A big theme for acheiving success in the downturn, is making sure that sales and marketing are aligned. An interview with Joe Galvin from SirusDecisions highlights data that shows that marketing contributes between 18 and 34% of the sales pipeline depending on segment.
Interesting post on 20 ways that companies are gaining advantage by using Twitter. The list itself came from a post on a Linkedin Discussion Group.
Here's the full list just in case the link doesn't work:
1. Build relationships with people they would have not met before
2. Exposure to lots of new business thoughts, technical ideas and leadership styles
3. Finding new clients by commenting back on others' tweets
4. Access to thinkers and doer's one wouldn't normally interact with
5. Can follow businesses you want the latest updates from with less effort
6. Clients have asked for accounts to be opened so they can get regular updates
7. Can assist Google rankings, sometimes it gets first page results
8. Can assist in getting real questions answered real time during the day
9. Been a great way to gain interactive access with new clients by following their tweets
10. Received access to publicity: radio, TV, press, speaking engagements
11. Allows leaders to connect to followers on a personal level
12. Without being pushy, it can generate buzz/talk about your company
13. Great for bringing traffic to your site if you offer truly valuable information and links
14. Provides a premier marketing tool when used correctly
15. Can be a great resource for getting push information versus searching the web
16. Can act as a news wire for journalist who are looking for story content
17. Can save time by getting the latest news without having to go search for it
18. Enables expansion of your database by removing budget or geography barriers
19. It can increase your market reach if you actively promote your presence on twitter
20. A great way to showcase your expertise and differentiate from competition
Interesting survey by Forester and MarketingProfs which shows which tactics money and resources are focused on. While budget cuts are common, digital tactics such as company websites, search marketing, online video, and webinars are seeing growth in spend allocation of more than 40%.
According to a Marketing Leadership Council poll, close to 75% of b2b marketers have reduced their marketing investment by at least 10%. Much of those cuts have come from marketing communciations, hence the need to ensure that any effort spent in this area can deliver the best possible returns.
They have also produced a useful tool to help marketers evaluate the effectiveness and consistency of their communication efforts.
MLC_11x17_Anatomy_of_a_Best_In_Class_Communications_Campaign.pdf
In this age of metrics and hard return on investment, it can be easy to score online display advertising out as ineffective if it doesn't drive volumes of clicks, traffic and conversion to your site. However a study from iProspect provides some insight into what users do beyond the click.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007090
I heard a story yesterday about a chap who worked in the postroom for the Gap. He was new to job and like a lot of new people was questioning different practices that he came across. One thing he discovered fairly early on was that the Gap had been mailing (via Fedex) multiple copies of the company's newsletter to the same addresses across the globe. They'd been doing it for years apparently. He questioned this practice and decided to open up all of the individual envelopes and put all the newsletters in one package with a note to distribute at the other end. What's more he told all of his colleagues in the mailroom to do the same.
That one simple idea saved the Gap £50k!
My point. Simple ideas are all around us and, if you're like me, you have lots of ideas every day - ideas of what can be created, changed, improved or applied to other areas to solve problems for either our customers or ourselves and save and make money in the process. However if you don't share these ideas down, the ideas won't be developed and progress won't happen.
In these challenging times, marketers are being tasked to do more with less and that requires thinking differently and innovating around processes. But how do you do that - well it all starts with an idea and one simple way of collecting good ideas is to set up a 'Future Box' whereby you ask other people to submit ideas for saving or making money. .
You'll be amazed at the different ideas you'll get - from creating new products to simply downloading free software.
If you're looking for inspiration - have a look at What If's website: http://www.whatifinnovation.com/default.
RBI have created an useful programme of seminars to help B2B marketers increase their knowledge of digital marketing and media. The programme is called 'What Works Online Programme' and is based on the many years of collective experience in building websites, creating content and promoting that content to drive traffic. The sessions are invitation only, but here are summary slides covering the main points:
www.slideshare.net.Overall the key message is that the world is changing fast and irrespective of the economic challenges that we're all facing, digital media is here to stay and provides many opportunities for B2B marketers to engage their marketplaces. RBI of course are not doing this just through some desire to train their customers, the ulterior motive is to build awareness of the propositions that the company has built around email and online display advertising as well a user evalutation proposition to help marketers really get the most from their websites. As a publishing company, the Internet isn't an adjacent of the business, it is the business so user experience and search engine optimisation are key competences that have been developed in-house.
This is something we can easily help you with through RB Insight's 'Website Evaluation' package. For a relatively small investment, we will provide a preliminary assessment on the effectiveness of your website along with recommendations for immediate improvement.
As I am Marketing Director for RBI - forgive me for doing just a little pitch - but if you are interested in finding out more about the RB Insight Evaluation - send me a message or go here for more information: http://blogs.rbi.co.uk/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=200.
White_Paper_Downturn Economy US Final.pdf
Insightful white paper to help big companies target smaller companies - many of which are taking the tighter economy to move ahead at the expense of their larger competitors.
As one of the fundamental problems with marketing in any downturn is that there are less customers to go round, by definition you are going to have less resources to play with - so saving time is a key requirement. The explosion in social media offers every marketer the opportunity to be part of their customers' communitites and engage with their customers in a more conversational way than many direct marketers are used to doing. However getting up to speed with social media and the many short-cut tools is a significant resource commitment in itself, so I thought the social media cheat sheet on the following blog would be very useful for you:
http://nextmark.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/social-media-cheat-sheet-for-executives.html
I noticed Joe Reaney's article in one of the Linkedin Group forums (The Institute of Direct Marketing). Again nothing new - focus on selling to existing customers; recycle old ideas and boost service levels are the main points and you can see the full article here:
http://www.redcmarketing.net/2009/05/06/marketing-during-a-recession/
. I was interested in one of the comments about tips for coping with the upswing as some organisations - caravan parks, confectionary to name a couple are seeing a bigger demand for their services. I think that the key challenge for us all is to focus our efforts on creatiing the best tools and processes that can be accelerated or slowed down depending on external factors - things change very quickly these days. This has certainly been a challenge in my role where I am dealing with a large portfolio of products and a significant cost base. Some of the portfolio have been badly affected by the broader economic market conditions - whereas others are trading well. Having flexibility and being able to refocus and repriortise is key to success in challenging markets - whether that challenge is either rapid market growth or rapid market decline!
Forrester - B2B digital marketing.pdf
I read a good white paper this morning outlining the responses of 397 b2b marketers and their views on using digital marketing both now and the future.
The paper is written by Laura Ramos and her conclusions show that b2b marketers main pressure point is producing sales-ready results using less expensive channles. To this end, digital marketing is well positioned as it delivers many of the benefits of offline channels, often at a lower cost.
