Content & the Buying Process November 5, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing.Tags: Content, content marketing, Integrated Marketing, Lead Generation, marcom mix, marketing best practices, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns, marketing strategy, strategy
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Last week I attended the TechTarget Online ROI Summit ’09 West. For me, the highlights included a wonderful panel of CIOs providing insight and perspectives on a) how they search for information, and b) how their purchase decisions are made. Also of interest was a Google/TechTarget Behavioral Research Project that mapped search terms to content types at each stage of the buying process. I’ve paraphrased here three of the key take-aways, but you can find more detailed information on the TechTarget presentations here.
This graphic shows what content types are most valued at each phase in the buying process.
In other words, success with marketing campaigns is all about matching the right content to the right stage of the buying process. The graphic illustrates the point. The Google/TechTarget Research study confirmed that certain types of content are more valuable in certain stages of the buying cycle. Makes sense. However, I was a bit surprised to learn that CIOs and other decision makers are keenly interested in “Comparison Review” data — data provided by vendors or other sources that provide side-by-side solution comparisons. I’ve always been a bit leery of this — after all, why should a vendor promote a competitor’s product? However, the CIOs told us that they would like to see some honest comparisons by key vendors. As was described to me by a CIO, “the IT team will ultimately discover the good/bad/ugly, so vendors can do themselves a favor by being straightforward and honest.” Another CIO told me that if a vendor slams the competition or their assessment appears too heavily one-sided, they will discount the value/honesty of that assessment as well as the sponsoring vendor. On the flip side, vendors who show integrity by showing a few blemishes gain credibility in his book.
Bottom line here is that the #1 organic search link (and even the #1 paid search link) do not necessarily yield the highest traffic. It appears that most searchers will peruse a few pages of search results. However, the determination of what they click on is directly tied to the title/description of the searched item. As an example, CIOs told us that they were more likely to click on a whitepaper with a solutions orientation (e.g. “CIO Strategies: How a Hosted Platform for Unified Communciations Could Save you Millions”) versus a branded whitepaper with a vague description (e.g. “Vendor X Strategies”).
Simply put, if your marketing resources are in short supply and you can only produce a few pieces of relevant content, aim for the considersation phase — as opposed to general awareness or final decision. Assets targeting the consideration phase seem to get passed around the most during the buying process.
Want more info? Check out these additional resources on content marketing:
Characteristics of Effective Campaign Managers September 21, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing, Just for Campaign Managers, Marketing Operations.Tags: brand managers, campaign managers, Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing team, marcom mix, marketing best practices, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Operations, marketing programs
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“I’m looking to hire a campaign manager to oversee our integrated marketing programs. What are the characteristics of the best campaign managers?”
I get asked this question a lot. Earlier in my career, I worked as a campaign manager at HP, Sun, and Ariba , so I’ve seen the good, bad, and the ugly. I’ll be up front with you and say that I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way. That experience opened my eyes to the marraige of marketing expertise with an appreciation for internal politics.
The biggest challenge campaign managers have is that they have a purview over an integrated marketing campaign (aka the “big picture”) but no direct authority over the team players who will execute the campaign. They walk a tightrope between meeting the campaign goals while aligning and carefully guiding a team of folks who have other masters. With that in mind, the most effective campaign managers have these traits in common:
- A recognized, well-rounded marketing leader familiar with the target market
- Proven leadership experience in “managing by objective” Attentive to detail, but smart enough not to micro-manage
- Diplomatic and politically savvy
- Patient
- A good facilitator, seasoned in active listening techniques
- Excellent written and oral communicator (with the team, to upper management, and in front of the steering committee)
- Knows when and how to provide constructive feedback in real time during team meetings; knows when and how to provide direct feedback in one-on-one settings
- Is prepared to make hard decisions and trade-offs for the greater good of the campaign
- Most of all, doesn’t let their ego get in the way of sound recommendations
There’s art and science in this role. The science comes from understanding sound marketing best practices. More important than understanding the specific products being sold, the best campaign managers bring an awareness and appreciation for the customer and their business problems and opportunities. While they usually won’t know all the answers, their expertise comes in knowing the right questions to ask the team in order to define, architect, and execute the best, most effective integrated marketing campaigns. That’s the art.
Looking for more information on integrated marketing campaigns? Please see Chapter 7 in Marketing Campaign Development.
Social Media & the Marcom Mix September 8, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing, Social Media.Tags: activities & offers, direct marketing, Integrated Marketing, Lead Generation, linkedin, marcom mix, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns, marketing programs, pull marketing, push marketing, Social Media, strategy, twitter
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I have a hard cold truth for marketers: we are no longer in complete control of driving the lead funnel!
As recently as a couple of years ago, marketers were. The lead funnel was driven by our pushing messages out to our target audiences. We controlled the message, the media, and the timing. Social media has changed the dynamics. People are finding out about our companies and products before they even get on our radar screen. Some sources even estimate that 90% of the customer’s buying process takes place without the aid of a sales rep! This has huge implications for our marcom mix.
The upshot: we must help our companies become “findable” in a marketing landscape we no longer control.
Being “findable” is not just about having a decent website. It’s about having relevant, meaningful content available that addresses the topics buyers are interested in. And, it’s about having this content posted in places where buyers look. In fact, we shouldn’t be talking about social media as if it were another marketing silo. Instead, we should focus on “content marketing” — providing information and experiences that buyers are looking for. More than that, we can better establish and nurture a dialog with a prospect if we think about how to provide meaningful content that can be:
- Captured = easy-to-read content posted in a friendly format that can be cut-n-pasted and downloaded, and . . .
- Stored = easy to tag, sort, and file in electronic or printed format
- Forwarded = easy to pass-along and share with others, both formally (i.e. cut-n-pasted into a presentation) and informally (i.e. sharing a link via Twitter)
- Repurposed = content that can be annotated and adapted by the reader to fit their unique decision-making process
Including Social Media in a Marketing Blueprint
Integrating social media in the marcom mix
Today’s lead gen programs can produce higher ROI if they combine elements of both traditional “push” marketing (where you control the message) and “pull” marketing (where we offer information on non-corporate sites and we listen to and monitor the discussion around us). The example shown in the above illustration is based on a real marketing blueprint being executed today by a local hi-tech company.
There’s more to the story, of course. But this gives you a flavor on how and where social media is being used to complement traditional outbound marketing activities. How will all this play out? I’ll let you know when the campaign concludes in November!
How are you using social media? I’d love to hear your stories.
How well is your marketing team performing? July 7, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing, Marketing Operations.Tags: Integrated Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Campaigns, marketing blueprints, marcom mix, Marketing Operations, marketing audit, 360 degree audit, marketing best practices, practical application workshops
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As businesses gear up for the fall quarter, it is timely to take a few moments to revisit past marketing communications programs and evaluate their success. But, the last thing you want in an audit is a “marketing free-for-all blame game.” Instead, use this simple 2×2 matrix to help you capture and align the issues.
Depending on your need, you may want to hire an outside expert to work with you to perform an unbiased audit. Or, you might be interested in holding your own half-day team offsite. Either way, here is a structure that I have found works great to capture, categorize, and then prioritize actions.
An effective 360 degree audit will look at the following:
- Plans: The current plans and programs (with scrutiny and focus on the marketing objectives and program blueprints).
- Processes: The internal processes for capturing and distributing leads (with a review of any CRM and marketing automation tools you are using).
- People: A review of the marketing skills your team possesses and those they lack, as well as what skills you are outsourcing.
As you review these 3 dimensions, categorize your findings in one of 4 groupings:
- Turn-around
- Re-alignment
- Start-up
- Sustain
An example audit is shown in the attached graphic. During a half-day offsite, the marketing leadership team performed a frank assessment and prioritized the insights which are captured in the graphic. Action items were then identified and assigned to owners. The team will be reconvening next month to update each other on the progress and confirm the metrics and measurement for a successfull Q3 and Q4.
Consider performing your own 360 degree audit and let me know how this technique works for you. For questions or tips on how to structure the most effective “working session” offsite, feel free to email me at mikeg@kickstartall.com or post your comments on this blog.
Mechanics of a Lead Gen Blueprint June 16, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing.Tags: activities & offers, Integrated Marketing, lead funnel, Lead Generation, marcom mix, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns, marketing programs
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Lead gen blueprints come in all shapes and sizes. However, there are common best practices that continually and consistently work well together. In my latest article, “Mechanics of a Lead Generation Blueprint” (as posted in the June KickStart Alliance enewsletter) I’ve highlighted aspects of both “push” and “pull” marketing activities and how they work well together to nurture prospects through the lead funnel.
This particular blueprint is centered around an upcoming webinar. Quite often, marketers focus on a single event (like a webinar) without considering all the valuable pre- and post-webinar marketing activities and offers required to maximize the number of qualified leads surrounding this event. Marketing is not about a singular event or activity. Marketing is a process that must be nurtured to drive the best results.
Have a look at the blueprint and feel free to shoot me questions and comments. I’ll continue to post various examples of other lead generation blueprints in the future.
Mapping the marcom mix to the lead funnel June 2, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing.Tags: activities & offers, Integrated Marketing, lead funnel, Lead Generation, marcom mix, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns
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This “best practice” comes from Carol Hague. Carol is an experienced integrated marketing campaign manager and offers a helpful approach to mapping marcom activities and content appropriately to the lead funnel.
She and I collaborated on this graphic and share it as a powerful reference tool for B2B marketers everywhere. This is by no means a comprehensive list of available activities and content types, but it is enough to help guide teams as they draft their marketing blueprints.
I offer this graphic as a companion tool to the marketing blueprint examples you can find elsewhere on this blog and in my book, Marketing Campaign Development.
What suggestions do you have to make this tool/graphic even stronger?
Where does “sales & channel enablement” fit? May 5, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing.Tags: channel, Integrated Marketing, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns, sales, sales and channel enablement
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When you develop your go-to-market strategy, are you also thinking about sales and channel enablement? This incredibly important element of any integrated marketing campaign is easily overlooked. It’s frequently thought of as someone else’s job, and slides unceremoniously between the cracks.
Recently, I’ve been working with a team who has been taking a fresh look at developing campaign assets. Instead of just looking at campaign assets from a production standpoint (press releases, landing pages, etc), they divided the list of assets into three buckets:
1) Promotional Pieces: tactical marketing deliverables such as . .
- Print / Web advertising
- Feature articles
- Webinars & events
- Corporate presentation (with script)
- Collateral/fulfillment
- Direct mail pieces
- etc
2) Enablement Tools: tools to educate sales/channel partners; and, tools the channel can use themselves
- Promotions training & details
- Sales playbooks
- Tele-scripts (for use with sales development teams)
- Channel-event/program “kits”
- HTML customizable assets
- Syndicated content for partner use (50 words, 100 words, 900 words)
- etc
3) Channel Executables: customer-viewable deliverables that the channel owns
- Local executive breakfast seminars
- Lunch & learn series
- Bundled promotions (to channel customers)
- etc.
A complete integrated marketing plan needs to have all of these bases covered. The channel will never be as intensely focused on your business as you are. So, we need to feed them relevant information, messaging, and programs that dovetails with our own lead gen programs. And as this team discovered, it is a lot easier to be proactive in addressing the sales & channel enablement implications when the campaign is first being developed, rather than chasing missed opportunities reactively.
What sales and channel enablement assets have worked best for your business?
Building an “Awareness/Thought Leadership” blueprint April 27, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing.Tags: awareness, Integrated Marketing, marketing blueprints, Marketing Campaigns, marketing programs, thought leadership
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An example of an awareness / thought leadership marketing program. Click to enlarge the image.
One of the most common types of marketing programs are the “awareness & thought leadership” programs. This specific program has the objective of focusing the company on the business and solutions topics the customer cares about. Instead of immediately diving down to the feature-rich technical jargon, this program marks an important step to communicating to customer executives that we truly understand their business issues. It positions us as business partner, and thus allows us to take a consultative approach in dialoguing with customers and prospects.
Reading left to right, notice that we’ve identified the intended target audience on the left. (Personas would have been developed in detail prior to designing this blueprint.) Across the top, the customer’s buying behavior has been listed — in this case moving from “awareness” to “interest”. The first step of expressing interest is usually seen in the prospect searching for information. (This is not an comprehensive example; other forms of engaging in awareness and interest activities will be covered in future posts.) Like branding, this type of program is best viewed as an ongoing investment in creating and maintaining “aircover” for your marketing efforts that will frame specific product launches and promotions.
Each box in the blueprint references a “theme” and the “marketing methods” (i.e. articles, Web, executive presentations) used to communicate the theme. We cast our net wide by starting with business topics that should appeal to both the CIO and IT director. Popular themes can be thought of as the “what” themes: — What industry trends will influence the industry? or What impact can we expect the current economy to have on consumer behavior? or What are the three primary investment priorities for telco CIOs in 2010? For best results, a company may have one or two business themes that will be explored all year. It’s best to be focused.
Next, we move on to solutions-based themes. Think of these topics as “how” themes — How will companies balance containing costs while protecting the network? or How are companies maximizing the ROI of their outsourced functions and programs? These topics tend to get more specific in prescribing a criteria for success. For best results, a company may entertain 2-3 solutions topics that support each business theme, per quarter. This allows additional solutions topics to unfold over time, thereby providing flexibility to leverage new product launches and current events that may impact buyer behavior.
Notice that in neither the business-topics nor the solutions-topics have we put our product in the headline. This is important. The value that your company brings is in sponsoring these topics and providing business and solutions savviness. Via your sponsorship, customers will make the connection to your products and services. Like chapters in a book, these discussion topics will build and evolve each quarter, providing rich content for prospects to review and respond to.
But our marketing efforts are only just beginning. Ultimately, the best qualified leads are the ones who seek us out. So, we whet their appetite with our business and solutions topics, and we give them an opportunity to raise their hand to request more information. And, we’ll be on the look out for prospects who exhibit certain behavior based on the topics they find of interest and the information they share with us along the way. (I’ll share some best practices on establishing lead qualification criteria and scoring in a later blog post.) In either case, we’ll be ready. That’s when our demand generation programs kick in and we actively confirm that they are indeed qualified as we quickly stream them through the sales cycle.
Next month I’ll share an overview of a couple of blueprints for demand generation programs.
For more information, please read Marketing Campaign Development.
“Digital Body Language” book review April 15, 2009
Posted by Mike Gospe in Integrated Marketing.Tags: Digital Body Language, Integrated Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Campaigns
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I just picked up Steven Woods’ new book, Digital Body Language, and I think this is a “must read” for any marketing campaign manager.
In most companies, the primary focus is on its sales process. While this is incredibly important, it shouldn’t be the only focus. Steve reminds us that it is just as important to understand the prospect’s buying process. Consider a couple of relevant points Steve makes:
“As prospective buyers use online resources to gather the information they require to educate themselves, explore ideas, discover solutions, and form opinions, they do so without any interaction from sales professionals.” Is the sales rep a vanishing breed? Hardly. However, in the age of the empowered buyer, marketers must be more mindful in communicating relevant messages and information directed to the right audience, at the right time, via the right vehicles .
This book awakens us to a new world where the prospect’s buying process in no longer synonymous with the company’s sales process. The implications for marketing are profound.
For more insights, I invite you to check out Steve’s book: Digital Body Language.
