If exceptional digital marketing and sound marketing strategies are taking your competition to the next level----you can see it happening for them, but not so much for your firm------here are a few questions for marketing leadership to ponder in a recession:
Who owns technology selection within your corporate marketing staff? Perhaps the analyst charged with providing Salesforce.com with your data? Or the one lone team member with an iPhone? I mean, that is techno-literate, isn't it?
Be truthful and look around. True marketing technologists are few and far between. Who said five years ago, Go get an IT degree and then go into marketing and you will have it made? But yet, business' are screaming for the blended skill set.
Do you have an IT savvy marketing team? Are you building a sound business strategy around this capability? Or are you still focused on creative slogans, printed sales brochures, brand identity and event-based marketing?
High caliber marketing is making the difference in today's business by reducing costs and transitioning away from antiquated and non-effective practices.
With that in mind, who is defining your technology strategy and what is the skill set on your current team? Is the marketing staff member chosen to define your digital direction simply because they currently have a Facebook page or Twitter account? Activity does not equate to a marketing outcome for the business.
Do you have a succession strategy to gain the talent you need to excel in a recession? Are you aggressively moving your marketing and your team to a modern approach? Is it anecdotal or systemic?
Does anyone on your current marketing staff have a valid technology background? And more importantly, do they have a tactical business focus?
Rare. Very rare.
So how does the typical marketing staff move forward with modern marketing strategies if you do not currently have the in-house skills to get you there?
If you can't hire in a recession----can you develop existing resources? Does the learning curve time continuum mean you miss the advantage of digital?
There are tremendous costs if you do not have the technology and marketing skill set necessary for today's gains.
I remain madly in love with Wordle as a marketing thermometer to check the health of a firm's messaging. Maintaining message in a large organization is tougher than ever as all functions speak to the marketplace directly---sales, PR, marketing, engineering, corporate staff---it is essential to double check that only the vital few messages are making their way out of your firm.
A modern marketing team delivers relevant, frequent and desired content. So, as a modern marketing leader, perform Wordle on your corporate blogs and your web properties for sure. But I would urge you to try a few non-traditional approaches with the Wordle "paste in a bunch of text" feature:
1) Perfect Sales Pitches: Record your best and your worst performing sales team members and input exact transcripts from both sales pitches. Look at which concepts are working with prospects and update the pitches of those with lagging sales. The worst sales pitch Wordle easily becomes valuable and immediate feedback as to what to eliminate. If your firm does outbound calling, do the same with telesales scripts. Re-vamp quickly and run a pilot test with the new key messages.
2) Make RFP Responses Clean. An area of huge opportunity for most organizations! So much fluff and garbage occurs when clean and concise is what is warranted. Are the largest words displayed in the Wordle conveying your value-add as your offering is evaluated?
3) Competitor Espionage: Download the competitor's messaging from their website. The theory goes you should not attack a solid wall, rather get a few loose bricks and the wall will eventually tumble down. Are there any "loose bricks" you can address in the competitor's messages? Are you addressing the competitor's key points directly?
I have to admit my blog Wordle above is speaking my language!
Since the beginning of time and no matter what you call it today-----customer references, client evidence, word of mouth, referrals, case studies----having someone love what your offer and tell others to love it the same is the MOST powerful sales technique there is. Are you doing enough in this space right now? Free download of The Word of Mouth Manual takes yesterday's client reference into a modern marketing dimension. Enjoy!
It is time to make the formal and long overdue introduction. Marketing execs get busy meeting the IT gang---for you may not recognize it yet, but you covet their skills. Chances are you are working hard to find who on your team of "marketing scientists" or "marketing artists" can build a savvy requirements document for the very willing, but very underqualified agency of marketing artists you call 'vendor'. They want your project and they will nod their heads they know what you are talking about (even when you guys don't reallyknow what you are talking about)....but, use your intuition, something is wrong. The agency is taking the requirements from you without any collaboration. It is a one-way.
I am sorry to inform you if you do not already know----they are simply brokering your job to another more sophisticated technology firm. A willing partner adding no value always costs too much. Break it down: First, your own staff. Are you a technically literate marketing team? Do you know what language you want the application coded in? Do you? Do you want your Salesforce expert stretching away from lead creation to become an application developer wanna-be? Next, you are now engaging in a bunch of kindergarten can and string conversations between you---the agency---the real programmer. I see severe and unncessary cost and timeline creep and so do you. But, I also see an end product that will not run on the firm's backbone, the website or the client location.
In fact, I have been there. I have seen it. I have come in to rescue it. You see---
the story goes there was a great idea for an application slated to save on sales training that took thousands of the now dwindling budget to correct. The launch is 7 months behind schedule and there has been no return for the initial investment. I hope this does not sound familiar....because if you do not have the skilled staff today, you aremissing today's results.
Here is a task for the marketing leadership, guaranteed to yield. Spend time examining your true sales cost and begin to think in terms of marketing opportunity.
All too often I see marketing management using numbers and metrics derived from legacy accounting and reporting mechanisms or personal preferences of leaders no longer with the firm to take the firm's temperature. Worse yet, they are using systems with known bias and gaps for gaming by sales teams because they do not have the technology skills or commitment from IT to seek better software and practices. The worst is how the salesforce incentives do not match the business strategy (long term or short term!).
A Day in the Jumpseat: An Investment in Your Business
I recently spent a day with a sales professional for a high tech medical product. I was fascinated with how much time was spent engaging with documenting information for headquarters and how little time was spent with the actual client. "Miles" shared with me how he wakes at 5am to input sales orders and daily talleys of client/prospect activity and engagement on his home office computer. Living in one of America's largest cities, he then gets on the road to 'beat the traffic' to his first call of the day. I kept thinking how rushed the client appointments felt to me. When I inquired about the rushing, Miles said it was so that he could meet the daily quota of prospect visits. Increasing prospect visits was the new big target for headquarters, which could land Miles a Rolex watch during a new sales incentive program. Then there was the paperwork for the existing clients we visited. I was amazed at the paper forms he was constantly placing in front of clients for signature. They seemed very annoyed by it as well.
What internal demands are being placed on your sales professionals and what is the potential opportunity cost to your business? Is your sales team spending hours fulfilling internal process requirements instead of engaging in consultative selling techniques? Are they sitting in front of the computer versus working on the client relationships? Are they annoying your committed clients because your current accounting process has redundant documents signature requirements?
Opportunity is yours. Will it be opportunity cost or marketing opportunity?
How to ensure the continuous production of quality digital marketing content which is then placed/enabled on the web is the significant process challenge for today's modern marketing team. Yet no one has a content production manager on staff. What would the job description look like?
The Content Enabling Manager will own the objective of perfecting the digital client experience by working in partnership with the sales force, corporate partners and the marketing team to ensure consistent production of targeted content that is continuously fed to our appropriate marketplace prospects and clients via social media tools, the website, web events and email campaigns.
Better yet, save yourself from 'it is not my job, it belongs to the new Content Enabling Manager you just hired' mentality. Instead emulate the genius move of HP CMO Mike Mendenhall and find a way to incorporate content enabling targets and social media excellence into the existing job descriptions of the entire firm. Make it universal and owned by all.
Coming up next: How to build and launch a content production strategy at your firm.
The Digital CMO|Where Technology and Marketing Come Together
There is no doubt digital marketing increases opportunities for your organization to gather and use metrics. So, it makes perfect sense to see the influx of mathematical and analytical people coming into the marketing profession.
Some equation fun in honor of the Marketing "Quants" among us:
So, here is the ultimate exercise for not faint-at-heart marketing professional who would like to begin taking on content as a science. A way cool tool named Wordle allows you to take your website URL or Corporate Blog feed and get a depiction of your prioritized content.
Of course, I immediately think of how modern marketing professionals can use it to their advantage:
Exercise One: With the easy print feature on the site, you can print multiple copies and throw them up in the conference room and the hallway and have everyone comment on what they see. Is what you see an accurate depiction of what you are trying to say in the market or is it a big miss?
Exercise Two: Send your Wordle to your current customers and then to customers who have previously said no. Ask them to be brutally honest. Are the key words that stand out what they think of when they think of your brand, your offering, your product? Ask the next level question. The tough question. What do they think is missing?
Personally, I am feeling pretty good at what I see for the Digital CMO, but I am looking forward to improving on the term I am most about these days...Content Science.
By the way, these people are doing very cool stuff...help them out as requested from there website: Survey! The Wordle creator and his colleagues at the IBM Research Visual Communication Lab are trying to understand how and why people use Wordle. If you've got 5-10 minutes, please take this anonymous survey. Thank you.
If you caught my last post, you will get that I am passionate about content. I am planning to write a lot about content in my blog. I see content creation and distribution as the missing link we need to examine to make marketing work in modern times. It is just too easy to confuse technology with what makes for effective marketing. A lot of firms invest in technology selection and think they have a valid approach. As marketing professionals, we have all had the lessons four thousand times and, if you are like me, you understand that content needs to 'stick' and it does so only after we have been granted 'permission' by the consumer. I've got it and I know you do.
But with so much content out there, perhaps it is time to focus our professional energy more on how to analyze content as a science we can master and make actionable within our own teams. Traditionally someone in branding owned the marketing messages. Today, everyone at the firm has the potential to generate content messaging. Who knows where they are placing it, who is put off by it, how far it is taking the strategy backwards, and how off-brand it is? An entire industry is evolving just to help you keep track of it.
Perhaps it is time we start looking at how our organization determines content ownership. Just like anything else, if we take the time to examine and drive how content affects our market, then suddenly we have a handle on it and can use it to our advantage. Utopia then becomes the art of wading through the infinite market noise and actually hitting our targets, having them grant us the glorious permission we sought and having them take action because our content was indeed the perfect message for them.
I believe it is overdue to begin a quantitative approach so we can examine and refine content and its effectiveness. I would like to perfect and recognize a new science. Content Science will explore the quality of content, the art of its production, the desire of others to digest and seek it out and the ability to transform the way marketing professionals view and maximize its value
I always knew my first blog post would mock the introduction of MTV as it first signed on as a media channel. MTV was thought to have revolutionized the way music was consumed and here is the first video to play on the channel:
We could go on and on about the thinking behind the band selection. But instead, I want to draw two thoughts as the Digital CMO:
Think of the millions of blogs written today and then compare the blogosphere of today to the MTV channel of yesterday. Ask yourself how we consume music today. I am not even certain how often videos play on MTV today--if at all. The Buggle's agent must have thought the positioning as the first video on MTV assured longevity on par with the Beatles. Which brings me to my next thought:
The song was just not that good. In fact, it was a really awful example of a one-hit wonder. Content matters. It matters a lot. As a marketing professional, have you got content on your radar screen?
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