demand management, the old saying of “we are all sales people” has never been more relevant. Especially as we move toward a world where differentiation on customer experience becomes the #1 competitive factor, as differentiation based on technical capabilities becomes less and less of a factor. In this world, marketing is no longer a cost center, but a revenue center, and to ignore it as such would be missing an opportunity for optimizing revenue generation. 

 

In the world of competing customer experiences marketing efforts become vital to revenue generation, and in ensuring that the right content, is at the right place and time to meet prospect informational needs and expectations.  

Marketing Science

Technology has certainly made account based marketing more consumable and easier to implement. Most business have now matured their use of CRM and Marketing Automation systems (MA) to a point where new levels of account information and buyer behavior insight can be joined together. In the last few years we have seen the emergence of Predictive Analytics. Traditional friction points to using advanced analytics have usually been due to the lack of ample data sets, along with sufficient and consistent data accuracy and taxonomy. One of the beautiful things about B2B, is that our buyers tend to throw off a tremendous amount of online data, or what some may know as “Digital Body Language”.

By using new tools and services available to marketers, we can make greater use of “Marketing-by-IP” capabilities to quickly amass a tremendous amount of data beyond the confines of our web site to include data from many external sources (media portals, social, email) that shed new light on the digital footprints left behind by potential contacts as they move through their buying cycle. By marrying this new insight together with data from your website, and past sales successes, you can now identify, with a high degree of accuracy, those accounts being actively engaged within a buying cycle.

 

These new analytic capabilities, combined with your CRM and MAP, have what amounts to be a true game changer for B2B marketing, in that we can deliver the right message, to the right contact, at the right time, and tailored for a specific buying stage or persona scenario.

The nexus of these trends truly enables a new degree of personalization to take hold, and as a result, elevate the customer experience to new levels. It will force us to reevaluate traditional processes, and develop new engagements with our customers. For example, imagine sales territories now being predicted, not on geography, but rather on sales people personalities to better match those of buyer contacts, with the goal to elevate the chances of a successful engagement.

In Part III we will look at the “Keys to ABM Success”.

Nuff said

Free Content Creation Tools You Cant Live Without

Interesting read across several compelling resources

 

http://high-impact-prospecting.com/13-free-content-creation-tools-you-cant-or-shouldnt-live-without/

 

Nuff said.

Top Ten B2B Marketing Mistakes and How To Avoid Them

A few months ago I contributed to this crowd sourced effort by Mac McIntosh and Dianna Huff. The ebook is now complete and available for free download. In this ebook ten broad categories of mistakes were identified that B2B marketers commonly make. What do you think? Were the mistakes nailed?

Download Top10MarketingMistakes

 

Nuff said.

Will Super Bowl XLV Kill The Social Media Star?

 I came across a recent article in USA Today this week on how most of the major marketers who are advertising during Super Bowl XLV will unveil social media contests, as part of their campaign effort. The article noted that Mercedes and Audi will both unveil this week large scale social media contests, backed by hefty prizes for those that “tweet” or “like” the most.

The basic crux of all these social media efforts is to get people to post en-mass “likes” or “tweets” which to me sounds eerily similar to “awareness drives sales” used by many a Madmen in their day. So is ‘tweeting” and ‘Liking:” the new “awareness heroine" of the day?

 
 
Looks like it is to me. I had to laugh at the quote from Stephen Cannon, Mercedes Marketing Vice President “We're using the 2011 Super Bowl as our head-long plunge into committing to social media," at Mercedes-Benz. It's our strategic leap of faith.” W.T.F.?

Let me translate what “strategic leap of faith” really means. It means were doing this because everybody else is doing it, but we don’t have clue as to why we’re doing it, or what were going to get out of it, and oh by the way, we have more marketing budget than brains. Well that’s okay, as that same argument could probably be used against massive TV advertising budgets, applied to a 30 second spot, with no follow on support for the rest of year. Sound familiar?

Is it any wonder why then the Edelman Trust Barometer shows a remarkable 25% decline in peer/friend trust in the 2010 survey? Not really, especially when everyone is “friending” everyone else, and Big  ‘M” marketers blindly throw cash to generating “likes” and “tweets”, while social media snake oil consultants continually tout social media as the next god send for lead generation. What the Edelman Trust Barometer really indicates is that people are basically saying that the value of a “like” or ‘tweet” or number of “followers” you have is becoming worth less and less everyday as marketers spend gobs of money in blindly building a mass of “likes” and “fans” artificially.

I also had to laugh when I heard that after the much ballyhooed announcement of Pepsi leaving traditional media by spurning the Super Bowl 09 in lieu of social media, recently announced their return to the Super Bowl with the purchase of 4 slots for their Pepsi Max brand. So I guess all them “Likes” and “Tweets” didn’t pay off for you huh? Here’s another classic “Big M” marketer quote “PepsiCo is "doubling down," says Rudy Wilson, marketing chief at Frito-Lay”. You bet you’re doubling down Rudy, because social media, as a one off tactic, or communication channel is not driving the revenue needle for you buddy. Welcome to real the world.

 

Here’s a basic tenant everybody needs to remember. Social media is worthless until someone is engaging with you by leaving a comment, question, or point of view that opens an opportunity for you to converse with them. Social media is not about the leads, sales, or monologue. It’s about dialogue. Social media shouldn’t be called out as some special type of marketing campaign; it should be part of everyday business, just as using the telephone is part of everyday business.

Social media is about you engaging with your ecosystem and building an opportunity for honest, and real conversation, debate, gripes, insight or innovation to be had. Don’t waste your money on building artificial “fans” and “likes”.

Pam Moore added a good point in the article where she adds that “ Tweets” and Facebook "likes" that Super Bowl marketers all are glomming onto today will seem archaic in just a few years” Amen to that. Nuff said.

Big Ed’s Top 10 B2B Marketing Trends For 2010

 
The great global economic meltdown of 2009 has passed, and we are still here and breathing, mostly a sigh of relief. It’s been a tough year for B2B marketers as many of us had to deal with decreased budgets, staff and a return to basics. Hopefully, we focused on improving our core processes, measures, and databases so we are ready for whatever the economy and market brings our way in 2010. In 2009, I put forth my Big 10 Trends for B2B Marketing, and in keeping with tradition I thought I would do it again for 2010.

1.    Mass Adoption of Social Media in The B2B Marketing Mix

I hope that in 2010 we will finally see an end to the monotonous message of “Why Marketers Should Use Social Media” and hopefully an end to the ubiquitous “5 Ways to Use Twitter to Improve Your Marketing”.  I think we can all say that social media officially jumped the shark when Ashton tweeted all of us a picture of Demi in her underpants.

 To that end there should be only be a few of us left that do not fully understand that social media, must become part of our integrated marketing mix in order to get our message out, and to build a dialogue with our customers. While not in such large numbers yet, marketers are beginning to understand that they have lost control of the brand experience to the customer, and that they must engage if they have any desire to partake in their brand experience. 

Are there any of us left that aren’t using social media in one form or another today? Granted some of us may be using it ineffectively, but we are using it, and therefore we are learning. Unfortunately get ready for the onslaught of the a-typical social media campaign: “take a video of how you use our product and we will show it on You Tube.”

2.    Social Media ROI Remains Confusing and Elusive as Ever

 

 

With the mass adoption of social media we will now be inundated with an ever increasing amount of articles, and blog posts on how to “Increase Leads & SEO with Social Media”. The reality is almost all of us confuse “the media” with “the social” in trying to identify measures that get us to some form of ROI. Today most of us are focused on awareness, and lead generation as noted by this recent research from Sirius Decisions.

I, for one, do not believe that social media will prove an effective lead generation tool as social media is inherently about dialogue, listening and engaging. I don’t think there are too many people, customer or otherwise, that want to be sold to in every dialogue they have with a brand. Someone once said “Social Media Works Best When it is Earned and Not Paid for”.

We will see continued ROI assertions with the “media side” of social media, but I don’t think this is the relevant measure to look at as these measures are usually short-term in their focus. Social media is inherently about value creation and, as a result, much more long-term in its value add that is ultimately reflected in trust, advocacy, and sentiment towards our brands. This is where the true ROI/Value in social media lies, but it will be a long and arduous path for most of us to realize that, let alone convincing our management. In addition we are hampered by a lack of effective and efficient tool sets that can aid our measures on these more subjective value drivers.

 

I think that we must all go through an evolution of social media learning before we can truly be enlightened on the real ROI, or better yet, value generation of social media. In my view this evolutionary curve follows a distinct path of enlightenment for B2B marketers:

· Awareness: The stage where most of us begin our journey. Here the focus is on utilizing social media channels to drive market/brand awareness and SEO. Marketers confuse Social Media ROI with media measures such as page rank, organic vs. paid search, page views, and leads (we also confuse inquires & leads but that is another issue). Social media strategy is often confused with social media tools and channels (i.e. the tactics) at this stage.

· Engagement: After awareness we realize that social media can actually be used to converse in a two-way dialogue with our ecosystem. Metrics get a little more focused and try to relate to other ongoing tactics in order to monetize the value of such efforts and convince management of the need for continued investment. For example, using a blog to gain feedback on a company’s products can be monetized against the ongoing cost of focus groups.

 

 

 

· Listening: Once we are engaged we discover the power of listening. Here we start to use social media to listen to the market, and to what people are saying about our products, brands, and engaging more directly to assist with the service aspects of the company’s offerings. Social media metrics get more sophisticated, and are viewed in a much longer time frame than media measures. This new level of social media measurement is focused more on advocacy, brand sentiment, and service experience. While sentiment and advocacy are difficult to measure, as tool sets are still emerging, advancements will be made on the monetization and measuring the service aspect of social media (i.e reaching out to a compliant heard through twitter and solving the issue via social media channels).  Comcast Cable use of Twitter  is a good example of this stage of evolution.

· Innovation: At this stage we start using social media to crowd-source, and to co-innovate with our ecosystems. This is the most advanced stage of evolution where our products and services actually converge with community and social media capabilities to foster greater and faster co-innovation. At this stage the value derived from social media can be extraordinary as smaller brands can compete effectively with larger brands. SalesForce.com and Starbucks are two companies with examples of community based innovation frameworks in place.

 

3.    Focus On Database Accuracy

Last year I said that database marketing will be a major priority for us as the recession will require us to focus on cross-sell, and to leverage our database for more effective and efficient demand generation. Now we have a new issue at play in our databases, and that is the accuracy of the contacts. While we will always be searching for the holy grail of accuracy in the database, this issue has been exacerbated in 2010 due to the recession that has left many of these databases defunct due to the massive job losses seen. Efforts need to be undertaken to cleanse and update existing data bases this year versus focusing on adding more quantity to the marketing database.

 

4.    B2B Buyers Continued Shift to Online Sources of Information

As I said last year Print is dead. 2009 saw the continued demise of B2B print media and the large industry events have been called into greater question, as their real value became more suspect in an increasingly digital world. Influence of the virtual event and webcasts continues to grow as effective communication and lead generation channels for B2B marketers. Yet there remains a gap in how we, as marketers, view the channels that our prospects are using to conduct their buying research. Here is some recent Tech Target IT buyer research that I found particularly interesting.

When asked how frequently they use the internet to conduct buyer research IT buyers said the following:

 

Note the disconnect between Marketers and the people they are trying to reach. IT Buyers don’t view the Vendor Website in such high esteem as we do (imagine that), nor do they view conferences, trade shows, associations or editorial articles in evaluating technology as highly as we do.

 

 

 

The key point here is that now, more than ever, we truly have to understand our persona’s buying process and how they conduct and consume information in order to optimize our marketing mix across online and off-line channels.

5.    Understanding & Optimizing the Buying & Selling Cycle

While much has been written about how we, as marketers, have lost control of our brand experience, and the need to understand our buyer personas in a way to more effectively deliver content to support the buying process, very little has been written about the impact to the sales cycle. The reality is that sales has lost control over the selling cycle in the context that sales must control relevant information in order to force an engagement with the prospect, and to ensure that the sales is guiding the decision making process of the prospect. While that may have worked 10 years ago, nothing can be further from the truth today. How many times have you heard your sales team say “Don’t put that on the website. They need to come to me for that information”?

In today’s world, our prospects are getting their information including pricing, technical details, etc. from our past customers and, in most cases, now know more about the product, and the business terms than our own sales teams. This puts our sales teams into ever increasing positions of justifying their value add.

Note some recent B2B buyer research from Forrester where 70% of business decision makers prefer to develop their own knowledge online.

In short, they don’t want to engage with you until they are ready (I know. It’s a novel concept). This creates a few challenges for B2B marketers:

1.    Understanding the buyer process and personas of the target audience in order to develop an optimal content model and delivery channels.

2.    Extending Marketing programs to cover the sales process and understanding our sales persona in order to develop an optimal content model for sales that adds value to the customer buying process.

3.    Optimizing a cohesive content model that supports both the buying and selling process.

Ultimately this reinforces the notion that Content Is King, but if we don’t understand both the buying and selling process, as well as our buying and selling personas, we will be producing content for the sake of content and not meeting any of the true requirements of our customers or our sales teams.

6.    Content is King, but Comparative Content is The Kings Ransom

Content may be King but it is comparative content that your buyers want—

Content that compares how your solution stacks up against your competitors. Closely following comparative content is pricing information. These are the two most valued types of information and searches across buyers when using the internet for research, yet these two types of information are most resisted by marketers and sales alike, in an attempt to control information and force engagements with the brand.

 

2010 will see an increase in comparative and pricing content on vendor websites by aggressive marketers who want to define the competitive framework. First movers will gain leverage by introducing this content first. Do the following search:“enter your company/solution name here” vs  “enter your competitor’s company/solution name here” . You may be surprised at what comes up.

 

7.    Segment Based Nurturing

By now we have all learned that it is important to nurture, and most of us have put in place the Ubiquitous Newsletter that touches our base at least a few times a year or month. Some of us have even put into place some automated touches of emails that are sent out at predefined intervals to inquires in an attempt to get them to re-engage or push information to accelerate a buying process. Segment based nurturing is the next stage of this nurturing process where we put into place a very comprehensive communications flow whose message evolves over time based on actions taken.

 

In short, segment based nurturing revolves around the notion that the conversation you have today is different from the one you have next month based on level of interest, need, actions, content taken, etc. To do this well you must have the right tool sets in place (i.e. Eloqua, Marketo, Genius-I’m a customer). The tools sets are rapidly evolving and coming down in cost. If you don’t have this type of capability, you need to make 2010 the year you implement a basic marketing automation platform.

 

As I said last year, many of us that have these platforms in place are still only using them as glorified email engines, but the real power is when we leverage them as segmentation engines that happen to have email as a feature.

 

 

To realize this value we must bring together an enriched and accurate marketing database, a well designed web site, improved understanding of our content model, and its relation to the buying process, and persona requirements.  When this happens very advanced and segmented-automated nurturing can be applied. In 2010 we will see more companies move to this more advanced level of nurturing, along with increased adoption of marketing automation platforms.

 

8.    Operationalizing the Marketing Convergence of Art & Science

Is marketing an art or a science? The answer is yes. When the science meets the art in a more structured way, exciting marketing messages, creative, campaigns can and will result. More companies are realizing this benefit, and are looking to formalize the “marketing gearbox” where art meets science.

 

This may take the form of a dedicated operations role or through process where the analytics works side-by-side with the creative process. Increasingly we will see this convergence become more formalized across more and more companies in 2010.

 

9.    Social CRM Takes Root

 

 

 

The year 2009 saw Social CRM start to hit the main stage with the announcement of twitter integration into

Salesforce, Comcast Cable use of twitter to serve customers, and Best Buy’s Twelp Force. More companies, including my own, are increasingly monitoring social media channels in an effort to support customer issues, both positive and negative.  

 

2010 will see accelerated integration of these channels into CRM and service systems as it represents an ideal way for companies to have an efficient dialogue and improve overall brand and customer experience. This is one area of social media that can be quickly monetized and measured.

10.   Rise of Community Thought Leadership

Thought leadership has been around for some time as an objective for marketers to drive. In most cases thought leadership takes a more strategic approach to a company’s messaging or positioning objectives, such as “trying to educate a market”, “influence opinion makers”, “position the company’s vision as the industry vision”. In my view, thought leadership is an important part of the overall marketing mix and should be invested in.

 

However I do believe that there is a new dimension coming to thought leadership and that is “community thought leadership”. Scott Mersey of Genius.com recently blogged that the difference between Community Thought Leadership & Thought Leadership is:

“The key difference between Community Leadership and Thought Leadership is that this approach means that help and relevant content is provided freely and without strings so that any member of the community - whether or not ever a “prospect” to become a customer - comes away with actionable information and insight into how to solve their problems. It’s leadership that’s vendor agnostic and broader than a piece designed to capture leads.”

Henrik Ibsen once said that “A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.”  This really denotes the difference, in my view, between our traditional approach to marketing thought leadership and community based thought leadership. In the traditional sense we are focused on getting our message out, and not so concerned with dialogue, or as Mersey states “Focused on Monologue”.

 

In community thought leadership we are a member of a relevant community, and focused on influencing and building advocacy for our views across many community members. In doing this we take part in meaningful dialogue, and debate where our initial thought/idea/position is subject to evolution based on input from the community.

Community thought leadership is growing more important to B2B marketers as communities are becoming increasingly important as vehicles where our ecosystem engages, and shares ideas in an increasing manner. So how does one define a successful community thought leadership effort?

1.    Become part of a relevant community.

2.    Share your ideas freely and provide information that is free of vendor speak and requirements such as registration.

3.    Have thoughtful debate and dialogue.

4.    Be willing to evolve your position.

5.    Focus on building advocacy, not monologue.

 

In 2010 we will see more push on community thought leadership as part of a comprehensive thought leadership program.

 

I wish all of you great success in 2010. Nuff Said.

B2B CMO’s Still Don’t Get Social Media

BtoB Online caught up with several CMO’s to get their take on what they are doing different this year versus last year. In short:

·         Trend to Online media

·         Much more use of social media in marketing programs

·         Greater use of rich media (i.e Video)

·         Using marketing tactics in a more integrated way to build thought leadership

·         Leveraging social media to bring the voice of the customer into play.

I’m very surprised at the number of CMO’s who use the term social media, marketing, and lead generation/sales in the same sentence. I have a hard time bringing social media into that context. Social media, in my view, is about the conversation first and foremost and in being authentic, transparent and honest in that conversation. Lead-gen, and sales are nice things that may, or may not happen, but to focus on those areas as the primary objectives of bringing social media into the mix still confirms to me that most of us in B2B marketing view social media as tactics instead of communication.

(Too be fair to all. These comments are short and may not represent the ideal context of their intentions)

Tom Haas, of Siemens, did say that their goal was to really support a conversation between their company and its customers and I think that is the right goal to have. I also liked the thoughts from Jack Mason, of IBM, who said that IBM has launched a new program using rich media to capture a much more personal, and real side of the people that make up the their brand. This is a brilliant agenda, in my view, as we too often hide behind technology, and don’t get the individuals that make the brand out in front. Of course it may be that I’m the one who doesn’t get it. Nuff said

Twitter Helps Latest LA Food Sensation Gather Its Tribes

 Kogi is the latest phenomenon in LA dining. Chef, at world famous restaurant, decides to forgo glitz and glamour and create a unique fusion of Korean and Mexican food and serves up these delectable concoctions in roving catering vans all over LA.

I’m not making this up folks, and it’s the stuff that Hollywood is made of. I’m sure the food network is already doing a show on it. While I’m a foodie at heart, the real story is one of a relatively unknown (until recently) mobile catering truck that used Twitter and awesome food, to create a following, and help lubricate word of mouth in America’s 2^nd largest city and now the world.

As Kogi is a mobile business, and a small one at that, it needed a way to tap into the following that it had created, and who was already talking about Kogi on Facebook, other social networking sites and blogs. Kogi’s brand director, in a recent Reuters article, stated that they decided to use Twitter as a way to communicate with their “tribe” and facilitate gathering places based on the trucks location. Kogi turned to Twitter. Today you and Kogi’s 23,000 followers can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/kogibbq.

This shows the amazing capability of utilizing a social media tool to facilitate a small business with a large following, and an excellent product. So let’s look at Kogi’s ingredients for success:

1.      Great Product: Kogi obviously has a tremendous product. Social media success and for that matter any business, starts with an amazing product or service.

2.      The Tribe of Kogi: Kogi’s customers wanted to talk about their experience, and in fact had became a tribe. Seth Godin writes that “a tribe is any group of people connected to each other through an idea or experience”. In this case, Kogi’s customers had become a tribe, but we’re missing a leader. When Kogi stepped in, and utilized social tools Kogi become the leader of its own tribe. A place where a brand wants to be at the end of the day.

3.      Honesty: The social community in this case is honest. Kogi delivers an amazing product, people want to talk about, and others want to experience it and Kogi facilitates this. Kogi’s goal is not about selling or hyping, at least not yet, and let’s hopes it stays that way.

4.      Word of Mouth: WOM is the best advertising around. This is as old, as the hills, and still true. Kogi couldn’t buy the brand awareness it has now, and is getting through the facilitation of communication across its tribe. Social Media can help any small business if the intent is to converse with the community of customers and prospects; not sales or advertising.

5.      With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility: Kogi must now realize the importance of its brand experience, and promise that its customers have come to expect. Any degradation in service and experience will travel at the speed of light in Kogi’s social universe.

6.      Innovation: While Kogi’s responsibility to its brand experience is now much greater it has an amazing community of people to listen to, and engage with, and in doing that develop new innovation in its business.

This story shows how small businesses can take advantage of building and tapping into their community. Today, McDonalds and Burger King do not have Twitter accounts and Domino’s only recently started one to help combat the recent wave of bad publicity. Why haven’t the brands, with all the resources in the world, tapped into the tools that help them engage with their customers? Probably because they are still strategizing, and trying to figure out the ROI of a conversation. Nuff said.

Perspectives On Marketing ROI

Interesting question asked of David Meerman Scott and his response . Nuff Said.

We Need 50 Ways to Measure the Impact of Social Media Marketing

Measuring the impact, or dare I say it, the ROI of a social media campaign is a growing topic of interest in many marketing departments in terms of how to measure the  impact-roi of social media campaigns.

I recently listened to a pod cast of a marketer laud his viral video campaign where he placed banner advertisements on the landing page as a great success. In fact he stated that the metric was “eyeballs” and then said after 1.4M page views they got 44 leads.

Now is the term “lead” used in the context of BANT or a registered inquiry? The hard part is after taking the cost of the agency and video production into account and let’s assume he converts 50% of the 44 leads into opportunities and let’s say that the win rate was 50% so he gets 6 deals. Is demand generation the goal of social media?

After listening to this podcast I thought I felt like I had found an old school marketer who was trying to be trendy by throwing the term “social media campaign” around. I’m not sure that I would walk in front of a CEO and tout Social Media in the context of demand generation, and/or eyeballs. Is this really the metric for social media marketing efforts?

I don’t think so.  Rather I think social media is for supporting a conversation with the brand. If you agree with this than perhaps we need new types of capabilities to measure the sentiment of the conversation and how this is trending across many different types of social media networks.

I was looking on the Collective Intellect website. Collective Intellect is a company that is developing a set of analytical tools to determine the impact of Social Media on your company, your brands, your reputation, your image. While I can’t say if what they are doing today is truly unique, I do think they are headed in the right direction. Companies need to start monitoring the conversation about their brand and understand the sentiment and then engage.

On the Collective Intellect web site they had pasted a prior post from  Chris Brogan on 50 Ways for Marketers to start using social media. It’s such a great list I have reposted it here as well.

However I’ll call on the great thinkers in social media marketing to start pondering what are 50 ways to measure the impact of social media marketing investments, and how to use this insight to improve the communication. Nuff Said.

 

50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too. “