Ebook_Winning Demand Generation Battle_v3

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1 Winning the Demand Generation Battle: A Quick Guide to Achieving Sales Success Today © Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015

Transcript of Ebook_Winning Demand Generation Battle_v3

  1. 1. 1 Winning the Demand Generation Battle: A Quick Guide to Achieving Sales Success Today Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  2. 2. 2 Index 1. Prologue 2. Digital Demand Generation: Is Your 2015 Marketing Plan Optimized For The Future? 3. Five Ways to Jazz Up Your Content Marketing in 2015 4. How to Best Leverage Marketing Technologies in 2015 5. Supercharge Your Sales Funnel With Predictive Analytics 6. How to Succeed with Mobile Marketing in 2015 7. Key Marketing Metrics for Revenue and Profit Growth Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  3. 3. 3 1. Prologue Winning the Demand Generation Battle: A Quick Guide to Achieving Sales Success in Todays Environment W hen was the last time you lined up to purchase a must-have product? Perhaps you were one of those Apple devotees queuing for hours to be one of the first to nab the latest iPhone. Or maybe you were one of the shivering hopefuls, still digesting your Thanksgiving dinner, outside of Best Buy, trying to land a $200 HDTV. Whatever the context, as marketers, we look at these types of happenings as the Holy Grail of our trade. And we ask ourselves: How can we create the same kind of lusty fervor for our product or service? And, more importantly, how do we break through the clutter to sell the sizzle, when todays consumer is clamoring for the steak and, thanks to technology, is well-armed to do so? The good news is that, in todays plugged-in environment, the consumer, on their quest to find the perfect next thing upon which to lavish their cash, is leaving behind a passel of digital information. These bits and bytes, when properly harnessed, can help marketers regain and maintain a decided edge in winning the demand generation battle. In the following pages, it is my hope to arm you with enough information to begin a purposeful dialogue within your company about how to deftly navigate this pulsing technological minefield, and emerge with mindshare, market share and wallet share. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2014
  4. 4. 4 Among the essentials covered in this eBook and the questions they will challenge you to answer in the context of your own go-to-market strategies include: Content Marketing: Are you generating content that will help you define and attract the right audience? Is this content compelling and offering your consumers a message of empowerment? Are you choosing the right channels for the promotion of this content? Are you creating a treble effect by catalyzing your consumers to share this content, on multiple platforms, with their friends and family? Marketing Automation: Have you heard of the term Marketing-as-a-Service? Are you using such technologies to capture, analyze and sort data that you are receiving from your consumers? Are you nimbly toeing the line between your need to capture such data, and your consumers expectation for privacy? Mobile Marketing: Do you have a strategy to promote your product or service on your consumers portable devices? Is your website responsive and viewable on all devices, large and small? Have you implemented geotargeting and a mobile-specific advertising campaign? Do you have a mobile app with eCommerce capabilities? Predictive Analytics: Have you linked marketing insights with your CRM system to help project consumer sales trends? Are you using this data to fill your sales funnel with more targeted, quality leads? Are you using a recommendations engine on your eCommerce site to help upsell your consumers? Are you using software to help analyze, and improve, your lead scores? Do you have buy-in for this process across all key functional sales and marketing divisions? Digital Media: Are you personalizing your content for consumers, and using informal means, like social media, to conduct your dialogue? Have you implemented the right marketing mix given the method that your consumers are using to make purchasing decisions? Are there opportunities for you to bring your product or service offerings to the Internet of Things? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  5. 5. 5 Search Marketing: Are you keenly aware of the keywords by which your consumer is searching for your company and its products or services? Are you using both organic search engine optimization (SEO) as well as a pay-per-click campaign to microtarget your consumer? Is your companys search result displaying on the first page of the chosen search engine? It is my hope that, after youve read this eBook, that you will forever vanquish to the Kingdom of Bad Ideas the notion that gut feelings and educated guesses are still acceptable to todays business world. The rise of the technologically enlightened consumer coupled with the availability of insightful digital measurement tools should motivate us to develop new strategies for business growth that will prepare us for today and tomorrow. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  6. 6. 6 2. Digital Demand Generation: Is Your 2015 Marketing Plan Optimized for the Future? In a recent blog, I talked about the need to have your 2015 marketing plans be mindful of the increasing importance of marketing technology infrastructure, data, content, mobile and privacy regulations. Assuming you are ready with your 2015 marketing strategies, its time to take a deeper dive into the great leveler of the marketing playing field digital demand generation. In a little under a decade, the advent of new social and online tools has dramatically changed demand generation using tools that are accessible, easy to use and offer the ability to micro-target like never before. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  7. 7. 7 According to a recent CEB and Google study, with the rising use of digital channels, it is not enough to incorporate digital in the broader marketing campaigns. An organization can optimize digital demand generation efforts by continuously monitoring and managing all digital presence including the website, social platforms, blogs, search, communities and, potentially, paid search and online advertising. One factor about digital demand generation is an irrefutable truth it is among the most cost effective methods to draw prospective clients to your product or service. A survey of B2B marketers experienced in deploying such demand generation tools cited E-mail marketing, social media, and search engine optimization as the most cost effective demand generation methods today. With all this in mind, lets take a closer look at the digital demand generation landscape today and what companies have found as a best-practices approach to utilizing each discipline. 1. User Engagement: If you prefer a top-down, monolithic approach for communicating with your customer base, heres a news flash that may send shivers up your spine. The customer, today and going forward, is now behind the steering wheel. With increasingly efficient ways to access a plethora of resources, the consumer can learn everything they need to know about your company or offering with just a few mouse clicks or screen taps. With so many resources from which to choose why not offer the consumer your take, in a rich, informative and interesting way? Source: Software Advice B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Industry View | 2014 Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  8. 8. 8 Landing pages and microsites are great ways to capture mindshare about your company, product or service but dispense with the fluff and get straight to the point. Populate your online presence with clear content and supporting information that reinforces your value proposition, success stories and clear competitive advantage. Create blogs and other materials that sprinkle your expertise throughout the vast worldwide web. Also, ensure that your content looks not only as good on a mobile device as it does on a desktop or laptop, but also perhaps even better. We are fast approaching a mobile first scenario. Compelling content will increasingly need to consist of an interactive story with video and other visuals. Consumers will increasingly rely on social branding and peer recommendations. The key lesson here? You must embrace your consumer, give them a voice and make sure you are communicating these messages in a way that they can be received easily. 2. Search Marketing: Organic search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click (PPC) programs have been the leading ways todays businesses have out-hustled and out-classed their competitors. However, experts predict SEO in 2015 will be much more integrated with content and social and very different from SEO a few years ago. If your company is not yet adept at hiking its information to the top of search results, its fairly easy to get into the game. An article in Forbes recently outlined the recipe for moving your companys online presence to the fore in 2015. It includes: Keywords ensuring you are picking the correct and most relevant terms by which your prospective clients are searching for your services. While Google is expected to start replacing keyword targeting with alternate targeting, keywords, when used correctly, serve the most important function of engaging your prospects. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  9. 9. 9 Mobile SEO and User Intent ensuring websites and content accessed from mobile phones are optimized for the type of person who consumes information on the go. Link Building adding implied links through brand names and citations to the high-quality and relevant express links from other portals where your prospects may be searching. Social Signals social presence becomes even more important as social signals become a significant factor in the Google ranking algorithm. 3. Digital Media: By all means, make sure you have all of your online bases covered. The first two points support an argument for a sound inbound marketing program. However, one shouldnt forsake the importance of outbound marketing. It gives you the chance to control the message, reinforce your organic marketing methods and, yes, redeploy some of your dollars in a targeted, efficient manner. Display advertising, location-based mobile marketing, personalized media, social advertising, retargeting, persona targeting, as well as email and affiliate marketing are all essential pieces to this paid paradigm. While some of these may be more appropriate than others for your company, all of them offer the unique benefit of enhanced tracking and data mining. This allows you to take action as prospects interact with your paid content. As with any campaign-driven approach to marketing, make sure your message is consistent. Ideally, your paid media should lead to your user engagement tools and ultimately, lead to a buying decision. What are you doing to support Digital Demand Generation at your company? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  10. 10. 10 3. Five Ways to Jazz Up Your Content Marketing in 2015 If you are reading this blog right now, you are participating in a trend that has transformed the face of marketing as we know it. Content marketing is .. creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action, according to the Content Marketing Institute. If that sounds a lot like what traditional advertising endeavored to do, youre correct. Content its creation, refinement and dissemination through multiple channels of communication has become the essential recipe to the marketing formula. And, like traditional advertising, the gauge of success, too, for content marketing is, profitable customer action, e.g., thought leadership, lead generation and ultimately, sales. But what has rocketed content marketing to the fore has been a very definite, and measurable, shift in the relationship dynamic between company and the content consumer. Driven by social media, smartphones and other means of point-to-point communication, this consumer now can decide exactly which messages to consume and when. As noted entrepreneur and web expert Brian Alvey has said, The revolution occurred (because) the audience is now in charge. With corporate bottom lines hanging in the balance, its little wonder that marketers are flocking to feed the appetites of this content-hungry public. But there is a law of diminishing returns that applies, too, to content marketing, and overload certainly is a serious risk factor with consumers having to sort through, by some estimates, more than 2,900 distinct content marketing messages per day. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  11. 11. 11 With such a groundswell, its logical that both quality and curation need to be considered, lest your content marketing messages get drowned out. Here are some tips to keep your content marketing strategy on target: Whos in charge: According to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, your contents effectiveness increases by having both a documented strategy and a person who oversees it. However, only 35 percent of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy. So making your plan and appointing a content czar is critical but, so, too, is C-level support. This way, you can ensure your content marketing strategy has the investment, resources, business processes, and power it needs to thrive. Quality rules: Ensure that the content you create is both helpful and unique. Investigate different ways to tell your story and facilitate sharing. There is no one right way to do so; depends on the message and the audience. And by all means, give quality a greater weight of importance than frequency. Reduce, reuse, repurpose: Save time and money by leveraging such avenues as crowdsourcing and wikis to generate content. Once youve got your content rolling, consider repurposing it into an eBook, book, web or other learning materials from the topical information youve generated. Variety is the spice of life: You will find that you will have higher search rankings if, in addition to being user-friendly, your content is presented in a variety of formats including videos, infographics and slides. Its also critical that your content look as great on a four-inch smartphone screen as it does a high- resolution desktop monitor. Promotion and distribution: Youve invested in both strategy and quality now, make sure your content is given the chance to inform as many constituents as possible. Content is distributed today through a mix of owned, earned and paid channels. However, these channels are increasingly starting to overlap with some payment being required for the owned and earned channels as well. Take the time to find the best channels for your content to maximize results. What has worked for you with content marketing? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  12. 12. 12 4. How to Best Leverage Marketing Technologies in 2015 I was recently asked my thoughts on how technology and digital trends will shape the future of marketing. As I pondered this question, I took note of all of the ways that I am digitally connected to the outside world. My laptop, smartphone, phablet, tablet, and e-reader were all dripping digital data to some unseen force through my WiFi connection. A fitness tracker awaited the opportunity to observe and report my next activity. Acting as marshals for many of these resources were my modem and router, which collected the needed inputs and outputs and converted my actions into trackable information. The New Digitally Savvy Customer Digital capabilities, indeed, are built into many of the products we use or consume today -- offering marketers the chance to collect, distill and understand data in new and compelling ways. The tradeoff?We are now breeding a generation of customers who have a greater level of sophistication and greater technological expectations, for the companies that they patronize, in their personal and business worlds. In a recent survey of chief marketing officers by Gartner, marketers cited the satisfaction of these plugged-in customers as their top innovation project for 2015. A recent study by Conductor showed that 65 percent of marketing executives plan on spending more on marketing technology in 2015, with a large percentage (28%) planning to spend more than 25 percent. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  13. 13. 13 Marketing Technology Landscape Of course, many companies are still trying to figure out how to optimize their use of last years technologies -- search engine strategies, web analytics, email campaigns, webinars, social media, blogs, online video and mobile marketing. And, in case theres any doubt about the continued proliferation of such tools, this supergraphic should serve as an apt reminder. It is just overwhelming to try to review the graphic and get actual takeaways about how to leverage each piece of technology within the marketing technology ecosphere. In actual life, users are confused today about which marketing technology to use, and how. Marketers simply have a large number of options today. If a marketer encounters an issue, there is surely a marketing technology company that has already set out to solve that issue. It is worth re-emphasizing that at its core, marketing technology helps customers connect with businesses and to help businesses better understand the customer needs and journey. Priorities for 2015 Technology has facilitated the collection of vast amounts of customer data. The next task for marketers is to leverage analytics and translate this data to help customers and businesses better make these connections. Personalization is a big part of facilitating these connections and enhancing the customer experience. Digital marketers need to have an integrated approach -- encompassing multiple devices -- to meet customer demands for easy information access via mobile devices and a unified service experience across channels. To address user privacy concerns and increasing wariness of gated content that requires personal data for access, marketers need to work especially hard to gain consumer trust. By focusing on quality and ensuring that the content is very relevant and Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  14. 14. 14 valuable for users, marketers may be able to ease some of these hesitations regarding privacy. According to Aberdeen, 95% of B2B sales are directly influenced by content. Its a particularly powerful way to influence the decision makers to which the sales people dont have direct access. Yet, content overload will be a serious risk factor in 2015. Companies can address this issue by giving quality a greater weight of importance than frequency, using a variety of formats including slides, infographics and videos, and making content interactive. As part of sales enablement, it is important to figure out the content that salespeople find most effective in engaging prospects and closing deals. That content and its usage can then be promoted across the sales teams. Marketing-as-a-Service The good news is that there are indeed shortcuts to harnessing the power of the digital revolution. Cloud- based tools have been a game-changer for all companies big and small. Just as enterprises are looking for more turnkey solutions rather than just individual box purchases, consumers will also look for integration of their digital products/ services. The next iteration is a Marketing-as-a-Service, or MaaS model. In this model, companies retain the core roles for internal teams and outsource the functions for designing, building, and optimizing the marketing infrastructure and its applications. In 2015, well see Marketing-as-a-Service include new cloud-based offerings such as content-as-a-service, analytics-as-a-service, and even community-as-a- service. Technologys sweeping impact on the craft of marketing can, understandably, be an overwhelming prospect. As you sort through your 2015 resolutions, keep in mind that now is the time to prioritize the adoption of digitally-awake strategies that keep you in step with if not one step ahead of your customer. How are you currently using marketing technology? What changes will you make in 2015? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  15. 15. 15 5. Supercharge Your Sales Funnel With Predictive Analytics As I have discussed in my previous blogs, digital marketing tools and technologies are transforming the way businesses connect with pros pective and existing customers. Adoption of these technologies is key to maintaining and gaining competitive advantage. Presuming you have plugged in to marketing technology and have started the data flowing, you probably are developing a keen sense of what strategies are most effective in converting leads to customers. Of course, this is only useful if, in fact, you are keeping the top of your sales funnel filled and if the pipeline is delivering the types of leads that will lead to long-term, quality business relationships that will promote growth for your company. Predictive analytics is the way to address this challenge. For the unfamiliar, predictive analytics is the practice of gathering information about a companys best customers, using the information to determine what makes them great and then combining these insights with external data to offer the most attractive solutions to current and future customers. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  16. 16. 16 2015 is widely projected to be the year of data-driven marketing, with the adoption of predictive analytics techniques increasing as marketers see its huge potential to improve prospecting, increase lead quality and build the sales pipeline. According to TWDI Research, the top reasons that companies want to use predictive analytics are to forecast trends, better understand customers, improve business performance, drive strategic decision-making, and predict behavior. Predictive analytics can be useful for both growing existing accounts and closing new ones. Predictive Lead Scoring and Analytics Of course, many business-to-consumer (B2C) companies have been using predictive analytics for some time as a means of improving customer understanding and driving sales. An example you may have encountered is the recommendations engine on ecommerce sites that makes product recommendations based on previous purchases by a customer and other customers with similar profiles, location, and reviews. Such technology enables marketers to make better use of behavioral data and other data points. Now, B2B companies are getting into the act applying predictive analytics to accelerate sales by improving lead quality. Nearly 14 times more B-to-B organizations are using predictive lead scoring than in 2011, says Jill Stanek, research analyst at Sirius Decisions. Source: Sirius Decisions Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  17. 17. 17 Predictive scoring increases the data points significantly, when compared to traditional lead scoring. This is because it allows marketers to take internal data from CRM systems (e.g., historical win/loss and transaction information) and marketing automation databases, and to combine it with data from the web and social media. The resulting lead scores are much better predictors of actual buying behavior as compared to traditional lead scores. Some advantages reported by companies using predictive lead scoring include: Better ROI on campaigns Better quality leads Faster sales cycle Better ability to prioritize existing prospects Better conversion rates Predictive lead scoring leads to improvements in sales productivity and marketing effectiveness, and better alignment between sales and marketing. According to Todd Berkowitz, research director at Gartner: New models need to be used once the lead reaches an opportunity stage, both in terms of likelihood to close, but also the optimal price to get the deal done. And the same logic can be applied both pre-funnel (to find companies that best match the characteristics of customers) and post-funnel to identify churn risks and expansion opportunities. Implementing Predictive Lead Scoring While predictive analytics seems complicated and the implementation daunting, it can be implemented easily in any size company. Todd Berkowitz further notes: Entry costs are (generally) low, proof of concepts are available, out-of-the-box integrations exist with CRM Lead Management and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems and ROI can be quite rapid. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  18. 18. 18 There are several vendors today providing predictive lead scoring solutions. For example, Lattice Engines and Mintigo offer cloud-based B2B predictive analytics solutions, accessible to both large and small businesses, as a means of identifying, prioritizing and ultimately closing more customers. Both collect data from a companys internal CRM and marketing automation database, and then add external data. This external data for prospects can be vast including such inputs as company financials, number of employees, number and location of offices, management changes, press releases, media coverage, social media activity, job openings, patents, mergers and acquisitions, etc. Nadim Hossain of BrightFunnel notes that in the future these analytics will go much further, looking at the whole funnel to understand how things are going to move from stage to stage all the way to revenuereally predicting the pipeline and the revenue in a way that marketers can actually react. If we consider a truism that has stood the test of time high-quality leads accelerate sales cycles and ultimately increase sales it seems only logical that the latest predictive analytics tools should be a part of any marketers arsenal in todays wired world. What are you doing to leverage your data and improve your sales funnel? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  19. 19. 19 6. How to Succeed with Mobile Marketing in 2015 Engagement in the world around us once purely the domain of the five senses today would not be complete without the flurry of taps, swipes and scrolls that we make on a pocket-sized smart device. One does not need a lot of research or statistics to see how non-negotiable our relationship has become with our mobile devices. As marketers, we no longer can count on consumers to look away from their small screens to view information about our products or services. The trick in 2015, instead, is to embrace this unique opportunity to serve relevant data directly to their device. In 2014, users who consumed digital data with mobile devices finally surpassed desktop users and didnt stop. In fact, the lead continues to widen for mobile in 2015. According to Gartner, more than 70 percent of U.S. consumers have a smartphone in their purse or hip pocket, and 40 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledge regular use of a tablet. What are they doing? Email, texts, web searches and social networking still lead the way. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  20. 20. 20 The good news for B2B marketers is that this mobility trend isnt limited to consumer activity. Todays B2B buyers want to use mobile devices of their choice to research products, view content, and review proposals, as well as pricing anytime and anywhere. According to the IDG Global Mobile Survey, 77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business. Lets explore five areas of focus where, with a degree of mastery, you can win the mobile mindshare game: 1. Responsive Website Design Due to the pervasiveness of web contentinteractions, users have high expectations for their mobile experience. They demand an excellent user interface with a design adapted for mobile devices, and quickly disregard sites that load slowly or look clunky on their smartphone. When they find mobile friendly sites, they are more apt to revisit and be loyal to them. Using responsive design a technique by which the site will automatically adapt to Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  21. 21. 21 the platform through which the user is accessing it ensures a clean, uncluttered and consistent experience across screens. This consistency is especially important because while the buyers journey can span multiple devices. Consumers may conduct research on smartphones but make the purchase on a laptop or tablet. Tracking consumer behavior on your mobile website provides useful insight. Look at the web logs, which likely have mobile traffic (by device type) broken out separately. See where the consumers go on the site and follow their actions. 2. Content, Email, and Social In addition to being the top mobile activity, email is the third biggest driver of revenue on mobile phones and tablets. If a mobile email doesnt look good, over 70% of the recipients delete it immediately. As such, marketers should keep the constraints of the mobile medium in mind when designing marketing emails. Similarly, companies need to create shorter, digestible newsletters that can be read easily on mobile devices. They whet the user appetite encouraging them to read more at a later time. The long-form content can be linked to and hosted on the company web page. Content viewed in a mobile-friendly manner can significantly increase response rates and ROI. Consumers initially fed the growth in social media usage, but now, B2B customers are increasingly active in social networks as well. A recent survey conducted by IDG Enterprise found that 82% of the B2B respondents used social media/networking sites for business purposes. Social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, are outstanding avenues to engage with both consumers and business customers in a less formal manner while they are on their mobile devices. Since cookies dont work in most mobile environments, companies are now using data from social media platforms to follow consumers online. In 2015, consumers will be looking for content to be increasingly personalized. They Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  22. 22. 22 want their activities to be connected across all their screens so enabling features like social sharing, and engagement within all of your content would be a mandatory step. 3. Location and Beacons In the B2C environment, its not enough to pair the right message to the right person it has be done at the right time, and in the right place. Geotargeting a trend by which a phones location services plays a role in accessing geo-relevant content for consumers is promising, but privacy concerns need to be addressed. According to Mobile Media Summit, retailers have been quick to adopt location-aware apps and beacons since they allow them to provide relevant information and promotions based on the consumer location. Push notifications and targeted messages based on location are driving sales at many brick-and-mortar stores today. Beacons communicate with users smartphones via Bluetooth. They can work with mobile payment systems to not only increase consumer ease of use, but also to provide rich data to retailers. 4. Mobile Advertising Though marketers are still trying to find the best formula for using mobile contextual and display advertising, it does seem that their best role is as a supporting player by creating awareness to encourage conversion later. As the effectiveness of mobile display ads is still being assessed, it may be better to have rich interactive ads or campaigns that offer premium access. It is more effective to have a call to action like a hashtag or contest to encourage the desired consumer and business response. The challenge is to execute these enhanced campaigns quickly and consistently in any setting. Difficulty in measuring ROI has been holding back growth in mobile ads. There are now Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  23. 23. 23 tools available to marketers that will allow them to measure, record results and make impactful real-time changes during the campaign not afterward, when it is not as meaningful. 5. Mobile Applications According to the U.S. Mobile App report, Americans spend more than half of their time on mobile using applications. Mobile apps, when built and deployed properly, can drive meaningful interactions and engagement with customers. The challenge is to keep customers engaged once theyve downloaded the app. Gamification, relevant updates, push notifications, and beacons are examples of engagement strategies. The key is to gain an understanding of which of these strategies to use, and when and to use that engagement to drive the buyers journey. While the apps are more prevalent in the B2C space, B2B companies need to recognize this trend and assess their mobile presence within apps most relevant to their buyers. They can also use apps to provide easy access to resources and improve the user experience at company events and meetings. While apps work in many instances, they do have some disadvantages. It can be hard to get users to adopt them, and apps, unfortunately, do not help with search engine optimization (SEO). With a large number of mobile operating systems and devices, it requires a significant investment to build and maintain an app. Assess the pros and cons before you decide to provide your own app. Hopefully, you are now convinced of the value of adopting a mobile-first approach. With the right vision, focus and execution, perhaps it will be your company gaining mobile mindshare the next time you see someone entranced by a collection of words, symbols, and pictures on their smartphone. What are you doing for mobile marketing in 2015? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  24. 24. 24 7. Key Marketing Metrics for Revenue and Profit Growth At the essence of any marketing or business program are metrics the measures that indicate the heights to which revenues will soar or the depths to which fortunes will plummet -- as a result of your strategic efforts. Long gone are the days when conjecture, hypothesis and gut feel were acceptable ways to gauge business success. The digital explosion, while requiring us to be even more dialed into a dialog with our consumers, has also given rise to a raft of new tools that help us analyze the quality of these interactions. Such information can offer amazingly keen insight into how well our overall marketing strategy is working, as well as to identify the focus areas for business growth. But where to start? Most companies have hundreds of unique data points that can be distilled into actionable insights. According to the Salesforce 2015 State of Marketing Report, most companies find the greatest value in metrics focused on revenue growth, customer satisfaction, return on investment, customer retention rates and customer/ audience acquisition. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  25. 25. 25 Lets take a deeper look at these categories. 1. Revenue growth How much money has been gained from marketing strategies and tactics is the No. 1 question that keeps most marketers up at night. CEOs today expect higher levels of ownership and accountability from their chief marketers than at any time in the past. While marketers traditionally expected to be judged on consumer sentiment, perceptions, and brand awareness, today companies wish to understand how marketing activities generated qualified leads that were subsequently converted to sales. A recent Forbes article indicated that a great way for marketers to understand their impact on revenues is to do extensive baseline testing. This testing can include measuring sales levels pre- and post-marketing, or even testing digital in-market tactics for revenue and profit against a control group that receives business-as-usual marketing tactics. If relevant to your industry, direct tracking (such as a click on a link in an email that leads to purchase) still provides the cleanest measure of marketing cause-and-effect. Of course, no such measure is complete without including an understanding of how multiple contacts through various channels improve a companys chances to close the deal. Well talk more about this paradigm shortly. 2. Customer Satisfaction Customers now expect 24-7 hour service across channels. They arent afraid to switch to a competitor, and they increasingly voice their opinions via social media. This growth in competition and consumer power has eroded traditional product-based advantages, forcing organizations to use customer experience as a differentiator. This trend will continue in 2015 as more companies recognize the value of better customer experience in improving customer satisfaction and retention, average profit margin per customer and the customer lifecycle value. In 2014, Gartner found that digital marketers were spending almost as much to retain customers (45%) as they were to gain new ones (55%). Despite the high cost of retaining customers, there is a definite economic advantage to keeping an established customer over the longer term. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  26. 26. 26 Some useful metrics for the customer experience are the satisfaction scores and other sentiment measures including the percentage of customers who plan to repurchase. Use these metrics to focus efforts on addressing the worst experiences at every contact point. Invest in innovation to delight the customer after testing to see which experiences have the most impact. 3. ROI As I hinted earlier, its essential that the measurement of marketing ROI include the impact of the holistic efforts of the organization. It is rarely a single campaign or program that generates revenue -- especially for B2B companies. Most B2B buyers have many interactions with a potential vendor over an extended period before they make a buying decision. They are exposed to multiple campaigns, and it can be difficult to determine which particular campaign led to the customers buying decision. Considerations for measuring ROI from a marketing program include: Incremental sales/revenues Gross margin percentage Total marketing and sales investment Multitudes of marketing automation platforms exist to help marketers address the attribution issue and calculate the ROI. This article by Marketo is an excellent primer on measuring the ROI of marketing programs. 4. Customer Retention Rates For the uninitiated, the customer retention rate (CRR) is achieved by a simple calculation of the customers the company keeps with respect to the customers at the start of the period. It does not include new customers and is the opposite of customer churn. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  27. 27. 27 Depending upon the business or market segment, customer retention rates can be gauged monthly, quarterly or annually but understanding your companys interval is an important factor in obtaining accurate CRR. Heres a simple formula to get your CRR: CRR = ((CE-CN)/CS)*100 CE = Number of customers at the end of a period CN = Number of new customers acquired during that period CS = Number of customers at the start of that period CRR is a great indicator of customer loyalty and effectiveness of customer service. While a companys target CRR depends on the industry, market and business goals, most companies should aim for 85-90 percent retention and continually seek to improve it. Additionally, dollar renewal rate or DRR, can provide an even more complete picture, favoring actual dollars earned over customer count. So if the existing customers start paying more, through upgrades or other purchases, the DRR might increase even if some customers are lost. Ideally, a companys DRR should be above 100% -- meaning the company is earning more every period and growing. Many people target a DRR of 110%, but this number might vary by industry and the stage of the company. Retention metrics affect the bottom line and provide real insights into a companys strengths and weaknesses while highlighting opportunities for improvement. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  28. 28. 28 5. Customer Acquisition For new customer acquisition, it is important to track: Number of leads generated (Lead generation) Closing rate (Lead nurturing) Revenue per new customer (Lead quality) Average days to close Customer acquisition cost (CAC) CAC is the fully loaded cost of acquiring an average customer derived by looking at the gross margin of new revenue from a quarter minus the sales and marketing expenses in the preceding quarter. The assumption is that new revenue from sales and marketing spending is not realized until approximately three months later due to time for customer ramp- up. CAC is critical in that it indicates how long it will take the company to recover the initial investment used to acquire customers. This can, in turn, be used to determine whether the business should make additional investments in sales and marketing. So whats to prevent you from becoming a metrics maven today? In a perfect world, where all information is readily available, and there are no resource constraints, companies would easily be able to track these metrics. However, sometimes situations are a lot muddier. You cannot evaluate the impact of an individual campaign or initiative because there are multiple touch points for a lead, and you dont know what specifically led to a conversion. Or the data you have is enough to be directionally useful, but is not precise. Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  29. 29. 29 Part of being a data-driven marketer in todays age is not only understanding the metrics, but being able to operate with incomplete information. One can fill gaps in the data sets with more qualitative/ anecdotal information and assumptions about customers, the market, etc. Its not perfect, but it allows you to act and make business decisions without waiting for the data to be 100 percent accurate or available. For those of you who are starting from ground zero or facing challenges with data or resources, consider tackling the revenue growth metrics first and then implement the remaining metrics once you can measure revenue success. Prioritize the metrics that will best address your major business and marketing challenges. What marketing metrics are you currently using to gauge your companys success? Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015
  30. 30. 30 www.ChiefOutsiders.com [email protected] Call 855-777-2443 FRACTIONAL CMOs FOR GROWTHMIDSIZE COMPANIES Chief Outsiders, LLC 2015