Sales & Marketing Effectiveness

Number One Marketing Tip for Any Economy

Over the past several months, I’m sure you’ve read more than your share of tips and advice on how to market during a recession, depression, tough economy or whatever term best defines our current economic state.  Much of this advice is valuable and can possibly help you hang on and, just maybe, pull yourself up above our current sales and marketing doom and gloom. 

Yet, if you were to ask me - as I asked myself - what is the top marketing tip, the number one piece of marketing advice that I would offer to B2B marketers in 2009, or anytime, it is this:

Know Your Best Customers

Why?  Think about the following: 

• Your best customers are the foundation of your current and future success – your key to success in any economy, good or bad. 

• If you lose just 3 of your best customers, how would that impact your profits; indeed the very life of your company? 

• Your best customers were probably once your best prospects and it is likely much of your marketing strategies and efforts were built around finding and attracting them. 

• Current and past studies show that it costs about five times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to keep an old one. Chances are, most of your old customers include many of your best customers.

• Best customers provide cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.  If you know them, you’re aware (or should be) of their other departments/divisions/units that may need what you have to offer. 

• Without knowing your best customers, you can’t effectively retain them, keep them loyal or turn them into advocates and referrals for your company.

• If you don’t know your best customers, you don’t know your best prospects and, therefore, don’t know how to effectively find and add more best customers. 

•  Best customer knowledge provides the vital focus of your campaigns, messages and sales reps. 

Knowing

Some people ask me, what does “knowing” your best customers really mean? It means finding every piece of vital information about their company that might help you to build, solidify, keep, and leverage your current relationship with them to find more customers like them.

Knowing your best customers is much more than a simple spreadsheet of your key customers’ names, addresses and phone numbers. Everybody has that basic information. It is learning all you can about them and includes details such as: their primary and related products/services; what they buy from you and how often; their annual revenue, employee size, SIC code; their parent company, divisions/units; their market share and current industry challenges; how often you communicate with them and their preferred method; what else they should be buying from you.  The list goes on and on and on.  You can find a more complete list here.

Whether your recession marketing strategies are customer retention, customer acquisition, or a combination and regardless of your various media choices such as; SEO, Direct Mail/Print Marketing, Internet Marketing, Tradeshows, Public Relations, Social Networking, Mass Advertising, or others…without a best customer focus, chances are you’ll be hanging by a thread from your 2009 marketing efforts.  Or just hanging out.  

Best customers are your sales and marketing treasure map to your best prospects and if you read it accurately, you’ll get to the right destination - your next best customers. 

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Still Flying Blind in 2009?

The new year is already tick-tocking away. You, now have only 11 months to identity and solve your biggest sales and marketing challenges.  

How well you leverage, integrate, share and view your customer data, marketing analysis and resulting reports will likely predict your company’s position in the marketplace at the end of 2009 and into well into 2010. 

Are you equipped with the right tools, customer intelligence and focus to succeed?   

If you can’t definitely say “Yes!”, then I suggest that you review the following: MARKETERS ARE FLYING BLIND WHEN IT COMES TO LEVERAGING CUSTOMER DATA AND ANALYTICS. Lack of Customer Data Sharing, Integration and Insight is Impacting Competitiveness, Retention Rates, Revenue and Profitability.

Next, check out The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council website at http://www.cmocouncil.org
and start tooling up with their free executive summary and/or full report, titled Business Gain From How You Retain.  This is an impressive study that surveyed more than 450 senior level marketers across the globe, with 72% being in North America. 

Although, the study was conducted and reported on several months back, I think it’s safe to say the issues and obstacles addressed remain a huge problem for companies of all sizes, in all industries, everywhere. The summary alone is extensive and packed full of value, while the full report provides significant ideas on how to succeed in 2009, 2010, 2011…you get the picture. 

Consider the following stats:

• The average company loses more than 10 percent of its customers each year.

• Acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers.

• A two percent increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 percent.

• Loyal customers are 15 times more likely to increase spend than high-risk, intermittent customers.

Then consider some of the study findings:

• Only 50 percent of global marketers report having a strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key account relationships

• A surprising 45 percent rate the effectiveness of customer relationship management (CRM) systems as deficient or needing more work

• Only 15 percent of companies rate themselves extremely good or effective at integrating disparate customer data sources and repositories.

• Just 50 percent report they have fair, little, or no knowledge of the customer.

• While more than 35 percent of respondents report that the CMO or marketing department (38.9 percent) has primary responsibility for the customer analytics function, they are not leveraging its value. Over 31 percent of those surveyed do no data mining at all and 63 percent are only doing moderate levels of data mining for intelligence and insight.

• Key initiatives to increase customer retention include improving customer communications (65.2 percent); addressing complaints, problems and pain points (51.8 percent); and enhancing the customer experience (54.8 percent). Unfortunately, fewer marketers noted their companies’ willingness to modify busin  ess practices and policies to accommodate customer need

According to the study:

The research demonstrates a disconnect between what marketers say they want to do and how well they are equipped to do it. For example, close to 50 percent of the respondents say they are improving customer retention by enhancing front-line customer service, while at the same time, only 55 percent report that their customer service and support teams have access to real-time customer data.

A fair number of survey participants (23 percent) say they’re able to acquire a sufficient amount of customer data but don’t have the ability to share the information, while 33 percent think that there is insufficient data as well as an inability to share.

Another way to put it is: If you don’t retain, you don’t gain.

Are you equipped to succeed in 2009?  What about 2010 and beyond?  Is your company still wearing blinders or are you flying with vision?

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InfoGrow Turns 20! Join Us in Celebrating!

2009 marks our 20th year of success and commitment as a leading sales and marketing solutions provider. This fantastic achievement is due to a combination of my dedicated employees, loyal customers, supportive business partners, along with our mission of being central to all of our clients’ sales and marketing success. 

November 6, 2009 is the official date, but we are going to CELEBRATE all year long.  In the spirit of celebration, I invite everyone to take part in, and enjoy, our monthly Anniversary 20/20 Trivia Contest.  Test your trivia knowledge and get the chance to win a great prize. 

Oh, by the way, categories change each month, so you have many chances to win.

HAVE SOME FUN!

Application Hosting – What it is and Why Use it?

I’ve often had clients and prospects ask me what exactly does hosting an application mean?  It is a fairly easy concept, but not so easy to explain given today’s technologies and rapid change of definitions, so here goes my try at explaining it. 

You may know it as Application Hosting as ASP (Application Service Provider), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), On-Demand software, or simply Outsourcing.  Though all of these terms are closely related to each other, they are not completely interchangeable, but the concept is the basically the same and fairly simple. 

What Does Hosting Mean?

Hosting is a software application distribution system where your application - CRM, Location Intelligence/ Mapping or others, are maintained and managed by a qualified service provider and made available to you, as a service over the WWW.  Essentially, this means that an application resides on the provider’s servers instead of your in-house servers. The application can be instantly accessed and shared by your sales/marketing and other company staff, through a web browser. In most cases, this means that the hosting provider is responsible for support, maintenance, installations, upgrades and security on a 24x7 basis. 

What is a Qualified Provider?

Generally, a qualified service provider is a company that has either developed the application and/or is certified by a software manufacturer, such as Microsoft.  Qualified Providers have worked extensively with your application and understand all the ins and outs.  They know exactly how to make the application work and are able to support you with best practices.

What are the Highlights:

With a good hosting service, you should experience the following

• No loss of data security or control
• Quicker implementation and quicker ROI
• No steep learning curves, plus ease of use
• Reduced Sales, Marketing and IT support
• Lower software and hardware costs
• 24x7 maintenance and support and security
• Automatic and frequent upgrades
• Ability to implement enhancements on an ongoing basis

What are the Benefits:

The biggest benefit is that you are sharing and accessing vital information with all your sales and marketing teams, instead of it all residing on your separate desktops.  In addition, you should get:

• Sales & Marketing on the same page, sharing the same information all the time
• Enhanced company image and customer loyalty
• Reduced costs and increased revenue and ROI

Bottom line is: You get to concentrate on your core competencies, and increase your sales and marketing effectiveness.   

What Companies are Using Application Hosting? 

CRM Magazine’s January 2009 Special Supplement, Best Practices Series: Software-as-a-Service said, “according to Analyst Perspectives, 55 percent of businesses based in North America will have deployed at least one SaaS application by the end of 2008.  They further stated that, “in fact, if industry forecasts can be believed, by 2012 nearly 30 percent of business software will be deployed and delivered via the SaaS model”.
 
So, do you now have a better idea of what hosting is?  Are you using it?  If so, what are the results?  If not, are you considering it?  I welcome you comments. 

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Market Smarter with Mapping

Given today’s unstable economy, tighter marketing budgets and highly competitive business environment, marketers are facing some incredibly difficult challenges. Now, more than ever, it is vital for you to find effective ways to:

• Do more with less resources
• Understand and use your sales and marketing information better
• Access and share your data faster and easier; you need answers now – not next week
• Get your sales and marketing teams on the same page

There is no better way to solve these challenges than through mapping technology and location intelligence. Why?  Because these tools provide an instant visualization of your sales and marketing information that Excel or other reports can’t provide.  They enable you to clearly see data relationships, trends and patterns that are basically invisible in the rows, columns and tables spewed out in spreadsheets.

By looking at one clean map of your customer / prospect / competitor data instead of a Niagra of numbers in dozens of unintegrated reports, you can see the whole picture clearly and make smarter, more profitable decisions faster and easier. 

Combining your sales and marketing information with location intelligence and mapping tools, allows you to effectively:

• Identify you best customers and prospects
• Determine your current market share and see/decide how to increase it
• Optimize your sales teams and territories
• Analyze, access and share your data faster and easier
• Discover new markets hidden in spreadsheet reports
• Reduce sales force travel time and increase customer contact time
• Enhance your company image
• Focus on your most profitable customers / prospects and find more like them
• Present your CEO with a clear picture of where the company is and where they need to be

Those are only a few of the benefits. The possibilities are endless.

So, given the above benefits, why isn’t every marketer in every company not taking advantage of these readily available, powerful sales and marketing effectiveness tools?  Especially now, when marketers need all the ammo they can get to fight the economy and competitors. 

As I see it, though most marketers are aware of mapping and location intelligence, they often view these tools as too costly, too difficult to learn and use, too labor intensive, and believe everything has to be built and maintained in-house.

But, that’s not the case at all.  There are easy, cost-effective options. 

Microsoft’s Virtual Earth offers an integrated set of location based services combined with best-of-breed mapping technology.  These services can easily be delivered across the Internet and/or through a company’s Intranet and maintained by an in-house team or outsourced to an experienced Microsoft Virtual Earth Certified Partner / Developer with hosting capabilities. 

So, if you don’t have the in-house resources, contracting with a qualified Virtual Earth Partner / Developer is a great way to go.  With this option, there is no need for internal hardware, development, staff resources or support.  You can get all of the benefits without any of the headaches. 

Virtual Earth delivers solid solutions to marketers in every industry to visualize and share sales and marketing information instantly, effectively connect with your customers, and efficiently manage your limited resources.

For all marketers who are looking for the best ways to overcome today’s complicated challenges and succeed in 2009 and every year after, I suggest investigating what Location Intelligence, Mapping and Virtual Earth and Hosting have to offer. 

Visit these sites and learn more:

http://www.microsoft.com/VIRTUALEARTH/
http://www.infogrowcorp.com/Home/Solutions+Index/Location+Intelligence/default.aspx
http://infogrow.typepad.com/sales_marketing_effective/2007/04/mapping_the_tre.html
http://infogrow.typepad.com/sales_marketing_effective/2006/12/location_intell.html
http://infogrowcorp.com/Home/Solutions+Index/Development+Services/Application+Hosting/default.aspx

Have a Great New Year!

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Have You Wrapped Up That 2009 Marketing Plan?

If not, there is still time, but not much, to wrap it all up.  Keep in mind, there is no Santa coming to deliver a nice tightly wrapped marketing package outlining your plans for success in the coming year. 

If your 2009 plan is still on the table and you’re yet trying to determine effective strategies and dollars, I encourage you to peruse the following links to 2009 marketing trends, surveys, advice and predictions.  These resources could help you finalize an effective marketing plan for the coming year. You need a plan that puts you ahead of the pack next year…and years after. 

And, even for those of you who have finalized your 2009 marketing plans, you might find some valuable ideas that you could integrate into those plans. 

Changes to Marketing Spending and Strategy Coming in 2009
For some excellent insight on potential marketing budget and strategy changes coming in 2009, you must read this post on 1to1 Media’s blog – Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog .  This article provides the results of a survey of their readers and LinkedIn members on potential changes to their 2009 marketing budget and strategy.  The survey conducted by Ginger Conlon, Editor-in-Chief of Peppers & Rogers Group’s  1to1 Media, and article comments are a wealth of information that you can’t afford to miss.

How’s That 2009 Marketing Plan Coming?
Also, back in August, Ginger Conlon posted this article based on 10 trends offered by Richard Feldman, managing partner of Source Marketing that may impact marketing in 2009 and beyond. As Ginger stated, “Keeping tabs on trends can help”. 

Media Alert: ANA Reveals 2008 Annual Conference Polling Results
Check out the results of a poll conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) during their 2008 Annual “Masters of Marketing” Conference.  The 1200 attendees, including a mix of B-to-B and B-to-C marketers, were polled about their marketing mix, budgets, plans and tactics for growth in 2009.  Learning what other marketers are planning may help you with your 2009 marketing strategies. 

What won’t fly in that 2009 marketing plan
For some great suggestions and additional resources to help you solidify your 2009 marketing plan, read this post published on the Red on Marketing blog built by Business Communications Group.  The post covers several specific 2009 marketing strategy questions along with some good answers, ideas and additional marketing links/resources.  You don’t want to pass this by. 

Survey Says: Nearly 43 percent of healthcare marketers plan to spend more in 2009
Details of the survey were posted by Mac McIntosh, president of Mac McIntosh Incorporated, a sales and marketing consulting firm.  While the survey is centered on healthcare marketing, healthcare is a huge growing industry and a glimpse into what some healthcare marketers are planning and spending in 2009 could provide some great insight into marketing strategies for any industry. It’s a great read and may show you how to apply their strategies into your own.  Mac’s post also includes a one-question 2009 marketing budget survey which provides a comparison between 2008 and 2009 marketing budgets. 

Marketing Into The Storm: How The Recent Crisis Will Create New Opportunities 
This article by Mike Gospe, Co-Founder of KickStart Alliance puts forth three marketing truths that companies need to embrace and act upon in order to achieve success and excel in 2009.  Great advice for the coming year and all the time. 

Strategic Thinking 3.0 - A media forecast for 2009 
These 2009 media predictions offered by Nick Brien is president and CEO of Mediabrands provide some valuable opinions about marketing in 2009.  Although, this forecast seems to embrace advertising firms, it is valuable for all companies since many B-toB and B-to-C organizations use ad agencies for much of their marketing efforts.  Definitely worth your time. 

InfoGrow Corporation Website and Blog 
Last, but hopefully not least, is my company’s website and blog. I invite you to visit both sites and look over the solutions we provide to all companies everyday in order to help them achieve sales & marketing effectiveness.  Solutions that worked 20 years ago, will work in 2009 and in the future. 

I hope these links/resources are of value to your marketing efforts in 2009 and years after.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year

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