Thoughts on 2010 for B2B Technology Marketing

It's that time of year: time to reflect on what became of 2010 and look forward (hopefully) to 2011.

For the B2B marketer, particularly in technology markets, 2010 seemed to be significant for three things:

1. the coming of age of the marketing automation platform
2. the rise and rise of social networking
3. the broad usage of terms reflecting a focus on marketing outcomes rather than activity

Marketing Automation

With the acquisition of Unica by IBM, followed by the recently announced acquisition of Aprimo by Teradata, a period of consolidation has started in the marketing automation market, reflecting a growing maturity and use of these tools in day-to-day marketing campaigns. Adding Unica to the analytics and reporting capabilities of Cognos and Coremetrics, IBM is seeking to provide integrated sales and marketing platforms which focus on metrics and data to provide real-time customer intelligence in the pursuit of revenue growth. Eloqua launched Version 10 of its leading platform for B-to-B marketing automation, completely redesigning the interface and workflow usability and opening the door for traditional Marketing campaign managers to catch up with their digital campaign cousins.

Social Networking

2010 may be seen as the year of social media. Twitter has released figures showing that 50 million tweets are sent a day across its network (compared with an average of 5,000 just 3 years ago). Facebook meanwhile boasts half a billion users of which half on average are logged on per day. My search on LinkedIn came up with over 670,000 English-language groups - there is definitely an appetite for sharing information. It remains to be seen how effective these media are in influencing B-to-B sales. Even more difficult will be assigning ROI to social media channels, when they become just one of many customer touchpoints.

Marketing ROI

Marketing performance management (MPM), Marketing operations, Revenue performance management (RPM) - these and many other terms have more frequently entered the marketing lexicon in 2010. The one thing they have in common is a focus on identifying the financial returns from expenditure on marketing. This recognition of the need to justify Marketing's contribution to the enterprise based on it showing a healthy return on investment is an idea that seems to have come of age in 2010. My good friend Jim Lenskold wrote the book on this back in 2003 so it is good to see companies embracing marketing metrics, underpinned by contact databases and automated marketing platforms, to show that each dollar invested can show a $4, $5 - or whatever - return. 'Can' is key here of course because this isn't easy - you have to measure the right things, often over a long period of time and processes and data need to be carefully monitored to ensure that the information needed to support the metrics is gathered consistently. As we know, even getting Sales to complete a few fields in the CRM system is difficult, so full visibility of marketing returns may be impossible. But the journey is beginning and 2010 showed that it is becoming the responsibility of more people, often in senior positions, to take the first steps.

2011: more of the same?

I won't run the risk of making any predictions for 2011. While I believe the 2010 trends, above, will continue and be reflected in the skillsets required of marketing professionals, the fact that technology is playing a greater part in marketing execution also makes it more unpredictable. The mobile channel, location-based marketing and other factors may also leave a more significant mark in the forthcoming year.

Whatever happens, have a good one!

Is B2B Marketing Changing Fast Enough?

'Despite the rapid, decade-long growth of Google and other digital forms of advertising, traditional channels still commanded 66% of b2b marketing budgets this year, according to the “2011 B2B Marketing Outlook” study.'

I was struck by this headline in BtoB magazine. What does this say about the state of Marketing? Either we are kidding ourselves about the impact of the Web, Email, Search marketing and social networking on our businesses or we are simply not putting our money where our mouths are! How can it be that in B2B, where budgets are comparatively small and market segments easier to target directly, we are not spending more on digital marketing? Do we think it's a passing fad?

Trade Shows Rule, Ok!
This article goes on to say that the top three areas of expenditure are 'trade shows and events (28%), magazines/trade publications (13%) and direct mail (9%). Apart from direct mail - which frequently could be replaced by email and eNewsletters - this off-line expenditure is in areas in which it is often hard to show any ROI. In my experience, Sales love events because it gives them an excuse to meet people (often people they already know). But ask what happened to the leads and things go very quiet! I'm not saying there isn't a place for target seminars and events - but 28% of budget...?

Decisions Must Be Data-Driven
80% of B2B marketers are using some form of digital marketing (what are the other 20% doing then..?) which is a relief, and it is even mentioned that through-the-line (digital plus off-line) campaigns are working, but, reading between the lines, this article suggests to me that many B2B marketers are still running campaigns from within their comfort zones and adding digital activity at the margins ('Yes, we're doing SEO'). How many marketers are looking at integrated, channel-neutral campaigns aligned to the sales pipeline and targeted at key stages of the buying cycle? How many are making decisions based on data, not just what they've always done or what Sales have asked for?

Not enough I would wager.

Marketing Leadership in Changing Times

Marketing is experiencing unprecedented change. From Social networking to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Performance Management (MPM). How it responds to the challenges of the digital age on the one hand and the calls from the C-Suite for accountability on the other, may be a defining moment in its quest to be regarded seriously as an investment and not just a cost of sale.

Is it time for Marketing to subject itself to the kind of scrutiny that other functional disciplines have faced for decades and begin to recognise its need to show a legitimate ROI?

Marketing ROI Not Just Tactics

If Marketing is the 'voice of the customer' then it must show that it can truly align marketing tactics to the strategic imperatives of turning customer demand into profit. In high-tech, marketing continually competes for attention with R&D - who make the products - and Sales - who sell them. R&D know that they need to 'package' 'price' and 'promote' their products (marketing tactics). Sales like trade shows, sales aids and the web site - the 'shop windows' of their trade.

But these are just the costs of 'doing business' - no one is really clear, in my experience, what the true ROI of Marketing is: how to measure it; how much to spend; whether PPC is 'better' than Twitter etc. The smoke-and-mirrors of marketing will remain that way unless Marketing itself shines some light (excuse the mixed metaphors) on what we do.

Marketing Metrics Drive Accountability

When the annual budget round comes along, Marketing needs to have a case to present to the CFO that demonstrates why the budget should not be cut; or, indeed, why it should be increased, for example, from 6% to 8% of revenue.

Metrics need to be established for demand generation tht are tracked through to sales revenue using marketing automation/CRM systems such as Eloqua and Salesforce,com. Metrics for intangibles, such as brand awareness and brand value are harder to establish, but again need to be agreed and reported against. These metrics should be part of the CMO's dashboard.

Is Marketing ready to stand up and be counted? The digital age presents the opportunity - we need to seize it.

Social Networking: what does it offer to the B2B marketing professional?

Like many marketing professionals, I have spent the last 18 months or so trying to get to grips with the value that Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and so on bring to a business focused on selling products and services to other businesses.

Of course, we all know that social media is 'a good thing'. Why else would everyone be putting up pages on Facebook, tweeting and retweeting messages and ensuring that they are posting content to the right groups on LinkedIn? Why indeed? It couldn't just be because everyone else is doing it, could it? Nor because it is new, trendy and exciting. We HAVE to do it to build 'communities' of interest, to let people know we have just issued a press release or posted a new Blog. Don't we? It's the future of digital communications: email is dead and that's official (Facebook say so)!

But amidst all the hype, what value are business marketers getting from it?

Granted, social media helps you 'get found' on the Internet: being found in a world of noise is pretty important and stage one of the buying cycle. But what then? How about conversion of that interest into leads? And nurturing those leads until qualified for Sales? How does that work without outbound marketing - using traditional techniques like email, telemarketing, webinars and so on?

In other words, what part does social media play in closing business? Is it just for raising awareness in new market segments and then for keeping customers informed so that you can sell more to them, at lower cost? Or does it signal a fundamental change in marketing strategy?

Strategically, B2B marketers need to know how social media integrates with the rest of the marketing mix and what the appropriate business metrics are for judging its contribution to ROI. Not just followers, clicks and web hits, but its contribution to the overall sales funnel.

My experience is that once the overall social strategy is developed, execution, as with most of marketing, means doing a lot of detailed, inter-dependent tasks well and consistently with clear targets and a real-time dashboard that tracks inbound and outbound activity throughout the buying cycle.

I'd be interested in your experiences.

Performance Measurement in B-to-B Marketing

Marketing in technology markets has become increasingly focused on measurable outcomes. As Marketing execution becomes more and more digital, Marketers are benchmarking email opens, clicks, conversions to leads and so on. But these are merely Marketing metrics - the rubber hits the road where Marketing hands over to Sales and we begin to monetise (to use a modish word) our investment in Marketing.

Credible Measurement
In short, Marketing needs to prove the Return On Investment (ROI) - sooner rather than later. The closer Marketing metrics are to the money end of the business, the better for the credibility of Marketing. And these are metrics that are primarily influenced by Sales: e.g. lead to opportunity conversion ratios; rate of opportunity leakage from marketing-driven leads; average value of orders derived from marketing leads and so on.

For complex sales cycles, these metrics also help Marketing to determine what tactics work most effectively to nurture sales opportunities and help move them through the pipeline. Events and ROI calculators may be appropriate tactics later in the sales cycle to overcome objections and help drive prospect engagement.

Process First, Automation Second

Marketing automation platforms, such as Eloqua, Marketo, Genius, Silverpop et al, all offer some form of workflow-like automation of marketing processes to make lead scoring, routing and nurturing much easier in the digital world (off-line activity still presents a challenge). But these systems will only provide business value if you have:

• a clearly defined marketing strategy
• clearly defined and understood marketing processes
• a clean and segmented contact database
• Well-trained staff who understand the process and how to set up and execute digital campaigns, and, above all
• clear financial and marketing metrics and targets

Metrics must be appropriate to their user and their role: Digital Marketers need real-time dashboards for email opens, web hits etc. Marketing Directors want standardised reports for volume of leads generated, percentage of leads converted to opportunities, cost per lead/ opportunity. Ultimately, measurement of overall marketing performance is defined by contribution to revenue and profit, so Marketing must be able to account for its total contribution from generating demand through to closed business. These are measurements that the CFO and COO understand.

Marketing Comes of Age

Marketing's contribution to revenue can no longer be the 'magic' that happens somewhere between the Web hit and the Sales team; ROI has to be more directly linked to specific activity. We need to understand marketing operations in detail and be able to explain to the C-suite the value of its contribution. Telling them we generated 1,000 leads this month and that this is more than the same time last year, is just not good enough any more. If Marketing is not an investment, it is simply a cost - and the pressure on costs is always downward.

'You can't manage what you don't measure', the old management adage, must finally be applied to marketing.

Content generation for lead nurturing in a 1-to-1 world

In this networked world it remains a challenge to take potential buyers through a truly personalized interactive experience with your company.

The Holy Grail of business to business marketing is to deliver a one-to-one customer experience at one-to-many prices. In other words, while our budgets and headcount are being cut this is supposed to be more than offset by the power of new technology to do things faster and cheaper.

Here's how the story goes: with social networking creating awareness and bringing visitors to your Web site 'for free', combined with the power of profiling, PURLs and analytics served up by vendors like Eloqua we can capture, profile, score and nurture buyers like never before using automated workflows. All of this while keeping MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) costs at an all time low by using digital communications.

I'm not sure what your experience is, but if sales cycles for complex solutions continue to stretch from 6 - 12 months, that's a heck of a long time to keep someone interested enough to continue receiving your emails without unsubscribing. Not to speak of the amount of content required to move people through the funnel with a personalized experience from the position of 'content and not even looking' through 'bothered I might have a problem, but not a priority' to 'active investigation of our options' (at which point Sales might be vaguely interested!).

Who writes all this content? How much does it cost? How do we match content with the customers' buying cycles? How many people do we need in Marketing Operations to analyze what is going on at a data level and act on it? Can only big companies do this?

I don't know the answer to these questions but the challenge is definitely emerging and to really exploit the power of the technology which is at last being thrust into Marketing, we need to redefine the resourcing and skills profile of not only our in-house staff but also those agencies we rely on to add value to what we do. And we all need to get a lot better at generating, harnessing and repurposing content.

Integrating Marketing with Salesforce to Track Results

Long time, no post...!

Apologies to all (two?) of you who have been hanging on my every word and are therefore disappointed that it's taken me 6 weeks to post another update. Life gets in the way.

Talking of which, I have just completed a new configuration of Salesforce with my ever-reliable support team at CRM Technologies and it has brought back to me the many times I have helped Sales to define their processes, created screens and fields to support them and then wrestled with data flows and marketing processes to ensure the front-end of the pipe and the back-end were in synch.

'But doesn't Salesforce take care of all of this?', I hear you cry. In a word, 'no'. Where CRM/SFA etc implementations have failed, it is because insufficient time has been spent on thinking through the basics:

• What is our sales process?
• How do we measure its effectiveness?
• What pieces of objective data do we need to collect to determine how healthy our pipeline is?
• How will we use this data for forecasting purposes?
• Where will it come from and how will it be maintained?
• What is a 'lead' and at what point does it become an 'opportunity'?

Luckily we implemented Eloqua and tied it into Salesforce back in July, so this was merely a change in the sales process prompted by new management and an acceptance (probably) that this time, perhaps we should actually use the system consistently after we've set it up as planned. As a result, it was a relatively short process, but even so it has had a big impact on Marketing - our lead scoring model, the Web form questions and how they are served, as well as the metrics delivered via the Salesforce dashboards. Why? Well, because a change in Sales process goes to the heart of things for Marketing: including what kind of leads we are delivering; how long and for what reason we nurture leads; what success looks like (what we are measuring).

If ROI, accountability and impact - ie. measurable results - are the watchwords of B-to-B techmarketing in this digital age (comments please!) then processes, systems, data and metrics have to replace the 'spray-and-pray' approach in marketing communications planning.

In other words, joined up thinking about Sales and Marketing drives joined up processes and systems. If Sales in your company are those slightly scary guys whose meetings you have to attend once a month to describe the marvellous campaigns you're going to run, only to find that all they want is 'more leads' then it's time to understand their world a little better!