Location Is Irrelevant With A Cloud Organization

March 6, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Some of the teams we implement cloud computing systems for work in one location. Many more are distributed and work all over the country and the world. With Google Apps, for example, a team can be in completely different locations and feel together in one environment. Their collaboration is in real-time and everyone can get things done accessing resources and people available in a secure environment. It is the magic of the cloud. You can manage your business and customers from a web browser or mobile device.

Your location is much less important in the cloud. The thing that matters is whether you are logged in, and that matters only depending on whether you are working in real-time vs. sequentially.

One of our recent implementations of a team has their organization spread halfway around the world between various states and South America. Having a central knowledge base where they can get answers in a Google Site helps everyone to get aligned around business process.

As things continually change, the process can be updated, knowledge can be shared easily and systems can be updated to enable customer communications and follow-up for sales, service and marketing functions.

Ask someone a simple question, “Where do you go to get things done?” See if they truly answer, “The office.” Most people get distracted in an environment where people can interrupt them and are tempted to do so easily. We get work done through focus and moving information on a screen. Ideally, this is in a central cloud computing system.

Perhaps the old ideas and habits keep you from broadening your perspective on what productive organizations are already doing today. How about exploring and use the cloud to lower your real estate footprint, allow people to work from home or work wherever they want. It will force you to make the work about systems rather than face time.

How can you apply this to your startup or business?

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , ,

Before The Sales Process Begins

February 22, 2012 by · 2 Comments

The sales process is visual and attractive to manage. It feels like a higher level of control. It is showtime. We are with the prospective customer and get to display our salesmanship. A process helps make this more predictable and fruitful. Otherwise it is random and opportunities are lost.

However, if there is overemphasis on wooing and winning customers based on a salesperson’s tactics, then your process starts with little or no trust. Trust is the lubricant which makes selling a formality for those that work hard before the sales process begins.

Inbound Marketing Starts The Buying Process

Before you ever engage in selling, your customer is buying. They are searching, scanning and learning. They want to feel educated, empowered and comfortable before having a sales discussion. It is the buying process. They are persuading themselves and figuring out what they want.

Here is where you can be of immense value, not necessarily personally, but by offering your expertise. You have what is known as the curse of knowledge. You spend so much time thinking about your product, service, industry and technicalities that you forget that it is foreign for a newcomer to your space. Yet, your knowledge is extremely valuable.

In the buying process, you can help your buyer get what they want:

  • Education. Packaging your knowledge in myriad forms of content – audio, video, written – should be easily found and easily accessed. Distribute this in a way that helps a person ask smart questions and feel like a peer when they do decide to engage in the sales process.
  • Empowerment. Your buyer needs a framework for making a decision and a way to evaluate what you offer. This helps them feel in control in their decision. Provide such empowerment by helping them ask the right questions and understand your market, competition and even jargon. It may feel awkward if you are not used to doing this, but it will build trust as you are transparent and broaden the discussion to helping them see how a choice is made in context rather than in a one-sided fashion.
  • Comfort. Helping your buyer feel competent and confident is important in a strange area. Think about how you feel when the mechanic is overwhelming you. It can cause you to shut down and withdraw. Invite the buyer into the discussion. Help them feel comfortable so that the sales discussion is a conversation rather than a lecture.

If your buying process is set up well in the inbound marketing system and process, then selling becomes much easier. You can tell because the buyer is ready and conversant with you. Trust is present.

Since information is democratized, why not be the leader in providing the right information at the right time before the selling begins?

What could such a process mean for your selling?

Filed Under: Blog, Inbound Marketing, Sales Process · Tagged: , , , , ,

Using Google+ For Support

February 1, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Google+ is continually being explored for its many use cases. One of the less commented opportunities is to serve your customers with support. Every new customer or prospect can be added to a new circle called “Clients,” “Customers,” or “Support.”

You now have a specific area to share knowledge, best practices or anything you wish to support your customers with. There are numerous benefits for capturing your support content within the Google+ platform:

  • Social value. Content which points back to articles on your site can continue to drive both social and SEO value. They invite opportunities for +1′s.
  • Knowledge base. Email is a one-to-one, private conversation. You open up the conversation by broadcasting to a larger audience. Furthermore, the history can be searched and explored for past answers.
  • Tribe building. Your customers can be part of a select audience that receives special advice, insights or offers. It revolves around your content that you provide ongoing in a private circle. It is a forum with benefits.
  • Thought Leadership. Posting your content and sharing it with a select group continues to position your leadership. Share insights that help to benefit your customers – increase their health, grow their business or help them grow. It is a platform that allows you to provide value.
  • Interactivity. The dialogue around a problem can be expanded to benefit a group and commenting back and forth creates passion, clarity and resolution to challenges everyone is facing.

There are lots of different systems for building support or help desk systems. However, consider using Google+ and explore the use case. The platform itself has intrinsic leverage comparatively. It makes it easy to stay connected and to deliver ongoing service and loyalty for those that pay you for your products and services while getting real feedback quickly.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , ,

Validation In The Buying Process

November 28, 2011 by · 1 Comment

validatedThe internet changes the game between the buyer and the seller. Second opinions are easy to access for a buyer. Assuming your lead generation systems and marketing automation are set up well, a new lead will be nurtured, scored and engaged when they are ready. There are analytics and systems which work effectively. However, trust is not built solely on marketing automation.

When a buyer is wanting something, they search and look specifically for their desired product or service. The choices may be numerous. Your competitors are just a click away. If they click off of your website, then you can easily be forgotten in their continual navigation.

Imagine what you do when you do start to hone in on some choices after searching. You gravitate to places of value. You are seeking validation. Here is how validation works within an inbound marketing process:

  • Content Which Educates. Sellers think about what they sell all the time. They forget that buyers think about many diverse things and have limited attention. They are new to a domain you are fluent and obsessive about. They don’t even know the right questions to ask. If you have content which educates then their searching and navigation continually draws them into your rich resources to help them understand value and orient themselves to your industry.
  • What Others Say. When the buyer decides that you are worth engaging because of what they see and feel from your inbound marketing systems, then they find validation in what others say. Testimonials, social media and other forums and sites which lend opinion about you are important. They build a picture of your credibility. It’s all out there. Be sure your goodwill and success stories are captured and searchable.
  • Congruence. We have all experienced businesses which have remarkable marketing but they disappoint when the first touch point with the customer happens. Unresponsiveness, uncaring, rudeness or complexity create incongruence with the message. Validation requires that what the buyer experiences aligns with what they expect from what they read and research.

There are anonymous visitors that are checking you out right now and trying to decide if you provide value and are a good choice. If you can think through each step of your process with these points in mind, then trust grows and you win new business. Fix the broken links and work it continually. The battle for our customers’ minds and business is relentless.

How can your own process work better?

Filed Under: Blog, Feature Articles, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Why Marketing Automation Makes Selling Easier

July 5, 2011 by · 3 Comments

Marketing automation sets up the salesperson.  It assumes something that traditional sales does not: buyers prefer self-service until they are ready to buy.

If you court your buyer too early, you can violate trust.  It is intrusive and unsynced with how they would prefer to move through the process of buying.

At some point, a switch occurs.  When the buyer feels ready, they move into engagement.  Selling becomes easy at this point.  The hard work beforehand is a process.  The actual sale is an event.  Create a personalized, predictable and relevant process and you create repeatable events for your business.

Here is the heavy lifting that marketing automation does before the event of a sale:

  1. Creates Awareness:  The marketplace is saturated and noisy.  Marketing automation gets past this noise by connecting with the buyer in an impactful and precise way based on their behaviors and preferences.  It is targeted when a well-designed marketing strategy has been implemented.
  2. Educates: Assume you know much, much more than your buyer.  You think about your product or service all the time.  Your buyer is buying when they need something.  There is a long list of items they have and you are one item in time and attention they are focused on.  They want to learn as much as possible, preferably from you.  Your marketing automation strategy should empower the buyer with knowledge which you have.
  3. Builds Trust: Your brand becomes part of the flesh and blood of your marketing automation system and touchpoints.  Frequency helps to spotlight your brand.  Insight and expertise positions you in the mind of the customer as the leader.  They want to pick the leader.  Effective marketing automation strategies build trust by positioning your leadership and your care by adding value as they are learning.
  4. Measures Interest: You can’t keep calling your unseen buyer.  However, their digital body language is telling you many things if you can capture it and analyze it.  You can see what content they are interested in, how they move through a decision tree and the level of interest they have ongoing.  Scoring what is invisible and surfacing it for sales readies the conversation your company will eventually have.
  5. Qualifies Leads: If your expensive sales team is wasting time talking to people that will never buy, then it is a waste of resources and money.  Allow your system to direct such uninterested prospects to some kind of referral nurturing campaign.  The workload for your sales team can be focused and cut down by seeing your marketing automation system percolate with the most qualified leads.
  6. Positions The Sales Meeting: Imagine someone who is already sold.  They are ready to do business with you.  They know your value proposition and they trust you.  This is the result of marketing automation executed well.  Your buyer feels like they know you because of the hard work of your marketing automation processes.

There are two ways to sell – you call people or they call you.  Calling people has natural limits.  You can only do it so often.  It is linear and inefficient.  It takes manpower and will power.

People calling you can scale as a business process.  It affords you better opportunities with higher levels of effectiveness.

Take a look at your selling process.  Think through how it works and what you would want your buyer to experience.  Imagine a process which connects personally and moves the buyer forward towards the sale.

What would stop you from implementing such a system?

Filed Under: Blog, Feature Articles, Marketing Automation · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

5 Reasons Marketing Automation Fails

June 7, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Marketing automation works.  Engaging and nurturing leads with a real-time, personal process keeps attention, builds trust and wins business.  Our team has built many successful marketing automation systems and campaigns.  It becomes a vital asset to the business of our customers.

But, not all marketing automation works.  Typically, a company hears about the promises that marketing automation brings and then proceeds to try and make it work.  Here are a few reasons why failure happens and how you can avoid them:

1. Lack of Talent

If you only have traditional marketing people on your team that are adept at advertising or PR campaigns, then this is the number one reason for failure.  Marketing automation is hard, not easy.  It requires a combination of skills including IT, developers, copywriters, analysts, copyeditors, project managers, graphic designers, web developers, video editors and creative strategists.

It is an expensive payroll to bring all these roles together.  It is hard to find this all in one person.  Choosing self-service rather than full-service may already doom your project to failure if you don’t have the right talent.

2. Poor Marketing Strategy

We approach our marketing automation projects with strategy first.  A marketing automation campaign roadmap needs to be well established to define what the buying process looks like.

Putting a bunch of forms together that do a bit of lead scoring is like driving a race car at 35 to the grocery store every day.  It was designed for so much more.

3. Fear Of Failure

The likelihood that your marketing automation campaign will immediately convert leads to customers is rare.  We are dealing with human beings and seeking to get to their motivations and decisions.  The goal is not to launch something perfect.  The goal is to launch something that is measurable and connects.  In so doing, you can continue optimizing and refining.

If we see a major drop in a lead process for downloading content, then we address that step with both art and science to drive the next step.  Marketing automation teaches you what works and connects.  It is an iterative process which requires commitment.

4. Silos Of Marketing And Sales

When the salesperson engages and with what message is a critical component.  If there has been a tradition of marketing and sales working separately – the former creating demand and the latter closing deals – then this has to be quickly overcome in the project scope and implementation.

Sales team members need to be brought into the project for launching a campaign and understand the experience prospective buyers are undergoing before they call for a meeting.  They have to be able to read their digital footprints in the team CRM system, not just the analog outbound sales activities.

5. Leadership Gap

Give me a leader over a marketer any day.  This is a critical component to making marketing automation work.  There is a team of talent that has to be managed, business processes to be defined and systems that need engineering.  A creative, technical, business leader will drive success.

We have seen too many junior people try and take the reigns and they are the root cause of failure.  The vision, strategy and execution all have to come together for success.

Beyond Features And Benefits

Note that there was not commentary on the features and benefits of individual marketing automation software systems.  Marketers like to look at those because it takes the lens off of ourselves.  After all, technology cannot fight back.

We can interchange marketing automation campaigns between systems easily and make them work.  The systems today are remarkable and are far above the thresholds for effective strategy for results.  It is unlikely the features will be exhausted in the array of different software available today.

It comes down to whether you can drive any of these systems, connect with the buyer and create a buying experience which is personal, relevant and timely.  Avoid the failure points and ensure your team, whether in-house or via partnership, can take this powerful instrument and make music rather than noise.

Feel free to comment below.

Filed Under: Blog, Change Management, Feature Articles, Marketing Automation · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Converting Inbound Leads

May 31, 2011 by · 10 Comments

The inbound marketing process has failure points.  If your business is set up where marketing generates leads and your sales team aggressively calls, then trust can be compromised with otherwise potential sales opportunities.

Inbound marketing has the following conversion points:

  1. Visitors: These are a high quantity of people that find you from search or marketing efforts.  They visit your site and will engage your content if it is relevant and remarkable.  If you do not meet this criteria, then you lose visitor stickiness.
  2. Leads: A lead is someone who chooses to exchange their anonymity for something of value.  As trust is built from your content, then their eagerness for a higher level of value means that they identify themselves.  They will give you their email address and name when they get access to white papers, video, guides, ebooks and other quality produced items that help them solve a problem.
  3. Prospects: These are people that move through the marketing funnel and say, “Yes,” to engaging your sales process.  They agree to a meeting, a trial of software or purchasing an item.  High trust and/or high pain has created this opportunity for your business.

Conversion

Think about when you buy.  It is a process which starts with awareness moves through education and then escalates to action based on trust.

If you disrupt the natural buying process by injecting your salesmanship or not providing a logical next step, then a conversion point is affected.  In our attention economy, it is difficult to regain ground.

Each of the steps need to be monitored and walked with analytics that reveal how your buyers are moving through the funnel.  As you are building your process, it becomes an exercise in refinement and iteration.  Here is what to look for:

  • Content Interest.  Understand what your visitors are looking at specifically and how deep they delve.  Their affinities will provide insight into how to create further content which builds upon the initial search.
  • Call To Action Value. Your value piece to generate a lead takes up valuable real estate with each content piece.  Ensure there is a logical and attractive next step to your call to action.  Analyzing the number of new emails you get will determine success.  Drive the ratio between Leads to Visitors by carefully reviewing where the drop offs are between the content consumption and the actual sign-ups for your value pieces.
  • Nurturing.  Continue to build momentum and trust with Leads by delivering ongoing value and nurturing.  Timeliness and personal messages which connect based on their behaviors are required.  This is an intelligent marketing automation process that has responsive engagement with the prospect.  Nurturing is the appropriate strategy where premature sales engagement might otherwise be used.

You may be getting visitors, but converting them to viable sales opportunities requires focus and systems to drive the conversion points.  These areas of iteration will be the crux points for making your inbound marketing strategies and systems a continuing asset for lead generation and lead conversion in your business.

What areas can you optimize for helping visitors become prospects?  Feel free to comment below.

Filed Under: Blog, Feature Articles, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What Matters? Marketing or Marketing Automation?

April 8, 2011 by · 3 Comments

AcronymMarketing automation has been growing because marketing in the new economy has changed from a selling process to a buying process.  Marketing Automation Software Guide sent me an article on a new acronym, RPM, or Revenue Performance Management.  There has been millions of dollars already invested in the shorthand for marketing automation.  It’s expensive to change.  It’s a branding effort which translates into how we search for what we are looking for.

While corporate speak has continuous internal eddy currents focused on nomenclature and smart talk, results are what will matter at the end of the day.  Repositioning how marketing automation sounds may make it more amenable to certain high level executives.  However, at the end of the day, what matters is less about automating marketing processes and more about marketing in the new economy.

The problems persist:

  • Buyers buy when they are ready
  • We do not like to be interrupted
  • Advertising is dead
  • Buying is self-service
  • Selling is typically a formality
  • Products and services are bought, not sold
  • Buying can be quantified
  • Traditional marketers cannot hide

It’s a brave new world.  Your marketing automation tool is not going to grow revenue by itself.  The team behind the system has more to do with success than which tool they use.  How your content is presented and how you iterate to create a logical, relevant and personal path for the buyer is what will create the value from such systems.

As you are seeking to adopt or implement a marketing automation system, remember the strategy is a thousand times more important than your tool.  Tools make for great psychological pillars.  They comfort us and buttress us with comfort.  However, you still have to build campaigns, content and logic which connects and helps buyers buy.  Design, writing, analysis and leadership are the costs which should truly be captured in the discussion.

Call it what you may, but I will take a great marketing strategy over a marketing automation system any day.  With talent, I can make many of the systems get the same result.

What are your thoughts?

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Filed Under: Blog, Marketing Automation, Miscellany · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

4 Content Marketing Strategy Practices

March 22, 2011 by · 8 Comments

Content marketing is critical for winning new business today.  Awareness of your products or services and the required education therein are dependent on buyers finding relevant information.  Your content should prepare a buyer for engaging your sales process.  Naturally, they will want to delay this until they feel ready.  The internet allows buyers an abundant self-service opportunity for education and awareness.

As a content marketing agency, we focus heavily on the buying process in recognition of the new rules of marketing.  Products and services are bought, not sold.  The access to information today makes it easy for buyers to understand what they want before they have to talk to a salesperson.  Here are four strategies we focus on with customers for effective content marketing to generate leads and win new business:

1. Get Found Online

When you want something, you search.  Google is the gateway to buying.  You are looking for something specific when you search from the millions of pieces of content out there.  As a buyer, your search hones in on results from the first page and possibly the second.

As the seller, you need to be found.  Getting found is highly competitive and requires strategy around the keywords of your content, your site authority and your relevance on the web.  This is all without losing the natural tone and connection of your content.

Your content must be focused with embedded keywords which allow you to get found.  Your systems must support your authority and relevance online.  For your content to count, it must be found.  Ensure your systems support this critical criteria.

2. Educate The Buyer

Getting found gives you an initial opportunity to connect. Your content has to provide ideas, strategies, steps or something tangible.  There must be action and purpose to engage the attention and desire of the online buyer.  Rarely will a person just click on something they find and just buy.  The pain has to be immediate and high.  Yet so many companies are set up with a “Buy Now” only option.  It’s ridiculous.  The majority of your visitors are not ready.

They are looking to get educated first.  Thus, your content which helps you get found should provide such value.  Educate them on how your products, services and market work.  Explain the parameters for making a decision for what you offer.

You may think about what you do for 40 plus hours per week.  Your buyer has you on a list of many other things they are concerned with.  Don’t assume they know what you know.  Help them understand and learn terminology, what to consider and how to make a decision.  This positions your buyer to feel empowered and confident for any ensuing conversations they may opt towards.

3. Package Your Value Systematically

Your content should be layered in such a way to provide increasing value.  We call this a “breadcrumb trail” at AscendWorks.  If you are found and the buyer finds credibility in your public content, then offer richer knowledge and value with private content.  The most effective way to manage this is with a marketing automation system.  Video, white papers, ebooks and an assortment of packaging for content needs to be positioned for those who want more and are serious.

Your strategy should include an opt-in and measuring of subscribers and downloaders.  In this way, automated and personal follow-up can occur with a lead who has made themselves known.

Ensure your second layer of content is organized and managed in a system that can capture leads, follow-up with interested buyers and score buying behaviors.

4. Implement Automated Lead Scoring

As users frequent your content or act on calls to action with your public or private content, they increase in value to your organization.  This value should be captured in real-time and measured.  All leads are not equal.

At different points, follow-up in the form of even higher levels of value or direct contact should naturally be introduced into the buyer’s experience.  Lead scoring accomplishes this within a marketing automation system setup.  Architect a decision tree which provides the right follow-up at the right time, either digitally or directly.  Ask yourself, “Would I welcome the timing of this communication or call?” to avoid selling prematurely.

If content is part of the touchpoint, narrow it to be highly valuable by helping the buyer with an increase in revenue, productivity, joy, knowledge or what is truly tangible.  You must know what is important to the buyer and deliver.

Real Value

All businesses are in the content marketing business.  We have enormous choice.  With choice, we need education.  If you can set up your systems and provide real value with thought leadership and concrete strategies, you will win fans and buyers.  There are no shortcuts.  The winners today spend a lot of time connecting and having a direct dialogue with buyers.  This process takes shape much earlier and is initiated by the buyer online.

How would these strategies help you grow your business?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Feature Articles, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Marketing Automation Campaigns To Set Up Your Salesperson

February 28, 2011 by · 4 Comments

Marketing Automation is the step after you attract a visitor.  It is the nurturing which builds trust with a stranger.  The temptation and illusion which a traditional salesperson finds difficult to resist is selling too early when the buyer is not ready.  Marketing automation helps your buyer become ready for the sales conversation.

Old Mindsets

Premature selling is the root cause of many organizations who have not transitioned to the new economy.  Their old mindsets have them doing the following:

  1. Interrupt prospects
  2. Continual follow up
  3. Sell, sell, sell

Effort is confused with results.  Success is a low percentage.  Typical numbers may be 2 out of 100 cold calls get a meeting or 2 out of 100 mailers got a call.  All the while, the question of what happens to your brand with the other 98% is ignored.  You damage your brand.  You don’t get a second shot to make a first impression.  But, that matters little to someone who only cares about selling.  It’s part of the delusion in a sales mindset.  The carnage and failure rate is ignored.

What About Buying?

Think about how you buy.  When did you want a salesperson to call you about software, services or products you were not sure you needed yet?  Likely later, rather than sooner.  Here is how a buying process works:

  1. Have need
  2. Search for need
  3. Become aware of offerings
  4. Educate myself
  5. Look for value and content
  6. Subscribe
  7. Request meeting
  8. Confirm credibility
  9. Buy

The buyer is largely in a self-service mode to get to the goal you both want – a sale.  How is this process managed effectively today?  Marketing automation systems which are set up with multiple campaigns that nurture the buyer based on their preferences help your brand build trust in the mind of the buyer.  It helps the buyer become ready to engage you and purchase.

Types of Marketing Automation Campaigns

Let’s assume that the various marketing automation systems today can get the job done of nurturing and building trust.  You will likely start with some standard automated marketing campaigns which are based on specific buyer profiles.  In our marketing automation consulting, here are a few which nurture and convert leads to customers:

Education Campaign

Nurture by providing education on your industry and offering.  Buyers think about your value offering a fraction of the time your company incessantly talks about itself.  Help them with the knowledge gap by providing valuable information which allows them to be in an intelligble conversation with your sales team.

Use Case Campaign

Help the buyer see the use cases of your offering and the success stories.  This builds a picture for identifying with your product or service in solving their problem.  The envisioning should make your value proposition indispensable with regards to your competition.  You must establish leadership and uniqueness.

Branding Campaign

If you are in an unknown category, this campaign should drive your leadership position.  Capitalize on the PR and credibility you have established in your market space and educate the buyer on your category.

Buying Campaign

Explain what it means to be a customer and how your team supports and brings added value in the context of ongoing relationship.  This helps build relationship in the mind of the buyer and trust.  Explain your processes and create transparency with how your service delivery is different and reliable.

Imagine that a visitor to your site engages one of these funnels or another custom developed marketing automation process.  Their nurturing can be measured for effectiveness by ongoing scoring and triggers in your CRM system.  The respective buying funnel should be designed to help a smaller sales team engage when your system tells you who is ready.  You will see the digital behaviors each nurtured lead has in their contact record.  Clicks on your content, subscribing to additional value pieces or response to a call to action are more valuable in this system than a follow-up phone call with the buyers’ guard up.

By the time sales engages, your buyer should relate to you and your brand with high trust.  They know you and trust you because you provided value which connects in a relevant, personal and timely way.

What are the campaigns you believe your buyers care about and need to say, “Yes?”  Feel free to comment below.

Filed Under: Blog, Feature Articles, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,