Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels

Table of Contents

Foreword .............................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 1: The What and Why of B2B Marketing Channels ....................................................... 2

What Qualifies as a Marketing Channel? .........................................................................................3

The Business Benefits of Marketing Channel Discovery and Prioritization ..........................................4

A Quick Look at the Key Players in the Process ...............................................................................5

Understanding the Prerequisites of Marketing Channel Research .....................................................7

Chapter 2: Discovering a Universe of Marketing Channels ........................................................ 8

Narrowing Your Marketing Channel Focus through Preliminary Research ...........................................9

Preliminary Research Techniques ...........................................................................................10

Identifying and Grouping Keywords for Web-based Channel Research .............................................11

Generating Keyword Combinations for Online Research ............................................................13

Generating Hashtags and Short Forms for Your Most Common Keywords ....................................13

Grouping Keywords into Applicable Themes ............................................................................14

Performing Online Research to Build a List of Prospective Marketing Channels ................................15

Building the Data Collection Plan ..........................................................................................15

Executing a Web-based Research Process ...............................................................................16

Removing Junk Data and Channel Duplication ........................................................................18

Qualifying Marketing Channels by Type, Thematic Relevance, Quality, and Feasibility .......................18

Content Quality and Relevance ..............................................................................................20

Channel Feasibility ...............................................................................................................21

Chapter 3: Prioritizing Marketing Channels and Optimizing Your Marketing Plan ....................... 22

Identifying Marketing Channel Prioritization Factors and Relevant Metrics .......................................22

Prioritization Across Different Types of Marketing Channels............................................................23

Defining and Managing the Prioritization Data Collection Process ..................................................24

Establishing a Backup Plan to Address Unanticipated Gaps in Prioritization Data ............................24

Applying the Prioritization Scheme to Qualified Marketing Channels ...............................................26

Gathering and Incorporating Feedback .........................................................................................27

End Note ........................................................................................................................... 31

Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 32

Marketing Channel Types ............................................................................................................32

Typical Marketing Channel Prioritization Metrics ...........................................................................37

Additional Resources .................................................................................................................41

Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels | 1

ForewordFor much of its 100-year history, outdoor recreation retailer L.L. Bean relied on a straightforward and simple

marketing strategy. The company would send out thick, glossy mail-order catalogs to its best customers and rely on

word-of-mouth or customer referrals to drive new customer acquisition. Outside of that, the Maine-based business did

little else to market itself. Because, well, it didn’t need to.

Then, about 10 years ago, things changed. L.L. Bean CEO Chris McCormick realized that the company’s single-channel

marketing strategy was no longer sufficient. As McCormick told an industry publication at the time, L.L. Bean’s catalog

was beginning to cause customer fatigue and brand apathy. Meanwhile, the company’s primary competitors were actively

engaging the same customer segment through a variety of more recent online marketing channels.

So, McCormick and L.L. Bean’s executive team did what the best companies always do: They reinvented the company’s

marketing strategy. Today, as L.L. Bean attempts to target younger and more mobile consumers, the business is investing

heavily in social media networks like Facebook and YouTube, and it has hired a team of 10 employees dedicated to

those social channels. The company is also leveraging traditional broadcast media by airing television commercials and

publishing magazine ads.

Interesting story, right? But why does any of that matter to growth-stage B2B technology companies? It’s simple, really.

Because it illustrates one company’s recognition that marketing has evolved. While a single channel marketing strategy

might have been effective 20 years ago, it’s not enough anymore.

Businesses today — especially expansion-stage B2B technology companies in competitive markets — must be able

to identify the channels that influence their customers the most. They must dedicate an appropriate amount of their

marketing resources to reach them effectively. If they fail to do that, then scaling technology businesses stand very

little chance of capturing their market’s attention.

OpenView’s eBook, “Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels,” can

help. In the following pages, you’ll find detailed marketing channel definitions, a well-summarized list of multi-channel

marketing business benefits, and a step-by-step process. It’ll bring your company up to speed. But more than that, it will

help you to begin engaging the right customers in the right places.

Ann Handley

Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Co-author, Content Rules (Wiley) (now in paperback – spring 2012)

www.marketingprofs.com

ContentRulesBook.com


Chapter 1: The What and Why of B2B Marketing Channels

The average marketing strategy for a startup or growing B2B software company used to be fairly straightforward.

It might involve buying advertisements in specific trade magazines or publications, creating a small budget for

Google AdWords, and building a sufficient, if not fancy, website. Beyond that, most additional marketing chan-

nels were viewed as experimental or an unnecessary use of precious resources.

In many ways, that strategy closely resembled the tactics that much

larger B2C businesses have long relied on: using one primary medium

(e.g., direct mail catalogs) and one or two sub-channels (e.g., pay-per-

click ads or e-mail newsletters) to reach very specific buyer personas.

The problem with that approach is that a single channel strategy is far too

simplistic for B2B technology companies, which tend to sell sophisticated

products to very complex market segments.

Today, B2B marketing is multi-channel marketing and growing businesses

should be tapping into an ever expanding universe of online marketing

channels, including social media, interactive assessments, and virtual

events, to better target their customers. Of course, the range of options

can be burdensome, especially for companies that lack the budget and

staff to experiment with each of them.

However, that doesn’t excuse smaller B2B companies from having to

research and identify the marketing channels that are most appropri-

ate for their business goals. In fact, because of the complexity of their

products, the sophistication of their customers, and, in most cases, the

competition in their markets, it’s more important than ever for those

companies to leverage multiple channels to engage their target customer

segments.

“It’s shocking just how much time

and money companies spend

promoting their products and

services without ever truly

understanding their customers or

prospects. If you don’t know who

you’re trying to convince, what those people need to

hear to be convinced, and what channels you need to

use to reach them, your message is never going to get

across. This eBook advocates the same principles that

we use at Influencer50: understand your customer’s

approach to buying or adopting new providers and

suppliers as well as what affects their choices,

prioritize opportunities, and measure the effectiveness

of your approach to market. It’s shocking, and

completely illogical, how few organizations plan their

marketing outreach around these basic common sense

building blocks.”

Nick Hayes President, Influencer50, Inc.

http://www.influencer50.com/


So, how exactly do you identify which channels are right for your business? And how many channels should you be using at a time?

“Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels” provides a high-level overview of

one channel selection process — there are certainly others — that OpenView has had great success using. It is intended for

senior executives and project managers who, after reading this, will be able to make sense of the wide and complex range

of marketing mediums that help bring their message to their customers and pinpoint the marketing channels that are most

effective at engaging those customers. Ultimately, those insights will allow your company to strike the right channel mix and

optimize your marketing dollars so that they have maximum impact.

WHAT QUALIFIES AS A MARKETING CHANNEL?

Marketing channels are specific conduits through which a company’s message can reach

its target prospects. Channels can include people, events, and organizations, provided

those outlets offer a medium for connecting a business with its customers and prospects.

The beauty for growing B2B businesses is that effective marketing channels now stretch

well beyond the confining — and often expensive — boundaries of traditional advertising.

Simply put, marketing can occur across a large array of mediums, though not all of them

are appropriate for your business. To avoid confusion, it’s important for your business to

categorize its best marketing channels by media and content types, as well as market

focus and coverage. Doing so will make the discovery and prioritization process much

simpler and ensure that the right messages are being delivered to the right audience.

For the purpose of this eBook, keep the following four specific categories

of marketing channels in mind:

Product-specific

Marketing channels that are relevant to your product’s direct market, which include mediums where

that product — or similar competing products — are normally advertised, reviewed, or discussed.

Product-specific marketing channels are most suitable for targeted demand generation campaigns.

There are hundreds of

different types of marketing

channels, some of the most

common used today being:

} Word of Mouth

} Partner Marketing

} User Groups

} Social Media

} Influencers

(See page 32 in Appendix for a representative list)


Competitor

Marketing channels where your competitors are not only present, but also active. Applicable chan-

nels include those used directly or indirectly by competitors to advertise, sell, or promote their prod-

ucts, along with channels that frequently mention or review competing solutions. There are various

types of competitors (including direct pure play competitors, direct non-pure play competitors, and

substitutes), all of which are germane to this category.

Behavioral

Marketing channels that are relevant to a customer’s buying behavior (i.e., his or her pain points,

thoughts, intentions, trusted sources and advisors, and buying preferences both online and off).

For example, you might include online communities frequented by your target prospects as well as

the active experts in those communities whose recommendations influence buyer behaviors.

Industry

Marketing channels that are used by the industry as a whole. In other words, the mediums that your

industry’s buyers, vendors, partners, analysts, and journalists use to exchange pertinent information.

Typically, this group covers a broader range of topics and content than the previous categories and is

particularly useful for general market presence and brand-building efforts.

THE BUSINESS BENEFITS OF MARKETING CHANNEL DISCOVERY AND PRIORITIZATION

Like any marketing initiative, senior executives want to know how a B2B marketing channel process will impact the bottom

line and what value it will bring in return. While it might be difficult to derive a quantitative return on investment overnight,

the marketing channel discovery and prioritization process can help optimize your company’s marketing spend over both the

short and long term.

As most marketers know, doing so will impact sales and marketing operations almost immediately, fueling better departmental

efficiency and performance — not to mention better market focus — for quarters if not years to come. Some of the other

benefits of conducting a marketing channel discovery and prioritization exercise include:

Helping develop finely tuned annual marketing plans: Most marketing managers suffer through a rigorous annual

guessing game that requires them to predict which conferences they should attend, which analysts they need to engage, and

how much money they will need to do their jobs. By executing a marketing channel discovery and prioritization process, they

can more accurately project those plans and better support them with key data.


Improving tracking and benchmarking: Once marketing managers have well-defined and prioritized lists of marketing

channels, they can review their performance against those channels and continuously optimize that list accordingly.

Gaining insights into competitors’ marketing strategies: Through the channel discovery process, companies can gain

critical competitive insights into which channels their greatest competitors — especially the ones with similar marketing budgets

— use most.

Knowing who to hire for future needs: If a marketing manager knows that her business’s top online channel is influenc-

ers, she can plan ahead to hire people with the skill sets (public relations and social media, for example) that are best suited

for utilizing that channel.

Setting more realistic goals: With the data derived from the marketing channel discovery process, a marketing team can

set realistic goals that align with a particular channel’s actual opportunities. In turn, marketers can avoid the pitfall of setting

overly ambitious goals that cannot possibly be achieved with the channel they plan to use.

If your business is struggling to gain traction in an increasingly competitive market, each of these five benefits could have a sig-

nificant long-term impact on the development of your business’s marketing strategy. It is important to note that there are other

ancillary benefits that we will not cover in this eBook.

A QUICK LOOK AT THE KEY PLAYERS IN THE PROCESS

Gathering and prioritizing marketing channel data is not a one-person job. It requires significant

effort from several people in your marketing organization, with the key roles falling into three

specific categories:

Typically the VP of marketing or your company’s most senior marketer, the project sponsor is responsible for owning and over-

seeing the entire marketing channel discovery and prioritization process. He or she is responsible for directing the scope and

goals of the project, along with securing company-wide agreement on the research methodology and the ultimate utilization of

the project’s outputs. Specifically, the project sponsor:

Project Sponsor

2Defines the marketing channel prioritization criteria 3

Reviews and vets the prioritization of the marketing channels 4

Incorporates the results into the marketing plan1

Defines and plans the project


Generally a marketing manager with deep knowledge of the target market segment, the market research analyst’s responsibili-

ties include executing the research and analysis steps necessary to guide the project, and ensuring the reliability and accuracy

of the initiative’s data outputs. Specifically, the market research analyst:

Market Research Analyst

10Organizes and presents the results and incorporates stakeholder feedback

7Defines and manages research efforts to collect prioritization data on marketing channels based on the prioritization criteria

1 Collects target market definition inputs

4Groups keywords into applicable themes

5Defines and manages online research to collect a comprehensive list of potential marketing channels and associated qualification data

8Defines alternative metrics or prioritization strategies to address any unanticipated lack of prioritization data

9Applies the prioritization scheme to prioritize qualified marketing channels

6Qualifies candidate marketing channels by marketing channel type, thematic relevance, and marketing channel quality

2Executes preliminary research to establish the focus of the research efforts (content topics, marketing channels)

3Defines relevant keywords


The project’s worker bees, the data collection team might include junior-level marketing associates or marketing interns. The team’s responsibility is to carry out the bulk of the data collection and entry processes under the oversight of the market research analyst. Specifically, the data collection team:

It bears repeating that a project of this magnitude should not be left to one or two marketing associates. To be truly impactful, it requires collaboration at both the senior executive and team levels to ensure focus, accuracy, and efficiency. If your VP of marketing does not have the time to sponsor the project or you lack the lower-level team members necessary to assemble a data collection team, wait until you are better prepared before starting.

The reality is that like any strategic marketing initiative, marketing channel research requires businesses to set aside almost as much time for preparation as they do for execution. Before engaging in any of the actual channel discov-ery and prioritization steps, it is critical to examine your market (see sidebar) and identify the universe of potential channels available to your company.

Assembling the right team is critical, too. By identifying the right individu-als for each of the three roles above, it will be far easier to delegate the specific channel discovery and prioritization tasks covered in the remainder of this eBook.

Data Collection

Team

1Carries out online research to compile a comprehensive list of marketing channel candidate URLs

3Collects prioritization data or proxy prioritization data for each qualified marketing channel

2Eliminates duplications and reviews the resulting URLs to remove irrelevant websites and low-quality content sites

4Collects additional information on selected marketing channels to support the implementation process

At the highest level, marketing channel research

requires some basic — but key — pieces of informa-

tion, including definitions of project objectives and

outputs, both of which drive the discovery and prioriti-

zation process and, ultimately, define its success.

Additionally, it is extremely important to execute some

form of market segmentation research before engaging

in this process. Doing so will arm your business with:

} A strong sense of what your ideal buyers look like

} An understanding of the common pain points your targets share

} A comprehensive view of why a particular market segment might be interested in your product

Ultimately, if your effort is not focused on a defined

market segment or product, then the prioritization

process will lead to a faulty apples-to-oranges analysis.

And that, as most marketing managers know, often

does more harm than good.

Lastly, it is critical to set marketing channel goals that

are comprehensive, without being overly sophisticated

and cumbersome. Expansion-stage businesses should

limit themselves to three channel categories and two

or three subtypes within each category. Any more than

that and they risk overwhelming their teams and dilut-

ing their results.

UNDERSTANDING THE PREREQUISITES OF MARKETING CHANNEL RESEARCH


Chapter 2: Discovering a Universe of Marketing Channels

The Holy Grail of marketing is being able to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. The marketing

channel discovery and prioritization process allows marketers to work toward that goal in many ways, pinpointing the mediums

to best connect with and influence their company’s most important customers and prospects.

As such, understanding your audience is a critical component of market channel research. Before going any further, it is impor-

tant to ensure that you can define the following market components for your company:

Your target market segment: The specific, homogenous subgroup of prospects

you are targeting with your sales and marketing strategies

Your buyer personas: The personal and professional characteristics that define

and distinguish the buyers in your target market segment

Your product value propositions: Messages that explain why your particular

product or service benefits — or adds value to — a specific group of prospects

The competitive landscape you are in: A picture of direct and indirect competi-

tors in your target market segment

Your product ecosystem: The players and products in your target market that

directly or indirectly relate to your target market segment

Understanding these five market components is very important for a couple of reasons. First,

if your target market is too narrowly defined, the discovery process will be equally limited. Con-

versely, if you define your target market too vaguely, you might fail to truly understand your buyer

persona’s specific needs and the direct competitors that stand in your way. Ultimately, that

could lead you to include marketing channels in the prioritization process that are too broad or

inappropriate for smaller, more targeted market segments.

“There are

hundreds of

different

marketing

channels that

you can use to

deliver your message to customers

and prospects. Knowing which

channels to use to deliver that

message, however, will make all

of the difference in terms of if

and how it is received. Fail to use

the right channel, and you

dramatically reduce your chances

of being heard.”

Tien Anh Nguyen Senior Associate, OpenView Venture Partners

http://openviewpartners.com


Once you’ve gained clarity on each of these market components, you will be ready to execute the bulk of the marketing chan-

nel discovery and prioritization process that is covered in this chapter. The next several pages cover the multi-step research and

channel qualification process that will help your team build a list of highly qualified potential marketing channels and organize

them by relevance, feasibility, and impact. In Chapter 3, we detail the channel prioritization process that allows you to narrow

your prospective channel list so that it only contains the ones that make the most sense for your business.

After reading the four-step process in this chapter, you will be prepared to conduct your own marketing channel discovery

exercise. Armed with that knowledge, you can adjust your marketing efforts and begin to connect with your ideal customers in a

much more meaningful way.

Narrowing Your Marketing Channel Focus through Preliminary Research

Before the marketing channel discovery process can begin in earnest, businesses need to conduct preliminary

research to help them develop a set of intermediate outputs that will eventually be used in guiding the project’s

full-scale research effort. The goal of the preliminary research process is to define the following:

The most important marketing channel types for your company: Typically, this will include at least five types

of channels as well as a document that details the evidence gathered to support their selection.

The topical themes that are most relevant to the buyers in your product market: Every market has a unique

set of topics that matter most to its buyers. Those topics can typically be grouped into three general content themes:

product features and technical benefits, general industry topics, and behavioral and personal benefits. The marketing

channel discovery process will help tighten the scope of topics that are most relevant to your target customers, ulti-

mately allowing you to better inform the channel prioritization process.

Step

1


Preliminary Research Techniques

There are numerous tactics your business can use to acquire these intermediate marketing channel discovery outputs. Below,

we explore four relatively simple activities that, while not comprehensive or overly methodological, will help you better understand

your target market segment, its unique needs, and the channels that its prospects rely on most frequently to gather information.

Internal interviews: Polling customer-facing team members is

a fantastic way to obtain market information. This group might

include marketing managers, sales representatives, customer ser-

vice associates, and professional consultants. The interviews should

be short, with questions that address distinct customer types, the

channels they are exposed to, and the topics they are interested in.

External interviews: Conducting similar interviews with a small

set of customers or market experts can both validate the informa-

tion you gleaned from your team members and provide additional

insight into channel usage. Limit surveys or interviews to four or

five questions, focusing on the ones that reveal where customers

go for industry information (i.e., specific blogs, experts, or publica-

tions), how credible they think those sources are, and which medi-

ums tend to influence their purchasing decisions the most.

Online surveys: Executing a simple online survey can help

broaden the scope and diversity of research input. Use a simple

tool like Instant.ly, Survey Builder, or SurveyMonkey to develop a

short questionnaire and deliver it to prospects in a specific market

segment. Include questions similar to the ones you ask in internal

and external interviews, and use a mix of open-ended and multiple-

choice queries.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Here are some sample questions that you might consider asking in interviews and online surveys.

Multiple-choice questions:How often do you read industry publications

per week?

Never

Fewer than 5 times

5 to 10 times

More than 10 times

Where do you go for information on the latest technology in your industry? Please select all that apply.

Industry experts

Industry conferences

Trusted vendors

Open-ended questions:

Which vendors in your industry have the best marketing and why?

_________________________________________

_________________________________________

_________________________________________

1.

2.

3.

http://labs.openviewpartners.com/ebook/marketing-channels/

Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels

Business

Transcript of Discovery Channel: A Guide to Identifying and Prioritizing Optimal Marketing Channels