How to make
marketing accountable is an age old question that keeps rearing its ugly head in
nearly every organization. And every time sales slide we hear the same old
song: our marketing is not working, we don’t have enough leads, we aren’t
sending the right message, our positioning is off, we are too expensive and the
competition has better marketing “they are everywhere.” My dear old boss at
Hummingbird, Jan Adamek would always say “marketing smarketing let’s just sell
the stuff.” In many ways he was right and in many startups sales and marketing
are connected at the hip, this is not the case in many large organizations
where marketing often sits in the glass house. Last week we discussed Indium’s three Cs of
social media and how MVP executes best practices in integration social media
marketing to drive lead generation and revenue for SAP. This week it’s the old
and the new of marketing.
Age Old and New
Marketing Questions:
·
Is
marketing too important to be left up to the marketing people?
·
Can
everything we do in marketing be measured?
·
If
it can’t be measured then why should we do it?
·
How
do we measure the impact of social media marketing?
Sales Driven Marketing
People Rock
I firmly
believe that marketing is too important to be left up to marketing people. So recruit
and develop marketing people that have carried a bag. There is no substitute
for front line selling experience, and if you find and/or convert sales people
to become marketers they are, and/or will become your best marketers. However, they are a rare breed, find them and
your marketing department shines. For them marketing every day begins with
sales and they think about it from the perspective of a sales person and what a
sales person needs to sell. They will
automatically reach out to sales people and ask them what the current barriers
to sales are? What ammunition (content, influence & qualified leads) can they
put in a sales person’s hands that day and what kind of air cover they can
provide for the sales marines in the field? Marketing and its various
communications functions are in many ways the air force of business war, sales
guys are the marines.
Measuring Marketing
& Communications
Nearly
everything you do in marketing and the various functions of communications efforts
can now be measured. The first step is to take a close look at all marketing
processes and look at how they are integrated to fill your funnel. Marketing in
the sense of the four Ps used to be much harder before the Internet in my view,
but those that have not adapted to the social media change will say it was much
easier. The fact is that it is much more measureable now than ever.
Four Ps
Marketing your product to a place and positioning it with a price was the foundation of early
marketing that has changed radically in the last ten years.
Think about how
difficult it was to get competitive information fifteen years ago, it meant
going to trade conferences, in some cases dumpster diving, and the best case scenario
was always when the customer hated the competitor and told you all about them.
What is Measureable
Today?
·
Traditional Marketing Vehicles:
o
Brochures and collateral created.
o
In person events and trade shows.
o
On premise customer visits.
o
Snail mailings.
o
Executive thought leadership.
o
Third party thought leadership.
o
Sales visits.
·
The Internet & Web 2.0:
o
Search word and engine effectiveness
o
Click through, from partners.
o
Unique visitor’s impressions.
o
Chat streams.
o
Downloads of content, ebooks etc.
o
Global distribution of visitors.
o
Webinar and virtual trade show
attendees.
o
Brand experience and sentiment.
o
Number bloggers on your radar screen.
o
Blog tonality.
o
Social media sites that review your
products and services.
o
Engagement: Facebook, Twitter, eg
blog comments.
Communications
in its various forms is the mouthpiece of marketing and the two organizations
are connected at the hip in most successful companies. This is often the case
in startup companies and SMEs where marketing- sales - senior management are
completely integrated and this provides them with significant competitive advantage
over larger competitors. And they simple can’t afford not to have effective
marketing.
Measuring Brand & Thought
Leadership
In the
social media world it is becoming easier to measure reputation and brand
experience by looking at the tonality of the blogosphere and social media peer
groups involved with your products and services. Marketing is more than branding
and brand management; however, these are two factors that were not easily
measured just ten years ago. Brand is one aspect of marketing that is still very
hard for small business to measure; however, social media can make it easier
when employed. Thought leadership is also more measureable than ever within the
collaborative influence chain that social media enables. Finding your thought
leaders and evaluating the depth of their ecosystem and number of followers has
never been easier.
As Darwin so
aptly said, “it is not the strongest that survive, but those that can adapt to
change.” The smartest marketers today are rapidly adapting to the social media
tsunami and are leveraging it to competitive advantage.
Beachcombing Tidal
Drift Zones
Every day
our oceans fluctuate in a pattern of low tides and high tides in two sequences,
with two lows and two highs every twenty four hours. When the moon and sun are
in alignment with our earth we have our lowest and highest tides because of the
gravitational pull exerted by these objects. Gravity pulls our oceans towards
the equator and they bulge out creating extreme highs and lows in regions north
of the equator. These are called spring tides and when they occur with storms
we see the most damage and erosion on our coasts. During these times we have
the highest and lowest tidal amplitudes and they can be very extreme, examples
being the Sea of Cortez and Bay of Fundy where tidal amplitudes can exceed
fifty feet. I have experience extreme tides in both of these areas and it is
truly an amazing event.
As a young
man I spent a great deal of my time working the tides and learned that on every
beach there are two tide lines. At the top of the beach we always find what is
called the high tide line and at the bottom of the beach or coast is the low
tide line. When beachcombing one should
always walk both tide lines because they will have different animals and shell
and of course my favorite beach glass. Beachcombing is one of my favorite past
times and until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the
millennium.
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