Welcome to the Marketing Impact Vlog!

Today, we’re dipping into the fascinating world where customer experience and marketing converge because the future is here, and yet, customer experience is one of those areas where most companies don’t have a person looking out for that. So we’re here to define the opportunity a little better and hopefully inspire you into taking bolder action.

Five years ago, I led a workshop at one of our Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange events. At the time, the research by the Economist on how marketers’ roles would shift by 2020 said that “75% of marketers believe they will be responsible—i.e., measured, judged, rewarded, promoted—for the end-to-end experience over the customer’s lifecycle.”

As a result, we would be measured on “engagement”, and marketing would become responsible in some way for marketing, sales, repeat sales and referrals.

It seems that the future is here.

The 2019 Salesforce State of Marketing report stated:

“A Unified Customer Experience Is This Year’s Leading Strategy. As marketers take the lead on more end-to-end customer experience initiatives, they are broadening their focus down the funnel, deepening relationships with other teams, and tracking metrics that extend beyond customer acquisition into purchase and post-purchase. The number of marketers tracking lifetime customer value (LTV) is projected to grow 107%.”

We are now in the era of full-funnel marketing.

If you haven’t already, we as marketers should be raising our hands internally to own customer experience. This is our domain and places marketing in a serious power position which we all should relish! But – this provides a dilemma. How do we fit this into our already over-scheduled day to day? Marketing automation and AI continue to improve our efficiency, but  it’s still a lot. How do we set reasonable expectations around what services and support marketing provides our organization?

First off, there is no arguing in our opinion that marketing DOES play a critical role in customer experience, but it’s as simple as just about spreading our messages across all channels at every stage of the funnel and customer journey to cast the widest net.

The customer experience IS at the center of our work, but engagement is not our final measure of success.

Yes! Marketing actually has a BIGGER role than customer retention, sales or return on investment…that bigger job is to see our role as driving INNOVATION.  When you are a key player in the customer experience and looking at Customer Lifetime Value, your job is no longer about defending your programs’ ROI. You become focused on creating value for your customers, which translates into creating value for your company.

Are you starting to see how being customer-focused can become your strategic, competitive advantage?

I couldn’t agree more. It’s a paradigm shift each organization must make and we’re here to help you get started.

1. Ask great questions. As marketers, we love customer research and insights, but we often feel we don’t have enough. So the work here is to invest time in aligning with the teams in your company that are gathering customer and product-usage insight, and make sure they are asking really great questions. Make sure they are asking questions that help you get inside the heads of your customers. In this way, you’re investing less in “one-off” customer research and embedding smart research into your operation.
2. Analyze with an eye for adding value. Once your organization is gathering and sharing customer insights, put your analytical skills and creativity to task. Analyze the data. Then ask more great questions—Do we make this easy for our customers? Did our customers say, “Wow!”? If not, what are we doing really well that needs to be amplified, and where do we have opportunities to innovate brand new approaches?
3. Stoke the creative fires inside your organization. Armed with better customer research that you’ve analyzed and synthesized, next you want to uncover the skills, knowledge and expertise within your organization that you can leverage to help innovate new solutions to address your customers’ evolving problems, needs and desires. Position yourself to close information loops within your organization—bringing unlikely teams together—and empower teams to rally around these challenges, get creative, and innovate in the name of customer delight at every stage of the customer journey.
4. Create a bigger “Why” for yourself and your work. Every passionate marketer I’ve met is equal parts dreamer and doer. You welcome challenges as opportunities to learn. You join with others and recognize that the success of one requires the success of many. You see that marketing today is not only influencing purchases. The marketing initiatives you create have the ability to create visceral connections between people, to inspire movements, and to lead our world to a better place under the namesake of your brand. In one light, you and your marketing team have been given the pen to author a version of the future you’d like to see.  Embrace this and you will secure your strategic advantage for a long time to come.

Now, if that’s not a reason to get up in the morning and do our best, I don’t know what is!

So there you have it. A call-to-action for you to step up your game and lead the way forward using customer experience as your strategic advantage. Interested in learning more about CX? You gotta check out CX Ecosystem. This is a Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange and if you’ve never attended one, you MUST place this event on your calendar. Visit CXmindxchange.com or click the link below for more details.

Until next time, remember to Grow your Brand….…and Drive Demand.

Thanks for checking out this week’s episode. If you clicked on today’s topic, then I’m sure you’re asking the same question we are: Does the traditional content marketing funnel still work?

The answer is an emphatic NO.

Funnels like this one are a dime a dozen and for the past 20+ years have been the backbone to our content marketing strategies.

Yes – some of the top, middle and bottom of the funnel marketing strategies still fit into our modern-day content mix, BUT it’s honestly no longer a traditional linear model. The buyer journey today is WAY more complicated and reflects a looping decision journey where buyers move down, up and sideways on their own terms at their own time.  Why? Buyers are using social media, web, mobile and more during every stage of the traditional funnel.

I think about how I personally research and buy and you’re absolutely correct.

I love this quote by Nick Worth at MarketingLand: “Now more than ever, consumers expect brands to understand them and treat engagements as evidence that they are committed to knowing them better as individuals. Whether it be through recommended products, engagement channel preferences (like social media or email), more relevant content or selecting better promotions, brands will benefit from going the extra mile.”

From a B2B perspective, I feel confident that we’re trending in the very same direction. The B2B sales cycle has begun to mimic our own expectations on the consumer side. As marketers, we MUST embrace this shift if we’re going to continue to be relevant to our customer base and prospect communities. Our buyers aren’t looking to get to know us, they want us to get to know them.

The core value of understanding the pain points of our buyers is as critical today as it was 20 years ago, but personalizing our marketing to their specific needs is an expectation that they have before they even engage with us. How we rise and respond to this challenge is now a key indicator of our future success.

So what does this new content funnel look like? The best version we could find is this one by Campaign Monitor.

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the traditional funnel. There is still a flow to the focus of our interactions but provides the necessary opportunities for buyers to come in and out on their terms.

The key take-away of killing the traditional content funnel is buyers want to consume content whenever, wherever, and however they please. We need to offer valuable content, in the right place, at the right time, with personalized iterations across a variety of distribution channels.

Excellent point, but it’s also critical to remember that our content assets are not linear either. Today more than ever, our buyers are utilizing a wider variety of mediums to consume content. They include traditional text of course, but ever-increasingly include video, audio, and graphics. As marketers, we must be creating content for each of these asset types, as well as be thinking about adjusting our SEO content strategies to include voice and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) results to maximize engagement.

Diversifying the type of content asset is huge, but equally as important is to diversify your distribution channels as well. They should include a mix of paid, owned, and earned. We must be hosting and sharing content in multiple locations. Some of those channels can do both like LinkedIn or YouTube. The key is to offer a place for the content to reside long term where your prospects will self-select, engage, follow and hopefully share with their community.

Remember – the process is no longer about creating a content strategy that is top-down. Allow yourself to move away from this rigid model to build a more personalized and fluid approach that engages your buying and customer communities on their terms – when, where and how they please.

Until next time, Remember to Grow Your Brand. And Drive Demand!

Welcome to the Marketing Impact Vlog!

A few months ago we did an article detailing ten ways to engage your prospects so they respond to your sales follow-up attempts. Today, we’re going to focus on the three most important strategies you have to get right in order to see success in your marketing and sales follow-up attempts.

To keep it easy to remember, we’re calling this the Three T’s of follow-up mastery: Timing, Tactics and Tools.

Adam, what do you think about these three things? Will they actually help more prospects respond to our sales teams’ follow-up attempts?

ADAM: Yes, I really believe they do! I think each one of these is important by itself, but they also work together.

I’ll start by talking about the first essential strategy: TIMING.

With TIMING, we’re referring to all of the touches and interactions you have with a prospect after they subscribe or engage with your company. This means you’re following up promptly after that first connection either with marketing automation or sales activity, or both, and that the timing of your interactions after that first touch is just enough to keep your company top of mind, but not so frequent that your marketing or your sales team becomes annoying.

A word of advice here, even if you think you know how long your teams and systems are waiting to follow up, it’s important to keep tabs on this stat. It’s easy for automations to get turned off or expire, or for follow-up times to lag if they’re not monitored well.

NICOLE: Good point. So once you get your timing down, the next T to increasing lead response is to master your TACTICS.

In other words, leverage best-practice methods that are proven to get your outreach noticed. We covered a whole list of tactics at length in the blog article, but at a minimum, you want to make sure you’re using Relevancy, Transparency and Reciprocity.

• The Relevancy tactic means your communication is staying dialed into the right topics for a given contact.
• The Transparency tactic means you are giving them a “what to expect” so they start to see themselves doing business with you before you close the deal.
• The Reciprocity tactic makes use of our human nature to reciprocate when offered something of value.

These three TACTICS alone can transform your follow-up engagement if you’re not doing them.

ADAM: Yes! And speaking of value…that’s a great lead-in to the last T of Follow-up Mastery: Use TOOLS

Making every interaction memorable is key to increasing response rates, and finding innovative ways to provide value to your prospects is a win-win.

Instead of sending content marketing in the form of articles and reports, provide insightful surveys, tests, ROI calculators, and other tools for your prospects to use to help them move along your process.

Another great tool is simply your sales team’s calendar! Think about offering the ability to schedule a meeting with your team early and often. Putting the power of scheduling into your prospects’ hands keeps them feeling in control of the process. When they are in control, they are paying attention! People are far more likely to keep commitments that they actively signed up for than those that were given to them.

NICOLE: That’s a great point, Adam. As I said in the beginning, you can check out the full blog article for more ideas to get your prospects to respond to follow-up attempts.

But if you’re short on time, or wanting a quick way to assess where you might have gaps, use this three T’s framework: Timing, Tactics and Tools to cover your bases.

We’d love to know YOUR top strategies for increasing lead engagement, so share them with us in the comments below!

Until next time, remember to Grow Your Brand…and Drive Demand!

Marketing leaders from across industries have shared insights with us so you can benchmark best practices in the areas of Marketing Strategy, Content Marketing, Account-Based Marketing, Budgeting and Success Measurement. Here, we’re taking a look at one of the leading challenges marketers are facing and what they are doing to overcome it.

I’ve been working in the events industry for longer than I care to mention, cough… 20+ years! I’m a strong believer in the value of events and the ROI face to face marketing provides.  I’ve produced and marketed ALL types of events, so I feel like I’m in a unique position to share my marketing perspective on the distinct events models you can and should take advantage of.

Here at Frost & Sullivan, I’m responsible for our digital strategy, MarTech and demand generation, so I’m also a huge proponent of leveraging technology to identify, engage, validate and close business. However, I can’t stress enough the importance event marketing plays in our overall strategy. Dollar for dollar, it continues to drive the strongest marketing ROI.

Why? Nothing can replace the ability to shake hands, look someone in the eye and establish meaningful relationships. Then, post event we leverage technology platforms, automation and personalization (based on those face to face interactions) and you just can’t duplicate the investment returns, which include shorter sales cycles, larger contracts and increased renewals.

If you’re not seeing similar results, then the events you’re investing in aren’t aligned to your marketing strategy and that’s the focus of today’s Marketing Impact Vlog.

Each event model serves a valuable purpose. It’s critical to understand the pros and cons of each model to properly align your event schedule to your marketing strategy. We’re going to run down the main B2B event models by size, from largest to the most intimate.

Trade Shows & Association National Events:

Pros:

• Brand Awareness – exhibiting at an industry trade show provides amazing brand building and improves the industry’s overall awareness of your products and services
• Lead Generation – lots of people = lots of potential lead gen opportunities
• Market Research – you’ll grab a quick pulse of the industry, what’s trending and what your prospects are responding to, not to mention insight into what your competitors are focusing on.

Cons:

• Costs – Exhibiting at a large event is expensive and it doesn’t end with square footage charge. Add in booth design, construction, delivery, staffing, travel costs, electrical, setup and teardown…
• Quality of Leads – Yes you get a ton of leads, but you’ll need to work really hard to sift thru them for the decision makers you seek.
• Competition – how do you stand out in a sea of competition? Be sure and highlight what makes you unique and provides the ability to stand out.

 

Conferences

Pros:

• Qualified Audience – participation is only possible after purchasing a ticket
• Networking – ranging in size from 100s to 1000s of people provides the opportunity to build relationships whether thru receptions, sessions or at the venue bar.
• Specific Focus/Theme – everyone in attendance is there for the same reason and focus.

Cons:

• Options Galore – size, focus and event organizer credibility vary greatly. You need to do your research and investigate the overall value and history of the event.
• Costs – although less than tradeshows, conferences can still be expensive and come with similar expenses.
• At the Mercy of the Event Organizer – audience demographics, brand positioning, and event tools/apps are controlled by the organizer.

 

Hosted Events

Pros:

• Full Control – you have control over the entire event and audience
• Brand Front and Center – participants only experience your brand

Cons:

• Time and Energy – it takes a ton more energy than you think to plan, marketing and execute a hosted event.
• Costs – you are 100% responsible for all costs, ie: feeding participants, signage, marketing, etc.
• Brand Reputation – It’s your event, your brand’s reputation is on the line. Yes you have full control, but with events there are many variables out of your control that can negatively impact your reputation.

We’re running out of time and there are all kinds of other events to consider. The key is to align your goals and strategy with the benefits of the event model. Take the time to do your research not only on the type of event, but its history and the event organizer.  Review sponsor testimonials and feedback, as well as ask around to be sure the event will deliver on your expectations.

We’ll end today’s blog with some honest self-promotion. If you’re truly looking for quality over quantity, to be treated as equals on-site, along with the ability to establish meaningful relationships, then you must add Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange events to your event schedule.

Here is a link to our 2020 calendar of events, and I highly encourage you to check them out and get involved.

Till next, remember to grow your brand…and drive demand!