VARs: Time To Consider Your Message

February 2, 2010

Last year a majority of the VARs slowed their marketing spending during the down economy. As we move into this new year, I would argue that many VARs are following the same plan and perhaps rightfully so as the economy still remains a bit shaky. But spending less money doesn’t necessarily mean reduced marketing — Now is a good time to review your brand.

I am encouraged to see a growing trend that I have not seen in many years among the VAR community.  Many VARs are making an effort to brand and promote their own unique value above and beyond any vendor affiliation. Creating this differentiation within a landscape that could easily be described as a commodity can only have a positive affect.  With long term goals in mind, VAR marketing must go beyond the very common messages focused on vendor certifications and the perceived benefit of  associating with these multi-billion-dollar brands. A reliance on provided vendor messaging will only hamper the ability of a VAR to communicate its point of difference in the crowded marketplace.

Tech buyers have consistently  suggested that it’s more important for a VAR to align tightly to its organizational needs by communicating more relevant expertise than to promote the Platinum, Gold or Silver level of certification they may have with any vendor.  VARs can strengthen their customer relationships by highlighting the value they deliver, communicating their deep vertical expertise or by providing above-and-beyond services for more basic infrastructure issues.  Of course, these are only a few general thoughts that demonstrate a path towards more unique messaging and must be underpinned by the VAR’s ability and not necessarily the vendor’s marketplace message.

The economy has forced many VARs to simply become better business people instead of relying on vendors for marketing differentiation and business expertise. VARs have to work hard to identify what their unique position is within the marketplace and develop their own brands to ensure they can stand out among the crowd.

The smart ones will understand that the canned messaging and marketing programs provided by these vendors…. is not a VAR identity.

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Tech Marketers Here Is A Quick Tip: Create Content For The Final Decision

January 28, 2010

There are a lot of great thoughts and opinions on how to use content to further a potential technology buyer down the sales pipeline. Tech marketers have done a great job of developing content that is relevant for the various buying stages and it looks like the tech buyers appreciate the information.  In the early phase of their buying stages these tech buyers are consuming content at an accelerated pace. This is good news.

But what about the later stages of the buying process. Many technology marketers struggle with how content can address the buyer’s issues when they are in the final decision-making process. More often than not, there seems to be a hand off to sales at this point with marketing stepping back a bit and allowing the sales person to “close the deal.”  However, tech buyers want more detailed information at this stage and may not feel comfortable bringing in the sales person during the end stage of their decision-making process.

So tech marketers, if you want to influence this end stage buyer, you should have some content built around relevant details for the buyer to contemplate. Take a risk….try providing a vendor comparison document.

Many of you in the tech marketing field are not comfortable comparing your solutions to your competitors due to the perceived risks involved, but buyers have expressed the desire for this information (as noted by many tech buyer reports). Let’s face it, these tech buyers are going to compare your solution anyways, so why not make sure that they have the right detail and benefits to compare with. By offering up this content, you can hep the buyers out so they are not searching for the information themselves, and perhaps your company will be seen as a more trusted and transparent partner.

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Tech Marketers: Quick Reminder Strategy Comes First

January 26, 2010

CMO’s at tech companies need to ensure their team is focused on strategy first. I have had recent discussions with many marketing departments at technology companies that cause me a bit of concern. Often, the conversations among these marketers tend t0 focus on what marketing vehicles should be used. I can’t count how many times I heard ‘let’s do a direct mail’ or ‘we should look into social media,’ without a mention of the objective, audience, or – for that matter – the desired result.  This concerns me greatly as I believe these marketers have the talent and the know how, but seem to be so focused on the tactical efforts due to heavy influence of a sales team or perhaps their senior management to get something out there.

A common trap inside these corporate marketing departments assumes that when you talk about marketing, you’re automatically talking about tactical marketing – placing ads, generating leads, sending out mailers, attending tradeshows, creating brochures, implementing a follow-up system, and so forth.

There is a failure to realize that the strategic side  – what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to – is always more important than the marketing medium of how you deliver it.

The distinction between the two is critical and these marketing folks need to stay focused on their strategies without undue influence from other departments. Now, I am not suggesting that the sales team input is not important. I do believe in alignment, but the conversations seem to shift to marketing tactic versus the bigger objectives. Tactical marketing is the execution of your marketing plan, such as generating leads, placing media, creating marketing tools, and implementing a follow-up system. In other words, it’s the medium in which your message is delivered.

Strategic marketing has to do with the content of your marketing message and starts with understanding your customers and the issues that are important to them, understanding why they buy or make a decision.

Just putting a marketing message in an appropriate medium for your target audience to hear or read is not good enough. The strategy must derive from an understanding of what’s important to to the target audience. Otherwise, this tactical part of the marketing process will be much less effective, resulting in ads that under-perform.

Many companies simply try to craft their sales pitch more before they find out how to provide a solution to their consumers’ needs.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, the true intent is to remind all of your busy tech marketers to stay focused.

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Tech Marketers: Too Much Proof = Bad Content

January 21, 2010

When developing your content to build credibility for your tech solution it makes common sense to include data to back up your claims.  Let’s face it, we are taught throughout our educational years to demonstrate and prove our intended results with documented evidence. There are so many technology solutions competing for share of voice, that incorporating proof data to build credibility in your marketing message should be automatic. Without the backing of data to support your claims, you leave your prospect simply wondering if they should take a chance on your solution.

But how much data? With technology solutions, I have reviewed many “pitches” that incorporate pages and pages of data to prove out their thinking. Marketing teams at technology companies that have adopted the content approach are gathering and analyzing data toward developing their proof points. Certainly they are demonstrating their commitment to content development which is quite necessary for their marketing initiatives. But I am often surprised by the results of this activity. Most often this content is delivered through heavy white papers and elongated sales brochures, powerpoints that can go one for days, all filled with mounds of data and proof points to back their claims.

I am not a tech buyer, but I read a lot of this content and am amazed at the quantity of data and the quality. There are some messages that have an overwhelming amount of data to support their claims, and causes me to become suspicious of their claims. It is almost too good to be true.

We can only comprehend so much. Our minds have limits in our ability to digest information and too much knowledge can undermine the intended message, greatly diminishing the intended credibility.

Developing content should be a critical component to your external marketing initiatives, but balancing the amount of benefits and proof points included within your messaging should consider the audiences ability to comprehend and digest your message. If you are truly attempting to build credibility for your tech solution, limit your messaging to four or five data points that can prove out your claims.

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Tech Marketers: When developing content, is speed or production value important?

January 18, 2010

As a CMO or marketing person at a technology company, I have to believe you are well into understanding the need to develop relevant content and its value toward driving leads, building credibility and differentiating your brand. With more and more content available to tech buyers both on-line and off-line I am beginning to question whether speed to market vs. production values will emerge as the crucial consideration for businesses and brands as they create and distribute new content.

Developing content can be quite laborious and requires a full marketing team effort. Listening to many CMO’s communicate the concern for cost and time necessary to develop and produce quality content has me wondering about the process and the budget necessary to achieve an organizations content goals. While one of the key issues in enterprise technology is cost optimization, I would suggest that this line of thinking can be applied to content development as well. Is there a tipping point with content development? How much production value should be embedded into the process to best serve your audience ?

As I think about video and audio content-creation for a technology company, I tend to focus on the basics. The content’s purpose will directly impact the tolerance (or lack thereof) that your audience will have for the quality of the finished content. The speed to deliver the content should reflect the audiences need for the information. With a fast paced world out there, I would lean more toward content relevancy and speed versus a high production value.

As an example: If you are reporting live from an event and the purpose of the content is to give your audience a feel for the event as it happens, speed is valuable and you can get by with little to no editing. In fact, the “in the moment” feel of almost-raw video helps support the purpose of the video and communicate the essence of the event.

However, if you’re putting together a reflection on the same event, with the goal being to provide a solid overview of the event as a whole and to draw larger conclusions, I would suggest that you have to balance time and quality. You have a little more time and you’ll need to more thoroughly edit your available footage to tell the bigger picture.

I believe web-content can follow the same measure of content purpose versus production value. Users expect different things from a post created as part of a live blogging activity vs. even a daily post on a thought-leader’s blog. Live-blogging is rawer but is immediately timely. A daily blog is still timely but should have the benefit of a little thought and at least a read-through before posting. If you are developing a white paper, Web site, or learning content, a plan and more substantial editing are called for to truly support the purpose of the content.

Bottom line is you should review your content development with cost optimization in mind. Match your resources against the audience, identify the purpose of the content and measure the added value you may receive from the extra time and budget spent to deliver versus delivering the message faster.

What do you think?

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Tech Marketers: Content Development Should Initiate The Conversation

January 6, 2010

One of the great benefits of developing and implementing a fully integrated marketing plan is the efficiency of re-purposing your content throughout the various marketing vehicles. As we know tech buyers are continually seeking information about their desired subjects and tend to rely on multiple forms of media consumption to obtain this information. Certainly re-purposing content not only saves time to market and has efficiencies by lowering your development time and cost, but can also ensure your messages remain consistent in all forms of delivery.

As you start the new year, add a goal to review all of your existing content. Like any other marketing asset, you should have all of your content in an organized fashion and at minimally categorized by subject, date created, and how the content is delivered by vehicle. Although re-purposing content can extend its shelf life, you want to ensure that your content is current and relevant to the conversations of your targeted audience. Use this exercise to weed out old information, up date your point of views and create more compelling messages.

Most important your content should be measured based on its ability to create a conversation. The true value of all of your marketing efforts be they on-line or off-line is the opportunity to initiate the conversation among your target audience. Let’s face it, a smart message that can initiate the conversation creates behavior like clicking to a link, referencing the point and perhaps picking up the phone.

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Tech Marketers, it is time to evaluate your lead nurturing efforts

November 30, 2009

Whether you have a lead nurturing strategy in place or you are about to incorporate this strategy in to your lead generation activities, now is a good time to evaluate your nurturing approach.

A quick recap of the definition of lead nurturing: In a complex sales cycle, nurturing is a relationship-building approach utilizing multiple media to provide relevant information to prospects and engage in an ongoing dialog until qualified prospects are deemed “sales ready.” A smart nurturing strategy shortens the sales cycle and improves return on investment from lead-generation activities, so it is important to reconsider or re-evaluate your nurturing strategy frequently.

If you read about the effectiveness of well thought out lead nurturing efforts, you may have come across data that suggests some lead nurturing programs can yield anywhere from 15% to 200% in additional, new qualified leads.  Close ratios are higher.  Sales pipelines open up and are stronger.  Average sales cycles are shorter.  One company determined that its nurtured prospects bought from 100% to 250% more than those that were not nurtured.  Lastly, many nurtured prospects cited greater overall positive impression of the company.  Bottom line is that a properly planned lead nurture strategy can drive results.

Ardath Albee, a known B2B Marketing Strategist, recently outlined some basic evaluation criteria to evaluate your lead nurturing efforts. These are great thought starters and should be discussed among your team responsible for lead nurturing.

3 steps for evaluation that will help you create a baseline for building an effective nurturing program.

First – About your customers:

  • Who buys from us?
  • Why do they buy from us?
  • What do they need to know to make a purchase decision?
  • Who influences our buyers?
  • What could stop them from choosing to buy?
  • Is one kind of customer more ideal than another? Why?
  • What’s your best foot-in-the-door sale?

Second – Evaluate your prospect database:

  • Who’s in it?
  • Did THEY opt in or did YOU opt them in?
  • How do the prospects in your database match up with what you know about your customers?
  • How are you getting more prospects to opt in?
  • When’s the last time your database heard from you?
  • What topics have they responded to?
  • What’s your opt out rate?

Third – Audit Your Website:

See Ardath’s recent blog post about how to audit your web pages.

  • How much information on your website matches the answers to the questions in the About Your Customers step above?
  • What can be improved?

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Marketing your technology to the C-suite

November 24, 2009

“We need to sell up to the C-Suite.” This is the ongoing discussion and challenge  among all marketing folks in technology. The thought that if we can get our message beyond the day-to-day executives that we currently have a relationship with, the sales people will have a better business outcome. Although the C-suite is a very important audience and can certainly influence the purchase decision, as a marketer, you cannot ignore those day-to-day executives. In many cases they have the direct line to the C-suite and can determine if your message is C-suite worthy.

Reality in many cases is that each prospective organization has very different protocols in terms of the C-suite influence. Many CEOs, CIOs and CFOs rely on these day-to-day executives to make smart decisions and at the end of the day they trust their talents. This would then suggest that the C-suite audience is simply going to forward your information right back to the day-to-day folks or perhaps simply discard your message. Worse yet, is if you have not developed your content specific to a C-suite audience you can potentially create a perception of irrelevance among this highly sought after group.

Should you be marketing to the C-suite…I believe yes!. There is still great value in creating awareness and building credibility for your technology solutions among the c-suite audience. But as with all other strategic marketing efforts these C-suite focused activities should be integrated with the rest of your marketing efforts against the day-to-day executives.

If you are looking to penetrate or increase your share of corporate budget and provide long-term value to a company you would be wise to plan your approach both tactically and via content development. Do some homework against each account. Meet with your sales team and map out the authority of the day-to-day executives as well as the influence of the C-suite. Find out how the organization tends to make decisions.  Figure out who is actually involved in the decision-making process. What information do they need? When do they need it? Who are the influencers?

Using this information, develop a content strategy to nurture both the c-suite as well as the day-to-day executive. Have your content developed so you may react appropriately based on response or feedback from these two targets. Every touch point should add value to the conversation and continue to build your credibility.

Keep in mind, you need to prove your worth to those who will immediately benefit: the day-to-day business-unit executives. With the right messaging and ROI, they may take the results directly to the C-suite, which will increase the impact of your C-level messaging. The effectiveness of your messaging to th e c-suite will increase if it is delivered by the very team they trust.

 

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

Technology and B2B Marketing Benchmarks for 2010

November 18, 2009

Planning season is continuing to heat up around marketing departments at technology organizations and many of you are looking for insights to justify your planned activities or perhaps inspire some of your upcoming marketing activities. Marketing Sherpa has recently released its annual B2B benchmarking report that I would encourage you to invest in. The report is probably the most comprehensive of its kind and addresses everything from trade shows to outsourcing and lead generation trends. There are several focus areas for technology marketing that may aid your marketing planning development.

I have listed some of the highlights below.

So the good news is that there is a lot of optimism for the upcoming year as many respondents of this study suggest that feel as thought there has been a turning point in the economy and there expectations for their business. This is good news for marketers trying to secure budgets and renew their limited marketing activity from the past two years. As the Marketing Sherpa study suggests, the expectation of better days ahead will mean a change in marketing objectives and the strategies required to achieve them for 2010. Those organizations that have learned to be efficient marketers on a lean budget will apply the lessons learned during these difficult times to become even more effective in the future.

Sales and marketing continue to debate quantity of leads over quality. Of course each of these department have performance measures that create this ever ongoing dialogue. Online search activities have become an ideal solution to balancing lead flow because, in many cases, the spigot can simply be opened or closed to control volume. The more complex challenge is controlling lead quality. This requires a much more strategic approach to optimizing not
only web pages for SEO, but in the case of paid search, carefully aligning the sequence of PPC keywords, ad listings and landing pages.

Tech Buyers are still consuming content at a rigorous pace, so whatever you are planning on doing, ensure you have outlined a smart content development process to feed into the various mead and outlets relied up on by these tech buyers. The chart below outlines the changing use of information resources by technology buyers in the past six months.

Aligning marketing and sales is still essential to creating a productive new business pipeline. As this chart demonstrates, many marketing and sales organizations are collaborating at minimum level by mutually engaging in best practices like defining what a sales-ready lead is – but few are developing a more complete process for sales to hand leads back to marketing for re-engagement and continued nurturing.

The website has also become an extremely efficient platform for integrating and automating the lead generation process. As a result, the role of a company’s website has been elevated from simply a spoke in the marketing mix wheel to the hub of the marketing strategy. While many website capabilities are being managed at a high level, or clients were at least doing a good job of managing them, the report suggests that system integration which enables the flow of leads generated on a website to the CRM system was a weak point.

 

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

2010 End user sentiments from Gartner

November 16, 2009

Unable to attend this meeting, I was fortunate enough to have one of our clients pass his notes on from a recent Gartner summit regarding IT end user sentiments. The information was collected by Gartner and reflects the forward thinking of many IT buyers and decision makers for the upcoming 2010 year. Although most of these thoughts are a bit random, I always appreciate the chance to peek inside the mindsets of the tech buyers. I think the pattern here suggests that there is opportunity for tech marketers to identify how their solutions fit within the context of the current conversations.

For tech marketers to take advantage of these opportunities, you must build the content and prove out your solutions as they relate to what is on the it buyers mind.

IT end user sentiments in 2010:

*   6.9m jobs lost since 2008 in the US, and unemployment is still rising.

*   The IT industry is exiting its worst year ever.

*   Healthcare, Utilities and Government will be the first sectors to recover.

*   While the IT industry is on its way to recovery, we expect that by 2012 we will only be at 2008 revenue levels.

*   60% of CEOs surveyed think IT is holding the business back.

*   In 2009 1m servers will have their replacement delayed, which means increased risk to the enterprise.

*   The age of the IT industry’s hardware is increasing because many companies are delaying the purchases of servers, PCs, etc. So we need to plan for increased equipment failure rates.

*   The top 3 focus areas right now are cost management, growth and risk management.

*   Pattern Based Strategies—this is a hot theme, and the most profound of all.  It’s about implementing a framework that seeks models and looks for leading indicators in the marketplace and then exploits them (e.g. CPM, business analytics).

*   What’s the new normal?  Regulatory oversight will increase dramatically because of all the bailouts.

*   There will be a demand for increased accountability and transparency all the time now.

*   Increased scrutiny of IT is a good thing—it gives you more data to work with and forces you to see where IT is contributing.

*   Bloated apps portfolio is the big pink elephant in the apps space.  Apps are growing at 4-7%/year.

*   Apps portfolio management needs to reduce costs and risks.

*   IT starts with an inventory of apps (you do have one, right??!).

*   Start by assigning a business owner, use data (eg. Cost, utilization and risk) to justify its existence.

*   The “Collective” is a major force out there.  Don’t ignore it or try to control it.  It’s pervasive and galvanizes around the social network and is very influential (e.g. YouTube and Facebook).  You can’t halt it.

*   Whether the company allows it or not, people are doing social networking.

*   Don’t miss the early signals about what’s coming (e.g. Wall Street).

*   Don’t view your strategy as linear—that blinds us to emerging patterns, and that takes a behavioral problem and makes it worse with a systems problem.

*   Finance’s biggest challenge is how to forecast results.

*   Don’t ignore The Collective—it’s something we can’t ignore and it helps with early pattern detection

*   We need a performance measuring system that plans, simulates and forecasts performance at all levels of the organization.

*   Security.  Don’t try to protect yourself as much as possible.  Ask yourself what you will do to protect yourselves and what you won’t do.  You can’t protect against everything.

*   Risk management’s philosophy is to protect against reasonable threats.  Accept risk to perform well.

*   You must have Transparency for the Return to Growth in the new business environment.

*   Like IT, security must measure its impact on the business.

*   If all you focus on is cost, then everything you look at will be an expense.

*   Balance cost, risk and growth to be successful.

 

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Posted by Tom Jacobs

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