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.....

3 Sales Questions You Should Always Ask and Answer

You are working with sales to develop a value proposition for a specific prospect. The presentation is going in different directions as the sales and marketing teams suggest different strategies. Some want to talk about product and features; others want to focus on benefits and ROI. The conversation gets tangled and so does the presentation.

One of the most important things to remember when developing client-facing content is to put yourself in the prospect's shoes. What questions are the BUYERS asking themselves? What do THE BUYERS need to know to justify a buy decision?

It's more simple than you might realize because at the end of the day, the prospective buyer needs to know the answer to only 3 QUESTIONS:

1. Why should I buy?
2. Why should I buy from you?
3. Why should I buy NOW?

Wow! 

Now you are asking yourself, "Why didn't I think of that on my own?" No worries. I can't take credit for developing the 3 questions. The concept was passed down to me from a marketing consultant many years ago.

But I can demonstrate how to respond to the 3 questions, and I decided to use my own company and services as real-life example. Note that I've limited my responses to 5 points because that is the most a human being can digest - 3 points is even better.

Why buy marketing consulting services?

So let's pretend that we are the buyer. We sit in her chair. We wear her shoes. Speaking as the buyer, what want to be able to articulate the business problem?

• B2B marketing organizations need to be agile and move quickly. I need a consultant to keep the wheels on the marketing machine especially when priorities and staff requirements change.
• Sometimes I need to fill a temporary gap in headcount. Other times I need specific marketing expertise fast.
• Hiring great team members takes time and if work stops or slows down, the company can loose its competitive edge which can negatively impact my reputation across the company.
• Sales doesn't care if marketing is understaffed or overworked, sales needs leads.
• The company's revenue number is depending on me. 

Why buy McGee Marketing Consulting services?

The answer to this question highlights your differentiators and the responses change depending upon the specific needs of the prospect. Make sure that for any differentiator you mention, you can provide proof to support your claim. This is an example that I recently provided to a technology company that sells B2B insurance software.

• Over 20 years of 'old and new-school' experience as a strategist with the ability to execute and achieve measurable results. 
• Expertise in 'womb to win' integrated marketing (e.g., from GTM plan development through all aspects of marketing and sales execution). 
• Experience across all marketing disciplines in the B2B technology sector. 
• Domain expertise in both the healthcare and insurance segments.
• Innate ability to quickly simulate with your team and achieve success fast.

Why buy now?

This is a very important question - it is the compelling event that has a strong sense of urgency and can only be answered after a discovery session with the prospect. Here are the reasons why clients have engaged with me - again from their point of view.

• I need an expert to put a new set of eyes over our messaging and value proposition NOW.
• I need someone to manage my PR agencies NOW. I'm spending a fortune and need the PR activities integrated with the rest of marketing.
• I am understaffed and need to launch a new product NOW.
• Sales needs more leads NOW and the current demand generation machine isn't working.
• We are a small company, need help with strategy NOW, but not ready to hire a full time VP of Marketing.

I am interested to get your point of view on the "Why buy...Why buy your company...Why buy now" perspective.

3 Reasons Why You Need to Redesign your Website

Several weeks ago, HubSpot published an excellent blog post discussing 10 Terrible Reasons to Redesign your Website and as I read it, I recalled how many times I heard these exact reasons from former employers or clients.

And when one of these reasons surfaced, I remember how the marketing team stopped everything to redesign, relaunch, revamp, re-something the corporate website as fast as possible. Many times, the website looked so much better - everyone agreed - but no one really knew whether the website was 'behaving' better - meeting the objective of 'why a website'?

For this reason, I thought I'd share with you my views on 'when to redesign your website' - IMHO.

Reason 1: Prospects tell you they don't know what you do

One of the key components that drives a superior website is crisp messaging which is developed from the customer or prospect's point of view. I myself have made mistakes here, getting caught up in coining new technology or marketing terms, trying to look 'new school', modern, on the bleeding edge, only to later discover that website readers are scratching their heads wondering what we are talking about. Other times, I've seen organization's get caught up in focusing on the 'unique' features of their product - versus the 'unique' value - which only leads to presenting your product while standing in the weeds.

IMHO - You should crystallize your value proposition, key messages and unique selling propositions (USPs) before you even think about a website redesign. Prepare yourself because if you are a SMB and haven't done this in a process-oriented way, you may be surprised to see how long and difficult this can be. Also look under Reason 3 for other homework you will need to do before finalizing your messaging.

Reason 2: Your customers tell you they can't find anything on your website

Website navigation is more important that you think. Regardless of how much great marketing content you may have on your site, it's of no use if no one can find it.

IMHO, you need to think about what your customers and prospects want to know - NOT what your company wants the customer to know - and put that content front and center.

Depending on the objective of your site (see Reason 3 below), customers, customer stories, resources such as your blog and other thought leadership pieces, and educational opportunities such as webinars, events, should be front and center - in other words, ABOVE the fold.

Reason 3: Your website isn't meeting your company's objective

Reason 3 assumes, of course, that you have identified the objective of your website at some point. For most B2B enterprise software organizations, the objective of a website is one or more of the following:

• Provide product, company and/or industry/thought leadership information for existing customers and prospects
• Generate leads (note: for a software company that provides 'free trial' software, the objective of their website may be to generate sales AND leads)
• Enhance your company's brand
• Any combination of a through c above.

Provide information (a.k.a. marketing content)

With regards to product and company information, you know if you haven't reached the objective if you can check off Reasons 1 or 2 above. What is more interesting is that if you are doing a good job at providing compelling information about your company or product, and your customers/prospects can decipher and find it, you can still get a low grade for your site if you aren't delivering industry and thought leadership content.

IMHO - many technology organizations have great websites both visually and content-wise but it only talks about the company and/or the product. Your readers want more. They are looking to be educated about your 'space' and the value of your product or service. Don't just talk about yourself, your company, your product, your product features.

Generate leads

Both marketing and sales will know, intuitively, if the website isn't generating inbound leads from either organic search or PPC. The problem here can be a combination of not identifying the right keywords (or any keywords for that matter), not delivering the information the prospect wants, not making the information easy to find. 

IMHO - you should develop your list of initial keywords as you develop your messaging, value proposition, USPs and web content. And, bear in mind that this will be an iterative process. Hire SEO and PPC SMEs and don't forget that a strong social media presence can also bring leads to your site.

Enhance the company's brand

Your sales team, customers, the media and the industry analysts will tell you, in a heartbeat, whether they recognize your brand. What they can't necessarily tell you as easily is whether the brand personality, as portrayed on your website, is the personality you want portrayed. 

IMHO - if you feel your brand and/or brand personality is weak or needs to be more 'current', you will need to bring your company through a re-branding exercise. Unless you have a branding SME on staff (and even if you do and depending on your size), re- randing is best done in collaboration with an outside marketing agency.

Have you had other experiences for 'why a website redesign'? If so, please feel free to comment and add additional ideas.

10 Steps to Develop a Lead Generation Plan

Integrating Social Media Marketing

I had a series of interesting conversations these past few days with several individuals about the importance of integrating traditional marketing techniques with social media marketing. As I work with a series of different B-to-B clients, I notice that one company typically excels at traditional marketing techniques while another excels at social media. Many organizations are looking for the right marketing talent to integrate the best practices of each.

Marketing Sherpa published a good article this past week about Social Medias Place in the Elite Marketing Trio, which you should read to make sense of the remainder of my post. Here is the chart with the results of a survey asking marketers to rank the importance of social media. I voted (unofficially to myself) and chose that in a pure integrated marketing model, social media marketing can (1) complement existing tactics, (2) be a standard marketing tactic and (3) have its own budget line item. The answer for your organization will have something to do with the target audiences and products/services that your team is marketing.

For example, with a company that has multiple products or lines-of-business (LOBs) targeting different segments and/or audiences - you might choose a social media marketing tactic exclusively for one segment and perhaps integrate with existing tactics when targeting another segment/audience. Your choices may be driven by (1) your desired outcomes, (2) where a segmented audience is in the lead nurturing cycle (or the impact on brand as an influencer or thought leader), (3) how 'social' your audience is and (4) your budget and the need to balance and execute more comprehensive marketing tactics (including social media) to your top priority segments/audiences, while spending less dollars via social media exclusively for segments that are a secondary focus.

I think it is also important to note that the "trio" analogy the author discusses talks to interactive marketing tactics and if a non-marketer reads this article, it can leave an impression that oversimplifies the power (and complexity) of marketing. While interactive marketing tactics are important, there is more to marketing/lead generation than dropping emails, SEO and social media particularity for enterprise software companies. Most enterprise software companies have multiple "messages" and target audiences as discussed above. For those organizations targeting C-suite executives and Vice Presidents, in particular, marketers need to integrate an array of different marketing mediums including direct (dimensional) mailings, executive events (such as a breakfast event, cocktail hour, dinner, etc.), email, webinars, SEO/SEM, social media, tradeshows/conferences/thought leadership events, telemarketing, etc. - those that entice more "face-to-face" interaction and relationships.

The good news with this survey is that marketers realize that social media is here to stay. I think it would be interesting to survey non-marketing executives to get their point of view. I sometimes think that all the hype about social media marketing is confusing non-marketers who already grapple with what marketing really is....

Here are some relevant links/sites on this topic:

http://elektrik.com/blog/2009/07/integrated-marketing-strategies-are-even-more-important/

http://masterful-marketing.com/social-media-marketing-one-component-of-marketing-plan/

Part III - Tips on Segmentation, Solution-Selling and Selling Solutions

In order to address segmentation and answer the question: what am I selling to a given vertical that differentiates my product or service from what I sell to another vertical – I find it is good to talk about the concepts of ‘solution-selling’ (or ‘solution selling’) vs. ‘selling solutions.’

I remember working with one enterprise Software Company evangelizing solution-selling as I was working to expand this organizations brand from an infrastructure company to a “solutions” company. Since I had been an early advocate of (and thoroughly trained in) ‘consultative selling’, the notion of solution-selling was natural for me to embrace. I was very surprised about a year into this position when one of the most respected product marketing directors exclaimed: “Terry, when you talk about solution-selling, I thought you were talking about selling applications.” I then realized that I had some work to do to better explain myself.

Even as late as this past year, I’ve been asked the same question or something close to it – “What is solution-selling?”, “What is a solution?”, etc. Some years ago, it was rumored that IBM was asking similar questions and engaged SiriusDecisions to define a “solution”. A white paper on this topic can be found on the SiriusDecisions website (but you may need to have a subscription).

Here are my thoughts on solution-selling, what a solution is, etc.

Solution-selling is different than selling solutions. Typically, when selling solutions, the prospect tends to think you have an “out-of-the-box application” or something quite close to it. Selling an application can incorporate (and should incorporate) solution-selling concepts but solution-selling does not mean you are selling an application…is this confusing?

Solution-selling occurs when you position your marketing and sales message to address a “business pain” that a prospect is experiencing instead of merely selling technology for technology’s sake. In a good economy, such as what we experienced in the late 90’s, your prospect organizations were enamored with technology and were willing to spend big bucks just to have the latest and greatest technology “toys”. In most cases, it was the IT organization that made the buy decisions. When the .com bomb occurred, we saw the pendulum swing away from buying technology for technology’s sake - to the requirement for organizations to invest in technology when a line-of-business (LOB) executive indicated that he/she needed this technology to solve a strategic (or tactical) business problem. The challenge technology vendors had: convince the LOB executives that your technology could address their business pain. Hence, the language of marketing and selling had to change. This is what we call solution-selling.

So, instead of selling features and functions to IT (who could intuitively understand why a given feature/function was important), we had to sell benefits and return-on-investment (ROI) to the LOB executive. Technology vendors had to ‘talk the talk’ of the business executive. If you were selling technology to an insurance company claims vice president, you needed to talk about claims management and processing. If you were selling to a bank’s mortgage department, you had to talk about mortgage servicing and processing.

Since the beginning of time, technology organizations have been working to execute to a solution-selling approach. Even today when I speak to many software organizations, solution-selling is top of mind.

Here are some links to other blogs/articles defining solution-selling which offer similar points of views. There are also many books available that go into detail regarding solution-selling sales methodologies.

http://businessskeptic.firstrulecorp.com/2007/10/13/solution-selling-defined/

http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3476

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_selling

Next posting, I will talk about my views on the evolution from solution-selling to selling solutions…..

Part II - Tips on how SMB Enterprise Software Companies can better segment

This is a 2nd posting on this topic. See posting dated August 12, 2009 for Part I of this series.

'Segmented messaging’ is typically a first “baby step” that many SMB software organizations choose when “going vertical”. The challenge you face is: where do I get the content? The answers are:

(1) Identify company personnel who have specific industry expertise and/or

(2) Hire part time consultants who have the domain expertise you need as an interim step and/or

(3) If you have already defined your longer term roll-out plan for verticalization and plan to move to “segmented marketing”, you may want to consider hiring marketing professionals with domain expertise.

‘Segmented marketing’ means that you plan to target all of your marketing messages directly to a given segment by developing an “integrated marketing” model and I emphasize the word “integrated”. In the past, I have seen organizations move to segmented marketing but in a fragmented way, e.g., run segmented lead generation campaigns but not segment the message in media, public or analyst relations. I have never seen a fragmented marketing model work. In fact, every like-kind approach was an abysmal failure forcing the organization to revert back to the former “horizontal” model. (And typically try a vertical approach again a few years down the road).

Marketing messages need to be consistent. If your PR team is talking a different talk than your lead generation team, you will more than likely waste marketing dollars and never realize an acceptable ROI on segmentation.

‘Segmented sales’ occurs when the sales force is verticalized but this is not an all-or-nothing approach. In fact, in most cases, sales verticalization is localized. Metropolitan areas may realign sales over verticals where there are large concentrations of companies whereas rural geographies might identify multiple verticals or not verticalize at all. In some cases, both sales and pre-sales technical support may be verticalized or just sales. In other cases, (and this is prevalent in initial phases), sales will not be initially verticalized but sales “domain experts” - what we call “rain makers” - work with sales as an “overlay” function.

Unlike segmented marketing where only an integrated approach will work, there are many successful segmented sales models.

Next blog answers your question: Ok…I’m convinced I need to “go vertical” but what product/solution am I selling?