Sales & Marketing Effectiveness

Lead Scoring and Data Quality: How Much is Dirty Data Costing You?

Qualifying, coding and ranking your leads so the hottest opportunities are the first to get distributed to your sales teams is vital to your company’s sales and marketing success. That’s a given.

Yet, what many companies fail to understand is that data quality is core to an effective lead scoring system.  

A SiriusDecisions study, “The Impact of Bad Data on Demand Creation”, shows that following best practices in data quality generates a 66 percent increase in revenue. 

The study summary cited in a CRM Magazine article, “Looking to Score”,  offers some key insights for B2B organizations, such as:

• 10 to 25 percent of customer and prospect records contain critical data errors.
• The amount of data doubles every 12 to 18 months.
• It takes $1 to verify a record as it is entered, $10 to cleanse and de-dupe it, and $100 if nothing is done, as the ramifications of the mistakes are felt over and over again.
• From inquiry to marketing-qualified lead: A data strategy that solves conflicts at the source can lead to a 25 percent increase in converting inquiries to marketing-qualified leads.
• From marketing-qualified lead to sales-accepted lead: Unifying the data, whether into one database or by using technology for virtual integration, can lead to a 12.5 percent uplift in conversion rates to the next stage.
• From sales-accepted lead to sales-qualified lead: Clean data can reduce by 5 percent the time spent conducting the kind of additional research that precedes initial contact with a prospect.
• From sales-qualified lead to close: Given that the average field-marketing function spends no more than 10 percent of its budget in support of this final conversion, accurate data is a must for applying the right tools and resources to the right audience at the right stage of the buying cycle.

Jonathan Block, author of the report and senior director of research at SiriusDecisions, writes, “A best-in-class data strategy is shared by marketing and sales, and is focused on quality from [inquiry] to close. Although it is a job that consumes both money and time, paying more attention to data quality is not only worth it, it is something that your organization simply can’t afford not to do.

I couldn’t agree more.  Have you reviewed the quality of your data lately? 

Getting New Business: Adapting to Current Market Conditions

Guest Author - Richard G. Melecki

 
In virtually every industry today, businesses have to do more with less.  This includes all of the marketing activities necessary to get new business in a challenging economy. 

In past recessions, marketers have concentrated their efforts on market segments, geographies, and customers which have proven profitable in the past.  But the current world economic situation is changing virtually every market.  Just doing what worked in the past to acquire new business risks wasting scarce marketing dollars and increasing your cost of new business acquisition.

To reduce your marketing costs and to increase your return on dollars spent to get new business, follow these steps:

1. Examine every current geographic market, market segment, and customer to determine if they are in fact viable prospects in the current economy.  Ask yourself how your products and services might sell in markets and in geographies you have not previously served.

2. Concentrate on no more than one to three profitable markets or market segments at any given time.  Like an army on the attack, your business must achieve strategic focus in order to maximize the use of scarce resources.

3. Fine tune your product/service design and your pricing strategy for each market in which you do business. 

4. Make sure you have identified the real buyers in each market segment.  Buyers are individuals who have the authority to make purchase decisions and who own the budgets used to make the purchase.  Concentrate your marketing and sales efforts on reaching these individuals.

5. Profile each buyer type for every one of your products.  At a minimum you should know their titles, their professional background, how they find out about products and services like yours, and how they make purchase decisions.

6. Use communication channels that have the best chance of reaching buyers for the least cost.  Active business acquisition methods, such as business-to-business referrals, direct mail/e-mail, and cold calling usually are the most cost effective.  Other less direct methods, including Internet and print advertising, can also prove effective if selected carefully to reach your targeted buyer

For more information, feel free to contact:
MPI Achieve, Ltd.
330-622-4038
info@mpiachieve.com
http://www.MPIAchieve.com

Retain and Grow Market Share - a Major 2009 Marketing Mandate

According to the 2009 Marketing Outlook Survey, the largest independent assessment of senior marketing executives today, conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, an astounding 48% of marketing respondents indicated that “senior management is mandating that marketing contribute to the bottom line by retaining and growing market share.”

Great directive, as this will increase profitability. But, after 20 years of conducting comprehensive Market Analysis projects for all types of companies, I find that too many companies base their market share knowledge on “gut feelings” instead of a real analysis.

For example, I hear explanations like “We’ve been in business for 50 years, and everyone who needs our product knows us, so we feel we have a big share of the market”. 

This is almost always not true. Just because a consumer, whether it be B2B or B2C knows a company or their brand doesn’t mean they will purchase nor does it mean they are a qualified prospect. Branding does not equal sales or effective lead generation. And, it does not enable you to retain or grow market share. 

I have yet to run a basic analysis for any company and not found at least 30% more prospects than their sales reps were contacting.  Plus, this missed 30% were prospects like their best customers – not just anybody qualified for their product. More . .

It’s one thing to have a feeling for how your company has penetrated a given market. It is quite another thing to actually analyze and understand your share and potential, then see the results on maps and charts, and be able to effectively act upon the information. Unfortunately, many companies, even large ones, don’t have the internal expertise or resources to effectively perform the necessary analysis. 
   
You Can’t Retain or Grow What You Don’t Know
 
Before you can retain and grow market share, you must first thoroughly analyze and understand your current share and potential.  You must be able to, at least, answer the following basic questions:

* How much of the market currently belongs to you?
* How much more is out there?
* How profitable are your existing customers? 
* Which existing customers are the most and least profitable?
* Who are your most profitable prospects? 
* How do you get a bigger share of current customers, profitable prospects and market? 

For those marketers who are looking for ways to retain and grow market share, I invite you to visit the following sites for advice and solutions:

Market Analysis - previous blog on topic
Want to analyze your market share and potential?  Contact us info@infogrowcorp.com

Driving Sales & Marketing Effectiveness with Customer and Prospect Proximity Reports

One of the most beneficial pieces of knowledge marketers can have is knowing where your customers and prospects are located in relation to your stores, branches, or distributors. Recognizing where your customers and prospects come from and how far they are willing to travel for your specific product or service adds considerable precision to your targeted marketing efforts.

Proximity knowledge is also the first step toward understanding your trade areas plus driving more business to your physical locations. Learn More

Ordinarily I don’t directly promote InfoGrow’s services on this blog but, in this case, I made an exception. Why? Because I keep seeing marketers in both the B2B and B2C industries save time, save money and win more sales by using our Proximity Reports – Plus tool and felt my readers should know about these benefits. 

Proximity Reports – Plus is a web service that provides quick, accurate, inexpensive, pay-as-you-go reports that append your closest locations, by air miles, to your customer/prospect records.  It can be the closest one location or all of your locations within your specified radius and maps can be added to the reports. 

Various Industry Applications

Commercial Printers / Ad Agencies / Marketing Consultants
Often, these groups are in charge of their clients’ direct mail programs.  Using the Proximity Reports - Plus tool they can match clients’ customer/prospect locations to their clients’ locations.  This information enables them to easily add their clients’ closest addresses to their mailers, which steers more customers and prospects to their clients’ physical sites, increases the marketing campaign ROI, plus boosts their value to their clients.   

Chain Retailers and Franchises  
Businesses such as restaurants, beauty salons, tax services, grocery stores, and many others, use Proximity Reports – Plus to tailor their in-house direct mail content. By understanding customer and prospect proximity, they can include local information such as: closest addresses, hours, phone numbers, coupons, and special promotions or events. Proximity knowledge enables them to improve foot traffic and drive revenue. 

Banks/ Hotel Chains/ Healthcare Providers
Service companies, such as the above and others, that are trying to win new national accounts often need to respond to RFPs (Requests for Proposals) from prospective clients. These RFPs usually include their ability to show that their locations are in a convenient proximity to the prospect’s locations, proving they can effectively meet coverage needs.  Proximity Reports – Plus accelerates the process by delivering immediate, accurate on-line proximity reports into their sales reps’ hands, providing a competitive advantage and more corporate account sales. 

Real-Life Examples

Huddle, Inc. - Huddle is a marketing company that specializes in helping national retailers, through their High School Ticket Program, to connect  with the local high school marketplace.  They currently uses Proximity Reports – Plus to localize the match of these retailers to specific schools. See Press Release  

Grainger, Inc. - Grainger is the leading broad-line supplier of facilities maintenance products serving business and institutions in North America.  A recent promotional mailer that I received from Grainger, included their 2 closest locations to my address.  It localized the marketing campaign for them and provided convenience to me. See the following example.  

Try Proximity Reports – Plus Demo
Think about your own possible applications and benefits.  Then, see how easy it is to use our on-line Proximity Reports – Plus tool to help you develop effective target marketing campaigns, assess new opportunities and increase your marketing ROI. 

Wisdom from Marketers for Marketers

Once again, I must point out that nothing beats getting solid, down-to-earth advice from successful real-life marketers.  Well, except, maybe getting it for free!

Earlier this year, Marketing Sherpa released their 7th annual “Wisdom Report”, so if you haven’t heard about it yet, check it out and download it now. Their Marketing Wisdom for 2009 is packed full of real life stories, lessons learned and tips gathered from 101 marketers for marketers. 

The topics include email, search engine, B2B, lead generation, direct mail, metrics, customer service issues, and much more. 

You definitely don’t want to pass this up.  Plus, you don’t want to pass up logging onto the MarketingSherpa site at least once a week to review their marketing case studies, research, surveys, and access to free reports.  If you’re in the market for some great marketing advice and ideas, this is the place to go. 

Marketers Take Wrong Route to Revenue Opportunities

It appears that lack of existing customer insight and the tools to leverage that insight is creating a revenue roadblock for many marketers. 

Despite the critical need to leverage current customer knowledge, especially during this recessionary period, many marketers are throwing up their own obstacles to reaching solid, ready-and-waiting opportunities. 

Instead of concentrating on and maximizing their existing customer potential, too many marketers are spending their limited resources on acquiring new customers, while allowing their existing customers to fall by the roadside.  What a huge waste. 

According to a recent study titled, “Routes to Revenue”, conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer Council (CMO), and based on a survey of more than 650 senior marketers, an astounding 75.9% of these senior marketers believe they are not realizing the full revenue potential of their current customers.  Only 46.5% of the surveyed marketers feel they have good insights (note, not excellent) into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value. 

Additional study findings include:

• 22.3% lack real-time data and analytics from across all customer touch points

• 21% say that selectively gathered information is inaccurate or incomplete

• 15.5% cite problems with data silos and restrictions in availability and use across the organization

Marketers were also asked what strategies they are using to realize greater revenue and profitability from existing customers.  Top responses were:

• 60.1% - becoming more personalized, relevant and precise in customer communication

• 44.5%  - finding new ways to cross-sell or up-sell current accounts

• 41.0% -  addressing under-penetrated markets or new customer segments

• 32.20% - using more efficient channels or alternative media to engage customers

“Many marketers, and in most cases, the larger organizations, don't have the insight into their customer data to be able to determine what the opportunities are The constrained environment we have today will force marketers to do more analysis, get more data, get more insight and intelligence into their customers, and map strategies to up-sell, cross-sell, partner and be more inventive in the ways they engage with existing customers,” noted Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. 

Neale-May said there are three core areas marketers should be focusing on to improve their overall performance: customer insight, customer experience and customer advocacy.

“That is all about retention marketing and more individual retention management,” he said. “Most creative groups tend to see value in external programs, rather than looking at the customers they already have, the cost of acquiring customers, the value of the deal and whether they are targeting customers that are most predisposed toward the company or brand.

“These do not all require outside media or marketing dollars. They require much more drilling and integrating with the customer database and sales organizations.”

So, are you leveraging existing customer insight to maximize your revenue potential?
If not, then why not?

If you want some guidance on these issues, then take a few minutes to review the following. I am sure it will help. Download Sales & Marketing Effectiveness Overview 

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