Posted by Tara Robertson on Thu, Aug 26, 2010 @ 01:14 PM
Another recent article written by Mike Kelly, co-founder of TSL Marketing, has received all the buzz in DM weekly. In this article Mike Kelly asks the simple question "Are you boring your prospects" and the answer is... most likely. Let's take a deep dive into what this means through an excerpt from the article:
With all the buzz around “micro marketing” and “one-to-one” marketing over the last decade it still astonishes me to see how many companies rely on a single message to multiple contacts in different functional areas at their prospect companies. Do we really believe that the Finance Director and IT Director have the same agendas?
Many business-to-business marketers seem to have forgotten that you don’t market to companies, you market to individuals. And each has their own specific agenda. Unless you market to them in their language, addressing their specific needs, you will simply bore them.
It is worth using an example to reinforce this. Imagine you market a business-to-business software application and that the buying center for this application is comprised of multiple constituents at a company e.g. the IT Director, Operations Director and Finance Director.
Each of these people will have separate goals and agendas specific to their functional responsibility. The IT Director will be concerned with things like compatibility with the existing IT infrastructure and future-proofing. The Finance Director will be concerned with Total Cost of Ownership and how quickly the company can recoup its investment in your application. The Operations Director may be more concerned about how your application will affect the operational efficiency of the business...
Or click here to read more of this article
Posted by Norma Shepardson on Thu, Apr 29, 2010 @ 04:06 PM
This coming week TSL Marketing will be sponsoring the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. We are excited for the event, and if you are planning on being there stop by booth 17 to say hello.
These are a few event highlights...
- Get a comprehensive B2B marketing education
- Sharpen your B2B skills overnight
- Use social media to grab more attention
- Learn from your peers in the interactive discussions
If you want to view full agenda for the Forum, click here.
We definitely are looking forward to hosting the Wii station at the Forum, it should be a fun way to see everyone between sessions, seminars, and speakers. If you are planning on attending, stop by and enter the raffle for a chance to win the Wii at the end of the day on Wednesday.
If you are unable to attend the forum, check back in the coming weeks and we will be sure to share some of the new information, marketing trends, and sales advice we will learn about while we are there.
Event details can be found by logging on to the MarketingProfs website, or by clicking here.
Posted by Tara Donnelly on Mon, Feb 16, 2009 @ 03:03 PM
Marketing Operations is a relatively new term that has been tossed around over the last couple years. According to wikipedia, Marketing Operations (or Marketing Operations Management/MOM) is a vision of end to end marketing optimization, from planning and budgeting, through marketing content management, to global marketing execution and analysis. While this is all correct, we would term marketing operations as simply your foundation in which you work to improve your marketing effectiveness.
When starting your marketing operations plan, here are some basic steps to get you started in marketing more effectively.
- Track Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) - Any and all marketing tactics should be tracked in order to determine its effectiveness. You can track your ROMI by use of a marketing dashboard with marketing automation programs; however if you do not have access to these programs, a simple spreadsheet will suffice. Tracking ROMI should (in the least) contain the following: cost of tactic, time for implementation (cost of internal team), leads generated, conversion rates for leads, proposal stage, and closed/won revenue. By keeping track of these numbers, you will quickly learn which tactics generate the most leads, and more importantly, which tactics generate the most sales.
- Develop Dashboards - Most CRM tools have dashboards that can be created in order to track your ongoing marketing and sales activities. In these dashboards you can track lead conversions (by sales reps), marketing leads generated, sales goals, and top marketing tactics as some examples. If you do not have access to dashboards within your CRM tool, these can also be created via spreadsheets (though this can often be time consuming). For more information or ideas on how to custom create company dashboards, email us.
- Marketing Lead Conversion - One of the best ways to measure campaign effectiveness is through lead conversion rates. This should be tested by assigning leads to (at minimum) 3 different sales reps from the same marketing tactic. After a few weeks/months, tracking what leads convert, which sales reps are converting them, and how long the conversion rate takes, you will have not only an idea of how successful your marketing campaign was; but also which sales reps have the highest conversion rates, and what the average lead lifecycle time should be for that particular tactic.
- Lead Lifecycle Management - Tracking the lifecycle of your leads is a crucial part to marketing operations. When leads are not tracked, it is easy for them to slip through the cracks and potential sales could be lost. Some successful ways in tracking leads are to create a lead lifetime with your sales team that is attainable. Based on your marketing conversion rates, you will soon be able to determine what the average lead conversion rate should be. For example, if you are able to determine that a lead should convert within 90 days, than your lead lifetime should be 90 days. If after 9 days a lead does not convert, the lead then goes back into lead nurtuting for marketing or gets assigned to a different sales rep. Sales should also have an average per contact touch ratio to determine how many times a prospect gets reached out to within the 90 day time period.
- Campaign Management - When starting your marketing operations plan, you should always make sure you manage your campaigns from start to finish. This encompasses setting up a marketing schedule and managing tactic launch dates, close dates, and multi-touch marketing efforts. This will help assure that your marketing efforts will stay within your monthly/quarterly budget and also drive consistent leads for your sales team.
Good luck and let us know if you have any additional questions on how to start your marketing operations plan.