Developing a Revenue Marketing Organization: One Quick Tip!

Recently, Kevin Joyce published a blog post on the Business 2 Community (B2C) website which talks about how he would turn inbound marketing into a ‘revenue marketing’ organization. In the post, Joyce recommends that all of marketing should be measured on sales qualified leads (SQLs) and nothing else. It reminded me of the similar experiences I had in the past when I turned my marketing team into a ‘revenue marketing’ entity.

On two different occasions, I took an approach which was quite similar to Joyce’s - I put the entire marketing and the inside sales teams on the same goals - Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and took away all other goals. Of course, this announcement shocked everyone and it took almost two quarters for the teams to successfully collaborate, streamline the process, and hit the mutual goal. In one instance, I had a 15% turnover in staff that included those who could not adjust to the new way of thinking. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, as it gave me the opportunity to hire people with the right mindset.

The concept of revenue marketing meant that my PR team had to change their focus. With the introduction of this concept, PR now had to ‘integrate’ their activities with the marketing team versus writing articles or case studies on any topic that was ‘easy’. This meant getting a view into the events and campaigns that were being planned and developing content on THOSE topics in order to provide ‘air cover’ for the demand generation team.

Naturally, if the PR team is publishing articles and case studies focusing on the same topics as the demand generation team, you will eventually see an increase in webinar attendance, email responses, and ultimately qualified leads. Recently, I wrote a blog post that provides some interesting statistics on this topic where I talk about experiencing a 300% increase in the cost per lead for products that do not have PR ‘air cover’ versus those that do. The ‘air cover’, along with the higher quantity and quality of marketing content coming from PR, also helped the demand generation teams develop deeper campaigns and improved nurturing.

As Joyce also mentions, the mutual SQL goal forced the teams to work together. The marketing team carefully listened to the feedback provided by the inside sales team with regards to both lead quality and campaign ideas. And, over time, the inside sales team religiously followed up on each and every lead that marketing delivered.

Have you had similar experiences turning your organization into a revenue marketing entity?

References:

http://www.business2community.com/marketing/how-does-inbound-marketing-relate-to-revenue-marketing-0564580#XLYO0MdGarvQ3fdu.99I

http://b-to-bmarketingdigestfortheceo.blogspot.com/2013/10/integrated-marketing-its-still-in-isnt.html

Integrated Marketing: It's still 'IN', isn't it?

It's interesting how everything I see and do working with clients always brings me back to the

concept of 'integrated marketing' - a term coined years ago but I believe is just as relevant today. Whether you are talking about digital marketing, revenue marketing, internet marketing, email marketing, PR, AR - anythingmarketing; none of it works unless all dials are tuned and all marketing disciplines, campaigns, activities are integrated across the board.

I wrote about examples of what happens if marketing is not integrated in older blog posts but there is one experience I had that 'showed me the money' - what it costs when marketing isn't integrated.

A client of mine had three different product lines - two of which were their core products and one which was an after-thought product developed by an engineer who thought it was a solid piece of technology. Let us call each: Product A, Product B and Product C.

Marketing activities, either by design or by accident, were integrated for Product A and Product B; the message to customers, the marketplace, media and analysts was consistent and the branding, website, positioning, targeting, lead generation, partner management and field marketing were all aligned.

Product C, on the other hand solved a completely different business problem for a completely different audience than the other Products. Regardless, sales viewed Product C as an easy way to bring in incremental revenue quickly. The Sales VP assigned three full times sales representatives and one inside sales representative to focus solely on Product C and instructed Demand Marketing to run lead generation activities. Corporate Marketing was not supporting any activity over Product C other than the Product Marketing Manager (who was one of the best the company had) to develop marketing content and sales collateral without any oversight to ensure brand and messaging consistency.

The results? Demand Marketing barely generated leads for Product C and the cost per lead was way out of line when compared to the other product lines - over $9,000 per sales lead - 300% higher than the cost of a sales lead for Product A or Product B.

Was it the marketing? You bet it was - a great example of what happens when you do not have integrated marketing.

If you have had similar experiences, I'd love to hear.....