Marketing Governance

A fast, steady and predictable growth, that is what companies these days want. The fastest growing companies of today use repeatable marketing and sales 2.0 techniques to grow revenue predictably and reliably. They are embracing the shift from the selling process to the buying process, moving marketing from a cost center to a revenue generator. By replacing the old linear sales model with a new holistic approach, companies are redefining the way marketing and sales teams work together.

The new buying landscape has changed marketing’s approach to lead generation and management. This tectonic shift has created a need to improve upon outdated systems that can no longer keep up with the demand to increase lead flow, ensure lead quality, and prove program effectiveness and ROI.

Companies that implement a marketing automation system to support their marketing and sales efforts are better equipped to manage lead flow and process leads more efficiently. A whitepaper by Marketo outlines how marketing automation optimizes marketing programs and can help companies:

• Create a faster and more predictable revenue cycle
• Increase profitability with tactics that result in higher conversion rates
• Align the efforts of marketing and sales teams to substantially increase topline revenue growth

Source: Marketo Benchmark on Revenue Performance as of Sept 15, 2012

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John Broadbent, CMO at Netmark.com, coached 5 years of college club hockey during the early years of his career in internet marketing.

During that time he implemented a coaching process that works well for internet marketers.

The process:

• Observation
• Preparation
• Action

The very best marketing strategists apply this process with a duel-facet approach. They are both analytic and creative. Leaving out either facet from your marketing campaign limits the strategic impact.

During the observation stage, marketing strategists must analyze and empathize. Great strategists look closely at data and identify with their target market. These marketers understand the people they are targeting through data and intuition.

In preparation, the best marketing strategist will synthesize an efficient process while visualizing the end result with imagination and clarity. They tap into both natures to create game-changing plans for success.

While in action, the most effective marketing strategist will create an efficient system that leaves room for resourceful improvisation. These marketers understand the value of flexible processes.

Its easy to simply focus on being a technical marketer. Its safe. You can blame the data for telling you to implement a poor strategy. Its also lazy. The analytic marketer needs to be creative in order to be the best marketing strategist.

study by the MediaSchool Group.

A survey amongst 2000 students in the age of 20 to 25 years by the MediaSchool Group revealed that 70 percent of the students think that marketing will be a whole different kind of job than today. They think that marketing will be “dominated” by content marketing and “PR thinking.” An advertisers job will be mostly to “entertain” rather than “sell,” according to 7 in 10. Recent survey results indicate that American consumers already believe that should be the case.

The European students almost universally see the importance of social media as an integrated marketing channel: 90 percent feel that it’s a channel that should be used by all practitioners, rather than a stand-alone discipline. As a result, 85 percent believe that in the next 10 years, social media and digital agencies will be integrated with other marketing communications agencies or be full-service agencies themselves.

In an industry where entertaining is more important than selling, 81 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that content marketing – where brands become publishers and creators of their own content – would be an essential part of their job 10 years from now. Meanwhile, “PR Thinking,” where word-of-mouth creation and trust in brands are paramount, will be similarly important, according to the students, with 70 percent believing that will be the primary way in which agencies respond to briefs.

And in a nod to TV, an excellent medium for story-telling, 70 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed that TV advertising would be irrelevant in 10 years.

For maximum impact and return, marketers must go beyond simple segment marketing or click reporting and create a personal dialogue with each visitor.

Behavioral digital analytics can fuel this personalization process by providing specific insights about each segment and individual. This can drive personalized product and content recommendations, as well as individually tailored retargeting for greater marketing ROI

Irv Shapiro. “I am fascinated by many of the results that reflect the innovation that is occurring in marketing measurement.”

So, what are the results?

A primary trend from the 2013 research is the level of support, and scrutiny, that marketers are receiving from their CEO’s around marketing measurement as a growth engine. Two thirds of CEO’s surveyed have significant influence in marketing decisions and half receive regular marketing measurements. In fact, one in ten CEO’s seek marketing measurements daily (9.2 percent) while one in five (19.7 percent) are receiving updates weekly.

How often marketing metrics are reported

 (graph by Ifbyphone 2013: State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report)

What is being measured?

Marketing teams are being asked to measure a wider range of marketing metrics with a greater focus on revenue and tracking of customer interactions from both offline and online sources. Tracking new customer sources is the highest rated marketing metric utilized (by 49 percent of all respondents), with measuring increases in sales/revenue across marketing channels a very close second (48 percent).

Given the dominance of the sales-related metrics already being measured by the marketing team, it is not unreasonable to conclude that marketing measurement innovation, which enables marketers to better track and monetize engagements with customers and sales prospects, will be a high priority in coming years.

Use of marketing metrics

 (graph by Ifbyphone 2013: State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report)

Marketing enjoys budget growth

Investment in an emerging generation of marketing measurement tools is needed to satisfy the CEO’s increasing demand for tracking data. In order to facilitate this, budget growth and additional marketing resources are being provided.

Possibly as a result of the increased focus from the CEO and the growing role marketing has as a growth engine, almost half of respondents (45 percent) reported an increase in their marketing budgets in the past year while only 12 percent are working with a tighter marketing budget.

Respondents were asked what their marketing personnel priorities would be for 2013/14 and a significant majority were focused on proactive and growth related strategies. Almost a third (32 percent) plan to add more full-time marketing resources, one in five respondents (19 percent) plan to invest in more contingent marketing workers, while one in 10 (10 percent) will hire a new marketing agency.

One in 10 respondents (10 percent) will also share resources with other departments, such as IT, reflecting the highly technical nature of twenty-first century marketing analytics. A much smaller percentage of respondents are planning to downsize their investment in marketing personnel in 2013/14.

The emergence of the Growth Hacker

In line with increasing marketing budgets, more marketing people are being hired. Growth hackers, marketers who combine marketing knowledge with a strong technical background to drive growth, are having an impact on improvements in marketing measurement. One quarter of respondents (25 percent) now have a Growth Hacker on their marketing team, the same percentage that have Product Managers.

Marketing teams with Growth Hackers are prioritizing investments in emerging marketing measurement technology, across both online and offline channels. Almost three quarters of marketing teams with a Growth Hacker engaged (72 percent) are experimenting with Voice-Based Marketing Automation (VBMA), 19 percent more than marketing teams generally. Meanwhile, 44 percent of marketing teams with Growth Hackers are using marketing automation software compared to only 26 percent of marketing teams generally.

Over a third of Growth Hacker-backed marketing teams (34 percent) are utilizing heat map tools compared with only 20 percent of the average marketing teams. Almost twice as many marketing teams with Growth Hackers (28 percent) are experimenting with emerging workflow automation tools, compared to 15 percent generally.

Across every category of marketing measurement technology, it is the Growth Hackers who are leading the charge in experimenting and innovating with emerging tools that will give them, their CEO, and their marketing colleagues the edge in tracking where the best results are being achieved for marketing investments.

See the complete survey at Ifbyphone.com

Think of a place I would go, I’m daydreamin’, Where the sycamore grow, I’m daydreamin’, And oh if you knew what it meant to me, Where the air was so clear, Oh if you knew what it meant to me, Anywhere but here.

It’s the song by Travelodge Marketers daydream seven times during their working day with each daydream lasting more than five minutes on average.

The top five daydreamers by profession:

1. Marketing
2. Bankers
3. Lawyers
4. Estate agents
5. Civil servants

Embarrassment

Over a third of marketers (36 per cent) admitted there had been occasions when they were engrossed in their daydream that they have completely said the wrong thing in a meeting. A further 15 per cent said they have made a mistake at work because they were so occupied by their daydream. A fifth stated they are regularly caught daydreaming by their colleagues on the job.

Performance

However, the research revealed many marketing professionals employ daydreaming each day to help them improve their performance and make them more motivated in the workplace. Some 32 per cent said daydreaming helps them work through and resolve problems, while 23 per cent reported daydreaming increased creativity.

Edinburgh Sleep Centre said: “This is a very interesting study, illustrating how daydreaming is a natural part of our cycle.Dreaming during the night occurs on a 90 minute cycle and it is thought that daydreaming follows a similar pattern, however daily activities interrupt that. Dreaming in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep helps improve our memory perhaps we need the same downtime for daydreaming?”

Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Survey. The survey was published April 26th. Some 53 percent of the digital marketers surveyed from around the world say they devote less than 5 percent of their budget to optimization activities. Last year 48 percent of the marketers said this. Only 6 percent of respondents are allocating more than one-quarter of their budgets to these activities, relatively unchanged from last year’s 7 percent. And that is strange, because through optimization companies can reduce the costs of their marketing operations. By calculating the ROI for the optimization projects it can become apparent that the reason not to, is actually the reason to do it; saving budget.

Eye-openers

Adobe conducted this survey amongst 1800 marketers from around the World. “Some of the findings are eye-opening”, says John Cristofano, PR-Manager at  Adobe, “like data showing a majority of the companies surveyed spend 5 percent or less of their marketing budget on optimization activities. Five percent or less, even though it’s also clear from the data that companies investing more get more in return. For example, companies allocating more than 25 percent of marketing budgets to optimization are twice as likely to see high conversion rates.”

With these kinds of results, it’s only logical to ask why there are not more companies are investing in optimization. According to the survey there are two major challenges. Budget and resources are the two most important things, that hold marketers back says almost half of the respondents.

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Women are their own worst critics, says Dove Real Beauty. In this experiment  they are asked to describe themself . Other women describe them as well. Conclusion: what you think of yourself is not always the right thing. People are bad in marketing themselves. What lesson can be learned for marketing?

Unlike many C-level executives, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are without commonly accepted strategies and routine performance measures. This may be in part why CMOs so often dont get a seat at the executive table and incur such high churn. So whats a CMO to do? In this 

You know you need to market your practice, but how effective are your current methods? Marketing metrics give us the best information about whats working and what is not and will help you make better investment decisions. Learn how to measure the impact of your efforts and refine your approach in this webinar, Marketing Metrics Getting the Most from Your Marketing Dollars with Cheryl Whitman, CEO of Beautiful Forever Consulting.

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