Sales & Marketing Effectiveness

Does It Take a Recession Threat to Shape Up Marketing Efforts?

I keep reading articles, blog posts, and newsletters packed with advice for marketers on how to ride-out the recession, economic downturn, revenue slow-down, tough times, or whatever one decides to call this unsure economy. 

The following are all great marketing tips, but does it take the threat of a recession to shape up our marketing efforts?

• Stay in close touch with your current customers and make sure you know everything you can about these target accounts.
• Keep a good eye on your competitors.  Learn their strengths, weaknesses, long and short-term goals.
• Reactivate your old leads and tighten up communications to those leads you’ve been slowly nurturing.
• Prioritize your marketing budget. Decide what you must have, what would be nice to have, and what you can do without. 
• Motivate and reward your sales teams with programs and qualified leads that encourage them to excel.
• Target wisely.  Don’t waste precious time and resources on those not likely to buy; instead focus on your most profitable customers and prospects.
• Strengthen relationships with your existing customers and business partners.
• Segment your customer base and measure lifetime profitability value and overall sales.
• Don’t cut back on marketing and advertising because your competition is likely holding back now. You have the playing field.

This last one gives me hesitation, though I read this tip everywhere. I truly doubt that anybody’s competition is sitting on the sidelines right now, or ever. I would say to spend more wisely by focusing correctly and that will get you ahead in any times. 

I find it interesting reading all of the “how-to-market-in-a-recession advice,” but one BIG thought strikes me.  Actually, it makes me worry. Shouldn’t marketers be performing all of these activities regardless of economics?  Isn’t that just good marketing? 

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Marketing Wisdom

Nothing beats getting solid, down-to-earth advice from real-life marketers.  Except, maybe getting it for free!

Marketing Sherpa has released their 6th annual “Wisdom” report.  This invaluable report is packed full of real life stories, lessons learned and tips gathered from marketers for marketers.

Included are topics on email marketing, business-to-business, lead generation, direct mail, business-to-consumer, and much more. 

It’s definitely a must read, so if you haven’t done so already, download your free copy of Marketing Wisdom for 2008 here.

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It's Not Too Late To Set Your B2B Marketing Goals For 2008

Yes, January is over, but for those of you who haven’t done so yet, it’s still a good time to establish goals that will increase your sales and marketing effectiveness throughout the year and, for that matter, the years to follow.

With that in mind, I encourage those of you who are getting a late start, to visit Todd Ebert’s blog – Bad Marketing, The good, the bad and the ugly of B2B marketing, and ideas on improving it.  Todd offers some great ideas on how to improve your marketing efforts in this new year. 

I especially like (though all are valuable) the idea about reviewing your marketing/customer database for completeness.  If you choose to do nothing else, do this! Without accurate data and consistent quality updates, chances are you are slowly losing customers and prospects.  Read more about this issue in my Sept. 19, 2007 post, When Was the Last Time You Reviewed the  Completeness of Your Data? 

In addition, I’d like to add a few other suggestions that can make a substantial impact on your marketing efforts and bottom line. 

Get your sales and marketing teams working together - Develop and implement an effective lead generation process.  Begin with the basics such as: what constitutes a good lead, what are the steps in qualifying a lead, how should marketing track the leads they distribute, how should sales provide feed-back on the leads they receive, how do they best both close the loop. 

Sharpen your focus on your best customers – Perform a comprehensive database analysis to determine who your best customers are and where they are, and use that information to find more prospects like them.  There is nothing more important when searching for leads than profiling and ranking your best customers in order to determine where you should be investing your targeted marketing efforts and sales reps’ time. 

Break down your data silos – Pull together information from your multiple customer information sources (accounting systems, customer service, POS systems, sales reps) into one database that can be accessed and shared by all employees who interact with the customer.  This provides a single view of the customer; identifies key sales drivers, trends, issues and cross-sell/up-sell opportunities; maximizes lead management.

Analyze your trade area(s) – Whether your customer base is retail, commercial or a mix of both, understanding where your customers are in relation to your stores, branches, distributors or sales reps is key to focusing your marketing efforts. Understanding who in your proximate area are NOT your customers helps you identify new prospects and concentrate your budget on your best opportunities.

I welcome any tips you’d like to share on improving a company’s sales and marketing efforts.

Have a great year!

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What’s Your Opinion of the AMA’s New Marketing Definition? Can You Do Better?

The new definition reads: "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."

Here are some bits and pieces of various comments I’ve read regarding this new definition.

• “has the AMA ever heard of the KISS principle?”
• “about as useful as a straightened paper clip"
• “sounds like it was written by academics”
• “meaningless crapola”
• “use English instead of jargon”
• “I have no idea what it means”
• “makes it difficult for non-marketers to take us seriously”
• “classic committee-created definitions”
• “too many words used to say nothing”
• “perfect example of what is wrong with most marketing”
• “makes me pass out in boredom”
• “the 1935 definition was much better”
• “I’d hate to hear their elevator speech”
• “Is there a typo in the definition?  Or is it really this tedious?”

Of course, I’ve read a few (very few) positive comments.  Unfortunately, those read like the new definition itself – wordy, vague, and difficult to understand. I quit reading after the first sentence or two. 

Why not try your hand at forming a definition of marketing and share it with us.  Maybe you can help the AMA out with their next attempt at defining marketing which is slated for 2012.

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Does Your CFO Understand the Value of Marketing?

We all keep reading about sales & marketing being on different planets, or some such adage, but an equally important issue, especially to marketers, is the disconnect between finance and marketing.  Forget the planets – these two entities are in separate galaxies, speaking entirely different languages. 

As indicated by MarketingSherpa research, “ if you run marketing for a business technology firm, your salary, your staff and your entire marketing budget represent – on average – only 3% of total company annual revenues.  Only 17% of B-to-B marketers we queried were sure their CFOs understood the value of lead generation programs."

In a September 6, 2007 B2B article, ANA/MMA study finds greater need for alignment between marketing and finance, by Carol Krol, she sites the results of a 2007 study conducted by the Association of National Advertisers in conjunction with Marketing Management Analytics, a marketing measurement company. “The study found that a relationship between marketing and finance is often lacking. Sixty-one percent of marketers surveyed for the study said there is “some” cooperation between the two departments when establishing metrics and methodologies for measuring marketing ROI, while only 22% said there was “full” cooperation. In addition, 42% of marketing executives said they are dissatisfied with marketing ROI measurements within their company, up seven percentage points from last year’s study, while 45% said their organization lacks marketing ROI definitions (up 20 percentage points).”

The survey was distributed online, in partnership with Guideline Research, and surveyed over 200 senior-level marketers/ANA members. The 2007 ANA Marketing Accountability Committee, formerly a task force, is comprised of 57 ANA member companies including IBM, Coca-Cola. Microsoft, ING, and Nestlé USA. 

In addition, an informed survey conducted among 16 of the 200 attendees at the September 2007 ANA Marketing Accountability Conference revealed that approximately one-third of respondents said marketing’s representation on the board of directors was 20% or less; about equal numbers sited frequent or minimal contact with their CFO; one-quarter said they never see the board of directors and half see them only one or two times a year.    

Marketing and finance are equally crucial for building and maintaining a successful company. Both need to learn the other’s language and communicate often in order to understand their mutual initiatives for growing sales.  Marketing needs to do a better job of proving its value as a revenue producer and finance needs to treat marketing as an asset rather than an expense.  After all, marketing feeds sales and sales feeds the company.  Without either, the CEO and CFO cannot meet the growth objectives of the company. 

Are you a marketing VP or CMO? If so, please share your experiences or opinion on this issue.

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