Entries from June 2007
How To Handle 3 Challenges Of Multiple Marketing Channels
Being in the right place is playing a larger role than ever in driving B2B leads and sales. Multiple marketing and sales channels can lower costs and provide faster leads and sales, but how do you handle the challenges? Here are some ideas.
How to handle channel conflict
If your’re selling direct and online, and your resellers are as well, there’s a tendency for all involved to feel cut out. So first focus on the customer: make it easy for them to research and purchase the way they want to.
Then, rather than hope to eliminate channel conflict, try to minimize it by making openness a priority. Communicate early and often to anticipate and resolve issues.
How to handle pricing
Help prospective customers get to pricing info quickly and easily. Requiring users to hand over detailed information first or making technical specs tough to find will just hamper their decision-making process.
So now that they know the cost early on, don’t lose the sale on price alone. Make sure to integrate the key advantages of your solution to fit their needs with the pricing.
How to handle branding
Keep key design and brand messaging consistent across all channels with guidelines and procedures for your marketing and sales communications. When these are clear, accessible, and branding is kept top-of-mind, everyone involved will know how and why to stay on track.
Remember, it’s the relationship that prospects have with your company that delivers the strongest impression, and what will lead to growing sales by word-of-mouth–if it’s a good one.
Is The Top Marketing Job “The Most Dangerous Job In Business”?
If you have the title of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or the org chart equivalent, you may have the most dangerous job in business!
According to the June 2007 issue of Fast Company, it may be the riskiest job in the American C-Suite.
The article, The Most Dangerous Job in Business, by Ellen McGirt, quotes research by executive-search firm, SpencerStuart that shows that over the past three years the tenure for CMOs has averaged to only 23 months. (As a point of comparison, SpencerStuart says the average tenure of a CEO is 54 months.)
While analyzing why CMO tenures are so short, the article goes on to say “Maybe the CMO post should be acknowledged simply as the ‘fall guy’ job in the C-suite. If the numbers turn down and CEOs need to make changes, the first instinct certainly won’t be to step aside themselves. Getting rid of the CFO might spook Wall Street, while changing a COO or CIO could disrupt operations. Dumping the CMO seems easy in comparison.”
The article also quotes Forrester Research as saying that over the past two years, three quarters of marketing departments have been reorganized.
There is more to the ‘Dangerous Job’ article, including analysis of why this is happening and what can be done about it. It is worth reading if you are your company’s top marketer, or if your company’s top marketer is your boss.
I personally think that the short average tenure of top B2B marketers is at least partially because they are now being held accountable for the results of their marketing. Senior executives in all other departments have had to show the direct impact of their efforts on costs, revenue and profits. Why should marketers be exempt?
Do you think marketing is as dangerous as they say? How at-risk do you feel in today’s marketplace?
Some Really Interesting Information About How Tech Buyers Respond To Online Marketing
An article by Jack Loechner published on June 5, 2007 in the Center for Media Research’s Research Brief newsletter, entitled Tech Buyers Go Deep For Information and Bite on White Papers, highlights a new research study from KnowledgeStorm, in conjunction with MarketingSherpa which surveyed nearly 3,000 B2B marketers and technology and business professionals in April 2007, included CMO, VP or Directors of Marketing, Marketing or Product Managers, IT professionals, Strategic Planners, and Buyers.
I found some of the findings to be very interesting. For example:
- Sixty-six percent of marketers said they have a strategy for achieving a high organic (natural) placement for their content on major search engines. Yet, only fifty-six percent thought that their content was consistently indexed and usually accessible within the major search engines.
That means that the webpages of more than a third of the technology marketers are NOT being found in the search engine results pages! That is a huge problem for those marketers.
- Eighty percent of technology buyers say that offline marketing materials such as magazine advertisements or direct mail “sometimes” or “frequently” create sufficient interest for them to seek more information online.
I think that eight out of ten is pretty significant. This reinforces the need for both online and traditional marketing communications tactics.
- More than 50% of technology buyers say they give a valid name, email address, industry, job title and company name when they register for technology content online. And less than 40% provide accurate phone numbers.
That means that nearly half DON’T give valid contact information and the majority DON’T want to be called by phone. Why? I think it is because they would rather be in control of their consideration and buying process but are often forced to “register” to get the information they want.
So you have to find other ways to continue to reach out and touch these prospects as they move through their consideration process.
Also, if your information helps sell your company, products or services, don’t you want to get it into your prospective customers’ hands? My approach is to let my prospects download the information they want without having to register first, then ask them if they want to sign up for some addition information that may be useful to them, such as a newsletter on the same topics or updates on future events.
- Nearly 80% of technology buyers will register for a white paper, which is also the top content type marketers deem as worth requiring registration. By contrast, only 38% of buyers will register for a demo and 31% for a Webcast.
Requesting and reading a whitepaper takes less of a commitment than attending a Webcast or sitting through a demo, which may be more appropriate for the middle and later stages of your prospects’ buying process.
I recommend that B2B marketers, including tech marketers, who are looking to generate sales leads, include multiple offers or calls-to-action in all their marketing communications; each designed to appeal to prospective customers at different stages of their buying cycle. By offering three choices, you’ve effectively tripled the chance that one of your offers is appropriate to the reader or visitor and will generate a response.
- When technology buyers are asked to register for content 74% want to see at least a one-paragraph overview. However, only 48% of marketers provide this desired level of detail.
Wow.This is a huge disconnect. How can your prospects determine if they want it, if you don’t tell them what it is and why they would want it?
Request your free copy of the report here. Unfortunately, you’ll have to register first.
