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Content Is Dead and We Killed It
- January 19th, 2020
- CMSWire
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Content is the lubricant of customer engagement. Buyers are attracted to brands with content that enables them to make a more informed decision. Valuable content keeps them coming back. Or so the story goes. The reality is we are all sick of content. Brands are burned out from producing rivers and oceans of content. Customers are fatigued by the barrage of irrelevant and often low-quality content. In fact, according to the Economist Group, 71% of buyers/readers said they were turned off by content that seemed like a sales pitch. And CMI & MarketingProfs found “only 54% of B2B marketers are using content to 'delight' and build loyalty with existing clients/customers.”
3 Causes of Content Burnout
Three things contribute to the demise of content: Inside-out content strategy, a plethora of channels and content-centric lead generation. Most content is developed from the inside-out. Various internal teams each believe the customer "needs" to have this or that information. The CTO has a white paper they are passionate about, product marketing insists on a data sheet, the CEO wants a blog, and the list go on. What starts out as a genuine desire to communicate differentiated value turns into a political football — it’s easier to just create the content and get on with life. Lost along the way is meeting the buyers’ needs. Second is the overwhelming number of channels and their constantly evolving efficacy. Determining which channel and format for each asset and for which audience is enough to give you a migraine. Sure, omnichannel marketing is the remedy, yet stitching the systems together is hard and having the necessary clean, complete data is even harder. The third uses content as the tip of the spear. Buyers are looking for more in the moment, contextually relevant ways to learn about brands. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers.What Is the Buyer Trying to Accomplish?
In the thousand-plus journey interviews we’ve conducted, buyers and customers want information that helps them achieve specific tasks. They are unwilling to settle for content that misses the mark. As a result, buying teams increasingly rely on word of mouth, independent third parties/influencers, industry forums and peers to get the information they need. You can start to fix the content challenge by asking a question — what is the buyer trying to accomplish at each micro-moment? Answering that question requires outside-in insights best obtained by interviewing customers and prospects. Keep in mind it’s not about your content but everyone’s content they look for. By broadening the inquiry, you’ll quickly learn if your brand is their ‘go-to’ resource or if that honor goes to someone else. A manufacturing organization mailed out high-quality product catalogs to customers and prospects on an annual basis. We learned from journey interviews that 90% of those catalogs went directly into recycling upon receipt. Customers didn’t want anyone’s catalogs and some thought it made the manufacturer appear old school and out of touch. It’s easier to search and order online. Another client developed YouTube product videos to promote their products. We discovered companies were actually using them as employee training videos without buying the product. According to Sitecore, the true cost of content that misses the mark is poor customer experience, missed revenue opportunities, lost internal productivity and inability to scale. Ironically, companies tend to kick the can down the road. The result is a mountain of assets that aren’t inventoried, are out of date, and in channels that have been forgotten about long ago.How to Turn Your Content Strategy Around
Here are four quick steps to turn your content back into powerful customer enablers:- Conduct a content gap analysis between your outside-in journey map and current marketing/sales processes to identify what content buying teams are looking for but not finding from you.
- Delete content that is not sought by members of the buying team. Same thing for content channels. If buying teams do not use a channel(s), drop it. (This is a good project to outsource.) Don’t fall into the FOMO trap of being everywhere with everything.
- Develop persona/micro-moment level content strategy that clearly defines how each asset satisfies the buyers’ objectives, the preferred channel and how to measure success. (Detailed journey maps make this step a breeze).
- Repurpose existing valuable content that is in the wrong format. For example, buyers might be looking for statistics or listicles instead of long-form text. There are sophisticated tools available, like SDL’s Content Assistant that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to parse existing content into preferred formats, from tweets to blurbs.
What CMOs Should Tell Board Members (and What Boards Should Be Asking)
- February 14th, 2019
- CMSWire
- 0 Comments
Marketers have an opportunity to proactively help board of directors understand marketing — but most are missing out. I’ve sat in many board meetings over the past few years where the CMO presented slides full of detailed metrics on conversion, reach, mindshare and more without putting the information, which is essentially Greek to most of the board, into context. Marketers, in short, need to speak board member's language. Christopher Faust, a life-long SaaS-industry CMO, pointed out that marketers typically present “beautiful charts but don’t answer the most important question of whether the sales and marketing team is adding pipeline at the pace needed to meet future total forecasts.” Ken Klein, who sits on several boards, said board members lack the expertise to ask the right questions of marketing. Their backgrounds are typically in sales, finance or company founders. “Few of my peers come up through marketing and therefore don’t understand that marketing’s results is an early indicator of the company’s future performance,” he shared. “Boards really only care about one thing — are we going to meet our number and do we have the coverage to get there. Marketing's role should be to help simplify metric reporting to answer that question and prove marketing's ROI,” said Faust. Part of the problem, he continued, is that marketing and sales present different pipelines and revenue forecasts. This creates confusion for the board and friction between the teams. “The metric of marketing contribution to sales is important, but meeting sales targets is most important. It doesn’t matter if marketing’s revenue contribution is 50 percent or 100 percent, if the pipeline and conversions are too low to meet targets, those numbers are meaningless,” said Faust.
What Marketers Should Be Presenting to the Board
When I attend board meetings, I look for specific insights from marketing which put their efforts in context:-
Total pipeline forecast for next three quarters and actuals for the past three quarters.
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Line of sight conversion for the buyer journey funnel — trigger event through purchase and renewal — by major market segments/buyers.
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Marketing/Sales spend analysis and how it could be optimized to improve revenue, customer alignment and reputation.
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QoQ and YoY changes in customer/SaaS cohort, buyer (lost/never considered), and influencer behavior patterns and marketing and sales’ joint action plan.
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Market landscape changes, with a particular focus on disruptive risks from tangential/orthogonal markets.
What Boards Should Ask CMOs
There is no one-size-fits-all list of questions that boards should ask the CMO. The questions differ based on the maturity stage of the company.Early-Stage Companies
Start-ups and early stage companies are in a unique situation: They are often pre-revenue and trying to figure out the right go-to-market model. Bruce Cleveland, founding partner at Wildcat Venture Partners and author of "Traversing the Traction Gap," said that for very early stage companies, “Boards should be focused on asking the team about what I call 'market engineering' tasks. These are tasks that must be completed such as 'minimum viable category' (category creation or redefinition), developing a thought leadership talk track about how you are going to transform the world, and what the initial sales talk track is, all while the company is still working on reaching MVP (minimum viable product).” For companies that have achieved MVT, minimum viable traction, board-level marketing discussions should focus on high-level metrics. Cleveland stressed, “The focus should be on trends such as: CLTV (customer lifetime value), CAC (customer acquisition costs), NPS (net promoter score) and DAUs (daily active users).” He echoed Faust’s point that marketing’s macro metrics should tell the board if things are on track or not. Based on his experience, Cleveland argued that “Marketing be responsible for helping to forecast what the revenue will be in the next quarter; Sales should own the current quarter.” Marketing should use lead conversions and other data to help the board and management team forecast future revenue. Most companies aren’t there yet. Related Article: How to Deliver Credible Marketing Pipeline ForecastsGrowth-Stage Companies
Growth stage companies are all about scale. Management and the board are focused on quarter over quarter growth in market share, profitability, revenue and customer retention. The sales cycle should be repeatable and predictable, as is the competitive landscape. The marketing mix is more diverse and should be driven by customer experience expectations. The company may be privately-held or be publicly traded. The composition of the board frequently includes independent board members and/or industry experts. Gayle Crowell, a serial public and private board director, recommends that CMOs focus on four areas when talking to their boards: 1. Overall marketing investment and structure: Venture capitalists and private equity investors need to understand, at a glance, where that money is going.-
What kind of return (in terms of revenue generated) do you expect for each area of spend?
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What are your most effective marketing channels, why and does the data support your findings?
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Do we have the right marketing structure, skills and talent to overachieve on our growth plan?
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On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that the additional results would be achievable?
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What kind of leverage should be expected from additional investments as the business scales?
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How can we double the results without doubling the marketing investment?
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What is marketing doing to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales organization?
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What are marketing’s goals in this area and how should success of your initiatives be measured?
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Specifically, what can marketing do to significantly increase the conversion rate in middle to late stage of the sales process?
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Is the company positioned in right place (product/market/price) to successfully compete?
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What are the top three causes of wins and losses? Specifically, where would you invest to drive more wins or fewer losses?
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What are specific ways the company can create new revenue streams? (Pricing, services, new distribution channels, new markets, etc.)
Late-Stage Growth and Mature Companies
Mature stage companies are well-established in their industry, with clearly defined competitors and product/service substitutions. Their challenges are focused on maintaining a culture of innovation, year over year growth, organizational productivity and customer loyalty. At this stage, the board is a true governance body. Their interest is in the marketing strategy, not in number of leads, marketing and sales spend statistics, etc. The board assumes those things are being effectively managed by the CMO and CEO. Directors are interested in the big picture strategy and how that affects the outcome. Most CMO presentations at this stage are just not high level enough. They don’t connect the dots of what they do and say with the bottom line. Agnieszka Winkler, is a serial board member for private and public companies including SuperCuts, RenoAir, The Cheesecake Factory and Ascension Healthcare Network among others. Her marketing background makes her the "go to" board member to determine if the company’s efforts are on the mark. Her advice to board members is to get comfortable asking probing questions. Only by "peeling the onion" can the board understand how effectively marketing is setting strategy that will increase its brand value, reputation and revenue growth. Winkler suggests three areas of focus: 1. Market share: This implies that marketers know their total available market, competitors, what their revenue breakdown is and how much they are investing in marketing.-
Are your marketing strategies adequately increasing market share or should you shift focus to grow total available market?
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What are the triggers to sell different offerings into your existing markets to maintain/grow market share and revenue?
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Are your primary competitors doing the same thing as you or are they solving the market problem in different/unique ways?
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What percentage of your revenue is from repeat customers and from net new customers?
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What are the customer acquisition costs?
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Who are your strategic customers and what percent of revenue do they represent?
Share the Stories That Inspire Confidence
Board members want deeper visibility into revenue impact from marketing spends. CMOs who are accountable for delivering revenue must be able to speak in business terms that help board members and investors better understand how marketing is driving growth. Getting lost in the day to day tactics and metrics that don’t tell the bigger story of growth isn't helpful. While that might sound like CMO-bashing, it is one of the realities facing CMOs. Boards want to know with a high level of confidence that the CMO understands the levers that drive demand, can adjust accordingly and are trusted stewards of company resources.How to Deliver Credible Marketing Pipeline Forecasts
- January 12th, 2019
- CMSWire
- 0 Comments
Marketing owns the pipeline today. Not because sales is not performing, but rather because marketing owns most of the customer lifecycle touchpoints. In “The 4 Factors Defining Marketing’s Future,” we identified one of the biggest challenges facing marketers: the inability to deliver credible forward-looking marketing-generated pipeline forecasts. It’s what boards want and what the rest of the C-Suite needs to excel at their jobs. Historically, board of directors didn’t expect marketing to talk about owning pipelines and forecasts. If marketing presented at all to the board it was about branding. Today, all board of directors want to talk about are ROI, pipeline, funnel metrics, investment metrics and more. According to Ken Klein, who sits on a number of boards, “the ideal situation is if the CEO could measure marketing based on the pipeline generated, audit that number and the process, much like the financial books.” Part of the problem, according to Klein, is that board members lack the expertise in marketing to ask the right questions.
Bringing More Science to Marketing
CEOs stress that marketing needs to become more scientific. “Marketers need to embrace that. Funnels should be viewed as a scientific experiment because not every channel or lead is equal,” said Henry Schuck, CEO of DiscoverOrg, a prospect data and B2B intelligence solution. “It takes time and iterations to get the data, process and reporting correct to yield credible marketing generated pipeline forecasts. It took us two and half years.” Marketers don’t disagree — they are trying to deliver credible pipeline forecasts. Doing so would help their credibility, secure more funding, and level the power equation in organizations. What’s holding marketers back is not lack of desire but a lack of knowing where to start and having the right data. In talking with CMOs who have mastered credible pipeline reporting, they stress that four foundations need to be in place first:- Agree on the percentage of revenue that marketing will source.
- Ensure marketing and sales op systems correctly capture leads for each channel.
- Analyze past 12 months of lead distribution by channel for consistency, seasonality and identify unpredictable channels, i.e., social algorithmic changes.
- Identify the internal skilled resource(s) who own managing forecast data and process.
A Repeatable Sales Cycle Is Key
If your sales cycle has not achieved stable repeatability for at least four to five sequential quarters, you have no basis upon which to expect marketing to deliver credible forward-looking pipeline forecasts. And chances are high your sales forecast is not as credible (and predictable) as you’d like it to be. Your business model or market is not mature enough. Repeatability is important because marketing needs accurate and complete historical data as the foundation for predictive modeling. Without that, credible predictability will be elusive. That doesn’t mean you should abandon forecasting, rather you should use it to identify patterns.How One Company Mastered Marketing-Generated Pipeline Forecasting
Contently, provider of a content marketing solution, has mastered marketing-generated pipeline forecasting. It is its primary means to manage the business and marketing investments. Fernandez built and managed five data models that became the cornerstone of marketing pipeline management.-
Customer Database: This database includes over 40 key attributes for every customer, both active and inactive. The Salesforce database is maintained daily to ensure every data element is correct and current. “The biggest problem these days is data. It’s grumpy and dirty,” shared Fernandez. “Analysis isn’t the problem, it’s data quality and veracity.”
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Historical Pipeline: Is a Tableau database of all past marketing and sales pipelines, forecasts and accuracy.
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Historical Lead Performance: Is a Marketo database of all marketing leads, campaign source, cost, time to lead conversion, number and cadence of subsequent touches, time and rate of pipeline conversion, deal value and win rate.
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Marketing Channel Analysis: This Tableau database combines the first three data models to track and report on marketing channel lead and engagement performance, spend and ROI.
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Marketing Spend ROI: This database “allocates every penny of marketing spend including discretionary, overhead allocations and fully loaded salary costs,” said Fernandez. “We use it to calculate Return on Marketing Spend as well as ROI for every marketing and sales team as well as channel. This shows the board we are responsible with money.”
5 Steps to Forecasting Your Marketing Pipeline
With your data in shape, you’re ready to forecast your marketing-generated pipeline:- Set your annual target of marketing generated pipeline revenue ($X) broken down by month to account for seasonality, if there is any.
- Separate out “net new,” “renewal” and “up-/cross-sell” pipeline forecasts, as the three behave differently. According to Schuck, “Determine, by market segment, the average win rate (Y) and be specific if the win rate differs by product/solution, customer size and/or industry.” Sloan also stressed that forecasting blended business models, where you have multiple sales cycles, requires separate modeling and forecasting.
- Determine your marketing "coverage" rate — most B2B vendors use four times. Meaning, marketing needs to generate four times $X for the year with a win rate of Y.
- Define the historical spend and conversion metrics for each channel, which you’ll then use to forecast future spend pipeline results. “A key to success is making sure the channels are tightly aligned to the actions customers take at each stage in the buyers’ journey,” stated Fernandez.
- Develop your marketing revenue-generated pipeline forecast. Use historical conversion to pipeline and win rates to forecast marketing generated pipeline by forward quarters.
What Can Throw a Forecast’s Credibility?
A lot of factors can throw off a forecast's credibility. Most of these are unexpected, like budget and channel mix changes. Revised forecasts need to account for the effect on leads by channel by time period but also the ripple effect on other channels, what Sloan calls the omnichannel effect. While marketers are talking about executing omnichannel campaigns, the reality is marketers still plan and spend in a channel-centric model. Her rule is to “stop investing in channels if there is no ROI (revenue) in six months of investing. Instead take a ‘fail fast’ approach to new channels. Switching to ABM or ABM list changes can also throw a forecast. Marketing teams need two or more quarters to understand the impact on historical conversion patterns. Sloan has found that with ABM it’s best to focus on the number of opportunities to be generated versus revenue amounts. Going through this process inevitably brings up the topic of attribution models. Sloan is a fan of multi-attribution models to achieve visibility of conversion along the sales cycle. Schuck and Fernandez, not so much. However, all agree that the first and last touches are critical. Sloan advises companies to keep it simple. “Don’t try to over-calculate the forecast, you’ll never get to the exact number.” The ability to present credible marketing generated pipeline forecasts is a game changer for marketing and the company. A key to success is routinely reviewing the pipeline forecast with the CFO and CEO. Schuck suggested weekly meetings, so everyone understands the process and changes being made to marketing spend and the forecast model. First published in CMSWire.The 4 Factors Defining Marketing’s Future
- November 23rd, 2018
- CMSWire
- 0 Comments
How to Get What You Want From Analyst Relations
- August 8th, 2018
- CMSWire
- 0 Comments
It matters less what you say than what others say about your company or product. While marketers have been preaching this for decades, the definition of who the “others” are has varied over time. Others used to mean tier one print media outlets, news channels and industry analysts. Today, the focus is on customers, thought leaders and subject matter experts promoted through case studies, blogger posts, video testimonials, webinars, social media and customer reviews on platforms like Trustpilot. Industry analysts are noticeably absent from today’s list.
The Technology World’s Love Hate Relationship With Analysts
The technology community has always had a love-hate relationship with analysts. For many, they are seen as a necessary evil requiring costly investments in the hope of currying favor. Success is usually narrowly defined as inclusion in analyst reports and placement, preferably in the upper right corner of a magic quadrant, wave or market category vendor rating. You’ll hear many CEOs and marketers lament that analyst relations is a “more you invest, greater the odds of coverage” game. However, that’s not true. Sure, some “analyst” firms are play for play, but seasoned marketers know who those players are just as well as customers do. Leading large and boutique analyst firms like Gartner and Wainhouse Research are in the advice and empowerment business. Gartner’s mission statement states: “We equip business leaders with indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their mission-critical priorities and build successful organizations of tomorrow.” In other words, analysts are motivated when they see companies using their knowledge to achieve real success. It’s what makes them tick. Years ago as CMO of Ariba, I developed a trusted relationship with Mickey North-Rizza, who is now with IDC. As I led Ariba’s shift from on-premises to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) while rebuilding market credibility at the same time, Mickey was my muse. We talked about positioning, acquisitions and market evolutions. She gained a richer understanding of our goals and challenges. She was instrumental in turning around the market and Wall Street’s perceptions of Ariba, which improved the stock and sales performance. To this day, I listen to Mickey.Jump Start Your Way to Better Analyst Relationships
If you’re a growth or early stage company you need to invest in relationship-building, but here are a few of my hacks to get a jump start on results:Get Personal
Instead of your CMO conducting briefings alone, put your CEO on a plane to join the visit with analysts on their turf. Have a cup of coffee, lunch or a formal briefing and demo in a relaxed environment designed to foster a personal connection. Your CTO should also be there.Conferences
Use those conference passes — and buy more. Attend and preschedule analyst one-on-ones. Ask intelligent questions during their presentations.Frequent Inquiries
Submit a steady (but not over the top) cadence of inquiry requests with relevant analysts and ask thoughtful questions about recent reports and issues facing your company.Access to Customers
Every analyst loves to talk to customers. In inquiries and briefings offer to connect the analyst with one or two customers for an open conversation without “minders.”2 Keys to a Successful Analyst Relationship
One key to successful industry analyst relations is to set realistic goals for your program. For a recent growth-stage client the goals we set were:- Make sure we’re in the right market category, today and within 24 months.
- Help define/confirm the compelling use cases and return on investment (ROI) metrics.
- Help define truly differentiated messaging and validate with category and GoToMarket analysts.
- Make sure relevant analyst knows us, our differentiation, and enjoys every conversation.
- Critique and engage in refining our (new) website to meet the customer experience (CX) objectives.
- Get mentions (intentionally last on the list).
- A detailed onboarding plan with ‘milestones’ and a prioritized initial list of analysts.
- Monthly face-to-face meetings focused on client updates, milestones and relevant upcoming research agendas.
- Proactive reminders about scheduling inquiries and briefings and help in getting the analyst to accept requests.
- Build relationships with multiple client personnel including your CEO to broaden analyst exposure and knowledge with the company.