Why I Love B2B Marketing

Why do I love B2B Marketing? That's the question that was recently posed by those nice people at the BMC. Here's my off the cuff response:

Our profession is maturing. It feels to me that we're starting to break through and be taken seriously. We're talking much more about revenue, customers, contribution, systems, gaps - and rather less about clicks and widgets. And we're talking to more people outside our own marketing team. That's got to be good news.

The future is unwritten. Our journey is not over - in fact it never will be. As long as customers continue to demand better service, better products, better experiences  then marketing will have to strive to match those heightened expectations in everything we do. Frankly we've only really made baby steps in anticipating customer needs so far - and what seems sophisticated best-practice today will seem hum-drum by next year. That keeps us all on our toes - and B2B marketing is a great place to be if that excites you. The next few years will be a blast!

It's accountable. Digital has empowered marketers to build measurements into the discipline more than ever before. When those measurements are aligned to what the business really cares about (e.g. revenue, profit, customers) then we can be part of conversations that shape business strategies. When we are able to operate as a peer to other functions then we get involved in areas further and further away from simply running events. That's highly  motivating.

Creative is coming back. While measurement has taken centre stage for the past few years - partly driven by the state of the economy, it's great that we're now starting to see creativity and ideas have a resurgence. Having chaired  the B2B Awards judging earlier in the year it is evident that increasing numbers of marketers are working on projects and campaigns that are really thoughtful and inspiring.

The Human Factor. Digital technologies are very seductive, but ultimately this business is about people - whether it's the clients we're trying to serve better, or the colleagues that we work with inside our companies and across our networks. B2B marketing is full of energised, inspiring and downright pleasant people - and I learn from them every day. That makes working hard so much more enjoyable, and makes this a wonderful profession to join. #ILOVEB2B

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Gen Y - is Youth Wasted on the Young?

I was recently reading some research from Hays Recruitment on some research they conducted with 1000 GenY individuals on their attitudes to work, what they are looking for in their boss, technology expectations etc.

It's a good read with the main headlines being:

• They want a career that allows them to do interesting work
• Money is important, but so too is flexibility and bonus potential
• When looking at a potential employer the opportunity to develop is the most crucial factor
• They value a coaching style of leadership
• They expect email to be the dominant style of communications for the foreseeable future

I'd recommend reading the full report because there are some interesting nuggets in here. 

However, as I was reading it I confess I kept saying to myself "yep, me too". I want interesting work that will help me grow, rewards beyond cash, and the opportunity to learn from inspirational coaches - however apparently I am 20 years too old to join this club!

While it makes good headlines I'm not a great fan of this approach of lumping any large group together based on an arbitrary segmentation (age, race, star-sign) and saying this is how they think. In fairness I don't think that was really the intention, but that is always the risk - and I would argue that if you removed the age factor from the research you would emerge with broadly similar results. I prefer to take the view that there are people of any age who are curious about the world they live and work in, and those for whom this is not a significant driver. So let's not create artificial differences between groups and generations.

Of course there are many people in senior positions in the workplace who don't think the same way - who believe the pursuit of money is the only measure of success, who only exhibit an autocratic style of leadership, who invest little in helping their staff grow, and who have no interest in considering alternative views to their own. If that describes your boss my advice is simple - find someone else to work for! 

Unfortunately, if you are one of those dinosaur bosses - you're highly unlikely to read this report let alone act upon it...

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Remind me - What does marketing actually do?

I love it when you stumble across something you created a few years ago and, upon re-reading, decide that it still holds up.

A few years ago I was part of a small workshop at IBM that was challenged with the question of "What is our strategic vision for demand generation?". Grand terminology that can be translated to "What the **** do you do?". The sentence we came up with was a little dry, but I think it captures pretty well what marketing's role is around demand generation (clearly marketing has other responsibilities beyond DG, but this was the focus here).

This is what we came up with:

"Our purpose is to:

Engage in remarkable conversations...

With the right customer communities...

Through the most relevant method(s)...

Which builds relationships...

And creates value for both parties..."

Let me clarify just a little:

Marketing is about conversations rather than a monologue; those conversations need to be sufficiently interesting (remarkable) such that they make people think, engage, share; we know that the decision making units have grown and so it's essential to engage more broadly in the various communities of influence; What is the most relevant method? Actually it's not for you to say - the relevant method is the vehicle chosen by the client/prospect. Demand generation is not just about today's transaction - it's about a dialogue that builds a deepening relationship and that delivers value to both parties - you are looking for immediate and longer term revenue, and the client is looking to solve a business issue.

I keep coming back to this piece of work as a useful checklist to evaluate whether a set of Demand Generation activities is doing what it needs to do. 

Many thanks to Sarah Chatterton, Tony Whitelaw, Martyn Christian, and several others who made key contributions to this output.

Does this work for you? How would you improve upon it?

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9 Attributes of a Successful Marketing Leader

What are the attributes of a good marketing leader today? I've been giving this a little thought recently - marketing is being asked to contribute more than ever before to the business (a great opportunity), is having to deal with an unprecedented amount of change driven by a number of factors, and strategic choices are having to be made on what to change first and what to ignore. 

So here's my initial thoughts:

1. Commercial Connectedness. Running events and producing brochures is not enough anymore. We need to demonstrate revenue contribution to the business. That means marketing leaders need to be tightly integrated into the commercial fabric of the business so that they can shape the direction and increase the contribution that their department can make.
2. Inspiration. Today's marketing department needs to evolve to take account of changes in buyer behaviour and the digital landscape. Leaders need to have a clear vision of where the team is heading that everyone can buy into and contribute towards. 
3. Operational Focus. Change is exciting and stimulating (most of the time), but you get little credit for it until it's done. Meanwhile if your revenue contribution declines you'll have more "help" than you can handle. So you need to have the operational focus to ensure that you turn all the dials green so that you can get the space to drive the transformations you need.
4. Digital Savvy. One day soon we'll stop using the term "digital marketing" and just use the word "marketing" again, as the digital element will be inherently integrated into everything we do. As a leader you don't need to have the departmental expert in all things digital, but you absolutely need to know enough to see how the various elements fit together and add value (to the prospect)
5. Customer Strategy & Advocacy. In the rush to become "modern" I have seen many organisations invest in siloed digital skills at the expense of more tradition strategy skills - planning, targeting, value propositions, etc. The reality is you need both - one of the key roles of a leader is to ensure that the activity of the team comes together to add value from the perspective of the customer/prospect.
6. Resilience. If you're trying to drive change you need to expect bumps along the journey. A strong vision will go a long way to help keep things in perspective, but you will also need the toughness to pick yourself up and re-engage, and to help others do the same.
7. Collaboration. You may think you're smart - but clever people surround themselves with smart people. Fostering a culture that celebrates sharing and teaming creates a buzz and confidence that maximises the effectiveness of the whole team
8. Decisiveness. Don't confuse collaboration with abdication! Your are paid to make choices and to do the right thing. Sometimes you just need to make a decision and stand by it, rather than conduct endless research and discussion.
9. Perspective. Leading a team is a challenge and a privilege. It's both exhausting and energising. But you need to step away from time to time and, for want of a better word, breathe!

What are your thoughts on this?

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Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Agency & Client Alignment

Clients and Agencies are different animals (excuse the pun)!. In a sense it's a little like Sales and Marketing - they are not used to walking in each others shoes. This general misunderstanding of what clients expect (or hope for) when they meet an agency results in significant opportunities to create additional revenue being left on the table

I am in the unusual position of having spent most of my career client side, but now find myself selling consultancy services to clients. But I've also had the opportunity to work with several marketing agencies and more recently provide them with more of a client-side perspective.

I use the term "Agency" loosely. These days everybody wants to sell to the Marketing department. As well as media agencies, marketing agencies we now find ourselves increasingly in conversations with various shades of technology supplier, all hoping to relieve us of our marketing budgets with promises of astonishing ROIs (always amusing, since most agencies don't even have the visibility of the sales pipeline in order to even measure the ROI!)

Over the years I have had the pleasure of working with some great agencies and some great people within those agencies. Just to be clear - I do mean YOU. However I've also worked with a number of distinctly average people from both great and average agencies. For clarity - yes, I mean THEM! I also used get approached on a very regular basis by agencies wanting to get 30 minutes in my diary to explore how they might be able to help me.

So let me give you a few personal observations on my experiences in dealing with agencies of various shades over the years. If you are client side and can add some further observations, I'd love to hear from you. If you are in an agency, I'd be delighted if you want to get in touch - perhaps I can help...

(BTW - as I write this I am currently updating my iTunes library. That explains some of the headings and pictures)

That's Entertainment

I used to despair when I looked at my calendar for the forthcoming week. I would protect a few hours to get some of my work done, but otherwise my day would be a succession of meetings and reviews with various stakeholders (mostly outside of the marketing function), conference calls, reviews and managing the odd crisis. All very internally focused. I had a 90 minute train commute into the office and that was my only way of keeping on top of my email. Gosh how I miss it all :)

One of the only things that kept me sane and fresh was interactions outside of the company - with clients, at conferences, or with agencies. But time was very limited so the default response to any approach had to be - "sorry I can't make a meeting, but if you want to send me something I'll probably ignore it". 

Entertainment? Perhaps that's not how you want to be seen - but in that case you had better demonstrate that you're merely an interval between meetings.

That Don't Impress Me Much

Most initial agency meetings went down a familiar path: Initial chit-chat, followed by presentation of the agency's credentials deck, followed by a loose "so how could we help you" conversation.

I rarely felt this was a great use of my time. I wanted more than credentials. I'm not silly. I know that you will put, for instance, the Coca-Cola logo in your credentials even all that you did was design an internal email header 10 years ago. I get that - would probably do the same. That's why I'm not impressed. Oh and  by the way - my business is nothing like Coke's, so only focus on relevant client stories.

Think!

My recommendation would be to move past all that stuff really quickly. More positive meetings occurred when someone did something that made me realise that this was not just another agency, and made me want to explore further. Think about the following:

• What make you any different from every other agency I've seen this month? I'm looking to make a quick decision on whether we will ever have another meeting. No matter how affable I may seem - I've not invited you in for a chat.
• Can you clearly articulate the breadth of your agency's capabilities? I want to have relationships with as few partners as possible. That means I want to see understand what you can do beyond some nice creative. What value can you and your colleageues add to help ease my business pains. Otherwise I think you are just another creative agency, and that you are the only talent there.
• Have you come to the meeting with a provocative point of view on something I really care about? Do you know what the key challenges are for a business marketing leader today? Have you researched to get a sense of my particular challenges and focus areas? Do you have specific capabilities that could help me address my key challenges? Do you share the passions I do?
• Will you disagree with me? I don't want an agency full of yes men. That simply means you will do what I want rather than what is right for the customer/market. If all I wanted was resource, I could have secured it much cheaper than talking to you. I want someone who has opinions and real insight - not just telling me what they learned in a 5 minute Google search.
• Will you educate me? I like to learn about new approaches that I haven't previously considered. Give me a fact or two that I might be able to use into one of  my next meetings. 
• Can I talk to your clients? I was always keen to engage with other people in a similar position to myself on a peer to peer basis. If you can make some connections for me I have an immediate reason to start building a relationship.
• What are the next steps? I used to be constantly surprised at how many initial meetings ended with a limp "I'll call you again in a few weeks". What are you going to do next? What do you want me to do next?  

Don't You Forget About Me

Of course the meeting is just the first step. Just as important is the follow up and progress against the key actions - don't let all the hard work to secure that meeting simply fizzle out. 

That's my take on it based on my years in client side marketing leadership roles. If you can demonstrate that you understand my world, have a confident perspective upon it, and can offer me something tangible to progress the discussion - then you are already ahead of the pack.

What's your views on the gap between agencies and clients in those critical first meetings? I would love to hear from you.

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5 Steps towards Customer Intimacy through Marketing Data

All of a sudden it's very trendy to talk about data and analytics. Of course there's very good reasons for this - the data that you capture potentialy provide an enormous amount of insight about a client's actual and likely behaviour. However most of us are failing to capitalise on this potential.

Whilst it's very easy to get excited by the latest software technologies that promise to revolutionise our marketing worlds, a simple truth remains: Unless you focus on the basics of your marketing data, no end of automation or predictive analysis is going to deliver the improved results you have promised.

The bad news is that your data is probably in something of a mess. The good news is that most of your competitors data is in a similarly poor state. It simply hasn't been a focus area for marketers until relatively recently - but now, as our industry re-learns that marketing is all about serving customers, we are starting to revisit what we can learn from the signals that our clients and prospects are already providing. And they do this every time they engage with us, talk about us, buy from us, ignore us or even complain about us.

Last week I participated in Marketing's B2B Marketing Transformation conference in Hatton Garden, London, along with some excellent speakers from Google, Dell and SimplyBusiness to name three.
I outlined a 5 step approach to getting your arms around your marketing data:

1. Capture the Right Stuff

It starts with capturing the data that will help you serve your clients better. Are you gathering insight about their interests, the people who influence them, the places they look for insight?

And if you are currently looking to identify new strategic investment areas for next year, you had better ensure that the data that you are capturing will help support that strategy. It is also important to have a good dialogue with the sales function so that you can minimise the amount of useful data that is being recorded on individual laptops rather than being shared for the common good. The same applies to external list purchases - you should never buy in a new list without figuring out how you are going to integrate it with the rest of the data that you have.

2. Organise it to be Useful

In order to be usable for analyis or outbound marketing activity, you will need to structure the data so that you minimise the amount of unnecessary variation. Creating a data dictionary is a good place to start to see the scale of the problem. This is simply a table of all the available fields along with all the potential values for each field. Then you can start to introduce standardised fields for key areas such as job roles, territory assignments, country etc. For example, you may want to group Marketing director, VP Marketing, CMO, and Head of Marketing all under a single job role of "Marketing Leader".

Remember - it's an order of magnitude less expensive to capture data correctly at the entry point than to resolve and correct later. Examine your forms and other capture points - ensure that you use dropdown menus to minimise data capture errors/variance and use mandatory fields if there are specific fields that you will need later on for targeting and analysis. All this would be second nature to a systems person - but most marketers today do not have any background in systems.

Increasingly people are starting to look at Social Signon systems as way to ensure that (normally correct) information from LinkedIn etc is shared, without the need to present further forms. After all, 88% of us admit to having deliberately submitted false information into a contact form - I guess the other 12% just don't admit it!

3. Fill in the Gaps

The client is not the only source of information - and we all have a loathing of long contact forms. We can supplement the data we've gathered with information from 3rd party sources such as D&B, Experian or Jigsaw.

Furthermore, integrating with data from social streams is an emerging area of marketing data enrichment. And don't ignore any opportunities to augment your data with useful insights from your customer service systems or from your channel partners.

4. Get Creative

In my corporate career, I was frustrated that the dialogue between the marketing program teams and the data analysts was only ever along the lines of "Give me a list of all the IT Directors in the Finance Industry". Too late and too dull.

Instead of basing our outbound campaigns purely on demographic and firmographic data, you will get much greater ROI if you combine that with behavioural insight - have they declared specific interests via some form of  a preference centre; or have they already displayed an interest in the particular topic by their engagement in a previous activity? The big learning I took away from those experiences was that it's never to early to involve the data analysts in the campaign planning process - you will almost certainly make your campaigns more effective and less wasteful.

5. Keep it Clean!

In an ideal world you would be able to go to a dashboard that gives you the key metrics around the health of your marketing data whenever you choose to view it. However in my experience most people don't have this luxury yet (although it is a feature of several marketing automation platforms). Therefore some element of a database audit is required. Sound scary? It really isn't. It starts with looking at the completeness of key data fields (ie is there data in them or not?) and then looking at the validity of that data (ie is the data any good or are the name fields full of "Micky Mouse"?)

For many, an audit might be the first place to start on your marketing database journey of discovery - at least it will inform where you have the greatest challenges.

And how often should you be auditing your data? Ideally it should be a constant part of your management system, but at the very least it should be done whenever there is a significant change in the business - eg a change in strategy, an acquisition of another company, a change in the pattern of marketing results, or a significant spike in opt-outs.

Love your Data in 2013

The bottom line is that we are all trying to get closer to our customers. This means that we need to looking more closely at the data that we have about them, and developing our skills to turn that into analysis and insight and ultimately revenue.

The full presentation from the conference is below. What's your data resolution for 2013?

Leveraging your marketing data from Pete Jakob

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2009's Top 50 Marketing Blogs

There's always a plethora of lists of "this years blogs to watch" around this time of the year. I just stumbled across one from Evan Carmichael (a new author to me - but creating lists is always a good way of promoting your profile in the blogosphere). Some old faithfuls in here (Seth Godin, Marketing Sherpa, Guy Kawasaki) plus several that I've not come across before. Helpfully they've divided them in to different sections.

What additional ones would make your list of must-read blogs - particularly in the B2B space?

Personally I would add Chris Brogan, Marketing Profs Daily Fix and Web Ink Now for starters.

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An Organic Gardener's Guide to Lead Nurturing

Yesterday I spoke at a seminar organised by B2B Marketing magazine. Rather than use the traditional analogies of dating/marriage that we all use to describe the nurturing approach, I used the topic of vegetable gardening (it's the new rock'n'roll!).

Marketing campaigns produce seedlings, but that's only the start - we need to feed, weed, water, prick out etc at the appropriate time. We also need to ensure that the sales teams want to eat vegetables and are not just red meat eaters. You get the picture?

So my 9 tips for a bumper marketing crop have now become:

1. Grow the right stuff (Align marketing activity with Sales)
2. What's growing and What isn't (Record all your Responses in a client contact-centric view)
3. Follow the instructions on the Seed Packet (Develop "nurturing blueprints" of standardised processes to develop a relationship from an initial response)
4. Apply the right Feed at the right time (Align your nurturing content to the stages of the buying cycle)
5. Are the nutrients being absorbed? (Implement activity-based scoring)
6. Make it easier with a little machinery (Automate the most appropriate processes)
7. Share your knowledge (Integrate your marketing insights with the CRM system)
8. Monitor Progress Regularly (Measure key indicators)
9. Apply plenty of Mulch (Refine and keep learning)

You can find the complete presentation on Slideshare.

Flickr Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tico_bassie/120810354/

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5 Ways to make B2B Lead Management more Effective

Catching up on some reading today I came across this article from the ITSMA - an interview with the excellent Brian Carroll. It offers the following common sense advice to improve your lead management:

1. Create a marketing funnel
2. Create a universal definition of a lead
3. Use the phone
4. Ask about goals - don't sell
5. Define lead nurturing - and the right people to nurture

All good stuff - you can read the full article here.

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Each morning our piece of the world comes through the door

Here are some of the key documents, blogs and websites that I have used recently that have really helped me get an insight into the issues and potential challenges surrounding lead nurturing and progression:

I found that googling Laura Ramos at Forrester unearthed a number of insightful pieces including a paper titled– How mature is B2B Lead Management in which they had benchmarked 252 B2B companies and established that only 9% were at best practice. For most of us, we were creating leads that we were passing onto the sales teams (usually too early), and the sales teams were tending to cherry-pick those that they felt they could close quickly. All the rest was leaking out of the buying funnel. There is also a Forrester Marketing Blog that Laura and a number of her colleagues contribute to.

Another name that keeps on popping up is Brian Carroll, CEO of Intouch. His ebook Start with a Lead offers some practical pointers that help remind us that nuturing a client from initial interest through to sale takes a sustained effort, not just a series of disconnected tactics. Brian maintains a regular B2B Lead Generation blog.

Another great resource to dive into is Jon Miller’s Modern B2B Marketing blog. Of special note here is the Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs where you will find the opportunity to learn from and engage with good, bad and ugly truth-seekers in this arena.

That's where I started on this journey - along with a few a few vendor websites such as Marketing Advocate and Vtrenz and a handful of newsletters from the likes of MarketingSherpa and MarketingProfs.

There's so much information out there that's just a click away - and most of it is free. On its own this won't solve your lead management challenges of course, but at least you'll sense that there's some others who are thinking along similar lines as yourself.

What free sources do you use for inspiration on the topic of B2B lead nurturing? Please post a comment and let me know.

And Finally - and for not obvious reason whatsoever, each post will be headlined by a an extract from a song. The only prize is your own smug satisfaction. Post #1 was pretty obvious – Start! By the Jam. Today’s is much more obscure, but also from the Jam - News of the World.

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