The Marketing Mélange

Marketing Trends That Matter for Every Business

Seems that every conversation about marketing these days somehow raises interest in “what are the big trends in marketing?” and “what’s hot in marketing?”. While some so-called trends may be fleeting, there are a number of recent and future trends that have or will change what and how we do marketing.

Here’s a list in no particular priority or sequence of the more frequent marketing activities and trends encountered on a daily basis:

Social Media – no question that social media has a huge impact on marketing and will continue to be one of the most prevalent trends in marketing for the foreseeable future.

Marketing Automation – there is growing interest and use of marketing automation software to plan, manage, execute and track marketing campaigns in a more structured, integrated and consistent manner.

Sales 2.0 – although there are many interpretations of what Sales 2.0 means, the primary aspects of this trend are the convergence of sales, marketing and customer collaboration using internet-based technologies and tools for improved performance.

Analytics – internet-based technologies, automation systems and database capabilities have vastly improved the availability of relevant and accurate data for analysis, performance measurement and management to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing.

Metrics – there has been an explosive increase in the definition and use of standardized marketing metrics over the past several years to measure marketing performance and results in a consistent and comparable manner.

Location – while still a nascent trend and technology, location-based media and marketing to deliver relevant content specific to a user / customer / buyer’s location will become an increasingly important and effective approach for reaching target audiences.

Mobile – mobile technologies continue to play a more prevalent role in everyone’s personal and business life. As mobile capabilities continue to improve and evolve, and usage increases, marketing must reach their target audiences through mobile technologies.

Inbound Marketing – the trend from traditional ‘push’ style outbound marketing approaches such as print advertising, direct mail, trade shows, email blasts, etc. continues to shift to more effective and measurable ‘pull’ style inbound marketing methods such as search, websites, content, social media, etc.

Content – buyers and customers want information and resources to make informed buying decisions. Content marketing uses educational, informative and authoritative content delivered in multiple media formats such websites, newsletters, white papers, articles, videos, etc. for specific target audiences.

Search – is one of the most important tools and resources for marketers across all types of businesses. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become a sophisticated marketing strategy encompassing both Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Placement methods.

Integrated Marketing – persistent campaigns and consistent messaging across multiple channels such as websites, video, online and other media advertising, content and collateral.

Adaptive Brand Marketing – the shift from traditional command-and-control and/or hub-and-spoke approaches to collaborative approaches that include new technologies and social media. See article ‘Adaptive Brand Marketing – More Than Just Four New Ps’ for more information.

Customer Loyalty – means that a customer desires to continue doing business with a company based on their positive experience and satisfaction. Marketing is increasingly charged with measuring and improving customer loyalty, providing loyalty programs, and driving customer-specific campaigns to get more sales from existing customers.

Psychographics – traditionally marketing primarily used demographics to define market and customer segmentation based on tangible characteristics. The use of psychographics to define target audiences and market segments based on aspirational, opinions and value characteristics enables improved targeting and more relevant messaging.

What do you think about this list and what you’re seeing and experiencing? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Get More Insights from Customers with These 4 Survey Questions

A previous article discussed limitations of typical surveys to produce valuable insights from customers. The problem is that many surveys are constructed to get formulaic answers from customers, rather than letting them express opinions from their perspective.

Most surveys have multiple choice answers to questions because they are easy to score and analyze. But a limited choice of predefined answers limits the opinions and feedback customers can provide when responding to a survey. Questions with open-ended answers are more difficult to score, collate and analyze, but provide significantly better feedback, opinions and insights from the customers surveyed.

If you want to get really insightful information from your customers, try asking these 4 open-ended questions in a survey:

What is one thing you think we do well and should keep doing?
This question will help you identify what customers really like about doing business with you. While you may have your own opinions on this, you may be surprised by customers’ opinions on what they consider as your big differentiator and/or unique value proposition. You obviously want to keep doing these things and ensure continued focus on doing them well.
What is one thing we do that you think needs improvement?
This enables you to get real feedback on areas of your business that need improvement from a customer perspective. Some of the customer responses may be unexpected, but this is truly valuable insight for improving your business relative to actual customer experiences and insights.
What is one thing we do that we should stop doing?
Businesses hardly ever ask their customers this question. The problem is that many businesses do things because they think that’s what customers want, or because they’ve always done it, or because someone told them to do it, or it was someone’s cockamamie idea. This could be something that a company spends resources on but has no or negative value for customers. Answers to this question provide great insights for improving how you should work with customers.
What is one thing we don’t do that we should do?
There is no one better to ask than your customers – they’ve done business with many other related and unrelated companies and have seen good and bad business practices for how businesses deal with customers. The feedback from this question can provide invaluable ideas for improving the experience for your customers and/or developing stronger competitive differentiation.

Some important points to bear in mind for using these questions in a survey:

Only ask for “one thing” in each question. That makes it easy for customers to respond in an open-ended manner and not ramble on about all sorts of issues without giving you a succinct actionable response.
Don’t provide prompts or ideas on the type of things they should consider – you don’t want to lead them to any particular responses – keep it completely open-ended and spontaneous.
Customize the questions to your business or survey context but keep them short and easy to understand within the four primary areas of feedback indicated by the above questions. The generic question wording shown above works well for many businesses.
Be sure to add relevant demographic and segmentation data questions for categorizing, analyzing and comparing results.

Have you tried these types of open-ended questions in surveys? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Do Your Surveys Really Produce Valuable Insights?

Like most marketers I’ve produced my fair share of surveys over the years. And like many consumers / customers I’ve responded to a large number of surveys and abandoned some part way through.

The most frequent reason for abandonment is generally assumed to be excessive length of the survey. But I think there’s another factor that plays a significant role in whether a respondent abandons a survey. People are influenced to take a survey because they want to express their opinions on the issue. But many surveys are constructed in such an inside-out manner that part way through the survey the respondent realizes that the questions and answer options don’t allow them to express their real opinion in the survey – so they abandon it.

How many times have you taken a survey and wished there were additional answer choices for the questions?

On the other side of the fence, marketers tend to construct surveys in order to achieve a specific set of results. The questions and answer options are formulated in a manner that supports the specific outcome objective. So the survey respondents provide responses based on the inside-out perspective of how the survey was constructed and the limited choice of inside-out answers. Are the results from these types of surveys as insightful as they could be?

I would argue that most surveys don’t produce as much really valuable insights as thought because of the survey construction and inability for respondents to really express their opinion. Some surveys will produce misleading results that companies use as the basis to make plans and take action.

One way to overcome this potential problem with surveys is to take more of an outside-in approach during the survey design, construction and testing process. Involve a small representative group from your target survey audience (customers, prospective buyers, etc.) in the process. Have them review the questions and answers to provide input from their perspective. Have them do a test of the survey and provide feedback on suggested changes to better connect with the respondent’s perspective.

Taking these extra steps could produce markedly better surveys, lower abandonment rates, produce more trustworthy results and more valuable insights for your business.

I’ll share another approach for getting more valuable insights from customer and prospective buyer surveys in my next blog post.

What are your thoughts about the quality and relevance of surveys and how to improve the results and insights from surveys? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Stealing Customers – Indicator of a Saturated Business Software Market?

A fundamental marketing strategy decision is whether to generate sales and business growth by developing and growing the target market or stealing customers from other vendors in an established market. In saturated markets with no or low growth projections, the tendency would be to focus on stealing customers.

Recent marketing campaigns from a number of business software vendors primarily focus on stealing customers from other vendors. Another major business software vendor just announced this type of campaign targeting a particular competitor. Does this mean that the business software market is saturated with limited growth prospects or are there other factors influencing these decisions?

Reviewing 2009 revenue performance for business software vendors, there’s a distinct dichotomy between two classes of vendors:

Legacy On-premises vendors showed significant and continuing declines in license revenues.
SaaS vendors showed significant and continuing increases in subscription revenues.

So it’s no surprise that many of the legacy on-premises vendors’ current marketing and sales tactics focus on stealing customers from other vendors – usually other legacy on-premises vendors. No question that SaaS vendors are taking customers from on-premises vendors, but that seems to be more a result of customers motivated by a more appealing value proposition and solutions that meet their current needs.

There is good anecdotal evidence that prompting companies to consider switching business software, expands the evaluation to consider all alternatives. An unintended consequence of legacy on-premises vendors raiding each other’s customer bases is that they’re probably creating additional opportunities for SaaS vendors.

Discounting is usually considered as the last resort in sales negotiations. Is stealing customers the last resort marketing and sales tactic for vendors who are unwilling or unable to contribute to the development and growth of target markets? Several of the customer-stealing campaigns also include substantial channel and buyer incentives and discounts.

Projections from analysts and other research sources show positive market growth, development and expansion opportunities for business software in most market segments. Vendors that create real value for customers relative to current needs are in the best position to pursue these opportunities. Vendors that contribute to the growth, development and expansion of their markets will reap long-term rewards while vendors trying to steal customers as a short-term revenue tactic will continue to see long-term business declines.

While stealing customers has always been a customer acquisition tactic in the software industry, the current focus on stealing customers as a primary marketing and sales tactic by so many business software vendors is unprecedented.

What are your thoughts about the marketing and sales tactic of stealing customers and how this relates to the current state of the business software market? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Are Businesses Measuring the Right Social Media Metrics?

The results from a recent survey done by MarketingSherpa caught my attention. They asked over 2,000 marketers what metrics they use to monitor and measure the impact of using social media – here are the results courtesy of MarketingSherpa:
Social metrics chart from MarketingSherpa
Three significant observations about these survey results caught my attention:

The top 2 metrics are about presence – number of visitors and network size. These are interesting data for analysis and market intelligence that could produce tangible results for targeted campaigns. While having a large number of social media visitors and followers doesn’t necessarily translate into business results, it appears that companies are currently primarily focused on establishing and building their social media presence.
The 3rd and 4th highest ranked metrics are about reputation – no question that brand, product and company reputation are huge considerations for social media and should be diligently monitored and measured. The surprise is that only 56% and 50% respectively use these metrics which means that almost half of the companies surveyed don’t know what social media commentary and sentiment is expressed about their brand, product or company.
Leads generated only ranks 6th with 48% monitoring and measuring this outcome from their social media activities. This is an alarming observation for me. Marketing shouldn’t do anything unless it eventually supports and/or produces sales for the company. Presence and reputation are all important contributors for supporting and producing sales, but leads generated is a more tangible measure that everyone in the company understands. But more than half don’t bother to measure this!

The sole purpose of marketing is to sell more to more people, more often and at higher prices. There is no other reason to do it. ~ Sergio Zyman

The results of these types of surveys can be interpreted in many different ways depending on one’s perspective. The results of this survey are very similar to my own observations and anecdotal information. Maybe it’s an evolutionary process that will shift focus and measurement to more tangible outcomes over time. It will be interesting to see the results of this same survey in subsequent years.

How does this survey correlate with your social media monitoring and measures? What observations do you have about this? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Adaptive Brand Marketing – More Than Just Four New Ps

Forrester Research published a research paper titled ‘Adaptive Brand Marketing – Rethinking Your Approach To Brands In The Digital Age’ in October 2009. Much of the subsequent comments and discussions about this paper concentrate on the proposed four new Ps of Adaptive Brand Marketing that will shift the brand marketer’s focus from the original four Ps to deal with new realities:

Permission – better understanding of whether and how someone wants to engage so that marketers engage and communicate according to buyer and customer preferences.
Proximity – moving away from the “one-size-fits-all” approach to more closely connect with local markets and specific consumer / buyer / customer groups.
Perception – in using the social Web for marketing the marketer should respect the distinction between a person’s social and commercial personas and not try to make or use social connections for commercial purposes.
Participation – there is no central command and control for communities on the social Web. Marketers should facilitate and participate with communities of consumers / customers for developing trust, loyalty and advocacy.

However, there are much more interesting and important concepts and proposals in this paper than the four new Ps that have received most of the attention.

Much of the traditional marketing approaches are based on a command-and-control and/or hub-and-spoke approach where marketing exercises complete control over all things related to marketing. However, in today’s interconnected world of social media, globalization and 24/7 always-on communications, control has shifted to consumers and customers who are more informed and more engaged to find the best deals on their terms.

Some of the principles of Adaptive Brand Marketing in this report that should be of particular interest to most marketers are:

Channels – rather than deciding on channel strategy from the inside-out in traditional approaches, channel design (part of the Place P in the original 4 Ps) is determined from the outside-in by first understanding the needs and behaviors of prospective customers.
Intelligence – in traditional approaches most marketing intelligence comes from formal research sources. Today, the intelligence from other sources such as social media, online communities, websites, eCommerce activities, customer interactions, etc. are more current, dynamic and possibly more important.
Spending and Planning – traditionally these decisions are annual events with possible quarterly adjustments. No more – marketing spending and planning decisions should be a daily event based on the availability of dynamic, real-time data in unprecedented volume and detail.
Brand and Segment – traditional approaches relied primarily on taking a brand to the masses. New media and marketing capabilities now enable taking a brand in specific contexts to multiple different segments with common shared attributes for each segment.

There is much more to this report that marketers should consider about how they operate in the current and evolving environment and adapting their marketing approach to their customer and market environments.

Have you reviewed the Forrester ‘Adaptive Brand Marketing’ report and implemented any of the recommendations? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Where does your Web team report in the organization?

I'm conducting a survey to research where Web teams report in the organizational structure and whether there are any related meaningful insights for businesses and marketers.

The survey is quick and straightforward - just 4 questions that will take 1 minute for the entire survey.

Please respond to this survey at: http://bit.ly/9NQ9xl

I will share results and analysis at no charge and no registration requirement on this blog once it is completed.

Thanks for participating in this survey.

Does Positioning Get the Attention it Deserves at Your Company?

My answer would be "no" based on most of the companies I’ve worked for and with over the years. What is your gut response before reading this article?

All marketers learn about the original "Four Ps" of marketing and use them in all aspects of marketing strategy, planning, development and execution:

Product – deals with the dimensions of the product being marketed. This applies to all types of 'product' – whether it’s tangible, intangible, service, practice, etc. The product dimension addresses characteristics such as the branding, functionality, design, quality, safety, packaging, warranty, etc.
Price – deals with the dimensions of pricing decisions such as pricing strategy, suggested selling price, discounting, wholesale pricing, seasonal pricing, bundling, flexibility, price discrimination, etc.
Place – deals with the dimensions about how the product reaches the customer. Marketing decisions on place include distribution channels, coverage, channel members, inventory strategy, order processing, logistics, etc.
Promotion – deals with the dimensions of promoting the product including decisions on promotional strategy, advertising, campaigns, promotions, selling, public relations, publicity, marketing communications, etc.

Al Ries and Jack Trout introduced the concept of Positioning as a key marketing strategy during the 1970’s and popularized Positioning as a core marketing discipline with their seminal book; Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Since then many marketing practitioners and academics have included Positioning as the 5th P of marketing. However, doing some quick checking around while writing this article, I was surprised to see many recently published materials, some from reputable sources, still referring to the original "Four Ps" without mentioning Positioning. In spite of these surprising omissions, it does appear that most university curricula do include Positioning as one of the updated "Five Ps" of marketing.

So why is positioning most important?

Positioning deals with what you want to do in the mind of the prospect – i.e. how do you want prospects and customers to uniquely perceive your product in their minds regardless of exposure or familiarity with other similar or competing products – e.g. "safe vehicle" = "Volvo". Positioning is the promise of the value you create for your customers. Positioning cuts across the other 4 Ps and determines how you develop the specific dimensions of the other 4 Ps within the overriding positioning.

Positioning dictates what you do with a product and/or how you develop a product. Pricing decisions must support the positioning. Place is determined from positioning to define how to take a product to market. Promotion is how you consistently communicate the positioning to the mind of the prospect. If any of the 5 Ps are out of sync, your marketing strategy and execution will not produce good results.

According Philip Kotler of the Kellogg School of Management, all good marketing planning starts with Research, which reveals potential customer Segments, which determines the Targeting of specific segment(s) a company can serve better than anyone else. The next step from this process is Positioning which must be done before considering Product, Price, Place & Promotion of marketing planning and execution.

A previous article discusses why positioning should take precedence over branding.

Where does Positioning fit in your business planning and marketing process? Do senior management and other functional areas in your company understand and appreciate the importance of positioning before everyone runs off to build, market and sell product? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Targeting B2B Buyers with Occasion-based Marketing

Mention occasion-based marketing and most marketers think about B2C holiday marketing –the special offers and promotions for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas and other real or fabricated holidays.

Most businesses and marketers want to improve their marketing response and conversion rates – i.e. the number of responses to a marketing campaign and subsequent conversions to a sale. Occasion-based marketing is a proven tactic to boost response rates – people are more receptive to buy something related to a relevant occasion.

Occasion-based marketing is more than just doing promotions around holidays. Think about the definition of occasion in broader terms:

A particular time when something happens.
A chance or opportunity to do something.
A cause or reason for something.
The need for something.
The need to do something.
An important or special event.

Using these broader definitions, think about what occasions would make your prospective B2B buyers more receptive to buy and/or respond to your marketing campaigns:

News – look at current news topics and who is paying attention. Is there any relevance for your offer and the audience that you can leverage? For example, if a group of businesses are paying attention to carbon tax legislation, do you have relevant products or services to position and offer to take advantage of this news and attention?
Events – there are all sorts of events happening all the time – which of these events may make buyers more receptive to buy or consider your product/service/solution?
Holidays – although this is most visible in B2C, consider where your product/service/solution may fit in the value chain. For example manufacturers have to supply distributors who supply retailers in anticipation of a future holiday promotion.
Associative – we drink orange juice with breakfast, wine with dinner at restaurants and sports drinks when we exercise or play sports. Why? Because marketing has made us associate these products with these occasions. Are there opportunities to associate your product/service/solution with an occasion?
Business Cycle – businesses have cyclical occasions that present occasion-based B2B opportunities. For example, when they do budgeting is a good occasion to get your product/service/solution in their budget plans for the following year.
Customer Occasions – such as management changes, mergers, acquisitions, new product introductions, business expansion, etc. are opportunistic marketing and sales events.

This is not an exhaustive list of all occasion-based marketing opportunities. The key to successful occasion-based marketing is to find targeted and relevant occasions when prospective buyers are more receptive to buy your product/service/solution and respond to your marketing campaign or promotion.

Cyclical versus ad-hoc or unplanned occasions – it’s straightforward to schedule marketing campaigns and promotions for cyclical occasions. Do you have the means to respond quickly and appropriately to relevant ad-hoc or unplanned occasions?

Consider occasion-based marketing as an overlay to your previously established market and customer segments – it adds timing and positioning dimensions for executing campaigns and promotions when buyers are more motivated and receptive to buy. Try a test to compare response rates between a regular schedule-based approach versus occasion-based for the same marketing campaign or promotion.

Have you had success or otherwise with occasion-based marketing in B2B situations? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

How Much Should Analyst Surveys Shape Your Marketing Strategies?

I recently reviewed the results of the 2010 Gartner Executive Programs (EXP) survey of CIOs who influence $126bn of IT spending in 41 countries and 27 industries. Besides the headline that IT budgets in 2010 will be at 2005 levels, there are some interesting changes and trends that B2B IT and business software vendors and marketers should consider.

Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others) is not a Top 10 business or technology priority in 2010 – this is a startling finding and dramatic change from previous years. Enterprise applications were the #2 technology priority since 2007.

After being the #1 technology priority since 2006, business intelligence applications have dropped to #5.

Business process improvement continues to be the #1 business priority – this has been the #1 CIO business priority every year on this survey since 2006 (the earliest edition of this survey I could find).

Virtualization, cloud computing and Web 2.0 are the top 3 technology priorities in 2010 – while this may not be a big surprise to most people in the industry, it is the first time any of these technologies have appeared in this Top 10 survey.

So this got me thinking about the relevance of these surveys for influencing product, marketing and sales strategies:

Are vendor marketers paying attention? Given that ‘business process improvement’ is the #1 business priority for CIOs since 2006, one would expect this to have some prominence for relevant vendor marketers. Looking through the websites, collateral and marketing campaigns for several business software vendors, there’s scant direct attention to the business process improvement value proposition. While it is mentioned within other propositions and contexts, it doesn’t have the headline attention or prominence for vendors that one would expect for the #1 business priority of potential buyers.
Should vendor marketers pay attention? Considering the scope of this survey and the influence of the respondents on buying decisions, it would seem logical that marketing and selling to these priorities would yield better results. Although the reality for actual buyers that transpires during the forecast period may not exactly match what they indicated in a particular survey, the priorities and trends in surveys provide good directional information for connecting with buyers relative to their top-of-mind interests.
Which survey(s) do you pay attention to? While this is a good survey from a reputable source, it is just one of dozens or possibly hundreds of good surveys from many reputable sources published each year. Relevance to your markets and industry are obviously critical. Aggregating results across multiple relevant surveys may provide a more balanced perspective.

While these types of surveys do provide valuable insights for market trends and what concerns potential buyers, they should be considered as just one of a number of inputs for shaping marketing plans.

How do you use surveys to shape your marketing strategy, campaigns and programs? Have you seen beneficial results from paying attention to these surveys? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Key Decisions That Determine Whether B2B Buyers Will Buy From You

Last week’s post discussed the 3 reasons that motivate B2B buyers to find and consider buying a product / service / solution:

Solve a problem
Pursue an opportunity
Improve performance.

In this article we’ll look at what the key decision factors are that determine whether they buy, what they buy and who they buy it from. Based on work I’ve done over the years reviewing countless win/loss analysis reports from thousands of deals, there are always 3 key decision factors at play that determine what a buyer decides to do:

Meets their needs – B2B buyers set out to find something that will enable them to pursue the goals they have established based on one or more of the 3 primary motivators and supporting objectives. While this may be intuitively obvious to anyone who has been around B2B marketing and sales for any time, meeting the specific buyer needs based on their buying motivators and business goals is the #1 reason that determines which product / service / solution they buy. These needs are frequently expressed as lengthy lists of requirements, Requests for Proposals (RFPs), demonstrations and other nitty-gritty details for vendors to show that their proposed solution will meet the customer needs. While it is possible for vendors to influence some of the specifics to suit their solution, the ultimate decision is still whether the buyer believes a specific choice will meet their needs.
Affordability – the most frequently mentioned reason for a deal loss from salespeople is price, but affordability for buyers is much more than just the price of the product / service / solution. Firstly, many B2B buyers usually have underestimated expectations of what they are willing to spend to pursue the goal of the buying motivators. Secondly, it’s more than just the purchase price – it’s the total cost of ownership over the projected lifetime of the solution. Thirdly, it always boils down to ROI – buyers determine the value to the business for achieving the goal they identified based on the buying motivator(s). From a vendor perspective, the discussion with the buyer should be more about value creation for the business and less about the actual price. If you create the right value for a business, the price becomes incidental.
Trust – while this is not an overt discussion topic like needs and affordability during the buying process, it is a significant influential factor that determines who a buyer buys from. All things being equal in meeting the needs and affordability factors, buyers will choose the vendor and people they most trust. I’ve seen cases where buyers don’t choose the best fit and most affordable option because they don’t trust the vendor and/or the people representing the vendor. Salespeople usually put a lot of effort into building a good rapport and trust with buyers. Trust extends to every aspect of a vendor company and all the vendor people all the buyers deal with. Building trust with buyers should be a major objective for all marketing, sales, consulting, management, support and other interactions.

Sometimes B2B buyers decide not to decide and defer buying to some undetermined future time. When you delve into these cases, the reason for the non-decision is probably because one or more of the above 3 decision factors wasn’t met. The buyer doesn’t believe they can achieve the goal of the original motivators and decides against proceeding.

Vendors can significantly improve their marketing and sales performance by understanding and focusing on the 3 motivators that initiate the buying process and these 3 key decision factors that primarily influence the buyer’s decision of what they buy and who they buy it from.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

The 3 Reasons That Motivate B2B Buyers to Buy

An interesting (more like disconcerting) observation from some of the work I do is the dichotomy between Information Technology vendors and buyers on why a customer buys a solution.

IT vendors tend to focus a lot on the features and functions of the solutions, their claimed technology leadership, their innovations, and how they are better than the competitors. It’s all about them and how wonderful they are and how wonderful it would be to be their customer. While these might be selling points worth mentioning, they are hardly the reasons most buyers decide to buy.

When I talk to vendors, a lot of the discussion centers around who they can sell something to and how to best go about marketing and selling it to get buyers. When I talk to IT users and buyers, they’re primarily concerned with creating value for their company. Buyers frequently need help interpreting the vendor gobbledygook and vague statements into what a particular solution actually does and how it can create value for their business.

Based on what I’ve seen and experienced over many years in the IT industry, there are three fundamental reasons that motivate IT buyers to buy a solution:

Solve a problem – something is wrong or not working properly in the business that seemingly cannot be resolved with the processes and technology they already have. The scope of the problem can be in one or more functional areas or across the company. The scale of the problem may range from a serious detriment to an annoyance. The scope and scale of the problem determines the urgency and budget to resolve the problem.
Pursue an opportunity – companies find new opportunities to expand or grow their businesses beyond their current confines. In many instances these opportunities require new or additional business processes and solutions (e.g. a manufacturer adding an aftermarket service center) that they currently don’t have. The scope and scale of the opportunity determines the urgency and budget to buy what is needed to pursue the opportunity.
Improve performance – it could be argued that underlying every buying decision a business makes is a goal to improve performance. That’s true, but businesses do have specific performance improvement initiatives such as decreasing inventory investment or reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) that may require the acquisition of specific solutions and/or services. The scope of the performance improvement goal can be in one or more functional areas (e.g. reduce overtime wages in the service department) or across the company (e.g. increase operating cash flow). The scale of the problem may range from imminent demise if not fixed soon to a long range continuous improvement process. The scope and scale determines the urgency and budget to buy.

While all three of these buying motivators could be present in many situations, there is usually one primary motivator. Look for the primary driver and primarily focus on that, but don’t overlook the importance of the other one or two secondary motivators to support the buying decision process.

Marketers and Salespeople can significantly improve their odds of finding and converting suspects and prospects into buyers by paying attention to these three reasons that motivate buyers to buy and by connecting with prospective buyers based on why they want to buy.

In my next post, I’ll explore the next step for buyers – the three reasons that cause them to finally decide to buy and who they buy it from.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Does Your Marketing & Sales Engagement Sync with the Prospects Interests?

Despite highlighting this problem for many years, I’m still regularly dumbfounded when I see what Marketing and Sales organizations do when they engage with prospective buyers after they’ve expressed interest. This practice regularly exasperates buyers, and I would contend that it’s a major reason buyers look elsewhere after expressing initial interest in a particular company / product / service / solution.

This is the type of scenario that leads to the problem I’m referring to:

Marketing formulates an appealing value proposition for a target market segment
A marketing campaign uses typical awareness programs such as white papers and webinars to create awareness and attract prospective buyer interest
A prospective buyer sees this, the specific value proposition connects with their needs and they express interest by responding to the call-to-action for the marketing program
Marketing immediately get the prospect into their marketing database for follow-up
Marketing assign a tracking identifier to designate which campaign / program / webinar / landing page / offer / etc. originated this lead
The marketing lead qualification and nurturing process kicks in – usually based on a set of standard scripts and progression steps to eventually get a qualified lead to Sales.

But what does marketing do with the tracking identifier that links to the specific value proposition which is the key reason why a prospect expressed interest?

They primarily use the tracking identifier to analyze the effectiveness of a campaign / program / webinar / landing page / offer / etc. to determine what’s working and what they should continue doing, change, update or drop.
However, what many marketing organizations fail to do sufficiently is to use the tracking identifier to determine how to specifically engage with each prospect relative to their specific needs – the reason they expressed interest in the first place.
What is frustrating for buyers is that they see a great value proposition and offer that attracts their attention, but when they express interest they are dumped into the generic marketing sausage factory.

And what happens when Sales get the qualified lead? The tracking identifier might be visible, but is there anything to highlight what it means and identify how sales should specifically engage with each prospect relative to why they expressed interest? From what I’ve seen over the years, sales tend to pay insufficient attention to this – they jump on the lead and use the standard selling cycle process to engage with prospects.

The buyer’s perspective and interests get lost in the internal marketing and sales processes.

And what does this look like from a prospective buyer’s perspective? Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. The buyer expresses interest because a very specific value proposition attracted their attention, but the engagement process with the vendor is mostly based on the vendor’s processes and perspective to eventually get a sale. This is downright frustrating for buyers and makes vendors look incompetent because they can’t connect the dots between why the buyer expressed interest and how they engage with the buyer.

It’s a buyer’s market; the buying cycle takes precedence over the selling cycle. It’s tough to find prospects and convert them into sales – improve your conversions by paying attention to how your marketing and sales organizations engage with buyers relative to their expressed specific interests.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Are You Selling or Facilitating Buying for Customers?

We all know when we’re being sold to – whether it’s a straightforward advertisement, or a clever marketing campaign, or a salesperson going through their shtick. How do you like being on the receiving end of this process? Most of us dislike the process, but we have to play the game in order to get the information we need to ultimately make a decision that is right for us.

It’s not that we don’t want to buy, in too many instances it’s that we don’t want to buy in the manner we’re being sold to. We’ve all experienced this frustration and possible annoyance as a consumer or business buyer. But why do so many marketers and salespeople, especially in B2B and Information Technology, still persist with this selling oriented approach?

Ask most marketers how they approach marketing to prospective customers and you’ll hear a lot about market segmentation, demographics, value propositions, campaigns, lead tracking, lead qualification, etc. Ask most salespeople how they approach selling to prospective customers and you’ll inevitably hear about the various stages of the sales cycle and all the predefined processes to move the buyer through each stage to closure and purchase.

Now ask a prospective customer how they want to approach buying and you’ll hear about their reasons, specific requirements, expected results, risk, trust, proof, competitiveness, etc. Prospective buyers have their own buying cycle of what they need to accomplish in order to make a purchase decision.

So we start with an inherent conflict of interests and processes:

Prospective buyers have an approach and buying cycle they need to get through before making a decision
Marketing has an approach and process of finding possible buyers and converting them into leads for Sales
Sales have a selling cycle and predefined processes to take a lead and convert them into a buying customer.

And we wonder why B2B and IT sales cycles take so long. Consider all the wasted time, effort and resources on both sides because the selling process is not aligned with the buying process.

Marketers may point out that there are specific buyer-oriented value propositions in their marketing campaigns. That may be true, but the pitch and process is still mostly focused around the seller and driving leads and statistics through their marketing processes.

Salespeople may point out that they find out what problems and pains a specific prospect wants resolved and then align the sales process accordingly. That may be so, but from I’ve seen, more often than not it’s more like a “show me your nail and I’ll show you how our hammer will do the job better for you” approach.

“He who buys had need have 100 Eyes, but one's enough for him that sells the Stuff.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

How are you marketing and selling to customers? How and why do prospective customers want to buy from you? Consider how you can move from a vendor selling approach and rather facilitate prospective customers to buy from you.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

SaaS Solutions – Are You Marketing for Leads or Sales?

Traditionally, Business Software vendor marketing has primarily focused on generating leads for sales to follow-up and engage with prospects. This was predicated on the complexity and duration of the sales, delivery, deployment and implementation processes for traditional On-premises solutions.

Software as a Service (SaaS) radically changes the delivery, deployment and implementation processes for business solutions. This creates opportunities to rethink the sales and marketing approach and processes for the SaaS solution model.

Business software vendors that started life in the SaaS world, primarily focus their marketing campaign strategies, materials and website on:

Demonstrating the real product online, on-demand
Offering a free trial to sign-up online right now to use the full product for a limited time period and subsequently convert to a paying customer
Pricing and other specific information about subscribing to the solution
Providing relevant information for prospective buyers in their context with multimedia materials
Engaging with their audience using online marketing and sales methods to expediently make the sale online with or without salesperson involvement
Alternatively, collecting contact information for generating leads for subsequent follow-up by a salesperson.

The intent for new generation SaaS vendor marketing is to firstly attempt to make the sale or part of it online and secondly to capture contact information for the lead generation process.

In contrast, On-premises business software vendors that also offer SaaS versions of their solutions, seem to be continuing their traditional marketing approach:

Providing general information about products, solutions, industry applicability, etc.
Focus on harvesting contact information for their lead generation process at every opportunity such as registration to read a whitepaper, view a video clip, etc.
Limited or no information about subscription costs and terms
Creating the need for a prospective buyer to provide their contact details to get additional information and details they need for a buying decision.

Even though SaaS creates new opportunities to reorient marketing to actually sell solutions or initiate the sales process online, most traditional On-premises vendors that offer SaaS versions of their products are still primarily focused on generating leads for SaaS solutions like they have done for On-premises solutions in the past.

Some SaaS solutions such as CRM, Expense Management, eCommerce, etc. have a proven track record of selling online in a customer self-service mode with little or no live salesperson assistance. Prospective buyers may not be ready to buy all SaaS solutions, especially more complex or higher value solutions, in an online self-service mode. However, there are proven methods for opportunities to redirect the focus from marketing for leads to marketing for sales.

“I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.” ~ F. W. Woolworth

The ultimate objective is to make a sale – SaaS provides the opportunity to directly market for the sale, rather than market for leads for the sales process.

Have you shifted or considered shifting your marketing focus from leads to sales and what have you experienced? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Marketing & Selling the Service Differentiation in SaaS Solutions

My previous post ‘Are there Differences for Marketing SaaS versus On-Premises Solutions?’ proffered that customers need to make 2 buying decisions with the increasing availability of mainstream SaaS alternatives to traditional On-premises solutions:

Which solution best fits their business needs
Which acquisition / deployment option best fits their IT strategy.

The second buying decision means that prospective buyers will want information and comparisons to help them make the best decision for their business. This creates a need and opportunity for marketing and sales to establish additional differentiation for their solution based on the Service aspect of Software as a Service. It may help to consider the following three questions more broadly to develop your Service differentiation for marketing and selling your SaaS solution:

Who are you competing against?
In the first buying decision of solution fit you are primarily competing against other vendor solutions. In the second buying decision of acquisition / deployment options you are competing on multiple fronts such as:

Other vendors on service costs, terms and delivery
Other vendors on the delivery platform – is it just a SaaS solution or are there Platform as a Service (PaaS) and/or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing differentiators?
Customer’s internal IT organization’s perspective on SaaS solutions
Other vendors and customer’s internal IT on service delivery – Service Level Agreement (SLA), operational controls, security, SAS 70 compliance certification and whether it’s Type I or II, etc.
Financial – operational expenditure versus capital expenditure considerations
Total Cost of Ownership – there’s a lot of spin from both On-premises and SaaS marketing and sales pitches about which model costs more over three, five or more years
Inertia – some buyers and/or companies may be reluctant or even resistant to having their business systems run in a data center they don’t control.

Considering all the possible competitive points will help formulate your best competitive differentiation.

What are customers buying?
Although a customer needs to make 2 decisions during the buying cycle, once they decide on going with a SaaS solution, they are buying one inseparable solution comprising of the application functionality, acquisition method, services, deployment, provisioning and other elements to make it work. In a previous post I suggested a bifurcated marketing approach to attack the market from two positions to find prospective buyers on either decision track. However, the overall marketing and selling strategy should be on the goodness of the complete SaaS solution, because that’s what customers are buying.

What are you really selling?
The bottom line is that you’re selling trust – that the customer trusts your company, product and the representative people they’ve dealt with to provide the solution to satisfy their core buying motivations of solving business problems, developing new opportunities, improving performance, increasing profitability, etc. This isn’t different for SaaS versus On-premises solutions, but SaaS adds another major dimension of trust in the Service aspect. With the continuing commoditization of business software and minimal functional differentiation between products in the same category, Service is the operative word for differentiation of Software as a Service solutions. Marketing and selling the Service differentiation will attract and engage prospective buyers, and trust in your company’s ability to deliver the Service will make the sale.

Do you have additional suggestions and ideas for marketing and selling the Service differentiation in SaaS solutions? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Are there Differences for Marketing SaaS versus On-Premises Solutions?

From a customer perspective Software as a Service (SaaS) and On-premises business software solutions have the same objectives of creating business value by providing applications and functionality for improving business processes and performance. The customer buying motivations are the same – solve business problems, develop new opportunities, improve performance, increase profitability, etc.

Marketing SaaS and On-premises business software solutions have the same objectives of developing a credible market presence, creating awareness, generating leads and enabling sales to efficiently sign up new customers. The marketing tactics are the same – using a familiar mix of webinars, events, collateral, PR, SEO, web content, analyst reviews, email marketing, videos, social media, etc.

When SaaS solutions first emerged as viable alternatives to the traditional On-premises approach, the marketing focus was primarily on the different acquisition and deployment characteristics of SaaS. More recently the marketing focus for SaaS solutions has shifted to the application functionality and business value for customers as more SaaS and On-premises vendors compete for the same customers in target markets.

So what’s different? The real difference is that customers now need to make 2 buying decisions:

Which solution best fits their business needs
Which acquisition / deployment option best fits their IT strategy.

Customers can take two different paths to making the buying the decision:

First develop a short list of best fit solutions and then decide on available acquisition / deployment choices as part of the final decision process. While SaaS versus On-premises may not be the initial primary decision driver, it could be a key final decision factor.
First decide which acquisition / deployment option they want and then find the best fit solution that meets the selected acquisition / deployment criteria. SaaS versus On-premises is the initial primary driver, but functional fit between qualifying solutions will be the final decision factor.

This has implications for marketing both SaaS and On-premises solutions for positioning and differentiating according to each decision choice and path in the customer buying process. It also has implications for sales to determine how to engage with prospective buyers depending on which decision path they are following.

Given that customers need to make 2 buying decisions and usually take two different paths to reach a decision, business software vendors may want to consider a bifurcated marketing strategy for positioning and differentiation:

Traditional functional fit solution marketing approach emphasizing business benefits and applicability of the solution functional capabilities.
Acquisition and deployment marketing emphasizing the business and IT benefits of each available acquisition / deployment option.

“If you're attacking your market from multiple positions and your competition isn't, you have all the advantage and it will show up in your increased success and income." – Jay Abraham

I’ll explore the differentiating and positioning possibilities in future blog articles.

Have you faced this situation and how are you approaching it? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Is that Cloud Computing or is it SaaS?

No question that Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing are hot topics and major trends in the business solutions market. SaaS vendors and solutions continue to grow new customer subscriptions and revenues while traditional on-premises vendors and solutions experience declining new customer license revenues.

But vendors are causing confusion for prospective buyers by referring to SaaS and Cloud Computing interchangeably in their marketing materials. As with most new technologies, prospective buyers largely depend on the vendors to provide information and educational content as part of their marketing outreach. We’re at the early stages of a major long-term trend on how business solutions and computing capabilities are delivered to customers. Using standard and consistent terminology and definitions avoids customer confusion and disinterest in what may appear to be more tech jargon.

While most of the terminology is established, the definition or interpretation of the terminology is still inconsistent and a source of confusion for prospective buyers. In the interest of resolving this situation, I hope to instigate a broader discussion by proffering the following definitions and interpretations of the common, currently used terminology:

Software as a Service (SaaS) – customers subscribe to the use of a functional solution as an on-demand service delivered by the vendor or authorized partner in a multi-tenant deployment online environment.
Cloud Computing – provides customers with a complete, secure, private and scalable on-demand computing environment from a utility-computing provider on a subscription basis.

The important and confusing distinction is that while a SaaS vendor may use cloud computing to deliver a CRM solution for example, the SaaS customer is only subscribing to the CRM application service. If they do not have access to the underlying cloud computing environment for other purposes, it should be referenced as SaaS, not cloud computing.

On the other hand, a cloud computing customer subscribes to a computing environment for all their computing needs and deployment of multiple solutions as an alternative to their own data center. The solutions could be sourced from multiple vendors and/or self-developed. They may choose to deploy one or more SaaS solutions in their private cloud computing environment.

This leads to more terminology and definitions to more fully describe all the available possibilities. The cloud computing environment is currently comprised of three layers of services:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – this is the computing foundation and infrastructure for cloud computing consisting of the computing services, storage, networking, security, backup, recovery, operations management and other requisite capabilities.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) – this is all the application enabling technologies for developing, deploying and servicing functional SaaS solutions in a cloud computing environment. PaaS also enables customers and authorized partners to develop and deploy their own applications using the tools and services provided by the PaaS vendor. PaaS runs on the underlying IaaS.
Software as a Service (SaaS) – these are specific functional applications such as CRM, Expense Management, HR Benefit Management, etc. licensed and delivered by solution vendors in an on-demand online or cloud computing environment. SaaS runs on the underlying PaaS and IaaS.

Hopefully this article will help prompt a larger discussion for industry analysts and vendors to agree on standard and consistent definitions and interpretations of the terminology for evolving SaaS and Cloud Computing technologies.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Why Many Businesses Still Fear Social Media

Social media has come a long way over the past couple of years. Some businesses have successfully embraced social media for marketing, growth, new opportunities and interactive engagement with customers and buyers. But a number of studies published in recent months indicate that many businesses still have fears and concerns about widespread use of social media as shown by this sampling of findings from various studies:

Research from Russell Herder / Ethos Business Law:

51% of senior management, marketing and human resources executives fear social media could negatively impact employee productivity
49% of this group claim that social media could damage company reputation
40% of companies surveyed block online access to social media for any purpose.

Results from a poll of system administrators by IT security and control firm Sophos:

63% worry that workers share too much information on social networking websites
66% are concerned that employee social networking could endanger company security
Approximately 50% block or restrict access to social networking sites
Productivity, data leakage and malware are primary reasons for blocking or controlling access.

A study commissioned by Robert Half Technology:

54% of U.S. companies ban workers from using social networking sites
Only 10% of 1,400 CIOs interviewed said that their companies allow employees full access to social networks during work hours.

A global survey by Avenade and Coleman Parkes Research identified key barriers to adoption of social media technologies as:

76% are concerned about security
Senior management apathy at 57% of companies
58% fear using unproven technologies
50% fear a negative impact on productivity.

A Nucleus Research survey revealed:

Employee productivity drops 1.5% at companies that allow full access to Facebook in the workplace
87% of those who use Facebook at work had no clear business reason for doing it.

In spite of these fears and concerns, many business executives do understand the potential value of social media. For example, in the same Russell Herder / Ethos Business Law research, senior management, marketing and human resources executives perceive the following potential value of social media for their businesses:

81% believe social media can enhance relationships with customers
81% see social media value for building a company’s brand
69% think it’s a viable recruitment tool
64% think it can be a customer service tool
46% believe that social media can enhance employee morale.

This is an interesting dilemma for marketers. Most of us know and understand the huge potential of social media and social networking for marketing. Many of us have successfully used social media and social networking for marketing activities and plan to do more. If everyone in a company has some role or contribution to marketing and sales as they should, then how do we deal with these fears, concerns and apathy that will impede progress for making social media and social networking an integral part of a business?

Something else to consider is the impact of these fears, concerns and apathy at customer or prospective buyer companies. If over half of companies are blocking or restricting access to social media, it means the social media-based marketing programs won’t reach at least half of the intended target audience. Good reason to continue using traditional marketing channels as the social media channel matures and hopefully overcomes the current fears, concerns and apathy.

Have you faced these issues in your marketing work and how have you handled it? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Marketing Budgets Depend on Measurability

Last week’s article about Are Marketing Budget Cuts Here to Stay? prompted interesting discussions about the role of measurability for supporting marketing budget proposals. In the current scenario of declining or flat marketing budgets, measurability is a key factor that determines what is funded and what gets cut.

In recent years, marketing organizations have greatly improved capabilities to gather data, do analysis and produce meaningful metrics about most marketing tactics and activities. This is all good – executives and other functional areas of a company now have a measureable view of marketing’s contribution to the business. Marketing has more insights into the effectiveness of what they’re doing and tracking their activities and results as never before.

Given the constrained business conditions and expanded availability of marketing metrics, it’s no surprise that executives are insisting on more measurable supporting data to determine what and how much of marketing budgets receive funding. While this may seem like a reasonable approach on first impression, there are some concerns that marketers should consider to ensure that the right mix of marketing plans are approved in their budgets:

Inbound marketing channels such as websites, search engines, blogs, social media, videos, etc. are online and have built-in data gathering capabilities to produce a vast array of metrics.
Various research studies and anecdotal information from various marketers indicate a substantial shift of marketing budget allocations to inbound marketing from traditional outbound marketing channels.
While there is substantial proof that inbound marketing works, is it possible that some of the budget shift is influenced by it being so easily measurable and therefore more quantifiable for budget discussions with executives?
It’s generally more difficult to get meaningful metrics with direct correlation to outcomes from outbound marketing channels.
For many B2B and IT companies, outbound marketing channels such as trade shows, conferences, live seminars, etc. used to be the staple marketing tactic to find buyers and engage with customers. These are the areas that are being cut the most in marketing budgets.
Although attendance at these type of live events have declined, are we possibly cutting back more than we should because we don’t have good supporting metrics?
I have talked with many salespeople who lament the continuing trend of decreased participation in these live outbound marketing events. For many B2B and IT salespeople, meeting people face-to-face and speaking with them at these type of events is still the best way to find qualified prospects.
Although some metrics such as response rates, unique website visitors, clickthrough rates and others are easy to get and meaningful within a specific performance context, are they really meaningful for determining budget allocations?
Many marketing metrics are primarily about measuring activities. But business results are what really count in the end. Are the metrics for supporting marketing budgets based on funding activities or producing results?
What about funding for longer-term strategic marketing such as positioning, branding, developing market presence and credibility in target segments, engaging with influencers, etc. These are vital for producing business results, but tough to measure and maybe more difficult to justify in constrained marketing budgets.

Are you seeing an increasing requirement and importance placed on metrics to get budget allocations and approvals? How are you dealing with some of the concerns raised above? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com