Go-To-Market Strategies Blog

New Research Reveals Marketing’s Two Biggest Challenges: Lead Generation and Lead Qualification

2012-01-12T11:27:00.000-08:00

We’ve come to depend on MarketingSherpa to provide the case studies and research to help us further refine how we market and shape our best practices. This year’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report is no exception to the Sherpa collection.

Over 1,700 B2B marketers were surveyed for this report that includes 157 charts and analytical commentary on how to “attract and convert the modern B2B buyer.”

Within its 188 pages, MarketingSherpa reveals the two biggest B2B marketing challenges we face: lead generation (74%) and lead qualification (49%). These results, along with Sherpa’s report that the average B2B deal size declined in 2011, show us that marketing to a lengthening sales cycle has led to more promotional pricing than ever to get the deals closed.

The impact is widespread. Across all industries and sizes (and regardless of process maturity) marketers continue to struggle to achieve the proper balance of lead quality and quantity. MarketingSherpa’s research shows that smaller the organization, the more challenging this becomes.

Other top B2B marketing challenges:

· Generating a perceived value in “cutting edge” products (41%)
· Competing in lead generation across multiple media (40%)
· Generating PR “buzz” (38%)

Further, marketers indicated that an overall lack of resources (time, staff and budget) is the greatest barrier to achieving their marketing goals. This would explain why marketers are struggling to gain maturity in lead conversion processes. There simply isn’t the time, money or manpower to focus on an initiative of this magnitude.

So, how is marketing leadership planning to address these challenges? MarketingSherpa’s data on CMO’s strategic priorities for 2012 includes:

· Gaining greater insight of customers and target audience (56%)
· Optimizing lead progression through the marketing-sales funnel (55%)
· Achieving or increasing measurable ROI from lead generation programs (54%)

What provides the best insight in this most recent report is how MarketingSherpa dissects the data: by industry, by maturity, and by size. These cross-sections illuminate the why’s and how’s of B2B marketing to help us evolve our own best practices.

Download your own copy of the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report today. With a wealth of industry-specific data, marketers everywhere must have this report to better inform their marketing strategy, improve best practices, and achieve more sales conversions.

Finally, Some Excellent Facebook Advice for Marketers!

2011-12-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

If your company hasn’t yet established its presence on Facebook, take a look at these statistics from Deluxe Rev:
Users average 15.5 hours on Facebook each month.
On average, users visit Facebook 40 times per month.
50% of users log on to Facebook on any given day.
With Facebook popularity on the rise, it is time to get started! If you aren’t quite sure what to do first, you’ll find plenty of advice out there for the taking. We just found an excellent resource we recommend you download first, Deluxe Rev’s new ebook, “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.”

Filled with statistics and how-to advice, this is THE Facebook marketing guide to get you going quickly. It includes practical tips like:
Don’t worry about your Facebook page being perfect -- it is more important to get started. Remember Facebook changes often and so will your page.
If you have more than one administrator for your company’s Facebook page, create a list of guidelines for posting to ensure that your brand standards are being followed.
Use “mentions” to help build your fan base. Post some recognition to other companies (think: congratulations and thank-you’s) that also share your target market. When you tag them correctly, these mentions will display in their fans’ news feeds, which will point new users to your company’s page.
Besides real-world tips, Deluxe Rev also has fascinating statistics to share (these are from a 2011 Buddy Media Study):
The best length for a post is 80 characters or less.
The best times to post are early in the morning or late at night.
Thursday and Friday seem to be the best days of the week to post, although there are specific days that are better for specific industries (those are included in the ebook).
Simple call-to-actions in your posts are most effective at encouraging participation (Like this…, Post this…, Comment here, and Tell Us).
However the biggest revelation is the importance of Facebook’s feature the News Feed. Social Media Strategist Ekaterina Walter of Intel says, “News Feed Optimization (NFO) is the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO).”

Those are powerful words, and they could not be truer. Facebook’s algorithm for determining what posts end up on News Feeds takes into account page popularity. Simply stated: If you have more fans interacting with you (Likes and Comments on posts) the higher your chances are to be included on your fans’ News Feeds. This is all the more powerful when coupled with this statistic: 70% of fans will not see Status Updates due to this algorithm. Yes, landing on the News Feed should be the number one goal of your Facebook strategy.

But to get on the News Feed, you first need a Facebook page. And to get started, we recommend Deluxe Rev’s “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.” This ebook will give you the tips and techniques necessary to optimize your Facebook presence (and get on that News Feed), plus it includes some great case studies, too.

Creating a sales development group for better lead qualification!

2011-11-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

We recently took another look at Marketo's Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development. In this guide, Marketo is advocating the creation of a Sales Development Group: a collection of reps whose singular focus is on lead qualification and data capture.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don't take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo's guide:

A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)

Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don't pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.

Don't ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don't want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.

Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn't in your company's immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies' Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.

Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.

Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today's economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo's Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

Is Customer Retention Really Marketing's Lowest Priority?

2011-08-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

We took a closer look at two recent reports highlighting how sales and marketing priorities and budgets are allocated in 2011. The good news is, according to CSO’s 2011 Lead Management Study, marketing budgets are on the rise. CMO Council’s The 2011 State of Marketing Report also confirms this, with 57% percent of respondents indicating that they are adding to their 2011 marketing spend. (Note that this represents a budget between 2 and 4 percent of revenue.)

So how are we spending all this money?

In CSO’s Lead Management Study, respondents reported their top three strategic marketing objectives this year as:

Increasing new customer acquisition – 82.6%
Optimizing cross-selling and up-selling – 41.7%
Increasing brand awareness – 41.5%

However the real story is in the bottom three:

Increasing customer renewals – 17.6%
Enhancing customer experience – 16.3%
Becoming customer-centric – 14.5%

CMO Council’s data also weighs in on our apparent lack of focus on our existing customers. Their State of 2011 Marketing report indicates that only 4% of marketers are concerned with customer churn when allocating their budget. CMO says “… marketers continue their focus on more costly customer acquisition strategies in place of customer retention initiatives.”

It’s been said before: it is far cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. So why is customer retention falling behind?

If we take a closer look at the data, we find that marketers are facing some big challenges this year:

A lengthening sales cycle. Marketers now own more of the customer as sales cycles slow down and prospects spend more time on the web, learning and comparing on their own, before engaging with sales.
Overwhelming amounts of customer data. Many more of us jumped on the social media bandwagon this year, afraid of being left behind and without having an integrated solution in place. Now, we have lots of customer data all over the place, and we aren’t sure what to do with it (or how to get at it.)
Lack of talent. CMO Council reports that 37% of marketers plan to bring on new digital and interactive marketing talent this year. We’re not surprised. In 2011, marketers found themselves with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, even going mobile, and did not have a well-thought out strategy for any of it.

What is being lost as we fight our way through these challenges? The opportunities to build loyalty, increase revenues, and promote brand equity through our most precious resource: our customers.

Determining what priority customer retention should take in your marketing strategy starts by understanding the lifetime value of your customers. If you’re not sure where to start, check out our Customer Value Pack. It is designed to calculate the core value of your best customers and help you more effectively define, acquire, and retain the ideal customer set within a reasonable budget.

Knowing the numbers allows marketers to prioritize customer acquisition and retention strategies with more precision and authority. Because of this, we believe that all marketers must understand how much they can truly afford to spend to acquire a new customer.

Do you?

A New Breed: The Revenue Marketer

2011-08-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

We reviewed Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics and found it lived up to its title with 70 pages of detailed advice on how to most effectively gather and measure key marketing metrics.

Within the Guide, a new profile emerged: the Revenue Marketer™. Marketo describes them as marketers who, “begin to operate and sound more like sales.” Trademarked by The Pedowitz Group, The Revenue Marketer™ “…knows how their key metrics stack up against their targets, and what they plan to do to improve their results.”

If you don’t classify yourself as a one of these new breed marketers, you’re not alone. 44% of marketers have no idea what profits a 10% increase in their marketing budget would generate (Lenskold Group’s 2010 B2B Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study)

However, we should.

As the Definitive Guide tells us (and as most of us suspected already), to gain more credibility and respect (translation: budget and resources) within our organizations, marketing needs to measure the things that will guide decisions that improve profitability. We need to start speaking the CEO and CFO’s language.

To do so, we first need to understand and develop goals around:
How many sales we anticipate our marketing program(s) will generate
How much revenue each sale produces
What the gross margin percentage is
Next we need to design our programs so that we can effectively measure results. With clearly understood goals and well-defined ROI estimates at the outset, we can then track and connect measurements to our pipelines, revenue, and profits. We also can make adjustments to programs with actionable data to improve results, and therefore improve credibility.

To get started, we recommend you download our Marketing Audit Pack. This group of templates includes our Marketing Plan Audit Template, Marketing ROI Template, Sales & Marketing Scorecard and S.W.O.T. Analysis Template, and will help you:

Make well-informed adjustments to your marketing strategy
Understand the true performance of your marketing plan vs. the estimate
Report your status on a weekly basis to raise awareness about your sales and marketing results
Calculate the ROI on your marketing plan

Think about it. Prospects are taking more time to gather information from the wealth of content online, content that marketers produce. This means we are presiding over a much larger share of the revenue cycle than ever before. If you aren’t yet measuring your ROI, it’s time to start. The Revenue Marketer™ is here to stay.

The How and Why of SMBs and Interactive Marketing

2011-07-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

As we audit marketing plans for our SMB clients, we are excited to see interactive marketing taking a more prominent position in the marketing mix. For companies that are on a limited budget, there are many effective ways of putting email, social and search to use that bring value far beyond their traditional counterparts.

This spring, American Express OPEN published the results of its “Small Business Search Marketing Survey,” reporting on how small businesses are currently utilizing some type of online marketing, and revealed the following:

Three quarters of small businesses plan to add some form of online marketing in 2011. Roughly three-in-ten will add a company website (36%) or social media (29%). About one-in-five plan to add search engine optimization (23%), mass email (22%) or search advertising (16%).

The most common online marketing techniques currently being utilized by small businesses are a company website (86%) followed by social media (44%). One-in-five (21%) small businesses report that they are utilizing search advertising.

Among small businesses who conduct some form of online marketing, two-thirds (66%) say that new customers find them through search engines/Internet, compared to 82% who say word of mouth is still the main source where new customers find them.

The American Express survey echoes what Forrester reported in August 2010. Their report “Interactive Marketing Priorities for SMBs” gives insight into how SMBs are allocating their budgets and perhaps more importantly, why.

The biggest takeaway for us is that SMBs are finally using interactive marketing to provide a key focus on customer care—both in acquisition and retention. Forrester stats to support this include:

SMBs weigh lead quality, partnerships, and understanding buyer behavior more heavily than do enterprise firms, in part because smaller companies have fewer key clients to lose.

For SMBs, the most important business objective when determining how to invest in interactive marketing is NEW CUSTOMER SALES, followed by overall sales, brand awareness, and leads.

And because of their size and flexibility, SMBs can respond with the timeliness required to maintain an effective interactive campaign. Becoming more responsive to their customer’s voice in real-time, SMBs can make an impact that is more powerful, more quickly, than in traditional marketing.

Although marketers should heed this warning: going interactive requires manpower (even recruiting key players from the rest of the organization to implement effectively). To do this is challenging, so much so, that even at the enterprise level marketers complain they do not have enough staff dedicated to interactive marketing, Forrester reports.

Pew Internet & American Life Project Gives Us More Insight Into Social Media Users

2011-06-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Pew Internet reports, “The number using social networking sites has nearly doubled since 2008 and the population of SNS users has gotten older.”

The breakdown looks like this:

The average age of SNS users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010.
Over half of all SNS users are over the age of 35.
56% of SNS users are female.

The report is filled with interesting nuggets, such as:

Facebook users are more likely to trust in others and are more politically engaged,
MySpace users are more open to opposing viewpoints, and
LinkedIn users have more diverse social networks than users of other sites.

While fascinating to read and identify with the above findings, marketers should truly pay attention to these stats:

Nearly twice as many men (63%) as women (37%) use LinkedIn.
The average adult MySpace user is younger (32 y.o.), and the average adult LinkedIn user older (40 y.o.), than the average Facebook user (38 y.o.), and Twitter user (33 y.o.).
MySpace and Twitter users are the most racially diverse mainstream social network platforms. However, a large proportion of users of “other” social network services are racial minorities.
MySpace users tend to have fewer years of formal education than users of other social network services, whereas most LinkedIn users have at least one university degree.

These demographics may surprise you, or they may validate your own assumptions about which social media sites are best to engage in a dialogue with your customers. In either case, the differences between the social media options are becoming clearer as the popularity of social media increases.

Make sure to gut-check your social media strategy with the tidbits in this new report. You can download your copy at Pew Internet.

Highlights from Chief Marketer’s 2011 Interactive Marketing Survey

2011-06-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

The results are in from Chief Marketer’s annual Interactive Marketing Survey, conducted between February and March of this year with 647 marketing professionals from both B2B and B2C.

Key insights into 2011’s interactive marketing budgets include:

The average allocation to interactive marketing is 25.2% of total budget
B2B marketers plan to devote more money to interactive than B2C (26.2% vs. 24%)
30% of the overall marketing spend will go toward digital campaigns this year
B2B marketers are more likely to increase both their interactive budgets and their overall marketing spend than B2C

Strategically, the number one goal from interactive campaigns is to build brand awareness according to 79.2% of respondents. This is followed by driving consumers to website (61.5%), generating sales (61.0%), and generating leads (60.4.%).

What surprised us is that even though building brand awareness is the leading goal for their interactive campaigns, only 24.6% of respondents are measuring brand “lift.” This speaks to the power of brand and the renewed energy around brand building with the power of social media.

Other data points to note:

Email marketing has held steady from 2010.
Other mainstream tools such as social media (Facebook, LinkedIn), SEO, Twitter, Online Ads, Paid Search Ads, Social Media Ads, and Viral or Word-Of-Mouth campaigns are all seeing more use now than last year.
Top 3 leading niche-marketing tools are webinars, blogs, and online contests.

The challenge for us marketers has always been measuring how well our interactive marketing campaigns are doing. What are the metrics that we use to determine whether or not we are successful? Responses indicate the top 5 metrics being watched currently are:

Click-throughs (58.7%)
Traffic to website (53.3%)
Lead generation/user opt-in (43.3%)
Page views (38.3%)
Incremental sales (34.1%)

Yet marketers aren’t quite sure how cost-effective interactive marketing actually is. Those who think online campaigns are more profitable than offline declined nine percentage points this year (25.7% of respondents), whereas those who think online is less profitable than offline went up (9.3%). That being said, 29% of marketers simply don’t know if interactive is more or less profitable than offline methods.

What is clear is that any uncertainty about the ROI of interactive marketing is not making an impact on the pursuit of these key initiatives. Marketers across all industries agree that is far worse to be left behind than worrying about its cost-effectiveness right now.

Download your own copy of Chief Marketer’s 2011 Interactive Marketing Survey for more information.

The Intersection of Sales and Marketing: LEAD SCORING

2011-04-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

With the challenge of delivering quality leads confronting marketers every day, once again the focus returns to lead scoring. More than just numbers, lead scoring is the true intersection of sales and marketing as it defines what makes a quality lead, how to recognize it, and what to do about it.

If your company doesn’t already have a lead scoring system in place, or if you do and it isn’t working out too well, we recommend you download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring . It is a great resource and will take you through each step of creating an effective lead scoring system.

Before you dive in, here are a few tips on effective lead scoring:

· Include both explicit and implicit criteria. Explicit criteria are the data points that the prospect expresses or declares to your company directly. Implicit criteria are the behaviors the prospect exhibits when interacting with your organization (website clicks, submitted forms, event attendance). Both are key to determining how interested your prospect is and how close they are to making a buying decision.

· Stay balanced. Always keep the prospect’s BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) in mind while remembering that BANT is based on information that the prospect provided to you. Let the behaviors of the prospect provide even more insight into sales readiness. And remember to not weigh the individual prospect’s characteristics above those of their organization.

· Your lead scoring system will never be done. That is to say, you must constantly update, change and evolve your criteria to stay relevant and meaningful with your target as they respond to market conditions. Adjustments to lead scoring must also be made according to the reality of your sales team’s experience. In fact, some scoring systems allow for sales to adjust the lead’s score and send it back to marketing for reassignment.

· Without buyoff from sales, you’ve got nothing. It’s very, very important that your lead scoring system is born out of a sales and marketing meeting of the minds. If sales doesn’t approve of how you are ranking leads, they won’t view the leads as credible and won’t follow up. This also applies if you aren’t refining your scoring criteria based on the sales team’s feedback.

Lead scoring plays a pivotal role that forces the cooperation of sales and marketing like no other. If you do not yet have a scoring system in place, consider creating one. They can be as straightforward as our Lead Qualification Checklist or as layered as those outlined in Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring.

Remember: effective lead scoring makes sure your sales team is working on real prospects before your competitor’s do.

New Stats On Blogging and Customer Acquisition

2011-03-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

A recent HubSpot report called “The State of Inbound Marketing” offers some enlightening stats about marketers and their blogs:

Blogs and social media channels are generating real customers: 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.

More and more businesses are blogging: Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.

Businesses are increasingly aware their blog is highly valuable: 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful,” “important,” or “critica‖,” a whopping 27% rated their company blog as “critica‖” to their business.

And marketers are putting their money where their mouth is:

The average budget spent on company blogs and social media increased from 9% in 2009 to 17% in 2011.

So who’s blogging successfully? According to HubSpot, marketers in higher education, professional services and consulting, and software and biotech indicated blogging as highly effective with over 50% reporting customer acquisition as a direct result from their blogs.

If you haven’t started blogging because you are unsure about the benefits, let us give you the short list of why you should take another look:

Nurtures prospects
Establishes thought leadership
Improves S.E.O.
Builds community
Increases CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

Remember, a blog is just one part of your larger content marketing strategy. It is critical to have something relevant to say and share with prospects across a variety of mediums. For a list of content marketing tactics, download our Content Marketing Strategy Cheat Sheet. It’s free and it will help get you started.

To find out more about inbound marketing in 2011, you can download the report “The State of Inbound Marketing” at HubSpot.

Why Can't We Get Our Data Act Together?

2011-03-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

By Shannon Kavanaugh, Go-To-Market Strategies' President

I was having a conversation with a business owner recently to help him determine how to bolster his revenues in this rocky time. As we were evaluating what his situation, a key problem became very clear. While he had gathered a lot of information from a lot of sources, it was not centrally located. Some data was stored on his computer in spreadsheets, some in sticky notes on various employees desks, and still more in salesforce.com or the accounting system.

I was reminded once again, that one of the biggest sales and marketing mistakes companies make is not capturing the information they gain in one central place--leading to lost opportunities, mistakes, and inefficiencies!

According to a recent study conducted by eConsultancy, only 35% of those surveyed report they collect data from different sources and store it in a single database. I realize it's simply math, but that means 65% of you are operating from many different data sources, including that stack of sticky notes on your desk!

If everybody is doing it, or not doing it as the case may be, "why is it so bad" you might ask?

It's bad because KNOWLEDGE is power. In many environments this is true, but never more so than in the sales and marketing arena. Whether you're looking for more accurate forecasting, that "low hanging fruit" to fill the pipeline, or the right segment to launch your next campaign....you won't be as successful without full integration!

SO, take the Spring Cleaning Challenge, gather up all your key data capture mechanisms (including those sticky notes, spreadsheets, and one off databases), design/document your sales process, and build a centralized location to house all associated information/data. You just might be surprised how knowledgeable (aka powerful) you are!

It’s Called Your Sales Process

2011-02-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

Last month, Forrester found only 8% of organizations believe they have tightly integrated their sales and marketing teams. Their report, B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment Starts With The Customer also found that the greatest obstacles to achieving tighter integration are:

• Long-term thinking by marketing vs. short-term thinking by sales (58%)
• Different goals and measurement (46%)
• Not enough time to integrate (45%)

This list echoes the results of our recent Sales & Marketing Industry Survey, where marketers said their top 3 challenges working with sales were:

• Their lack of follow-up on leads.
• They do not think about the future.
• They don’t communicate.

And where sales indicated their top 3 challenges working with marketers are:

• They don’t provide qualified leads.
• Their marketing materials are irrelevant.
• They don’t understand the target customer’s pain points.

If we look closer at both surveys, we will see that the seeds of our discontent are sown with poor planning, lack of communication, and broken lead generation. So what can get all three of these back on track? What can ensure sales and marketing share the same goals, speak the same language, and march to the same drum?

Easy. It’s called your Sales Process.

Yes, if you are among the 92% of companies who feel like your sales and marketing teams are enduring a very bitter break-up, our advice is to revisit your sales process—immediately. And if you don’t have one defined and documented, well, there’s your problem right there. (Check out our What is your Sales Process article and Sales Process Template for more assistance.)

Remember, alignment problems arise when: 1) sales and marketing are not adhering to their part in the sales process; 2) they don’t understand the sales process or didn’t know it existed, OR 3) the process as defined is simply not working because of a changing market condition.

So start with a well-defined, relevant sales process that puts all of marketing and sales activities, tools, and goals on the same page. Literally.

Is Your 2011 Marketing Plan Ready?

2011-01-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

In the 2010 Sales & Marketing Industry survey that we conducted last month, more than half of us marketers responded that we did not have our 2011 marketing plan completed. In fact, 51% were still working on it, whereas 10% hadn’t yet started.

Yikes.

If we aren’t finished with our marketing planning by the end of the year, what is guiding us when the New Year dawns? Our instincts? Or are we just reacting instead of following a strategy? Either one of those scenarios should make you nervous.

Creating a solid marketing plan has never been more important, especially as we navigate new marketing tactics and a still unpredictable economic climate. Taking the time, right now, to stop reacting and start (or finish) your planning is essential to your company’s success.

Our Marketing Plan Template can help kick-start your efforts, plus you’ll receive a free copy of our 2010 Sales & Marketing Industry Study as a thank-you with your purchase. (Truth be told, you can purchase any one of our templates and receive the survey report for free.)

As marketers, we are concerned about what we perceive is a lack of planning. Even the most talked about and highly effective marketing tactics must be used in a strategic way. You can’t immerse yourself in social media or begin email marketing without an understanding of how, why, and what your expected ROI is.

We’ve learned over the years, and through hundreds of clients, that if you have no plan, you have nothing. A focused strategy is the only way to leverage your marketing programs to build momentum and ensure lasting success.

Time to get planning.

Who’s in charge of social media anyway?

2010-12-14T06:36:00.000-08:00

Recent statistics from SmartBrief on social media marketing reveal the urgent need for companies to define a measurable social media strategy and manage to it:

• 20% of companies have started to use social media in the past 13 to 18 months

• 94.1% of companies are using social media for brand-building, as compared to 49% who indicated they use social media for new business and lead generation

• Companies still don’t know how to manage social media and whether or not it is effective (only 14.7% reported they measure ROI)

• There is a low-level of confidence in social media strategies, with only 7.3% of companies describing their strategy as revenue-generating

Either we get better at it with time or we get used to the feeling of uncertainty, but around the 2-year mark, companies begin to express confidence in their use of social media. Hopefully no damage has been done in the meantime.

What did we take away from SmartBrief’s report? If 2010 was the year for adoption of social media, then 2011 must be the year we learn how to manage it. Like any other initiative, social media’s success depends on accountability to a well-thought out strategy.

So for the 33.3% of SmartBrief’s respondents who said they are NOT the social media decision maker in their organization, we ask: who is?

It’s time to figure it out.

Download your complimentary copy of SmartBrief’s State of Social Media for Business: Select Themes 2010 white paper today.

What Is Stressing Out Sales Managers?

2010-11-22T13:36:00.000-08:00

We just read Focus Research’s latest Expert Briefing, “Top 10 Things that Keep Sales Managers Up At Night.” Focus asked leading experts in the field to join an online conversation about the things sales managers should be most worried about in maximizing performance of their teams.

The results include some insightful responses that shine a light on our most common concerns. Not only does it provide succinct advice, the briefing poses some pretty powerful questions that all sales managers should be asking themselves, including:

• Am I a sales leader worth following? Am I someone I would want leading me?
• Is our sales process helping us to predictably repeat what we do so we can compete and win?
• Am I taking every opportunity to coach and develop my salespeople?
• Are we mercilessly disqualifying poor opportunities and putting our energy where it counts?
• Do we have the right compensation plan that motivates performance?

There is much more to this discussion, but we especially appreciated the above list of questions. In our experience, the honest answers to these questions provide the “aha!” moments needed to motivate and inspire change within our teams.

This free resource is well worth downloading. If you are in sales, get your copy at Focus today.

Optimizing Your Sales Team

2010-11-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

We really enjoyed reading CSO Insight’s latest ebook, Sales Management 2.0 -- Optimizing Sales Performance 2010. It’s filled with terrific insights from sales leaders Kenneth Powell, Vice-President of Worldwide Sales Enablement at ADP; Kevin Joyce, Chief Sales and Marketing Office at Miranda Technologies; Jim Dickie, Managing Partner at CSO Insights; and more.

Some our favorite takeaways include:

• The most effective sales leaders are not necessarily the top-performing sales performers! Before hiring any candidate into your sales force, perform an assessment to ensure you have a balance of great sales talent and future sales leadership on the team.

• Sales organizations are under-investing in and under-developing their sales leaders. Finding and mentoring excellence in sales leaders takes time – shortcuts do not work! Plan to spend 12 months grooming your future sales leaders for success.

• Tight integration between sales and marketing groups requires close management of the sales process. The feedback from sales to marketing is a vital step to achieving sales success.

• Sales teams need to more thoroughly understand the markets they are selling to, determine their strategy for specific accounts, and then start calling on stakeholders. In other words, we need to earn the opportunity to sell to our customer.

• This recession may have changed the way we sell forever. It is time to focus on the best available opportunities and only call on those accounts. We need to become even more strategic and leverage all of the data available to us in the Web 2.0 world.

There is so much more in this free download… we highly recommend you get your own copy today at CSO Insights.

IntroMojo: New Sales Tool Makes Prospecting Easier

2010-10-22T06:21:00.000-07:00

The sales world is buzzing with the launch of IntroMojo, an online tool that compiles key information about your prospects and serves it up to you in a snazzy looking website.

The information it provides is already accessible on the web and isn’t that revelatory, but who cares? What has us and the rest of the sales world excited is how convenient it is. It is one-stop searching for the background data you need to know before engaging with your prospect.

So how does it work?

Go to IntroMojo and sign up (there is a 14-day free trial, then it’s $25/month for 50 searches). Then, start searching.

The magic of IntroMojo is the back-end work it does for you. It compiles all of the data readily available from the web and social networking sites and serves it up. In a matter of seconds. And, if it can’t locate your prospect right away, it will ask a series of questions to refine its search to find exactly who you’re looking for.

Once IntroMojo locates your prospect, you can view all of the following on one page:

• How They Can Be Reached
• What You Need To Know
• Groups They’ve Joined
• Places They’ve Worked
• Where They Went To School
• What They’re Talking About
• What They’re Watching
• What They’re Writing
• Videos They’ve Posted
• Products They’ve Reviews
• People They’ve Connected To
• Places to Find Them On Web
• And More

Pretty cool, isn’t it?

It is the timesaving convenience that makes this a must-have sales tool. Sales people can leverage what they learn from IntroMojo to make a more meaningful connection with their prospect—and fast.

We recommend you give it a try! Go to IntroMojo.com to find out more.

Social Media: Where Customer Service and Marketing Collide

2010-10-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

A recent whitepaper from Chief Marketer and Genesys poses the question, “Does Your Social Media Strategy Force Marketing to Act Like Customer Service?” We think this a very important question. Especially as companies evaluate the purpose of their corporate website and compare it to social sites and online forums. Where is customer service actually happening?

Much of it is happening in social media. And it’s getting complicated. Trying to manage our social media presence to preserve brand integrity and ensure customer satisfaction is hard to do. Especially when responses must be given real-time and are out there for the world to see—forever.

So we’re all out here together trying to make it work. Marketers must occupy the same social media space with customer service, even if they don’t use that space in the same way. The result? Without a thought-out social media process in place that serves both purposes seamlessly, our friends at Genesys have concluded that customer service is likely to decline. And we agree.

There is some good advice in this brief white paper, our favorite nuggets are:

• The first step is to LISTEN. Always listen. What are your customers saying? Can you identify trends in the feedback? Is it easy to distinguish between responses that require customer service from those that are brand building?

• As you listen, identify certain words or phrases that your customers are using that will require an escalation path. Hopefully there won’t be too many of those. But, if they do appear, your team will know exactly what to do to resolve the issue.

• Establish best practices. One example is to reply to a customer within the channel in which they initiated contact. If they posted to Facebook, don’t email them directly. Use Facebook.

• Think of any customer outreach as a “an opportunity to respond and maintain a customer.” Even if the message begins as a negative one, don’t get upset. Use the response to both help the customer and elevate the conversation to a positive resolution. This is the secret of great customer service. And it isn’t easy.

Download your own copy of “Does Your Social Media Strategy Force Marketing to Act Like Customer Service?” here. It should help you on your way to a well-thought out, actionable social media strategy.

Want to know more about social media monitoring? Funny you should mention it…

2010-09-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

Sales and marketing professionals are participating in social media more than ever these days. Determining the ROI of this effort remains elusive, but websites like Social Mention, HowSociable, and BlogPulse are helping us monitor coverage more efficiently. And they’re FREE.

Today, we are going to focus on our favorite of the freebie social media monitoring tools: Social Mention.

If you haven’t checked out yet, you should. With a very clean interface, the tool allows you to easily search social media to see where you are mentioned and then evaluates your coverage: Is it positive? Negative? Or neutral?

Other metrics Social Mention offers are:

• Strength. This is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media.
• Sentiment. This is the ratio of mentions that is positive to negative.
• Passion. This is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand and will do so repeatedly.
• Reach. This is a measure of the range of your influence.

You will also see how many minutes you average between mention, when your last mention occurred, how many unique authors have mentioned you, how many re-tweets, the most frequently used keywords and more.

Simply enter the term you want to search for and Social Mention searches all data from social media streams and aggregates the results for you. Now, like all searches, there will be some irrelevant results. If you are finding the list to unwieldy to scan, you can further refine your search using their Advanced Search options.

Remember: the more you refine you search, the more meaningful the metrics. That being said, be careful with how much emphasis you put on the metrics themselves. There are just too many variables involved to let them influence your day-to-day operations. We use them for benchmarking, identifying trends, and engaging in more meaningful online conversation—all of which inform our long-term marketing strategy.

Besides the easy-to-use website, Social Mention lets you get your results, real-time, via RSS feed. You can also download them in csv format. Plus, you can sign up for email alerts (similar to Google Alerts) that let you know when and where you were mentioned.

Did we mention that it’s FREE?

Curious? Visit socialmention.com to find out more.

Sales Guy Brings Us Back to Basics

2010-09-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

We should all know by now that being successful in sales is more than having good instincts; it is following a tried-and-true process. With this in mind, we are always on the lookout for effective sales tips and have a terrific source to share with you. If you haven’t listened to (or read) Sales Guy’s tips we highly recommend you do.

Who is the Sales Guy? It is Jeb Blount, one of the world’s leading experts in sales and sales leadership. He is the author of PowerPrinciples, founder of the popular sales community, SalesGravy.com and has more than 20 years experience in Fortune 500 sales and marketing.

What we like best about Jeb is his philosophy that “in sales and life there are a handful of basics, which if focused on intently, will drive peak performance and achievement.” These basics are what Jeb writes about, from how to confirm sales appointments to how to overcome the “I want to shop around” objection.

Some of our favorite posts are:

• Is Social Media Relevant in My Industry?

• Anatomy of a Cold Call

• The Ice Breaker

• Use Questions to Differentiate Yourself

The best practices for sales reps are well articulated here and with a thoughtful reasoning that makes sense. We especially appreciate the emphasis Sales Guy puts on listening. As a salesperson, it is the most important skill to master yet the hardest to put into practice.

Start by giving Sales Guy a listen. He posts at least once a month and covers the following categories: cold-calling, lead generation, career management and sales methodology. (Make sure to browse the archives, too, for more great insights.)

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate!

2010-08-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

The wise people at Silverpop have produced another informative whitepaper called “A Failure to Communicate: Stop the Noise & Start Real Dialogues with Prospects.” Click here to download your free copy.

We recommend this one because it does a great job of discussing how we can communicate more meaningfully with our prospects, nurture them along the buying cycle more effectively, and positively influence the conversations they are having online.

Some key takeaways:

• Buyers are waiting longer to connect with the sales team. Why? They are able to find answers to their questions in other places long before they engage in direct conversation with you. This is lengthening the sales cycle and requires a more proactive communication plan.

• Before crafting messaging, it is very important to understand the route your customers have taken from initial interest in your product to a final purchase. (How did they find you, what pages did they visit on your website and in what order, and when did they decide to speak to your sales team?)

• We’ve said this before, and we’re happy to hear Silverpop say it, too: Gather customer data from the sales team. Find out what they’re hearing from customers and what messages are resonating with prospects. Let sales contribute to marketing messaging – it will create more compelling content.

• Remember: effective marketers take a multi-channel approach. Buyers use different channels at different phases of the buying cycle. Content needs to reflect what the buyers are looking for in each particular channel to achieve the greatest impact.

These are just a few highlights, there’s much more in this free download. To access it and other great resources, visit Silverpop.

Who Needs MythBusters? Marketers have MarketingExperiments.com!

2010-07-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t yet visited MarketingExperiments.com, we’d like to introduce you to this fantastic group of researchers whose self-proclaimed goal is: to discover what really works in optimization. The team focuses, “…all of our experimentation on optimizing marketing communications.”

To that end they offer a quarterly journal, online training, and more. Some are for free, some you have to pay for, but the journal (free, yay!) is well-worth subscribing to and provides some pretty great marketing insights. Attention: if you are a data and research enthusiast, this is the marketing resource for you. So much testing, so little time!

A few key takeaways from Q2’s journal:

• MarketingExperiments labs discovered a HUGE conversion increase from tying online efforts to an offline campaign. The kicker is there wasn’t a direct correlation between the two. The journal shows you step-by-step how it played out.

• Any organization can achieve measurable success with one-to-one marketing, no matter what level it currently functions at, including detailed examples from real-world experiments to show us how.

• An excellent overview of the key differences between Web Designer and Web Developer that every marketing professional should understand before undertaking any web initiative of any kind.

There is much more in the 132-page download. You can find it here at marketingexperiments.com

CMO Council Report Reveals the State of the Marketing Budget

2010-07-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Time and time again we are asked about budget allocation. Questions like: How much should I spend? How much should I allocate to branding? What are other companies spending? How does my budget compare with my competitors?

All are excellent questions. And although the answers are hard to come by, a recent report from the CMO Council gives us a bit more insight. But before you read on, be warned: 46% of marketers say they have been given “insufficient budget” Yikes!

Here is the budget breakdown based on the CMO Council’s report “2010 Marketing Outlook” where over 500 senior marketers were surveyed on how they are creating their marketing mix, spending their budgets, and what changes they are making to their media spend.

The overall marketing budget allocations look like this:

• 58% have budgets less than 4%
• 16% have budgets between 5 and 6%
• 23% have budgets from 7 – 20%
• 2% have budgets over 20%

Clearly, marketers have felt the squeeze from the recession. We know marketing budgets have suffered and tough decisions have been made on where the funds need to be spent to get the most of out very little.

So how are marketers spending these funds? CMO Council reports:

• 10.5% on strategy and branding
• 10% on product marketing
• 9.5% on website properties and digital platforms
• 9% on sales support
• 7% on creative services
• 6.5% on marketing planning, operations, and measurement

How does your marketing budget compare with these allocations? Are you surprised by these figures? Summer is here and it is an excellent time to assess how well your plan has performed in Q1 and Q2, and make adjustments for the rest of the year.

And with marketing planning for 2011 just around the corner, we recommend you read the CMO Council’s report. You can download the entire report or the free executive summary at cmocouncil.org.

Is HR Really Evil? We don’t think so!

2010-06-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

First, let me be clear, we are not recruiters nor are we HR specialists. We do, however, work with companies on hiring sales people, training sales teams, and coaching sales managers. And we understand there is an art and science to building an effective sales team. Creating and nurturing the right mix of skills, personality, and expertise is essential to building a successful team in any organization.

Because of this, we recommend you check out the Evil HR Lady’s blog. Not only is it full of insightful posts about recruiting, job hunting, HR policies, and more, but she takes your questions, too. And as you may have guessed, she’s not really evil.

When you’re there, be sure to read our favorite blog entries: 5 Ways to Screw Up Your Career, It’s a Job Interview—Not a Beauty Pageant, and How Do I Gain Visibility?

Although not focused exclusively on sales and marketing, the issues and questions that arise when dealing with HR challenges are universal. So if you find yourself looking for a new job, managing a team, or trying to hire the right person, you may want to see what the Evil HR Lady says about the problem you’re trying to solve.

Is Your Email Authentic?

2010-05-18T14:32:00.001-07:00

Earlier this spring, participants in the 2010 RSA Conference gave this warning: the only way to reduce phishing and spoofing is through email authentication. Further, the only way to rid the world of phishing and spoofing is for widespread adoption of email authentication across industries. Everywhere you turn, experts agree it is a must-do for email marketers today. Still not sure about it? Email authentication also improves your deliverability!

So what is email authentication?

Email authentication allows organizations to confirm email messages as originating from an authorized source. It can be achieved several different ways. These protocols can be deployed singularly or in combination, they are SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Sender ID, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). SPF and Sender ID are considered easier to implement, however each protocol has its own benefits and disadvantages that should be evaluated before determining what’s best for your organization.

So where should you start to find out more about it?

BITS created this email authentication guide last year that provides a thorough examination of DKIM and SPF. The guide itself targets the financial sector, however the information is applicable to all industries. And although sometimes very technical, BITS does an effective job of highlighting the tradeoffs of each protocol and includes helpful links and resources.

If DKIM isn’t a protocol you’re company would implement, check out Return Path’s Best Practice Guide on email authentication. They cover SPF and Sender ID and include important links to help you get started. The tone of this guide is more practical and less technical.

And if you are already authenticating your emails, well done! If not, you’re not alone. Although the number of authenticators is growing (51% now versus 20% 18 months ago), there are still half of us who need to evaluate and deploy this key tactic.

As you get started, remember authentication is one layer of security -- a very important layer -- but it is not a complete solution. Other security measures such as encryption and anti-spam technology are also essential.

Top Online Marketing Tactics for 2009 Revealed in New Survey

2010-03-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

A recent survey completed by the teams at eROI and eM+C questioned 678 marketers about their 2009 online marketing programs to give us their new report "Online Marketing Trends:What Worked in 2009 And What to Expect in 2010." The goal? To discover what online marketing tactics provided the most success last year. The big winners of 2009? Email marketing and websites!

As we weathered the recession, it is no surprise that the relatively low-cost tactics of email marketing and websites were tied for most used (at 93%), followed by social media tools (69%).

Not only did marketing teams dedicate additional resources to email marketing and online communities last year, they also spent more marketing dollars: 45% of marketers increased their online communities budgets in 2009 and 66% increased 2009 budgets for email marketing.

The focus on these channels is what led to:
. increased website traffic (24%)
. improved brand awareness (21%)
. increased sales (20%)

To see how other online marketing tactics (like social media and mobile marketing) are being woven in to our strategies download the whole report from eROI and eM+C.

Attention Product Managers: Check out these blogs!

2010-03-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Our subscribers often ask us where they can find quality product management resources. Today we have a couple of really great blogs to share with you courtesy of Jeff Lash, a talented product manager based in St. Louis, MO.

How To Be A Good Product Manager

This blog is full of great advice and tips directly from Lash, and delivered in a cool way. Lash starts each entry with, “If you want to be a bad product manager….” and then describes a common product management pitfall. He follows it up with, “If you want to be a good product manager…” where he explains a better approach.

Beyond the catchy format, what makes Lash’s blog shine is the level of information he provides. We think he strikes the right balance between technical and practical advice, and gives a well-rounded perspective that product managers across industries and experience levels can appreciate.

Some of our favorite posts are:

• Realize Your Product Is Not The Center of Your Customer’s World
• Differentiate to Avoid Being a “Me Too”
• Save Some Features For Later

Note that Lash doesn’t feel the need to post every day or even every week. He posts regularly enough and with new, relevant information that the blog doesn’t feel overdone or outdated. Check it out. It is worth a read if you are a product manager or if you work closely with one.

Ask A Good Product Manager

If you are a product manager and would like to find out what burning questions your colleagues are asking and see how the experts respond, check out Lash’s sister blog to How to Be. It’s aptly titled “Ask a Good Product Manager.” There is lots of good information here, and make sure to read the comments, too, to get even more perspective and the occasional dissenting opinion.

Some past questions include:

• If product managers are CEOs of their products, why aren’t more of them CEOs?
• How can I avoid cannibalization with a new product?
• How is a product manager different from a brand manager?

Once you’ve checked it out, feel free to ask your own product management question. Odds are you have colleagues out there who are interested in the response as well.

Enjoy these blogs and let us know if you have your own favorites!

A Must-Read Top 10 List All about… Sales?

2010-03-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Who doesn’t love a good Top 10 list? We know we do, and it can’t be just us (and David Letterman). It is usually entertaining to read, and delivers the goods in a way you hadn’t quite thought of them before… so what’s not to like?

Renowned author Geoffrey James has created a winner of a list on BNET called "Top 10 Reasons New Sales Reps Fail.” There are some terrific insights in this one. We highly recommend you read the entire article, but to whet your appetite, here are our favorite reasons that Geoffrey lists:

They base their self-worth on what other people think.
They lack the right attitude.
They don’t perceive the subtleties.
They’d rather be doing something else.
They lack true honesty and candor.

After we read this article, we decided that Geoffrey could have also titled his post: Top 10 Ways to Ruin a Conversation. Not only do all the reasons he lists mangle the sales process, they also are real conversation killers. And that is what effective sales is all about, right? It is a conversation where real communication must occur and when both parties receive value from that communication.

During our sales coaching and training efforts, we’ve found time and time again that some new sales reps simply don’t realize this. Either too focused on winning the sale that they aren’t really listening (and therefore not offering the prospect valuable problem-solving information in return) OR they simply would rather be somewhere else and do not invest the time and effort to understanding their prospect’s needs. Both scenarios are a fast track to a hollow pipeline.

If you are a new sales rep or if you are managing one, check out the article to see if any of these reasons sound familiar. Recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it.

Paid Search Best Practices

2010-03-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

Paid search campaigns are complicated at best. There are so many factors that go into a paid search effort, even the best marketers can simply lose their mind.

Recently we came across a whitepaper from FATHOM SEO called Paid Search Best Practices, which details 10 tips to SEM success.

Our favorite takeaway was tip #7: "Don't Aim to be #1." As the author explains...buying the #1 position is more expensive and not always necessary to meet your ROI objectives. He suggests aiming for the #3-5 positions.

There are many other great a-HAs in this paper...Download it now...it's free! (NOTE: the author does have a limited number of downloads available for this paper, so be quick!)

Forrester’s 7 Steps to Social CRM Success

2010-02-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

Forrester defines social CRM as the way customers buy from and interact with organizations of all types through social media. In its recent paper “Social CRM Goes Mainstream,” Forrester shines a new light on customer relationship management. We are challenged to “embrace new ideas about customer behaviors, innovative business capabilities, and fresh technologies as part of (our) CRM solutions understanding and vocabulary.”

Yes! It is time to reframe our idea of CRM to include the sphere of customer-to-customer relationships. If you were thinking that this might not be such an easy task, you’re right. The experts at Forrester kindly get us started with their seven steps to achieving social CRM success:

1. Initiate social CRM experiments immediately.
2. Benchmark customer and prospect social readiness.
3. Define your social customer objectives.
4. Assess your social CRM capabilities.
5. Understand the social CRM solutions landscape.
6. Map out your social CRM capabilities-building plan.
7. Define your CRM metrics for success.

These seven steps seem a bit daunting to undertake when your customers are collaborating, right now, in real-time, and you haven’t any time to benchmark your readiness, set objectives, and map out a plan.

Don’t panic. Yes, your customers have formed opinions about you, your level of service, the quality of your product, and are likely expressing that opinion somewhere on the web. And, yes, it would be a good idea to find out where, when, and how this is happening.

But remember, you can’t really affect the dialogue in these forums. What you can (and must) do is take control of this conversation by providing the space for your customers to readily communicate with you and, maybe more importantly, with each other.

This is the crux of Forrester’s social CRM approach. By creating the tools (blogs, wikis, forums, customer feedback tools, social networking sites and other platforms) you can then mine the data, influence the outcome, and demonstrate that your organization is listening and actually doing something with this extremely important feedback.

Forrester is right. Planning your social CRM strategy is absolutely essential to ensure you are taking the right approach for your organization. So start immediately. And begin by reading “Social CRM Goes Mainstream.”

A Warning to All eMail Marketers: Stay Relevant to Your Customers

2010-01-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

In a recent survey conducted by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions Company, marketers gained more insight into what marketing messages and channels of delivery are valued most by today's customer. One of the most interesting results may, or may not, surprise you:

91% of survey respondents said they had unsubscribed from an email newsletter, mainly because it was not relevant to them

Yikes. As marketers, we know we are already competing with way too many other messages in our customer’s inbox. It is awfully crowded in there! If we aren’t communicating our relevance, through compelling subject lines and targeted offers, do we have any business being there? Especially when:

73% of consumers say they have received promotional offers on products they have already purchased from the sender

We haven’t exactly cracked the code on how to most effectively use email to strengthen our customer relationships, have we? But we may be catching on. In the CMO Council Report, Routes to Revenue, 60% of marketers indicated they intend to improve their customer segmentation, profiling and targeting in the order to better leverage their knowledge about the customer to create a more relevant relationship.

Yes! This sounds like the best course of action. However over 20% of us marketers still don’t know exactly how to get at the data that will drive these changes. This echoes trends we saw in early 2009.

It’s clear, in 2010, that we understand to create relevant, individualized marketing campaigns is the key to building long-term, sustainable relationships with our customers. Relevance is the critical path. But how to start?

Start with the customer. Remember, they define what is relevant, so it’s time to get to know them better through your real-time analytics and data mining. And you need to do this before they start unsubscribing.

Visit the CMO Council to access both “Routes to Revenue” and the survey “Relevance Drives Response.”

"Twitter: Best Practices and Tips"

2009-12-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Receive Your Complimentary Guide NOW!

If you've felt like tweeting for a time now, but didn't know where to start, this guide is for you.

Even though half the universe is on Twitter these days, beginning out of nothing isn't always that evident. If you really want your Twitter to fly high, it doesn't end with just creating an account. Especially with this many people on Twitter, it's important to know the tools you're working with, and the dazzling reach of this innovating technology. In over forty pages this guide tackles every Twitter feature, tip and trick you can think of. Learn to work the interface, to Tweet from your desktop, cool Twitter bots and which people to follow.

Download The Complete Guide to Twitter now.

Sponsored by: Makeuseof.com

White Paper: Selling Through A Slump

2009-11-18T08:52:00.000-08:00

Selling in today's economy is tough. And simply doing more of the same is not the way to survive, much less thrive, in a tough market. There are important dos and don'ts in times like these.

This eBook is your industry-specific roadmap out of the economic slump. Selling through a Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook brings together sales strategies and best practices from 11 top sales experts from 11 distinct vertical market sectors, ranging from retail to health care to telecom - because one size doesn't always fit all. The practical tips and experience-based wisdom here aren't just limited to any single industry, though. Regardless of your market sector, you're bound to find value in this arsenal of great sales ideas. Get access to exclusive tips on how to sell in a challenging market, from renowned sales experts like Jill Konrath, Charles Green, and Dave Stein. You've got questions - this eBook was created to give you answers.

Offered Free by Oracle Corporation: Download today!

Marketing Plan Template

2009-10-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

To Plan or Not To Plan...It's not even a question! Particularly as you face the aftermath of a recession.

Often when marketing dollars are allocated within companies, the temptation is to hurry and launch a marketing campaign because "we need the leads and we need them now!"

While it might induce some angst to wait for a well thought-out Marketing Plan, the consequences of not doing so could do serious damage to your marketing effectiveness AND budget. It doesn't have to take four months to develop a comprehensive plan. In fact, a focused team can accomplish it in three to six weeks; and the time invested upfront WILL pay off through the implementation and launch of future campaigns.

***************************

Built in Microsoft Word for easy editing and customization, this Marketing Plan Template includes step-by-step instructions for each section: market research, company identity, target market, product/service definition and messaging, competition analysis, sales model, marketing mix, implementation calendar, and budget.

This plan is probably the most important document you will create throughout your marketing efforts. It establishes a roadmap for your sales and marketing planning, maximizing your resources. It validates your target market and competition, summarizes the marketing plan, and outlines the resources and budget needed for successful completion of the planned activities.

So, download your Marketing Plan Template and get started!

New FTC Rules for Social Media!

2009-10-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

The new FTC rules on Social Media content go into effect 12/1/2009. And, for the most part the new rules are aimed at protecting the consumer from reading a blog about a product that presents itself as an editorial, when the "blogger" has been paid to promote the product and/or has been given the product for free.

That's a good thing, right? Yup...we think so too. BUT, it does create a few things every marketer must consider--whether they run a blog and/or promote their products on blogs or other social media sites (such as Twitter).

The main crux behind the new rule is this...when endorsing a product or service (such as in a blog or tweet), you must:

Disclose when you are being compensated--whether you are being paid for the endorsement and/or have been give free sample of the product (traditionally known as "not-for-resale" copies).
Be truthful in your statements...and make sure they can be substantiated.
Speak from actual experience--meaning you can't just regurgitate the sponsor's marketing speak if it isn't an actual experience, opinion, or belief of your own.

And the fine for not doing so? $11,000 big ones.

Really, most legitimate marketers already follow #2 and #3, but they should now be much more diligent in making sure nothing slips through. The biggest addition to all is the disclosure requirement--so make sure your social media efforts (whether you are the blogger or the product company promoting through 3rd party blogs) now have these new rule on the operations checklist...it's the law!

Seriously, SHUT UP!

2009-09-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest mistakes sales people make is to go into a sales call with a prospect or customer and talk, talk, talk. In fact, when coaching we often find that sales people talk more than the prospect does. By A LOT!

Seriously, you need to SHUT UP. And we mean that in the nicest possible way.

Selling is largely a process of learning what your customer needs—what they do, how they do it, with whom they do it with, why they do it that way…all BEFORE telling them how you will help them do it better. How can you accomplish this if you’re talking all the time?

We know this to be true, yet we can’t seem to stop ourselves from talking. Why?

Well, because when silence lingers it is human nature to fill it. But you must fight the urge, whatever it takes—bite the inside of your mouth if you must—and let your prospect do the talking. Count to ten and if the prospect still hasn’t filled the space, ask a question…and then shut up and wait for their answer.

This technique really works. Most of the time you will find that the prospect/customer will tell you things you haven’t even asked for…which is exactly the position you want to be in when selling.

So try it…just SHUT UP!

More Selling Technique Articles:

Three Negotiation Skills for the Economic Recovery

2009-08-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

We just got done reading Negotiation Rules! A Practical Approach by Jeanette Nyden, J.D. It offers tons of good advice!

We asked Jeanette to share a little for our readers, and this is what she had to say:

Business Week ran an article suggesting that businesses prepare for the recovery. ("Getting Ready for the Recovery," April 14, 09) What the article doesn’t mention, and what you and I both know, is that the recovery will look very different from what we are used to. Rather than strong, steady growth, many of us will see more peaks and valleys.

This means more opportunities to negotiate: Negotiate your lease; negotiate to get good pricing and prompt payments from clients; negotiate with employees. Negotiation skills must now be a core competency for every small business.

Small businesses were hit hard by the recession. We are innovative and responsive, so we will survive. To maintain that flexibility, you need to look at three core negotiation skills.

Making tradeoffs, rather than concessions
Making effective counteroffers, rather than saying no
Planning for all conversations, rather than winging-it

Here is a case on point. A sales rep for a small company called me after her client asked to re-negotiate the deal—within days of signing the deal! My client was confused because she didn’t know what to ask for in return for accommodating her client. She did not want to just give in to her client’s demands after they reached a deal. It would have eroded her company’s bottom line.

Not only should you know what you are willing to give the client, you need to know what you want from them in return. Once you know that, you can now make an effective counteroffer, rather than caving in. Both of those require at least a little thought and preparation.

Everything has changed and you have to be willing to negotiate. It is now expected of you. Know what you will give and what you want in exchange. It will keep your doors open despite the recovery.

For more information about making tradeoffs, counteroffers or planning, read Negotiation Rules! A Practical Approach to Big Deal Negotiations.

AUTHOR BOX: Jeanette Nyden, author of Negotiation Rules! A Practical Approach to Big Deal Negotiations, is the president of J. Nyden & Co., Inc, a negotiation skills training company. For more information and free negotiation articles visit www.jnyden.com. Jeanette can be reached at 206-723-3472 or jn@jnyden.com.

Getting Facebook into the Marketing Mix!

2009-08-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

Social media is clearly here to stay. And most of you have already incorporated it into your marketing mix with LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. One social media tool that marketers have been slow to adopt is Facebook. This is largely due to the fact that Facebook is primarily a social network focused on personal relationships. In fact, many members specifically avoid business contact connections in Facebook.

Still, Facebook is the largest growing social media website online today (over 25 million and growing). It cannot be ignored or dismissed so easily. But how do you add it into the mix? Here are two easy and cost-effective ways:

1. Create and promote a Fan Page. Facebook allows members to create a specific Facebook page for their business through its "Facebook Pages" application. This page can then be used to promote who you are and what you do. You can use this page to post alerts when you have new articles to distribute, news to announce, etc. Facebook members can then become fans of your page and receive these updates on their newsfeed as you post them.

a) Create your business page by going to the "Advertising" link on the bottom of your personal Facebook page. Choose the "Pages" tab at the top of that page, and then choose "Create a Page." Upload your logo, enter your company profile details, and establish your settings. Once completed, click the "publish your site" button to go live.

b) Promote your Page EVERYWHERE you can. Add a "Company X on Facebook" link to your website, your email signatures, and email newsletters. Ask your "friends" and "fans" to spread the word. If you're already on LinkedIn and Twitter, promote it there. You get the idea...Get the word out and begin building that fan base.

Want an example? Find Go-To-Market Strategies on Facebook and become a fan! Heck, tell all your friends about it while you're at it.

2. Advertise with PPC. Another cost-effective way to add Facebook to the marketing mix is to deploy pay-per-click ads through the advertising application. Like many online advertising venues, Facebook advertising has received mix results. Still, it's depth and breadth of demographic targeting makes it one of the most powerful tools in this space.

With Facebook advertising, you can target as tightly as specifying sex, age, relationship, location, education, as well as specific keywords (titles, favorite books, sports, movies, etc.). Once you specify your target criteria, the tool will tell you how many members in the network meet your target needs. It's really quite amazing.

As mentioned, Facebook results have been mixed in terms of how much traffic you will really see from it. Still, given the low cost and the nature of pay-per-click, you really have very little to lose and at the minimum you are making online impressions that will help build brand recognition for other vehicles in the mix. Just make sure you set a daily "not to exceed" budget to keep your spend at an amount you can afford.

If you haven't already engaged the above two techniques in your social marketing strategy, it's time you you got started. Facebook has a huge audience and these tools are a free-to-cheap way to gain awareness with that audience in a way that is highly targeted and interactive.

Oh...and in the meantime Find Go-To-Market Strategies on Facebook!

Quick Social Media Tips

2009-08-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the recession, many of us have been out of work this past year, sitting on the sidelines as our colleagues have mastered the new tools, technologies and trends in our industry. One of the biggest, most influential of all is the use of social media in sales and marketing. If you are feeling left behind in the Web 2.0 world, we’ve pulled together some quick tips to help you navigate the social media questions in your job search.

To be successful professionally in social media, we recommend the following:

Define a clear goal to guide your participation. Does your company want to source referrals? Gain brand awareness? Increase SEO? Knowing this will help you narrow down what techniques and sites to use. (For example, a Facebook page will not help your SEO, but it will help you source referrals.)
Do not use social media sites to hard sell. Ever.
Blogs are a very important tool to building credibility and to increasing SEO. If your company doesn’t have a blog, they need to start one. Yesterday.
Social media networking is reciprocal. Link and be linked, but make sure the links are relevant and do not do any brand damage. The idea here is to promote you (and your company) as knowledgeable and helpful, so all links and referrals you post must be credible and valuable to your prospects.
Create a set of guidelines for employee social media participation. A list of do’s and don’ts will help ensure that your brand is not diluted or damaged in any way by raising awareness about what is and isn’t acceptable.
Make time every single day for social media networking. To be relevant, you have to be active… even if you can only dedicate 15 minutes a day!

When preparing for your interview, find out how your potential employer is currently using social media by visiting the top sites. Determine what you think they are doing well and what could be improved. Bring your social media recommendations to your interview. And remember to spend some time on the company’s website. Also, search for them on the big search engines to see how they rank. Arming yourself with this information will make your social media savviness even more impressive.

Happy job hunting!

5 Rules for PowerPoint Presentations (according to Seth Grodin)

2009-07-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

You, like most of us...have found yourself sitting through that horrid PowerPoint Presentation. In fact, you may have even delivered a few yourself.

Blogger Seth Grodin says..."It's not your fault. It's Microsoft's."

We were intrigued. So we reviewed his eBook "Really Bad PowerPoint (and how to avoid it)" to see what he meant. It's an older eBook, but it's still worth a read.

The eBook outlines all the problems with PowerPoint and its current use in selling. And even provides 5 "rules" to follow to save yourself from this horrible:

No more than six words on a slide. EVER.
No cheesy images. Use professional images from corbis.com instead.
They cost $3 each, or a little more if they’re for ‘professional use’.
No dissolves, spins or other transitions. None.
Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never (ever)
use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds
and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have.
Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They’re emotional, and they
won’t work without you there. If someone wants your slides to show
“the boss,” tell them that the slides go if you go.

The eBook has a lot more in the way of presentation advice. Check it out!

Don’t Weaken Your Brand, Build a Solid Digital Foundation!

2009-07-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

Forrester’s Q1 2009 Global CMO Recession Online Survey, released last week, “…reveals marketing leaders under pressure to deliver results while enduring budget cuts in excess of 20%. To keep their businesses moving forward, marketing leaders are cutting back on traditional tactics and investing in digital channels like Web sites, social media, and email.”

Yep. Sounds about right. Who isn’t trying to squeeze the most out of their digital marketing campaigns? But how many of us are successful? And how can we improve when the digital ground is shifting underneath us? Here are a few no-nonsense tips that we have noticed from our own efforts. The key is building a solid foundation:

Make sure the content on your website is working for you. Are you providing the right information to your prospects? Are you using the right voice? Is both your content and tone consistent with your brand? And are you capturing your prospect’s information? If you answered yes to the above, you have a solid foundation for the rest of your digital marketing. If no, you need a cohesive content strategy. Get strategizing.
It is true…Social Media is best used for networking and link-building. It isn’t for the hard sell or the product demo. Not only will these efforts fall flat, they will do brand damage. Your prospects listen to you differently in the digital world. Use social media to get noticed for the right reasons, and then direct your prospects elsewhere for the sales pitch.
Start measuring the results of your email campaigns, and if you aren’t testing your campaigns…you better start. The process of discovering what works and what doesn’t with your email promotions will dramatically impact how you structure your next offer and how you segment your prospect base. There is no excuse for ignoring your email campaign stats, especially when a few minor adjustments can have a major impact on your bottom line.

As a result of their survey, “Forrester recommends that marketing leaders expand their focus to include enabling technologies that build brands and a true picture of the multichannel customer. This added emphasis will help deliver quick results while protecting long-term brand health.”

You said it, Forrester. Any and all digital marketing campaigns must preserve the brand you’ve worked so hard to build. Do not tear your brand apart with a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of Web 2.0.

Finding Customers the Old Fashioned Way

2009-06-22T09:45:00.001-07:00

Today’s economy is spurring entrepreneurship like never before, with statistics showing hundreds of thousands of new businesses launching each month. Necessity really is the mother of invention. However, with this surge of new businesses, entrepreneurs must find low-cost, high-impact ways to market their services and stay in the game. So, where to begin?

I would recommend starting the old-fashioned way—with a friendly introduction and a brief sales pitch. Why? It works!

Not long ago, I responded to a knock on my front door. I opened it to find a well-dressed, twenty-something professional asking if he could introduce himself. He had just started a financial consulting business in my neighborhood and wanted to know if I was looking for help with financial planning. It was 90 degrees outside and the sun was beating down. And here was this young man, walking the neighborhood in the blistering heat, to put a friendly face to his new business and make real connections in the neighborhood.

We spoke for a few minutes, and I asked for his card. After he left, I decided to give him a call and see how he could specifically help me. Not only did I admire his persistence and courage, but he was very personable. I immediately liked him. And isn’t that one of the key ways we choose who to do business with? We have to like them and trust them. After all, it is important for your prospect to imagine how well you two could work together.

So, if walking the neighborhood to shake hands and deliver your card doesn’t work for your business, try a different way of networking. Don’t rely on social networking sites to make these connections, but use your social networking sites to help strengthen your relationship with prospects and customers.

To make a strong personal connection, you must clearly define who your customers are, find out where they meet, and go to them with a friendly introduction and a relevant story.

It’s Time to Get Integrated… if you’re not already!

2009-05-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

The CMO Council released their Marketing Outlook ’09, a detailed report from 650 companies on their marketing budgets, strategies, and headcounts for the upcoming year. We have reviewed its highlights and found some interesting trends emerging in light of the current economy.

The good news is that marketing budgets are holding firm, and CMOs are not expecting big cuts in headcounts. Further, the report found that in light of the recession, marketing organizations are refocused on supporting sales and “owning the customer experience.” Demand generation is of the highest priority.

That being said, what we found most interesting in the report is the call for more integration between sales and marketing. This concept is near and dear to the small to mid-size company, and seems to have now reached the larger organizations. This is encouraging.

For years now, Go-To-Market Strategies has championed the tight integration of sales and marketing. In fact, we founded our company on that very principle. We know that keeping sales and marketing groups aligned and mapped to a clear sales process ensures an effective and efficient execution of strategy. And that means more sales and more revenue.

How do you know if your sales and marketing groups are integrated enough in your own company? Check out these articles and start mapping out your own integration points:

Remember, the integration of sales and marketing is a necessity for the smaller company who has less budget to work with and must maximize all of their resources all the time. It is also a must-do for larger companies, especially those who need to drive business and sales opportunities during an economic crisis.

We think its time for you to get integrated, too.

Our Favorite Lead Acquisition Sources!

2009-04-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

In the many marketing plans we write or audit for clients, the one thing that is a fairly constant element in lead acquisition is LIST acquisition. Purchasing or renting lists is a mainstay of most marketing programs, particularly those with a direct marketing component.

As we've said before, the list is possibly the single most important element to an effective direct marketing effort (whether it be email, direct mail, or outbound calling). We've tried and tested the following tools to help you build your lead lists:

Demandbase: Gives you access to data from multiple leading data sources; scores each lead on relevancy, data freshness, and response potential; and guarantees the quality of the lead. Plus, a $20 cash credit for first time users will be waiting in your shopping cart courtesy of Go-To-Market Strategies.
Jigsaw: Every contact in Jigsaw is complete with full name, title, postal address, email address (only corporate email addresses are allowed), and telephone number. The way it works is that Jigsaw awards members points for every contact it contributes. Users then can use their points to download contact information they would like to add to their own database. If you don't want to upload contact information for points, you can also simply purchase contacts from the Jigsaw system at $1-$5 per contact, depending on whether you are a free subscriber or pay for the next level of membership.
Netprospex: This tool is similar to Jigsaw, in that it also allows the B2B community to exchange or purchase business contact data. However, it is much easier to upload and download information...and their search tool is stronger. Unlike Jigsaw, which relies on the community to update contact information for accuracy, NetProspex validates the contact quality through a range of technology tools and displays an accuracy rating for each contact. Another great thing going for NetProspex is their customer support...it's amazing!

Try them all and see which works best for you!

Email Marketers: Make Me An Offer I Can’t Refuse

2009-04-15T00:26:00.000-07:00

As marketers continue to strategize their way through this recession, email marketing is getting extra attention. And it should be. Not only is it cost-effective, it also generates real-time data about your audience and prospects that you can’t get anywhere else. Effective email campaigns can nurture prospects, build brand awareness, and boost sales.

A recent survey conducted by eROI, a leading email marketing and interactive agency, indicated that even though marketers are continuing to use email to reach customers, there is a significant group of us who are not tracking the results of our campaigns… say what? Not tracking the results of our campaigns? Really? This is troubling. If we aren’t tracking results, then we have no real-time data.

Without key statistics, we cannot make solid adjustments to the offer in our email campaigns. Without adjustments, there can be no performance improvement. And unless every email campaign we send exceeds our goals, there is always a way to do better.

Further, the survey revealed that 1/8 of email marketers aren’t sure how to track their email campaigns. That’s right. They simply don’t know what to do. There is a treasure trove of prospect and customer data that 1/8 of us are, well, ignoring. We are ignoring the data points that can help us form more targeted campaigns, adjust our offers, and refine our messaging.

Then it should come as no surprise in the recent Forrester Report, “Marketing Best Practices Adoption,” that 37% of marketers rate their use of best practices as poor or below average. Included in the list of “significant deficiencies” is marketing campaign offer management. It is easy to see why.

If we don’t gather the data, or even if we do, many of us still don’t recognize the importance of campaign metrics. If we did, we would drop everything right now to begin evaluating what worked, what didn’t, and what adjustments we need to make to increase conversion for our next campaign.

So marketers, it’s time to make campaign offer management—especially for email marketing—our focus once again. Make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse.

Profile of a Social Media Marketer

2009-03-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

This week we read the latest white paper from Michael Stelzner called “A Social Media Marketing Report – How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow Their Business.” The report provides key insights into how we use social media for marketing, and is based on a survey of 880 participants, found primarily through (what else?) social media sites. What emerged is an interesting portrait of today’s social media marketer.

If you actively participate in social media marketing, we ask you, does this sound familiar?

You are a business-owner, most likely a sole-proprietor.
You are between 30 and 39 years of age.
You average 5+ hours of social media each week.
We can find you on Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook.
You have only been using social media for a few months.
In that amount of time, you believe that social media has increased exposure for your business.
You have already generated quality leads through social media.
By using social media, you have reduced your overall marketing expenses.

Also revealed in the white paper is the correlation between how experienced the social media marketer is with how much time they allocate to its practice. Now this surprised us. According to the survey results, if you have been an active social media marketer for at least a couple of years, you are now spending over 20 hours per week at it. Wow! For this particular group, the results are making the time and energy investment worth it, which, in turn, makes a strong case for the brand-building power of social media.

And so a lively debate has ensued in the blogosphere that finds some marketers choosing sides. While we all tweet, post, blog, and debate the benefits of social media, ask yourself this: are you a marketer who requires immediate, measurable results to justify a commitment to social media, or are you a marketer that believes the time and energy spent will pay off eventually?

Food for thought.

Is SERVICE making a comeback?

2009-03-20T08:19:00.001-07:00

It's no surprise customer service in America has declined substantially over the past decade. We've all experienced it. More and more we have been greeted with automated phone systems, customer reps from another country, indifference to poor customer experience, and so on. For these reasons and others, we have been left with that nagging feeling that the person we're giving our money too, is not really all that appreciative or grateful for the business.

Is that changing?

We think it is. Sales are harder to come by and companies are beginning to understand that brand loyalty and customer retention are important...no, CRITICAL...to their survival. If nothing else, maybe that is one of the good things that can come from these challenging times--a customer service comeback.

We call to all sales, service, and marketing teams everywhere. Use this time to focus on your customer.

Here's some articles we think can help:

Go-To-Market Strategies' recent articles 3 Sales Tips for a Tough Economy and Tracking Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Testimonials!
The Seven Habits Of Successful Customer-Based Firms By Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
60 Customer Service Tips for Entrepreneurs from The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.