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BMI: Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 302—December 12th, 2011)

 

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The Indispensable Marketing Professional: Five Ways to Keep Your B2B Marketing Job

by Eric Gagnon

In prior issues of TMN, we've covered some of the important keys to making yourself, and your marketing program, indispensable to sales by re-orienting your program for lead generation, prospect conversion through effective lead development, and getting out ahead of your program to help develop new business.

This week, we’ll address five more ways to get your marketing program, and yourself, re-oriented to serving sales in this new economic climate, including the most important key of all, which is you (see 5.) below).

1.) CRM is your friend

Companies are adopting CRM and salesforce automation (SFA) systems to make their sales teams more efficient, and to make their marketing teams more accountable. People who implement CRM systems for companies will tell you that of all company departments, marketing is often the most resistant user of CRM systems. I’m sure part of this is due to the technical intimidation many of us feel when being faced with using new technology in our jobs, but in many cases, what marketers are running away from is the accountability CRM brings to marketing, by the precise measurability CRM introduces to this process.

Accountability introduced by CRM through better measurement ultimately forces marketers to prove the worth and value of their programs, but this is something no marketer worth their salt should ever be afraid of: If you are producing effective marketing programs, they will generate sales response (leads, open rates, landing page click-throughs, or any other result that generates a lead) and this response can be measured using CRM. Why would anyone want to be in a job where they weren’t producing tangible, measurable results?

With the understanding between you and your senior management that part of your marketing program will, by its nature, require spending for market tests and other new marketing initiatives that usually generate little or no response (see 4.) below), think of CRM as a new tool for helping you “up your game” as a marketing professional, to develop more effective marketing programs. CRM is only just another tool for helping you prove the value of your marketing program through objective measurement. In time you will find CRM systems help you to sort out the marketing programs that are doing well from the ones that don’t pay, and they help you identify those programs that, with some work to their presentation, offer, or prospect targeting, can be modified to generate a higher return—and this is all good for you as a marketer.

Because they can efficiently automate, track, and measure any marketing program (called “campaigns” in most CRM systems), these features also make CRM systems a required tool for establishing lead development programs. If you aren’t currently running a lead development program (see below), you will be doing so sometime in your career.

As companies continue to apply IT-based approaches to business processes, CRM will only grow in its application to business-to-business marketing programs. The transparency and efficiency CRM systems bring to your marketing program can improve your competence and skill as a marketing professional, but only if you accept this change as a challenge to meet, and not a threat.

2.) Develop and formalize a lead development program

As part of their marketing programs, many companies lack formalized, ongoing lead development programs. This is a systematic, continuous communications program, run by marketing, that works alongside your sales team to communicate with prospects alongside your company’s sales team throughout your company’s sales cycle.

Of course, you know that sales cycles in B2B markets are long and consist of many individual contacts between your sales team and prospects at the company before the account is closed. For marketers, a lead development program means adding value to as many of these prospect contacts as possible, by developing the messaging for the ongoing communications utilized by your sales team in their ongoing contact with their prospects.

Think of your new lead development program as a specialized type of “marketing program after your marketing program,” usually involving electronic communications, which also integrates some of the elements of your ongoing marketing program, such as new product or pricing promotions, PR announcements, and trade show appearances by your company.

Establishing a lead development program means assessing the length of your company’s sales cycle, and evaluating the information your prospects will require on your company, its product, and its applications and benefits, as they communicate with your company’s sales reps. Developing an understanding of these information needs, and how they change over time as prospects become more knowledgeable about your product and begin to envision how it fits in with their operation, will help you determine the types of information deliverables and programs that will be needed, and when they’ll be needed.

Lead development and “triggering events:” In addition to making lead development an established communications process, think also about how you can help your company’s sales team respond to what Jill Konrath, author of the book Selling to Big Companies, calls “triggering events.” These are sudden, major changes in the prospect’s company that create a more favorable environment for closing a sale.

Examples of triggering events might include a merger which forces the acquiring company to upgrade its IT systems (great for you if your company sells hardware or software), plant expansions, or new business initiatives. Properly handled, each one of these events provide an opportunity for you to help your company’s rep on the account establish the dialogue that raises the probability of closing the sale.

By keeping in close contact with your sales team, you can provide assistance to your company’s sales reps when they experience triggering events with their prospects, following through with the critical support your sales team needs to position your company’s product as the best solution to the opportunity created by the event. Being first to know about a triggering event means being the first to frame and develop the customized presentation, white paper, fact sheet, or other marketing deliverable required to turn a triggering event into a strong opportunity to help your sales team close a sale.

CRM systems play a major role in lead development programs and executing responses to triggering events, since most lead development activities involve e-mail communications and sales rep contacts, both of which can be executed and closely tracked and measured in your company’s CRM system.

Next to the obvious benefit of improving prospect conversions through more effective marketing, running an effective lead development program that can be measured using CRM allows you to measure the total impact of your marketing program, by tracing new business closed on a prospect back to the original ad, mailing, trade show or other activity in your program that led to the prospect’s initial contact. This makes your marketing program accountable to your senior management, and keeps you solidly involved in your company’s sales process.

3.) Be the best trade show marketer you can be

In a downturn, a company will often cut marketing activities that don’t generate a ready return, like advertising, PR, or flashy, experimental stuff like social Web media. However, appearances at the industry’s top trade shows are usually safe, because these are the venues where your company’s sales team shows up to meet new prospects, close sales, and do new business with existing customers.

Given a choice between executing marketing projects that may or may not generate leads, or going to a trade show where exposure to prospects who mean new business is almost guaranteed, trade shows become more important to companies who are looking to hold their current business, and to develop new business by their contact with prospects and customers at the show.

Your company’s sales team is looking to you to provide the essential pre-show and on-the-ground marketing execution and support, and post-show lead handling and followup to maximize the value of your trade show schedule.

So to be an indispensable marketing pro, be the best trade show marketer you can be. Master the fundamentals of providing effective marketing execution for your company’s trade show appearances:

Integrate your company’s trade show appearances into other parts of your marketing plan, for example, by coordinating announcements of upcoming trade show appearances in print ads and mailings;
Develop pre-show mailings and e-mail campaigns to get prospects and customers to your booth at the show;
Plan and execute effective, hard-hitting trade show deliverables—booth backdrop, signage, booth video, and print collateral;
Establish and stick to a firm policy on lead qualification and ongoing inclusion and follow-up on generated leads with your lead development program.

In good economies and bad ones, effective execution of trade shows is where marketing managers earn their pay. Here are links to previous TMN articles on trade show presentation and execution:

• Trade Shows, Part 1: Evaluating and Getting the Most from Your Company’s Trade Show Opportunities: Three Keys to Trade Show Success

• Trade Shows, Part 2: Trade Show Pre-Marketing and Deliverables: What You Need to Do Before the Show

• Trade Shows, Part 3: Trade Show Deliverables: Using Clear and Effective Presentation to Draw Qualified Prospects to Your Booth

4.) Try and test many different marketing activities, and execute, adapt, and improve

Robust marketing programs must be agile, flexible, and dynamic, and especially so during a recession, because you never can tell when a marketing activity that has usually worked well begins to fail. Viewing the execution of your marketing program as a kind of hedging strategy, by developing many different marketing activities as both market tests and ongoing programs, is the best insurance against failure in one of these activities.

What happens, for example, if the messaging, copy, or promotional offer you’ve been using successfully in your print advertising advertising campaign suddenly generates much lower response? If you have been testing different copy approaches and promotional offers, either in your ongoing ad placements, or even in other media, such as direct mail or online, you will always have another option to lift response: Different and better copy, a new promotional offer, or even a new marketing effort targeting new markets or prospects.

Think of your marketing program not as a schedule of campaigns and tactics, but as an infinite series of opportunities to reach many types of prospects in your market who represent opportunities to do business with your company. Then, think of the most effective and efficient ways to reach these groups. Third, and most important, don’t ever let yourself get too comfortable with your current marketing program: Put out the extra effort required to develop, test, and execute additional marketing projects to test new ideas, markets, and opportunities.

Testing is an important feature of every marketing program, and your best insurance against marketing program failure. Dedicate a small portion of your budget to testing, and do this continuously. If you are constantly testing different ad formats, direct mail pieces, mailing lists, and other variables in your marketing program, you are not only enhancing your knowledge of what’s effective and what’s not, you are hedging your bets in case one or more of your ongoing marketing activities suddenly pulls less response. If it does, you’ll have options you didn’t have, with a “Plan B” ready to go. Testing helps you determine what your Plan B is.

The naked truth of marketing is nobody really knows for sure what works, every time. In every new marketing program, as well as in established programs, some marketing activities, will succeed, some will fail, and some generate marginal response that may be improved with changes to copy, layout, offer, media, or targeting. However, you won’t know any of this unless you test, and you’ll certainly never get any of this done if you don’t know how to execute well. Execution is the key to making your marketing program agile, which is also one of the keys to making yourself indispensable to your company’s sales effort.

5.) Work on yourself: Stop multitasking, regain your focus, study your craft, and build your skills

The most important part of every indispensable marketing program is . . . YOU.

Now is the time to get yourself more productive, and to work on developing the professional skills you will need to better execute marketing programs that generate leads and conversions for your company or client.

First, get productive by changing your work habits. I’m convinced that the Internet, e-mail, and the myth that people actually get any real work done by “multitasking” are the three things that are killing our country’s productivity—and probably yours. Turning off your e-mail and phone for most of every hour and setting aside as many interruption-free blocks of at least 30 minutes throughout your day are two simple changes you can make that will cause your productivity to skyrocket.

Setting aside uninterrupted, timed, half-hour blocks of time (as many as you can throughout your day, with short, 5-minute breaks in between) for intense creative and planning work helps you regain your attention span, sharpens your focus and creates an environment where you can be productive at any task that’s not only important to your job, but critical for getting ahead: Planning, prioritizing, writing copy, thinking of new marketing ideas, etc.

Spend some of this new time you’ve found studying your craft of marketing: Read (or re-read) the classics of advertising by John Caples, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, and other Depression-era copywriters. Study every ad ever created by any of these guys. If these classic masters of advertising were able to create successful advertising in the Depression, what they have to teach us today is likely to work just as well in the tough economy to come.

Go to libraries and used bookstores and get hold of as many old magazines (especially trade and industrial publications) from the 1930s-1940s, and study the ads in these old issues for clear headlines, expression of benefits, offers, layout, and copy presentation. Don’t forget that these ads were selling in the midst of a Depression mindset, and often used powerful, no-nonsense sales copy and layout presentation to move their company’s products to tight-fisted buyers.

Get skills: The tough economy ahead is sure to weed out the posers in our field from those who can get things done, and next to being more productive, knowledge of the tradecraft of marketing is essential for being an effective marketing professional, even if these tasks are handled by others inside or outside your company.

Knowing how to write an effective ad, knowing the elements of an effective layout, and knowing the critical steps involved in executing every type of project in your marketing program makes you a better and more effective manager, even if you’re not doing these things yourself. Knowledge of the process, and its practice, helps you do a better job of planning your ongoing marketing execution, and minimizes those 11th-hour fire drills with your agency, copywriter, designer, consultant, or other vendor that cause delays in effective execution. Your knowledge of the tradecraft of marketing gives you respect for the process that engenders respect for you from the other members of your marketing team.

How to Begin: Go Out on Ten Sales Calls in Twenty Days, Starting Today

In addition to these steps, it’s not enough to sit in your cubicle and try to think up ways that you think will sell your product. You’ve got to get out there, listen and learn what your prospects have to say, and how your sales team sells your product—and the only way to do this is to get out there with your reps on their sales calls.

Going out on ten sales calls in 20 days (with a day in between to debrief yourself and reflect on the previous day) is the best on-the-job experience for learning what sells your product, and what you need to do to change your marketing program to achieve this goal and achieve an indispensable position as a marketing professional for your company or your client.


Comments? Questions? Send them to me at: eric@businessmarketinginstitute.com

Eric Gagnon (eric@businessmarketinginstitute.com), a director with the Business Marketing Institute, is author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook and The CRM Field Marketing Handbook.







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