1. 1 Winning the Demand Generation Battle: A Quick Guide to
Achieving Sales Success Today Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
2. 2 Index 1. Prologue 2. Digital Demand Generation: Is Your
2015 Marketing Plan Optimized For The Future? 3. Five Ways to Jazz
Up Your Content Marketing in 2015 4. How to Best Leverage Marketing
Technologies in 2015 5. Supercharge Your Sales Funnel With
Predictive Analytics 6. How to Succeed with Mobile Marketing in
2015 7. Key Marketing Metrics for Revenue and Profit Growth Chief
Outsiders, LLC 2015
3. 3 1. Prologue Winning the Demand Generation Battle: A Quick
Guide to Achieving Sales Success in Todays Environment W hen was
the last time you lined up to purchase a must-have product? Perhaps
you were one of those Apple devotees queuing for hours to be one of
the first to nab the latest iPhone. Or maybe you were one of the
shivering hopefuls, still digesting your Thanksgiving dinner,
outside of Best Buy, trying to land a $200 HDTV. Whatever the
context, as marketers, we look at these types of happenings as the
Holy Grail of our trade. And we ask ourselves: How can we create
the same kind of lusty fervor for our product or service? And, more
importantly, how do we break through the clutter to sell the
sizzle, when todays consumer is clamoring for the steak and, thanks
to technology, is well-armed to do so? The good news is that, in
todays plugged-in environment, the consumer, on their quest to find
the perfect next thing upon which to lavish their cash, is leaving
behind a passel of digital information. These bits and bytes, when
properly harnessed, can help marketers regain and maintain a
decided edge in winning the demand generation battle. In the
following pages, it is my hope to arm you with enough information
to begin a purposeful dialogue within your company about how to
deftly navigate this pulsing technological minefield, and emerge
with mindshare, market share and wallet share. Chief Outsiders, LLC
2014
4. 4 Among the essentials covered in this eBook and the
questions they will challenge you to answer in the context of your
own go-to-market strategies include: Content Marketing: Are you
generating content that will help you define and attract the right
audience? Is this content compelling and offering your consumers a
message of empowerment? Are you choosing the right channels for the
promotion of this content? Are you creating a treble effect by
catalyzing your consumers to share this content, on multiple
platforms, with their friends and family? Marketing Automation:
Have you heard of the term Marketing-as-a-Service? Are you using
such technologies to capture, analyze and sort data that you are
receiving from your consumers? Are you nimbly toeing the line
between your need to capture such data, and your consumers
expectation for privacy? Mobile Marketing: Do you have a strategy
to promote your product or service on your consumers portable
devices? Is your website responsive and viewable on all devices,
large and small? Have you implemented geotargeting and a
mobile-specific advertising campaign? Do you have a mobile app with
eCommerce capabilities? Predictive Analytics: Have you linked
marketing insights with your CRM system to help project consumer
sales trends? Are you using this data to fill your sales funnel
with more targeted, quality leads? Are you using a recommendations
engine on your eCommerce site to help upsell your consumers? Are
you using software to help analyze, and improve, your lead scores?
Do you have buy-in for this process across all key functional sales
and marketing divisions? Digital Media: Are you personalizing your
content for consumers, and using informal means, like social media,
to conduct your dialogue? Have you implemented the right marketing
mix given the method that your consumers are using to make
purchasing decisions? Are there opportunities for you to bring your
product or service offerings to the Internet of Things? Chief
Outsiders, LLC 2015
5. 5 Search Marketing: Are you keenly aware of the keywords by
which your consumer is searching for your company and its products
or services? Are you using both organic search engine optimization
(SEO) as well as a pay-per-click campaign to microtarget your
consumer? Is your companys search result displaying on the first
page of the chosen search engine? It is my hope that, after youve
read this eBook, that you will forever vanquish to the Kingdom of
Bad Ideas the notion that gut feelings and educated guesses are
still acceptable to todays business world. The rise of the
technologically enlightened consumer coupled with the availability
of insightful digital measurement tools should motivate us to
develop new strategies for business growth that will prepare us for
today and tomorrow. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
6. 6 2. Digital Demand Generation: Is Your 2015 Marketing Plan
Optimized for the Future? In a recent blog, I talked about the need
to have your 2015 marketing plans be mindful of the increasing
importance of marketing technology infrastructure, data, content,
mobile and privacy regulations. Assuming you are ready with your
2015 marketing strategies, its time to take a deeper dive into the
great leveler of the marketing playing field digital demand
generation. In a little under a decade, the advent of new social
and online tools has dramatically changed demand generation using
tools that are accessible, easy to use and offer the ability to
micro-target like never before. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
7. 7 According to a recent CEB and Google study, with the
rising use of digital channels, it is not enough to incorporate
digital in the broader marketing campaigns. An organization can
optimize digital demand generation efforts by continuously
monitoring and managing all digital presence including the website,
social platforms, blogs, search, communities and, potentially, paid
search and online advertising. One factor about digital demand
generation is an irrefutable truth it is among the most cost
effective methods to draw prospective clients to your product or
service. A survey of B2B marketers experienced in deploying such
demand generation tools cited E-mail marketing, social media, and
search engine optimization as the most cost effective demand
generation methods today. With all this in mind, lets take a closer
look at the digital demand generation landscape today and what
companies have found as a best-practices approach to utilizing each
discipline. 1. User Engagement: If you prefer a top-down,
monolithic approach for communicating with your customer base,
heres a news flash that may send shivers up your spine. The
customer, today and going forward, is now behind the steering
wheel. With increasingly efficient ways to access a plethora of
resources, the consumer can learn everything they need to know
about your company or offering with just a few mouse clicks or
screen taps. With so many resources from which to choose why not
offer the consumer your take, in a rich, informative and
interesting way? Source: Software Advice B2B Demand Generation
Benchmark Industry View | 2014 Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
8. 8 Landing pages and microsites are great ways to capture
mindshare about your company, product or service but dispense with
the fluff and get straight to the point. Populate your online
presence with clear content and supporting information that
reinforces your value proposition, success stories and clear
competitive advantage. Create blogs and other materials that
sprinkle your expertise throughout the vast worldwide web. Also,
ensure that your content looks not only as good on a mobile device
as it does on a desktop or laptop, but also perhaps even better. We
are fast approaching a mobile first scenario. Compelling content
will increasingly need to consist of an interactive story with
video and other visuals. Consumers will increasingly rely on social
branding and peer recommendations. The key lesson here? You must
embrace your consumer, give them a voice and make sure you are
communicating these messages in a way that they can be received
easily. 2. Search Marketing: Organic search engine optimization
(SEO) and Pay-per-click (PPC) programs have been the leading ways
todays businesses have out-hustled and out-classed their
competitors. However, experts predict SEO in 2015 will be much more
integrated with content and social and very different from SEO a
few years ago. If your company is not yet adept at hiking its
information to the top of search results, its fairly easy to get
into the game. An article in Forbes recently outlined the recipe
for moving your companys online presence to the fore in 2015. It
includes: Keywords ensuring you are picking the correct and most
relevant terms by which your prospective clients are searching for
your services. While Google is expected to start replacing keyword
targeting with alternate targeting, keywords, when used correctly,
serve the most important function of engaging your prospects. Chief
Outsiders, LLC 2015
9. 9 Mobile SEO and User Intent ensuring websites and content
accessed from mobile phones are optimized for the type of person
who consumes information on the go. Link Building adding implied
links through brand names and citations to the high-quality and
relevant express links from other portals where your prospects may
be searching. Social Signals social presence becomes even more
important as social signals become a significant factor in the
Google ranking algorithm. 3. Digital Media: By all means, make sure
you have all of your online bases covered. The first two points
support an argument for a sound inbound marketing program. However,
one shouldnt forsake the importance of outbound marketing. It gives
you the chance to control the message, reinforce your organic
marketing methods and, yes, redeploy some of your dollars in a
targeted, efficient manner. Display advertising, location-based
mobile marketing, personalized media, social advertising,
retargeting, persona targeting, as well as email and affiliate
marketing are all essential pieces to this paid paradigm. While
some of these may be more appropriate than others for your company,
all of them offer the unique benefit of enhanced tracking and data
mining. This allows you to take action as prospects interact with
your paid content. As with any campaign-driven approach to
marketing, make sure your message is consistent. Ideally, your paid
media should lead to your user engagement tools and ultimately,
lead to a buying decision. What are you doing to support Digital
Demand Generation at your company? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
10. 10 3. Five Ways to Jazz Up Your Content Marketing in 2015
If you are reading this blog right now, you are participating in a
trend that has transformed the face of marketing as we know it.
Content marketing is .. creating and distributing valuable,
relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly
defined audience with the objective of driving profitable customer
action, according to the Content Marketing Institute. If that
sounds a lot like what traditional advertising endeavored to do,
youre correct. Content its creation, refinement and dissemination
through multiple channels of communication has become the essential
recipe to the marketing formula. And, like traditional advertising,
the gauge of success, too, for content marketing is, profitable
customer action, e.g., thought leadership, lead generation and
ultimately, sales. But what has rocketed content marketing to the
fore has been a very definite, and measurable, shift in the
relationship dynamic between company and the content consumer.
Driven by social media, smartphones and other means of
point-to-point communication, this consumer now can decide exactly
which messages to consume and when. As noted entrepreneur and web
expert Brian Alvey has said, The revolution occurred (because) the
audience is now in charge. With corporate bottom lines hanging in
the balance, its little wonder that marketers are flocking to feed
the appetites of this content-hungry public. But there is a law of
diminishing returns that applies, too, to content marketing, and
overload certainly is a serious risk factor with consumers having
to sort through, by some estimates, more than 2,900 distinct
content marketing messages per day. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
11. 11 With such a groundswell, its logical that both quality
and curation need to be considered, lest your content marketing
messages get drowned out. Here are some tips to keep your content
marketing strategy on target: Whos in charge: According to the
Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, your contents
effectiveness increases by having both a documented strategy and a
person who oversees it. However, only 35 percent of B2B marketers
have a documented content strategy. So making your plan and
appointing a content czar is critical but, so, too, is C-level
support. This way, you can ensure your content marketing strategy
has the investment, resources, business processes, and power it
needs to thrive. Quality rules: Ensure that the content you create
is both helpful and unique. Investigate different ways to tell your
story and facilitate sharing. There is no one right way to do so;
depends on the message and the audience. And by all means, give
quality a greater weight of importance than frequency. Reduce,
reuse, repurpose: Save time and money by leveraging such avenues as
crowdsourcing and wikis to generate content. Once youve got your
content rolling, consider repurposing it into an eBook, book, web
or other learning materials from the topical information youve
generated. Variety is the spice of life: You will find that you
will have higher search rankings if, in addition to being
user-friendly, your content is presented in a variety of formats
including videos, infographics and slides. Its also critical that
your content look as great on a four-inch smartphone screen as it
does a high- resolution desktop monitor. Promotion and
distribution: Youve invested in both strategy and quality now, make
sure your content is given the chance to inform as many
constituents as possible. Content is distributed today through a
mix of owned, earned and paid channels. However, these channels are
increasingly starting to overlap with some payment being required
for the owned and earned channels as well. Take the time to find
the best channels for your content to maximize results. What has
worked for you with content marketing? Chief Outsiders, LLC
2015
12. 12 4. How to Best Leverage Marketing Technologies in 2015 I
was recently asked my thoughts on how technology and digital trends
will shape the future of marketing. As I pondered this question, I
took note of all of the ways that I am digitally connected to the
outside world. My laptop, smartphone, phablet, tablet, and e-reader
were all dripping digital data to some unseen force through my WiFi
connection. A fitness tracker awaited the opportunity to observe
and report my next activity. Acting as marshals for many of these
resources were my modem and router, which collected the needed
inputs and outputs and converted my actions into trackable
information. The New Digitally Savvy Customer Digital capabilities,
indeed, are built into many of the products we use or consume today
-- offering marketers the chance to collect, distill and understand
data in new and compelling ways. The tradeoff?We are now breeding a
generation of customers who have a greater level of sophistication
and greater technological expectations, for the companies that they
patronize, in their personal and business worlds. In a recent
survey of chief marketing officers by Gartner, marketers cited the
satisfaction of these plugged-in customers as their top innovation
project for 2015. A recent study by Conductor showed that 65
percent of marketing executives plan on spending more on marketing
technology in 2015, with a large percentage (28%) planning to spend
more than 25 percent. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
13. 13 Marketing Technology Landscape Of course, many companies
are still trying to figure out how to optimize their use of last
years technologies -- search engine strategies, web analytics,
email campaigns, webinars, social media, blogs, online video and
mobile marketing. And, in case theres any doubt about the continued
proliferation of such tools, this supergraphic should serve as an
apt reminder. It is just overwhelming to try to review the graphic
and get actual takeaways about how to leverage each piece of
technology within the marketing technology ecosphere. In actual
life, users are confused today about which marketing technology to
use, and how. Marketers simply have a large number of options
today. If a marketer encounters an issue, there is surely a
marketing technology company that has already set out to solve that
issue. It is worth re-emphasizing that at its core, marketing
technology helps customers connect with businesses and to help
businesses better understand the customer needs and journey.
Priorities for 2015 Technology has facilitated the collection of
vast amounts of customer data. The next task for marketers is to
leverage analytics and translate this data to help customers and
businesses better make these connections. Personalization is a big
part of facilitating these connections and enhancing the customer
experience. Digital marketers need to have an integrated approach
-- encompassing multiple devices -- to meet customer demands for
easy information access via mobile devices and a unified service
experience across channels. To address user privacy concerns and
increasing wariness of gated content that requires personal data
for access, marketers need to work especially hard to gain consumer
trust. By focusing on quality and ensuring that the content is very
relevant and Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
14. 14 valuable for users, marketers may be able to ease some
of these hesitations regarding privacy. According to Aberdeen, 95%
of B2B sales are directly influenced by content. Its a particularly
powerful way to influence the decision makers to which the sales
people dont have direct access. Yet, content overload will be a
serious risk factor in 2015. Companies can address this issue by
giving quality a greater weight of importance than frequency, using
a variety of formats including slides, infographics and videos, and
making content interactive. As part of sales enablement, it is
important to figure out the content that salespeople find most
effective in engaging prospects and closing deals. That content and
its usage can then be promoted across the sales teams.
Marketing-as-a-Service The good news is that there are indeed
shortcuts to harnessing the power of the digital revolution. Cloud-
based tools have been a game-changer for all companies big and
small. Just as enterprises are looking for more turnkey solutions
rather than just individual box purchases, consumers will also look
for integration of their digital products/ services. The next
iteration is a Marketing-as-a-Service, or MaaS model. In this
model, companies retain the core roles for internal teams and
outsource the functions for designing, building, and optimizing the
marketing infrastructure and its applications. In 2015, well see
Marketing-as-a-Service include new cloud-based offerings such as
content-as-a-service, analytics-as-a-service, and even
community-as-a- service. Technologys sweeping impact on the craft
of marketing can, understandably, be an overwhelming prospect. As
you sort through your 2015 resolutions, keep in mind that now is
the time to prioritize the adoption of digitally-awake strategies
that keep you in step with if not one step ahead of your customer.
How are you currently using marketing technology? What changes will
you make in 2015? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
15. 15 5. Supercharge Your Sales Funnel With Predictive
Analytics As I have discussed in my previous blogs, digital
marketing tools and technologies are transforming the way
businesses connect with pros pective and existing customers.
Adoption of these technologies is key to maintaining and gaining
competitive advantage. Presuming you have plugged in to marketing
technology and have started the data flowing, you probably are
developing a keen sense of what strategies are most effective in
converting leads to customers. Of course, this is only useful if,
in fact, you are keeping the top of your sales funnel filled and if
the pipeline is delivering the types of leads that will lead to
long-term, quality business relationships that will promote growth
for your company. Predictive analytics is the way to address this
challenge. For the unfamiliar, predictive analytics is the practice
of gathering information about a companys best customers, using the
information to determine what makes them great and then combining
these insights with external data to offer the most attractive
solutions to current and future customers. Chief Outsiders, LLC
2015
16. 16 2015 is widely projected to be the year of data-driven
marketing, with the adoption of predictive analytics techniques
increasing as marketers see its huge potential to improve
prospecting, increase lead quality and build the sales pipeline.
According to TWDI Research, the top reasons that companies want to
use predictive analytics are to forecast trends, better understand
customers, improve business performance, drive strategic
decision-making, and predict behavior. Predictive analytics can be
useful for both growing existing accounts and closing new ones.
Predictive Lead Scoring and Analytics Of course, many
business-to-consumer (B2C) companies have been using predictive
analytics for some time as a means of improving customer
understanding and driving sales. An example you may have
encountered is the recommendations engine on ecommerce sites that
makes product recommendations based on previous purchases by a
customer and other customers with similar profiles, location, and
reviews. Such technology enables marketers to make better use of
behavioral data and other data points. Now, B2B companies are
getting into the act applying predictive analytics to accelerate
sales by improving lead quality. Nearly 14 times more B-to-B
organizations are using predictive lead scoring than in 2011, says
Jill Stanek, research analyst at Sirius Decisions. Source: Sirius
Decisions Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
17. 17 Predictive scoring increases the data points
significantly, when compared to traditional lead scoring. This is
because it allows marketers to take internal data from CRM systems
(e.g., historical win/loss and transaction information) and
marketing automation databases, and to combine it with data from
the web and social media. The resulting lead scores are much better
predictors of actual buying behavior as compared to traditional
lead scores. Some advantages reported by companies using predictive
lead scoring include: Better ROI on campaigns Better quality leads
Faster sales cycle Better ability to prioritize existing prospects
Better conversion rates Predictive lead scoring leads to
improvements in sales productivity and marketing effectiveness, and
better alignment between sales and marketing. According to Todd
Berkowitz, research director at Gartner: New models need to be used
once the lead reaches an opportunity stage, both in terms of
likelihood to close, but also the optimal price to get the deal
done. And the same logic can be applied both pre-funnel (to find
companies that best match the characteristics of customers) and
post-funnel to identify churn risks and expansion opportunities.
Implementing Predictive Lead Scoring While predictive analytics
seems complicated and the implementation daunting, it can be
implemented easily in any size company. Todd Berkowitz further
notes: Entry costs are (generally) low, proof of concepts are
available, out-of-the-box integrations exist with CRM Lead
Management and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems and ROI can be
quite rapid. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
18. 18 There are several vendors today providing predictive
lead scoring solutions. For example, Lattice Engines and Mintigo
offer cloud-based B2B predictive analytics solutions, accessible to
both large and small businesses, as a means of identifying,
prioritizing and ultimately closing more customers. Both collect
data from a companys internal CRM and marketing automation
database, and then add external data. This external data for
prospects can be vast including such inputs as company financials,
number of employees, number and location of offices, management
changes, press releases, media coverage, social media activity, job
openings, patents, mergers and acquisitions, etc. Nadim Hossain of
BrightFunnel notes that in the future these analytics will go much
further, looking at the whole funnel to understand how things are
going to move from stage to stage all the way to revenuereally
predicting the pipeline and the revenue in a way that marketers can
actually react. If we consider a truism that has stood the test of
time high-quality leads accelerate sales cycles and ultimately
increase sales it seems only logical that the latest predictive
analytics tools should be a part of any marketers arsenal in todays
wired world. What are you doing to leverage your data and improve
your sales funnel? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
19. 19 6. How to Succeed with Mobile Marketing in 2015
Engagement in the world around us once purely the domain of the
five senses today would not be complete without the flurry of taps,
swipes and scrolls that we make on a pocket-sized smart device. One
does not need a lot of research or statistics to see how
non-negotiable our relationship has become with our mobile devices.
As marketers, we no longer can count on consumers to look away from
their small screens to view information about our products or
services. The trick in 2015, instead, is to embrace this unique
opportunity to serve relevant data directly to their device. In
2014, users who consumed digital data with mobile devices finally
surpassed desktop users and didnt stop. In fact, the lead continues
to widen for mobile in 2015. According to Gartner, more than 70
percent of U.S. consumers have a smartphone in their purse or hip
pocket, and 40 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledge regular
use of a tablet. What are they doing? Email, texts, web searches
and social networking still lead the way. Chief Outsiders, LLC
2015
20. 20 The good news for B2B marketers is that this mobility
trend isnt limited to consumer activity. Todays B2B buyers want to
use mobile devices of their choice to research products, view
content, and review proposals, as well as pricing anytime and
anywhere. According to the IDG Global Mobile Survey, 77 percent of
executives use their smartphone to research a product or service
for their business. Lets explore five areas of focus where, with a
degree of mastery, you can win the mobile mindshare game: 1.
Responsive Website Design Due to the pervasiveness of web
contentinteractions, users have high expectations for their mobile
experience. They demand an excellent user interface with a design
adapted for mobile devices, and quickly disregard sites that load
slowly or look clunky on their smartphone. When they find mobile
friendly sites, they are more apt to revisit and be loyal to them.
Using responsive design a technique by which the site will
automatically adapt to Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
21. 21 the platform through which the user is accessing it
ensures a clean, uncluttered and consistent experience across
screens. This consistency is especially important because while the
buyers journey can span multiple devices. Consumers may conduct
research on smartphones but make the purchase on a laptop or
tablet. Tracking consumer behavior on your mobile website provides
useful insight. Look at the web logs, which likely have mobile
traffic (by device type) broken out separately. See where the
consumers go on the site and follow their actions. 2. Content,
Email, and Social In addition to being the top mobile activity,
email is the third biggest driver of revenue on mobile phones and
tablets. If a mobile email doesnt look good, over 70% of the
recipients delete it immediately. As such, marketers should keep
the constraints of the mobile medium in mind when designing
marketing emails. Similarly, companies need to create shorter,
digestible newsletters that can be read easily on mobile devices.
They whet the user appetite encouraging them to read more at a
later time. The long-form content can be linked to and hosted on
the company web page. Content viewed in a mobile-friendly manner
can significantly increase response rates and ROI. Consumers
initially fed the growth in social media usage, but now, B2B
customers are increasingly active in social networks as well. A
recent survey conducted by IDG Enterprise found that 82% of the B2B
respondents used social media/networking sites for business
purposes. Social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, are
outstanding avenues to engage with both consumers and business
customers in a less formal manner while they are on their mobile
devices. Since cookies dont work in most mobile environments,
companies are now using data from social media platforms to follow
consumers online. In 2015, consumers will be looking for content to
be increasingly personalized. They Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
22. 22 want their activities to be connected across all their
screens so enabling features like social sharing, and engagement
within all of your content would be a mandatory step. 3. Location
and Beacons In the B2C environment, its not enough to pair the
right message to the right person it has be done at the right time,
and in the right place. Geotargeting a trend by which a phones
location services plays a role in accessing geo-relevant content
for consumers is promising, but privacy concerns need to be
addressed. According to Mobile Media Summit, retailers have been
quick to adopt location-aware apps and beacons since they allow
them to provide relevant information and promotions based on the
consumer location. Push notifications and targeted messages based
on location are driving sales at many brick-and-mortar stores
today. Beacons communicate with users smartphones via Bluetooth.
They can work with mobile payment systems to not only increase
consumer ease of use, but also to provide rich data to retailers.
4. Mobile Advertising Though marketers are still trying to find the
best formula for using mobile contextual and display advertising,
it does seem that their best role is as a supporting player by
creating awareness to encourage conversion later. As the
effectiveness of mobile display ads is still being assessed, it may
be better to have rich interactive ads or campaigns that offer
premium access. It is more effective to have a call to action like
a hashtag or contest to encourage the desired consumer and business
response. The challenge is to execute these enhanced campaigns
quickly and consistently in any setting. Difficulty in measuring
ROI has been holding back growth in mobile ads. There are now Chief
Outsiders, LLC 2015
23. 23 tools available to marketers that will allow them to
measure, record results and make impactful real-time changes during
the campaign not afterward, when it is not as meaningful. 5. Mobile
Applications According to the U.S. Mobile App report, Americans
spend more than half of their time on mobile using applications.
Mobile apps, when built and deployed properly, can drive meaningful
interactions and engagement with customers. The challenge is to
keep customers engaged once theyve downloaded the app.
Gamification, relevant updates, push notifications, and beacons are
examples of engagement strategies. The key is to gain an
understanding of which of these strategies to use, and when and to
use that engagement to drive the buyers journey. While the apps are
more prevalent in the B2C space, B2B companies need to recognize
this trend and assess their mobile presence within apps most
relevant to their buyers. They can also use apps to provide easy
access to resources and improve the user experience at company
events and meetings. While apps work in many instances, they do
have some disadvantages. It can be hard to get users to adopt them,
and apps, unfortunately, do not help with search engine
optimization (SEO). With a large number of mobile operating systems
and devices, it requires a significant investment to build and
maintain an app. Assess the pros and cons before you decide to
provide your own app. Hopefully, you are now convinced of the value
of adopting a mobile-first approach. With the right vision, focus
and execution, perhaps it will be your company gaining mobile
mindshare the next time you see someone entranced by a collection
of words, symbols, and pictures on their smartphone. What are you
doing for mobile marketing in 2015? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
24. 24 7. Key Marketing Metrics for Revenue and Profit Growth
At the essence of any marketing or business program are metrics the
measures that indicate the heights to which revenues will soar or
the depths to which fortunes will plummet -- as a result of your
strategic efforts. Long gone are the days when conjecture,
hypothesis and gut feel were acceptable ways to gauge business
success. The digital explosion, while requiring us to be even more
dialed into a dialog with our consumers, has also given rise to a
raft of new tools that help us analyze the quality of these
interactions. Such information can offer amazingly keen insight
into how well our overall marketing strategy is working, as well as
to identify the focus areas for business growth. But where to
start? Most companies have hundreds of unique data points that can
be distilled into actionable insights. According to the Salesforce
2015 State of Marketing Report, most companies find the greatest
value in metrics focused on revenue growth, customer satisfaction,
return on investment, customer retention rates and customer/
audience acquisition. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
25. 25 Lets take a deeper look at these categories. 1. Revenue
growth How much money has been gained from marketing strategies and
tactics is the No. 1 question that keeps most marketers up at
night. CEOs today expect higher levels of ownership and
accountability from their chief marketers than at any time in the
past. While marketers traditionally expected to be judged on
consumer sentiment, perceptions, and brand awareness, today
companies wish to understand how marketing activities generated
qualified leads that were subsequently converted to sales. A recent
Forbes article indicated that a great way for marketers to
understand their impact on revenues is to do extensive baseline
testing. This testing can include measuring sales levels pre- and
post-marketing, or even testing digital in-market tactics for
revenue and profit against a control group that receives
business-as-usual marketing tactics. If relevant to your industry,
direct tracking (such as a click on a link in an email that leads
to purchase) still provides the cleanest measure of marketing
cause-and-effect. Of course, no such measure is complete without
including an understanding of how multiple contacts through various
channels improve a companys chances to close the deal. Well talk
more about this paradigm shortly. 2. Customer Satisfaction
Customers now expect 24-7 hour service across channels. They arent
afraid to switch to a competitor, and they increasingly voice their
opinions via social media. This growth in competition and consumer
power has eroded traditional product-based advantages, forcing
organizations to use customer experience as a differentiator. This
trend will continue in 2015 as more companies recognize the value
of better customer experience in improving customer satisfaction
and retention, average profit margin per customer and the customer
lifecycle value. In 2014, Gartner found that digital marketers were
spending almost as much to retain customers (45%) as they were to
gain new ones (55%). Despite the high cost of retaining customers,
there is a definite economic advantage to keeping an established
customer over the longer term. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
26. 26 Some useful metrics for the customer experience are the
satisfaction scores and other sentiment measures including the
percentage of customers who plan to repurchase. Use these metrics
to focus efforts on addressing the worst experiences at every
contact point. Invest in innovation to delight the customer after
testing to see which experiences have the most impact. 3. ROI As I
hinted earlier, its essential that the measurement of marketing ROI
include the impact of the holistic efforts of the organization. It
is rarely a single campaign or program that generates revenue --
especially for B2B companies. Most B2B buyers have many
interactions with a potential vendor over an extended period before
they make a buying decision. They are exposed to multiple
campaigns, and it can be difficult to determine which particular
campaign led to the customers buying decision. Considerations for
measuring ROI from a marketing program include: Incremental
sales/revenues Gross margin percentage Total marketing and sales
investment Multitudes of marketing automation platforms exist to
help marketers address the attribution issue and calculate the ROI.
This article by Marketo is an excellent primer on measuring the ROI
of marketing programs. 4. Customer Retention Rates For the
uninitiated, the customer retention rate (CRR) is achieved by a
simple calculation of the customers the company keeps with respect
to the customers at the start of the period. It does not include
new customers and is the opposite of customer churn. Chief
Outsiders, LLC 2015
27. 27 Depending upon the business or market segment, customer
retention rates can be gauged monthly, quarterly or annually but
understanding your companys interval is an important factor in
obtaining accurate CRR. Heres a simple formula to get your CRR: CRR
= ((CE-CN)/CS)*100 CE = Number of customers at the end of a period
CN = Number of new customers acquired during that period CS =
Number of customers at the start of that period CRR is a great
indicator of customer loyalty and effectiveness of customer
service. While a companys target CRR depends on the industry,
market and business goals, most companies should aim for 85-90
percent retention and continually seek to improve it. Additionally,
dollar renewal rate or DRR, can provide an even more complete
picture, favoring actual dollars earned over customer count. So if
the existing customers start paying more, through upgrades or other
purchases, the DRR might increase even if some customers are lost.
Ideally, a companys DRR should be above 100% -- meaning the company
is earning more every period and growing. Many people target a DRR
of 110%, but this number might vary by industry and the stage of
the company. Retention metrics affect the bottom line and provide
real insights into a companys strengths and weaknesses while
highlighting opportunities for improvement. Chief Outsiders, LLC
2015
28. 28 5. Customer Acquisition For new customer acquisition, it
is important to track: Number of leads generated (Lead generation)
Closing rate (Lead nurturing) Revenue per new customer (Lead
quality) Average days to close Customer acquisition cost (CAC) CAC
is the fully loaded cost of acquiring an average customer derived
by looking at the gross margin of new revenue from a quarter minus
the sales and marketing expenses in the preceding quarter. The
assumption is that new revenue from sales and marketing spending is
not realized until approximately three months later due to time for
customer ramp- up. CAC is critical in that it indicates how long it
will take the company to recover the initial investment used to
acquire customers. This can, in turn, be used to determine whether
the business should make additional investments in sales and
marketing. So whats to prevent you from becoming a metrics maven
today? In a perfect world, where all information is readily
available, and there are no resource constraints, companies would
easily be able to track these metrics. However, sometimes
situations are a lot muddier. You cannot evaluate the impact of an
individual campaign or initiative because there are multiple touch
points for a lead, and you dont know what specifically led to a
conversion. Or the data you have is enough to be directionally
useful, but is not precise. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
29. 29 Part of being a data-driven marketer in todays age is
not only understanding the metrics, but being able to operate with
incomplete information. One can fill gaps in the data sets with
more qualitative/ anecdotal information and assumptions about
customers, the market, etc. Its not perfect, but it allows you to
act and make business decisions without waiting for the data to be
100 percent accurate or available. For those of you who are
starting from ground zero or facing challenges with data or
resources, consider tackling the revenue growth metrics first and
then implement the remaining metrics once you can measure revenue
success. Prioritize the metrics that will best address your major
business and marketing challenges. What marketing metrics are you
currently using to gauge your companys success? Chief Outsiders,
LLC 2015