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By: Patrick Groover Posted: April 26, 2016 | Sales Marketing Alignment Have you been approached by your sales team within recent months asking for more leads or, in many cases, higher quality leads? (Where are my Star Trek fans?) As marketers, it’s no longer enough to be building the best communication with sales; it’s vital that we deliver the highest quality prospects to the sales team and reduce the amount of time spent on unqualified inquiries. And this can only be accomplished with the right insights. In this blog, I’ll cover two trends that are driving the demand from the sales team for higher quality leads, and how a strong marketing automation platform can help you provide your sales channel with greater insight into audience behavior: Understanding the Trends The first trend is a tech-savvy sales team. Greater access to information and exposure to technology are developing a new breed of salespeople. Marketing automation platforms and CRMs are no longer a novelty; they are the standard. And with this standard, the sales team is asking for tools that don’t just collect information. They want visibility into their return on investment, and as a result, sales looks to marketing to connect the dots surrounding the buyer journey and provide insights that will help them prioritize and act on the hottest targets for business. The demand for marketing services is no longer focused solely on the outside alone; there is a new consumer of strategic marketing services–the sales team. The second trend is the convergence of technology. Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and other industry leaders have laid the foundation for ubiquitous networks that condition buyers to expect universal access to information. This conditioning starts at young ages, with platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation setting an intrinsic expectation of connected experiences. Add to that the widespread usage of mobile apps, reminding buyers that they can quickly and easily access all kinds of information at the touch of a screen. As a result, marketing has inherited the expectation that insights into buyer behavior should be universally accessible by sales. Similarly, insights should be categorized and prioritized in a way that makes selling to the right audience at the right time as simple as possible. Responding to the Demand for Insights For many marketers, connecting the dots and prioritizing targets can be a daunting task. To start, connecting databases can be an immense challenge if the logic to consolidate and centralize insights around the lead, contact, account, and/or opportunity is missing. Take the standard request to pull together a report around tradeshow results. Many marketing teams can measure aspects of the event, but connecting these results together is oftentimes challenging because legacy marketing systems don’t “talk” to the CRM. The impact is a lot of marketing activity that cannot clearly be linked to revenue. Taking this thought a little further, the marketing systems that manage web activity, campaigns, and content may be disconnected from centralized tracking of customer interactions as well. Pulling together the full history of how a target moved from unknown, to known, to engaged, and then to closed is challenging at best. Addressing the Gaps and Finding your Insights The good news is that growth in ubiquitous platforms has reached the marketing world. Rather than struggling to connect the dots through SQL queries, congested lead routing, and manual scoring, marketing automation platforms are helping marketers define and share insights with sales. Here are three examples of how a solid marketing automation platform can help you answer the call for strategic prioritization of leads: Leading solutions deliver a strong and scalable API. There are a wide variety of systems out there and you need a centralized solution that can handle connecting the many different data points that drive your result. Strengths of a solid platform include (but are not limited to): A wide and open network of partner solutions The ability to connect to multiple types of data sources (e.g. e-commerce, CRM, DMP, etc.) The ability to both consume and act on data inputs Marketing has access to pre-designed and configurable insights that can be shared with sales. As a marketer, you need to be able to identify and highlight behaviors and events that indicate which targets have the highest likelihood to produce revenue. Scoring is important; however, the ability to pass specific events and alerts to your sales team at the optimum buying time is an additional criteria for delivering strategic marketing value. Marketing has access to pre-designed and configurable insights that can be shared with sales. As a marketer, you need to be able to identify and highlight behaviors and events that indicate which targets have the highest likelihood to produce revenue. Scoring is important; however, the ability to pass specific events and alerts to your sales team at the optimum buying time is an additional criteria for delivering strategic marketing value. Connected reporting helps tell the full marketing story which is essential to demonstrating impact. Your ability to show that particular opportunities were the direct result of marketing interactions is one of the primary ways that you can build a successful marketing career. Being able to connect the dots and gauge ROI from specific campaigns based on the full set of marketing interactions along the buyer journey delivers a competitive advantage to savvy marketers. The modern salesperson is used to having any and all types of information at their disposal. As a marketer, your ability to supply these insights with marketing automation can quickly demonstrate the value of your team, campaigns, and investments. Do you see any other trends driving a shift in marketing? Share your insights in the comments below.
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By: Chandar Pattabhiram, Marketo Group-SVP of Marketing “Strategy is all about choice,” says Marketo CMO Sanjay Dholakia. Sanjay, a former McKinsey strategist and a master marketer, was referring back to one of the axiomatic insights developed by Harvard Business School guru Michael Porter, who is absolutely right. The essence of strategy is about choosing what we are going to do, thus making the right choice among a set of alternatives. But the most essential and difficult part of strategy is about answering the reverse question, “What we are not going to do?” Many high-achieving executives and their teams are programmed to attack new markets with innovation and strategies to drive success. However, the same leaders find it hard to choose to stop doing something and actually stick with the decision. Procter and Gamble’s former CEO A.G. Lafley and strategy consultant Roger L. Martin wrote an insightful book called Playing to Win, where they describe how they implemented strategy at P&G using Michael Porter’s foundational principles regarding choice and trade-offs. They define strategy as the need to win. And to win, they say, one needs to make clear choices across five areas: What is our winning aspiration? Where will we play? How will we win? What capabilities must be in place? What management systems are required? I want to offer a slightly different way to think about this. After aligning around a common business vision, I believe that the most important question to ask is, “Where will we not play?” In other words, where are we going to stop investing scarce human capital and innovation capital in order to maximize our focus and chances for success? http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-The-Battle-Your-Mind/dp/0071373586What’s a good framework for saying “no”? Let’s consider the following criteria to answer this question: 1. Saying No by Product Market Fit Before hitting the gas on sales and marketing in any segment, we need make sure to have true product-market fit. Do customers truly yearn for the differentiation our products offer? If they do not, walk away and say no to any further sales requests. When I worked at Cast Iron Systems, our initial struggles to clearly answer this question hurt our ability to scale. Our fundamental product differentiation was speed and simplicity. We offered a plug-and-play appliance that connected business applications within days, not months. We enjoyed some early success with Fortune 500 clients in a number of one-off scenarios. So what did we do? We naturally doubled down and created a plan to go after the Fortune 500 market. However, it turned out we were trying to sell the equivalent of an iPod to buyers looking for large, professional-grade stereo systems to run their concerts. The Fortune 500 did not fundamentally yearn for our product differentiation of speed and simplicity – not when compared to other capabilities that they wanted, such as feature-breadth, large volume performance, enterprise-grade security, etc., that traditional middleware vendors provided. It was only when we said no and walked away from this market to focus on the SaaS market – one that yearned for speed and simplicity – that we achieved success. 2. Saying No by Buyer Type Tony Nemelka, who heads up IBM Software in Japan, always reminds me that there are no markets, there are only buyers. “And one needs to really understand truly who the buyer is and align a set of product capabilities that simplify their lives and solve real problems,” he says. Amen, Tony! The converse of this adage applies to companies that target multiple buyer profiles with the same product offering. For example, a software platform company may decide to offer variations of its product for so-called line of business buyers, such as sales, HR, and services as well as IT buyers. This can get dicey. A few established companies have been reasonably successful with this approach. But it can be disastrous for a growing company with a small product portfolio. Imagine the challenges faced by a generic sales team that has to learn how to speak contextually and demonstrate its solution uniquely to each segment? It typically does not end well. The more proven approach for growing companies would be to align a set of capabilities – home-grown and acquired – and target a single customer. Nortel Networks’ acquisition of call center company Clarify in the late 1990s was a classic failed example of what can go wrong. Nortel bought Clarify for $2 billion; barely a year and a half later, Nortel sold Clarify for 10 cents on the dollar to Amdocs. The problem: Clarify’s buyer was a line-of-business executive and very different from the profile that Nortel’s technology sellers were accustomed to selling to. “Nortel had a sales force that had no ability to sell application software," said Laurie Orlov, then research director at Forrester Research. Contrast that example with IBM, which walked away from the application software market in the early-to-mid-90s; IBM’s software head Steve Mills thought it made more sense for Big Blue to focus on one buyer type – the Fortune 500 CIO – and align a set of product capabilities and services to make the CIO successful. It worked marvelously well, and for over 15 years, IBM’s acquisitions and home-grown innovation adhered to the goal of serving the CIO (interestingly, IBM has aggressively come back to the application software market in the past five years). 3. Saying No by Leadership Position I’ll be Captain Obvious here and state that the goal of any company is to win the battle for the minds of the buyer and establish itself as one of the top brands in its market. This is obvious, but never easy. Legendary marketers Al Ries and Jack Trout write about the Law of Duality in their book, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.” In the long run, they note, consumers associate with two main brands for every product category. Google and Apple for phones. Coca-Cola & Pepsi for soda. Nike & Reebok for shoes. Crest & Colgate for toothpaste. This is not true for all categories, nor does it mean that marketers in the No. 3 brand should stop working. However, the key takeaway is that senior management should always honestly evaluate a company’s current market share in any market and the potential to become No.1 or No. 2. And sometimes, the best decision is to say no to a particular market or segment if they can’t reach this potential over the long run. GE’s former boss, Jack Welch, embodied this approach in the 1980s and 90s with his famous “No. 1 or No. 2” strategy. One of Welch’s primary leadership directives was that GE had to “fix, sell, or close” any business where it was not first or second in the market and did not have the potential growth opportunities to get there. Welch applied this principle to sell off $15 billion worth of GE-owned businesses, ranging from housewares to mining operations. At the same time, GE spent $26 billion to acquire companies which were either market leaders or had the potential to reach the top. 4. Saying No by Company DNA A company’s culture establishes its sense of purpose, core values, and fun. It also establishes its ability to successfully serve a market segment. Broadly speaking, a company’s DNA is primarily either enterprise-centric or consumer-centric. Problems crop up when companies refuse to recognize their dominant gene and attempt to equally participate in both markets. HP struggled with this question for years and couldn’t decide whether it was a consumer-centric or enterprise-centric brand. That led to confusion and cost the company dearly. HP ultimately reorganized into two separate entities – a strategy that significantly improves its chances for future success. By contrast, Cisco more quickly recognized its corporate DNA and sold or shut down its consumer businesses to concentrate on doing what it does best. Choose Carefully So there you have it, four strategic options to consider and evaluate to answer the question, “What should we not do?” Your answers and their follow-through may be more crucial to your business’s success than any other decision you face. Remember that strategy is all about choice. As Jack Welch famously noted, “You pick a general direction and implement it like hell.” And as his storied career made clear, it’s up to leaders to carefully select the corporate initiatives that they want to push through. You can toss the other stuff into the trash basket.
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By: Jim Kowalski Posted: April 20, 2016 | Engagement Marketing My wife recently had an outpatient procedure at one of the best hospitals in the country. Thankfully, everything went well; and our experience at the hospital was first-class. But as I drove us home and struggled to remember most of the instructions we were given post-op, the marketer in me began to think about ways hospitals can use engagement marketing techniques and technologies to better improve the patient discharge experience and drive significant financial benefits at the same time. The Potential According to data from Medicare, at least 20% of patients who are discharged from hospitals or other medical facilities make a repeat visit. The costs of these re-admissions exceed $17 billion per year and are growing. Spurred on by the penalties and other provisions for re-admission in the Affordable Care Act, hospitals, consultants, industry experts, and others are all seeking ways to reduce this number. While not a panacea, one simple solution is better patient engagement and education throughout the process. Industry studies have shown that patients who have a clear understanding of after-care instructions are 30% less likely to re-admit. When you’re talking the health and happiness of patients and billions of dollars in potential savings, any chance at improvement should be seriously considered. And sometimes, the simplest can be the most effective. The Payoff At Marketo, our teams work with healthcare providers from all across the country to create ways to better engage with new and returning patients, nurture them through the entire experience, educate them, and even engage their family caregivers to improve the overall quality of their experience. These customers and those who use marketing automation and engagement technologies see a wide range of financial benefits, including a significant reduction in patient re-admission rates. A good example of this is Kindred Healthcare, a Kentucky-based post-acute care provider. Using marketing automation technology, Kindred has been able to improve engagement with patients and caregivers through targeted, relevant content that answers the major questions healthcare providers are asking. The results in a short period of time are impressive: a 4.1% reduction in re-hospitalization from transition care facilities and a 5.1% reduction in re-hospitalization from nursing and rehabilitation facilities. Other providers I’ve spoken with report another additional benefit. As family caregivers engage in the content and education provided, they are more apt to choose the same hospital for any elective surgeries or procedures they have coming up as well. Hospitals are reporting higher satisfaction rates as patients and family members have more content at their fingertips. So what are the lessons we can glean from healthcare? Well, they aren’t isolated to that industry. In fact, marketers can apply them anywhere: Relevant content and messaging are critical—and so is the ability to deliver them with an understanding of who your individual customer is. Kindred Healthcare started by surveying their audiences to understand what their biggest concerns are and then developed content that addresses them. Build loyalty and advocacy over time because happy customers drive referrals. This is true of any business model—business-to-business or business-to-consumer. Your customers are your prospects, too. In fact, research from Teradata shows that 61% of people would to tell their friends and family about their good experiences and that 27% would sign up for a company’s loyalty program. Engage customers continuously over time—with messages and content relevant to their situation that drives them toward a desired action or outcome. Being mindful of who your audience is and what resonates with them the most will help push them further along in the customer lifecycle. And these steps are all made simpler for the marketer with the right technology. In an industry so complex, it’s refreshing to see that there are still simple solutions that can drive so much value across the entire customer lifecycle, from awareness of a medical facility to post-discharge. Now, if I can just find that piece of paper they gave me, so I know when to give her that medicine…
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By: Jamie Lewis Posted: April 14, 2016 | Marketing Automation Today’s buyers have unlimited choices, access to a wealth of research, and are being bombarded with countless marketing messages each day. So it’s no wonder that many marketers are finding it difficult to break through the noise. In my experience working with clients as a Solution Consultant, I see marketing teams do a lot of guesswork when it comes to their campaigns, hoping that their message will be heard. Instead of building a sound strategy based on a few proven fundamentals, they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. But, that’s avoidable. Let’s take a look at 4 pitfalls you need to avoid to ensure your marketing automation efforts are a resounding success: 1. Not treating your target audience as individuals. From my experience, many marketing teams still operate in batch and blast mode, sending out a one size fits all message. This is problematic because, according to a study by eMarketer, more than 85% of internet users specifically expect and accept personalization as a part of their online retail experience. In fact, CMO Council reports that more than half of senior marketers say that using enriched or personalized content and digital interactions yield higher response and engagement rates. Your customers want you to know them and remember them every time they interact with your brand. So to get started on the right foot, make sure that your messages are targeted at a specific segment of your database based on known preferences. Secondly, always personalize your content so your audience feels like they are having a conversation. One of my customers is realizing a 28% increase in lead generation through their email marketing activities based in large part to personalization and behavior-based triggers. This brings me to my next point. 2. User behavior is not being used to target the audience. This is another case where companies are blasting out unspecialized messages to heterogeneous audiences with limited results. The best way to avoid this pitfall is to trigger your messages based on what an individual person is doing and respond with relevant information. The fact is that a message sent based on customer actions gets more opens, clicks, and conversions because it is contextual. When David Daniels, co-founder of The Relevancy Group, was an analyst at Jupiter Research, he reported that targeting emails based on web click-stream data increased open rates by more than 50% and increased conversion rates by more than 350%. To get started, you should first make sure you are listening to user behavior: pages they are visiting, emails they are opening, and links they are clicking. Secondly, set up a scoring model to help gauge overall interest. With this information, you can set up triggered responses to user behavior and start engaging in meaningful conversation. 3. Marketing efforts are not designed to meet key business objectives. In my opinion, the biggest mistake marketers today make is not tracking key performance indicators back to corporate business objectives. If you continue to collect traditional marketing metrics such as opens and clicks to support your decision-making, you may very well be setting yourself up to be excluded from a seat at the revenue table. While they can be an important measure of progress for a specific marketing activity for the marketer, most of these metrics are meaningless to key stakeholders because they don’t tie directly to revenue. Focusing on driving revenue is the best way to align with your executive leadership and even your revenue teams. To put this in another way, ask yourself, “How are my efforts contributing directly to the company’s bottom line?” This is easier than you think. For example, for your campaigns, you can track metrics such as cost per program success, new names per program, cost per opportunity, pipeline generated, and pipeline to investment. 4. Not being on the channel your buyer is on. People don’t think in terms of what channel they’re going to be on. As Ashley Johnston, SVP, Global Marketing at Experian Marketing Services put it, “Consumers don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to be a mobile consumer today.’ They just use the channel that best fits the moment or task.” Engagement marketing is about more than being on as many channels as possible; it’s also about understanding how your buyers prefer to engage and using those channels to communicate with them. This cross-channel approach is known by some as opti-channel marketing, in which you use the optimum channel your buyer prefers. A great example is that most millennials communicate using mobile, while retirees prefer to use email or direct mail. You have to know your audience and communicate with them where they are. At Marketo, avoiding these pitfalls are some of the fundamentals of effective marketing. The key is to remember who’s ultimately receiving your marketing messages on the other side of that computer, mobile device, or direct mail: individuals. Don’t let these marketing automation fails happen to you. To learn how you can empower your team with marketing automation, check out our ebook How Marketing Automation Can Help Small Teams Succeed. What other pitfalls should marketers be on the lookout for as they’re planning their marketing automation campaigns? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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By: Sanjay Dholakia, Marketo - CMO The traditional marketing funnel may be as dated as bell bottom pants, but that hasn’t held back Charlie Metzger, the chief marketing and communications officer for the Detroit Pistons and its parent company, Palace Sports & Entertainment, from turning in spectacular results. Metzger has deployed marketing technology in the company’s operations to help drive a 90% season-ticket renewal ratehttp://cmo.marketo.com/conversations-and-interviews/what-its-like-to-be-head-marketer-for-the-detroit-pistons/. The secret? Metzger has traded in the funnel for what he calls “the circle.” Read this excerpt from an interview Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS) did with Metzger during the development of our whitepaper, “Designing a Marketing Organization for the Digital Age.” HBR-AS: Are you seeing the traditional sales funnel itself changing? Metzger: I think it changed eight to ten years ago. HBR-AS: What is its equivalent now? Metzger: It’s social, search, sale. You’re building a community, and it’s not a funnel anymore; it’s a circle, and at the beginning of that circle is the fact that we’re looking for advocates. So you’ve got to put yourself in a position where people are recommending your product and talking about you. That is really where it starts. It doesn’t start with you driving awareness. It starts with working on creating advocates for your product or service and, hopefully, they are telling others. HBR-AS: What sort of pressures or opportunities is the marketing organization under and how are you dealing with them at the moment? Metzger: It starts with the ability to have access to data and also to have access to data in real-time. Then you need to be sure that you’ve got the ability to move fast. The pressure is far greater than it used to be because you could be missing opportunities staring you right in the face. HBR-AS: Your situation is probably unique because there is a product on the field. It’s a team and you’re not necessarily able to change these rules. Metzger: Yes and no. Certainly, our product is on the court; it’s the Detroit Pistons and we also have outdoor music that we do. But whether you're at P&G, IBM, or the NBA, all organizations have the ability to use technology and gather intelligence on their customers. Not only what their customers are buying, but what they’re thinking, what they’re saying, and what they’re sharing with other people. You just have much more of a window into what people are thinking and, more importantly, sharing about you with others. HBR-AS: How is that changing the role of marketing?  Metzger: If we’re learning things about our existing customers or future customers, we’ve got to be able to translate that easily and simply to our sales team. If they want to follow up and get smarter, or hopefully make a sale, or influence a sale going into the future, that data and information has to get transferred to them as quickly as possible but also in a user-friendly way. HBR-AS: In terms of the innovation between marketing and sales, how does that relationship work? Metzger: At the end of the day, business hasn’t changed really. We still want to build brands and drive ROI and sell a product or a service and create loyalty.   HBR-AS: How is your marketing organization itself changing?  Metzger: I see marketing groups insourcing more than outsourcing. Marketers always will outsource certain things to partners, but I think you’re going to see skillsets, particularly in content creation, social and digital, probably being insourced a little bit more. You’ll probably see more of that in the future. HBR-AS: That’s because of speed? Metzger: Speed and technology, and also because of the way that people are used to consuming technology. So instead of viewing an offer again, going way back, through television or through a direct mail piece, or even a Sunday paper, people are communicating all the time on their phones. You’ve got to be able to create content that can work there.  It’s democratization of the ability to be able to create some of that yourself now. I think it allows marketers to potentially be able to take that on, whereas historically they might have had to outsource that to an agency. HBR-AS: So you’re saying that by and large agencies aren’t able to move as quickly around all those different media platforms, from television to mobile? Metzger: I spent 12 years in an agency so I see the huge value in agencies.  I just think that agencies will be different, too. Technology is going to change the speed and the pace at which everybody has to move. If you build the community the right way, and you’re building your social network the right way, and they’re searching for products or services or ideas or whatever it is that you’re offering, we believe that will translate and then lead to sales. It’s so much different than the old purchase funnel where it was pending consideration and awareness. We now know that the first place anyone shopping for anything will go is online and look at what others are recommending. You don’t influence them at all the way you used to so now you’ve got to be part of those communities.  
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By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: April 6, 2016 | Modern Marketing Historians of digital marketing will be hard-pressed to find another era when marketers faced so many challenges or so many opportunities to affect dramatic change. Like I always say, marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the last 500 and will change more in the next five than ever before. A report out today from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), sponsored by Marketo, shows just how much our world is shifting. In the past five years, marketers have been grappling with the emergence of new technologies, but the challenge–and perhaps opportunity–is about to go into overdrive over the next five years. Now, we’ll have to grapple with the added complication and explosion of Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and virtual reality technologies–technologies that will dramatically transform how your customers engage with your brand. If you lose their interest, buyers can switch brands or cut the cord with a keystroke. Marketers need to be listening and responding not just in every channel, but in every place and every moment. So what does this mean in practice? The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience Marketo turned to the EIU to help with the answer. EIU surveyed nearly 500 CMOs and senior marketing executives around the world to learn what these experts thought about the technologies and customer trends that are most likely to change marketing over the next five years. The findings describe how marketers are taking advantage of the rapid-fire innovations in digital technology to reshape their brand’s relationship with customers. Here are the top six that I found most interesting: 86% of CMOs and senior marketing executives surveyed believe they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020. More than half of respondents believe the accelerating pace of technological change, mobile lifestyles, and an explosion of potential marketing channels via IoT will change the field the most by 2020. This will be driven by billions of possible interactions between a company and its customers, forcing CMOs to manage staggering amounts of complexity. Marketing leaders *must* have a single view of the customer that allows them to engage in two-way, personalized conversations across technologies, locations, and physical objects at mass scale. It will be impossible for CMOs to build and manage a customer experience without one. New media will continue to trump old media, and the top channels for reaching customers in 2020 will be social media, internet websites, mobile apps, and the mobile web. More traditional publishing-centric channels, like television, radio, and print, rank far lower. Brand equity will depend more than ever before on fostering consistent and personalized experiences that leave customers satisfied. The biggest technology-specific trends that will most impact marketing organizations by 2020 feature small screens or no screens–mobile devices and networks, personalization technologies, and IoT. Smart marketers will need to use these new tools to learn customer buying patterns and the context of where someone is in their decision journey. What’s more, they’ll need to be able to predict what customers are most likely primed to do next and be ready to influence them at the proper moment. So how do these findings directly impact you, the marketer? If we all believed that the advent of social, mobile, and digital changed our world, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Sorting through the data, several emerging trends will occupy the attention of CMOs and, by default–their teams–throughout the remainder of the decade. The explosion of IoT and the ability to connect and interact with customers everywhere–literally everywhere–will fundamentally transform where and how we expect marketing to be in the very near future. This promises that the marketing we used to know is gone. Marketing is now the very essence of a company. Marketing is the brand. Marketing is the customer experience. And in the words of JPMorgan Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau, who was interviewed for the report, “the experience is the marketing and the experience is what drives performance.” I encourage you to take a look at the report and find out for yourself what’s on the horizon. Get ready for what’s next.
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FYI: This article originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review​ When business leaders talk about going digital, many are uncertain about what that means beyond buying the latest IT system. Companies do need assets like computers, servers, networks, and software, but those purchases are just the start. Digital leaders stand out from their competitors in two ways: how they put digital to work, especially in engaging with clients and suppliers, and how intensively their employees use digital tools in every aspect of their daily activities. Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) looked at the state of digitization in sectors across the U.S. economy and found a large and growing gap between sectors, and between companies within those sectors. The most digital companies see outsized growth in productivity and profit margins. But what are the key attributes of a digital leader? And how can companies benchmark themselves against competitors? We looked at 27 indicators that fall into three broad categories: digital assets, digital usage, and digital workers. Our research shows that the latter two categories make the crucial difference. Digital assets across the entire economy doubled over the past 15 years, as firms invested not just in IT but in digitizing their physical assets. Digital usage in the form of transactions, customer and supplier interactions, and internal business processes, grew almost fivefold — and over the entire period, the leading sectors maintained an enormous lead in usage over everyone else. But the biggest differentiator of all comes from having a digitally empowered workforce. Over the past two decades, the leading sectors’ performance on various digital labor metrics — such as the share of tasks involving digital tools and the number of new digital occupations — rose eightfold, while the rest of the economy barely ran in place. It is becoming clear that some parts of the economy are playing in an entirely different league. Our research included a new Industry Digitization Index, the first major attempt to measure digital progress and adoption in each sector. The results show uneven progress: The technology sector comes out on top — no surprise there. Right behind it are media, finance, and professional services, all of which have far more sophisticated digital capabilities than the rest of the economy. On top of these macro-level differences, we see that even lagging sectors may have standout firms that are pushing the frontier forward for everyone else. Let us look at each of our three broad index categories in turn. First, digital assets. To benchmark them, the index measures how much companies invest in hardware, software, data, and IT services (whether through outright purchases or contracting with third parties to fill in gaps). We also look at the extent to which companies are digitizing their physical assets — that is, whether they have smart buildings, connected vehicle fleets, and big data or IoT systems that get maximum performance out of equipment, systems, and supply chains. To some extent, digital assets are a story that has been playing out since the 1960s. Retail and financial firms were among the first movers, while today we see mining and manufacturing firms adopting digital technology in a purposeful way, with mobile-enabled tools and IoT-powered devices. One example is Caterpillar’s new S60 smartphone, which comes with built-in thermal imaging capability and is useful for builders, electricians, and utility workers. The focus has also shifted from making long-term capital investments to flexible usage-based operating systems, which explains the rapid growth in cloud-service offerings launched by the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Our second category, digital usage, measures the extent to which companies engage digitally with customers and suppliers. Companies in the leading sectors make more extensive use of digital payments, digital marketing, and design-led product development. They are more likely to use software to manage their back-office operations and customer relationships. They take advantage of e-commerce platforms — and may even operate their own. Their underlying business processes make use of social technologies to interact with customers and partners. Burberry, for example, has set the bar among retailers by seamlessly integrating social media and immersive experiences into its physical stores. These usage-related innovations are likely to have profound implications on business models and economics across the value chain in the coming years. What really sets the leaders apart, however, is the third category: the degree to which they put digital tools in the hands of their employees to ramp up productivity. To get an accurate picture, we evaluated more than 12,000 detailed task descriptions to identify those associated with digital technologies. We also estimated the share of workers in each sector in technology-related occupations that did not exist 25 years ago and looked at digital spending and assets on a per-worker basis. The gaps are huge: companies in leading sectors have workforces that are 13 times more digitally engaged than the rest of the economy. In lagging sectors, the digital engagement of the workforce can be erratic; some organizations have made progress in certain areas but have not yet addressed foundational tasks their workers perform. Many health care organizations, for instance, use incredibly sophisticated technology in diagnostics and treatment but substantial parts of their workforce use only rudimentary or no technology. Fewer than 20% of payments to health care providers and their suppliers are done digitally, for example. The striking gaps in digital labor at the sector level, revealed by the Industry Digital Index, are playing out every day at the company level as well. Technology still hasn’t penetrated much of the everyday work performed by many Americans, which means that most businesses are missing opportunities for greater efficiency and better customer experience. Many still need to break out of their old habit of housing “digital talent” in a separate department. Companies increasingly need each employee to bring greater digital skills to bear on every activity. That’s the only way to unleash innovation and capture efficiencies at an institutional level. In some cases, new hires may be necessary, but investing in ongoing employee capability building and cultural change could pay real dividends. For executives, the first step is to identify digital priorities, keeping in mind the overall business transformation needed to maintain a competitive advantage. This requires a renewed external focus to understand more deeply how peers in the industry are digitizing, how customer expectations are changing, and which companies from within or outside the industry can best meet those expectations. Once the gaps are identified, management teams can design strategies to deliver near-term financial impact while starting the process of renewing the digital core. Such a renewal is only possible when leaders take a holistic approach to their companies’ digital assets, usage, and labor. Prashant Gandhi is the global chief operating officer of McKinsey Digital. Somesh Khanna is a director at McKinsey and leads McKinsey Digital in financial services. Sree Ramaswamy is a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute.
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By: Marissa Lyman Posted: March 31, 2016 | Content Marketing Did you know that grammatical errors are the number one cause of work-related aggression? Okay, that’s a lie–but if everyone cared as much about grammar as I did, I can guarantee that misplaced commas, subject-verb disagreement, and improper use of “your” would top the HR incident list. A degree in journalism, numerous media internships, and nearly two years editing the homepage for America’s most-watched cable news network inadvertently turned me into what I recently told a colleague was “The Grammar Hammer” (copyright pending). To me, editing is like a treasure hunt, and finding each error brings a degree of satisfaction or–if it’s published– immense and somewhat irrational rage. The fact of the matter is that, at their core, typos in collateral undermine a marketer’s credibility with customers and prospects. If your company doesn’t know the difference between “there,” “their,” and “they’re,” how are you supposed to be trusted with the hard stuff, like–I don’t know–revenue generation? (For the record, “there” refers to a place or the existence of something, “their” is possessive–like, “Have you seen their new nap room? I am filled with envy.” and “they’re” should be used any time you can substitute it with “they are”–like, “They are going to be so well-rested! I hate them!”) Yes, typos happen. But if you follow the steps outlined below, you can significantly reduce the number of errors in your work, leading to fame, fortune, and marketing glory: 1. See If It Passes the Jargon Test You basically invented marketing–that’s how good you are. In fact, there is no industry term, TLA (three-letter acronym), or obscure marketing reference that you’re not familiar with. Well done, you! Yet not everyone is an expert like you are, so pumping copy full of jargon runs the risk of alienating those in your target audience who aren’t as technologically savvy as you are. You want to sound smart, not pretentious. Your external communications should be engaging and informative, and a major part of this is using appealing vocabulary. There is a time and a place for all of these “inside baseball” terms–like an in-depth how-to guide. But err on the side of general terms that are easy to read through, especially if it’s on an initial call-to-action. When in doubt, have someone in a different department or job function take a gander at your work. If it leaves them scratching their heads, it’s worth an edit. 2. Let It Sit You just wrote the copy for what, in your opinion, is the world’s most beautiful nurture campaign, and you’re getting ready to set it up for deployment. Your quest to finesse your language means that you’ve been staring at the same two paragraphs for the better part of the last two hours. What should you do? Save the copy and walk away. Do it. Tear yourself away. I know you’ve been itching to get this off your plate, but there’s a high probability that if you set it up for distribution now, you’re going to discover once it sends that it’s riddled with errors. The more familiar you are with text, the less likely your brain will pick up on any subtle inconsistencies. That’s why it’s important to give yourself a break, let your brain focus on something else (maybe this is a good time for a walk or a nap), and come back to the text with fresh eyes. You’ll be shocked by what you catch the second time around. 3. Print, Read Out Loud, Repeat You’ve just awoken from your nap–now what? Reread your work on your computer? You could, but–environmentalists, cover your ears!–I recommend printing out what you’re working on. Whether you’re reviewing plain text or the layout of a new ebook, without all that blue light hitting your eyeballs, you’ll be able to focus better. Errors will jump out of the page as obviously as that whale at the end of “Free Willy.” And once you’ve printed your work (or even if you haven’t–shame on you!), read it out loud. Hearing the words instead of reading them will give your brain a different perspective and help it to catch additional errors. These can range from typos and misspellings to sentence constructions that just don’t sound right. Try it the next time you write an email–this is the type of exercise that helps you walk that fine line between “The webinar is public” and “The webinar is …” You get it. 4. Ask the Experts I’ve lauded the power of Google in previous posts, but it’s worth a mention here too. Google is a wonderful source for your grammar needs and can also help to end any editing debates you might be having. It may take some digging, but you’ll usually walk away with knowing what the most common and widely accepted approach is for spelling or punctuation. Just make sure you’re getting your insight from a reputable site and one that is reflective of the grammar in your geographic region. And think about your internal experts as well, often on your Communications or Content team. Does your company prefer the Oxford comma? What solution names are capitalized? Smart marketing departments will implement a set of brand style guides for everyone to adhere to. WHAT. You don’t have one? Congratulations, you’ve just identified an important, proactive opportunity to make your mark. It’s like I always say, quality control is everyone’s problem. 5. Practice Makes Perfect I have literally spent days of my life editing things. DAYS. Do I wish I had been spending this time on a beach somewhere? Maybe. Would my written words benefit from a rich mahogany glow? Absolutely not. The tips above will help and should become standard practice whenever you’re developing external content. However, the only way you’re really going to step up your error-free game is through practice. How do you do that? Edit everything you can get your hands on. Your stuff, your coworkers’ stuff, your competitors’ stuff–everything. You can even search for practice tests as a fun and informative alternative to Sudoku or Candy Crush. There is no limit to how much practice you can do. Now go forth and conquer typos, you smart marketer, you. Are you a spelling and grammar connoisseur? Share your tips for writing spotless marketing copy in the comments below!
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Author: Matt Zilli The marketing organization has been in a renaissance, moving from a model where every type of marketing is handled in a silo toward a more holistic model that’s structured around the customer lifecycle. It’s about time. Traditionally, customers have come to us with marketing departments organized in every which way. In the long run, the model that’s proves itself time after time is a marketing department structured around the customer experience, one that makes sure that customers get consistent and progressive messaging from their first touch all the way through their entire journey—no matter where that journey takes them. In other words, marketing organizations have to be nimble enough to allow for a panoply of customer experiences—sort of like those “make your own ending” storybooks where every choice reveals a new plotline, which is essentially what each buyer experiences with your brand. Making this a reality involves ensuring that you have the right strategy in place and dollars to back it up. Point-to-Point Engagement? Or One Hub to Rule Them All? The hub-and-spoke system used by many airlines today was one of the greatest innovations in the airline industry. However, when airlines like Southwest successfully implemented point-to-point systems at lower costs, it put pressure on hub-and-spoke airlines to adapt. A similar story is unfolding in how marketing organizations handle the rapid explosion of marketing channels. If you’re in marketing, you know how overwhelming the sheer number of channel choices can be these days. The pressure to have an effective, dynamic presence on every single digital platform can be crippling to busy marketers who can barely keep up with just social media posts. And let’s not get started on the responsive, personalized website you need to have if you want to appeal to your audience. According to Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2C Content Marketing: 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report, of the 12 tactics consumer marketers consider most effective, a healthy nine of them are digital marketing approaches: email newsletters, social media, mobile apps, videos, online presentations, microsites, website articles, webinars and webcasts, and blogs—with the rest being in-person events and creatives (photos/illustrations and infographics). And their B2B report echoes similar results, with the most effective digital marketing tactics being webinars/webcasts, email newsletters, blogs, videos, and online presentations. Their other tactics, aside from in-person events, involve different forms of content that can be hosted online: case studies, whitepapers, research reports, and infographic. Unfortunately, a lot of traditional organizations are stuck in hub-and-spoke mode, with email marketing, social media marketing and mobile marketing arms simply tacked onto their traditional core marketing department—which is often most adept at legacy mass marketing that’s becoming ever less relevant. Some organizations with this old-school approach refuse to see the marketing experience through the modern customer’s eyes. What Exactly Is Your Customer Looking For? Customers don’t think of themselves as “email customers” or “Facebook customers” or “mobile customers.” They expect and deserve open access to the same information on any platform, a unified, omni-channel experience that unfolds organically wherever they are. If they see a post on Facebook about a great deal on a product, but didn’t have time to click “buy” before they walked out the door, they want to be able to go right to your website from their smartphone while they’re standing in line at the post office and get the same deal without having to go back and scroll through their Facebook timeline (in fact, this happened to me recently). But when marketing organizations are siloed, the customer experience becomes disjointed. The social media department can’t always coordinate with the website department to ensure that your customer sees the same information on every channel. Customers are apt to receive duplicate or even conflicting messages, and once they’re stuck in the quagmire of your duplicate marketing messages, they quickly lose faith. To give your entire team insight into the whole customer experience, you need a marketing organization devoted to that experience—and you need the tools to support it. Both your internal organization and your technology must allow you to read/listen and respond to customer behavior in the moment. Why You Need to Spend Even More on Digital Marketing Of course, to reorganize your marketing team, you need the budget. Less dollars are going into traditional offline marketing channels, and are instead going into digital marketing. And unless your company has been hiding under a rock for most of the last decade, you’ve probably already increased your digital marketing budget pretty substantially to accommodate the need for a website, social media presence, and email marketing campaigns (at the very least). In fact, Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2015-2016: Digital Marketing Comes of Age, published November 2015, reports that digital marketing budgets increased 10% from 2014 to 2015, and this amount will continue to increase this year, primarily going to social marketing, digital commerce, marketing analytics, customer experience, and advertising operations. These days, digital marketing is marketing. In fact, 98% of marketers acknowledge that the online and offline channels are merging and a third of marketers already have their digital techniques fully incorporated into their marketing operations, according to Gartner. And here’s why: Your customers are online, so that’s the natural place to talk to them. Pew Research Center reports that 84% of American adults use the internet, with adoption increasing over the years across all age groups, and a fifth of Americans go online almost constantly. Digital marketing is faster than offline channels. In a world where buyers demand immediate, relevant information, it’s infinitely easier to fulfill those demands via digital channels because we can listen to the requests and automatically respond. Even the best direct mail piece still takes a few days to arrive. Besides putting money where it counts, spending on digital marketing makes for better tracking of marketing ROI. Finally, marketers can justify where, how, and why they are spending their money. The bottom line? Even companies that don’t think of themselves as “digital businesses” are taking their marketing efforts online. You have to meet your customers where they are. Digital is no longer a marketing niche—in fact, the phrase “digital marketing” will soon be considered redundant. We’ll all just say “marketing,” and that will be that. If your organization hasn’t gone digital, you can lobby for change and be the marketing hero. Begin your campaign for change by defining what customer engagement means to you. Is it all about customer retention? Repeat purchases? Social advocacy? Perhaps it’s all, which for many it should be. Next, hone in on a set of customers you can identify as a prime engagement target and then engage them with that content, while measuring how their response is impacting your goal. Just think—it will be dawn of a new day for your marketing organization.
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By: Heidi Bullock Posted: March 24, 2016 | Modern Marketing Earlier this week, the big marketing technology (MarTech) conference swept through San Francisco, giving marketers and technologists a sense of new and upcoming solutions, and what technologies are truly standing the test of time. Every year when this time rolls around, I personally really look forward to Scott Brinker’s updated Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic. And every year, as I look at the graphic and sift through the landscape, I go through a series of emotions (and this year was no exception, with the number of MarTech solutions now reaching 3,874): Excitement: Wow, this is a beautiful visualization of tech geek nirvana. I love it! Look at all of these new companies with interesting new offerings. And Scott has done a great job of categorizing the thousands of companies in a very elegant and organized way. Pride: MarTech is real. Marketing has come a long way and I’m so proud that this area of business is getting the investment and attention it deserves. Several years ago, this would have looked like a few green peas on a big white plate, but today, it’s a satisfying meal–complete with mints when you are done eating. Panic: Dear God, do I really need to know about all of these companies? Am I an incompetent marketer if I am not using all of the “latest and greatest”? How is my budget going to support another tool–and who on my team is going to run this thing? These concerns are real. It’s hard enough to come into the office every day and work on your day-to-day tasks, but more and more, marketers are challenged with being a technical landscape aficionado on top of it–and this is coming from someone who loves it! Calm, Cool and Collected: Okay, stay cool. I have got this and I need to chill out. It’s easy to get stuck in any one stage of the emotional journey, it’s critical to keep moving forward. While an entire book could be written on how to make sense of all of the MarTech solutions, let’s keep things simple for the purpose of this blog. Follow these three steps to navigate the ever-evolving MarTech landscape: 1. Build a Solid Foundation It’s critical to have a few core solutions that represent the foundation of your ‘house’. A good way to think about this is to understand what will be your source of truth or system of record for your key functions. For many companies, this is often your marketing automation systems, customer database/CRM and content management system (CMS) . This is an obvious point, but make sure you put energy and thought into this blueprint. The tools you put in place here are critical to getting set up correctly. For example, understand your data flow, rules, and data hygiene processes. Understand APIs and what is truly out-of-the box versus needing to bring in a team to complete your integration. It’s also helpful to connect with other companies similar to your own to see what they have done right and wrong–essentially, learn from their successes and mistakes. 2. Understand Where You Are and Where You’re Going You need to know what the current state of your business is and where you plan to go. The majority of businesses are trying to grow–so make sure you consider this as you evaluate new solutions. It’s critical to think about tools that will grow with you, so you don’t have to rip-and-replace every other year. Some solutions are excellent for a small businesses, but then reach real limitations quickly. Another important lens is understanding needs versus wants. What is mission-critical for your business? If customer marketing and referrals are important, you may need software to drive advocacy. Or, if this is in your future, build your stack knowing this could be an addition for next year. 3. Avoid a ‘Frankenstack’ Some of you might have seen what’s commonly referred to as a “Frankenstack”, a set of individual siloed tools that an organization tries to get to work together and ultimately results in a hot mess. It can happen to the best marketers, and it often happens because of rapid growth and a lack of planning or impulsive decisions (“Hey we can use it here!”). It is painful for IT, and it is painful for marketers. When this occurs, it is often more time consuming and expensive to fix. The key here is to have a plan, involve IT, and be honest about the resources you need to maintain and manage the solutions. This thoughtfulness will save a lot of grief in the future. The ever-evolving sea of MarTech solutions can be overwhelming, but with the right plan in place, you can understand how to evaluate new solutions and avoid being swept away by “shiny new objects”. Have you checked out the new Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic? What other tips do you have for evaluating these solutions for the best fit for your business?
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During the development of our whitepaper “Designing a Marketing Organization for the Digital Age,” published by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS), Eduardo Conrado, executive vice president, Strategy & Innovation Officer (and former chief marketing officer), Motorola Solutions, was interviewed. He spoke about how marketing and sales work together at Motorola Solutions to create meaningful customer experiences. Below is an excerpt from his interview. HBR-AS: What are the pressures you see falling on the marketing organization and how is it responding? Conrado: Marketing has to assume the role of engaging with customers and employees. At the same time, as you drive communications channels outside and inside of the company, they tend to be more digital in nature. So by default, marketing has a duality of the traditional communications engagement role along with a technology role. HBR-AS: So how is that affecting the structure of the marketing organization? Conrado: In some companies you see marketing and IT combined, as we did at Motorola Solutions. In other cases, you see marketing and IT working together. If there is a lack of leadership or knowledge-sharing between the CIO and CMO (in terms of CIOs being more customer-facing and CMOs being digitally savvy), and if you see the Chief Digital Officer role being created, it means the CMO or CIO is not stepping up to his/her role. HBR-AS: Can you tell me the story about how you assumed both the IT and marketing roles and how that came to pass? Conrado: When I was CMO, we had digital marketing teams, but the digital implementations ran through an IT development team. It made more sense if we had thoseteams tightly linked. So during conversations with the CIO, we decided to combine the teams into one, reporting into my organization. The strategy and the actual implementation go hand-in-hand. In order to make the IT department more customer-facing, it would need to go through marketing or sales. I already had a passion for and knowledge of the IT component, so I picked it up. HBR-AS: What was the customer experience before you made this combination and what is it like now? Conrado: We’re in the process of building it out. I will tell you that investments are being made based upon functional priorities. Before the teams were combined, we had websites for each of the customer transaction types. Now we have a more holistic view of the customer as the information flows across the organization. That allows us to break down what the customer is trying to accomplish by customer type. Then we can identify and repair any broken systems within the company to improve their experience. HBR-AS: Is it a single experience because it’s all online in one website? Conrado: What we’re building is a way to define what the customer is trying to accomplish and how to make it easier to do it digitally. Going back to your earlier question, the CMO role is evolving from being marketing communications to actually heading up technology-enabled customer interactions. The role of the CMO should morph, depending on the company. It could morph into impacting the way that technology gets deployed. It could morph into playing that role in terms of how the company shifts and defines user experience beyond just website design, reflecting a holistic view of design thinking. HBR-AS: More of the selling process is done online through content, which is more of a marketing role than a sales role. How is that changing things? Conrado: It really didn’t change that much. I think we got the teams to work a little bit closer together. As you bring in conversations that take place between sales, marketing, and IT around the customer, then those pieces have to work closer together by default. HBR-AS: So they’re just working closer together or how does it reflect that more of the customer journey is managed by marketing? Conrado: No, marketing is just one part of it. Sales also has a big role to play. It doesn’t change the relationship between marketing and sales in terms of what the teams do, rather it broadens the conversations that marketing and sales can have together. HBR-AS: There is a lot of discussion around the traditional marketing role of creativity versus one now which is much more focused on predictive analytics. How do you see that skillset changing going forward? Conrado: If you go back three decades, marketing was actually advertising, and creativity plays a big part in that. I still think there is a big creative element in terms of what marketing does to get the right message out. But now, with the complexity of the roles and the fact that you’re also adding technology to it, you’re adding data, and you’re adding insights based on that data, which is what analytics provides. So the role of the CMO itself has become much more complex, along with the skills and the types of teams they oversee. When you look at the marketing department, you might still have a brand team and an advertising team, but then you also have a digital team as well as an insights team that has analytics within it. In the future, CMOs are going to have to be comfortable with technology and with the use of data for insight. HBR-AS: So how is the marketing organization currently measured and how do you think that is going to change in the future? Conrado: I think that companies measure customer engagement based on revenue growth. It is part of the sales organization, but ultimately, what are the programs marketing is putting in place to support that? There are some programs that you can attribute direct revenue to, but there are a lot of them where that’s not the case. If the marketing and sales teams work together with common goals, they will produce revenue growth.
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By: Kristen Kaighn Posted: March 21, 2016 | Lifecycle Marketing I have a confession. I have placed 118 Amazon Prime orders in the last 6 months. Now, judging by the amount of cardboard in my garage alone, I should have known I might have a “problem.” Everything I’ve purchased were things that I could easily buy across the street, from protein shakes to batteries, cheddar bunnies to hangers, and, of course, all the things I’ll need for my new baby that’s coming in a few weeks. But my “problem” is really the product of Amazon’s secret sauce and why they’ve been able to retain me (an admittedly extremely fickle shopper) as a loyal customer. What goes into this “secret sauce” of customer retention? Is there a recipe for taking a business model and product from good, to one that customers can’t live without? As marketers, we know that we have to keep delivering value in the form of content, entertainment, education, and services well after the initial transaction in order to keep customers engaged and our brand top-of-mind. But customer retention goes past simply staying top-of-mind. It’s about understanding your customers deeply and ensuring that no matter where they are in their purchase cycle, you’ve got their back. This is what great companies have in common: a customer culture where everyone feels ownership of the customer experience—essentially living by the quote “customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.” Today’s buyers are more likely to switch (brands, vendors, providers) than ever before, regardless of whether they’re a millennial or boomer. However, taking these steps towards building a customer culture in your company can make a big impact on your customer retention and grow your loyalty base: Step 1: Develop a Process Do you have a process for dealing with the positive and negative responses you receive from customers? Step one to building a customer-centric culture is to get your house in order because if it’s messy, everyone on the Twitterverse will hear about it. Okay, so maybe it’s not necessarily Twitter, but today’s customers are not shy about sharingboth their positive and negative experiences with a brand. Your plan will be unique to your business, your product or service, and your support structure, but it’s critical that everyone in your organization fundamentally understands your policy and process for handling customer feedback. As you develop your customer response plan, keep these things in mind: Take the time to listen to your audience. Address their issue with respect and timeliness, but appropriate humor also goes a long way (you are talking to a person after all). Don’t shy away from responding where they are, especially in the social arena. Step 2: Frame Every Interaction as an Opportunity Seize every interaction with your customers as an opportunity to make them happy. The top three reasons why customers switch brands are cheaper pricing, rude staff, and too many mistakes. This means that every touchpoint with your customer is important, especially when you consider the impact that retaining that customer can have on your business. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of your customers.With this in mind, here are three things to remember as you work to create excellent customer interactions: Offer promotions and discounts for your most loyal customers to keep happy customers, well, happy. Build your customer culture and teams with people who share the same values. Fanatical care for the customer can be built into your culture, so think about the different ways you can build it into yours. In some cases, this means that everyone spends time working customer support as part of their training, while in others, customers are the heart of every story the brand tells. Understanding your customers before they tell you something went wrong is critical. Having a centralized view of customers and coordinating their experiences allows you to avoid spamming them and lets you speak to them personally, with relevant messages. Step 3: Nail Your Customer Service As the face of your company, your customer-facing teams are the front line in sometimes tense situations. Their response can make or break you in the eyes of your customer.Arming your service team with the right tools to resolve issues can make a huge impact on your customer retention: Create a channel for service teams to relay customer feedback. Obviously, poor product design or experience will create some unhappy customers, but having a feedback loop from your customer teams to the appropriate contact internally will allow you to actively address and log these issues. Develop an arsenal of resolution tactics. A representative that can’t solve a problem can just make a bad situation worse, so make sure that your service teams have a robust arsenal of resolution tactics. Be prompt. No one likes hold music, so don’t torture your customers with lengthy wait times. Your customers are people and most people don’t love wasting their time on hold, so make their service experience as seamless as possible. Want to learn more about how to bottle your own secret customer retention sauce? Check out our slide deck,Customers Are Your Prospects, Too to discover how retention, loyalty, and advocacy drive revenue and should be every marketer’s biggest focus.
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By: Linda Russheim  (Founder and Director of HT Financial Marketing and Monica Ralli (CMO of The Hay Group) In professional services, creating and sustaining long-term relationships with clients is ultimately a business’ most critical challenge. With multiple mediums and devices competing for your audience’s attention daily, the new era of marketing is all about an integrated conversation with a client. Organizations must truly understand their audience, which means allowing clients the opportunity to engage and interact with a company. In this way, their preferred behavior can surface and a deeper understanding is gained by both client (in relation to the offerings) and the business (in relation to client behavior). This integrated conversation provides the business with a line of sight from prospect to profit. This is valuable in itself, but becomes even more powerful as a way for marketing departments to demonstrate their impact beyond lead generation to sales, revenue growth and ROI. From an internal perspective, it is imperative that the marketing, sales, IT, and finance departments are fully aligned. Marketing automation is the catalyst for this, allowing for better understanding of prospect and client lifecycles. With this understanding, businesses can develop the appropriate ‘trigger’ for when action should be taken and by whom. Marketing can nurture customers through the sales funnel more efficiently and in a personalized manner, leading to increased lead generation – thus providing sales with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). In turn, sales can then focus their time on their best prospects to close deals, resulting in increased conversion and a significantly reduced cost of sales. From a financial point of view, this is an attractive proposition. Recently, one of our clients – a global professional services company that invested in marketing automation as part of their digital transformation – moved to an inbound marketing model. The company overall had to be persuaded that what was happening in marketing would have a deeper impact on its overall business. In order to prove this, the marketing department was going to be held to a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) to justify the investment in marketing technology and automation. In this model, targeted, compelling content was created and shared with clients and prospects to foster an ongoing conversation. This ongoing conversation provided an opportunity for clients to engage in multiple ways, leading to a greater exchange of client information that provided the company with a better understanding of who they were trying to reach. Content creation and distribution are critical differentiators in professional services and help lead to long-term client relationships. The company underwent both a mindset shift and operational shift in marketing in order to learn how to develop campaigns that would resonate with specific audiences. In this way, they were able to create integrated conversations – a focus and approach that previously was not in place. Over a period of time it became clear that lead generation could offer the company some clear benefits: A more relevant and focused conversation around specific campaigns that led to consistent brand recognition in high-growth audiences. A clear view of the client behavior through all stages of engagement and value to the company from prospect through to MQL, sale, revenue, and ultimately profitability. Reduced cost-of-sales by engaging the salesforce on MQLs that had a greater probability of converting to sales. This more valuable conversation with clients and subsequent measurable results also elevated the marketing discussion in the boardroom gaining support from both the finance and IT functions. Discussions were centered around the client in a way that allowed relevant behavior to correlate directly to numbers. This process wasn’t seamless. Data clean up shouldn’t be underestimated nor should be explaining the concept of a ‘digital heartbeat’ to those outside marketing! There were challenges around moving to a data-driven client base, focusing on conversations with clients who had and were engaging with the company. And surprisingly the change in mindset for marketing to align around a singular engagement strategy and not multiple activities required an extensive re-education process. Although the company is still on the journey to complete the full marketing automation integration, its first pilot campaigns are showing very promising results. Specifically, there are improvements around client engagement and positive internal alignment between the marketing department and sales and finance. For the first time, all are aligned around the same objective. Many professional services firms and financial companies, have yet to appreciate that prospects and clients need time to engage and seek an integrated dialogue with the company. If tracked, their journey from prospect to loyal repeat-business client can yield multiple opportunities for the company in providing an exceptional client experience as well as strengthening the company internally with a common focus across a single issue – clients.
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By: Jignesh Shahfrom Grazitti Posted: March 14, 2016 | Lifecycle Marketing Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful channels for bringing new customers to your business. In fact, according to Edelman Trust Barometer, 84% of B2B businesses initiate the buying process with a referral. And data from Marketo Institute shows that the referral is the best acquisition channel for conversion rates at almost 4x the average. So, it should come as no surprise that many B2B marketers are following in the footsteps of companies like Uber who have successfully grown their businesses using referral programs. While companies from any industry can harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing, these types of programs pose unique challenges for B2B businesses. Due to the complex sales processes and expensive nature of some B2B products, you need to put time and careful consideration into developing your referral program’s strategy, structure and internal processes. Below are seven questions that you should ask yourself, your marketing team, and key players on your sales team as you develop a B2B referral program in order to anticipate issues and avoid pitfalls: 1. Is your product referral worthy? Customers will only refer your product if they have had an extremely positive experience with both your product and your company. Referral marketing is best suited for products with strong customer benefits and successful support. Before you consider developing a formal referral program, you need to assess the customer satisfaction levels for your product. Are your customers enthusiastic about your product enough to recommend it to others? To determine this, you may want to conduct a Net Promoter Score (NPS) study. NPS measures your customers’ willingness to recommend your product to other buyers. If a NPS study is not feasible, assess your customer retention and subscription renewal rates. 2. Which customers should you target? The most effective way to get your referral program off the ground is by targeting your best customers. Here are there things to look for when identifying these key participants: Payment: Start with targeting customers who are willing to pay for the product typically believe in its value. Avoid targeting customers that have just started on free or trial plans as they may not have experienced the full product benefits. For these customers, you need to first focus on making them successful before asking for referrals from them. Activity: Target customers who actively use your product as they can best communicate its value to others. Achieved ROI: Customers who have used your product to achieve measurable results can illustrate the product’s value better than those who have just started using it. 3. How will you promote the program? Now that you have defined your referral program’s target audience, you need to decide how you will ask them to join. For the most part, it’s better to start with a small, targeted push by sending invitations to those who are most likely to become referrers. You can do this through a targeted email campaign or by asking sales to send personal invitations.Once your program starts to take off, you can then begin to promote referrals more extensively through your website, blogs, newsletters, social media, and direct mail. You can also extend the referral program to your partners if you have an active channel program. 4. How will you qualify referred leads? Qualifying referred leads is a more complicated process for B2B companies. You need to confirm that your sales team hasn’t already identified the referral as a prospect. Depending on your sales process, this can be automated partially or completely using a marketing automation system and CRM.You also need to verify that the referred business has the budget, authority, and timeline to make a purchase. You can ask for this information upfront as part of lead capture process or your sales team may prefer to ascertain this information by speaking directly to the referred lead. This is where sales and marketing alignment is vital to define and agree upon how you will qualify and accept referred leads. 5. How will you hand-off referred leads to sales? One of the biggest pitfalls businesses encounter with B2B referral programs is that qualified, purchase-ready referred leads may get lost in the process. Not only is this a lost sales opportunity, but it may discourage customers from making referrals in the future. If you want your program to be successful, it’s essential that you work with sales to establish a system for tagging referred leads and directing their information to the right person who will follow up promptly.You may want to create separate CRM views or marketing alerts to make sure that the sales team follows up on referred leads quickly. Consider creating a written service-level agreement (SLA) with sales to establish how and when sales representatives will follow up with leads. 6. How will you motivate customers to make referrals? Even if customers love your product, they’ll still need a little motivation to introduce your brand to others. This is especially true given the cost of most B2B products and services. As a result, many B2B referral programs use rewards to motivate and thank the referrers.Here are some factors to consider when choosing an incentive structure: Reward Type: What type of reward will resonate best with your customers? Product discounts, free training, conference passes, and gift cards with tangible value are a few options. Choose the appropriate reward type (or types, if you are going to let customers choose) based on your customer demographics. Reward Size: How big does the reward have to be to matter to your customers? In general, senior-level buyers require larger reward sizes. What will your budget permit? Mile-Post: Will you provide rewards only when the lead makes a purchase? Given a typical B2B sales cycle, this can sometimes take weeks or months, so consider whether it make sense to provide a smaller reward as soon as the lead is qualified. Single or Double-Sided: Will you reward only the referrer? Or is there something you offer the lead as well so that they too benefit from coming in as a referral? 7. How will you automate your referral program? With all of the moving parts involved in a B2B referral program, it will save you time, money, and resources if you find ways to automate some of the tracking and administrating aspects of your program.Consider the following questions in order to help define how your marketing automation platform and CRM can support your referral program: How will you capture referred leads and referrers? Can you automatically qualify leads before handing them off to sales? How will you know when a purchase has been completed so that you can thank the referrer? Can you automate reward delivery? Make Your Referral Program a Pillar of Business Growth Word-of-mouth marketing is a worthy investment for any company with useful products and a significant customer base. Even though B2B referral programs can pose unique challenges, your business can build a successful program by identifying and anticipating these challenges from the start. Work with your sales team to identify your best customers and develop a referral lead-to-revenue process. Then, map out the incentive structure, the promotion strategy, and any automation needs. Now that you know what questions to ask yourself when developing the program, you can be on your way to making your referral program a marketing pillar of growth. If you have run a referral program before, do you have any considerations or tips to add? Please share them in the comments section below. This blog was co-authored by Rachit Puri at Grazitti.
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By Sanjay Dholakia I’m often asked which industries are experiencing the most growth within their marketing departments, or even which sectors are most open to adopting marketing technology. Surprisingly, in the last few years, the world of sports and entertainment marketing has emerged as an industry of rapid adoption, with franchises looking for new and inventive ways to connect with their fans. This is an important shift: Promoting sports has long been a quintessential traditional marketing exercise, with glossy magazine spreads and television advertisements winning the day. It’s such an emotive world. While fan enthusiasm might wax and wane with a team’s win-loss record, the understanding is that well-established teams like the Detroit Pistons orPortland Trail Blazers — both Marketo customers — will always have support. You could forgive them for just doing the same marketing things they have always done. But instead, what we’ve seen is that franchises across nearly every sport — NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL, even cricket and rugby teams abroad — are flocking to tools that will help them deepen their interactions with fans. We’re seeing them embrace a greater marketing shift and rotate toward digital engagement in nearly every way possible. They are doing this in an effort to drive fan loyalty, ticket sales and repeat engagement in an increasingly noisy world for consumers. My point is, if the sports world is rotating so dramatically toward digital, what greater imperative is there for marketers in other industries to rethink their marketing approach and embrace the new, more effective way of engaging with prospects, customers, and even employees? For the next few days, I’ll find myself in Austin, Texas, for SXSW Interactive, where I’ll besitting down with executives from the Pistons, Trail Blazers and sports and analytics agencyE15 to discuss the latest ways the sports world is leading the pack in terms of innovation. Of course, we’ll also detail what other industries can take away from this. If you won’t be joining me in the great state of Texas, here is a preview of some high-level insights that can be valuable for every marketer. There are fans, and then there are FANATICS We live in an age where consumers have transformed how they interact with brands and, therefore, how brands must interact with consumers. Marketing is no longer a one-way stream of messages; it’s a two-way conversation in which what the customer has to say carries even more credibility than the brand itself. Your brand is what the customers — or fans — say it is. With this huge emphasis on trust and the value of referrals, marketers must drive engagement and advocacy — something that is de rigueur in sports marketing today. The sports world should be considered the ideal model for brand loyalty. All sports teams have fans, and fans will always attend games and support their teams, right? Wrong. Even sports have had to respond and innovate in order to capture fan attention. There are just too many ways to spend time in today’s world, not to mention the fact that technology and television have made the stay-at-home-watching experience more enjoyable than ever before. For franchises, the challenge is how to convert casual fans who might attend one game into people who are repeat ticket buyers and who invest even more in other ways, be it through merchandise sales or attending additional events at a venue. Imagine if you could take this expanded approach and apply it to your industry! Sports marketing is multi-faceted Sports marketers teach us that there is much more to a brand-customer relationship than a single point of purchase; it’s about a greater customer relationship with multiple touch points across multiple channels. With all of these variables, it’s important to be able to engage with people in all the ways and places that they would like to interact with your brand. This maximizes the value of the relationship both for your business and the customer. For franchises, this involves curating a fan’s first interaction with a team — be that buying a piece of merchandise in-store or online or attending a game — and then understanding how this relationship can be maintained and developed over time. There’s a huge listening component there: If Bob consistently buys tickets every time the team plays a specific competitor, the franchise should know to market accordingly and include complementary offerings. This could be better seats, specific gear, in-stadium food deals or suggestions of other ticket packages that Bob also might find interesting. This connection to both in- and out-of-stadium is huge. This treats a fan as a whole person — not a series of different entities interacting with a brand in isolated channels. If Sharon buys an ice cream cone in the last half of every game, why not send her an offer for a two-for-one deal next time she’s at the stadium? In fact, you can then suggest some other events for her to attend where she can make use of this coupon. The possibilities are truly endless. The sports approach works When brands adjust their approach to marketing and adopt the right tools — marketing automation being one such tool — the benefits and results are palpable. In the case of the Detroit Pistons parent brand, Palace Sports and Entertainment, the organization saw a 90-percent renewal in membership rates — the best in their history — and a 30-percent increase in season ticket sales. And in the case of the Trail Blazers, the team was able to increase season ticket renewals by eight percent (a 96-percent renewal rate), up single-game ticket sales by 30 percent and improve email open rates by 45 percent. Wow. If this isn’t enough motivation, I don’t know what is. Take a page out of the sports playbook, and see your customers converted to brand FANATICS.
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By: Chris Savage Posted: March 10, 2016 | Modern Marketing When we started Wistia in 2006, all of our marketing was centered around our video hosting product. We thought we were doing all the right things—demos over the phone, a PR firm, a “business-like” team page—so we didn’t understand why we had no money and only 5 employees. Then one day our filmmaker friend Chris Lavigne came by the office. He looked around, and then he proposed an idea so obvious and perfect I can’t believe I was ever skeptical of it: since Wistia is a video hosting company, why not use video in your actual marketing? I was a filmmaker myself before Wistia, but when Chris said this I was just confused. We already had a screencast of our product on our homepage. I didn’t understand what making more videos was supposed to add. We were marketing to other businesses, not putting together a reel, but Chris was our friend and he offered to make the video himself. So we agreed to let him do his thing. The video he made was pretty unconventional, at least for the time, because it wasn’t about our product at all: it was about the Wistia team goofing around on an ordinary day in the office, working hard but having fun doing it. And to our surprise, people loved it. The video was a huge success, which taught us an unexpected lesson—that people would respond to what we made if it demonstrated the fact that we actually care, heart and soul, about what video can do. This was one of the single most important shifts in mindset that had to happen in order for us to succeed. Hundreds of videos later, we’re profitable, with a much bigger team and customer base. And we owe it all to shutting up about our product and focusing on our mission of empowering everybody to get more out of video—what we now call mission-based marketing. But it didn’t happen overnight. Here’s how we aligned our marketing to a mission, and how you can do the same thing with your team: 1. Write Down How You Want to Change the World We burned through a lot of different missions before one of them stuck. Now, our mission is the compass we use to direct every single piece of content we produce. Everything supports that mission. Our early iterations were way too focused on our product and company goals because we thought a mission was about summing up how you worked and what you wanted. What we finally did was write down the things we valued the most about working at Wistia. We shared these with our team, got feedback, and together crafted a final draft. And it’s only by bringing all these people together that you really can get what you need: a mission that’s bigger than you and your company. So start marketing with a purpose: Write down the things that you value most about your work Share the values with your team and solicit feedback so they represent everyone Use this pool of shared values to work toward a cohesive mission statement. 2. Ask Your Customers What They Want to Achieve Imagine what your company looks like from your customer’s perspective. Essentially, you are a tool that they’re using to succeed at some bigger project, be it in business or life. Your tool is maybe just a small percentage—say 3%—of that project. The other 97% is what your marketing should be all about.To figure out what that 97% is, email and call your customers. Set up a forum or subreddit and ask questions there. Send out surveys. If you reach out for ideas often, you’ll gradually build a customer-company culture where the lines of communication are more open, and you’ll see more ideas emerge organically.Here are a few ways you can learn what your customers want to accomplish: Use a Google Forms survey to collect mass responses. It’s a very basic tool, and free, but it works really well to distribute surveys and collect responses. Set up a community if you don’t have one. You can use something as simple as a subreddit. You just need a place where you can talk informally with your users about the kinds of content they want. Go back to basics and call your customers. Ask them directly what they want to accomplish, and you’ll find that people can be a lot more candid and talkative over the phone. 3. Adjust Your Team’s Risk-Taking Threshold Mission-based marketing requires creativity, and creative ideas are fragile. Both extroverted and introverted people can get very shy when they have an idea for something that’s out of the box because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing or being judged.We start ideation meetings by writing “Don’t hold back” on a whiteboard, especially when people clearly have ideas but are hesitant to express them. Then, we’ll just throw out the craziest idea we can think of that still fulfills our mission, something just really outlandish. After the baseline is adjusted, everyone in the room feels a little freer to speak their mind. Case in point: this is how the announcement of ourEnterprise plan turned into a full-fledged parade.Create an open culture around creativity using the same method we did: Divide meetings into ideation, decision-making, and execution so you can think of the craziest possible ideas without having to imagine how to do them. Start ideation meetings by throwing off the baseline, then let the conversation guide you toward a solution that’s both creative and doable. Write down without judgment every idea that your team generates. You can figure out which ones make sense later. 4. Make Your Content-Creation Process Transparent and Accessible We work really hard to encourage a total content culture at Wistia. Everyone who works here is part of the mission, so everyone should be part of our mission-based marketing.To open content creation up to everyone, we documented our process. Instead of just blazing through everything like we usually did, we slowed down. We got dry-erase markers, drew it out on a wall, and asked questions about each step to figure out how and why it was in there. When we had it down pat, we put it in a Google Doc and opened it up to the team. Then, we set up a Trello board just for content ideas and invited everyone to participate. If you do this, you’re going to find that your idea board fills up incredibly fast. There’s only so much you can say about your product, but when you start to orient your content around your mission, the possibilities become endless.Try out this method out with your team: Map out your process in dry-erase so you can edit on the fly and display it in a central location. Transcribe the complete process into a Google Doc so your whole team can see and use it. Set up Trello boards to document the stages each project is in (ideation, drafting, revision, submitted, etc). Live And Breathe Your Mission Great marketing demonstrates how passionate you are about the mission you’re trying to help your customers achieve. It doesn’t matter if your company is in a “boring” field (I mean, we do video hosting for businesses!)—showing heart still matters. There’s a lot of companies out there that don’t think about this stuff at all, but this is really how you differentiate yourself from the pack. Get your team together and write your mission down, then talk to your customers about it. Democratize and make transparent your team’s content-creation process, then unleash its creativity by encouraging crazy ideas. What other steps have you taken to align your marketing around your company’s mission? Share them in the comments below.
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By Rebecca Lieb Digital isn't just everywhere, it will soon be everything. Since the 1980s, digital has been in an unrelenting phase of hypergrowth. In our lifetimes, we've witness centralized mainframe computers morph into distributed desktop computers connected to a network. By the late '90s most of those machines were instead connected to the World Wide Web. The next decade brought with it cloud and ubiquitous computing, technologies for anywhere, any time mobile users. Up next? Pervasive computing. Processors will be embedded in everyday objects to gather data for analysis and action, the catalyst of a new ‘phygital’ world in which digital connections bridge the physical and digital worlds. The Internet of Things (IoT), beacons, and sensors already enable a far deeper "conversation" between all elements of brand experience – including objects. Connected Devices – Impact Increasingly, consumers no longer differentiate between media and channels. Second screen activity is already transforming how they watch television, for example. They may simultaneously be shopping, buying, voting, emailing, or chatting with friends, posting on social media or looking up information about the show they are watching. They're likely not even viewing content on a TV. Cord-cutting is rampant. Consumers no longer care about platform or media ownership, what matters is access and convenience. So how do marketers find these fickle consumers, flitting between channels like digital hummingbirds? It depends. Any individual’s preference will be based on their own unique pain points and needs, the time and location when that need strikes, their behavior, history, culture, exposure to technology, peer influences, and myriad other factors. What is clear however is that the CMO must be as agile and multifaceted as the increasingly varied customer journeys they steward. Their brands are compelled to be omnichannel, and that "omni" accounts for ever-more channels and devices. The CMO's mandate is to bind omnichannel together with seamless customer experiences bound by the Three Cs: Consistency: Consistency in brand tone, outreach, response, presence, and culture. Expanding touchpoints allows brands to pervade consumers’ lives by providing timely content, services, and utility Content: Content is the unifying element of how brands manifest across all touchpoints across channels, platforms, and devices, online or off. Context: Context is the antidote to endless, noisy media proliferation. Data helps companies better understand customer context down to the individual level, including (but not limited to) personal, location, historical, behavioral, cultural, social, technological, and beyond. MGM Resorts sends hotel guests at the Bellagio Las Vegas notifications on the MGM app for nearby restaurants, shopping, and shows via their smartphones. Offers are highly personalized based on a number of factors: geo-location, time of day, loyalty member status, purchase history, and preferences. You might get a twofer ticket offer for tonight's show, while I receive a steak dinner special.A non-mobile example of the new “phygital” frontier is Navdy, an in-car display system that's been called the Google Glass for your car. It shows the driver relevant messages: navigation, text and voice messaging, and vehicle service notifications, for example.Beacons and sensors in retail locations can not only convey inventory information, but provide consumers with highly contextual offers. Sensitive to the shelf level, embedded devices know if the shopper is browsing ketchup or mustard and can tailor offers accordingly.‘Phygital’ Risks and RewardsHarnessing digital connections to foster deeper human interactions is the opportunity in bridging the digital and physical worlds. For brands and consumers alike this means: Increased relevance and context Greater visibility Greater utility (“brands as service partners’) Happier, more engaged customers Data that inform optimization opportunities (across customer and product lifecycles) Increased loyalty Improved conversion and business results Market differentiation As with other emerging technologies, the “phygital” world is also not without risks, particularly if strategy is secondary to a tactical approach. Risks can include: Attribution Impact Losing (or losing track of) customers along their journeys Viewing mobile as a secondary channel Advertising-only mentality Annoying or creeping out customers > opt-out Higher possibility of friction in “offline” contexts Under-use of content and brand assets Negative impact on brand sentiment/experience Ineffective or unethical use of data Wasted investment Planning for an omnichannel “phygital” world requires a renewed commitment to digital transformation. This includes orchestrating across not only internal teams but also agency and technology vendor partners. Planning must take into account media convergence, with a strong view toward integrating technologies to "play nice" together, everything from marketing to mobile tech to systems that may live outside of marketing's purview, such as CRM. Ready or not, we're hurtling into a brave new world. Brands that aren't at the ready in the channels and media, times, and places where customers and prospects wish to interact will in just a few short years risk irrelevance, even obsolescence.
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By: Daniel Tolliday Posted: March 3, 2016 | Content Marketing If you ever find yourself banging your head on the keyboard wondering why there are so few hours in the day to produce content; don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Content marketing is an important part of a strategic marketing mix, building brand awareness, establishing thought leadership, elevating your messaging, and engaging your audience. But content takes time to produce and get out into the world. Sometimes, it can all come down to the way you manage your team and the content they produce. So, use this blog as a guide to speed up your editorial process without compromising the quality of your content. Let’s get into the five ways you can speed up your content editorial process: 1. Set Predefined Roles Within Your Content Team Whether you’re working with an internal team or external freelancers, it is critical for you to define specific roles for each process and determine who does what. If there’s only one person planning the calendar, producing all the content, and measuring its effectiveness–it’s likely that you’ll fall behind and that person will get worn out. This doesn’t mean that one team member can’t be used for more than one role; it just depends on your budget and resources. For example, your analytics manager may be able to write content about marketing analytics or your social media listener might have awesome design skills that you can leverage. Below are some common roles associated with content marketing teams: Content Strategy Director/Content Strategist: This is where it all begins. The director or content strategist is often someone high up in your organization that is experienced in digital marketing strategy. They will have created your content strategy and now it’s up to your content team to follow through and implement it. Production and Editorial Management Content Manager: Often called the ‘Content Marketing Manager’ or ‘Chief Content Officer’, content managers are responsible for overseeing the entire process–from start to finish. When an organization implements content marketing into their arsenal, the content manager is usually the first person hired. Managing Editor: The role of the managing editor is quite diverse and they often wear multiple hats. A typical day might involve editing several pieces of content, managing writers, and even working with the content manager to plan and update the content calendar. Social Media Listener: How is your content performing on social media? Your social media listener will be able to tell you. Whether they’re using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer, they will provide you with regular reports detailing how your content is performing on social media. Analytics Manager: Working closely with the social media listener, analytics managers help measure the effectiveness of content once it is published. They play a key role in proving the ROI of your content marketing activities and should have solid data and website analytics abilities. Content Production Content Writers: Whether they’re internal writers or external contractors, the number of content producers you need will depend on the quantity of content you wish to produce. Be sure to enable your writers as much as possible with resources, detailed briefs, and transparent writing guidelines to save editing time. Designers: What good is an article or ebook without a sexy design? A good designer is worth his weight in gold, as they are often the difference between a solid piece of content performing well or not at all. If you don’t have the budget for a professional designer and want to save extra time, you can explore using a tool like Canva (more on this tool shortly). Proof-readers: Many content teams share the workload when it comes to proofreading. Once an article has been edited, for example, it’s always good to get a fresh pair of eyes onto the piece for extra quality control. 2. Clearly Communicate Content Goals and Guidelines This is a key factor in speeding up your editorial process. Each piece of content should have a brief and your writing team should have access to a content guidelines document. Not only will this help them write faster, it will help the managing editor breeze through the first draft.Here are 4 questions to consider before sending anything to the content producer: What is the goal of your content? What themes or topics should it cover? Who will be reading the content? Think titles, industries, and company size. Are there any useful research links or existing assets that will help? It makes sense to provide your content producer with as much information as possible. It saves time and makes everyone’s jobs easier. 3. Repurpose Existing Content For each asset you produce, you should be able to leverage it to create at least 5-6 more pieces. One simple ebook can be turned into: A SlideShare presentation Tweets (using quotes from your ebook) An infographic An image for social media A blog post Webinars are also great for repurposing your content as they often cover a broad range of topics.Imagine if you have already written 5 ebooks; that’s around 25-30 extra pieces of content just sitting there waiting to be produced, which is a huge time saver. And speaking of time savers–there’s none better than a valuable editorial tool. 4. Use Editorial Tools and Templates Sending emails back and forth is a huge time waster; especially when an asset requires multiple rewrites. Fortunately, there are tools out there to help simplify and speed up the editorial process.It is important to note that you should not get too wrapped up in using tools, especially if you’re looking to save time. Sometimes, a simple spread sheet and word processor is all you need.Let’s take a look at a few (of the many) valuable time-saving tools: Trello: The days of overflowing inboxes are coming to an end–thanks to editorial tools like Trello. This tool allows you to organize content projects and have your writers upload drafts, comment on projects, and even track the time it takes to complete each task. Google Docs: With Google Docs, your editor can add comments directly into each document. Hosted in the cloud, there’s no need to store the files anywhere–they’re stored securely on Google’s servers. Once it’s finished and ready for publishing, you can save the document onto your computer. BuzzSumo: Having trouble with content ideation? BuzzSumo allows you to search for the best performing pieces of content on the web. You can rank them by LinkedIn shares, Facebook likes, and much more. This gives you a clear indication about what type of content works best for your target audience. Canva: If there was one time-saving tool I personally couldn’t live without–this would be it. Canva includes templates for every type of visual graphic imaginable (Facebook and Twitter cover images, for example), and images can be easily tweaked for uniqueness within seconds. Not to mention it’s free, too. 5. Utilize a Content Calendar As one of the most effective ways to speed up your editorial process, content calendars save time by revealing the bigger picture. Usually managed by the content manager or content editor, it should include content goals, useful links, and show you what is due and when.But how do you map out your content calendar? Fortunately, there are a variety of free tools available: Google Calendar: With Google Calendar, you can create your own version or download one of the many templates available online. Simply create a new calendar and start filling in your content ideas and what marketing objectives or company goals they map to. The best part of using Google Calendar is that you can receive notifications to your phone and desktop when your content is due! Excel Spread Sheets: This is perhaps one of the easiest and most effective ways to manage your content editorial process. Set up columns for the due date, publishing date, writer’s name, keywords, notes, and any other information relevant to your needs–and remember to use one tab for each week or month, depending on how much content you are producing. This reduces clutter and makes it easier to navigate through. But, if you’re looking for a more robust content management experience, there are many content platforms that can help you manage your content process from start to finish—from building an editorial calendar to tracking the production progress to publication and more. Using tools and calendars are effective time savers and a great way to give you a complete perspective of your content creation process. But what you really need to remember is to stay focused on one task at a time and allocate tasks among your team when there is an overload of work. After all, they are only a limited amount of hours in the day–and time management is something everyone must deal with. What tactics or tools are you using to save time in your editorial process? Let me know in the comments below! http://events.marketo.com/summit/2016/
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By: Sanjay Dholakia Fellow marketers, if recent economic headlines are leaving you antsy, if not mildly panicked, you’re not alone. Last year ended on a whimper — fourth-quarter gross domestic product grew by only 0.7 percent — and then the stock market promptly dove about six percent in January amid predictions of greater turmoil ahead. The uncertainty also has had a spillover effect on many smart marketers I’ve spoken with since the financial tempest blew in with the new year. Increasingly, they talk about internal pressures from their companies’ financial gurus to choose cheaper alternative products and services. Even though they remain far from best-in-breed in their categories, the argument is that they are “good enough.” And it doesn’t end there. As more marketing departments are asked to accomplish more with less, the to-do list grows, while resources are stretched thinner and thinner. Pretty soon, marketers are looking at program outcomes and saying, “Well, good enough.” Just good enough? This hardly sounds like a battle cry for success. Actually, it feels more like a myopic recipe for mediocrity. Marketers are in the business of finding new ways to make their companies stand out from the pack, and in doing so, drive the bottom line. You can’t achieve these goals with “good enough” as your guiding principle. Marketers need to know how to resist the “good enough” temptation in their operations — and they also need to know how to articulate the value of their own offerings so they avoid falling victim to the “good enough” mindset with their own customers. Here are some very basic lessons I wish someone had shared with me on why “good enough” — for lack of a better term — really sucks. ”Good Enough” Costs A Lot “Good enough” gets expensive fast. When I graduated from college and needed to swap jeans and sneakers for formal business attire, a relative suggested that I shop at a discount shoe retailer famous for offering deals. I took the recommendation and returned home with a real bargain: two pairs of shoes for the price of one. A couple of weeks later, the first pair had rubbed my toes so raw that they bled when I walked. The other pair wore out within three months. I had to buy two new pairs — I bought with quality in mind the second time. The postscript: Buying “good enough” ended up costing me three times as much — and gave me bloody feet. Like a pair of lousy shoes, “good enough” inflicts a little more hurt each day. Say you have a goal of increasing customer retention, but you’re also juggling driving new revenue and entering three new markets. With the plan you have time to execute — emphasis on have time — your retention begins to improve, but nowhere near the rate that would actually move the needle for the company. But at least the numbers are rising, so you proclaim, “Good enough!” That’s no way to operate! Same thing goes for the tools marketers use. I’ve seen companies choose a solution just so they could save $20,000 a year in costs. But did their “good enough” products help scale the business? Nope. In the end, the companies were forced instead to hire more people to deal with the limitations, costing another $200,000 in incremental yearly costs. No self-respecting CFO or CEO will argue that the $200,000 is better than the $20,000 cost. If they do, your company has bigger problems. “Good Enough” Wastes Time The Romans built their first aqueduct in 312 BCE. It was one of 11 separate structures that would supply water to the city of Rome for centuries. The ancient Romans didn’t scrimp on the quality of masonry, brick or concrete used in construction. If they had gone with “good enough,” their aqueducts would have crumbled long before Julius Caesar. The aqueducts were so well built that some even found use in the Renaissance era. This is long-term thinking with an exclamation point! Short-term thinking won’t allow you to plan very far into the future. Going with a good enough strategy, or even good enough talent, means you’re bound to wind up wasting time, effort and money to compensate for the original mistake of a penny wise, pound foolish approach. In marketing, if you settle for the “quick fix,” you’re bound to shortchange yourself in the long run. “Good enough” often slows down your entire team as they seek to cope with the inherent limitations of poor planning or a subpar tool. Worse, tools that are not built to last — by design — will force you to stop your business at some point to replace the product or service that was “good enough.” I’ll very often hear a statement like this: “Well, we don’t need all of those capabilities right now; we’ll just replace this later.” Huh? Yeah, because everyone likes to tell their CEO, “We are taking a break for a few months to redo the process we just did six months ago!” Take a cue from the Romans, and choose talent and tools that will last your company a lifetime. “Good Enough” Will Guarantee You A “C” Every marketer I talk with wants their company to aspire to greatness. They’re in this profession to ignite change, and so nobody wants to belong to the middle of the pack. But “good enough” suggests that you’re willing to be average. Think about the words. When have you as a marketer ever felt satisfied with average? Average will not get you the business outcomes you’re looking to achieve. Average will not drive revenue, and it will not help you gain an edge in the marketplace. There is so much coffee out there at our local gas stations and supermarkets that is absolutely sufficient from a convenience and caffeine perspective that we could claim a glut. That coffee is absolutely “good enough” for the purpose of jolting us awake. It’s not going to kill us. But, it’s not going to taste great either. It’s a solid “C.” That’s why millions of us, every morning and every day, still go out of our way to get that high-quality $5 cup of joe. We don’t settle for “C.” If you want to be a great marketer, “good enough” talent, strategies or tools will never enable you to reach the top. It sends a message to your organization: “Hey, we’re okay being … well, okay!” You have to compete with the best ammo you can muster. And this means not just thinking for today’s outcomes, but tomorrow’s, as well. Go for the “A” outcome — say no to “good enough.” This post originally appeared on Marketing Land on February 9, 2016.
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By: Renata Bell Posted: February 15, 2016 | Digital Marketing As the primaries heat up, politicians are leveraging digital marketing and social media to capture the hearts (and votes) of U.S. voters.Having a strong digital presence is now table stakes for political candidates. Whether 50 years ago or today, there are 3 things successful political campaigns have been able to learn from marketers: be targeted, be efficient, and be clear with your message across all channels or be lost in the cacophony of the elections. So, let’s take a look at how political candidates, over time, have adapted to incorporate digital marketing into their campaigns to effectively communicate their message. When Digital Marketing Meets Politics What does this look like in practice? Let’s answer that question by taking a look at how political candidates have structured and used their websites and how that has evolved to mirror marketing best practices. Then, we’ll look at how candidates have adapted their strategies to take their message to social media platforms. The Website In 1996, just five years after the first website was built, Bill Clinton and Al Gore took advantage of the web to promote their campaign. These running-mates launched their own site, which is still up today, stating their tagline and offering additional resources. At the time, presidential campaigns had little insight into who would come to their website. With no data to back up their actions and no measures to test by, their website laid out everything—from debate information to biographies to downloadable bumper stickers—in hard-to-navigate columns. By the 2000 and 2004 elections, websites were much more robust with new modules, calendars, newsletters, and lots of content. While these new capabilities were great and candidates seemed to embrace them, the sites suffered from looking cluttered and lacked a clear call-to-action. In the two examples below from the Bush/Cheney website in 2000 and then again in 2004, you can see the evolution of call-to-action and site organization. A marked departure from the clutter of the earlier websites, Barack Obama’s 2007 website harnessed the power of a clear message and call-to-action. Taking a page from the marketing playbook, instead of overwhelming his readers with more information, he created a clear message and call-to-action (join the team), with a more organized display for additional information. Overall, you can see a drastic shift in the site design to be less cluttered and provide clear visuals. In fact, Obama’s website was launched by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, who created it with the intention of being a networking site where volunteers could create groups, plan events, raise funds, and connect with each other. Look how far it’s come today: Digital Marketing is a Cornerstone for the Modern Campaign Not only did website capabilities advance as time progressed, but so did the different web properties to help candidates reach a broader audience—namely social media. The 2008 campaign year was an unprecedented turning point in which candidates embraced social media. This was especially true of the Obama campaign, which harnessed the power of social media and digital marketing to connect with his supporters on a new level. As Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post said, “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee.” Obama also leveraged YouTube like never before. The campaign’s official channel was collectively watched for 14.5 million hours, as reported by political consultant Joe Trippi. And from Obama’s success, a lesson emerged that political candidates from any party, running for any office (from local mayor all the way to president), will not soon forget—candidates need to be everywhere their audiences are if they want their message to reach beyond their base of voters. As for the current presidential candidates, almost all of the candidate sites today echo a similar format: clear message, clear call-to-action, neat navigation, and a giant email signup (plus links to social media sites). The emphasis on digital spending, social media, and other online paid ads is only going to increase as the election gets closer. Already, some candidates are changing their strategy to focus their spending specifically on digital marketing channels. Consider how presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has mixed traditional avenue with digital. She spent early on and often on traditional methods—$12 million on television, $6 million on direct mail, and set aside about $6 million for digital advertising. She has leveraged the most diverse and unique channels to interact with her followers: Instagram, Pinterest, Periscope, Snapchat, even a Spotify list with Clinton’s curated music including Katy Perry and JLo. Does listening to Clinton’s playlist sway more people to vote for her? I don’t think so, but it’s just one piece of the cross-channel puzzle. In fact, on hillaryclinton.com she has 14 or so webtrackers, including Optimizely, Facebook Custom Audiences, and Google Adwords. In contrast, Donald Trump has only 3 (Facebook Custom Audience, Google Analytics and Google Dynamic Remarketing). However, Trump hasn’t turned his back on digital marketing and social media. His website, like the other candidates, is simple above the fold and then below it invites visitors to sign up for SMS alerts, watch his YouTube videos, and participate with the campaign on social media. Trump Website: Above the fold Trump Website: Below the fold Among his Republican candidate primary competition, Trump seems to be using social media most effectively, although he is arguably one of the loudest (albeit THE most controversial) social media contributors. Which makes sense: small statements can travel far at the speed of light with social media. Stats released by Twitter after a GOP debate Take a look at another candidate, Bernie Sanders. He has spent more money than any other politician before on digital marketing: a whopping $10 million, while he has spent minimal funds on traditional avenues such as television and direct mail (Bush spent $35 million on television ads alone). Digital marketing has been at the heart of his marketing strategy, and that appears to have started to pay off with the target demographic of the millennial generation. After the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus, some 84% of voters ages 18-29 voted for Sanders. While millennials are an incredibly loyal generation, they also see through political pomp and want nothing to do with political campaigns from the past. Being able to interact with candidates on their own terms, on their own channels, is incredibly important to them. It won’t be surprising to see the rest of the presidential candidates start to pay more attention to digital marketing channels as the need to appeal to different, segmented groups grows more pressing. One thing’s for sure, while smart political campaigns are certainly applying marketing best practices—targeted and clear messages—undoubtedly, they could get even more personal and create more tailored message to followers that care about certain issues more than others. Do you think having more curated and personalized content from your representatives would be helpful? Let me know in the comments section below.
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