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Campaign Manager - a career dead end. The days of this popular job category are nearly over - a campaign manager designing a single large, integrated, multi-step, controlled, linear campaign are about to be replaced.

The future campaigns are:

• Small
• Integrated
• Multi-step
• Non-linear
• Uncontrolled

Small - we wont load a tens of thousands of contacts into a campaign and jam them through and get a 2% dribble out the other end. We’ll set up small campaigns that wont fire until maybe only one contact enters the campaign from a survey, but the response rate will be high >20%.

Integrated - we’ll still use DM, email, telemarketing, websites etc. But we’ll look to track and measure each step better

Multi-step - campaigns will more closely match the ‘buyers journey’ rather than the sellers process

Non -linear - campaigns will be flexible and build up a profile or footprint of the contacts in the campaign - its will adjust automatically to their pace and position on the buyers journey

Uncontrolled - as with much happening on the social media front at the moment - brand and product control is being replaced with collaboration with the brand users.

So if you are a campaign manager today, time to rethink and retrain. If you want to become one, start understanding now where the future lies. A good place is to start looking at Marketing Automation.

A B2B marketer has two customers, THE CUSTOMER who buys the product and also the sales team. The sales team is made up of a varied group of individuals with a range of talents - and you deliver them all the same quality leads? A little crazy?

 In all sales teams there are those under-performers and the over-performers. An over performer can take a lead, work through it, qualify it and give you  balanced feedback. It may take a few weeks but you get a good review.

An under performer will likely take your lead and either reject it very quickly or never quite get back to you. The quality and thoroughness of the feedback will leave you underwhelmed.

So what to do? Continue to work with the good sales guy as is. For the not so good, do some lead development, scoring or nurturing on the lead to give yourself a higher confidence level in the lead quality before handing over.

Take a look at your business processes - those that run 24/7/365. They will be those processes to do with how you spend money, build products, distribute products. A great deal of focus on the cost side.

Compare them with the other side of the ledger - the revenue side. The side that brings in the money is not 24/7/365 - even if the website is. The revenue generating processes can be disjointed, irregular, poorly measured and monitored. They may be managed well but it requires high levels of management attention.

So how good could it be if we had a 24/7/365 end to end revenue generating process?

Sales and marketing is sometimes deemed “Part Art, Part Science”. There seems to be little science - particulalry in the sales and marketing processes, and they have not kept up with processes in other parts of a business.

Imagine a car company - they make cars on a production line, same way each time. Or look at the way a jet engine is made - each step mapped out, checked, validated and measured. These environments have long and mature tool-sets like Six Sigma and Lean to help them monitor and improve processes.

Take a look at the sales and marketing processes of those same companies and you’ll find limited processes, limited measurement, little validation and a new way to do something for each campaign. Why?

Why is marketing’s lead generation, lead development and handover to sales not a better, more repeatable and predicatble process? I think we need to take a look at how we can create a steady stream of leads to sales, that takes advantage of modern automation and the 1:1 relationship skills of sales.

Comments most welcome.

Been planning to write a post on the need for Strategic Marketing as opposed to general marketing when I came across an article on BusinessBlogs site out of New Zealand entitled Marketing graduates are not ready for marketing. In this article they try and raise the bar( just a little) to get a better type of graduate.

The typical growing business will hire a marketing person when:

1. the website needs a refresh
2. an event needs to be run
3. some customer testimonials need to be written
4. no-one in the media printed your last product announcement

So you hire a marketing person - someone who is new out of uni or preferably related to the CEO or senior manager in someway. They then do your website, run some breakfast events, write some glowing testimonials but fail on the media piece and they drift away 18 months later. And your business is no wiser!

So to fail, remember to hire:

1. An inexperienced new marketer who
   • does not know your industry
   • does not know the difference between B2C and BTL
2. Does not know how you make money
3. Has no frame of reference to compare your business with another
4. Does not know a journalist or understand what makes them tick

Why do companies hire such people, would you hire an Accountant who was not a CPA or a sales team who have had success, or a development manager who couldn’t code - probably not! We instinctively know we need to hire the best resources we can in these areas.

You have a choice when you realise that you need some ‘marketing’. You can ‘waste’ 18 months or get the right person in first time. So when hiring a marketing person - look for:

• Experience - success and failures
• Credentials - Australian Marketing Institute such as CPM and AMAMI
• Understand business
• Can ask you questions that you can’t answer - because you haven’t looked at your business like that before
• Know when and where to prioritise effort
• Can help and mentor senior management

Original tweet: Marketing is how your business interacts with customers everyone is in marketing – the marketing department just happens to handle some of the stuff

A company’s brand and its reputation are a couple of the most valuable INTANGIBLE assets it has. These are often a high percentage of a total enterprise’s value - 37% of Google, 16% of Vodafone, 39% of Qantas and 20% of Woolworth’s according to Brand Finance.

A good brand and reputation can make many things easier, the obvious being finding and keeping customers but also finding partners and suppliers which helps to improve cash-flow and reduce transaction costs. In essence any part of a business that ‘touches’ someone outside the company is an ambassador for the brand and the company - everyone is therefore in marketing!

But how often do you have a ‘bad’ experience with a supplier, provider of something? One where the adverts press all the right buttons, the company of product comes into your consideration set, you buy the product. Then something goes wrong, the product breaks, the billing goes awry and the experience from there on sours the relationship?

Why would this happen? I think its because only one group may carry the KPI called “customer satisfaction” or that its not clear to all that everyone is in marketing.

This is not a land grab for the marketing department - but more a call to action for everyone in the business to realise that they have an impact on the brand and repution of the business.

Summary - So what can you do in your business - basically remind everyone that that they represent the company, to be considerate and sometimes wonder whether your policies are making it easy for people to do business with you.

Marketing is NOT advertising

Marketing is not sales

Marketing is a process

The Marketing process is a cyclical one that continues to monitor a market and adjust over time as the the market devlops and matures. A  favourite diagramme for this is Malcolm McDonald’s.

 Selling is not marketing, selling usually has much shorter time horizons of interest, days, weeks, months, quarters( as a rule)or a whole year if its a capital expenditure. Marketing on the other hand thinks about time horizons - now to drive people to consider the brand as store traffic, website traffic or leads to sales. Mid-term for initiatives, products and programmes to improve the value delivered, long-term to understand where the market will by in 2 years or more and what the company needs to do to meet the changes.

Advertising is part of the communications mix that relays the messages to the customer or potential customer about what the company does. Its just one of the techniques but quite often the most visible.

In many respects both Selling and Advertising are the same, they are communications between the company and the buyer, but the impact and audience reach are very different. At the end of the day all the other elements of the marketing process need to be well done for either of these to be successful.

The premise of this blog is simple - a customer and a consumer are different and its important to know which one you are aiming you messages at.

In this model the customer  is the person who buys your product. The consumer is the person who uses it or consumes it. Often they are exactly the same person, but often they are not.

Why is it important to differentiate? Maybe a simple example will help. Imagine that a child wants a “Barbie” doll for a birthday and a parent is responsible for buying it. Its likely that there is a specific doll that the child has in mind and wants, so the child makes the decision and not the parent. So the consumer decides and not the customer.

If the decision is about a breakfast cereal then the child may again have strong views but a parent may look at the box contents and decide that there is too much sugar/salt etc. In this case the customer makes the decision and not the consumer.

Sometimes there are balances and so you may need to have value propositions for both the customer and the consumer  with targeting being different. One message wont fit the bill. B2B has a predominately customer led weighting, and the role of the consumer is purely to use( although they can make life difficult if usability is an issue for your product). B2B is a mix of both and as in this example, it depends on the goods and the occasion.

The customer/consumer decision point is the last in a chain that moves your product from warehouse to the consumer. Working out the junction points and their influence on the sales volume and the dollars spent is important to understand where to put your sales and marketing efforts.

Came across a great article by David Kent of international brand consultants The Right Group. Basically the message is that if you continue to invest in the brand then the long term rewards are high. Full article link below.

“Here are some simple tips to achieve positive outcomes.

1. Listen to the market, focus on customer needs

• Be sure you understand your customers — their needs, wants and expectations.
• In changing markets, the basic needs of customers do not dissipate. Customer priorities can shift, however, so you need to develop innovative ways to satisfy these needs.
• Unmet customer needs present opportunities for new product development. Rather than pull back on innovation in new products, examine different ways to create and launch new ideas.

2. Manage your brand across all touchpoints

• In challenging times, customers place even more importance on brands they can trust.
• Ensure your brand is clearly defined and is delivered at all times.
• Avoid bait and switch branding; making a promise to customers that cannot be fulfilled.
• Engage all of your people with your brand promise. Staff interactions with your customers need to reflect your brand.
• Align your business practices to reflect your brand. All operating procedures, systems and policies need to reinforce your brand.

3. Communicate clearly

• Ensure your communication (internal and external) is clear. Clear customer communication minimises the potential for clutter, which leads to confusion.
• Also ensure that you reinforce your relationships with customers.
• Review your existing marketing communications programs. Think outside the square to identify alternative mediums and campaigns.

4. Look for ways to deliver superior value to your customers 

• Customers are more focused on value; they want to receive more for less.
• Ensure your customer value proposition meets the needs of a value conscious customer. Make sure it can withstand challenges from the competition.
• Invest in customer retention, as acquisition is more difficult.

Marketing is usually seen as an easy cost-cutting option, but think carefully about the long-term impact this will have on your brand and profitability.”

Full Article

As a follow-up to the Feb 18 post of how marketing and the CFO should work together to deliver on ROI. From UK.

Return on innovation