What’s happening to your Marketing ROI?

Large companies, like Ericsson, DSM and Philips claim not to be using ROI as a metric for Marketing and are looking for alternatives. Those who still use it, claim to only use it for certain parts of the marketing mix, not being social media engagement and brand activation. IBM’s recent CMO Study shows that while 63% of CMOs still believes that the Marketing ROI metric is needed to justify their expenditures, a minority (44%) actually thinks they are ready to do so.

If anything, the Enterprise Marketing 2.0 conference in Amsterdam by KGSGlobal showed that marketers are divided in this area. Those that have own retail channels are likely to be more Marketing ROI driven in their choices (like e.g. T-Online / Deutsche Telekom); others, especially where sales cycles are longer and value chains complex, depend increasingly upon more qualitative approaches and learning by doing.

Seems to me that we need to start making some choices.  And we should stop taking for granted that Marketing ROI is the holy grail of marketing KPIs…

Can we or should we come up with meaningful metrics to replace Marketing ROI? Join me in discussing the topic during the FREE Webinar “Marketing ROI, a great big lie?”, on November 2nd 2011.

DUTCH ARTICLE: Integrated Customer Engagement de uitdaging voor 2012 en verder?

Beste lezer,

Klik weg, lees dit artikel even (en kom dan weer terug…): http://www.adformatie.nl/nieuws/bericht/individuele-dialoog-bedrijven-met-klanten-moeilijk/

Verrassing?

Dacht het niet… De echte uitdaging is namelijk voor de hand liggend: wat gaan we eraan doen?

Welke gevolgen heeft dit voor mijn marketing plan 2012?

Hoe kan ik dit meetbaar maken, en ook nog uitleggen aan de baas?

Welke wijzigingen in mijn organisatie, mijn processen en mijn ondersteunende tools moet ik doen? Hoe implementeer ik dat?

Meld je aan voor de ICEwebinars (www.icewebinars.com).

 

3 ways to cut your marketing budget and still keep smiling

More on: www.icewebinars.com

It’s planning time… The economy is not flourishing yet, to put it mildly. Companies are facing difficulties in keeping shareholders happy by reducing risks, assembling enough “armor” to shield against continued economic adversities and at the same time planning to show healthy numbers. What does this mean for the marketer? Pressure on the budgets, just like there was in previous years. Here are three tips for responsible budget cutting :

1. Apply the cutter where the expected impact is lowest.
Cutting “across the board” is simple enough: if your budget needs to drop 10% then simply cut every item by 10% and you’ll be laughing again! Big danger: some items are impacted more by the cut than others. You risk affecting the end result by more than 10%. Furthermore, you’ll find that other items cannot be cut at all: the sponsorship program that you committed to for three years or the CEO dinner party that the boss really likes. Think in terms of impact, not activities.

2. Keep a fixed part of your budget for innovation and experimentation.
Cutting “what we are unsure of” may be a sensible choice, not? If we don’t know what a particular program will bring us next year, we will de-prioritise it for the benefit of others. Big danger: you’ll be cutting away innovative programs that may be your future winners. Moreover, elements that are not as measurable as e.g. your homepage, are not necessarily bad. Your future customer may even like them! Remember that experimentation is what made online and social marketing big.

3. Take what worked well in the past and use it to justify next year’s programs.
Cutting “everything that does not contribute to the sales targets”: ahh… that’s and old one isn’t it? This easily leads to long discussions about the role of marketing (long-term?) and the role of sales (short-term?), especially in B2B. If your role is tactical sales support only, than no problem: just start cutting and lean closely towards the sales teams. But if your company depends on product innovation, if the sales cycles for high value products can be long, if long-lasting customer relationships are key to your success or if you are in a complex value chain beware: you’ll risk squandering future opportunities. Recommended action: try to find evidence of how marketing contributed to some very successful customer accounts, and still does. Create some “engagement routes” a customer could follow to grow from nothing to ambassador, plotted in time. Use this to make your case.

And of course: keep smiling, it’s just part of the job!

If you want some more tips, please check out: www.icewebinars.com

3D marketing

Sony says: “You can buy the TV of the Future now”. Of course they are referring to their new 3D bravia. This development in consumer electronics gives me mixed emotions. Or, to be precise, it gives me headaches, literally. Maybe I’m just one of those people who can’t deal with 3D, although in B2B marketing we have to deal with  even more dimensions: time, message, channel, buying cycle, buyer, funnel…

These cause headaches too. Where can we buy the “marketing of the future”? Now please?

The demand waterfall

Ok, here are some snippets of info from the morning session, which proved to be very interesting. I need to digest this information more, but it seems that the Marketing Continuum is spot on….

I do worry a bit that we are looking at something only the very large and mature marketing organisations can afford to implement in their business processes. We have seen a nice testimonial from Symantec EMEA, where it took them 9 months and (estimating) at least 6fte and expensive BI software to implement a single overview of how marketing contributes to sales and the pipeline. And it takes at easily (estimating again) 300-600k yearly to maintain. Impressive results, but can you afford it? There must be something less impactful and equally effective…
  

Anyway, here goes. 

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Closed loop marketing and sales organisations are more profitable and have higher revenue growth. Taxonomy between marketing and sales is important.

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OLD: sales, lead generation and branding
NEW: sales, field marketing and reputation development

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Gap between marketing and marketing? Lead gen functions pushing comms or pr functions out of the ecosystem…

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Nurturing and feedback loop essential to maximise your intial investment. A loss now maybe a win in the future… 

###########
Intitial alignment between marketing and sales:
What kind of demand do we need?
What is the target market?
What is a lead (agreed taxonomy, Budget, authority, need, timeline)
What is the buying cycle

#########
Lead funnel is essentially a workflow, with formal handovers to marketing to sales etc.

#######
Seed the market, create the leads, enable the sales force, accelerate the closing process, nurture the “fall out”.

Sirius Decisions Europe summit 2010

We are @ park plaza riverbank in london, witnessing the first EUropean summit of the Sirius Decisions company. Partcipants predominantly from marketing automation suppliers and it industry. Mostly uk based, some belgian, dutch (me and my business partner) exceptions. We will be discussing issues around sales and marketing alingment, like:
Why is a b2b sales cycly 22pct longer in 2010 than it was in 2001?
Why are sales people only spending 18pct of their time selling?
The WEB generates 54pct of all leads today, growing to 71pct in 2015.
The impact of mobule devices, expecting to outgrow fixed devices as dominant web access tool.

Ill be submitting subsequent reports later today, afterwards Ill provide the links to relevant resources.

Enjoy!

B2B Marketing: the hard life

So, there you are, seasoned B2B marketer, carrying the scars of all the turf battles with the sales teams, your skin has thickened and you have grown insensitive to cynical remarks about “marketing ROI”. Your experience has grown as fast as your budgets have shrunken over the past years, you are now used to doing without the free advice of your strategic agency because it’s not free anymore, and finally you have come to terms with the fact that your (newest) boss doesn’t understand you. And still, everyday your life becomes more difficult…
You are increasingly aware that only one thing remains for you to control: your Own Performance, and it is slipping away. Why is this? You’re still putting in the effort and the hours, your commitment hasn’t diminished and you’re still good looking too!

I don’t have the answer, but I do have a theory: it is your ability to learn and grow that, by no fault of your own, has been compromised.

Over the past years marketers have been flooded by an every increasing swell of new possibilities, tools, opinions, books, blogs and (not in the least) unprompted advice – all coming from the online world, also known as the internet, interweb, web, social web and walhalla. It only takes one look at e.g. http://mashable.com/business to get a sneak preview of utter confusion. The abundance of choice has caused an enormous inflation of the Marketers Universe and at the same time left many in dismay, reverting back to what they know, back to what they can prove and back to what they are good at. It has also led to numerous erratic experiments in (e.g.) the social space and early, often misguided, conclusions and advice about what works and what doesn’t.
And to make things worse, all the channels, tools and devices you use spit out an endless stream of data, which you need to be able to digest, understand, compare, analyze and integrate in comprehensive reports, designed to convince your boss, who by definition is more critical and ignorant than you are.

In a sense there is a striking similarity with the world of the athlete. The art of improving performance when everyone and his dog is giving free advice about what (not) to eat and when, how to lose weight, how to maximize training output, what kind of training works best, which exercises to do, how to plan, how to peak, how to get sponsors, how to win, need I go on? Here too is a constant information stream about new developments, tools, kit, nutritional supplements, training programs, the good, the bad and the ugly guru’s etc. And the ones who call the shots, the bosses – the sponsors and the public – are demanding better performance all the time without any understanding of the day to day challenges. No wonder so many give up or crack at key moments. But others seems to be able to deal with this and succeed brilliantly. What makes the difference?

I’m sure there is an element of talent involved, but as an enthusiast and not so talented (tri)athlete I have come to rely on these few principles, which I mostly had to learn the hard way:
1. There is no holy grail or magic bullet, be critical, always;
2. Get a coach, he/she will shield you from the confusion and if it doesn’t work you can always get another one;
3. Don’t draw conclusions on single performances, there are too many variables and assumptions; be patient and not afraid to fail; keep your eyes on the horizon;
4. Do things that are FUN to do, it will keep you motivated to push on when it gets hard;
5. Set up a system of goals and measurement that works for YOU, not others; your ability to learn, grow and improve depends on it.

In fact, I don’t see why this couldn’t work for you too, B2B marketer. I’m not saying it will make life less hard, but it will put YOU back in control.

B2B Marketing tools

B2B web marketing platforms

Interesting debate on B2B marketing platforms on http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/02/08/b2b-web-marketing-the-platform-battle/

Question is: who will win this battle CRM or CMS?

I would say: none of the above.

Last week I had a conversation with a tool vendor trying to convince me that it would be best if I threw away my e-mail marketing point solution (SAAS model) and replace it by some module built in their next version of a CMS (“yes it will be there in April…”). Why would that be better? Will it make me a better marketer? Will it enable me to serve my customers better? Or will it lock me in to that particular CMS, making it difficult for me to replace it for something better that may come along in the future? No, I’ll stick with the cheap point solutions, loosely integrated through web services. Cheap, flexible and (most important) expendable.

Years of ERP and CRM faillures should have tought us that there is no such thing as a “suite” or a platform that actually offers a long term advantage over point solutions. Businesses change, customers change, markets change, communities change, management changes, software versions change – need I go on?

My bet would be to derive your current need for tooling from your current business strategies and realities. And when things change, throw the obsolete functions away, and please ignore all IT people advising you otherwise, especially tool vendors.

Use your functionality for what is was made to do and don’t customise it

My first time

Well, finally the time has come. I have taken it upon myself to start blogging. What about? Not sure yet. It will probably be a combination of marketing themes, dutch politics and cooking topped off by some sports. Agree: not very focussed yet.
Oh well, let’s see what time will bring. I will certainly be interested in finding ways to (1) write blogs anytime, anyplace – perhaps the iphone app will help – and (2) to see how I can raise interest for my blog.