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.

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!

Thoughts on Business-to-Business High-Tech Marketing

As a B-to-B Marketeer for over 25 years, 19 of which have been in high-tech, I have been involved at the sharp end of integrating marketing and business strategies, aligning sales and marketing and implementing campaigns to execute strategy at an EMEA and worldwide level. I have seen a lot of change in the marketing tools available, the demand to 'cut through the noise' and the challenge to deliver more and higher quality leads with fewer resources and in shorter timescales.

I thought I'd use this Blog to ruminate on the state of B-to-B marketing and provide some insight into the challenges we all face day to day in trying to deliver on the expectations of the businesses we work for. If this inspires some interaction and sharing of best practice then that can only be a good thing. If nothing else it will help to get some things of my chest which bug me, which possibly no one else, other than those of you out there facing the same challenges, is interested in.

I have primarily worked in Enterprise software and services with a strong direct channel orientation, but a lot of the challenges I face will be familiar whether you rely on direct Sales, systems integrators, resellers or channel distribution models.

The primary things I want to talk about are:

- Aligning sales and Marketing: how to get everyone 'singing from the same hymn sheet' or working off the same playbook
- Sales and Marketing automation: how to ensure Salesforce, Eloqua, or your SFA/ automation system 'de jour' help the practice of driving growth and don't just get in the way
- Performance measurement: closely aligned with the above - how do you measure both the short term lead generation and long term brand development aspects of Marketing? What are the correct metrics and how can you reliably collect actionable data?
- Digital marketing and Social networking - how do we build Web 2.0 into marketing strategy and not just get hung up on the new tools
- Human resources, MRM etc.: how do marketing organizations need to plan and organize to execute effectively in today's fast-moving environment
- Change management: how to align process, people, systems and metrics in a pragmatic way that doesn't involve putting the company on hold for 6 months...

I'm sure there's more but these things are on my mind at the moment (and that's probably enough for now).

Lots of other people are bombarding us with 'best practice' everyday - MarketingProfs, MarketingSherpa, BtoB Marketing, Sirius all have good things to say - these are just my thoughts. Hopefully I can find time to share them.

I'm looking forward to the debate.