The Fork In The Road

Death of the Playbook

I recently met with a CEO who asked me “so what’s your usual playbook?”  Wow.  There are a lot of problems with that question and the person who asked it.  First and foremost, any marketer who thinks they can create a playbook of tactics that will fit any given company should: (a) find a different career; (b) find an industry that hasn’t evolved in the last 10 years – hint: there isn’t one; or (c) work for someone who isn’t expecting much out of their marketing and sales teams.

Playbook marketing implies every situation is the same no matter the season, audience or product.  In other words, marketing is a series of tactics with no need for a brain to create the appropriate strategy. 

Companies who only hire demand generation professionals without balancing them with strategy are unwittingly falling into playbook marketing.  If demand generation efforts aren’t put into context of unique product value and audience, the result is likely to be raw leads that may not equal the most likely buyers.  Gathering a large number of these may actually slow the entire sales cycle.  “Good conversations” with leads who aren’t the right target mean at best your sales team will have multiple calls with several layers of contacts before they find the right person.  At worst, a large number of incoming, indiscriminate leads will distract your sales reps from closing deals.

Soon after Salesforce.com launched, Marc Benioff hired actors to protest in front of a Siebel conference.  Siebel called the police and a marketing legend was born. 

Clearly, this was not from a playbook, but it worked.  I’m now occasionally asked if we should add protesters at a competitors user conference, as if it is now part of a standard playbook. Benioff’s protest worked because it was pure guerilla marketing.  Most people hadn’t seen this before.  It was attention grabbing because it was fresh, creative and spoke to the target audience. 

Fortunately, this past week, I had two CEOs say “I’m willing to try anything if it will get results.”  It’s not surprising that each helms a successful company.  Their questions balance the need to be creative with the need to measure results.  Creativity without measurement is a waste of time and budget.  As more executives acknowledge this, I predict we will see marketing tactics continue to evolve.  Although the new approach is likely to include digital, social and guerilla marketing, it will also include tactics that continue to deliver positive results such as SEO, analyst relations and surveys.  The result will be continually improving marketing programs with improved ROI, and there is no playbook for that. 

 

 

Branding Roadmaps - The Overlooked Path

More than 10 years ago, I canceled merging my consulting practice with another successful boutique consulting practice.  We had already met with the attorneys twice and were about to start drafting the agreements.  I did this when it hit me what the new company would mean to my personal brand.  Frankly, the other managing partner had a habit of fighting with everyone: her own consultants, vendors and even clients.  In fact, my role with our joint clients was already starting to be “the fixer.”  

Canceling the partnership after we had already met with attorneys was a little expensive and a little painful.  I’ve never regretted it.  If we had gone forward, it had the potential to be very expensive (potential lost clients) and I’m certain very painful.  More importantly, I was in danger of having my personal brand damaged with negative general statements about the firm.

Brand perception, whether personal or corporate, is hard to change.  It is doable, and I’ve spent much of my career changing perceptions, but it is so much easier to get it right the first time.  Too often, companies think they’ll get their product where they want it and afterward possibly think about their brand.  Knowing what your brand is doesn’t mean you ignore the product; in fact, it supports the product roadmap.

Your company’s brand must be about the value and emotion you provide now as well as what it will be in the future.  If you plan to make a major switch in your product offerings, you need to build that into a brand roadmap so you don’t make a bold claim now that will come back to bite you in the arse later.

I’ve found people are much more forgiving – within reason – with product features needing to evolve.  But if your stated brand stands for one thing, but everything you do implies something else, your prospects and customers either won’t believe you or will assign their own definition of your brand.

The most successful companies boldly define their brands, then all company actions and marketing efforts support that positioning.  It doesn’t need to be overthought, but someone needs to be the company’s internal voice that says Does this make sense if we are an X company? For example, I couldn’t tell you what Burger King’s brand positioning was during The King advertising phase a few years ago, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t “Creepy Fast Food Company.” Clearly, its advertising didn’t match what the company wanted its brand to project.

Another question to ask is Should we be doing this if we know in a year we will be doing Y?  Some companies, particularly tech companies, have the wrong assumption that you don’t need to transition brand positioning.  “Today we are this.  Starting tomorrow, we will be this other thing.  Don’t mention what we were before.”  This is confusing at best.  It’s possible to go from point A to B, but you need to connect the dots.  Just like with a product roadmap, you need to show the evolution, even if it is onto a new plain of existence.   

If you cringe when you meet with a company that doesn’t have a product roadmap or plan for how future offerings will be developed, what do you think of companies who haven’t defined who they, what they stand or where they are going?

 

Three (Duh) Ways to Improve Your Marketing

I spent a few days last week in a sales kickoff meeting.  Hungry for qualified leads, the sales team was quite enthusiastic about how we would improve the company’s marketing efforts.   Of course, I love this, but frankly, much of what I said seemed obvious.  Then I realized, for whatever reason, sometimes marketers think too hard and overlook ways they can make easy but significant improvements.

This leads me to give you three (duh) ways to improve your marketing:

1)   Make Your Sales Team Experts Through The Magic of Social Media

As a marketer, I tend not to like using people with sales and marketing titles as company experts. This means unless the topic is business strategies or international marketing, you probably won’t see me presenting at a conference.  However, social media changes this bias.  In the world of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, an expert is defined by the quality of their content.

Salespeople often aren’t given credit for being subject matter experts. Frankly, if they aren’t experts on your product or service, they aren’t worth having on the payroll.

The best way to make a salesperson an expert through social media is to lay down the ground rules, let them know what tools and mediums are available, then get out of their way.  A good example of this is Paul Lancaster, who for three years was business development manager at GoGrid, an IAAS provider. I first found Paul when I started following IAAS experts on Twitter. He got my attention because his tweets went beyond simply retweeting company news releases and included industry news and trends. Paul also co-authors blogs and video blogs, and of course posts on Facebook. He became so well-versed in the IAAS world that a year ago he because manager of cloud ecosystem at GoGrid.

2)   Give Prospects a Chance to Interact with You

Many B2B companies give their prospects few opportunities to show their interest. Outside of “download free trial” or “view a demo” buttons, websites often are missing call to actions (CTAs) that provide valuable information. This is akin to walking in the door of a store, having a clerk pick something off the shelf, and asking if you want to buy it even though you may not have looked at it. Isn’t a better in-store experience when you’ve looked at things that interest you, had someone there to answer your questions and then made a decision to buy?

Yes, you want the option to jump in at any time to try out the product/service, but what if the price point is $100K+ or there are multiple offerings?  You may get prospects viewing your demo, along with your competitors, but outside of a form of contact information, you’ve learned nothing about them or their needs that will help close the deal.

If your company doesn’t have a healthy supply of assets created to be ingested at different stages of the sales cycle, you’re missing the chance to have your customers tell you what is important to them, while also learning more about your product/service. 

Yes, it takes time to create a stable of case studies, white papers, briefs and videos. This is why several should be created at once. For example, a customer has agreed to a case study. Yay! Here’s what you will create:

1. Word version of case study to be laid out as collateral, of course
2. Slide version of case study for inclusion in sales deck when appropriate
3. Video testimonial
4. Blog or video interview blog
5. Three-five slides of a use case for conference presentations
6. Byline article about the problem addressed in the case study
7. Media pitches to interview customer who has accomplished X, Y and Z by using your product/service

Your marketing automation efforts should also go beyond email campaigns. By implementing trigger campaigns, you will provide breadcrumbs in the form of related assets that lead down a path to a qualified lead and then a sale. Trigger campaigns can be defined as If/Then campaigns. If I respond to information about X download, then I’m offered Y download. If I download Y, then I’m offered Z. Soon, I’m contacted and asked if I’m interested in the product/service related to XYZ.

Just as the sales process is a series of yeses, marketing is a series of offers to engage.

3)   Test Your E-Marketing

What? You say of course you test everything. Really? Then I’m willing to bet you are in the minority. Everyone SAYS they test thoroughly, but not really.

Here is a brief quiz to test your thoroughness:

1. When was the last time you clicked on every link on your website, including those that link off the site, such as news clips?
2. Have you tested your website and offering on multiple monitor sizes, with multiple connection speeds? Yes, there are still people on dial-up, but frankly my “super fast” cable line isn’t always super fast.
3. Do you have Flash on your website? If so, why? Have you not heard of iPhones and iPads?
4. Have you tested e-marketing that should pop to a landing page?
5. Do you recheck your links after they’ve been shortened for Twitter? Does every article or infographic load as you expected? 

If you answered yes to all these, congratulations. I have yet to find a perfect company. Take Zuora, which recently announced expansion into EMEA and a USD$36 million series D. I’ve recommended Zuora for years. It is one of the few companies I believe is close to being a sure thing for great success. Having said that, is it my job as a Zuora fan to tell the company there was a problem with its LinkedIn banner ad?  Soon after its new funding was announced, I tried four times over four days to download a white paper advertised on LinkedIn. Each time, there was a problem with its landing page. If this happens with a company that is at the top of its marketing game, imagine what is happening elsewhere.

Clearly this is a short starter list and there are so many easy ways to improve marketing programs quickly. What are your other (duh) ways to improve marketing?

 

Creative or Analytical? - It’s the Wrong Question

I’ve been waiting a few weeks to figure out how I can politely address what may seem like a pet peeve. I’ve finally decided to not be so sensitive and accept that some people will see themselves in the blog post and will need to accept they are less than experts when it comes to marketing.

Wow. What a buildup for what seems to be a simple question: Are you creative or analytical?  As I’ve moved into senior global marketing roles, I’ve been asked this repeatedly. Usually by CEOs who I assume are intelligent in aspects of business.  I’ve always been polite, in part because it’s usually been in the middle of a job interview when this question is asked.  Now it’s time for me to share what’s behind my very polite smile: What an incredibly stupid question!

Yes, there are people in the marketing discipline who lean heavily toward creativity or analytics. However, do you really want to hire one of these people to head your marketing efforts?

Marketing executives, especially in high growth companies, must have a penchant and passion for both.  Only working through a “playbook” of marketing tactics neglects great opportunities to engage prospects.  For companies with a technology without widespread awareness or adoption, working through a series of marketing tactics because you think that’s how marketing is done, may ensure your solution is never seen by the most qualified prospects or that it’ll take a lot more money to get on their radar.

At the same time, I hate, hate , HATE, “gee whiz marketing.” These are super-cool marketing efforts done solely for the purpose of looking super-cool.  Marketing must be done for a purpose.  Sometimes this is lead gen, sometimes it’s awareness, sometimes it’s positioning for a liquidity event.  One of my earliest professional memories was promoting the Clay Court Championship in Pittsburgh, PA.  Our budget was just above USD$ZERO for an event spanning several days and a client willing to try something for the sake of drawing attention to it.  What I came up with was a celebrity charity tournament to be held on the first day of the event.  In Pittsburgh, “celebrities” were mostly media personalities, or in other words, TV  news anchors.  As planned, the celebrities that were invited to participate came with camera crews to show how the stations were supporting the community.  Each then ran it on the evening news.  The result was a measureable increase in attendance both from the previous day and also in comparison to previous years. 

Marketing must be a mix of creative new ideas and previous efforts with a proven track record. Both need forecasted results and ROI, and just as important, thorough measurement during and afterward. The measurement also needs to be the right measurement. For example, measuring lead generation on incoming leads is only a portion of what should be happening.  Ultimately, lead generation should be graded on how many leads reach the opportunity stage and the percentage of projected revenue in those opportunities.  It is also a mistake to assume public relations’ and analyst relations’ efforts cannot be measured.  There is always a way to measure. It takes someone who is creative and analytical to develop a metrics that fits the discipline and the company.

So, I ask again: Would you really want to hire someone who doesn’t have a passion for creative marketing to discover new ways to reach prospects, develop solutions and position your brand AND the analytics to continue to improve your (M)ROI?

 

Marketing Evolution Continues Into 2012

If 2011 was a game, it would be baseball. There haven’t been any grand slams this year, but there have been some solid hits. In the end, several companies have made enough overall progress that this year will be a win for them.

As we round third and head for home, I want to look back on what was done particularly well this year. Here are three winning marketing strategies of 2011 and how they will be improved in 2012.

1)   In 2011, more companies have embraced inbound marketing than ever before. This means tactics that will bring customers to them (SEO, content marketing) instead of purely outbound approaches (email campaigns, banner ads). For example, there has definitely been a plethora of ebook offers this year, most of which have been informative and added value. This is a positive trend, which we are sure to see more of.

2012 PREDICTION #1: The most successful companies will build programs that leverage both outbound and inbound marketing. They will integrate these programs so they feed off each other and move prospects through the sales process.

2)   There seemed to be an increase in user conferences this year. Although user conferences are a great way to turn users into evangelists, having an event isn’t enough. Over the last three months, I’ve watched several unfold. The best by far was Mashery’s Business of APIs Conference, which I attended in San Francisco in September. What made Mashery’s event superior? 

• A half-day event and a networking reception. Why have it longer if everything can fit into four hours?
• Program of customers and industry experts
• Program meets the audience demographics. The San Francisco, London and NYC events were more business-focused or developer-focused depending on their registered attendees.
• Conference hashtag and free WiFi were listed on programs
• Behind the audience was a raised platform where several people from Mashery tweeted throughout the event about comments presenters where making as they happened. Audience members then retweeted and commented on the tweets in real-time or wrote their own tweets. This wasn’t directed, but because the hashtag and free WiFi were available, it happened organically.
• Most importantly, the event wasn’t an advertisement for the company. It focused on the value of making APIs available or developing with other company’s APIs. In other words, the information presented was actually valuable to the audience.

These details add up to a more engaged audience. This flowed into a much more visible social media presence, which went on for days after each event. If you search #BAPI on Twitter, you’ll see some of what I’m describing.

 2012 PREDICTION #2: More companies will stage user day events. Many of these will be considered successful purely based on whether people attend. This is the wrong measurement. You can always get people to fill a room. User events should be measured on a more strategic goal, such as increasing brand visibility, converting leads in the pipeline to signed deals quicker, etc.

3)   It may be because of economic fears, but there was more talk this year about measuring marketing value than in the past. This seems to be for two reasons: first, there are more SaaS tools for marketing and each has a measurement function or dashboard to “prove” its value; and second, with limited budgets, there is more scrutiny of each dollar spent. It makes sense that if companies are using CRM systems to track the sales process, they should also be examining what marketing is contributing.

2012 PREDICTION #3: This is more of a hope than a prediction. I predict/hope that measurement of marketing activities becomes more refined. As I’ve written about again and again, it is important that companies measure the right areas. It is fine to measure raw leads, but in the end, marketing lead gen and demand gen efforts should be judged on the number of leads that convert to opportunities and projected revenue from marketing activities that appear in the company’s pipeline. This doesn’t discount the use of marketing for branding. That should also be measured. But if you are going to measure lead gen and demand gen, projected opportunities is the place to do this.

In addition to these three marketing trends, the other business trends seem likely to continue to evolve in 2012 are:

• The use of social media for customer service – both for consumer and B2B businesses. Very technical B2B companies are already starting to do this, but in 2012 we’ll see this increase in mainstream businesses. It is no longer about being “liked.”
• More companies will see the value of making their API available. They will understand it is about being where the customer is, not trying to get the customer to come to them.
• Conversely, hopefully by the end of 2012, companies that have a business based on use of their API will understand they need more than a developer channel to grow significant revenue.
• Multinational will no longer mean “the world’s largest companies.” More companies will be expanding into new regions. The most successful of these will understand the need to localize marketing and sometimes their business model as well.
• More companies, large and small, will embrace an integrated marketing approach that has all aspects of marketing supporting each other.

For all the talk of economic woes, 2011 has actually been a good year for business. It has been a developmental year for many companies. We are entering 2012 with a lot of promise. I’m looking forward to continuing the game.

Benioff Wins This Round

Whether Oracle actually cancelled Marc Benioff’s keynote speech or simply “rescheduled it” to Thursday, a day Benioff couldn’t be there, is immaterial. Oracle World is clearly huge and very focused on all things Oracle. I walked on the bridgeway above Howard Street yesterday and even from the outside, you can see it dwarfs the Dreamforce conference from a month ago. However, if someone thought moving/cancelling Benioff was a way to avoid giving him a voice, they calculated very, very wrong.

Now, no matter what Oracle and its partners announce, Benioff will always be mentioned in any news coverage of the event and, possibly more importantly, the gossip/Twitter streams, and blogs like this one. That means a whole lot of money is being spent and Benioff gets the last laugh.

I missed Benioff’s alternative talk this morning at the St. Regis Hotel – which happens to be across the street from Oracle World – but what he said doesn’t matter. What will remembered is the already famous tweet I saw retweeted dozens of times in my Twitter feed starting yesterday afternoon.

Whether you like Benioff or Larry Ellison, no one should question Benioff on this one. I’m not sure if Ellison actually made the call to cancel Benioff’s keynote or if it was someone else’s idea. If it was some else’s idea, their boss should be asking why someone who can’t think through potential ramifications is in a position to make these types of decisions. Anyone who knows Benioff, his reputation or has read his book should have seen this exact course of action happening, including the “street protest.” If this truly was Ellison’s idea, it is another example of what happens when people can’t tell their leader he has a bad idea. Either way, today, and this particular Oracle World conference, belong to Benioff.

 

Netflix’s Future Depends On Distribution Deals

When I was in the VOD business many years ago, the weak link in the business model was access to content (film and television distribution deals).  Flash forward to today’s world of video streaming – nothing has changed.

Now that Netflix has separated into two companies: Netflix for streaming and Qwikster (side note: really dumb name, but that is a different discussion), availability to licensed content for both companies is going to become even more important. Two years ago, Netflix signed an agreement that delayed when it could start offering many new releases, namely those from Universal Studios, Warner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox. This gives on-demand providers via cable and satellite a 28-day head start. Given their ties to some studios, the reason for this anti-competitive maneuver is clear. 

For Netflix, these agreements were supposed to help build up its catalog of available content for streaming. Earlier this month, Netflix lost valuable future content from Starz Entertainment. Their current distribution deal is set to expire February 2012.

I love streaming video and live in a household that consumes way more than the average amount of available video. Netflix is one of our main sources, but it isn’t the only way we access films and old television series. As Netflix has shortened the amount of time some content is available for streaming, delayed other content and is about to lose even more content, Hulu, Comcast, Amazon Instant Video and other options have come on strong.

Netflix will be around at the end of 2012, but it is yet to be seen if it will be able to bounce back into the growth mode it had only a few months ago. The company has put its eggs in the streaming delivery basket. Now is the time for it to guarantee it has and will have the available content consumers want, when they want it.

Where Founders Should Go After They’re Done Founding

It is rare to find a founder who is visionary and can grow a $1+ Billion organization. For every Jeff Bezos, there are 100s of founders who create very good concepts and then allow their companies to miss their true potential because they don’t know how to move beyond being the founder, CEO and company rudder.

The best founders know whether they are the right leader for the next stage, when it’s time to have someone replace them, or even leave the organization. The second best version is the founder who has trusted advisors who can provide this outside guidance.

For the founder who chooses to leave the company they helped create, their next step depends in part on what brought them to become founders in the first place. For some people, it is as if they have no choice but to create over and over again. For others, founding their first company was based on happenstance. For example, Engine Yard received the funding that put it on the path it’s on today because VCs noticed other companies were using it to build their technology. Wildfire Interactive was created after its founders experienced the painful process of trying to create promotions for Facebook.

Three options are available outside the initial company:

1)   Move into a technical or business role in a related business sector. Yahoo and Google have been known to hire former founders. A large technology company could be a good fit because the founder’s technical skills married with the personality characteristics required to develop and launch a company (determination, organization and confidence) makes these people more likely than their peers to prove themselves and move up quickly.

2)   If the VC who funded the initial company sees potential in the founder’s skills and creativity, an entrepreneur in residence position may be offered. This gives the entrepreneur the opportunity to assist other startup companies by providing insight and subject matter expertise. This also gives the entrepreneur in residence a needed break in which they can cultivate their next idea.

3)   An often-overlooked option is moving into academia. It’s unfortunate that this isn’t considered more. Just as some founders have an abundance of determination, organizational skills and confidence, others are much more interested in the process of creating and perfecting new things. These people will be more focused on details than the big picture. The same characteristic that makes it hard for them to decide what is the best business approach and stick with it makes these people good academics because they want to examine and reexamine every possibility multiple times.

For founders for whom it is not appropriate to remain in any role at their company, what comes next could be uncertain and an ego blow. Two important things to keep in mind: (1) whether you are currently in charge or not, the prosperity of the company you founded is bigger than you and it comes first; second, you can find success beyond one company.

 

What’s Coming and What Could Hold Us Back

Last week, I attended Dreamforce, Salesforce’s conference. Like the now defunct TechCrunch 50, it is a great place to see a lot of very different companies; in this case with a thin layer of similarity. It is the common ground of Salesforce integration that makes the companies so ripe for assessment and comparison. 

I met some old friends, saw the next version of some familiar technology and had a few people lie to my face.

I’m not necessarily in the market for new vendors/technology, so for me it is a perfect time to skim the surface of new companies. There are definitely some interesting things happening.

Without a doubt, social has become more integrated into the mainstream consumer experience over the last 18 months and will continue to expand into the enterprise in creative ways. Having said this, the next significant wave seems to be new ways to leverage business intelligence and predictive analytics. This makes sense given both the technology evolution and the desire for companies to prepare for whichever direction the economy/business may go.

So getting back to the people lying to my face. Enterprise sales and marketing have often sold ahead of what is actually generally available. I get this. If you assume it will take at least two to three months to roll out new software that could push the software into the next release. With the increasing adoption of SaaS and PaaS, this is becoming less likely, but in many cases could still be a legitimate assumption. For startup companies with limited resources, there is also the development plan that builds what customers want, also called customer-sponsored development. If customers understand the timeframe of receiving newly-developed capabilities, this also seems a legitimate approach. I am not labeling either version of this selling technique as a bold-faced lie. 

Unfortunately, there are companies so eager to close deals, they promise features and capabilities that are several releases into the future. If prospective customers don’t know this timing, this can only be seen as intentionally misleading, and if the company in question is promising what it does not intend to deliver, it can be defined as fraud. This has happened throughout the history of business, but combatting it is more important than ever. 

Although the percentage of companies guilty of this might be small, their reach is large. Dreamforce is a good illustration of the reach of SaaS companies. Obviously, main companies around the world use Salesforce. Now these companies are starting to, or are about to start making significant investments with other SaaS vendors. If what they purchase does not meet baseline expectations, it damages the reputation of that vendor, the cloud computing sector and potentially the bottom line of the business that purchased it. “Bad seed” companies can only survive for so long, but it’s the potential for them to drag the rest of us down a peg or two on their way down that will hurt.

 I love startup companies and I love optimism. All I need now is a BS meter for the next conference. 

 

Integrated Marketing: The Only Way to Guarantee Fully Optimized Marketing

For years, I’ve preached the benefits of integrated marketing, so it is time I write about it here as well. Too many companies silo their marketing approaches into narrow disciplines without creating a plan for them to support each other.

The answer is not to only hire generalists without any expertise, but in addition to these focus-area experts, senior marketing executives must be responsible for creating an integrated marketing approach.

One of the easiest ways to begin to create and implement an integrated marketing approach is with a themed approach. Take for example these four potential themes that could run in three or four month cycles over a year:

1)      Cost Savings

2)      Time to Market

3)      New Approach to Old Problem

4)      Sustainability

Messaging related to themes would then be woven into product marketing, analyst relations, demand generation programs and public relations. Like a product launch, the timing of each effort and tactic should be plotted so as to support each other. For example, the analyst relations outreach and thought leadership push would be a few months ahead of the demand generation and messaging to existing customers.

It should go without saying that although the themes and core messaging are the same, each piece must be tailored to a specific audience type. This is even true within the same marketing function. For example, your buyer could be a business unit leader, while the end user (influencer) could be at the staff level. While an attribute such as “easy to use” will resonate with the influencer, it is only a nice additional benefit to the business unit leader looking for a more strategic reason to approve the purchase.

Early stage tech companies sometimes mistake their product attributes for their brand. Others mistake public relations for a brand strategy. A good brand strategy is the perfect example of integrated marketing because it:

• requires articulating the company vision
• influences the product marketing approach and messaging
• determines if the product roadmap is legitimate
• is justified though leadership/analyst relations/public relations/social media
•  is sold as a concept to prospects through demand generation/advertising/ SEM

A siloed marketing approach will never see these commonalities. At best, companies without an integrated marketing approach are wasting time and money by duplicating efforts. At worst, they are weakening their brand and confusing the marketplace.