The Strategic Marketing Process - How To Structure Your Marketing Activities To Achieve Better Results
The Strategic Marketing Process - How To Structure Your Marketing Activities To Achieve Better Results
Marketing Process
How to Structure Your Marketing
activities to achieve Better Results
Second Edition 2013
STRATEGY
TOOLS
CUSTOMER
ACQUISITION
written by Moderandi Inc., creators of the marketing planning and management app at www.MarketingMo.com.
This guide was written by the team at Moderandi Inc., creator of the Marketing MoTM planning and
management web app.
Marketers use our app to:
Introduction
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
The Internet has fundamentally changed the marketing function, causing the greatest shift in the field since the invention of the television.
Digital marketing, social media and mobile devices have dramatically changed how we connect with our audiences.
Theyve created a tremendous opportunity, as well as a tremendous burden.
The marketing function has become complicated.
No longer can we rely on print, publicity and a media buyer to distribute our catchy ad campaign; marketing nowadays
requires heavy IT resources and an understanding of complex metrics to effectively (and profitably) connect with our
marketbusier people, who have shorter attention spans, and often suffer from information overload.
Social media, search engine marketing, email marketing, mobile devices, website optimization, content marketing ...
its impossible for an individual marketer to master them all, in addition to their traditional media activities. And then
theres strategic planning, creative development and financial measurement.
Its overwhelming. And it has caused many marketers to specialize, focusing on a single medium as their area of
expertise.
But the reality in most small to mid-size enterprises (SMEs) is that their marketing team only has room for a handful
of specialists, if any. Most dont have the budget to employ experts in all the necessary marketing mediums needed
to effectively reach their audience. And even if they do have the budget, they often dont have enough work to justify
hiring full-time specialists.
If youre not a specialist hired solely for your expertise, youre forced to know a little about a lotto be well-versed in
how to use a combination of digital and traditional mediums to effectively meet your revenue goals.
For the typical marketer at an SME, its created a quandary:
Identifying the right things to be doing, and then learning how to do them well
Many would argue that its more difficult for marketers to determine what we should be doing, instead of how to do
things right.
If were not sure what we should be doing, its easy to dive into the hot new tactic of the moment ... without having
a strong understanding of how it ties into the rest of our revenue-generation activities.
Specialization makes it easier to perform tactics well, but specialists arent necessarily the best resource to determine
strategythe right things to be doing. Specialists typically favor their own area of expertise.
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Strategy: Your high-level conceptualization of how your offering will penetrate your market. This is your global, longterm, go-to-market strategy, and it may cover 5 to 10 years.
Tools: The collateral, assets, software and processes that you use during the tactical execution of your strategies.
Customer Acquisition: The marketing mediums and tactics that you use to execute your strategies to achieve your
goals.
Visualizing these buckets helps to reinforce the need for strategy before tactics. Search engine marketing is a marketing
medium in the customer acquisition bucket. Its not a strategyits a tactic, supported by tools (your website, sales
literature, messaging, etc.), which should be tied to a strategy.
Our process covers more than just traditional marketing and ties together all go-to-market business activities: strategic
planning, financial planning and measurement, creative development, marketing execution and sales, and customer
retention.
Since marketing is always evolving, dont shy away from subjects and ideas that are new. Good marketers are always
learning.
Embrace marketing, and most importantly, enjoy creating value for your market and communicating the value of your
activities to your team.
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Table of Contents
Strategy
1
Competitive Positioning
Brand Strategy
8 Pricing
11 Distribution Channels
Tools
15 Naming
19 Messaging
22 Corporate Identity
24 Websites
27 Sales Tools & Literature
30 Copywriting & Graphic Design
33 Vendor Selection
36 Recruiting
39 Customer Relationship Management
42 Customer Lifetime Value
45 Return on Investment
Customer Acquisition
Planning
49 Sales Process
52 Campaign Planning
56 Marketing Plan & Budget
Traditional
59 Traditional Media
62 Direct Mail
65 Publicity
68 Telemarketing
71 Trade Shows & Events
Digital
74 SEO and SEM
77 Online Advertising
80 Social Media
84 Email Marketing
Management
87 Customer Retention
90 Business Development
93 Sales Management
96 Whats Next?
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Competitive Positioning
What sets your product, service or company apart from your competitors? What value do you provide and how is it
different from the alternatives?
Competitive positioning is about defining how youll differentiate your offering and create value for your market. Its
about carving out a spot in the competitive landscape, putting your stake in the ground, and winning mindshare in the
marketplacebeing known for a certain something.
A good positioning strategy is influenced by:
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Operational Excellence
Product Leadership
Customer Intimacy
These companies have a complete understanding of how they deliver value to their market. Its part of their strategy,
which makes it easier for them to win a position in their respective markets.
Heres another way to think of it:
You can provide the best offering, the cheapest offering, or the most comprehensive offering, but you cant provide
all three.
Another key factor in your positioning is your competition. Sure, you need to put your stake in the ground and claim
your turf. But is it turf that you can own? Can you realistically beat your competition to own it?
Rather than leaving your market positioning to chance, establish a strategy. What youre ultimately striving for is to be
known for somethingto own mindshare of the market. This is typically easier for consumer product lines than for B2B
companies, because positioning a single product against three to five competitors is a simpler task than positioning a
mid-size B2B company with numerous offerings in numerous markets.
Owning a strong position in the market is challenging for most small- to mid-size companies, but you have a better
chance of achieving it if you clearly define a strategy and build your brand around it.
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have the time, budget and opportunity. Uncover their true wants and needsyoull learn a great deal about what
you can deliver to solve their problems and beat your competitors.
Group your prospects into segments or personas that have similar problems and can use your offering in similar
ways. By grouping prospects into segments or personas, you can efficiently market to each group.
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Rate yourself and your direct competitors based on operational efficiency (price), product leadership and customer
intimacy. Its easy to think youre the best, so be as impartial as you can be.
Stake a position
Identify areas where your competition is vulnerable.
Determine whether you can focus on those vulnerable areastheyre major opportunities.
Make a decision on how to position your offering or company.
Select the mindshare you want to own, and create your strategy to achieve it
Review the components of your market and evaluate what you want to be known for in the future. Condense all
your research and analysis into the one thing that you want to be known for, and design your long-term strategy
to achieve it.
Next Steps
Develop a brand strategy to help you communicate your positioning and solidify your value every time you touch your
market. Together, these two strategies are the essential building blocks for your business.
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Brand Strategy
How do you define a brand? Is it a logo, a name or a slogan, or a graphic design or a color scheme?
Your brand is the entire experience that your market has with your offering or company. Its what you stand for, a
promise that you make, and the personality that you convey.
And while it includes your logo, your color palette and your slogan, these are only creative elements that convey your
brand. In reality, your brand lives in the day-to-day interactions you have with your market:
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If youre B2C, its likely that a few brands dominate your market. If youre B2B, there may or may not be a strong brand
in your market. But when you put two companies up against each other, the one that represents something valuable
and memorable will have an easier time reaching, engaging, and converting customers. Its a perceptionand for most,
perception equals reality.
Successful branding creates brand equitythe amount of money that customers are willing to pay just because its
your brand. Brand equity is an intangible asset that can be tracked on your balance sheet, and can make your company
more valuable over the long term.
Instead of allowing your market to brand you, strive to have their experience with your brand align with your strategy.
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Before creating your survey, outline what you think your brand should stand for, so you have criteria to evaluate
against the responses. If youre not sure how to create your brand criteria, complete the next steps, and then conduct your audit.
Identify which benefits are emotional (instead of functional)the most powerful brand strategies tap into emotions,
even among business buyers.
Review the emotional benefits and boil them down to your brand pillarsthe three things that your brand should
mean to your market.
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Determine your brand promisethe one thing that you deliver each time you interact with your market.
do, for whom, and one or two emotional benefits from interacting with your brand. Use it throughout your marketing
materials.
Write your brand story. This should convey your personality, your purposethe difference that youre trying to make
with your product, service or company. It builds credibility, differentiates you from your competition, and gives the
market a reason to listen to you. Seth Godin says that the two elements that must come together in a brand story are:
Next Steps
Together with your competitive positioning strategy, your brand strategy is the essence of what you represent. A great
brand strategy helps you communicate more effectively with your market, so be true to it in every interaction you have
with your prospects and customers.
For example, youll reinforce your brand strategy through your pricing, your distribution channels, your name and corporate identity, your messages, your literature, your website and your marketing campaigns.
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Pricing
Price is one of the classic 4 Ps of marketing (product, price, place, promotion). Since price is one of the 4Ps, its a key
element of every B2C marketing strategy. Yet in many B2B companies, marketers arent involved in pricing strategy.
Pricing is a complex subjectthere are many factors to consider, both short- and long-term. For example, your prices
need to:
What your prospects might pay for other solutions to their problems
Where your price should fall in relation to theirs
When your pricing, positioning, brand strategy and distribution channels are aligned, youre in the best situation to
maximize revenue and profits.
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If your method for delivering value is operational efficiency, then your price needs to be extremely competitive.
If your method for delivering value is product leadership or customer intimacy, a low price sends the wrong message.
After all, if a luxury item isnt expensive, is it really a luxury?
Cost of goods sold (COGS): the cost to physically produce a product or service
Gross profit: the difference between the revenue you earn on a product and the cost to physically produce it
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In addition, understand how much profit the company needs to generate. With this knowledge, youll be far more effective when considering discount promotionsyoull know exactly how low you can go and still be profitable.
Next Steps
Once youve finalized your pricing strategy, you can review your tools to make sure they support your strategy. Then,
dive into your sales process and campaign planning.
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Distribution Channels
Distribution, also known as placement, is one of the classic 4 Ps of marketing (product, promotion, price, placement).
Its a key element of your strategyit helps you expand your reach to penetrate your market.
B2B and B2C companies can sell through a single channel or through multiple channels that may include:
Value-Added Reseller (VAR): A VAR works with end-users to provide custom solutions that may include multiple
products and services from different manufacturers.
Consultant: A consultant develops relationships with companies and provides various types of services; they may
recommend a manufacturers product or simply purchase it to deliver a solution to their client.
Dealer: A company or person who buys inventory from either a manufacturer or a distributor, then resells it to an
end-user.
Sales Agent/Manufacturers Rep: You can outsource your sales function to a company that sells different manufacturers products to a group of similar customers in a specific territory.
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Direct to End-Users
If users need personalized service, you can utilize a local dealer network or reseller program to provide that service.
If your users prefer to buy online, you can create an e-commerce website and fulfillment system and sell direct; you
can also sell to another online retailer or distributor that can offer your product on their own sites.
You can build your own specialized sales team to prospect and close deals directly with customers.
Wholesalers, resellers, retailers, consultants and agents already have resources and relationships to quickly bring your
product to market. If you sell through these groups instead of (or in addition to) selling direct, treat the entire channel
as a group of customersand they are, since theyre buying your product and reselling it. Understand their needs and
deliver strong marketing programs; youll maximize everyones revenue in the process.
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If the buying process is fairly straightforward, you can sell direct via a website/catalog or perhaps through a wholesale/retail structure. You may also use an inbound telemarketing group or a field sales team.
If you need complete control over your products delivery and service, adding a channel partner probably isnt right
for you.
Approach the potential channel partner and sell the value of the partnership.
Establish goals, service requirements and reporting requirements.
Deliver inventory (if necessary) and sales/support materials.
Train the partner.
Run promotions and programs to support the partner and help them increase sales.
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Next Steps
If youre creating a new channel, youll need a pricing strategy. Youll also need to deliver sales tools and literature,
and a sales process.
When your channel is up and running, you can start launching marketing campaigns to channel partners and end-users,
and manage the campaigns and partners throughout the year.
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Naming
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Unique
Average
Forgettable
A Hundred Monkeys
Igor
All of these companies may provide great services, have many years of experience, and have terrific track records. If
you needed to select three companies to bid on your naming project, which companies would you contact? Are you
more likely to call a company with a unique name, an average name, or a forgettable name?
This example reinforces that you have one chance to make a first impression. Many of your potential customers might
know virtually nothing about your company, product or service, and a great name can make a positive impression and
open doors. A weak name can close them.
The name selection process is especially challenging because there are more than 26 million businesses in the United
States. U.S. trademark law protects business names, so when you find one you like, make sure you can use it. If you
infringe on a trademark, you could be forced to abandon your new name after investing a lot of time and money in it.
Also think about your internet marketing goals, since you may have to find a URL to match your name. There are almost
200 million domain names registered worldwide, and some experts believe that over 98% of words in the dictionary
are registered as domain names.
Dont let these challenges stop you from finding the best name you cantheres a lot at stake.
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The
stakesif youre investing a lot of money into launching a new product to a major market with established
competition, the stakes are high.
Develop a strategy
Determine what your name needs to accomplish.
Decide how it will work with existing product or service names (if applicable).
Determine what kind of name to developdescriptive, invented, founders name, etc.
Develop objective criteria to evaluate the names you generate.
Generate plenty of potential names
If youre competing beyond your local area, you may find that many of your potential names (or URLs) are already
taken, so youll need to create a long list. Invite a variety of people to a brainstorming session. Plan it well and capture
every idea for further evaluation.
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Next Steps
After you select a new name, you can create your logo and corporate identity, and then begin creating the messages
to use throughout your sales tools and literature, and your campaign creative.
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Messaging
How do you respond when someone asks what does your company/product/service do? Do all your team members
answer the same way? Is your response compelling enough to make the listener want to learn more, or do you sound
like everyone else?
Messages are written and verbal statements that quickly describe what you do and how youre different. Theyre used
throughout your interactions with your market such as:
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Create a tagline/slogan
Your tagline/slogan is a more succinct phrase used in campaigns. It can be a few words or a short phraseand for
most business writers, its harder to create. You may want to hire a copywriter for this one.
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Next Steps
Your messages feed all of your communication with your market. Use them in your sales tools and literature, your
website and in your marketing campaigns.
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Corporate Identity
When was the last time someone gave you a fantastic business card? Did you turn it over and look at it closely? Did
you comment on it? And did you generate some sort of impression of that person and company?
Corporate identity is an extension of your brand and includes everything that has your logo or contact information on it:
Business cards
Envelopes
Letterhead
Mailing labels
Email templates & signatures
Proposal/quote templates
Invoices/statements
Memos
Signage
Promotional items
Fax covers
Many companies spend time and money on things like business cards yet overlook proposal templates, invoices and
email signaturesitems that your prospects and customers see more frequently. When an employee customizes an
email template with unusual designs or fonts, it can contradict an expensive and serious business cardand convey
a far different impression to the customer.
Each element in your identity should use the same fonts, colors, and layout. The design itself may not be incredibly
important unless youre in a creative field, but consistency and professionalism make an impression. In many cases it
may be a first impression, so why not make a good one?
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Create professional, consistent templates for every touch point with your market
Use a consistent style for everything your company sends out. It may take only ten minutes to create a better template,
and that template may be seen by hundreds or thousands of prospects and customers over time.
Keep inventory
Templates can be altered or misplaced. Make sure that your team knows how to use them and check them regularly.
Next Steps
Once youve finished evaluating your identity, the typical next step is to focus on your sales tools and literature, as
well as your website.
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Websites
Your website is potentially the most powerful sales and marketing tool in your arsenal.
A good site plays an enormous role in your sales process and can help you to reinforce your brand, generate leads
and support customers. Think of your site as your storefront that serves different groups and converts visitors into
prospects and customers. It can help you:
Generate leads
Nurture existing leads and move them closer to purchase
Build brand awareness
Deliver information about your products and services in a compelling way
Process orders, cross- and up-sell, and run special promotions
Communicate with existing customers and distribution channels
Communicate with partners, investors and potential new employees
Generate publicity
Although a good website can be a substantial investment, it doesnt have to be expensive. It just needs to effectively
communicate with your market and support your brand. When you develop your site with rich content and some basic
marketing functionality, you gain broad and potentially lucrative marketing capabilities.
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If youre launching a sophisticated site, make sure youve included all of the relevant departments in your project team.
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Develop a list of the information and tools (content) that each user wants to find on your site.
Review competitor and industry sites for additional ideas.
Determine whether you want to allow customers to do things like view product details, process orders, and access
their records on the site.
Evaluate other functionality such as support forums, search, calculators, streaming video, etc.
Determine the type of content management system you need to support your SEO and SEM needs.
Next Steps
Once youve finished your site, use it in your marketing campaigns to communicate with your market.
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Do you know many B2B companies that can sell their product or service without literature or other supporting materials?
Sales tools and literature help you communicate and strengthen your messages. Theyre also known as marketing
communications or collateral and may include:
Brochures
Product data sheets
Case studies
White papers
PowerPoint presentations
Websites
Newsletters
Reference lists
Proposal templates
Calculators
The printed word carries a lot of credibility, so your materials are important tools in your arsenal. They reinforce your
brand and can create a lasting impression on your prospects. A single printed or digital piece can reach multiple decision makers when your primary contact passes it along, and can even go viral if distributed on the web.
Sales tools and literature are more common in B2B than B2C (which relies more on marketing campaign messages
and branding) but many B2C companies use sales tools and literature to promote their offerings to wholesalers, distributors and retailers.
Good literature and tools should be tightly integrated into your sales process. Rather than inundating a prospect with
all of your information at once, break out the information into distinct pieces that answer a prospects key questions at
a specific stage in the process. As a result, your prospects can quickly absorb whats most relevant, make decisions
quickly and move to the next stage.
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Brainstorm about the materials you could use to answer a prospects questions at each step.
Define a singular purpose for each piece of literature or tool.
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Next Steps
Determine where and how to use your sales tools and literatureon your website, with your sales team, and in your
marketing campaigns.
Your sales tools should align with your sales process, to provide the granular details that prospects need as they move
through the steps of their buying decision.
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Design and copy are essential tools for any brand. They play a major role in supporting positioning and shaping a
brand experience.
Brands are built by what we see, hear and touch. Our sensory experiences work together to create feelings and emotions, which create perceptions. These perceptions sometimes capture a piece of our mindwhen we decide what
something is known for.
Think about the elements of your brand that are defined by copywriting and graphic design:
These account for a substantial part of most brands experienceeverything but the people who represent your brand,
your product or service itself, your physical locations, and music or audio that you use.
Most companies use an array of copywriters and designers throughout the year. Since writers and designers typically
have strengths in specific areas, the challenge is to find the resources for the right projects.
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For example, copywriters can specialize in ad print ad copy, website copy, TV and radio copy, articles and blog posts,
press releases, creative storytelling, white papers and brochures, presentation writing, technical writing, or persuasive
sales copy.
Designers often specialize in logos and corporate identity, digital design for websites, print ad design, print brochure
design, digital presentation design, illustration, photography selection, or interactive design.
A great web designer might produce mediocre print ads; a great ad copywriter might produce thin website copy.
The key to maximizing the effectiveness of your copy and design is to understand what types of skills you need for
different projects, and have access to a talent pool (or be able to find the right talent for the job). Once you have the
right resource in place, a well-written creative brief (which includes detailed brand guidelines) should give your creative
resource the understanding they need to do their job.
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Deadlines
Goals, including the action you want the recipients to take after seeing the piece
Audience
Content
Background information about the product, service, audience, company, etc.
Branding requirements including the desired color palette, logo usage, fonts, voice, tone and personality to convey
Next Steps
Keep looking for good copywriters and graphic designers with strengths in different areas.
With a good team of resources, youll have someone to call on, no matter what type of campaign idea or tool you
dream up.
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Vendor Selection
Vendors play a key role in most companys marketing activities. The explosive growth of the Internet has fundamentally
changed the marketing function, giving marketers a tremendous amount of new avenues to use for connecting with
their audiences.
The downside for marketers is the challenge of choosing which new digital mediums to use, and executing the tactics
in these new areas.
Some marketing leaders have decided to focus their departments on designing strategies and carefully managing
outsourced vendors that handle execution. Outsourcing allows marketers to gain deep expertise across a number of
different areas, providing better results at a lower cost than if they hired the talent for in-house execution.
For example, a seasoned marketing director and a team of a few marketing managers and coordinators could leverage
vendors to:
Build and execute digital marketing campaigns, including social media campaigns, online advertising, and SEO and SEM
Design and build websites, microsites and mobile apps
Purchase traditional media in print, radio and television
Write persuasive copy for sales tools and presentations
Design brand elements, including logos and corporate identity
Generate online and offline publicity
Create print collateral, including brochures, data sheets, posters and signage
Use telemarketing to reach their audience
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Rate your bidders on the important criteria and narrow the field.
Negotiate pricing and terms with your finalists, but remember the adage You get what you pay for. Dont just
choose the lowest bidchoose the vendor that best meets your criteria for success and fits within your budget.
Next Steps
Continue to improve your vendor research, RFPs, and vendor management. If you rely on vendors for collateral and
customer acquisition activities, treat them as key members of your team. Good vendor selection and management will
help you improve results.
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Recruiting
Many CEOs have gone on record saying Our people are our greatest asset.
For many companies, their people heavily influence their brand. Think of a service companythe people delivering the
service have the most interaction with the marketplace, and sometimes define the entire brand experience.
In some product companies and in most B2B companies, the sales and customer service teams play a heavy role in a
customers experience with the company.
The simplest way to build your team, department or company with good people who will represent your brand is to
have a well-defined recruiting program.
Like marketing, recruiting is both an art and a science:
Art: Getting to know a candidate to understand whether s/he is the best fit for the job.
Science: Defining detailed job requirements so you can search for the right candidates; conducting a wide search;
using a process for evaluating candidates; and measuring results.
Marketing leaders need to recruit talented people to help them turn their strategies into realitycoordinators, designers,
managers, account reps, sales reps, telemarketers, and business development reps.
If youre a marketing leader, you might not currently influence hiring decisions with the sales team or in other areas
of the company. While you dont have to become a human resources expert, if people in ANY area of your company
represent your brand, its a good idea to have your hiring teams evaluate your market-facing candidates against your
brand personality traits.
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When your company hires people that naturally represent your brand, its a lot easier to deliver a consistent brand
experience in the marketplace.
And when you use a standardized recruiting process for people involved in marketing and sales, you should end up
with more consistent results.
Do you see your company in any of these scenarios?
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Use these during your screening and interviewing process. If people dont fit them, dont hire them.
Incent your people to refer potential new employees who fit your criteria.
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Advertise in appropriate publications and websites. If youre concerned about cost, measure your cost per applicant
and per hire, and then use the best-performing sources the next time around.
If youre not finding qualified candidates, keep investing ... dont settle for mediocre applicants just because you
dont want to spend more money looking.
If youre doing a lot of hiring, make sure to post open jobs on your website and include content that speaks to applicants. Good candidates will look at your site to learn about the company.
Respect the time and talent of all your candidates. Thank them for interviewing and let them know when youve
extended an offer to someone else. You never know when youll cross paths again.
Next Steps
After you bring aboard new marketing and sales employees, make sure that they understand your positioning, brand
strategy and messaging so they can deliver on them every day.
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Contact & account information (contact names, emails, phone numbers, SIC code, address, etc.)
Lead information
Sales rep name and activity history (calls, emails sent, inquiries, etc.)
Purchase history
Customer service tickets
Sales pipeline information
Marketing campaign data
CRM can also be an important reporting tool. For example, you can use it to:
Generate revenue projections for a product, a sales rep, and your company as a whole
Tie revenue to a marketing campaign
Pull up lists of leads and activities by sales rep
View the number of leads you have at each step in your sales process
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Enterprise CRM
Mid-Market CRM
Every company needs to store this information somewhere, and there are CRM products with very simple functionality,
as well as complex multi-million dollar versions to handle almost any need. When you use the right CRM system, you
gain knowledge and power to keep your team on track and measure progress against goals.
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Decide what information your team should be able to access and how theyll use it.
Identify who needs to use the system and where theyre located (i.e. in different offices).
Determine what reports youll want to generate, particularly your revenue and pipeline reports.
Identify the marketing programs that youd like to be able to run and how that information can help you better manage your accounts.
If youve outgrown your current system, you may be able to purchase add-ins to give your existing system more power.
You may also decide to evaluate new systems to gain the true functionality you need.
Gather feedback and modify the software configuration as neededmake it as intuitive and powerful as possible.
Next Steps
Many CRM systems have evolved to include marketing modules that you can use in your marketing campaign execution. CRM software can dramatically improve your sales process and sales management, so make sure that your entire
team understands how to effectively use the software.
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Do you know what an average customer is truly worth to your company? By calculating your Customer Lifetime Value
(CLV), youll be able to answer that question.
CLV is the amount of profit that a customer delivers to your company for as long as the customer is buying from you.
Its typically calculated as the net present value (the value in todays dollars) of the profit that youll earn from all of
a customers purchases over time. When you know your CLV, you have an extremely powerful tool that helps with:
Acquisition: Youll have a better understanding of what you can spend to acquire customers.
Targeting: Youll know which customer segment delivers the most profit to your company and you can focus marketing efforts on that segment.
Return on investment: By using CLV in your ROI calculations for marketing campaigns, youll have a much more
accurate measure of campaign performance.
Customer retention: You can determine how much you can spend to profitably retain customers.
Single-customer profitability: You can calculate the profitability of an individual customer.
CLV becomes more important as your marketing budget rises and your customer base grows. Yet even an early-stage
company can benefit by using simple CLV estimates.
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Cost of goods sold (COGS): the cost to physically produce a product or service
Gross profit: the difference between the price of your product and the COGS
Companies calculate these figures differently, so your first step is to confirm the formulas your company uses.
For each segment, determine how long an average customer stays with youtheir lifetime
Review your customers buying patterns and calculate the total number of purchases they make and the time between
those purchases.
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Plug it into your ROI projections. Its more accurate to calculate your return on a campaign when you use the total
profit the customer represents over time, not just the profit you earn on the first sale.
Next Steps
CLV is a powerful tool to use during the campaign planning process. Use it when projecting ROI before running a campaign, and after the campaign to see how well you performed.
Its also a valuable tool to use with customer retention, to determine how much to spend on your segments and customers, and when to let individual customers go.
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Return on Investment
Marketing campaigns and initiatives are best treated as investments, not expenses. Youre investing in enhancing your
brand, building awareness, generating leads and driving sales. And like any smart investment, they should be measured,
monitored and evaluated against other marketing investments to ensure that youre spending your money wisely.
Return on investment (ROI) is a measure of the profit earned from each investment. Like the return you earn on your
portfolio or bank account, its calculated as a percentage. In the simplest terms, the calculation is:
(Return Investment)
Investment
To express it as a percentage, multiply your result by 100.
ROI calculations for marketing campaigns and initiatives can be complex. With many variables on both the return side
and the investment (cost) side, understanding your ROI formula is essential in order to produce the best possible results.
For example, marketers may consider varied definitions of return, including:
Total revenue (or gross receipts or turnover, depending on your organization type and location) defined as the top
line sales generated from the campaign.
Gross profit (or a gross profit estimate) defined as revenue minus the cost of goods to produce/deliver a product or
service. Many marketers simply use the companys COG percentage (say 20%) and deduct it from the total revenue.
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On the investment side, its easy for marketers to input the media costs as the investment. But what other costs should
you include? When executing your campaign, you might include:
Creative costs
Printing costs
Technical costs (such as email platforms and website coding)
Management time
Cost of sales
The components for calculating marketing ROI can be different for each organization, but with solid ROI calculations,
you can focus on campaigns that deliver the greatest return. For example, if one campaign generates a 15% ROI and
the other 50%, where will you invest your marketing budget next time? If your entire marketing budget only returns 6%
and the stock market returns 12%, your company can earn more profit by investing in the stock market.
Understanding ROI helps you improve your ongoing campaigns. When you tweak your offer or launch a campaign using
a different list, you can compare ROI and focus on the version with the best performance.
Finally, ROI helps you justify marketing investments. In tough times, companies often slash their marketing budgets
a dangerous move since marketing is an investment that produces revenue. By focusing on ROI, you can help your
company move away from the idea that marketing is a fluffy expense that can be cut when times get tough.
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Cost of goods sold (COGS): The cost to physically produce a product or service.
Marketing investment: Typically youd include just the cost of the media, not production costs or time invested by
certain employees. In certain cases, it may be better to include all of those figures.
Revenue: It can be tricky to tie revenue to a particular campaign, especially when you run a variety of campaigns
and have a long sales process. Your finance team may have some suggestions for estimating this figure.
Companies calculate these figures differently, so confirm the formulas your company usesyour finance team or accountant can guide you.
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Its not feasible to track ROI on every marketing investment, though, as some, such as branding and PR are not worth
the effort tracking. Many marketers simply separate their budget into two bucketsstrategic spend, and campaign
spending based on ROI projections.
Next Steps
By having a strong understanding of marketing ROI, youre able to better understand where to allocate your marketing
budgeton the tools and campaigns that will produce a positive return.
Use your ROI calculations to continually improve your campaigns; test new ways to increase your ROI and spend your
money on the campaigns that produce the greatest return for your company.
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Sales Process
How do prospects decide to purchase your product or service? Does a single decision maker find your product or service and buy on the spot, or does s/he go through many steps and approvals first? Perhaps there are multiple people
or departments involved in the decision, each with their own needs?
A sales process is a defined series of steps you follow as you guide prospects from initial contact to purchase. Theyre
far more common in B2B than in B2C, but many high-ticket B2C items (such as real estate or autos) to have a distinct
sales process.
Your sales process begins when you first identify a new prospect or the prospect engages with you. Heres an example:
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
A prospect
responds to
a campaign
and requests
information.
An in-person
meeting and
product demo
takes place.
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Identify spots where prospects get stuck in the process and try new materials or messages to help them move
forward
Measure how well different reps convert at each step and help those that arent doing as well
See how leads from different marketing campaigns convert, and use that information to improve your campaigns
Create campaigns to recycle leads that fall out of the process at various spots
Next Steps
After youve documented your sales process, decide which sales tools and literature should be delivered at each step.
Youll also use your sales process in your sales management to measure the success of your marketing campaigns: for
each campaign, you will be able to see how many leads entered the process and made it through each step.
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Campaign Planning
For many companies, marketing campaigns are the main method for both communicating with their market to reinforce
their positioning and for customer acquisition.
Good campaigns follow a theme and include a series of touches with the market. Its noisy in the marketplace, and a
message delivered once through a single medium rarely makes a difference. While theres no magic number regarding
the best frequency for a message to make an impact, opinions range from three to twenty times, with seven being an
old marketing adage.
Many marketing campaigns contain an overarching theme, which can be leveraged over extended periods of time with
multiple variations, or different elements, to tell an entire story.
An example would be The Duck campaign launched by the American Family Life Assurance Company in 2000. While
the company had been in business since 1955, it had only a 12% brand recognition rate before the campaign launched.
The company used the Kaplan Thaler Group to improve its name recognition. Kaplan created a new character, the
Aflac Duck, who appeared in ads featuring customers who had trouble remembering the insurance companys name.
In the ads, the duck appeared in the background and quacked the name Aflac (while usually ending up in a funny
predicament).
Youve seen them, right? As a result of the long-running campaign, Aflacs brand recognition jumped from 12% to 90%,
and increased sales catapulted Aflac into a leadership position in the supplemental insurance market.
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Large consumer marketers typically use ad agencies (both traditional media and digital media agencies) to design their
campaign creative, handle the media buys, and track results. These are often multi-million dollar endeavors, and have
brought us such memorable advertising campaigns as:
Just Do It Nike
The Most Interesting Man in the World Dos Equis
Wheres the Beef? Wendys
We Try Harder Avis
Absolutely, Positively Overnight FedEx
While most small- to mid-market companies cant afford the multi-million dollar ad budgets from the Madison Avenue
agencies, they can create effective and memorable campaigns leveraging different media such as:
Print media
Social media
Publicity
Direct mail
Email
Radio
Television
Telemarketing
Events and trade shows
Search engines
Outdoor media
True marketing campaigns are more than just advertisements. Complex campaigns leverage multiple mediums, use a
sequence of messages over an extended timeframe, support positioning, define a brand experience, and handle the
campaign fulfillment and selling.
Campaigns can also be simpleusing a single medium, with a single message and call-to-action. Here are three examples of very simple campaigns:
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Its good practice to start with your companys annual goals and work backwards to develop campaigns to meet those
numbers. For example, when you know how many new customers you need, you can calculate how many leads youll
need, and then design campaigns to generate that number of leads over the course of the year.
With solid planning, a jolt of creativity, and a focus on measurement, youll be in a strong position for success.
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Think about how youll use different media. For example, if youre B2B, your sales team may be able to generate 30%
of your leads through prospecting; the rest may come from telemarketing, email, social media, direct mail, search
marketing, webinars, trade shows, etc.
Evaluate ideas and options (traditional sales activities, Internet marketing, social media, telemarketing, direct mail,
email and publicity) to determine which ones are most effective for meeting a particular goal.
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Be creativeyour market is bombarded with messages daily, so grab their attention and engage them.
if youre running a campaign where prospects request a software demo, and it doesnt arrive for a week, your prospects may lose interest.
Plan to measure
When you measure your campaigns, its easier to gain budget approval the next time around. Youll also know exactly
which programs produce the highest return.
Establish how youll measure the success of each campaign. If there are variables you cant measure, decide how
you will account for those results.
Identify how youll capture the data you need to track responses to your campaignunique phone numbers, unique
URLs, etc.
Choose a subset of your list or two versions of an ad; test them in small quantities and choose the best one for rollout.
Then you can test a second variable against the winner of the first test.
Keep the testing cycle going and track your results over time. Youll improve your response rates and your return
on investment.
Next Steps
After you plan your campaign, its time to focus on tactical execution. That means having a deep understanding of
the media youre using, carefully planning your media buys, tracking your results, and following the best practices and
steps for each media you use.
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A marketing plan is a detailed roadmap that outlines all of your marketing strategies, tactics, costs and projected results over a period of time. The plan keeps your entire team focused on specific goalsits a critical resource for your
entire company.
A good marketing plan typically includes:
Positioning strategy
Brand strategy
Product/service overview
Detailed goals by product, distribution channel
and/or customer segment
Sales plan
Major marketing campaigns
Detailed budget
Dates to review progress
It takes time to develop a solid plan, but its important because it ties all of your activities to tangible goals. Its also a
great opportunity to focus on the future, generate new ideas, and inspire your team. Even a simple plan is better than
none, but when you invest more effort upfront, youll have a better roadmap toward your goals.
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Strategic goalsfor example, you may want to expand into a new market with a new distribution channel, or you
may need to reposition your brand to reflect a change in your business.
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The top three campaigns youll run to generate leads, nurture customers, close, and/or market to existing customers
The media youll use (for example, email, social, online, print, telemarketing, trade shows, publicity, etc.)
Tools, technologies or resources youll needfor example, a new website, an email service provider, or a new piece
of software
Develop a budget
Budgeting can be a difficult process. Many companies just estimate or base it on their previous years spend. An estimate is better than nothing, but if youve defined your major campaigns and needs, you can develop better numbers.
You can use ROI to determine the appropriate total budget for your marketing efforts.
Next Steps
When youve finished your plan, its time to execute. You may need to create new messages, literature, websites or
other tools and processes for your campaigns, but after that, focus on customer acquisition.
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Traditional Media
Marketers have used traditional media such as print, radio, TV, yellow pages and even outdoor ads to reach consumer
markets for the last 50 to 100 years.
Traditional media can also play a role in the marketing mix for many B2B companies. These media often reach a broad
audience and thus can be relatively expensive. Yet in your industry or region, they may be very effective in helping you
reach your market. For example:
In many industries, print ads in monthly trade journals are an important vehicle to reach decision makers.
If your company sells to a certain geographic region, directory listings and ads may be crucial for reaching buyers
when theyre searching for solutions.
You may need to reach a wide variety of prospects in different industries, so you may advertise in a regional or national business publication, newspaper or radio program.
You can use these media to generate leads, build visibility, share your message and/or drive specific promotions. Theyre
especially helpful when you use them in conjunction with other media in a larger campaign.
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Its important to treat these programs as longer-term investments because responses tend to come in graduallythey
arent as immediate or measurable as internet marketing, telemarketing or direct mail. Targeting may be an issue and
you may not be able to measure the branding impact of your campaign, but theyre solid vehicles when theyre in line
with your goals or used in a larger campaign.
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Next Steps
As you design and manage campaigns using traditional media, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the
campaign, measure your results, and focus on continuous improvement.
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Direct Mail
For many years, direct mail has been an important marketing vehicle. Even though many companies have turned to
email and internet marketing, a targeted and well-produced mail campaign can still be highly effective.
Direct mail campaigns can generate leads, promote special offers, support other campaigns, communicate with customers and raise your visibility in your market. You can be very simple or wildly creative depending on your goalsfor
example, you can use a:
Handwritten note
Simple but effective sales letter
Postcard with a four-color image on one side and a printed message on the back
Digitally-printed brochure with the prospects name printed in the headline and body copy
Dimensional piece that you develop for a specific purpose
Direct mail can be an effective vehicle for a B2B company if you focus on strategic, targeted mailings instead of large
bulk mail campaigns, which draw very low response rates at much higher costs than online marketing. Instead, consider
using mail to:
Invite current customers and top prospects to an event youre holding at a trade show
Send product literature with the prospects name and custom specifications printed into
digital printing)
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If youre B2B, its better to think about mail as an integral part of a larger campaign. Dont just mail and wait for the
phone to ring. Instead, plan a campaign that starts with an introduction via mail, then perhaps a follow-up phone call
from a sales rep and a demo delivered via email or via social media.
When you use the right strategy and execution, direct mail can be a strong addition to your marketing arsenal.
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Next Steps
As you design and manage campaigns using direct mail, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the campaign,
and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
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Publicity
Have you ever read a story about a company and then contacted them to learn more about their product or service?
Or listened to a CEO deliver a speech and found yourself researching the company later on?
Publicity in the media can be extremely valuable in building credibility and awareness for your company, product or
service. For example, a legitimate news story acts as an endorsement that can reach a wide audience for very little
cost beyond your own creativity and time. There are many forms of publicity including:
News stories and interviews in trade journals, industry sites, newspapers, magazines, etc.
Expert quotes in a story written by a journalist or blogger
Self-authored stories published on websites or in industry publications
Speaking engagements
Publicity is a cost-effective medium that can:
Build awareness about your brand, products or services, expertise and people
Drive prospects to your website
Drive event attendance or participation in a promotion
Educate the market about problems your company can solve
Create an ongoing dialogue with the market
The key to success: create newsworthy stories. They should be interesting, relevant and timely. They should educate
and inform, and provide your prospects with insight into how to solve a problem.
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Even if you dont think you have newsworthy content to share with the world, you can benefit by implementing small
newsworthy programs (such as charity work) that will raise your visibility. At the very least, you should include news
releases on your website; they help improve search engine rankings and enable prospects to see what youve been doing.
Publicity isnt about luckits about investing in a good PR program, and it can really pay off over time.
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Develop a calendar that ties story ideas to key events and spreads your content out over the year.
List events that may offer good speaking opportunities.
Identify publications, reporters and bloggers who cover subjects that are relevant for your company.
Create traditional and online press materials to give reporters supporting and background information for their stories.
Know the audience for each story and carefully target your media.
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Write a second version of your normal releases with rich keywords and a format that helps search engines easily
find the release.
Post your search-friendly releases on your sitethey should be represented as an actual page on the site, not a PDF.
Send your release to Internet news distribution services.
Consider adding an RSS feed to your siteit will send updated content to other publishers.
Distribute your releases via Twitter, Facebook, Digg and other social media sites.
Next Steps
As you design and manage publicity campaigns, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the campaign, and
focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Its difficult to measure the return on publicity, but if youre really focused on creating stories and reaching out, you
have sound potential for success. One big story or important speaking engagement could generate fantastic results,
so keep at it!
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Telemarketing
The phrase cold calling sends chills down the spines of many businesspeople. Its often viewed as an intimidating,
difficult, and boring process ... and that means it doesnt get done as often as it should.
Telemarketing campaigns help companies reach a group of targeted prospects or customers to communicate a message, gather feedback, and determine a next step for the relationship. Telemarketing can be an important part of any
marketing strategyfor example, you can use it to:
Generate leads
Qualify prospects who have downloaded information from your website or attended a webinar
Follow up on a direct mail or email offer
Take orders for special promotions
Keep your marketing database current
Conduct marketing research
In many companies, sales reps should make hundreds or thousands of cold calls every month to set appointments
and/or generate leads. But busy reps usually prefer to work on closing their existing pipeline. Prospecting often slips
on the priority list; as a result, the sales pipeline isnt always filled with new prospects.
If cold calling is an effective way to introduce your company to new prospects, dont ignore it. Instead of forcing a sales
team to devote time to prospecting, many companies use an in-house or outsourced telemarketing group to make a
high volume of calls, find decision makers and qualify leads for the field sales group.
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When telemarketers handle prospecting, salespeople can spend 100% of their time selling and closing. Your company
can produce more revenue in the same amount of time; your reps earn more commission, theyre doing what they love,
and theyre more satisfied with their jobs.
You can use a telemarketing team in a variety of campaigns:
With the right strategy and proper management, a good telemarketing operation can produce great value for your
company.
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Your call volume also drives your headcount, software, phone system and the office space youll need.
These requirements will help you decide whether to use a vendor or hire and manage a team in-house. If you reach
out to vendors, having these requirements ready will make your discussions easier and faster.
Budget for everything including headcount, software licenses, bonuses and management.
Make your scripts conversational, simple, and focused on the end goal.
It helps to make and listen to calls as youre developing and refining your script. What looks good on paper may not
work on the phone.
Next Steps
As you design and manage telemarketing campaigns, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the campaign, and
focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Once your campaign is running, its all about execution, so manage your team and devote the resources necessary
for success.
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Theres an old saying in business that people buy from people. If thats the case, its a good idea to get people together as often as possible!
Trade shows and events are gatherings for people with common interests to achieve a goal. B2B and B2C companies
use them to generate leads, nurture prospects, build brand awareness, conduct training, or enhance relationships with
existing partners and customers. Options include:
Trade shows: You can have an exhibit booth, sponsor roundtable discussions or speeches, arrange for one of your
executives give a presentation or sit on a panel, advertise in show publications and/or host your own reception.
Seminars or conferences: Sponsor an industry conference or create a seminar and market it to your prospects.
Networking meetings: Participate in and/or sponsor industry or local meetings; you can also create a one-time or
ongoing breakfast or lunch meeting series for your prospects to attend.
Webinars: Webinars are online seminars with slides and audio; you can use them to generate leads and communicate
with large groups at a lower cost than a live meeting.
Events for the arts, sports or charities: You can participate in these events as a sponsor with advertising, blocks
of tickets, promotions and a reception for your VIPs.
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Many shows and events are major investments with numerous logistics:
Event planning
Travel
Shipping
Set-up
Exhibit booth design and materials
Promotion
Sales materials
Sales follow-up
Measurement
When executed properly, a great event could produce a large percentage of the leads that a company needs to generate over an entire year. With a halfhearted strategy, companies usually get lackluster results.
Do you see your company in any of these scenarios?
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With a solid strategy, plan, investment and measurement, events can be an exciting marketing medium for B2B or
B2C marketers.
Focus on the types of events that will help you meet your goals: industry events and shows, networking events,
seminars and conferences, sponsored events, charity events, webinars and more.
Brainstorm to create a list of events and themes that will fit with your goals.
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Plan for sales-related activities: what happens with new leads, how youll prioritize leads, follow-up timing, materials
they should receive, etc.
Next Steps
Trade shows and events typically generate new relationships or foster existing ones. Its important to set solid followup procedures with your team so that valuable leads dont fall through the cracks.
As you design and manage events and attend trade shows, evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy and focus on
continually improving your tactical execution.
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Search marketing is about gaining visibility on search engines when users search for terms that relate to your business.
For most companies, ranking high in the search results isnt luckits a result of solid effort in one or both categories
of search marketing:
Organic search (SEO): When you enter a keyword or phrase into a search engine like Google or Bing, the organic
results are displayed in the main body of the page.
When your market searches for information about your products and services, you want to rank highly in search engine
results. By optimizing your site, you can improve your ranking for important search terms and phrases (keywords).
You can also improve your rank by getting other important sites to link to yours.
Paid search (SEM): Paid search enables you to buy listings in the sponsored area of a search engine. There are
a variety of paid search programs, but the most common is called pay-per-click (PPC), meaning you only pay for a
listing when a prospect clicks your ad.
In search marketing, companies focus on driving more traffic to targeted areas of their website. They use search to:
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Studies show that most peopleboth business people and consumers considering large purchasesresearch their
problems, potential purchases and vendors online and use a search engine in the process. And the higher the price of
the product/service, the earlier in the research process they use a search engine.
For many B2B companies, generating only a handful of additional serious prospects can make a substantial difference
in revenue. Using search marketing may efficiently produce these additional prospects.
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Register your site in important directories that play a vital role in search engine results.
If you dont have anyone on staff that is an SEO expert, hire an outside specialist.
Using social media, online advertising and online PR to generate traffic and links
Including a blog on your site
Distributing search-optimized press releases on the web
Creating RSS feeds to distribute updated content from your site to other websites
Next Steps
As you design and manage campaigns using search engines, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the campaign, and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Pay close attention to click-through rates and conversion rates; for most paid search campaigns, the difference between
positive and negative ROI is thorough testing and detailed management.
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Online Advertising
Internet marketing isnt just for consumer marketers or large B2B firmsits a powerful vehicle for companies of all sizes.
Online advertising offers marketers an opportunity to reach very broad or very targeted prospects to generate leads,
communicate a message and raise visibility. The term refers to three general types of campaigns:
While a B2B marketer has a smaller universe of prospects than a consumer marketer, the value of each prospect is
typically far greater. With a targeted campaign and a good offer, you may only need to generate a handful of highly
qualified prospects to produce substantial revenue.
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Direct Sales
Timing: Reach people when theyre actively looking for information and solutions.
Immediacy: You can test and launch very quickly and generate response almost immediately.
Targeting: You can deliver your message to very specific audiences.
Lead generation and nurturing: You can capture prospects early, provide valuable information, and nurture them
throughout the sales process.
Cost: You can reach a large audience quickly and at a lower cost than many other types of media.
Scalability: You can run campaigns of any size, at any budget level.
As with any marketing program, its important to develop a good strategy, target your audience, test, measure and
improveespecially because its easy and inexpensive to test different aspects of your campaigns in order to generate
the best possible results.
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Focus on conversion
When you run a great ad, continue the message and momentum on your website. Dont drive prospects to your home
pageinstead, create unique landing pages that focus on the topic you used to generate their interest. Focus and sell!
Next Steps
As you design and manage campaigns using online media, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the campaign,
and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Keep refining your online campaigns and your website to drive and convert traffic.
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Social Media
By now, everyone is probably familiar with social media. But how many marketers truly understand how to use social
media to achieve business goals?
Social media describes the category of websites that allow people to connect, communicate and share information
in real time on the Internet. Social media allows almost anyone to be a publisherto disseminate information quickly
without controls.
Social media has become a powerful tool that marketers can use to:
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Social media evolved from the Web 2.0 technologies in the early 2000sblogging platforms and wikis. The number
of social media websitesor from a marketers perspective, social media toolsis immense. From 2006 to 2012, it
was estimated that there were over 300 popular social media websites. There are probably thousands of others, and
over 100,000,000 blogs.
Since most social media websites are free, its easy to go social and start interacting with others. There are substantial
costs to make it effective, however, such as graphic design, content development, publishing and account management,
listening to the conversation, responding to feedback and monitoring and managing performance.
Social media works well for certain types of business goals, but not so well for others. Since the barriers to start are
so low, many marketers begin using social media without a carefully crafted plan and without the proper commitment,
which typically leads to wasted time and a lost investment. Worse yet, the crowd can be a harsh critic and negative
information moves through the Web instantaneously, punishing bad social campaigns or a companys negative behavior.
The good news is that most social media sites fall into a handful of different categories:
Social Bookmarking: Interaction by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people.
Social News & Voting: Interaction by voting for shared articles and content and commenting on them.
Social Content: Blogs, micro blogs (Twitter), wikis, presentations, documents, photo and video sharing. Interact by
sharing information and commenting on user submissions.
Social Networking: Interaction by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions.
A number of these sites include features from the other categories.
If youre just starting with social media, thinking about the categories instead of all the individual sites (Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) makes it easier to understand how to use them to achieve your business goals.
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As youre considering how you might use social media, heres a helpful tip: think of social media as a cocktail party ...
online. You can mingle and share information and participate in a global conversation. But remember that once you
publish something socially, whether its a comment or piece of content, youve lost control of it and it can be indexed
by the search engines, sometimes forever.
Since you have no control over how the crowd speaks about your company or brand, an unhappy customer can generate quite a buzz. An example is United Airlines, who damaged a customers guitar and refused to replace it, spawning
the hit YouTube song United Breaks Guitars, decrying Uniteds customer service and brand.
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Next Steps
As you design and manage campaigns using social media, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used in the campaign,
and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Social media has evolved faster than almost any other medium in history. Whats hot today isnt always popular tomorrow. Remember Friendster? Theres no guarantee Facebook and Twitter will stay on top ... keep up-to-date on the trends.
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Email Marketing
Email marketing has been a staple for consumer marketers since the mid-1990s. A few years later, B2B marketers
discovered its value, and email campaigns have become an important tool for businesses in all stages and industries.
Email marketing enables you to cost-effectively communicate with your market in a way thats immediate and relevant.
With email, you can:
Nurture leads
Build brand awareness
Obtain prospects
Build customer loyalty
Generate sales
You can usually launch a campaign and measure your results quickly, making email a great option for time-sensitive
programs. Its easy and inexpensive to test different aspects of your campaign on a segment of your list, so you can
hone your creative and your offer to generate the best possible results.
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Direct Sales
Email is more editorial than advertising, and its powerful because it can support and even drive a sales process. Yet,
like any medium, it has its challenges. B2C email marketing to cold lists has a terrible response rate. Social media is
reducing peoples reliance on email. Businesspeople often still receive hundreds of emails (or more) each day, so B2B
marketers need to get past spam filters and give people a reason to read. Youll also need a strong offer, valuable
editorial content, appropriate design and a good fulfillment and measurement process.
While you can reach a wide audience with email, that doesnt mean you should. Its most effective when you really
target so you can speak to specific needs. Think of it as a one-to-one communicationpersonalized, relevant and
timelynot a blast.
If youve used email in the past, do you see your company in one of these scenarios?
Best Case
Neutral Case
Worst Case
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Develop a tangible objectivefor example, to generate a specific number of leads, demo requests, meetings, or
purchases.
Mail to your house list regularlyeven corporate emails change rapidly. The more time between campaigns, the
higher your rate of bad addressesand those bounces could trigger spam alerts.
Next Steps
As your use of email increases, keep learning about open rates, subject lines, list fatigue, and other ways to improve
your campaigns.
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Customer Retention
How much have you invested in your marketing programs over the last few years? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
Millions? Tens of millions?
Customer retention is about keeping the customers that you already spent money to acquire. And if youre in an industry
where your customers make multiple purchases over the years, your entire team should be very focused on retaining
those customers by:
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With strong retention marketing, its much easier to grow your revenue and profitability. Do you see your company in
any of these scenarios?
Best Case
Neutral Case
Worst Case
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Next Steps
Refine and improve your customer retention strategy and executionit may deliver the highest ROI of all of your marketing programs.
Service and manage your customer base, evaluate the effectiveness of the tools used, and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
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Business Development
Organizations apply the term business development (a.k.a. biz dev) to a variety of activities.
In this section, business development refers to high-level partnerships that generate revenue, create better products
and/or increase efficiency. These partnerships can help you:
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To Increase Efficiency
In these examples, each company has distinct responsibilities in the partnership. They each devote resources (either
time or money) to the program, and if it fails, they have similar levels of risk. Theyve also fairly divided the rewards.
The first step in a successful partnership is structure; the right arrangement aligns both companies toward an important
common goal. The second step is execution; a partnership should be managed like any business with careful attention
to detail, solid communication and focus on the end goals.
With the right structure and management, your business development deals have the greatest potential for success.
Best Case
Neutral Case
Worst Case
Since these partnerships involve multiple departments in each company, there are usually a number of people involved
in the deal. Its often an executive or high-level biz dev person leading the process for each company, although in small
companies, a sales or marketing executive will typically take the reins. However, creating a partnership is more complex
than pure salesit requires a solid understanding of the business and operational objectives of multiple organizations.
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Pitch a partnership
Develop a strong pitch to capture the attention of your potential partners; focus on the high-level benefits for each party.
As you move through the sales process, cover all aspects of the partnership including detailed structure and terms.
Next Steps
As you set up partnerships resulting from business development activities, evaluate the effectiveness of the partnership,
and focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Make sure that your company manages and executes its responsibilities, so that youll reap the full benefits. As part
of the partnership you may launch new marketing campaignstreat them as you would any other marketing program.
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Sales Management
Improving your sales management is one of the easiest ways to increase your revenue and profitability.
Sales management is about leading the people and process your company uses to sell to prospects and convert them
into customers. Responsibilities include:
Sales and marketing serve one purpose: to generate revenue. They should be completely aligned in their understanding of customer needs, their messages, and in the process they use to identify, sell, close and manage prospects
and customers. They should work together as a unit, providing valuable feedback to each other to improve all of
their strategies.
If youre B2B, your sales team is the voice of your company. In fact, your reps may be the only people with direct
customer interaction. They may be responsible for prospecting, selling and managing existing customers. They control
the dialogue with your market, gather feedback, and deliver much of your brand experience.
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The sales team will make or break your marketing efforts. Even if youre not personally responsible for the sales team,
its important to understand their role and draw on that knowledge to create better marketing programs.
When departments arent aligned, your company wastes time and opportunity. For example, when salespeople rewrite
literature and tools to their liking, your messages are diluted and salespeople are doing something other than selling.
Small improvements in your teams skills and processes can often produce substantial results. Even great salespeople
can benefit from coaching; if your team is struggling, theres room for improvement. And with the right attention to
your pipeline and goals, you can make sure that youre on track to hit your numbers and make adjustments as needed.
Best Case
Neutral Case
Worst Case
Some require a lot more handholding than youd like; there isnt
always time to give them the help
they need.
As a result, their close ratios are
much lower. Theyre probably not
hitting their quotas, but theyre not
a major liability to the company.
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Motivate!
Good sales reps want to get betterencourage them to read, attend seminars, network, and keep refining their skills.
Next Steps
As you manage your sales team throughout the year, evaluate the effectiveness of your people, process and tools, and
focus on continually improving your tactical execution.
Hire the right people, manage them well, and celebrate their success!
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Whats Next?
If youve made it this far, congratulations!
Hopefully youve identified some opportunities to improve your marketing by clarifying strategies, evaluating which
tactics to use, and adopting new ways to improve your tactical execution, keeping a balance of focus on understanding
what to be doing, and doing things well.
As you and your team explore ideas for new marketing programs, think about where they fall in the process, and how
they can support your strategy in the marketplace.
Continue learning and improving all of your marketing programs; strive to land in the best case scenarios used
throughout this guidebook.
Good luck!
To download plans for the activities in this guide, and access a set of standard operating procedures for completing
each marketing task, visit www.MarketingMO.com.
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