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About BMA
Begun in 1922 as the National Industrial Advertising Association, today's Business Marketing Association represents a lifetime of expertise in business to business marketing. BMA is the nation's only professional association dedicated to b2b marketers and communicators. For over 93 years, Business Marketing Association has been the preeminent resource providing professional development and peer networking to increase the effectiveness of individuals responsible for spending $85 billion annually in the U.S. on the marketing of b-to-b goods and services.
BMA has earned the respect and loyalty of members by following a simple, three-part strategic vision:
• Remain the primary repository of the best in b2b marketing information and resources
• Attract the best practitioners
• Promote the best practices in the industry
We connect members with the kind of knowledge, people and programs that make achieving their company objectives more efficient and effective.
As a business marketer or communicator, your needs are distinct from those of the consumer marketing environment. Broad-brush marketing associations or trade organizations devoted to a single program category cannot effectively provide the required resources. BMA focuses on meeting the challenges presented in business marketing, day in and day out.
For over nine decades, BMA has been the business marketer's first line of defense in changing business marketing environments. No other organization delivers the same level of commitment to the information and networking needs of b-to-b marketers and communicators.
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IBM and Qualcomm Global Marketing Executives to Address
the Consumerization of Business-to-Business Marketing
NEWPORT BEACH, CA – May 20, 2015 – "The Consumerization of B2B Marketing" – hosted by Business Marketing Association, Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA), on Thursday, May 21st, in La Jolla, California.
The event is part of SoCal BMA's 'The Leading Edge' executive signature series on thought leadership, best practices, and professional development for business-to-business (B2B) marketers and business leaders.
Speakers are SoCal BMA corporate member, Jacques Pavlenyi, Program Director Social Collaboration, Software Marketing at IBM, and Liya Sharif, Senior Director of Marketing, Global Brand at Qualcomm. Pavlenyi and Sharif will share their insights on B2B vs B2C (business-to-consumer) -- to now H2H (human-to-human) - all due to the exponential growth and impact of mobile, and the influence of Millennials who are now nearly fifty percent of today's workforce.
"The large influx of Millennial workers weaned on social media, smartphones and tablets powered by cloud delivered apps is having a profound effect on B2B purchase behaviors," stated Pavlenyi. "The key to success these days is to speak more human," stated Sharif.
This SoCal BMA event will be held on Thursday, May 21st, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., at Eddie V's Prime Seafood La Jolla Cove, 1270 Prospect Street, La Jolla, CA 92037.
Price to attend the SoCal BMA event is $75 -- includes wine and hearty hors d'oeuvres reception for registered attendees.
B2B marketers, communicators, and business leaders are encouraged to attend. Further event details and registration is available through the SoCal BMA website at http://www.SoCalBMA.org/Events.
About the Speakers and Companies
About SoCal BMA
For 93 years, Business Marketing Association (BMA) has been the world's premier community devoted exclusively to advancing the business-to-business marketing profession. BMA provides a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities to help you meet the daily challenges of sustaining business profitability and enhancing the development of B2B marketing professionals. No other organization delivers the same level of commitment to the information and peer networking needs of business leaders, marketers and communicators. From executive roundtables to panel discussions to online events, SoCal BMA serves its B2B marketing community throughout the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County, San Diego, and the Inland Empire, through education, professional development, and peer networking.
The role market dynamics play in developing your brand strategy
Posted 2015, May 18, 12:25 a.m. - Angelo Ponzi, EVP, Sales & Marketing - Strategic Market Intelligence
Developing messaging for your new campaign is simple, right? Identify the markets or categories you want to target, get to know the customer—his or her decision journey, motivations, pain points – then develop your brand message, slogan, creative and communications channels. Then market to them with a one-size-fits-all approach. Easy right? Wrong!
Every year companies launch campaigns only to have them fail. Sometimes it's the messaging that doesn't speak to the needs of the buyer. Other times, it's the behavior the campaign is trying to influence. Or, the channels are just not resonating with the way the customer consumes information. Or, worse, it's a combination of all of these factors. That's why understanding the dynamics of the market in which your company or brand is competing is extremely important. So many times we tend to focus on the campaign development that we forget to think about market dynamics.
Besides the customer themselves—IT Managers, C-Suite, etc.—the competition (single product or multi-product competitors) and your overall image as a brand, you have to also consider the current political environment, the economy, technological changes and other external factors that can have an impact marketing success.
And, while you're looking in the rearview mirror at your primary competitors, don't forget to look out the front window at the smaller brands that have a foothold in the market or markets you serve. Maybe there are already five other brands in the market and you're the last one to enter it. Maybe you're the market leader and you're trying to fend off the competition, or new and better products? Or, you're the leader in one product category, but a challenger in another. Knowing where your brand and or your various product/service offerings stand in the market is essential before developing your campaign strategy and messaging platform.
Take all of these influences into consideration when you're structuring and defining your positioning, your values, your overall strategy and, ultimately your messaging. The way you speak to the market is very different if you're a leader rather than a challenger. A one-size-fits-all strategy is not a strategic solution.
One piece of advice I give my clients is to think globally, not locally. By locally I mean the US, for example. Why? Because the image, position or reputation that your brand communicates is only one tweet, blog, post, link or share away from being talked about on a global basis. What, you don't sell internationally? Well maybe not today, but someday when you do, everything known about your brand will already be out there!
Keep in mind that while your messaging or the way you communicate may change based on the dynamics of the market. It is of utmost importance that your brand's personality doesn't change as you're doing it. You need to establish your brand's core personality, including the tone in which you speak to your audiences, and keep it consistent. You need to consider identifying a common motivation or need across markets that speaks to their aspirations or values, not just your product features and benefits. This way the overall image and culture of your brand remains consistent and familiar to your various audiences.
In thinking about the markets you serve and the dynamics of each of those markets, keep several things in mind.
So, when putting together your new campaign and developing your communications strategy, don't assume a one-size-fits-all messaging strategy. Take the time to understand the dynamics of the market you're competing in as they will shape your strategies, your messaging and your brand. Get to know your customer. Are there audience segments better suited for your product or service? Know the competition. Who are they, what do they offer that sets them apart from your brand? What differentiates your brand from them? Overall, think strategically, not tactically. Doing the necessary work upfront will help determine your strategy, messaging and communications channels to help you maintain and/or build a successful brand.
I welcome your comments.
B2B User Experience: SoCal BMA to feature time-tested UX techniques
for businesses to separate themselves from the pack
NEWPORT BEACH, CA – April 21, 2015 – "User Experience: The Ultimate Game Changer for Your Business" – hosted by Business Marketing Association, Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA), on Wednesday, April 22nd. The event is part of the 'The Leading Edge' executive signature series on thought leadership, best practices, and professional development for business-to-business (B2B) marketers, communicators, and business leaders.
SoCal BMA member and User Experience expert, Denis Lesak, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of UserBrite, will present UX teardowns of B2B companies, and will highlight the techniques successful businesses are utilizing such as user journey maps; user personas; usability testing; and iterative design, a methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing and analyzing. "Your company's website experience is most often the first thing prospects see when evaluating your business. B2B marketers now have access to time-tested UX techniques to separate themselves from the pack -- benefiting from higher lead conversions, lower abandonment rates, and lower training costs," stated Lesak.
This SoCal BMA event will be held on Wednesday, April 22, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., at 18400 Avalon Boulevard, Carson, CA 90746, at AEG's StubHub Center, a state-of-the-art professional sports and entertainment facility, and home of the five-time, reigning Major League Soccer Champions (MLS), the L.A. Galaxy.
Price to attend the SoCal BMA event is $75 which includes a private guided tour of the StubHub Center; the presentation and workshop followed by a reception for registered attendees; and the evening's soccer game. LA Galaxy's own Oscar Sorto, Ariel Lassiter and the U.S. Men Under-23 Men's National Team will face off against CONCACAF rival, Mexico. This game will serve as preparation for the upcoming CONCACAF Men's Olympic Qualifying Championship for the 2016 Rio Olympic games.
B2B marketers, communicators, and business leaders are encouraged to attend. Registration is available through the SoCal BMA website at http://www.SoCalBMA.org/Events.
About Denis Lesak
A User Experience professional since 2004, Denis Lesak, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of UserBrite, a leading LA-based user experience studio, began his UX career designing interactive wayfinding systems for major hotel brands such as Marriott, Hyatt, Starwood, Hilton and InterContinental. In the past eight years Denis has worked on projects designing award-winning user experiences for global brands such as Toyota, Subaru, City National Bank, Hautelook, and Nordstrom Rack. He received his Bachelor of Science, Consumer Science, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Denis has mentored several junior designers while working on various projects; taught user experiences to students at General Assembly Los Angeles, an educational institution for startups and entrepreneurs, transforming thinkers into creators through education in technology, business and design. Denis has also presented numerous times to a variety of peer User Experience groups throughout the L.A. basin. He is a member of Business Marketing Association, Southern California Chapter.
About SoCal BMA
For 93 years, Business Marketing Association (BMA) has been the world's premier community devoted exclusively to advancing the business-to-business marketing profession. BMA provides a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities to help you meet the daily challenges of sustaining business profitability and enhancing the development of B2B marketing professionals. No other organization delivers the same level of commitment to the information and peer networking needs of business leaders, marketers and communicators. From executive roundtables to panel discussions to online events, SoCal BMA serves its B2B marketing community throughout the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County, San Diego, and the Inland Empire, through education, professional development, and peer networking.
Top 10 Reasons to Implement a Marketing Asset Management Solution
Posted 2015, Apr 09, 12:22 p.m. - Alpa Patel, Marketing & Business Development Manager - Main Graphics
Marketing materials such as collateral, promotional and point-of-sale account for 30% or more of the average marketing budget. Yet more than half of the spend associated with these materials is often lost to the non-productive costs of storage, fulfillment, shipping, inventory management and product obsolescence. Many companies have found that a marketing asset management (MAM) or web-to-print (W2P) solution has been able to reduce unnecessary spending, automate and streamline ordering, proofing and billing processes, manage inventory and reduce overall costs.
A recent Gleanster Research survey notes several compelling reasons to implement MAM and W2P: 78% of top performers indicated an improved marketing cycle time; 82% provided more autonomy and control over local markets; 91% noticed an increase in marketing relevance and personalization; 54% noted an increase in brand compliance and 71% saw an improvement in marketing efficiency and production.
MAM/W2P is fast becoming a necessity for many organizations in order to incorporate digital marketing with traditional marketing. It enables the company to better organize their marketing assets including video, photography, logos, etc., optimize efficiencies, manage the creation, customization and distribution of marketing collateral and in turn, is helping companies both large and small lower their costs by saving time, increasing employees' productivity, maintain strong brand consistency and drive revenue to their bottom line.
Below are top 10 reasons to implement a MAM or W2P solution:
1. Increase brand compliance. Marketing asset management solutions allow companies to maintain brand and compliance standards by locking down certain elements in online templates while allowing local markets to customize materials for their needs.
2. Centralize marketing assets. Create an efficient catalog system that has all your assets in one place that can be accessed and ordered online 24/7.
3. Increase marketing relevance and personalization. Marketing is looking for ways to make messages more relevant, timely and personalized at the local level, while maintaining brand consistency at the corporate level.
4. Provide more autonomy and control over local markets. Corporate marketing is tasked with maintaining standards while local marketers need autonomy to meet the unique needs of their target audiences. With a web-to-print solution, corporate marketing provides online templates that can be customized by local marketers.
5. Improve marketing efficiency and productivity. Manage content more efficiently by having all assets in one place. Searchable access to content helps marketers find what they are looking for quickly.
6. Measure asset utilization and effectiveness. Identify the assets that have the largest impact on marketing effectiveness. Have sales and marketing rate and rank marketing materials to identify the most useful assets and the marketing messages that resonate with target audiences.
7. Manage inventory. Manage inventory levels and usage history. W2P solutions have many capabilities including online ordering, automatic inventory replenishment and built in approvals.
8. Improve speed to market. Companies need to react quickly to stand out today. Inefficient or manual digital and marketing processes make it nearly impossible to react in a timely manner. An online repository of digital assets and online templates make it easy to get materials ordered and to the field much faster.
9. Reduce obsolescence. The ability to customize materials and print on demand is more efficient than printing large quantities of static materials that sit in inventory and often become obsolete before they are used.
10. Reduce overall costs. Having a more effective and efficient digital and marketing asset management solution will reduce overall costs.
Senior Global Executives to Discuss the State of Corporate Culture, hosted by Business Marketing Association SoCal Chapter at upcoming March 25 event
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., March 18, 2015 -- "A Help or a Hindrance: The profound effect of company culture on your marketing strategy" – an executive panel discussion featuring executives from IBM, Qualcomm, Smith Micro Software, and Pharmatek Laboratories, will take place on Wednesday, March 25th. This Business Marketing Association, Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA) event is part of the 'The Leading Edge' executive signature series on thought leadership and professional development of business-to-business (B2B) marketers, communicators, and business leaders.
The executive panel for this event will share how their companies have benefited from harnessing their corporate culture as a marketing tactic and increased their bottom line. "Authenticity and trust have become increasingly important aspects of brand value, and corporate reputation is often an important criterion in customers' decision making. Organizations must give careful consideration to their core values and ensure these values are reflected in all the ways they engage with customers," stated Alisa Maclin, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, IBM.
This SoCal BMA event will held on Wednesday, March 25th, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., at the corporate headquarter of Pharmatek Laboratories, 7330 Carroll Road, Suite 200, in Sorrento Valley, San Diego, CA 92121. Price to attend this event is $35-$75. Registration is available through the SoCal BMA website at http://www.SoCalBMA.org/Events.
About our Executive Panel - Bios
- Timothy Scott President and Co-Founder - Pharmatek Laboratories, Inc.
- Carla Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer - Smith Micro Software, Inc.
- Alisa Maclin, VP Worldwide Marketing, Smarter Commerce | Smarter Cities – IBM
- Cherry Park - Senior Director, Marketing - Qualcomm
About SoCal BMA
For 93 years, Business Marketing Association has been the world's premier community devoted exclusively to advancing the business-to-business marketing profession. BMA provides a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities to help you meet the daily challenges of sustaining business profitability and enhancing the development of B2B marketing professionals. No other organization delivers the same level of commitment to the information and peer networking needs of business leaders, marketers and communicators. From executive roundtables to panel discussions to online events, BMA Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA) serves its B2B marketing community throughout the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County, San Diego, and the Inland Empire, through education, professional development, and peer networking.
Smith Micro Software Chief Marketing Officer to Keynote at Business Marketing Association Upcoming SoCal Chapter's February 18 Event
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Feb. 13, 2015 -- "Capabilities vs Value: Simplifying Your Technology's Messaging" – A presentation and executive panel discussion featuring keynote speaker, Carla Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer of Smith Micro Software, Inc, will take place on Wednesday, February 18th. This Business Marketing Association, Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA) event is part of 'The Leading Edge' executive signature series, geared toward thought leadership and professional development of business-to- business (B2B) marketers, communicators, and business leaders.
"Companies that provide complex technology solutions with high price tags can create roadblocks in their marketing strategies by focusing too much on technology and alienating their buyers," stated Carla Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and a panel of company executives in marketing, communications, product management, sales and PR will also address the matter of long, expensive sales cycles and how companies can generate trust and "buy in" from customers by showing value in their messaging.
B2B marketers and communicators will take away from the event key tactics on how they can set their company apart from the competition without having to play the "feature-comparison" game. Attendees will gain insights for navigating through their company's technical jargon to create value-driven content that their buyers will respond to.
This SoCal BMA event will be held on Wednesday, February 18th, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., at Smith Micro Software's global headquarters, 51 Columbia, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656. Price to attend this event is $75. Further event information and registration is available at http://www.SoCalBMA.org/Events.
About Carla Fitzgerald
Ms. Fitzgerald is a long-time veteran of the technology industry, with extensive experience in B2B software for enterprises and the telecom sector. As the Chief Marketing Officer at Smith Micro, she is responsible for corporate and product marketing, product management, technical sales, technical publications, business development and investor relations. She has developed market-leading brands, thought-leadership initiatives, and successful demand generation programs for a variety of public and private companies. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Computer Studies from Claremont McKenna College, and sits on the Board of Advisors for the UC Irvine Marketing Extension program. Carla Fitzgerald is a SoCal BMA member and serves on the chapter's Advisory Board.
About SoCal BMA
For 93 years, Business Marketing Association has been the world's premier community devoted exclusively to advancing the business-to-business marketing profession. BMA provides a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities to help you meet the daily challenges of sustaining business profitability and enhancing the development of B2B marketing professionals. No other organization delivers the same level of commitment to the information and peer networking needs of business leaders, marketers and communicators. From executive roundtables to panel discussions to online events, BMA Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA) serves its B2B marketing community throughout the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County, San Diego and the Inland Empire, through education, professional development and peer networking. Contact Us
Business Marketing Association Kicks Off 2015 With Five Highly Anticipated Events For B2B Marketing Professionals
NEWPORT BEACH, CA – January 15, 2015 – Business Marketing Association, Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA), an organization focused on professional development, fostering relationships, and ongoing education for business-to-business (B2B) marketers, today announced five new upcoming B2B marketing focused events. These events are designed to help business-to-business marketers achieve the highest level of success for not only their companies but their customers as well.
"Our 2015 event calendar is really shaping up, as we continue providing many great events for our SoCal BMA members and guests," stated Luz Marina, President of the SoCal BMA. "Adding to their arsenal of knowledge and resources for achieving their best results possible, we deliver relevant and cutting edge content to business leaders and senior level marketers."
A key aspect of these executive events is to engage attendees with presenters who are experienced B2B marketing professionals and on the cusp of industry trends. The speakers and panelists have experiential knowledge for overcoming obstacles in the B2B marketplace and implementing new targeted strategies that will gain event attendees overall success in the New Year. This year's topics range from: growing your business by aligning your company to help your customers succeed; how to simplify your technology's messaging; how to leverage your company culture as a marketing strategy; and why the user experience is extremely important for your marketing strategy and your business.
SoCal BMA 2015 Winter/Spring Events Calendar:
January 21st - Long Beach, CA
The Integrated Leadership Summit: Becoming the Go-To Organization in Your Industry
February 18th - Aliso Viejo, CA
Capabilities vs Values: Simplifying Your Technology's Messaging
March 25th - San Diego, CA
A Help or a Hindrance? The Profound Effect of Company Culture on Your Marketing Strategy
April 22nd - Long Beach, CA
User Experience: The Ultimate Game Changer for Your Business
May 6th - San Diego, CA
The Consumerization of B2B Marketing
To learn more about SoCal BMA events and to register, please visit: http://www.socalbma.org/events
About SoCal BMA:
For 93 years, Business Marketing Association has been the world's premier community devoted exclusively to advancing the business-to-business marketing profession. BMA provides a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities to help you meet the daily challenges of sustaining business profitability and enhancing the development of b2b marketing professionals. No other organization delivers the same level of commitment to the information and peer networking needs of business leaders, marketers and communicators. From executive roundtables to panel discussions to online events, BMA Southern California Chapter (SoCal BMA) serves its b2b marketing community throughout the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County, San Diego, and the Inland Empire, through education, professional development, and peer networking. Contact Us
Creating Purpose-Driven Brands:
Insights from FedEx, IBM, and John Deere
Posted 2015, Jan 16, 02:20 a.m. - Ryan Rieches, Founding Partner - BrandingBusiness (formerly RiechesBaird)
Over the last year, I've seen a powerful theme emerge that is worth sharing. If an organization desires to have a strong brand reputation with its target audiences, it first needs to focus on its internal audiences. This is especially true with B2B companies considering the typical complexity of their brand promise – which of course needs to be delivered by people who are passionate about the company they represent.
It begins with leadership and their ability to clearly articulate and ultimately live the company's purpose and promise. This was echoed by a number of brand executives at the Corporate Brand and Reputation Conference, organized by The Conference Board.
In the case of FedEx, it starts with a promise – The Purple Promise: "I will make every FedEx experience outstanding." This means doing whatever it takes to satisfy customers – "by keeping this promise, we meet the world's expectations, one person at a time." This simple promise unites the organization around a culture of shared beliefs – but it is only part of the story. The guiding principles of "Who we are," "How we think," "What we do," and "Why we matter," become the foundation of FedEx brand experience and are illustrated in the purple pyramid at the bottom of this image. But the bigger picture is the collective impact when each person understands the role they play. When that happens, companies prosper and people thrive.
Articulating, understanding and sharing that kind of message is critical given social media, which makes controlling a corporation's brand reputation more difficult than ever, noted Henry Maier, the president and CEO of FedEx Ground. The best way for a company to impact its external reputation is through a consistently positive brand experience delivered by each team member and at every touch point. Internal alignment around a compelling purpose and a thriving culture of trust and pride is the foundation for success, he noted in a presentation at the conference.
It seems FedEx does a great job uniting its 300,000 team members in more than 220 countries under a big idea and empowering each and every person to deliver the brand promise confidently and personally – which in turn drives their economic engine and betters the world.
Another example of a compelling "higher purpose" is John Deere. Bill Becker, the company's director of its Brand Center of Excellence made an interesting presentation at the conference on this topic. Many of us are familiar with their tagline, "Nothing Runs like a Deere." Unfortunately, that line doesn't translate well into many other languages – and while it's a nice line to distance them from the competition, it falls short as an inspirational internal message. For that reason, Bill and others on the team there developed the higher purpose campaign of "Solutions for World Hunger." Says Becker: "We are committed to serving those linked to the land, thereby helping to improve living standards for people everywhere." Clearly, that's a big idea that everyone can rally around. It connects the entire organization and its large distribution network.
IBM's Ben Edwards, its VP-global communications and digital marketing, discussed its internal culture and the role of an IBMer. The story begins with principles established by Thomas Watson Sr., which have stood the test of time as the company transitioned from typewriters to computers to services. Watson understood the importance of something he called corporate character, which today is synonymous with corporate culture.
An IBMer is a mindset not a product. This mindset is front and center throughout the company's 430,000 employees and thoroughly embraced by leadership. In fact, the role IBM executives play in corporate character development is actively measured on a social dashboard for all to see.
To spur this along, IBM developed a platform to guide the actions of an IBMer – a system called "1/3/9." The company even has a storytelling app with the same name where people can share examples of how people have lived the desired behaviors. The system works like a pyramid with 1 at the top, clarifying the company's purpose: "Be Essential." That is supported by the company's three corporate values: 1.) Dedication to every client's success. 2.) Innovation that matters for our company and the world, and 3.) Applying trust and personal responsibility to all relations. The number 9 represents the practices that are the foundation of the pyramid and offer further guidance and insight on the daily actions – which in turn creates success for individuals, teams and the entire company.
These examples by three of the world's most respected brands offer tremendous insight on how large companies can shape the daily actions of each team member to create a powerful, purpose-driven brand that is built from within and lived by the organization's leaders – who in turn pass their beliefs throughout the organization.
I welcome your comments.
What determines your company's ability to execute strategy?
Posted 2015, Jan 10, 01:13 p.m. - Steve Patti, CMO and Business Strategist
Each year executive leaders are under new pressure to deliver financial results for their stakeholders. The roadmap to deliver those results is typically an annual plan. As with most annual plans, yours probably contains its fair share of initiatives relating to improving buyer insights, omni-channel customer experience, and deepening customer engagement -- all in the name of increasing revenue. However, an often overlooked aspect of a typical annual plan is how a company's brand strategy and culture align with the many strategic initiatives an organization might undertake. At the end of the day, it's the people who execute the plans.
I believe the reason brand and culture are repeatedly overlooked in the Q4 annual planning process is due to their exclusion from strategic business unit collaboration throughout the rest of the year.
What often relegates these corporate disciplines to marginalized functions on an organizational chart? The lack of understanding for what brand and culture do, and how they impact financial performance of the enterprise.
A company's brand strategy defines its culture and its culture determines its ability to execute strategy. What's more, the positioning found in the brand strategy determines the degree to which the company will be forced to compete on price, and therefore impact Earnings Before Interest and Tax(es), EBIT.
Are you a well-meaning CEO, CFO, or other executive leader who may dismiss brand and culture as "soft skills" and not critical to the success of the enterprise? Consider this:
This year could be a breakthrough for your organization to rethink its approach to aligning brand, culture and strategy to deliver greater financial results. First, consider formalizing a readiness assessment of how or if your brand and cultural alignment supports the execution of your annual plan. Next, take steps to ensure your brand and culture teams are collaborating with mainstream operating units throughout the year so they are supporting each other's efforts. Then consider implementing a formal brand performance monitoring and tracking process that correlates brand/culture alignment to financial performance of the firm.
You've invested the time to develop an annual plan to meet your business objectives – but why stop there? Now go back and ask yourself whether your culture is aligned to deliver on the strategy and whether your brand strategy is defining your desired culture.
In an era where we've either outsourced or offshored our way into operating efficiency, perhaps the biggest financial upside potential is right under our nose. Getting this right will separate market leaders from market laggards.
I welcome your comments.
5 Best Places to Research Marketing Automation Solutions for SMBs
Posted 2014, Nov 11, 5:55 p.m. - Dustin Hall, Firesnap, Inc.
If you're here reading this, you already know how important marketing automation solutions have become within the greater marketing landscape. Most would now argue marketing automation adoption is a "when," not an "if" for today's businesses. This is especially true for small to mid-size businesses, who are turning to SaaS providers like Marketo, HubSpot, InfusionSoft, Salesforce Pardot, Oracle Marketing Cloud, and others to help them gain momentum (or even remain relevant) in their increasingly competitive markets.
So if you know you need it, how do you go about finding the right one for your particular business? More specifically, where can you find candid, centralized, and objective comparisons between all of the solutions out there?
Here are 5 of the best online resources for finding your own answers to your marketing automation vendor questions. I've listed them in order of sites I feel deliver the most relevant and objective feedback, however, I welcome your input and additional recommendations in the comments section.
1. TrustRadius
TrustRadius is an increasingly popular site where business software users can submit feedback on their experience with different solutions, ranging from CRM to Analytics. They state their mission is, "to bring transparency to the world of enterprise technology by helping technology users learn from their peers to find better solutions, implement them more effectively, and share best practices." I think they're doing a pretty good job of this.
One of the things I like most about TrustRadius is how incredibly thorough they are in vetting reviewers and their reviews. It's nothing like Yelp, where you can quickly login, blast out some emotional rant and get back to your day. You have to go through an extensive review process which I feel leads to more reliable and detail oriented reviews. Find TrustRadius reviews here.
2. G2 Crowd
G2 Crowd, like TrustRadius, also seeks to provide trustworthy and transparent reviews of business software. One thing that makes G2 Crowd unique is their handy graph that shows you where each solution fits on a various spectrums ranging from customer satisfaction, market share, number of ratings and even their own "G2 Score."
You'll find that each software provider has hundreds (if not thousands) of reviews, which definitely makes for better analysis.
Find G2 Crowd reviews here.
3. Software Advice
Software Advice is another great resource for marketing automation reviews. It also offers a helpful, 3 step process that seeks to assist you in your decision. One thing I would point out here is that the number of reviews for all solutions seems a bit skewed. Just like analyzing anything else, you want to make sure your sample size is large and varied, which I'm unsure this site (and the others below) accomplishes. You'll have to determine how much data is satisfactory for yourself. Find Software Advice reviews here.
4. Digital Marketing Depot (Report)
Digital Marketing Depot (AKA Third Door Media), like many others, has compiled a report that compares marketing automation solutions. The reason I've listed this report instead of one from a more recognized researcher like Forrester, is that this one contains virtually all solutions. While I love Forrester, their report was not comprehensive as some major automation vendors declined inclusion in the latest reports.
Nonetheless, this is a decent report that includes a comprehensive set of vendors, is focused toward marketers and doesn't require a fee to download. Find the Digital Marketing Depot 2014 report here.
5. Capterra
Capterra is another online review site that has a pretty stout list of vendors. When you visit, you'll find the downside is its lack of numerous reviews. It's also a bit hard to determine the validity of the reviews themselves. However, I've listed it here because it's still a good resource to see all of the vendors listed back-to-back with company info, feature lists, quick access to demos, etc.
While Capterra is a good source for general data, I would recommend visiting the others on this list first and including this one to round things out (if you feel it's necessary). Find Capterra reviews here.
Finding Your Own Answers
The above resources are merely an avenue for you to see other's experiences, view the solutions in a central location and get a quick glance at what's offered by each vendor. You'll also find that a many of the above sites offer their own comprehensive reports that you can download…some for purchase, some free. Of course, at the end of the day, your decision will come down to what solutions best fit your unique needs and budget.
Have any other great resources for marketing automation solution comparisons? Please share in the comments below.
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The Content Marketing Index
How to Apply and Drive Revenue Opportunities
Measuring Social Media and Content Marketing, Part 3 of 3
Posted 2014, Aug 7, 8:04 p.m. - Martin van der Roest, Batavia Research
In my college years as an engineering student, I quickly became enamored with the study of signal processing. I was completely fascinated by its power and versatility. I learned that you could apply this to not only electrical circuit design, but economics, biology, sociology and so on. Not only could you characterize and call out trends, but there were predictive properties as well. WOW … what a fun discovery it was for me!
Over the past years, I have tended to look at things with my "signal processing" glasses on. In fact, if I saw anything that looked like time-based data or sequences, I immediately thought about applying these techniques. It was bit like the law of the instrument expression "when you only have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."
Applying the Content Marketing Index
In the previous parts one and two of this series, we looked at the basis for the index. The key theme is that there are signals and insights buried in social media and content marketing activities. And these signals can be harvested and applied to …
- sales enablement and prospecting
- benchmarking and performance audits
- competitive analysis
- predictive insights
And on top of all that, these items are business initiatives that drive revenue. Attention B2B marketers … the Content Marketing Index™ (CMI) is a revenue generator!
So, let's explore this further.
Sales Enablement and Prospecting
I've thought of one aspect of marketing being a "vacuum cleaner." That is, marketers need to expose and understand "vacuums" or pain points or needs. With the CMI, marketers can immediately identify these "vacuums" as well as the strengths of a prospect that empowers sales to have data driven, non-subjective, conversations. The CMI is an intelligence tool that can give organizations credibility and shorten their sales cycles. Shorter cycles mean more sales bandwidth … more bandwidth means more revenue.
Here's a use case example. A user of the CMI, creates profiles of their prospects. These profiles are studied by their account managers, who in turn reach out to the prospects. Their profiles or reports are used as the basis for their initial conversation to affirm the findings and exposes the opportunities for improvement. This short conversation then allows for a proposal development by the 2nd or 3rd meeting. The prospects are met at their point of need and the organization can engage more opportunities than previously possible.
Benchmarking and Performance Audits
The question of ROI can activate the breakout of hives for some folks. Just like organizations audit other aspects of their business, why not audit one's social media and content marketing activities? Having your marketing manager directly responsible for these activities or your agency report on ROI is like having the fox guard the chicken coup. Even the word "creative" and "measure" in the same sentence seems oxymoronic for some agencies.
Conducting a performance audit is an ideal application of the CMI. Invariably there are two things that tend to pop out in this use case. The first is a comprehensive performance profile that doesn't lie. It's empirical and data driven. There is nothing you can make up.
Secondly, the actual "content performance" by media type and channel are clearly evident. For example, a common observation is to see several thousands of tweets and text posts to various channels and a handful of photos and videos. Yet in spite of these efforts, there are minimal to no engagements for the text media and often an average of 50 to 100x engagement for rich media. A need to adjust media type ratios would make sense.
Competitive Analysis
As we stressed in part 2 of this series, companies are talking about themselves, product, strategy, industry, etc. Moreover, since social media and content marketing are budgeted items, financial signals are also produced.
Just like the prospecting activities, the CMI can be an intelligence "illuminator" characterizing the activities, performance, messaging, etc. of competitors. And by drilling into the data, additional insights and nuggets can be harvested to highlight products and/or services being promoted along with customer and/or prospects sentiment and reaction.
Predictive Insights
Remember the point I made earlier … that the output of a process, in this case the content marketing lifecycle, is in part a function of input. If money or spend are an input, can we observe certain output to infer spend or budget? The CMI says "yes."
Let's take an illustration based on actual data. A company has a history of regularly posting mixed media to 5 different channels. Posting 5 to 10 times per week was not unusual. However, over a period of a few months, the media mix declined to status text and blogs. Activities on 2 of the channels steadily declined as well. Engagements fell off. So … what's happening? It could be a variety of things, including the dismissal of their agency, change of leadership, change of strategy and direction. However, given certain signals that reflect a change in resources, this could be interpreted as a reduction in budget … and in turn suggest financial stresses for the business? A separate verification indicated that in fact, staffing had been reduced.
Companies budget social media and content marketing initiatives. The resulting initiatives and supporting processes produce content and engagements. The content being produced speaks to company initiatives, products, strategy, pivots, etc. Engagements reflect sentiment. Collectively all of this data possess "signals" that can be observed, measured and rolled up into the "apples-to-apples" nature of the Content Marketing Index™.
This Content Marketing Index™is a significant asset that can empower B2B marketers to drive sales enablement, performance audits, competitive analysis and predictive insights … and ultimately to drive revenue. Translation … the CMI contributes to generating revenue.
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Social Business Intelligence
Empowering B2B Marketers to Drive Improved ROI
Measuring Social Media and Content Marketing, Part 2 of 3
Posted 2014, Jul 31, 1:17 a.m. - Martin van der Roest, Batavia Research
Unlike any time in the history of communications, the internet today has given organizations a platform to talk about themselves, their products, strategies, industry, competition etc.
The nature of this virtual market place is unique and still unfolding. However, it is clear it's the "must-place" to be. You can put off traditional, collaterals, events, etc., but you can't put off a presence on the internet. It is not an option. You have to "earn" your way in, "buy" your way in, or both. Everyone plays.
And not only are companies actively engaged, but their target audience comes to this market place in droves. They search, discover, engage and exchange. They are no longer shackled in their decisions about a product as defined by the product and/or service providers they might be interested in. Instead, they augment their purchasing processes via various communities seeking reviews, feedback and conversation. Transparency and opinions abound.
Pearls of Insights are Forming
The "earned" or let's call this "social media and content marketing" aspect of this market place continues to evolve. It can be challenging to assimilate and in many ways, can be seen as chaotic, unstructured, and disconnected. So much energy is given to figuring it out and reeling it in. Take a look at the posts within the various groups on LinkedIn. There is no shortage of "do this" and "do that" advice and counsel.
As of this writing, I have seen a few thoughtful posts this past year that suggest "content marketing is dead". The pundits believe it is not sustainable. It's like being on Las Vegas Boulevard at night trying to hold up a candle to get noticed. How discouraging would that be. But in reality, what data-driven evidence supports this?
None the less, the content keeps coming. Prospects keep looking and engaging.
But underneath it all … something else is unfolding. As a marketer, you're not the only one pushing out content and talking about your offering, value prop, industry, etc. So is EVERYONE else. Competitors, your industry, suppliers, partners, etc. You don't have to sit in their offices or board rooms to understand what is going on. It's all sitting in this pile of data falling out of everyone's social media and content marketing activities. There are pearls being formed … we just have to figure out how to find them.
First Clue … Follow the Money
The activities of "social media and content marketing" are reflective of a process. The process spectrum can range from random to very intentional. Ultimately, the process drives the output (or lack thereof).
Let's call this process the "content marketing lifecycle". We can further characterize the process by a sequence of lifecycle steps. Without debating the merits, I suggest that there are seven (7) key lifecycle steps. They can be described as setting goals, strategy and planning, scheduling, producing, publishing, engaging and then hopefully measuring. The life cycle is reflected in the diagram below.
This process requires resources. For most businesses this means money or budget. Resources are input … content and engagement are output. In between lies the black box we call the "content marketing lifecycle."
If the content marketing lifecycle is comprised of various steps, is it plausible to suggest that each step produces certain output? Why not? If your content is generating little-to-no engagements for example, what might that suggest about the planning steps where theoretically you identify the "who, what, when and where" of your target audience. I don't have to sit in that planning meeting (if it even happened) to conclude that you never took time to figure out your audience. You get an "F" for your planning efforts.
How about another segment of the black box of the content marketing lifecycle that we call "engagement?" You post and hopefully someone comments or engages. It takes you less than a (business) hour to respond. In fact, you do this consistently. What's that say about the engagement effort? Most likely it is documented, planned, enabled, resourced and measured. So bravo, we give you an "A" for your engagement efforts.
Like these two previous examples, each of the lifecycle phases produces observable and measurable output. "Manifestations" might be another way to express this. Resources applied to the black box of the content marketing lifecycle produces manifestations. What are the pearls that we can dig up and derive?
Social Business Intelligence Feeds the Content Marketing Index
It's easy to be caught up in the busyness of executing our digital marketing efforts. And while we are going about that, the various behavioral "signals" of our own efforts as well as that of others keep freely flowing into public view. Interestingly enough, these signals can be assembled and translated into "intelligence" or what we call the Content Marketing Index.
In part 3, I'll wrap up the series with what it means to apply the content marketing index. I'll touch on sales enablement and prospecting, benchmarking and performance audits, competitive analysis and drum roll … predictive insights. Remember the earlier point … output is in part a function of input. If money or spend are the input, can we assess certain output to infer spend or budget?
Applying data driven insights and intelligence to evaluate one's own activities and that of an industry and/or competitors is vital to adding perspective and visibility. This in turn empowers B2B marketers to ultimately drive improved ROI.
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How Are You Really Doing?
Your Content Marketing Lifecycle Process
Measuring Social Media and Content Marketing, Part 1 of 3
Posted 2014, Jul 23, 1:05 a.m. - Martin van der Roest, Batavia Research
I recently had lunch with a long time personal and business friend. He was already seated when I arrived. As I sat down, he must have picked up a vibe … when he asked curiously, "so ... how are you doing"?
For the past few weeks prior to our lunch, I had really been struggling with the poor results of an ongoing project. Was it for a lack of effort? I didn't think so. Bad talent? Doubtful … a few of the folks on the team struck me as bright, smart and hardworking. My sense was that the team lead was simply running into some tough technical challenges. We talked time and again about changing "this and that". But the same poor results kept cropping up. It was like the little Dutch boy trying to plug up the dam. The poor kid is working hard, but unless the fundamentals in the dam are changed, it's a futile effort.
How am I doing? Fine. How am I really doing? Very frustrated! I've moved into my "expectation management" mode.
Does this sound familiar? Your digital marketing team seems to be working hard and putting in long hours. KPIs such as posting activities, engagements and visitors seemed to be in line with targets. But the results are clearly missing expectations. What is going on?
Busy Outpaces Results
The above graphics reflect the actual activities and results for a small multi-unit business over a 90 day period. The left chart shows the number of posts to 3 channel platforms. The right chart shows "reaction ratio" at these same channels. The reaction ratio is the average number of people responding with a comment, sentiment, share, etc., for every post.
If you were to ask the person responsible for the results on the left, "so how are you doing"? It would be hard to argue their efforts. Over a period of 90 days the folks on this team posted nearly 2,500 times! That's about 28 times per day! 7 days a week! Wow … you couldn't ask for more.
But the results on the right tell quite a different story. Except for the YouTube numbers, the posting activities for the other 2 channels are basically producing insignificant reactions. Not even a "like"?! The words "feels like pounding sand" come to mind.
Random Acts of Marketing
I might be able to accept the above results as an experiment if it weren't for the fact that it's been going on for much longer than 90 days. How many organizations are running experiments, but blindly trudging on?
To "help" all these folks out, it's frankly a bit unsettling to see the abundance of "sage advice" from the experts. It's a barrage of "top 5 things to do", "these 3 game-changing steps", "10 KPIs that will drive sales", and countless other jaw flappings burped up from the "random acts of marketing" camp serving up the "de jour" knee-jerk favorites of the day.
The short history of social media and content marketing have in part shaped this thinking. There is a younger generation that is immersed in social media. This is bookended with an older generation that is skeptical of its value and ROI. I have heard some marketing managers suggest that their social media and content marketing are being done by part-time interns, outsourced to overseas writers unfamiliar with perhaps cultural nuances, and office personnel already tasked with other responsibilities and so on. The message is 'it's not a big deal", "anyone can do it" and "I don't really think it's that important".
Process Will Drive Results
Social media and content marketing are in fact an important dimension of the overall marketing efforts for B2B businesses. And, as in other business disciplines there is an underlying process.
Batavia Research has embraced a seven (7) content marketing lifecycle process. This is reflected in the diagram below.
The Content Marketing Lifecycle
To varying degrees, every organization has such a process. Of course, the allocated budgets and resources will vary. But what if we could assess the process … regardless of budget and resources? Instead of asking the question, "how are you doing?" Could you infer an answer to "how are you really doing"?
Measure the Process
All processes ultimately produce performance, behavioral and predictive "signals". In the consumer world, various "signals" are brought together to create an individual's credit score. For businesses we see Standard and Poor's Case-Shiller Index to characterize the housing market. Both of these indices help us quickly understand the state of certain activities, direction, and emerging trends. They help us develop an "apples to apples" understanding. They help us make decisions.
So, how about an index to characterize a company's social media and content marketing performance and activities? And what would this look like?
Batavia Research has done just that. It has developed the Content Marketing Index that is a data-driven, evidence-based, social business barometer of a company's social media and content marketing activities. It is based on the principle that the manifestations of an organization's content marketing lifecycle activities can be observed, measured and translated into actionable and predictive insights.
By applying common criteria, the Content Marketing Index serves as a "yard stick" that can be used to support various activities such as data-driven marketing, benchmarking, comparative analysis, and even purchasing. Additionally, the nature of the index suggests that even as it evolves, is changed and/or refined, all organizations to which the Index is applied are measured by the same standards and criteria.
Improve the Processes and You'll Improve the Results
Intended to activate discussions and perspectives, this is the first of a 3 part series. Next week In part 2 we will look at performance benchmarking and competitive analysis. Part 3 the following week will explore "predictive" opportunities using social business intelligence data. Embracing an index such as the CMI will only come with acceptance of its value and credibility.
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Relevance Is The New Black
Posted 2014, Jul 22, 11:53 p.m. - Jayne Merritt, FMC Technologies
I was sitting in an InDesign class not long ago with some of my fellow co-workers and we were at the point in the class where we were discussing how to set up documents and measurements. The instructor noted that among the choices available in the dropdown menu were picas – "a measurement term that used to be used in print production but isn't relevant anymore."
WOW – now that set me back! I got to thinking – what do people think today when they hear those outdated terms that at the time were integral to once-critical processes? And how about those processes and subjects that meant one thing back then but are now imbued with entirely new meaning as they relate to newer forms of technology?
When I joined the workforce, the computer was just starting to make inroads into the business world. Used mostly for the creation and storage of data, IBM supplied businesses with their mainframes, huge contraptions contained in freezing rooms that whirred mysteriously with large rolls of tapes that were stacked like platters. If you worked for a company that was even slightly progressive, as I did, you might have first worked on a computer with MS-DOS – pretty much the equivalent of writing code. Getting my first Mac, which had capabilities we now take for granted, opened up whole new vistas for creation.
I remember taking a print production class where we took a field trip to one of the major print production houses in Los Angeles. The production artists worked deftly with layers upon layers of acetate which when assembled together, provided you with a composite that illustrated the complexities of four-color processing. But what was truly exciting was that this company was in the process of computerizing their production processes, and we stared in awe at the triptych visual display that – based on the dashboard of a military jet bomber – was the absolute cutting edge in print technology.
It all seems so quaint now. Today, I can manage those same processes and more right from the same laptop that I'm using to write this blog. I can plan a preflight or create a digital publication while I'm sitting at the airport, then review it with a group of associates who are all on different continents. OK, maybe not Australia. They don't like to stay up that late.
The point is, technology has permeated all aspects of our lives and has changed our approach to everything. There are people in the workforce today who don't know what life was like before computers. Yet there is an even bigger demographic – the baby boomers, many of whom still struggle with the concept of Pay-per-click and Twitter – who are active and involved and still demand to be heard.
For us marketers, this begs a number of questions. How do these differences affect how we approach the market? Are the millennials that much different in their needs from the baby boomers? How much of the back story do we need, and how can we keep all groups relevant?
And finally, is it true that the more things change, the more they stay the same?
I welcome your comments.
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Join us August 6th for
"The B2B Content Marketing Forum and Harbor Cruise, Sunset Reception"
Visit SoCal BMA Events Calendar
How I Fell Head First into Social Media
Posted 2013, Dec 30, 12:05 a.m. - Carlyn Greco, Invensys Inc.
It began in Spring 2008...
Me: "Ummmm...The customer service and recruiting teams started some accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter. But they don't really have a plan and the branding isn't consistent."
Director of MarCom: "I've heard of LinkedIn and Twitter, but what are they? Doesn't matter. They can't speak for the company. Only we can."
Me: "I think that's contrary to the nature of social media. At least that's what I've been reading, but I really don't know much about it."
Director of MarCom: "I don't care what you've been reading. Stop them."
Me: I think we should form a committee and discuss it. I don't know who owns this project."
Director of MarCom: "From now on, you do. Figure it out and take control."
And so I did.
I was a sponge, reading everything I could on the subject, and formed that committee and a bunch of people joined...at first. But then they said they didn't have time. I understood what they meant, as this was just a side project for me as we'll, but my boss told me I had to keep myself in the loop.
For the next few years, spending more and more of my time creating and managing a nice mix of social accounts, I told anyone at our company who would listen that we needed a policy and a strategy so that we could be leaders in our space. That if we didn't reach out to our community with content that was valuable to them, we would fall behind our competitors if we weren't aggressive.
Eventually, they took notice.
Fast forward nearly six years and I'm still managing the social media program for that company. Only now, it's my full-time job. The program reaches into most areas of our organization; we have community managers in every global region, and I've expanded my immediate team. I am the social media thought leader for my company, I hold sessions during our sales & marketing conferences to help drive awareness and adoption of social, and create social content to support company campaigns and goals.
I've helped my company become more socially educated, accessable and connected. Industry editors and analysts follow one or more of our eight blogs and we have a consistently growing and active community across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and YouTube. I'll always be refing our strategy and our approach. I learned about Social Media the same way the rest of the you do - by trial and error, patience and conviction. My social career has been a wonderful whirlwind, and as far as I'm concerned, it's only just begun.
I welcome your comments.
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Data Use in Branding
Posted 2013, Nov 4, 10:38 am - Ryan Rieches and Alan Brew, RichesBaird
What opportunities does Big Data offer marketers to build and manage strong, enduring brands?
In 2010, McKinsey & Company conducted an exhaustive consumer research study to examine how consumers make purchase decisions.
The study included 20,000 consumers across three continents and five industries. It resulted in the widely-publicized Consumer Decision Journey (CDJ) model that disrupted the traditional notion of purchase decisions happening in a linear process, especially in these days of the Internet.
McKinsey then discovered that a similar phenomenon had taken place the B2B world. Many B2B brands are failing to engage buyers at critical points in the buying cycle. We couldn't be happier with McKinsey's efforts to evangelize the importance of delivering a consistent experience for both buyers and customers as they interact with a company. That's because we view branding as more than Vision and Mission statements, taglines or the logo found on a business card.
Brands are positive associations of value in the mind of buyers, over and above price and product functionality, that motivate them to engage with, buy and recommend a product or service. Research studies have shown that strong brands enjoy profitability advantages over their competition and sell for higher multiples in M&A transactions. Measurements such as the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) represent one indicator of the strength of a brand, however more advanced brand health measurements are available.
We apply five steps to develop a winning brand strategy:
- Business Strategy (clarity, executive alignment, investment)
- Insight Discovery (customer perceptions, market mapping, opportunity assessment)
- Brand Development (positioning, brand architecture, brand identity)
- Brand Adoption (employee engagement)
- Brand Integration (execution, marketing strategy) To begin, establishing clear strategic intent is essential for success throughout the rest of the process. It is important to select the correct data sets and apply the appropriate analysis technique during the Insight Discovery stage to produce a credible snapshot of where a company is positioned and buyer intent to purchase. This (in turn) enables the company to determine whether it should modify its brand strategy to better penetrate the target markets to accelerate sales.
McKinsey's notion of focusing on buyer and customer journeys is powerful during the Brand Adoption and Brand Integration steps to ensure the brand experience aligns with the brand promise. The result being that customers become promoters to spend more and refer more.
We challenge you to ask yourself:
- What intangible value do you deliver to customers?
- What associations are bundled around that value?
- How are you measuring performance over time?
Big data offers marketers unique opportunities to measure brand health in addition to statistical data analysis for developing brand strategy.
We welcome your comments.
Alan Brew - Principal - RiechesBaird
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Developing a Conversation Marketing Strategy
Posted 2013, Oct 30, 3:32 pm - Michele Grieshaber, IBM
A few weeks ago, I came across an article in the New York Time's business section about an astrobiology student in her senior year at the University of Pennsylvania who had figured out how to develop a wireless device that could charge a battery from across the room. She has figured out how to use sound waves to carry electrical current! It wasn't just fascinating that she did this by bridging multiple scientific and engineering disciplines, she researched this breakthrough on her own, assembling bits of information and overcoming objections from experts in various fields. The availability of information allowed her to create her point of view and inevitably, a prototype and start-up company.
To me, this is an extreme example of what happens on a regular basis in business today.
Everyday, prospective clients are searching for information to piece together a point of view on a problem they are trying to solve. While they may not all be astrobiologists, they all want answers. And the easier you can give them access to information that shapes their point of view, the more likely you'll be asked to help them solve those problems.
A recent Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that today's buyers progress 60% of the way down the purchase path before they reach out for live help. With so much information readily available on the web, it's easier than ever for potential clients to develop an informed point of view before connecting with vendors! This shift makes it critical for marketers to engage clients with relevant content during their discovery process. To be successful, requires a new way of thinking and engaging with customers, it requires creating a dialogue or what is called conversation marketing.
There are five steps that you need to take in developing your conversation marketing strategy.
- Get to know your client with "The Insights"
- Determine the Triggers and Pain Points
- Create a dialogue
- Engage the client with the right content
- Distribute and Optimize Quality Engagement Through Preferred Channels
Completing these five steps and developing your conversation marketing strategy will help drive consistent, compelling interactions across all channels. If done effectively, the output of conversation marketing serves as a blueprint for client engagement for a specific solution or audience and illustrates a journey to tell the complete and relevant brand story to the right audience.
I welcome your comments.
Michele Grieshaber
Keynote Speaker, SoCal BMA Regional Conference 2013
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Marketers Must Become Proactive Stewards of their Company Assets
Posted 2013, Sep 22, 10:58 a.m. - Steve Perkins, Accuvant, Inc.
Balancing the benefits of business enablement with business security, Information Security is a hot topic today at every level of government and business. The landscape has exploded and is now bigger and more complex than most people can begin to fathom.
Unfortunately, most companies are exposed. IT and security teams are underfunded and under empowered -- but it is not just an issue for IT. As owners of our data and brands marketers need to be proactive.
The threat is no longer general viruses and generic attacks, but highly targeted, multi-level, multi-year attacks on a specific company with specific assets as the prize. And some of the biggest prizes are your "big marketing data", strategies, trade secrets, even your very brand.
There are two primary considerations. First, defensively, is to understand that Big Data, along with go-to-market plans and secrets, represent a primary target for the bad guys.
The second issue, offensively, is to understand what this means. Methods will be implemented to inhibit us from connecting, profiling and reaching prospects and clients. This will apply to all new communication methods, such as social or personal targeting. These new channels represent the same vectors now being used by attackers. They will be sealed by IT departments.
As marketers, we have a call to be relevant and personal, but not invasive or overly assumptive in our tactics. Opt-in and relevance at the point of research, as well as trust development and referral marketing in B2B will become critical to cut through filters and blocks.
I welcome your comments.
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Read more about this topic in my best practices interview.
"Cybersecurity: Marketers Need to Defend Big Data".
5 Tips for Surviving and Thriving in this New Marketing Era
Posted 2013, Jul 25, 3:00 p.m. - Jacques Pavlenyi, IBM
I don't know about you, but it certainly feels like there's plenty of negativity and change in the Zeitgeist to go around, particularly if you're a technology or B2B marketer. IBM is experiencing a lot of layoffs along with other Tech giants. Most developed (and many developing) regions are still slogging through a sluggish economy. And movie theaters are raking it in with dark films like World War Z this year, on the heels of last year's Dark Knight Rises, and Contagion the year before that.
As as I wrote about in my previous 3-part series for SoCal BMA's blog, the very nature of marketing is being radically redefined in this unsettled and unsettling era of social, mobile, cloud, and marketing automation.
I've been feeling a little sluggish myself over the past couple of months from all these buffeting tides. So when I was invited to write another post for SoCal BMA, I leapt at the opportunity to revisit my own thinking and give myself a little pick-me-up: if I'm struggling with all this change, why not write about that?
And what makes for a better post than the top 5 ways I'm using to turn all these challenges into opportunity: an opportunity to position myself for not just surviving, but thriving as marketing professional in the next 15 years of my career.
#5. Stay flexible
Marketing, like all other professional fields, is undergoing great change. It's more critical than ever to stay curious about what new tools, trends and technologies can do to improve your game: cloud-based marketing automation software; social media measurements; the next Pinterest; customer data and social media data analytics; mobile marketing; etc. It's not about "getting there because everyone else is". It's about staying just slightly ahead of where your customers are going.
And on a purely personal level, learning new skills keeps our brains young, keeps our perspectives fresh, and even leads to higher levels of happiness and satisfaction.
What better way for your brand to stand out in a crowd by merging your existing offerings with a fresh perspective? What better way to enhance your personal brand by adding new techniques to your existing marketing professional toolbox?
#4. Zig when the competition zags
Don't copy or (just) react to the way your competition is marketing. There's an easy trap to fall into when things get complex. Remember, the ultimate goal is serving your customers, not beating the competition (if it's the latter, you probably should be in another professional than marketing).
If your competition is trying to serve the same audience by blanketing the market with Out of Home (OOH) ads, then don't ratchet up a war of billboards. Look to places where your customers are being underserved. Perhaps they congregate in an online community because the solutions those OOH ads are promising don't really deliver what the customer had hoped. That's when you can step in with subject matter experts who are ready to offer assistance through the online forum. And in all probability, your competition won't even know you're there until it's too late.
That's just one example among many. Avoid the trap of a direct attack and instead sidestep for success.
#3. Tell compelling stories
There's no doubt there's a competitive market out there. Globalization and technology mean no industry is spared having to compete with companies from halfway around the world. So knowing what your Brand stands for is doubly important, and how that Brand is different from anyone else. It's really hard to market what you haven't internalized, or don't understand, and even harder if what you have isn't easy to differentiate.
The good news is that no matter what you're marketing, it can be differentiated through compelling stories that communicate additional value in a captivating way. This timeless article from Brand Channel on differentiating commodities is still as relevant today as it was almost 10 years ago, and shows that even the most mundane products and services can be made compellingly unique. If after the hard work of defining that unique value proposition you decide what your value proposition or story isn't really unique, it's time to try again, or find something else your company can stand behind. Your customers usually figure that out before you do, by the way!
The same goes for your personal brand. In my own company, IBM, as a marketing professional, if I want to get ahead, I have to compete with literally thousands of other marketers in IBM across the globe, not to mention marketers trying to get a job with IBM. What's my story? What's my compelling differentiator? As a wise mentor once told me: you get ahead when you continue to have something unique to say, something your target audience wants to hear. If after all the hard work of the self-examined life you still come up short, it's time to try again. Everyone is unique, and your experiences undoubtedly differ from those around you, giving your a different perspective than everyone else.
#2: Learn to Collaborate
As Seth Godin has been writing about for several years, we've moved from the information economy to the artisanal economy. That also means moving from the safety net of a permanent employer to a riskier but more creative independent contractor environment.
This is nothing new for artists, of course. The multi-billion-dollar Entertainment industry has been using a model of structured project development for decades. Hollywood is a prime example of creating a project team ("film crew") to build the product, which is promptly dissolved when completed. Those projects are supported through the Studios' economies of scale (distribution, promotion, financing), who in turn pull together free agents from across the spectrum – Producers, Directors, Writers, Actors, Editors, Sound Effects, Cinematographers, etc. – to actually create and deliver the film. Almost all of these craftsmen and women are free agents, very few of whom directly work as a full-time Studio employee. They rely on their portfolios to help them get hired for the next gig.
Don't fool yourself into thinking this could never happen to marketing. It already has started. Mid-level marketing managers increasingly manage contractors, part-timers and junior marketing resources from outsourcing and "in-sourcing" centers like Bangalore, Bratislava and Bucharest, as much as they do full-time employees in the same physical office location.
That reality means learning how to collaborate with diverse teams on short notice is increasingly a critical success factor in a marketer's career. Like that Hollywood craftsman, you have to rely on an extended project team of experts in different fields to work together for a short period of time. And you have to quickly learn how to collaborate with people you may not know all that well, and even if you did, don't work for you or for your "official" employer. My experience as an IBM marketer is that my primary success is a direct result of my ability to collaborate across functional areas not just in marketing (public relations, analyst relations, demand generation programs, category marketing, web marketing, etc.) but other functions as well (development, product management, sales, support, services, etc.).
I was talking to a hiring manager yesterday at a Global 100 media company. The trend for some time in the resumes he's been seeing are that they are longer, with a lot more employers and projects, versus the 10+ year stints at a single company he used to see more often. And he suddenly realized that that isn't necessary a bad thing. It doesn't show disloyalty, but rather an ability to quickly ramp up and apply new and existing skills in a new setting, with new co-workers.
And #1: Be Social
What better way to keep those collaborative juices flowing than to engage through social networks? How better to learn those new skills by reading from your peers what they've done that is, and isn't, working, through their blogs, forums, status updates, and online community chats? How else to truly internalize and understand how social is truly transforming marketing, if you don't participate yourself?
There's a reason companies large and small are encouraging their employees to be social. It works. It drives more engagement, which in turn drives more revenues. As I showed in my most recent presentation for SoCal BMA in May of this year, marketing tactics in IBM that leveraged the use of social subject matter experts and activities yielded outsized marketing returns – number of leads, conversion of those leads to qualified opportunities, and higher revenues – than traditional tactics. I can't think of anything more powerful to show to your boss, on your resume – a set of market-winning tactics and campaigns. And I can't think of a better way to share those successes than through blogs, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twitter and other public social media.
I know I'm working hard on applying these 5 tips to re-ignite my personal engagement with my work in these challenging times. I hope they can help you as well.
I welcome your comments: What's keeping you fresh and engaged nowadays?
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End-to-End Marketing Part 3: Creative examples, good and bad
Posted 2013, Apr 23, 7:30 p.m. - Jacques Pavlenyi, IBM
As I wrote about in the first and second posts of this 3-post series, I've come to believe that the advent of the "science of marketing" doesn't have to mean the wholesale switch in power from the Creatives to the Quants. The marrying of data-driven and automated workflows with creative and emotion-driven design and execution, is where I see leaders shine today, and where the competitive winners will come from tomorrow.
The pitfalls are pretty clear. I think outsourcing customer lifecycle stages is going to be replaced by outsourcing the technology but maintaining the people and process in-house. In the age of the empowered customer, I think Brands are realizing that Marketing has to remain a core competency, even if the underlying technology platform is supplied by a partner.
Just look at how major brands like Dell and others have been slowly re-onshoring their support and service teams because customers were clearly turned off by distant call centers populated with basically robotic script readers, in many cases no better than the maddening voice-response systems ("...press 2 if you don't like the answer I just gave you to first try rebooting your computer..."). People, for better or worse, want and need some kind of emotional connection to the people they are talking to. In the high-touch stages of the customer lifecycle in particular, engaged employees who genuinely care about the customer and embody the Brand's culture are going to win.
I like to share an example of a Brand outsourcing to their detriment. About 5 years ago, I had the distinct misfortune of once ordering a new washing machine from Sears. They at the time outsourced their delivery to 3rd-party trucking companies. The struggles I had with late deliveries, poor installation, and unhelpful service calls to this 3rd party only damaged my relationship with Sears. I didn't care the delivery wasn't actually done by Sears. For me, it was all part of the "Sears" experience. And therefore, it was their marketing team's responsibility to understand how that vendor relationship was benefiting or hurting the Sears Brand. Sadly, I just heard of another example last month from good friends of mine, again with Sears' subcontractor (and therefore Sears) messing up the delivery phase. Apparantly they haven't learned.
I also like to share good examples I think are illustrative of success. One example of success that I liked was CenturyLink. They were awarded the BtoB "Peoples' Choice" award for Social Media Marketing. They used unique storytelling and game play to engage with prospects for business communications services. It was both a very creative use of storytelling, and heavy on quantification, data integration and marketing automation. While no data was provided on the actual sales that resulted from the campaign, clearly they touched a positive nerve and engendered a lot of positive brand equity.
Another I liked was USG. Their agency, Gyro, was awarded the Business Marketing Association B2 Award 2011 for an integrated campaign "The weight has been lifted". The creativity of the storytelling was outstanding and emotionally relevant to their target audiences. And it was integrated within a cross-channel campaign that leveraged multiple technologies (content syndication, social media, web, and more). The results in the first few weeks alone showed that Home Depot was selling 1 lightweight wallboard panel for every three traditional panels.
And I couldn't resist US Cellular, which uses marketing automation software from IBM to improve campaign volume and targeting, reduces costs, and frees up limited marketing resources to focus on creativity and campaign design, rather than manual processes.
What does this mean for the average marketer? For me, at least, there are 3 particular areas where the marrying of technology and creativity are changing the way I execute my job.
1. Free your time by automating repetitive tasks. Yes, it does take some time away for a short while from the creative aspects. But by finding a way of getting out of spreadsheets and manual processes, in the long run it frees up your mind for more strategic and creative aspect. Which are more fun, anyway.
2. Look for integration points. As someone wise once told me, "innovation happens at the seams". A lot of the innovation and consolidation happening in marketing technology today is about integrating the various steps more holistically and organically. This better collaboration between marketing, communications, sales, support and supply chain functions improves handoffs and decreases lost or irritated customers.
3. In the rush for metrics, don't forget storytelling; and as a storyteller, don't forget to measure (and act upon) your results. Marketing is entering an exciting, unique time. With my engineering background, I often railed against the overly creative aspects of the industry that weren't interested (or able) to report back to the business if all that effort was actually accomplishing anything. Today, less than ever, marketers have no excuse to not measure outcomes. But like Finance, if you let the Quants take over completely, the humanity of your endeavor is lost. So find a way to marry the two.
With all this talk about the marrying of tech with emotion, I am very excited about the upcoming April 25th SoCal BMA event, "Increasing Profits by Delivering Great Customer Experience: The 6 Disciplines for Achieving the Full Business Potential". Kerry Bodine, VP & Principal Analyst, Customer Experience from Forrester Research is a highly respected speaker in the customer experience area for Forrester, so I have a feeling this will be an exciting conversation.
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End-to-End Marketing Part 2: Marrying creativity with technology
Posted 2013, Apr 3, 8:20 p.m. - Jacques Pavlenyi, IBM
In my previous post, I started to think about the heavy influence of technology and how it seems to be pushing marketing too much towards the rational at the expense of the creative. In this post, I would like to think a little bit more in depth about where technology (rational, repeatable decision-making) and creativity (emotional appeals) can co-exist successfully.
I like to think of the traditional end-to-end marketing as more of a circle. Of course, each stage actually touches the other in some direct as well as indirect way. But for purposes of simplicity, I think this does the trick.
- Product or service idea - raw value creation
- Segmentation - the identification of unmet needs mapped to new value
- Messaging - translating raw value into compelling value propositions in natural language the target segments understand
- Go-to-market - the application of messages to specific media, tactics and channels to elicit a response
- Lead management and sales - the qualification of responses into leads, and the passing of leads to sales for progression and win
- Delivery - realization of value through application and use
- Customer support and service - product or service support to meet actual customer expectations of realized value
Different roles in the organization have specialized in one or more of these areas. But the advent of social technologies have tightened and increased the complexity of the cycle:
- Traditional marketing and corporate communications used to focus mainly on Stages 2-5
- Product management focused on Stages 1 and 2
- Sales focusing on Stage 5
- Support and Service closing out the loop in Stages 6 and 7
But the reality is that today "we're all marketers now", and everyone overlaps each Stage. Hence the growth of end-to-end marketing, and the consolidation of marketing, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and Big Data (analytics and predictive analytics) software and cloud services providers in the market.
Digital technologies are improving the automation and repeatability of all the various steps, especially in areas traditionally considered creative and manual. We're moving from spreadsheets and file folders to marketing asset and web content management. From siloed project management social project management. From manual campaign execution to marketing automation. From observational data to predictive modeling. As a result, marketing gets into every step much more intimately, as the organization's aggregate voice of the customer:
- New product or service. From pure "gut feel" design and focus groups to recordable behavioral observation coupled with predictive modeling based on social media discussions. But without creative design that appeals to emotion AND function (see: Apple, "beautiful" enterprise software), the product's or service's adoption slows or stalls.
- Segmentation. From guessed "personas" to personas based on analytics that aggregate actual behavior from millions of people and millions of interactions. But there still needs to be creative story telling, that turns these personas into people that your prospects actually relate to or can see in themselves.
- Messaging. From the myth of Mad Men to real-time A/B testing of digital content and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But the need for creative story-telling doesn't disappear. There has to be real copy behind the A/B. Web content that over-emphasizes SEO just reads like story written by a computer-generated voice response system. There has to be an emotional connection between the prospect's life and the product or service you hope will improve it.
- Go-to-market. From traditional go-to-market strategies that emphasize channel management, to distributed value networks and extended partnerships enabled through social collaboration and integrated supply chains. The emotional requirements here though are still important: relationships are built on trust and value sharing, not just quantitative analyses of leads passed or inventory management.
- Lead management and sales. From rolodexes and spreadsheets to robust marketing automation that syndicate registrable content, guide prospect automatically to qualified leads and hand them over seamlessly to Sales or indirect Channels who can manage qualified prospects through sales automation tools that are integrated with customer relationship management systems. But once more, without a cohesive, compelling story-telling thread in the content, as well as a sales force that fully internalizes AND embodies your Brand promise and product stories, the prospect will smell inauthenticity and insincerity. This inauthenticity slows progression or limits relationships to low-margin commodity transactions.
- Delivery and #7 Customer Support. From a "sign here" hand-off and "Call here if you run into any problems", to in-depth technical implementation and service, coupled with multi-channel "post sale" customer care and social media listening for possible crises or unplanned opportunities. The possibilities from integrated delivery and support chains that incorporate quantitative surveys and qualitative analysis of social media chatter is quite compelling. But it is all for naught if your delivery and support teams are not providing high-touch, locally-provided, engagement-rich interactions.
In the 3rd and last post of this series, I'll take a look at examples I think are illustrative of the opportunities that can come from this marrying of the logical with the emotional, and the pitfalls that come from not doing so.
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Segmentation: An offline marketing concept emerging naturally in an online marketing world
Posted 2013, Mar 26, 1:43 a.m. - Denise Hopkins, Experian
Segmentation has long been used in offline direct marketing to better understand your customers and market to them more relevantly. The concept of segmentation in its simplest form is understanding who your customers are and then creating clusters or cohorts based upon similar characteristics. This concept is naturally evolving as we move into more social interaction and engagement with our customers online. The social networks have given us a new channel where our customers naturally cluster. Whether they are called Circles, Friends, Followers or Likes they are the emergence of Clusters, Cohorts and Segments -- or put more simply, groups of people with something in common. As a B2B Marketer and a B2B Customer, you can learn a lot about me based upon the companies I choose to Follow, the Likes that I express or the Groups that I join.
What is missing from these Circles or Segments is the understanding of who those customers are based upon their needs, interests, attitudes, firmographics and behaviors. This customer understanding is still critical to your success. The more you understand who your customers are and what they are interested in, the easier it will be to engage in conversations and meaningful interactions within social media. Creating personas of your best customers will help you to better understand who they are and engage with them online and offline. Social media isn't about pushing your message out but engaging customers. The more you know, the easier it will be for you to create content and start up the conversation with your customers.
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End-to-End Marketing Part 1: The death of creativity?
2013, Mar 17, 5:50 p.m. - Jacques Pavlenyi, IBM
There's a trend roaming the marketing landscape. The acquisition spree that started as smoke signals in the mid-2000s with Experian's purchase of CheetahMail and Email Solutions, has heated into a raging fire:
- Experian acquired Techlightenment and Virid
- IBM purchased UNICA, Sterling Commerce and Coremetrics
- Oracle acquired Eloqua, Market2Lead and Vitrue
- Salesforce.com expanded with Buddy Media
- Adobe bought Omniture
- And let's not forget the continued rise of strong independents like Responsys, Marketo, ExactTarget, and many more.
Clearly these companies see an irresistible opportunity. Where IT in the previous e-business cycle was all about automating back-office processes, the maturation of cloud computing, the continual eclipse of PCs in favor of mobile and tablet devices, and the explosion of social media and Big Data all seem to lead to a unifying thought: the application of technology and repeatable models to transform traditionally "creative" and manual front-office processes like Marketing.
My concern, though, is that with the (IMHO) long-overdue headlong rush of applying these technologies to improve the "the science of marketing", we may be forgetting the core creative nature of marketing. This creativity is critical because we're dealing with people. Customers, prospects, influencers don't behave like perfectly rational beings in a perfect Adam Smith economics universe. People are complex, messy, layered, unpredictable. In my opinion, that means marketers still need to keep that creative element. I like to think of it as the human application of technology:
Obviously, the end-to-end customer lifecycle is much more complex. But for purposes of my post today, I wanted to emphasize the inherent necessity for BOTH the logical and the emotional when it comes to marketing. Data is taking center stage, and for good reason: measurements are easier to get than ever before, in places we as marketers have always dreamed of but didn't quiet get to:
- The average prospect spends 19 seconds on my latest offering web page since the updates last week, up 4 seconds. The A/B test indicated the update would result in a 10% increase in time spent, so we did better than expected.
- My most recent LinkedIn banner campaign had a 0.7% click-through rate, a decrease of 0.1 points from the last campaign. The analysis indicates it was more due to bad choice of copy vs. a general decrease in LinkedIn click-through rates.
- My Twitter followers have a 3-point higher positive Brand Consideration vs. the general population.
- Of the 4,972 responses I received from my last newsletter offer, 17% of these were "Qualified" are ready for passing to a Sales Rep, slightly better than expected. Of those passed leads, 27% of them converted into wins, much higher than our year-to-date average conversion rates. Discussions with Sales indicated improved enablement prior to launching the recent newsletter was a key success factor.
- The most recent beta program indicated 5 specific product improvement proposals garnered 71% of the "if this were available, I would be more likely to purchase the next version of the product" responses. Advanced analytics estimates a 64% chance of a 10% increase in revenue from making those changes.
This level of analytical rigor would be a dream come true for most marketing organizations. And the application of technology is slowly but surely making this a reality.
But at the end of the day, it's people who make the purchase decision, and therefore some kind of emotional element still enters into the equation. You don't think this applies to business-to-business marketing? I humbly suggest it does:
- FEAR: "Will I be fired if I choose Vendor A over Vendor B? Will my management team think I'm stupid or smart for making this decision?"
- EGO: "Can I further my status in the organization if I make this project a reality?"
- PASSION: "I really believe this solution can make a difference in the world."
- REVENGE: "My predecessor was a jerk. Bringing this project to fruition would be proof they were wrong."
If you think I am over-stating the danger of excessive reliance on data and technology, rather than emotional appeals, I simply offer the following example. I was at Universal Studios Orlando a few weeks ago. IBM Connect, the big collaboration conference, held it's big Wednesday evening event party there. The roller coasters were a blast, but something struck me as I left the Despicable Me ride. You had to exit through the gift shop. That's when I realized that EVERY roller coaster, every experience ride, every museum I've been to in the past few years sets up the path so that you HAVE to go through the gift shop on your way out. It's not on the way in – you haven't had the experienced yet, so there's no context for the shill about to hit you. It's on the way out, when your adrenalin rush is fresh and your emotional connectivity to the theme the highest – the best time to hit you with a retail suggestion. I have to admit the plushy minion stuffed toys were very appealing.
This uniformity of experience comes from a lot of data that originated in retailing and observational studies of purchasing behavior. But while it may result in more revenues per visitor, for me it drained the experience of uniqueness and creative differentiation. I became inured to the appeal. As a result I actually started to resent being manipulated so explicitly. Data can help in the short term, but too much and it robs the purchase or consumption experience of emotional content, like surprise and delight.
In a follow-on post, I plan to delve a little deeper into how technology can improve different parts of the customer (and therefore marketing) lifecycle, without losing the emotional qualities that I believe are necessary for successful marketing and selling.
What do you think? Do you agree the marketing pendulum is starting to swing too much towards the analytical? Or not enough?
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Post-Event Recap - "Mastering the Three-up's and One-down" with Robert S. Murray
2013, Mar 17, 5:50 p.m. - Luz Marina, Marin
What a great time we had Wednesday night, March 13th, at our executive roundtable dinner with Robert S. Murray and his presentation, Mastering the Three-Up's and One-Down. (Learn more about this topic at my Mar 11 posting below.) Thank you Bob!
Those of you who attended the event might agree the top three lessons learned (and the most entertaining!) were "squirrel", "chasing shiny objects", and "the wisdom of Billy Idol". (For those who did not attend... Yes, that Billy Idol!)
As for our roundtable discussion portion of the evening... First, I want to mention our January event with keynote speaker Gail Miller, former marketing exec for Toshiba America. Attendees from that event will recall our discussion topic for the evening, "What is your pain?". Gail's presentation (B2B Insider Marketing Strategies, Social & Success) paved the way that evening for our lively roundtable dinner discussion, delivering great ideas and resources offered by Gail and attendees throughout the room.
At our following chapter roundtable dinner (Wed, Mar 13), Bob's terrific presentation took us on a journey through practical, heartfelt, company leadership stories and insights -- inspiring our discussion topic for that evening, "What is your company's remarkable distinction?" It made for fascinating revelations about ourselves and our companies, and opportunity for Bob to further illustrate the importance of leading from the right -- side of the brain, that is.
"I found the presentation to be engaging and interesting. Some great examples were shared by Robert Murray about how he experienced the challenges in turning around a business and how he learned to truly engage the employees. The roundtable discussion around what makes our businesses remarkable brought out some very thought provoking conversation. Great event!" Denise Hopkins, Vice President, Small Business Segment - Experian Marketing Services
"I thought it was great. Mr. Murray's use of stories helped keep his presentation engaging while still communicating some great principles for leading an organization. I made some notes I'll be sharing with my entire team in a company meeting coming up. In particular, I found the distinction between the 3 areas of excellence (operations, innovation, or customer intimacy) helpful to share, with the comment that we want to be good at all of it but need to especially focus on one." Robert Miller, Owner - Lester Lithograph
The peer networking topped off the evening connecting business leaders, senior corporate marketers, managers and communicators from all four areas within our SoCal BMA chapter territory -- Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, San Diego, and Orange County.
For you fellow foodies... We enjoyed a light dinner that evening at the Center Club consisting of colorful Fresh Vegetable Crudités with delicious Hummus dip; sliced Tri-Tip Beef and Whole Grain Mustard; comfort-food Jerk Chicken Skewers with Rosemary Ranch sauce; fresh and delightful Caprese with Basil & Balsamic Reduction; a fantastic Winter Truffle Corn Risotto (my personal favorite!); and Merlot and Pinot Grigio wine, along with the Club's wonderfully refreshing "spa water". It was a light and flavorful meal perfectly suited for our lively and productive discussion!
Thank you to our event sponsors OmniPlatform, Young Company, and Steve Giraud Photography. Their support for this event helped make it possible for each attendee to received their complimentary copy of Robert S. Murray's book, It's Already Inside: Nurturing Your Innate Leadership for Business and Life Success.
Photos - SoCal BMA 2013-0313
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2013, Mar 11, 12:40 am
Drive change and grow your business by "Mastering the Three-Up's and One-Down"
Join us Wed, 3/13 in OC! If you are already registered, invite a colleague or business friend to join you next Wed, Mar 13, 4p-7p, at the beautifully-renovated Center Club, in Costa Mesa, Orange County.
What are the "Three Up's"?
Increasing Revenue
Customer Satisfaction
What is the "One Down"?
Decreasing Cost
The pressures in the C-suite have never been more intense than they are today. Business competition is at an all time high, and global pressure is causing chaos in every market. If you are a successful b2b marketer, you look outside your business and into the business of your customers and prospects. Understanding the pain and the challenges business leaders are are going through, and knowing how to apply the three-ups and one-down to your customers and prospects, will help you position your business to thrive, in spite of these challenging times.
During this presentation and roundtable discussion with international C-suite turnaround mercenary, Robert Murray, you will discover how to:
Identify where your company needs to strategically focus
Extend a deeper customer appreciation and understanding within your organization
Unlock the code to leading change with the hearts and minds of all stakeholders
Excerpts from prior chats with R.S. Murray
"From various C-suite positions I've held with companies over the years, I have learned that a whole lot of leaders operate purely from their left brain. And the ones that are really good have figured out how to simplify that left-brain activity.
Everything that comes at them, everything that they think about, they categorize into four simple file folders -- what I call the three-up's and one-down: how they're going to drive revenue up; increase production; increase customer satisfaction; and of course the one-down, reduce and control cost.
I'm a turnaround guy...I have found that organizations that are not as successful as they could be is usually because they are missing a few of the basics. An entrepreneurial organization, small to medium organizations suffer from what I refer to as entrepreneurial's disease, where they're constantly chasing shiny objects. In larger organizations which are very, very structured, I see that leaders in those organizations chase different kinds of shiny objects... usually pushed on them by the board or the market analysts. It causes leaders to react and behave in very uncharacteristic ways.
Three percent of truly greatly successful organizations enjoy double and triple digit market growth; they enjoy majority market share; their bottom line is significantly more profitable than their competitors... they pay attention to those three-up's and one-down, not just driving cost down.
From a marketing perspective, if companies don't embed their distinctive advantage -- why they are better or why their customers buy from them -- into their entire organization, they'll never truly succeed. Those that get it, the global top three percent, they understand their customer, deeply, and they craft their product and service that fits that customer's needs. They embed that throughout their entire organization -- from one end to the other -- HR goes out and looks for people that will fit those needs; the operations team structures standard operating processes. That's the difference between the global top 3% of great organizations versus the other 97%. Great companies get it. They embed it everywhere. And marketing plays a huge role in that." Robert S. Murray
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