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B2B Marketing: Do The Maths - Data Versus Creativity
The document discusses how marketing has shifted from push tactics like direct mail and TV ads to pull tactics like search and social media engagement. It emphasizes that marketing now relies on metrics and data to measure customer behavior and optimize campaigns. Key metrics discussed include open rates, click-through rates, and leads generated. The document also stresses the importance of collaborating with sales to define lead qualifications and agree on a lead nurturing methodology based on customers' buying cycles.
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B2B Marketing: Do The Maths - Data Versus Creativity
- 1. Do the Maths:Why Numbers have Replaced Creativity as the Core Marketing Discipline
- 2. Data as PriorityNo. 1
- 3. Marketing has foreverchanged
- 4. The old wayof speaking to customers has shifted...
- 5. From Push...Direct Mail,Bulk Email, Radio, TV,...
- 6.
- 7. ...to Engagement andSharingSocial, Conversations, Participation, Feedback,UGC
- 8. Email Is theB2B Tool of Choice89% of B2B marketers use email.
- 9. Email is thenumber-one outbound B2B marketing tactic used today.Source: Forrester Marketing Forum 2010 presentation
- 10. B2B Buyers HearingMore Noise
- 11. By 2014…9,000 emailmarketing messages a year.…750 a month…25 each day
- 13.
- 15. Behavior to monitor…Openingan email (or not)Clicking on a link in an emailDownloading a white paperAccessing a WebinarRequesting a demoVisiting a landing pageViewing a website (or a specific page within that site)
- 16.
- 17. Incorporate Blogs, socialnetworks and customer communities
- 19.
- 20. Core MetricsOpen RateWhatit measures: Open rate can be calculated a few ways, but typically measures the number of measured opened messages divided by the number of delivered messages. What it can tell you: How your “From” name, subject line, and overall brand and value proposition rate with recipients.Click-through rateWhat it measures: The number of clicks on links in the email message divided by the number of delivered email messages in a campaign.What it can tell you: How strongly the email’s call-to-action(s) resonated with recipients.Bounce rateWhat it measures: The percentage of sent messages that permanently failed (bounced)What it can tell you: Potential problems with accurate data collection at opt-in as well as email address churn among subscribers.
- 21. Core Metrics—Industry StandardsOpenRate: MarketingSherpa’s “2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report” showed an average open rate of 24 percent for email newsletters.Click-through Rate: Overall average is 11 percent for email newsletters according to MarketingSherpa. Bounce rate: According to DMA’s report, emails to a house list averaged a bounce rate of 3.7 percent.
- 22. Comprehensive MetricsOpens perOpenerWhat it measures: The total number of opens divided by the number of unique opensWhat it can tell you: Relevance and depth of content, use of multiple devices (e.g. mobile device and desktop), viral sharing.Click-to-open rateWhat it measures: The ratio of unique clicks as a percentage of unique opens.What it can tell you: How strongly the email’s call-to-action(s) resonated with the recipients who actually opened the message.Clicks per clickerWhat it measures: The total measured clicks divided by the number of unique opensWhat it can tell you: The same items as opens per opener, only as pertains to the message’s calls to action.
- 23. Comprehensive MetricsUnsubscribe rateWhatit measures: The percentage of delivered email messages that generate unsubscribe requests.What it can tell you: Whether your program is meeting the needs and expectations or recipients.Spam complaint rateWhat it measures: The percentage of delivered email messages that generate spam complaints.What it can tell you: Same as unsubscribe rate, but a stronger red flag that also indicates subscribers don’t trust your unsubscribe process enough to use it.
- 24. Comprehensive Metrics—Industry StandardsOpensper Opener: According to emails analysed as part of a Silverpop study, opens per openeraverages 1.66Click-to-open Rate: Overall average is 18.5 percent according to the Silverpop study Clicks per Clicker: An average of 1.45, according to the Silverpop study Unsubscribe rate: An average of 0.77 percent according to Direct Marketing Association’s “2010 Response Rate Trend Report.”Spam complaint rate: An average of 0.09 percent according to Silverpop’s study.
- 25. Output MetricsLeads GeneratedOpportunitiesCreatedWin RateOrder SizeRevenue
- 26.
- 28. B2B demand-gen isa numbers gameOnly 2-5% of raw inquiries coming into the top of the B2B marketing and sales ‘funnel’ convert to sales.25-30% of B2B marketing databases have bad or incomplete records.Source: SiriusDecisions, SiriusDecisions 2010 Summit, Scottsdale, Arizona
- 29. Agree on DefinitionsWhatis a marketing qualified lead? What is a sales qualified lead? What is an opportunity?What is the process for each of these handoffs?
- 30. Agree on MetricsBespecificSpeak their languageCompromiseBe transparent
- 32. Creating a LeadNurturing Methodology
- 33. Nurturing = It’sabout efficiency
- 34. Nurturing = It’sabout timingsort-of-readydefinitely not readySource: MarketingSherpa, "2010 E-mail Marketing: Benchmark Report"
- 35. Four Phases ofa Buying Cycle—
- 36. Nurturing = It’sabout the relationship
- 37. Dialogue = Architectureof nurturingLISTEN TO PROSPECTOFFER CONTENTGET FEEDBACKPLAN + TUNE NEXT OFFER
- 38. Dialogues Must beRelevant
- 39. Segmentation based onData—Why?Target communications in order to increase relevancy Align your marketing and sales resources Transition from product-centric to customer-centric messaging
- 40. Segmentation based onData—How?Demographic information BANTBehaviours
- 41.
- 42. Marketing Automation: Makesit Happen
- 43. Buyer-centric B2B demandgenerationSales Team POVBuyer POVOpportunity CycleBuyer Education + Dialogue
- 44. Buyer-centric B2B demandgenerationSales Team POVBuyer POVContent MarketingLead ManagementOpportunity CycleBuyer Education + Dialogue
- 45. Buyer-centric B2B demandgenerationMarketing AutomationSales Team POVBuyer POVScoringContent MarketingLead ManagementOpportunity CycleBuyer Education + DialogueSegmentation + Routing
- 46.
Editor's Notes
- #4 Engagement Marketing is not interruptive, but two-day dialogs.
- #5 Engagement Marketing is not interruptive, but two-day dialogs.It’s been happening. For a long time. But until recently your participation was optional. Today – it isn’t.
- #9 What is B2B is not even clearHow to reach B2B customers is constantly evolvingMarketing paradigm is forever re-aligned
- #11 During the past decade, the marketing world has changed dramatically. Today, buyers are being bombarded with product-related messaging from every direction, and its only getting worse. Forrester Research estimates consumers will receive more than 9,000 email marketing messages a year by 2014!
- #12 In this brave new world, interruption is out, but messages that are relevant, personal and helpful are in. With the wealth of today’s user-generated content, buyers can find out everything they want to know about a company, and they don’t necessarily need the official Web site or product brochure to get the information they need. As such, they will be indifferent to businesses that are indifferent to them.In the new age of engagement marketing, creative content will be as important as ever, but that alone will no longer be enough. With the permission of their customers, marketers must absorb a nearly infinite array of data points on preferences, behaviors, purchases, postings and dialogues. Most daunting of all, marketers will need to analyze and act on all this data with a sophistication and scale never before experienced that has no precedent in marketing or any other business endeavor before it. And then once a program has been initiated, marketers must analyze the results more closely than ever in order to demonstrate value and ROI.
- #13 When it comes to analysing prospect and customer behaviour, savvy marketers know that actions speak louder than words. So, carefully monitor how recipients interact with your company, collecting this information to help determine their specific needs and interests, how engaged they are and how likely they are to buy from you (and when). By observing how recipients interact—or don’t interact—with your communications, you can get valuable information regarding their position in the buying cycle and what content resonates most strongly with them.
- #14 Depending on the sophistication of your marketing platform and processes, you can also use this information to inform your lead-scoring models and lead-nurturing campaigns. For example, if a recipient clicks through to your home page or downloads a white paper, that might indicate a buyer in the research phase, so the action might not add many points to the user’s lead score, or you might place that person in a nurturing campaign packed with content related to their interests and tuned to that stage in the buying cycle.Conversely, if a person requested a demo, engaged in a live chat, or used an online calculator or similar tool, these are powerful indicators of interest in your products or services. Consider weighing these actions more heavily in your lead-score model, or trigger an intense short-term nurture campaign that included such materials as testimonials or pricing and feature comparisons.
- #15 Specific data pointsyou may want to collect include: Opening an emailClicking on a link in an emailDownloading a white paperAccessing a WebinarRequesting a demoVisiting a landing pageViewing a website (or a specific page within that site)
- #16 Hooking Web analytics into your email marketing program can also help you get to know your customers, by monitoring what they do on your site—before and after they register for your email program. These actions can give you valuable information regarding their interests and level of engagement. Leveraging website behavior to send highly relevant messages, even immediately following registration, can go a long way in jumpstarting the relationship.Consider a customer who visits an electronics store's website on numerous occasions, but always looks at computers. Just think how impressed he will be when he opts into the retailer's email program and the first email he receives is an offer for free shipping on laptops!
- #17 Finally, social media is a fantastic forum for listening and responding. Monitor key communities, competitors, influencers and related industry topics and keywords on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. This will increase your understanding of what people are talking about, better enable you to join conversations where they already exist, and can prompt new ideas. The more you interact with users, the stronger your content will resonate, and the better the chances your messages will go viral. Task your marketing team with setting aside time each week to read what others are saying in the marketplace. By paying attention to this dialogue and listening to the issues your audience is concerned about, you’ll be better positioned to produce content with timely insights.
- #18 Another way to collect information is to simply ask for it. So, the first tactic seems fairly obvious. Why not go right to the source to determine their preferences? Surveying recipients about their likes, dislikes, needs and desires is a smart way to gain customer insights that enable marketers to better send relevant campaigns that increase engagement. Today, new technology is enabling marketers to create more sophisticated surveys that incorporate exciting branching and advanced logic options. This allows marketers to set up surveys that move respondents through different question paths based on their answers to previous questions—tailoring the questions to the specific buyer. The benefits? Marketers have to ask respondents fewer questions to get the same amount of information, resulting in higher levels of survey completions. Plus, you can set up countless different branching scenarios that enable you to get very specific in the data and preferences you collect, which you can then use to send highly targeted communications. You could branch based on product, product line, preferred store, etc.Regardless of how you use these more sophisticated surveys, you’ll generate valuable market research that will enable you to dialogue more effectively with interested consumers.
- #19 And it’s not enough to just keep tabs on who is doing what. You must also pay attention to how often they are doing it, how this compares to industry averages and whether your numbers are getting better or worse. With email now the linchpin of any successful lead nurturing program, most marketers are experts on measuring classic nurturing benchmarks such as open, click and bounce but there are additional metrics that should be considered that deliver a deeper and more accurate picture of reader engagement and action on your email messages. Don’t forget to tie “process” metrics, which measure activity on email messages such as newsletters, to “output” metrics, such as revenue, leads generated, cost savings, order size or number of downloads. These measure how well your email campaign delivered against your company’s business goals—and in the end that’s the most important measure of your newsletter’s success.
- #25 While benchmarking against your peers can provide a baseline scorecard and help drive improvements in areas such as creative, deliverability and list hygiene, don’t lose sight of the big picture. “Output” metrics such as revenue, leads generated, cost savings, order size or number of downloads measure how well your email newsletters delivered against your individual company’s business goals, and they are arguably even more important than “process” metrics such as click-through rates.
- #26 Also important is the impact these reports can have on marketing’s relationship with sales.
- #27 Basically, there is often disagreement on the data.
- #28 And this is important because demand generation is a numbers game.
- #29 So, what’s a marketer to do? Incorporating a lead-scoring model into your lead-management process is an excellent way to bridge the gap between sales and marketing and ensure that leads are the “right” leads (industry, company size, solution needs, etc.) and ready to buy when they reach sales. For starters, sales and marketing should get together and define terminology. What is a contact? What is a lead? What is a qualified opportunity? Marketing needs insight from sales as to what constitutes cool, warm and hot leads—otherwise, it’s a lose/lose scenario.
- #30 Once you have agreed on the definitions, agree on how you will measure them. Generalized marketing reports—for example, “We’ve generated 172 hits in the press resulting in 100K impressions” or “We tallied 50,000 hits on our Web site”—don’t resonate with salespeople. They need to know specifically how these efforts bring in leads. Of course, there are salespeople who recognize that in some cases it’s the brand itself that creates the need to visit the company Web site or stop by its booth at a trade show, but it’s difficult to quantify this impact. Marketing can help bridge the gap by making its reports as specific as possible. If marketing can say, “We generated 20,000 contacts, 1,000 became leads, 400 got qualified and 50 became buyers,” not only will sales better understand the value you bring, those in the c-suite will, too. Which leads and sources of advertising are drawing the most revenue? If marketing ran a Google search campaign and a Yahoo banner ad, which is performing better—not based on the net number of requests, but the new revenue generated? In addition, organizations should consider evaluating the marketing team based on metrics such as sales-qualified leads generated. That kind of mutual stake in sales’ success is almost guaranteed to build trust between the departments. Having a CRM system—which most salespeople are comfortable with— integrated with a marketing automation solution is an excellent way to achieve the transparency that salespeople crave. For starters, visibility into lead scores (and their fluctuations) gives sales real-time access to when prospects are highly active and engaged. The integration also allows marketing to speak in specific terms—on W day, X prospect received Y communication and visited Z Web page. Having this visibility into marketing actions helps ensure that when sales makes contact with a prospect, it has the information it needs to connect strongly. And this transparency has the added benefit of reminding sales of the work marketing is doing on its behalf.
- #31 When a lead-nurturing system is developed with definitions and metrics that marketing and sales have developed in concert, it creates accountability on both ends. Sales has essentially signed off, saying “We agree, these criteria and this score would mean these leads are hot. When sales receives these leads, it’s accountable for acting on them.”
- #32 Once you have agreed upon the important data points, your job isn’t over. It’s just beginning. You must build a healthy dialogue with your customers, and help your sales team close the deal.
- #33 According to industry research firm Sirius Decisions, only about 53 percent to 68 percent of leads that are qualified by marketing as sales-ready are accepted by sales. And, of those that are accepted, only about 50 percent to 57 percent are subsequently deemed as sales opportunities.2 This means that leads frequently fall out of the sales funnel after being handed off to sales. And many of those leads that fall by the wayside will eventually buy. From your competition. Well-planned and highly successful lead-nurturing programs ensure that marketing and sales work in concert to manage leads more efficiently. Lead nurturing enables sales to work more efficiently, close more deals and generate higher revenues. It’s important to remember that, even with the best nurturing program, people don’t always move through the process exactly as planned. Even “hot” leads can get stalled. A budget gets cut; a timeline extended. To address the inevitability of hot leads suddenly going cool, make sure your lead-management program allows sales to send formerly qualified leads back to marketing for further nurturing. Similarly, marketing must be able to easily alert sales when prospects sent back for nurturing become re-engaged and are ready to be worked.
- #34 Most of the leads that come into your marketing organisation are still in the early stages of the buying process. If you don’t make an effort to stay in front of these longer-term prospects, they will simply move through the buying cycle without you. You may even fall off their radar entirely as the time to purchase nears. Imagine the pain of losing new business to a competitor because a prospect simply forgot about you.
- #35 Always remember the four basic phases of a buying cycle—Awareness, Evaluation, Choice and Purchase—and carefuly analyze data to nurture leads accordingly. Buying Cycle Phase 1: AwarenessProspects are no longer satisfied with the status quo and recognise a need for change. They have responded to one of your marketing campaigns, indicating an interest in the types of solutions your company has to offer.• Goal of nurturing program at this stage: To reinforce awareness of need, identify solutions and createinterest in further exploration.• Common elements of nurture program at this stage: An automated series of communications offeringeducational materials and best practices such as white papers, newsletters and Webinars.Buying Cycle Phase 2: EvaluationBuyers have decided to act, and are searching for and evaluating solutions. They have indicated a specific need or interest in your product or service.• Goal of nurturing program at this stage: To assess whether they are ready to be sent to sales; to assistthem in identifying their decision criteria; to position your solution with these criteria in mind; and tolearn more about their needs and respond with appropriate information.• Common elements of nurture program at this stage: An automated series of communications that offerwhite papers, case studies and testimonials, Webinars, special event invitations and product/servicedata sheets.Buying Cycle Phase 3: ChoiceBuyers have evaluated solutions and have narrowed their choices. They begin thinking about the personal and business risks that may be involved. They take actions highly indicative of a decision to buy, such as updating personal information, viewing an in-depth product page, or requesting a demo or sales call-back.• Goal of nurturing program at this stage: To uncover prospects’ perceived risks and help find ways toalleviate them; to help buyers justify a decision to choose your company and its products.• Common elements of nurture program at this stage: At discretion of assigned sales representative,an automated series of communications offering pricing comparisons, feature comparisons, productcapabilities, data sheets, testimonials, assisted demo, free trial and relevant marketing statistics can be sent.Buying Cycle Phase 4: PurchaseBuyers have selected your solution and are ready to purchase. Negotiations and contractual agreements are being finalised. Sales interaction validates buyer decisions to purchase. Active lead nurturing has concluded, but marketing organisation continues to track sales opportunity through to close to ascertain/confirm role in closed business/ROI.• Goal of nurturing program at this stage: To minimise “buyer’s remorse” and to instill an early sense of value in the purchase decision. • Common elements of nurture program at this stage: Product accolades, success stories, key contact references and personal thank-you messages. Offers aligned to the buying cycle not only keep more prospects in the pipeline, they help you learn more about your potential customers’ needs and nudge them closer to a purchase. Many industry experts believe offers are critical to moving B2B as well as B2C prospects through the buying process. Have a library of offers suitable for buyers in each category of your sales chain.
- #36 At the end of the day, nurturing is about building relationships.
- #37 And by dialogues, I mean just that. Two-way conversations. Listen to your prospects, collecting important data along the way—both by what they specifically tell you and by what actions they take. Then offer relevant content based on this data. Get their feedback again. And then tweak and plan accordingly.
- #38 At the end of the day, the messages must be relevant to each and every buyer.
- #39 Although you can send everyone in your lead-nurture program the same series of messages, dividing your prospects into groups enables you to more effectively: • Target communications in order to increase relevancy • Align your marketing and sales resources • Transition from product-centric to customer-centric messaging
- #40 You can segment your leads based on: • Demographic information • BANT information (Has Budget allotted; Authority to purchase; a Need that we solve; a defined Timeline to purchase) • Behaviours—such as those we covered earlier
- #41 So, how are you supposed to make your program more complex and juggle even larger amounts of data?
- #42 Automate your processes. Marketing automation increases marketers’ ability to deliver relevant content at times most conducive to making a sale. And because even complex campaigns can be automated, these online tools help marketers better engage with prospects, maximize marketing efforts, improve efficiency, increase revenue and accelerate the conversion timeline.
- #43 By helping overburdened marketers simplify processes and automate repetitive tasks, marketing automation increases your ability to deliver the relevant content that drives strong two-way dialogues. Campaign automation technology enables you to efficiently create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to prospect or customer behaviors, lifecycle segments and other criteria you define. And graphical program builders with drag-and-drop, movie-editor-style functionality make it much easier for marketers to build more complex, personalized dialogues.Campaign automation technology eliminates old-fashioned manual processes and saves time and resources by automating the execution of campaigns based on user actions and rules defined by the marketer. It takes a substantial amount of planning, coordination and automation in order to implement successful marketing programs that treat customers or prospects individually, creating unique dialogues that drive much higher responses. Visual campaign builders that feature drag-and-drop, movie-editor-style functionality allow marketers to easily create highly personalized email marketing programs based on contact scoring data and executed through multiple message tracks. Marketers can easily create everything from simple, single-track drip campaigns to highly complex, multiple-track marketing programs with Yes/ No decision points that automatically move prospects down the appropriate path through to a sale. Highly personalized, automated campaigns can even be designed to adapt to the actions of each customer based on his or her interactions (or lack of interactions) with numerous messages and related landing pages rather than from just one, single message. For example, if a recipient doesn’t open the first or second message in a predetermined series, the campaign can be automated to send him or her a very different third message than one designed for someone who has been engaged all along. In order to engage these more skeptical recipients, you might need to provide a more enticing discount or even a message asking for more information about his or her particular interests. Sophisticated marketing automation programs allow you to do this on the fly—freeing up more time for you to focus on the bigger picture.
- #44 By helping overburdened marketers simplify processes and automate repetitive tasks, marketing automation increases your ability to deliver the relevant content that drives strong two-way dialogues. Campaign automation technology enables you to efficiently create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to prospect or customer behaviors, lifecycle segments and other criteria you define. And graphical program builders with drag-and-drop, movie-editor-style functionality make it much easier for marketers to build more complex, personalized dialogues.Campaign automation technology eliminates old-fashioned manual processes and saves time and resources by automating the execution of campaigns based on user actions and rules defined by the marketer. It takes a substantial amount of planning, coordination and automation in order to implement successful marketing programs that treat customers or prospects individually, creating unique dialogues that drive much higher responses. Visual campaign builders that feature drag-and-drop, movie-editor-style functionality allow marketers to easily create highly personalized email marketing programs based on contact scoring data and executed through multiple message tracks. Marketers can easily create everything from simple, single-track drip campaigns to highly complex, multiple-track marketing programs with Yes/ No decision points that automatically move prospects down the appropriate path through to a sale. Highly personalized, automated campaigns can even be designed to adapt to the actions of each customer based on his or her interactions (or lack of interactions) with numerous messages and related landing pages rather than from just one, single message. For example, if a recipient doesn’t open the first or second message in a predetermined series, the campaign can be automated to send him or her a very different third message than one designed for someone who has been engaged all along. In order to engage these more skeptical recipients, you might need to provide a more enticing discount or even a message asking for more information about his or her particular interests. Sophisticated marketing automation programs allow you to do this on the fly—freeing up more time for you to focus on the bigger picture.
- #45 By helping overburdened marketers simplify processes and automate repetitive tasks, marketing automation increases your ability to deliver the relevant content that drives strong two-way dialogues. Campaign automation technology enables you to efficiently create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to prospect or customer behaviors, lifecycle segments and other criteria you define. And graphical program builders with drag-and-drop, movie-editor-style functionality make it much easier for marketers to build more complex, personalized dialogues.Campaign automation technology eliminates old-fashioned manual processes and saves time and resources by automating the execution of campaigns based on user actions and rules defined by the marketer. It takes a substantial amount of planning, coordination and automation in order to implement successful marketing programs that treat customers or prospects individually, creating unique dialogues that drive much higher responses. Visual campaign builders that feature drag-and-drop, movie-editor-style functionality allow marketers to easily create highly personalized email marketing programs based on contact scoring data and executed through multiple message tracks. Marketers can easily create everything from simple, single-track drip campaigns to highly complex, multiple-track marketing programs with Yes/ No decision points that automatically move prospects down the appropriate path through to a sale. Highly personalized, automated campaigns can even be designed to adapt to the actions of each customer based on his or her interactions (or lack of interactions) with numerous messages and related landing pages rather than from just one, single message. For example, if a recipient doesn’t open the first or second message in a predetermined series, the campaign can be automated to send him or her a very different third message than one designed for someone who has been engaged all along. In order to engage these more skeptical recipients, you might need to provide a more enticing discount or even a message asking for more information about his or her particular interests. Sophisticated marketing automation programs allow you to do this on the fly—freeing up more time for you to focus on the bigger picture.
- #46 The rise of the Internet—and later, social media—set off an inexorable shift in our society that has transformed how we live, how we learn, how we communicate—and how we buy. Buyers today are more knowledgeable, more connected and have more options than at any time in history. As such, the days of marketers shouting their messages as loud as they can, to as many people as they can find, are coming to an end. In the new age of buyer-centric marketing, creative content is more important than ever, but that alone is no longer enough. It must be substantive and responsive. And marketers must to be able to effortlessly reach into and participate with a rapidly emerging set of channels and mediums, connecting with prospects on their terms—when and how they want to dialogue. Only then will your messaging truly be absorbed by the buyer, and only then will you see the benefits of increased engagement, conversions and ROI that creating a strong dialogue with prospects can bring.
- #47 Engagement Marketing is not interruptive, but two-day dialogs.