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Cut Through The Inbox Clutter With These 14 B2B Email Marketing Tips

July 11, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

Email is a great marketing tool, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) world. But professionals may receive hundreds of emails every week, and they simply don’t have the time to read every one of them.

If you want to reach your contacts through email marketing, you’ll have to secure their attention long enough to avoid immediate transfer to the dreaded “trash” folder. We asked a group of Forbes Agency Council members how to stand out among the many emails in a professional’s inbox. Their best answers are below.

1. Hyper-Personalize Your Messages

Only reach out if you are willing to be hyper-targeted and personalize your message to the target recipient. Thereafter, don’t ask for anything up front. Focus on providing value and sharing. This builds trust and credibility. Remember, it’s a mini relationship you are building. – Zamir Javer, Jumpfactor

2. Write Your Subject Line Last

When I write my emails, I always write my subject line last. I work with nonprofits and social enterprises. Because of that, I like to create emails that are very personable and feel more like a letter you would send a friend. I even include a handwritten signature at the end of every email. Once the email is complete, I pull the best line from the text and use it as my subject line. – Genia Stevens, Belwah Media

3. Stay Away From Image Overload

Make them personal. Sometimes a plain text email, addressing the recipient by their first name, will perform much better than a graphics-heavy email with 18 clickable links. In addition to getting noticed and read, it has a better chance of actually making it to their inbox. Too many images or sales-heavy words can land you a spot in the dreaded “Promotions” folder. – Bernard May, National Positions

4. Don’t Templatize Your Personalization

Treat people like real people, not businesses or business contacts. Don’t try to “trick” them into thinking your email is personalized by using templated content and customizing the name of the recipient or company—make it truly personal. Generic personalized emails are today’s mass junk mail. The gig is up. The recipient knows it wasn’t written just for them. – Kelli Corney, Mightily

5. Get Right To The Point

With over 400 emails flooding my inbox each day, I’m quick to delete just about anything that looks like spam—which means that on more than one occasion, I’ve deleted emails that did, in fact, present some kind of lucrative opportunity for collaboration. It’s the emails that get right to the point in the subject line that grab my attention the most—subject lines like “new potential client opportunity.” – Michelle Dempsey, Very Well-Written Marketing

6. Appeal To The Few People Who Need You Now

Email marketing will not work miracles. Don’t expect it to. Write subject lines that will appeal to the few customers who need what you’re offering now. If they open your email and glance at it for a second or two, you’ve earned a brand impression. Be brief and clear about the value proposition and call to action. Have a plan to follow up with those who click the email but don’t “convert.” – Craig Klein, SalesNexus.com

7. Offer Insights And Speak To Tipping Points

Emails that promote products and services are only useful to people who want products or services promoted to them, which is typically a very small segment of any email list. Instead, offer insights that help your audience achieve their most important goals. Identify tipping points when they know they need better ideas to move ahead, and offer great advice. This helps you top the inbox. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group

8. Send Something They Want To Read

There are certain emails that I look forward to receiving. I open every single one. Why? Because the information inside is offering real insight that will add value to my life. This applies to seeing a new piece of clothing that I might want, or to the consultant who is sharing their thoughts on our field. In short, you can earn trust by sending quality and keep trust by not sending too often. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai

9. Leverage User-Generated Content

The power of user-generated content extends far beyond social media. Repurposing user-generated content as part of your email marketing strategy can help capture attention and drive sales, as this content tends to be more authentic, personal and engaging. Not to mention, a consistent and streamlined visual marketing approach across all channels can help strengthen consumer relationships. – David Shadpour, Social Native

10. Don’t Lead With Self-Interest

Lead with the news or a subject line that’s relevant (or humorous) to the receiver, not yourself. Emails with subject lines like, “Got time for a call?” are underwhelming because the self-interest is clear. But when you write to a prospect or contact with a compelling subject line that shows you actually care about their problems or interests, the probability of hitting “delete” decreases. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications

11. Offer ‘Positive Disruption’

Know your audience and their interests and needs. Be ahead of trends and industry news, and be the first to offer keen insights, opinions and solutions. Positive disruption can spur thinking and charge change. Focus on what your targets need to know and not just what you want to share. No one needs more information, but everyone needs knowledge. Make sure the news you share is worth reading. – Pat Fiore, FIORE

12. Always Frame Your Message From The Customer’s Perspective

Many times, email marketing messages focus too heavily on broad product claims or feature sets. Challenge yourself to look at the communication from the point of view of the customer. What benefit will it bring them? What need will it fulfill? Be specific. You’ll be surprised how this shifts and improves your narrative. – Jenni Smith, EGR International

13. Use A Personalized Video

By using a personalized video with an embedded animation in the email, we are able to break through the noise of the inbox and grab the attention of our prospects. We use BombBomb to create hyper-personalized and relevant content for our prospects and then email them with a few sentences and an embedded GIF preview of the video, which plays directly in their inbox. – Adam Guild, Placepull

14. Say One Thing, Really Well

Your window of engagement is three seconds. Within that time, you must clearly articulate your message and how it will add value to their lives. While you may have a series of new services and helpful tips to share with your customers, push yourself to focus on one core message with one call to action. – Andrew Au, Intercept Group

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How LinkedSelling Achieves Consistent Volume and Reliability with LinkedIn Lead Gen

July 10, 2019 No Comments

By Judy Tian

LinkedSelling is a marketing agency that helps B2B companies generate high-quality leads and appointments through social media, such as LinkedIn, and email. LinkedSelling offers training, custom workshops, and fully outsourced LinkedIn marketing campaigns.

What better place to attract the right clientele for such services than LinkedIn, the leading social network for B2B lead gen?

Challenge

Trouble is, LinkedSelling didn’t immediately achieve stellar results through LinkedIn’s advertising platform by simply mirroring ad campaigns from other platforms. So, when LinkedIn released an array of new marketing products, the LinkedSelling team decided to revamp its approach and restructure campaigns specifically for LinkedIn.

Solution

Seeking to align its LinkedIn marketing strategy with the sales funnel, LinkedSelling started using different products for different stages of the buying cycle. The company had identified that beyond engagement or opt-ins, what really drives their business forward is appointments. So LinkedSelling structured each of its campaigns around a simple process to get more qualified prospects to book a phone call with the sales team.

For colder prospects who were actively seeking out lead gen solutions or were not yet familiar with their brand, LinkedSelling ran LinkedIn Sponsored Content to drive awareness and engagement. With warmer audiences, the team would reach out directly through LinkedIn Sponsored InMail to spark conversations, or with highly targeted follow-up messaging via Text Ads and Dynamic Ads.

“We just want to be in every location,” says Pat Henseler, LinkedSelling’s Director of Products. He adds that collaborating with sales reps to identify their most desirable audiences and building custom follow-up campaigns for new leads have been key to this fruitful approach.

Results

With a focused and dedicated strategy, LinkedSelling began to see tremendous improvements from marketing on LinkedIn. Henseler points to “volume and reliability” as hallmarks of his company’s lead generation results through LinkedIn. In just the past two months, their campaigns have generated over 820 new leads and seen a 7:1 return on ad spend in that same time period.

“LinkedIn typically generates high-value, high-qualified leads for us. The leads we’ve generated through LinkedIn have cut our closing time almost in half,” Pat Henseler, Director of Product, LinkedSelling, said.

Henseler added that he might be most impressed by the vast reduction in closing time he sees when marketing on the platform. “On average, our agency clients sign in 27-to-36 days through other avenues. On LinkedIn, we see 16-to-18 days.” One particularly effective practice he calls out is having the sales team reach out to prospects who have taken some steps to indicate interest (i.e. they downloaded a report) but have not yet connected directly (i.e. they have not booked a call); these kinds of proactive steps make a big difference in helping LinkedSelling get their money’s worth from ad spend.

For the full LinkedSelling case study, visit our Success Stories page. And to keep pace with the latest in digital marketing, subscribe to the LinkedIn Marketing Blog.

By Judy Tian

Sourced from LinkedIn

In News

Why Podcasting Is A Smart Marketing Strategy For Businesses Today

July 10, 2019 No Comments

By Nancy Marshall

Building an audience is an old strategy in marketing. Did you know that Proctor & Gamble created soap operas so they could build an audience to buy their soap?

That’s right. In the 1930s, P&G sponsored daytime serial dramas on the radio to advertise their products to housewives. Why? Because research suggested that women wanted to be entertained while doing housework. And so, literal “soap operas” were born.

In the early to mid 20th century, Edward Bernays — long considered the “father of public relations” — also built audiences on behalf of his clientele, which coincidentally included P&G. The Conversation reports that “to counteract President Coolidge’s stiff image, Bernays organized ‘pancake breakfasts’ and White House concerts with Al Jolson and other Broadway performers.” Knowing that such events would garner significant media attention and ingratiate Coolidge with new social circles, Bernays provided an opportunity to “control and regiment the masses” in Coolidge’s favor. Who can say no to a pancake breakfast?

Building an audience is as important now as it was then. We just have more tools at our disposal: From YouTube videos to blog posts and social media campaigns, there are more ways than ever to reach millions of people with your own content.

Podcasting is one of the most powerful ways to reach people. According to one study, more than half of Americans over age 12 (144 million Americans) have listened to a podcast — up from 44% in 2018. It’s estimated that 60 million Americans listen to podcasts weekly. That’s a lot of potential listeners.

Because of that avid listenership and the popularity of home voice assistant devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, podcasting is now an important part of the marketing mix for a modern brand strategy. Home voice assistant devices are making it easier than ever to listen to music, podcasts, news, flash briefings and other types of audio content while you’re doing other things in your home, whether it’s getting dressed in the morning, cooking meals, cleaning or even relaxing on the couch.

Marketers can create podcasts to build an audience based on a brand or a specific area of expertise. If they trust you, then people are likely to start trusting what your business can bring to the table — and they’ll show their trust with their pocketbooks.

Whether it’s for your personal or organizational brand, building an audience of listeners who know, like and trust you — and are comfortable giving you their money — is a smart business strategy. In fact, 41% of monthly podcast listeners have household incomes of $75,000 or more. Reaching them makes sense financially.

So how do you reach them? As always, content is king. Make your content interesting. Make it informative. A podcast helps you tell your story, so more people will know, like and trust you. It also allows you to position yourself as a credible expert from a listener’s perspective. With my podcast, I’m able to do just that as an expert on public relations.

When you invite a guest to be interviewed on your podcast, it becomes an in-depth, even intimate conversation. You can dig deep into your guest’s background — what makes them tick, what they’ve accomplished and what their plans are. Once you dig deep, you get to know your guest better, so you can help them solve their greatest problems. I call it the “white knight” strategy because you’re perfectly positioned to swoop in and save the day by helping them solve those problems.

With that in mind, your guests are often your best brand ambassadors. They’re likely to have a sense of ownership in your podcast and to help promote it through word of mouth and their social media channels. That helps you expand your sphere of influence and strengthen your personal brand — and you’re not even doing the work.

As word spreads, you may even receive media coverage — the cherry on the podcasting sundae. When media members hear you describe your area of expertise, they’re more likely to call on you the next time they have to report on a relevant topic. Your quote can become the closing quote of the story.

Even if it doesn’t lead to media coverage, a podcast is valuable in itself. All of the content that you create can be repurposed as blog posts, infographics, social media posts, e-books and even print books. In my experience, there’s no better cornerstone content for your area of expertise. Plus, all of that content can boost your search engine optimization profile — on Google Search and beyond.

So what are you waiting for? Start podcasting, and build your audience.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Nancy Marshall

Nancy Marshall, The PR Maven(R),CEO and Founder, Marshall Communications,creating and implementing marketing/PR/personal branding strategies

Sourced from Forbes

In Uncategorized

How to Connect Better with Customers with Less Jargon

July 10, 2019 No Comments

By Brian Carroll

How can marketers better connect with people we hope will become our customers?

Over the few years, I’ve been researching why there’s such a disconnect between marketing and customers so I can understand how to bridge that gap.

Why? Because right now, the trust gap between marketers and customers has never been more significant.

For example, this recent Gallup Poll showed that public confidence in the honesty and ethics of marketers and sellers is at the bottom of the list.

And this survey by Hubspot showed that only 3 percent of people surveyed consider marketers and salespeople trustworthy. I’ve asked myself: how can things get better?

Quick Takeaways:

Focus constantly on improving the customer experience.
Make your communication people-centered, not product-centered.
Do not objectify people when following your standard sales or marketing processes.

Don’t Forget the Customer Experience

This is a problem we face in marketing. And as you’ll see much of problem is self-inflicted.

Here’s what I mean:

I think we marketers can be cynical and even snarky at times. We know good marketing. And we have well-tuned B.S. meters. We’re customers who know a great experience too.

For example, I talked with a VP of Marketing yesterday about these ideas, and he shared a recent negative marketing experience he had as a customer.

He said, “It sucks, but here’s the thing: I’m guilty of doing the same thing too.”

I asked him why marketers struggle with connecting with customers, and he replied:

I think it’s easier for us in marketing to talk about what we’re comfortable with which is the product/service we sell. And we LOVE to talk them. But what I’m not very good at is understanding what motivates our customer and how to best talk to them.

Listen to Your Own Words

The significant part of the problem is the words and jargon we choose in marketing and sales to describe what we do and the people we’re doing it for. Namely, customers and potential customers.

Why? Because our words affect how we think.

It’s something linguists call the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which suggests that the words and the language we choose influences our thinking. I understood this intuitively, but I don’t know that I’ve helped much.

A decade ago, I wrote the book Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, and it succeeded beyond my hopes. Back then, I wrote that marketing and sales come down to one thing: starting and growing relationships. And I still believe that’s true.

To help, I’ve written about things like

Be human. Use empathy. Remember leads are people.

But I realize that didn’t articulate the problem which is the words we use in the sales and marketing are object-centered, not people-centered.

Let me explain.

Understand How Jargon Influences Thinking and Perception

In my experience, our words express more than our thoughts and feelings. They reflect our motivations and values. And our customers feel them. This is why customer empathy is essential.

But more than that, our words influence brain function, i.e., how we think.

Case in point, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman the authors of Words Can Change Your Brain confirm this through their extensive research. In sum, their research shows that our words actually change brain function and we are astonishingly unskilled when it comes to our understanding and communicating with others.

According to Newberg and Waldman, “We communicate in so many different ways and in so many situations, but if we don’t bring self-reflective consciousness into the equation by reflecting on what we say before we say it, we’ll fail to reach the depths of intimacy and cooperation that we are capable of.”

For example, the minute I call someone a “lead” or “prospect,” I turn them into an object in my mind. And when I see someone as an object, I treat my marketing as something I DO to people rather than something I do FOR them.

We objectify people when we use jargon like leads, prospects, suspects, conversions, opportunities, pipeline, MQLs, SQLs and more. We also use phrases like, “crush your quota,” “lead magnets, “wins,” ”closes,” “deals,” and more.

When we put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and use empathy, we can begin to see how we unwittingly talk in a way that dehumanizes people and treats them as objects.

Nobody wants to be treated as an object to convert. Instead, we need to address others as thinking and feeling people with individual needs. So how can we identify with others and connect on a human level?

Close the Trust Gap

It’s no wonder the perception of marketers and sellers is negative, and we have a trust gap. And we’re due for a change.

It starts with the words we use which ultimately affects how we think and act towards others. We need to think about how we can connect more humanly and engagingly.

We have this incredible capacity to influence people positively or negatively.

That’s why we need to find congruency in the words we use and the ultimate purpose of marketing which is to help start and grow customer relationships.

To do this, immerse yourself in your customer’s world and think from their experience. Begin by looking at what you see and hear. And then consider the words you use from your client’s perspective. This will help inspire new language.

Also, the use of words that people-centered. For example, instead of leads, you can talk about change makers, potential customers, future customers, future advocates instead. See what I mean?

Next Steps

How will you change the words that you use to describe customers and future customers?
How might you change the way you talk about what you do inside (an outside) your companies to treat people like humans rather than objects to convert?

Based on the words and jargon we use, it’s no wonder the perception of marketers and sellers is negative, and we have a trust gap. It’s time for a change.

The post How to get your marketing unstuck and connect with customers appeared first on B2BLeadBlog.com.

By Brian Carroll

Brian Carroll knows what drives B2B buyers. As the founder of the B2B Lead Blog, a researcher and lecturer on marketing best practices, and leader in empathy marketing, he’s at the epicenter of the shifting B2B marketing landscape. Brian is the author of the bestseller, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill). He is also the founder of the B2B Lead Roundtable LinkedIn Group with 19,533+ members. Brian recently finished a stint as Chief Evangelist at MECLABS (parent company of MarketingSherpa) and is now back to helping B2B understand and execute modern lead generation and empathetic marketing with his speaking, consulting, and training workshops. www.b2bleadblog.com @brianjcarroll

Sourced from Marketing Insider Group

In News

4 Common Assumptions About Online Reputation Management That Are Totally Wrong

July 9, 2019 No Comments

By Manish Dudharejia

Eventually somebody will write something unpleasant about your business. You better have a plan.

Reputation management in the age of the internet is essential to business like water is to humans.

Well, maybe not that extreme. But you get the idea.

You’ve probably stumbled across a statistic or two about how impactful online reviews and feedback are on purchasing decisions. The bottom line is that public brand sentiment is a game changer in how people shop these days. This is a reality that all entrepreneurs must come to terms with.

The task of managing an online reputation is not an easy one, nor is it a one-size-fits-all process. The goal is to make sure you don’t have to learn the biggest lessons the hard way. That said, here are four things that many entrepreneurs get wrong about managing their online reputation.

1. Underestimating the value of consistency.

As many entrepreneurs quickly learn, managing an online reputation isn’t something that can be done in an afternoon or over the weekend. If there is one overarching buzzword attached to this process, it’s consistency.

For as long as your business is operating, shaping and maintaining an online reputation is a job that never ends. In the beginning, the steps involved in getting the ball rolling can likely be done single-handedly. These initial steps typically include:

Setting up Google Alerts for anything brand-related.
Claiming your business on the major platforms like Yelp, Google My Business, and niche review sites.
Setting up social media monitoring accounts (Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Mention).
Getting your blog up and running.

In the startup stage, consistently interacting with people online, responding to reviews, and creating thought leadership content won’t require a momentous time commitment. However, once business picks up, maintaining consistency will start to become harder and harder. As a general rule, if you are spending between one and two hours per day staying on top of your online reputation, it’s probably time to consider bringing on a specialist – at least on a part-time basis.

2. Assuming star ratings are all that matter.

To reiterate, customer reviews are an essential ingredient to an online reputation. A big part of the process is simply getting customers to review your product, service, and overall experience. Truth be told, most people won’t leave a review on their own. The good news is about 70% will if they are asked to, according to a study by BrightLocal.

Over the years, the very concept of online reviews has seen an interesting evolution. The era of online reviews started back in the late 1990’s during the Clinton presidency. Gradually, websites like RateMD.com started popping up in which people could review doctors.

Fast forward to today and there are niche review platforms designed for restaurants all the way to software solutions. In terms of the reviews themselves, a good or bad online reputation goes far beyond just the number of star ratings.

Consumers these days have more options than ever before. People can now be extremely picky in terms of how and where they spend their money. They look to online reviews to get an unbiased third-party opinion of a brand, product, or service. As you develop a strategy to gather reviews, you need to design prompts that give people the whole picture of what it’s like to do business with you.

Now, this can be tricky. You want to get substantial feedback, yet you don’t want to make it too time-consuming for the customer. When you send out follow up emails asking people to review, keep the prompt simple. Ask them what the pros were, the cons, the general overview, and advice to the company. This works to give people a 360-degree view of your business from a customer’s perspective.

Keep in mind, in the world of online reviews, honesty reigns supreme.

3. Negative sentiment should be left alone.

No one likes getting negative reviews. You put your heart and soul into your business; seeing unhappy customers rip it to shreds in a public arena is tough to watch.

However, negative reviews are not the grim reaper – believe it or not.

The way you react to bad sentiment says WAY more about your business than the review itself. To reference the BrightLocal study again, nearly 90 percent of consumers read business’ responses to reviews. Moreover, Google has confirmed that responding to reviews improves SEO value.

So, regardless of how painful it is to read bad reviews, you need to bite the bullet and make an effort to respond. If you play your cards right, you can turn this into a positive and gain a loyal customer. Zappos is famous for going above and beyond to turn bad customer experiences into extremely memorable positives.

Responding to negative reviews requires a certain touch. First and foremost, you don’t want to respond right away. Let the bad sentiment marinate for a day or so. The last thing you want is to respond while emotions are high. Second, and this should go without saying, try your best to empathize. Ultimately, your brand reputation depends on your ability to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and meet their needs.

Lastly, do your best to try and take the conversation offline – whether it’s on a review platform or social media. The initial public response should be cordial, but then encourage the bulk of the interaction with the nitty-gritty details to take place in private. This is for both your protection and that of the customer.

4. Thinking there is a ‘quick-fix’ for reputation issues.

An online reputation can always take a bad turn. There is a common saying that goes, “A reputation is something that can take 30 years to build, yet be completely destroyed in 30 seconds.”

In the age of social media and constant connectedness, we see crises happen all the time. United Airlines, Uber, and Wells Fargo are just a few examples of a reputation falling apart in an instant. If this unfortunate event happens to you, the key is to not let panic set in, as this leads to rash decisions.

In the old days of the internet, many companies assumed they could combat poor sentiment by forging their own positive reviews or paying professional writers to write long, detailed praises on major review platforms. While this certainly worked for a hot second, review sites wised up to these devious tactics. Trying to sidestep the process of gaining authentic reviews can get you into serious trouble.

Additionally, the simple fact that people nowadays are bombarded with insane amounts of brand messaging every day, most consumers have gotten pretty good at spotting BS. Resorting to sketchiness to try and mend a damaged reputation can often times put you even deeper in the hole.

When you are in a pickle, you need to accept that there is no quick solution. Getting people back on your side is a long process that often times requires deep-seated change. Take Uber for example. When they were in hot water from poor practices behind the scenes, they essentially cleaned house and rebuilt their company culture from the ground up. While they still have a long way to go, the new CEO is doing the right things to turn Uber’s image around.

The most important thing you can do is critically listen to what people are saying and make a conscious effort to usher in a fundamental transformation.

Over to You

The task of managing your online reputation will be around as long as your business’s doors are open. Not everything is going to be peaches & cream. You are going to hit bumps in the road and need to know how to handle it.

Hopefully, this post has given you a good idea of what you should do, and more importantly, what you should not do.

Feature Image Credit: 10’000 Hours | Getty Images

By Manish Dudharejia

Founder and president of E2M Solutions Inc.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Five Things High-Performing Portfolio Marketers Do Differently

July 9, 2019 No Comments

By Katie Fabiszak

Portfolio marketing deserves to have a seat at the strategic table alongside other executives
Results of a recent SiriusDecisions survey show that organizations that give portfolio marketing a strategic role to lead go-to-market strategy outperform their peers significantly
Portfolio marketers should own the alignment of product, sales and marketing for go-to-market efforts

Portfolio marketing leaders (and their teams) need to have a strategic seat at the table to do their jobs effectively, but they’re not always invited to that table! We repeatedly hear the following comments from many of our clients:

“It’s difficult for us to show portfolio marketing’s value because we are considered so ‘upstream’ from the activities that get measured.”
“We aren’t invited to participate in the go-to-market strategy discussions.”
“Our sales leader defines our target market segments.”
“Our product leader owns our launch process, not us.”

Do any of these comments sound familiar to you?

Portfolio marketing leaders need to work alongside the leaders of sales, product and the wider marketing organization to align efforts. It’s time for change– and we are here to help portfolio marketing get their seat at the strategic table!

SiriusDecisions conducted a survey exclusive to portfolio marketers to analyze what successful organizations are doing – and we unveiled the in-depth survey results at the 2019 SiriusDecisions Summit.

Here are some of the results, which show organizations that give portfolio marketing a strategic role to leads the go-to-market efforts outperform their peers significantly. We defined “high-performing organizations” as those where 90 percent or more of their offerings were meeting revenue targets. Survey highlights include:

Portfolio marketing drives the creation of defined target market segments. Eighty-six percent of high performers indicate the majority of offerings (76-100 percent) have well-defined target market segments. In comparison, only 14 percent of low-performing organizations have defined target market segments.
Portfolio marketers are responsible for market opportunity identification. Fifty-four percent of high performing organizations make portfolio marketing responsible for identifying market opportunities – compared with just 21 percent for the low performers.
As the experts on buyers, portfolio marketing owns the creation of buyer personas. Almost two-thirds of high performing organizations (64 percent) indicate the majority of offerings (76-100 percent) have defined target buyer personas. Only 21 percent of low performers have defined buyer personas.
Portfolio marketing owns the messaging that informs go-to-market activities. Ninety-three percent of high-performing organizations have portfolio marketing own messaging development and consistently leverage the messaging developed by portfolio marketers.
High-performing organizations are two times more likely to have a well-defined process for launching new offerings. Best-in-class organizations have defined activities and deliverables across product, marketing and sales with decision gates to achieve alignment and faster time to market. More than half of high performers have portfolio marketing lead the go-to-market launch process.

These survey results support the idea that portfolio marketing needs to be a strategic function. Portfolio marketers need to own the alignment of product, sales and marketing to build out an aligned go-to-market strategy and achieve successful results. Do this and you’ll be in the category of our high performers, where more than 90 percent of offerings meet revenue targets. Keep doing the “same old, same old,” and you’ll find yourself hanging out with the low performers. The bottom line is that high-performing portfolio marketers don’t distract themselves with tactics and activities that aren’t core to portfolio marketing.

By Katie Fabiszak

Katie is a strategic business leader with more than 20 years of experience working in sales and marketing to create and align go-to-market strategies for b-to-b organizations.

Sourced from Sirius Decisions

In News

How to Segment Your Audience for Demand Generation

July 9, 2019 No Comments

By Gurdeep Dhillon

In the first post in our series on demand generation, we talked about what demand gen is—as opposed to what people think it is—and then looked at the five aspects of a successful campaign.

Now, we’re going to cover one of those areas in detail: audience segmentation.

Knowing how to effectively manage and segment your audience and direct the right resources to the right people at the right time is the principle by which all marketing campaigns live and die. And demand generation campaigns are no exception.

At this stage, your primary goal should be to get your message in front of as many qualified people as possible, which means you’re likely casting a wider net than with a demand capture campaign. But that doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore personalization.

Considering specific parameters, like job title, industry, and location, and knowing the criteria for your ideal customer profile are vital to your success.

Why is audience segmentation important?

As marketers, we’re competing in an environment where prospects are exposed to more content through more channels than ever before. Their phones and computers never stop pinging, which means we all need to find a way to stand out among the noise.

And this applies to everyone. It doesn’t matter how niche your audience is. There will always be other businesses—as well as friends, family members, and the latest Netflix shows—competing for space in their heads.

This is part of the reason organic reach is no longer as effective as it once was. It’s also why good segmentation and genuine personalization offer such a strong advantage. They can be the difference between mediocre content and outstanding content that actually breaks through and speaks to your audience.

Data is king

Properly targeted content is now a must-have, not a nice-to-have. But getting personalization right requires one thing above all else: a firm grasp of your data.

Without good, current data, every part of your demand generation campaign will be a virtual stab in the dark.

But if your data is up to date, you can create content that is truly relevant and personalized. And that means the chances of it resonating with your audience are far higher.

With marketers increasingly under pressure to show ROI on every dollar spent, anything that can increase those chances is well worth the investment.

Five tips for effective audience segmentation

1. Define the best criteria

Of course, there’s no such thing as the “best” criteria. Only the criteria that’s best for you.

For many B2B companies, segmenting with parameters like title, industry, and role is the extent of their efforts. But that will only get you so far. You can go much deeper than that.

To make sure you’re targeting the right people at the right time, ask yourself some key questions:

Is your offering relevant to them?
How will it help them do their jobs better?
What are they under pressure to achieve?
How can you help them achieve it?
Are they at the right stage of the buying cycle?
Do you need to educate them further?

Once you have answers, you may find that your strategy changes. Why target the busy executive who won’t have time to read your content when you can target the person tasked with researching technology and reporting to them?

2. Know your platforms

Today, marketing means interacting with prospects on lots of platforms and through lots of channels—each with different rules and parameters.

When planning a marketing campaign, evaluate which channels will most effectively reach the right audience segment with the right messaging.

For instance, because executives receive so many emails, they’re less likely to read messages from unknown sources. But they often find useful reports and information while scrolling through their social media feed before a meeting.

To deliver the most impactful campaigns, make sure your team knows these platforms inside out and understands the best way spread your content on them.

3. Treat data as your marketing lifeblood

We’ve already touched on the importance of having detailed, relevant, up-to-date data.

But information changes quickly. In fact, according to research by MarketingSherpa, databases naturally degrade by about 22.5% each year.

So, pay close attention to your data hygiene. It can increase your marketing effectiveness exponentially.

This may require a paradigm shift in your organization. Many companies operate today with the same basic data strategy they used when CRMs first launched. That certainly won’t provide you with a competitive advantage so you may need to lead a data overhaul.

4. Don’t stop at demand gen

You should continue your targeting well past the demand generation stage. And don’t worry—it gets easier over time.

Once a prospect begins to engage with your content, you will get an increasingly clearer picture of what they’re interested in (as long as you’re tracking your data effectively).

Use this information to continue to fuel your lead nurturing efforts by personalizing and tailoring content and messaging for your prospects throughout the funnel.

5. Learn from successes—and failures

When demand generation campaigns fail, it’s usually because their strategies were based on bad data or because their outcomes weren’t properly measured.

So, measure everything. Make sure you know what worked and what didn’t. And use repeatable processes to ensure your segmentation gets more successful every time.

By Gurdeep Dhillon

Sourced from Marketo

In News

Why The Zero Moment Of Truth Is Even More Important Today

July 8, 2019 No Comments

By Steve Olenski

In 2011 Jim Lecinski, who was Vice President, US Sales & Service for Google, wrote the book Winning The Zero Moment Of Truth. The book dealt with the “moment where marketing happens, where information happens, and where consumers make choices that affect the success and failure of nearly every brand in the world.”

While it was ‘only’ 8 years ago, we all know 8 years is a lifetime in the digital age. In fact it is multiple lifetimes.

Today, Jim is a professor of marketing at the world-renowned Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern as well as Notre Dame. He also serves as an advisor for the consulting firm Bain and Narrative Science, a software company.

I caught up with Jim not long ago. I wanted to pick his brain on a whole host of topics including the now-infamous ZMOT.

What are some (of the many I’m sure) things that come to mind when you think about Then v. Now and the zero moment of truth?

Well, over time it’s become clear that the notion of ZMOT which we first identified eight years ago has proven accurate, and it continues to be even more important than ever today. Academic research have shown the criticality of winning that moment of the consumer journey.

And now with the emergence of mobile, that pre-shopping evaluation behavior has exploded across all categories not just high stakes high involvement categories like investments or travel. For example Google has recently reported that ZMOT searches for “best olive oil,” “best shower curtain,” “best umbrella,” and “best toothbrush” all have doubled between 2015 and 2017. So marketers need to continue to be focused on winning ZMOT today.

What’s your latest project you’re working on?

I am working on a book project with Raj Venkatesan, a professor at University of Virginia’s Darden School titled AI Moments of Truth in which we propose a strategic roadmap for Marketers to apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to Marketing.

Marketers are increasingly hearing about the importance and potential for what AI & ML might do to transform Marketing. The problem is, the AI and marketing books and solutions CMOs and their teams typically encounter are focused either on the basic capabilities of AI and machine learning technology or on the high level impact of AI on humanity, with nothing much in between.

This book proposes a solution that places the customer at the center of the discussion, a solution designed to help marketing managers leverage AI to do their jobs better, i.e., deliver the amazing, highly personalized customer experiences that will set their brands apart and help them win.

In short we show how AI can “super-charge” each Moment of Truth in your customer journey, and we provide an “AI Canvas for Marketers” as your playbook or strategic roadmap.

Segueing into your current life, if you will, as a professor if I may. What are some of the key lessons you try to impart to future marketers on a high level that is meaning some lessons will vary based on what particular field of marketing a given student pursues?

I teach Marketing Strategy and Brand Management at Northwestern and Notre Dame. In my courses we stress that the role of marketing is to drive profitable incremental growth.

That’s what it’s all about, that’s why marketers exist. And it’s important not to confuse “means and ends.” Things like “engagement,” “views,” “likes,” etc. can be important means, but don’t lose sight of the ends: profit, revenue and share growth.

To do that modern marketers need to be “whole-brained” which is to say they need to be fluent in data analysis and creative insights. It’s the effective combination of those things together that enable great marketers to drive profit growth. That’s what we try to impart on the students – that strategic approach and the tools to make it happen.

Additionally do you think there are some Marketing 101 lessons that were applicable say 25 years ago that still apply today?

No doubt. The interesting thing about marketing is that it is an “additive” profession. Marketing concepts we all learned and practiced years ago like how to write a good brand positioning statement and the 4Ps still matter as do classic techniques and methods like Conjoint Analysis. AND additionally now there are also newer theories (like Christensen’s “jobs to be done”) and techniques like R and Sentiment Analysis that we all need to know too.

This is what makes marketing challenging – it’s the totality of the decisions marketers have to make and the ever-evolving nature of consumers, competition and technology that marketers need to know.

Now let’s take a look at brands in general but I also want you to wear your consumer hat. What are some things brands do that drives you crazy today?

It drives me crazy when brands that have significant friction in the customer journey. I’ve been sharing this story about a recent brand experience I had: I stopped into a big box store right near my house because I needed a small $10 item. I walked the store and couldn’t find it, so tried to find someone to ask, finally I did. He looked on their computer, and said they had one set in the store.

He then couldn’t find it (and it’s now 30 minutes elapsed) so he suggests he can order it for me and have it shipped to the store in 3-6 days for a fee of $3.99. I say are you kidding, I can order it myself from Amazon right now on my phone and have them at my door tomorrow free. He replied, “I know that’s why I order from Amazon too even though I work here.”

This story illustrates immense friction in my buyer journey. Know your customer, and ruthlessly work to eliminate friction at every step–or someone else will!

Then looking down the road, finish this sentence: The brands that will be successful 10, 20 years from now will be the brands that _______________________________.

…will be the brands that know their customers best, and can quickly and continuously provide an ever-improving brand experience based on that customer knowledge. Unpacking this, that will mean a continued focus on customer-intimacy and deriving superior customer-insights AND the ability to quickly and decisively act to deliver what customers want. Increasingly this means real-time personalized experiences.

To do that, marketers will need to increasingly turn to machines to assist them. For example, take Google Search, how can you decide the optimal bid, budget, creative, landing page, time of day, day of the week and geography for every single relevant query? With a spreadsheet? In a weekly meeting? Machine learning offers marketers the potential to solve this.

That in my opinion is a key to being successful in the future…and thus why I’ve been thinking a lot about this looming “AI Moment of Truth” marketers are facing.

By Steve Olenski

View all posts by Steve Olenski

Sourced from The CMO Whisperer

In News

Google rolls out new visual ad formats for mobile

July 8, 2019 No Comments

By John Glenday

Google has given the green light to a series of new mobile advertising formats, unveiling image-focused buys for brands.

New arrivals include a ‘gallery’ format for mobile, enabling advertisers to reach users with multiple images and the introduction of ads within the discover feed built into many Android home screens for the first time.

This latter innovation will see ads depicted in the same style as regular stories with a lead image, headline and subject field – differentiated solely by a small ‘ad’ badge.

Each new format is designed to provide greater visibility for advertisers with Google predicting 25% more interactions as a result but at the expense of disrupting some people using core Google services such as search.

Google has been experimenting with ways to improve the visual clout of its advertising for the past year, driven by the knowledge that a more aesthetic approach will command greater levels of engagement.

These changes will be limited solely to mobile service, not desktop, with gallery ads expected to become widely available ‘later this year’.

On the other side of the coin Google has been cracking down on ‘bad ads‘, renoving 2.3bn over 2018 alone.

By John Glenday

Sourced from The Drum

In News

4 Major Marketing Trends for 2020 and Beyond

July 8, 2019 No Comments

By Alp Mimaroglu

Do you know what ‘on-SERP SEO’ means in the marketing universe? You’re not alone, but you are missing an opportunity.

Can you believe it’s almost 2020? When I began my marketing career over a decade ago in 2009, I could hardly imagine what I’d be doing today as a marketing leader at an enterprise organization …

… especially with technology. But each year, new and disruptive technological innovations are forcing marketers like me to evolve our best practices. Digital marketing, once the only game in town, has given way to multichannel marketing; and today, we are rapidly approaching the omnichannel marketing age.

And that can be overwhelming: As the rate of marketing innovation continues to accelerate, most organizations are having a hard time keeping up. But the good news is that new ways of doing things bring new opportunities. Here are four major marketing trends I see developing among organizations for 2020 and beyond:

1. Optimizing for on-SERP SEO

Ever hear of zero-click results? You’ve probably seen them. A zero-click result is a search result in which Google automatically provides the answer to the search query in the form of an automated snippet.

For example, if you type in ,“What is the temperature in San Francisco?” Google will automatically provide you a result it generates on its own. You’d actually have to scroll down to see the Adwords results and organic search results.

Google auto-populates search results for much broader queries, as well. Everything from “What is a cryptocurrency?” to “How do I create a marketing funnel?” has a snippet that may prevent a searcher from scrolling down to see more results.

Why is this significant? Because 61.8 percent of search results in Google are now zero-search results, according to data from Jumpshot. As a result, more and more keywords are becoming less profitable.

While the automatic snippet sometimes comes from a website that ranks somewhere on page 1 of the search engine results page (SERP), companies are unsure how to optimize their content so that Google chooses them over anyone vying for the same spot. Needless to say, this is a concerning development for any business that markets or advertisers on Google.

Opportunity: The brand that figures out on-SERP SEO first will have a huge competitive edge.

2. Advertising on smart speakers (and optimizing for voice search)

Another major development in recent years has been the proliferation of smart speakers. In 2018, around 56 million smart speakers were sold to consumers, according to Social Report.

Yet despite the growing number of households asking Alexa, Siri and Google Home questions, smart speaker marketing and advertising opportunities have been scarce. But this seems to be changing.

In 2017, for example, Google Home users noticed that a universal ad for Disney’s Beauty and The Beast began playing shortly after scheduled morning announcements, called flash briefings. These types of ads were rare and infrequent at the time, but are now growing in popularity.

In 2019, we’re seeing better, less invasive, examples of branded advertising on smart speakers. One of the most customer-friendly ways to advertise on smart speakers is to make what’s called a “branded skill.” For example, if you tell Alexa “Ask Patrón for a cocktail recipe,” Alexa will respond with a diverse selection of possibilities, courtesy of the premium tequila maker. This strategy works:. Patrón gets more than 6,000 queries a month for its Alexa skill, according to Digiday.

Opportunity: Try the “branded skill” approach for your branded advertising, for a more customer-friendly tone.

3. Optimizing for voice search

Granted, most brands may not be ready to explore smart speaker advertising just yet. But in the meantime, they should explore optimizing their content for voice search.

According to Google, 20 percent of all Google search queries now take place through voice search. Even more telling is that 71 percent of all mobile users between the ages of 18 and 29 use voice assistants on their smartphones, according to Thrive Analytics.

Needless to say, it probably makes a lot of sense for all businesses to start optimizing their content for voice search, not just big enterprises. There’s a lot of advice from marketing experts on how to do this, and it seems that the consensus is that making content more conversational does the trick.

Opportunity: With most search happening on smartphones, optimize for voice search.

4. More chatbots and, yes, even more content!

Finally, as I’ve explained before, written content isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Not only is it predicted to be the marketing activity that will make the largest commercial impact three years running (according to Smart Insights), but written content is also the main throughput of chatbots, which are expected to see increased usage in 2020 and beyond.

According to a recent study by Juniper Networks, as AI-powered chatbots grow in popularity and sophistication, retailers can expect to cut costs by $439 billion annually and increase sales by $112 billion, by 2023. With numbers like that, it’s not too hard to see why large organizations will continue investing in newer and more helpful chatbots.

But chatbots aren’t useful just for big business. Any business that has a website with traffic can benefit from a simple chatbot that answers the most common visitor questions and helps convert visitors into warm leads.

Opportunity: Chatbots will help you cut costs.

Marketing is changing, and marketers must change with it

When I first got my feet wet in the marketing world, I couldn’t have imagined that I’d be helping run digital marketing transformation programs. But that’s what it takes to stay competitive in the world of 21st-century marketing.

It’s almost 2020; have you looked into any new and innovative ways to spend your marketing dollars? Or how to double down on the marketing channels that work best for your business?

Because if you haven’t, I guarantee your competitors have.

Feature Image Credit: ipopba | Getty Images

By Alp Mimaroglu

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe