21st Century Public Relations

The RACE Digital Marketing Planning Framework We created RACE to help digital marketers plan and manage their activities in a more structured way since we. Marketing topic(s):Digital marketing strategy. Advice by Dave Chaffey.

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Digest...

In the B2B world, most innovations have implications far beyond the purchase.  People have to be retrained, systems have to be updated, processes have to be adapted, and more.   Additionally, in the destructive phase, someone (often the person who made the original purchase recommendation) has to make the case for early replacement.   That is not an easy position to take, with its significant political ramifications.

 

When you look at all these factors, you can see why B2B disruptions often take several years before they reach critical mass.   This should be reflected in your strategies.   Progress is critical, but focus on the best way to achieve that progress.   Get some wins from traditional competitive procurements.  Target new buyers that have been on the sidelines since there is less emotional and organizational “baggage.”  For destructive opportunities, focus your energies on one or two competitors and implement strategies to ease the transition from them to you.

 

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Advanced/ Digest...

But my earlier perceptions play out the challenge that marketers face–everyone  thinks they can market.  As a result, we are constantly on the defensive, trying to convince people of the value we provide. Sometimes, this goes too far—where we define marketing as being the hub of the business, trying to get over our own inferiority complex by making everything else inferior to us.   As I hear more and more talk of marketing having “revenue responsibility,” I worry that this is going to far.   Sales has revenue responsibility.  Marketing’s job is to make it easier for sales to sell and customers to buy.  But if we broaden the scope of marketing too far, we are doing what was done to us—devaluing key roles and functions in the business.

 

When you think of marketing this way, the role is pretty broad.  Its about contributing to what is being created.  Its defining who the target customers are and the value they can expect to receive.  It’s sharing the story broadly so that the job of your sales channels (whether ecommerce, direct, or indirect) get easier.  You want to be that favorite author–the one who fans wait impatiently for their next book or story and tell all their friends about.

 

Whether you like my definition or hate it, the big thing is to get over marketing’s inferiority complex.  Refute definitions that define marketing based on a single tactical activity.  Participate in strategic discussions and fight hard for the good of the brand and brand promise.  I recently advised one client that has an incredible track record of successful implementations that that was a claim to stand behind.  And, if any of their product lines did not match that standard, they should either be  divested or work must be done to the product or services to get to the level of the other products.   That is marketing driving strategy and it makes sense.

 

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Advanced/ Digest...

There’s a deep organizational chasm between [marketing and technology]. But worse, each has their own language, tools, and processes. Plain and simple, the two organizations don’t know how to talk to each other, and the result is the wrong technology for the right market (if you’re a marketer) or the right technology for the wrong market (if you’re a technologist.) Both ways, customers suffer and so do business results.

 

The biggest difference, however, is around customers. Where marketers pull, technologists push – can’t be more different than that. But neither is right, both are. There’s a huge need for translators – marketers that speak technologist and technologists that talk marketing. But how to develop them?

 

To transcend the language barrier, don’t use words, use video. To help technologists understand unmet customer needs, show them a video of a real customer in action, a real customer with a real problem. Technologists don’t believe marketers; technologists believe their own eyes, so let them.

 

To help marketers understand technology, don’t use words, use live demos. Technologists – set up a live demo to show what the technology can do. Put the marketer in front of the technology and let them drive, but you can’t tell them how to drive.  Marketers don’t understand technology, they understand their own eyes, so let them.

 

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The short version: the above graphic is the latest incarnation of my marketing technology landscape supergraphic (click for a high-resolution 2600×1950 version, 4.7MB).

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To come up with the Hot Marketing Tips for 2014, I turned to CMOs, authors, CEOs, and even a Dean. I asked the experts to provide their top tips for CMOs as we move from 2013 to 2014.

Advanced/ Digest...

Below are 5 of the best ideas (and a bonus one) that range from career to management to marketing advice.

 

Tip #1: Think ‘Cloud’ First

CMOs in 2014 need to think ‘cloud’ first as the vast amount of channels, systems, media and networks that make marketing ‘work’ will grow even more over the next 12-24 months. Being able to integrate systems and reconcile data on a daily basis is the only way the CMO’s business will stay aligned with the speed of today’s audience/consumer.”

 

Tip #2: Bias for Action

Marketers will be well served by getting into the market quicker, reading results faster, and being more agile in action.

 

Tip #3: Don’t Fall Behind While the World Moves Ahead

The technologies and data sources for tracking (marketing fundamentals) are changing at warp speed.  Failing to keep up is a certain recipe for falling behind, but today’s environment offers many more ways to stay abreast than in years past. 

 

Tip #4: Learn Google Analytics

Every CMO with a strong online presence should be fluent in how to analyze, understand and evaluate at a high level their online traffic.  This skill is necessary to ‘walk the talk’ with their team and gain credibility with senior executives. Should a CMO routinely spend time in Google Analytics? Probably not, but understanding the concepts of online analytics will make a CMO more effective in all aspects of their job.

 

Tip #5: Don’t Focus on Profit at the Expense of Growth

Many smaller / mid-sized firms are so worried about the bottom line that they adopt a state of analysis paralysis when it comes to planning for the future. Focusing on profit while ignoring the planning that can lead to growth can be costly and prevent the executive from achieving long(er)-term business goals.

 

Bonus Tip: Drive More Revenue from Content Marketing

The power of content marketing comes from leveraging the rich data captured within marketing automation to better educate and convert prospects to qualified leads and high value sales. CMOs that approach content marketing strategically, with disciplined processes and alignment to revenue will generate more value from the technologies already in place that are severely under-utilized.

 

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Digest...

Here are five themes for the future which resonated across multiple surveys and form the basis for these predictions. Remember, they are made specifically for large and extra-large companies.

 

1. Customer Experience Will Be the Battleground Marketers Are Fighting Over

In 2016 customer experience will garner the highest level of marketing investment; it is one of three areas in which CEO’s expectations of CMOs will increase the most; and bleeding-edge technologies to improve it will be the top innovation project marketers undertake.

 

2.  How Marketers Use Customer Data Will Determine their Level of Success

Managing, collecting and making use of internal and external data was the second highest area of CEO’s increased expectations for CMOs. Marketers will analyze data less and synthesize it more, leading to better and more actionable conclusions. Distribution of the data to decentralized groups such as brands or business units will occur to allow for informed recommendations/decisions about what action to take.

 

3.  Digital Commerce Will be Inextricably Linked with Marketing

We found that in 25% of organizations, marketing has total responsibility for digital commerce, and in 46% of companies, marketing owns a digital commerce P&L now.  Whether you lead or support your company’s digital commerce efforts, plan for higher investment and a greater role in crafting compelling commerce experiences. 

 

4.  Marketing Will Set the Strategy for Not Just Marketing Technology, But for All Customer-facing Technology

Marketing will be intensely involved in all technology that touches the customer as it works on improving the customer experience with customer service, sales and operations. It already sets the strategy and develops the roadmap for marketing technology in over 90% of companies. In a growing number of companies it is moving into different elements of revenue management, including former sales systems. By the end of 2016, customer-facing technology strategy and roadmaps will be led by marketing in at least one quarter of companies.

 

5.  Marketing Innovation Will Come Out of the Closet

For the second year in a row we found that marketers are setting aside more than 9% of their budget for innovation. Leading a culture of change and company-wide innovation was the third highest ranked increased CEO expectation of CMOs. More marketing executives have innovation in their title.  An increasing number of CMOs manage product development as well as product management. Digital business transformation is causing many industries to shift their business model and offerings to digital vs. physical; putting marketing squarely in the middle of such innovation. 

 

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Digest...

1. Run Emotional Ideas

Studies have shown emotional and psychological appeals resonate more with consumers than feature and function appeals. In advertising copy, benefits--which often have a psychological component--generally outsell features.

 

2. Highlight Your Flaws

It’s no secret that consumers tend to doubt marketing claims--for good reasons. Many simply aren’t credible. One way to raise credibility is to point out your product’s shortcomings.

 

3. Reposition Your Competition

In Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout delve into the limited slots consumers have in their brain for products and services, and the importance of positioning one’s business in the ideal slot. They also write about repositioning--changing the position a business occupies in consumers’ minds.

 

4. Promote Exclusivity

Near the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid sits self-esteem. People want to feel important; like they’re part of an exclusive group. That’s why advertising copy sometimes says: “We’re not for everyone.”

 

5. Introduce Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or FUD, is often used legitimately by businesses and organizations to make consumers stop, think, and change their behavior. FUD is so powerful that it’s capable of nuking the competition.

 

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Digest...

1. Program Focus (Top graphic)

With the program focus funnel, especially if you are leveraging marketing automation, you are trying to map back specific programs and content to specific personas in the specific stages of this funnel.

 

2. Operations Focus (Middle graphic)

As you can see with the operations focus funnel, the considerations change. The focus is on processes, not programs. Some key processes to note with this funnel are fast tracking, lead scoring, qualification stages, and lead recycling. No matter how you set up your operational funnel, you want to have a fast track path to sales. The sales team does not want to feel that qualified leads are being held up in Marketing. Lead scoring is simple to set up in marketing automation but hard to master. The same white paper could be downloaded by someone just collecting information or someone ready to close. How do you score it? Keep revisiting and adjusting your lead scoring on at least a quarterly basis.

 

3. Buyer’s Focus (Bottom graphic)

Some look at the above graphic and call it a buyer’s journey. It is—but it is a buyer’s journey through the funnel. Too many marketers overlook these distinct buyer’s actions as they plan campaigns and programs through the funnel. You must map specific content to these specific actions if you want to see specific results. The content that you would send out at the “Committing to change” stage should be different than that content going out at the “Justifying the decision” stage. Always take a moment and consider the buyer’s journey through the funnel as you plan and create your marketing initiatives.

 

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Marketing has changed more in the last five years than in the 100 before that. The speed of change in marketing is picking up its pace, and it’s going to keep accelerating.  The implication is that marketers will need a customer engagement platform to keep up. Here's why marketers need a platform, and what that platform looks like.

Advanced/ Excerpt...

Here’s what a marketing platform needs to deliver:

1. UNDERSTAND: Track customer identity, contacts, and context across every digital, social, and mobile channel — then organize this information into a single, open data repository.
2. ORCHESTRATE: Design and coordinate engaging customer experiences and continuous conversations that take each customer on a personal journey over time – and do this in an organized, automated way.
3. PERSONALIZE: Deliver relevant, personalized content and messages across channels and devices.
4. MANAGE: Support the operational aspects of running a marketing department. Plan the marketing calendar, coordinate content, track investments, and tie the marketing budget directly to results.
5. OPTIMIZE: Measure and maximize marketing ROI across channels. Attribute outcomes to each marketing experience, regardless of which application handled the interaction.  Support data-driven decision making at the speed of marketing.
6. LEARN: The pace of change in marketing isn’t slowing down, so the platform also needs to give guidance, best practices, and knowledge to help marketers keep up.

Lastly, as discussed above, a true platform needs to be open to allow other marketing applications to tap into their data repositories, workflow capabilities, analytics, and so on. A true platform provides a backbone of common orchestration, common management, and common measurement, competing with the other platforms to provide the most complete ecosystem of marketing solutions.

 

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Advanced/ Excerpt...

Looking at the latest marketing technology landscape, you might ask yourself, “How the heck do marketers make sense of all of this?” Increasingly, the answer is: they have a chief marketing technologist.

A terrific new research report by Laura McLellan of Gartner, How the Presence of a Chief Marketing Technologist Impacts Marketing, confirms that this senior hybrid role — “part strategist, part creative and part technologist” and “broadly the equivalent of a CTO and a CIO dedicated to marketing”— is growing in popularity. Within large companies — more than $500 million in annual revenue — 81% of them now have a chief marketing technologist role, up from 71% just a year ago. Another 8% expect to add that role within the next 24 months.

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Intermediate/ Excerpt...

1. True/False: The most effective B2B marketers use an average of 3 social media platforms.

2.  True/False: Over 70% of B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did a year ago.

3. True/False:  B2B reviews are expected to transform themselves and mimic B2C review forums, creating a crowdsource platform to narrow down vendor potentials.

4. True/False: Google+ and Slideshare will remain ineffective channels for content distribution in 2014.

5. True/False: According to Social Media B2B, companies that consistently blog generate 2o% more leads per month than those who don’t.

6. True/False: CMOs and CIOs should be joined at the professional hip.

7. True/False: Mobile marketing is only for the B2C marketplace. B2B marketers should focus on desktop.

8.  True/False: According to Google, high-quality content is more crucial to content marketing success than keyword stuffing.

9. True/False: Native advertising will start to take a back seat in 2014.

10. True/False: 52% of B2B leads are never called.

 

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