There’s Power in Our (BtoB Marketing) Habits

I have been thinking lately about the power of our habits – those habits that contribute to “negative” outcomes, and those that help us to meet positive goals.

A Shared Definition

After checking a variety of sources, here’s a working definition of the word “habit.”  It is something:

·      we do automatically without thinking

·      we repeat often as a routine

Good, Bad, the Ugly

Good habits in our personal life include brushing our teeth upon waking; clicking our seat-belt when we get in a car, or saying "please and thank you.”

Good habits in business to business marketing might include taking time each week to review relevant metrics related to marketing programs, monitoring key industry blogs and publications for trends, or a weekly update meeting with the customer service team to pull compelling customer testimonials.

Bad habits include biting our fingernails, late night snacking in front of the TV, those afternoon candy breaks at work, and more.

Bad habits in business to business marketing might include forgetting to keep a customer mindset in programs, ignoring key metrics like web visitor behavior, not regularly scheduling sales team project updates.

The Power of Habits

The bottom line is that habits have a lot of power in both our personal and work lives:  power for good, or power for bad. 

As marketers, we are wise to build a set of routine behaviors that deliver the best business outcome for our clients.

• Routinely checking customer service for mini success stories is a powerful habit that fuels content marketing programs.
• Regularly posting comments on thought leadership blogs and articles helps your client “get in the conversation.”

Intrigued?  See one of the best posts out there about “habits of highly effective marketers” here…

Reckoning with Last Year's Resolutions

Last year at about this time, a BtoB Blog post outlined five resolutions as a way to give focus to marketing program efforts. 

The list set priorities against the never-ending to-do list of marketing campaigns, eNewsletters, PR programs and other daily tasks.

So how did it turn out?  

Let's look back to the 5 resolutions set for 2011, with an assessment of efforts.

1) Test your marketing programs, when you can.  2011 efforts were solid but we can do better!  One 2011 client project did use a CRM solution to split direct email marketing messages into A/B groups to test email subject lines. However, our team resolves to continue to test one element at a time.  This year, we intend to test the audiences by being more strategic in segmentation; test the “call to action” or offers to see which gets the best result; test design elements like photos; test headlines and subheads in the copy.  I did not have a chance to use Google Optimizer tools to A/B test two pages of a website. Great idea to pursue in 2012.

2) Ask somebody else outside of the organization to review your content.  Again, 2011 efforts were good but there’s room for improvement here.  For several Rogier Communications projects, a person outside the client organization, who was in the same general industry, read marketing content (website, an article and press releases) and provided valuable feedback. Other client work did not take time to seek an outside perspective. Here again, need to do more of this in 2012!

3) Make campaigns as relevant and timely as possible.  Teaming with Markit Strategies, our efforts definitely hit the mark.  Our team quickly sent out over a dozen direct marketing messages through the year, emphasizing timely regulations, articles and news in the industry press relevant on behalf of our main Markit Strategies client. These messages result in high conversions responding to the offer.  The timely nature of the message is a big part of the success.  Let’s keep it up in 2012!

4) Make measurements meaningful.  A recent post stressed the value of measuring marketing program outcomes, not outputs. 2011 efforts moved in this direction, but there is room for improvement.  Several 2011 Rogier Communications programs did focus on outcomes in terms of measuring social media engagement, open rates of messages, web traffic and other key metrics.  We can do better about being consistent in measurement, reporting, and monitoring trends.

5) Keep learning! Try something new!  This one hit the mark in 2011. There was tremendous value from attending the MarketingSherpa BtoB Summit in Boston, summarized in blog post recap part I and Summit recap part II.    The one-on-one content strategy and direct marketing coaching provided by MecLabs was especially useful. Other 2011 training included attending several  MarketingProf webinars related to using LinkedIn business-to-business marketing, eBook marketing, content strategy, and direct mail messaging.  I taught myself the basics of salesforce.com for a professional services client, and successfully navigated the world of social media marketing.  It’s critical to keep skills fresh. A learning mind is everything. This approach will continue in 2012.

So instead of laying out another set of resolutions, let’s keep these five and shoulder on!  Happy New Year, all! 

The Upside to Group Juggling

It's a fast pace in the typical business-to-business marketing department.

New projects and fresh ideas for innovative programs can often fall between the cracks especially when the team is going a million miles a minute juggling regular, monthly marketing programs.

A complicating factor is when the team is large (8 plus people), with some team members working remotely or part time.

A recent HBR blog post entitled “The Secret to Ensuring Follow Through” offers a helpful look at how to help ensure follow-through in this kind of setting.

When a marketing team is juggling a million ideas, as noted in the post, “there is a higher risk of someone, somewhere, dropping a ball."

The post goes onto say:

“… there's another, more positive, side to group juggling: the more people juggling, the more likely someone, somewhere will be able to catch a ball that an otherwise busy, overwhelmed individual would have dropped.”

A New Mindset

The HBR blog author proposes a new tool and "culture" to help a big marketing team manage tasks -- nothing overly formal, but a new mindset and vocabulary as a style of communicating.   

The tool is essentially a list of 7 questions to work through as new projects are delegated.  It stems from a work known as “The Checklist Manifesto” by Dr. Atoll Gawande.

This approach is incredibly valuable for the projects so many of us in marketing manage as a team – keeping websites updated; special event management; direct marketing campaigns; online advertising; sales support; etc.

Here’s the list from HBR, modified here for a business-to-business marketing team.

The (Marketing) Handoff Checklist

1. What do you understand the overall marketing goals of this project to be? (Lead generation?  Generating attendance at a sales event?  Gathering a certain number of attendees at an online webinar?)
2. Do you have any issues or concerns with this idea that have not already been mentioned?
3. What are the key next steps – creative, content development, project management, etc. -  and by when do you plan to accomplish them?
4. What do you need from the team in order to be successful?
5. Are there any key contingencies we should plan for now?
6. When will we next check-in on progress/issues?
7. Who else in the organization (Creative Team, Sales, HR, Admin?) needs to know our plans, and how will we communicate them?

Coordination Wanted

There is definitely an upside to group juggling. 

Indeed there’s a better chance of success when the team can work together to catch the ball that an overwhelmed individual might drop – but that effort takes coordination.  

Next time your marketing team juggles a new program or project, give the Handoff Checklist a try and let us know how it went.

The Marketing Two-Step

Here’s another blog post about marketing and dancing.

Gaining Insight
One of the advantages of contract consulting is the opportunity to team with business-to-business companies in a variety of industries -- learning about each company’s challenges.  This provides valuable perspective and insight into common marketing challenges most organizations face in the marketplace. 

While most of my background is in manufacturing and technology, a significant number of projects and clients come from the professional services and non-profit/educational sector.  

Common Goals
Despite the type of business, many of the marketing issues these organizations face are the same. 

At the most fundamental, most organizations want to:

• expand market awareness.
• seek out prospects likely to buy.
• entice prospects to make a purchase decision.

In pursuit of that goal, decades of experience have revealed that the following two-step process is key, despite the company type.  Think if it as a “Marketing Two-Step”.

The Marketing Two-Step

Step 1: Who’s Your Prospect and What Do They Want?   

Most organizations have not taken the time to develop a solid understanding of who the company is trying to attract, and what motivates them.

It’s all very well and good to make assumptions about the marketplace but that approach can be quite ineffective.  The marketing two-step begins with a commitment to allocate resources to get inside the heads of prospects. Instead of designing and creating marketing campaigns, ads, lead generation programs or other marketing programs based on the internal team’s existing understanding of what they think their buyers want, the first step is to ascertain resonating messages, tone and features of campaigns that appeal to what ideal buyers want – not what we think they want. 

This can be accomplished by teaming with reputable marketing research groups, conducting market surveys or focus groups, or even surveying recent wins to determine the most compelling buying decisions of recent closed sales.

Step 2) Set Clear Goals and Targets.    

The two-step also includes a process to team with sales, finance, and other internal team members to calculate the number of leads needed to achieve revenue goals. Then here's the kicker, communicate that goal to the entire sales/marketing team. 

What’s the company’s revenue goal?  Tie that annual goal to leads and sales. How many inbound prospects turn into qualified leads?  How many qualified leads from marketing turn into sales?  What’s the average revenue from a closed sale?  An aggressive program depends on these figures. This target needs to be front and center.

Elegance Despite Difficulty

This marketing two-step sounds deceptively simple, but it is in fact extremely difficult to achieve.  (Fred Astaire sure made those routines look easy! He even makes dancing with a coat rack look elegant!) 

Like any dance choreography, this key step has to come first to “set up” the rest of the dance.

The trick is to make it part of the routine, do it as elegantly as you can, and go about the step with gusto. 

Five New Year’s Resolutions for B-to-B Marketers

B-2-B marketers are a busy group of folks.  For many marketing departments, the to-do list seems never-ending. There’s always another marketing campaign to generate; tradeshow to plan and attend; eNewsletter to write and distribute; prospect database to build; Adword campaign to launch; and so on.

Before this first month of 2011 ends, it might be useful to commit to a set of resolutions as a way to give focus to efforts.  This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, just a way to place priorities.  Hope it is helpful as we start the New Year of business-to-business marketing. 

1) Test your marketing programs, when you can.  If you have a CRM solution, split direct email marketing messages into A/B groups and test one element at a time.  Test the placement of a download button; test a subject line for the best open rates; test design elements like photos; test headlines.  Use Google Optimizer tools to A/B test two pages of a website. See which message or page gets the largest open rate or conversion rate.  This approach is truly liberating and focuses effort on the optimized, best performing elements.

2) Ask somebody else outside of the organization to review your content.  This is a favorite subject, as my colleagues likely know.  Did you just write a web page, brochure or eNewsletter?  Let somebody outside the organization, who is in the same general industry, read the content and see if resonates or hits the mark.  Getting feedback from folks outside the organization is a low-cost, high impact strategy for improved marketing communications.

3) Make campaigns as relevant and timely as possible.  Here’s a resolution to put into place as much as possible.  Just yesterday President Obama signed a new food safety bill into law, and a Markit Strategies client sent a notice reminding our team of the news.  We quickly sent out a direct marketing message to food industry folks in the prospect database addressing how the client’s products help meet the new mandates.  The message was emailed that same afternoon (subject line: Food Safety Bill Signed Today. Now What?)   The timely nature of the subject line and content helped garner a nearly 8% open rate (that’s pretty good!) and very high conversions responding to the offer, plus a few direct calls right into the sales team.  The timely nature of the message was a big part of the success.  Let’s do that again!

4) Make measurements meaningful.  Measuring success in b-to-b marketing is critical, as long as you choose the most meaningful metric. In the case above, two measurements helped us gauge success: open rates -- the number of emails opened by recipients of the email; and conversion rates --- the percentage of email recipients who visited the website or downloaded a form by clicking on a link in the email.  Likewise, when measuring social media engagement on Twitter don’t concentrate on number of followers, but analyze the type of followers (do they fit a certain profile?), along with their level of engagement in terms of mentions or retweets.  Measuring engagement is pretty significant in terms of social media programs.

5) Keep learning! Try something new!  That means attending webinars, participating with professional groups like IABC Detroit, or attending conferences such as Usability Week conferences by Norman Nielsen Group to keep skills fresh.  Resolve to keep abreast of current thought about social media marketing, SEO and online marketing. Learn a new skill?  Try it out to see if it garners results.

Happy New Year, all!