Social Media Darwinism » Lead Generation

CMOs: Shedding light on marketing performance

Paul Dunay — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:19:01 +0000

Businesses use enterprise data and metrics to manage business performance and drive efficiencies across the organization. But when it comes to marketing, there has always been a bit of the “black box” effect. Marketing is the one major budget item that traditionally has been the hardest to understand and measure from a traditional business performance standpoint.

Quarterly and annual reviews provide some idea of how the money is being spent, and frequency, reach, target rating points, media impressions and clip counting are among the longstanding measures of marketing effectiveness. But these are becoming less and less informative as the world moves at Internet speed.

Now CMOs can create the same level of visibility into their marketing spend that other operational areas have done for years. The efficiency of marketing – especially spending on advertising – can be improved by analyzing customer “conversations” carried out across social networks and other channels. Advanced techniques and capabilities are available now to capture the pulse of the marketplace as never before.

Armed with this information, CMOs can work with their CFOs more closely to identify — really, for the first time — the minimal effective amount of spending needed to drive the greatest market awareness. This new form of “marketing intelligence” can dramatically reduce “spray and pray” spending and contribute more effectively to earnings per share improvement. In this way, both CMOs and CFOs will understand and track — with far greater accuracy — marketing’s accretive value to the enterprise and shareholders.

Download this report to learn about the emerging role of social media analysis.

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Changes in B2B Marketing — Mad Marketing TV Ep 13

Paul Dunay — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:00:16 +0000

Join guest host Jeff Ogden and special guest Paul Dunay, CMO of Networked Insights and author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies, as they discuss:

Recent changes in B2B marketing
Influencer strategies and why they’re important
Facebook’s IPO and what it means for marketers
New social media tools for B2B marketers
Social data and what it means to B2B marketers

Join Jeff and Paul as they discuss how Paul has made the shift from working within a large company doing B2B marketing, to thriving in a start up environment where he’s focusing on social, amongst other things. Paul delves into the development of an influencer strategy and what that means. Jeff and Paul also address the Facebook IPO and the opportunities Facebook provides for marketers. Paul ends with an introduction of various new social media tools for B2B marketers, as well as the explosion of social data and what that all means.

To hear more from our special guest Paul Dunay, read his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Don’t forget to join us for our next episode when we discuss creating the life you really want with Randy Garn. Also, look out for special “After Party” footage from this interview with Paul Dunay coming next week.

MadMarketing TV is sponsored by Act-On Software: Marketing Automation for the Fortune 5 Million. Visit http://actonsoftware.com to learn more.

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News Feed Optimization (NFO) is the new SEO!

Paul Dunay — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:00:25 +0000

One of the big mistakes I often see with companies when they are setting up a Page on Facebook is they spend more time planning “the wedding than they do the marriage” as I like to say. They spend all of the effort to get the page perfect and have it be in compliance with their corporate guidelines but they have no real plans for how they are going to grow their base of Fans with rich engaging content.

I often suggest to companies to put at least the same amount of time in identifying and planning for how you are going to create content for the site on an ongoing basis as you do in the planning and design of the site itself. And you would be surprised what I hear. Things like … “sure we already make tons of content, you know brochures, fact sheets, data sheets, web pages, case studies, etc” Oh my, that’s not the kind of content I meant!

It occurs to me my definition of content often differs from their definition of content. I mean content that can be used for Inbound Marketing (hat tip to HubSpot who created the term) things that can be shared socially like blog posts, eBooks, videos, podcasts, research reports. Also more advanced techniques like Polls, Promotions and Contests. All this is needed to get people to engage with your brand specifically in the form of “likeing” and commenting on it.

And the reason that this is so important is because …

Only .2% of Fans ever return to a Fan page and in some cases it’s more like .02% (hat tip to BrandGlue) So people on Facebook who “like” your Fan page basically never go back to it. So stop thinking of it as a micro site and making it all fancy. What you need to focus on is the content and optimizing it in order to get likes and comments which will help drive the amount of people that Facebook will show your page to.

It’s all based on Facebook’s algorithm called EdgeRank (see photo above). This is the algorithm that controls what you see in your News Feed when you log into Facebook.

Remember the days back in 1999-2000 when everyone was trying to get a banner ad on the homepage of Yahoo! Then came the days of wanting to appear at the top of a Google search (either paid or organically). What’s happening now is savvy marketers are creating content that gets liked a lot and commented on a lot so they will continually show up on individual homepages in Facebook. This is a new type of optimization called News Feed Optimization and it’s the next big race for all of us to embark on.

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Facebook Advertising Tricks for B2B Marketers

Paul Dunay — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:00:01 +0000

If I could offer you a billboard in the middle of Times Square for little to no cost for you to advertise your company would you do it? One of the great things about the Facebook is that it provides you access to a large audience of over 550 Million people worldwide at a very low cost so why not take advantage of it.

After 9 years of Search Engine Marketing – I think it is safe to say any keyword you are going to buy is maxed out when it comes to the Google AdWords auction process. In 2001 when Google AdWords was just announced – I was buying and converting potential prospects into leads for pennies on the dollar with keywords like Globalization, eCommerce, Interactive Marketing (I was in a consulting firm at the time). This is why today on Facebook seems so familiar to me – while the buying process is less about keywords and more about precise targeting – the costs seem awfully familiar.

So let’s go through 3 Tricks to Maximize a Facebook Advertising purchase for B2B Marketers

Trick 1) Place specific Job Titles into the Likes and Interest field. This way anyone who has mentioned their job title in their profile is now a potential recipient of your ad. Go big and go broad with the Job Titles. Facebook doesn’t care how many you put in there; they will go find you the profiles that contain them nonetheless.
Trick 2) Put the 20 top companies you want to target into the Workplaces field. Facebook unlike Google works off of the “or” operand not the “and” operand so you can use this to your advantage by placing as many of the companies you want to target into the Workplaces field and thereby target the employees of all of those firms.
Trick 3) Run your Facebook Ads using Friends of your Page – if you want to widen your fan base why not try targeting friends of the people who already like your Page. If they are friends perhaps they share a common interest and one of those interests could be your company. Best of all when appears; inside the ad it will personally name your friends who already like your Page giving it the credibility and hopefully the “like” ability you are looking for.

There are tons of ways to target folks on Facebook. I have even seen people target down to the single individual level – “NanoTargeting” as it is called. I suggest you get your feet wet with Facebook Ads by building your Fan base on your company Page. This will give you a feeling for how the self service system works and perhaps even try some of the tricks above for your initial ad buy.

Also pay special attention to the metrics that Facebook is providing to you from your advertising buy because you can compile a buyer persona by running an ad for 30 days and a minimal investment. A persona will tell you what their favorite movie was, what their favorite music was, what their favorite TV show was, what their favorite books were, even their average age, gender and marital status. Great stuff to know and great data you can use to refine you next Facebook Advertising buy!

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3 More ROIs in Social Media – Conversations Leads and Advocates

Paul Dunay — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:00:41 +0000

If you follow me you know I talk a lot about the ROI of Social Media since I happen to have stumbled on a great ROI using Social Media in providing support for our customers at Avaya.

Social customer support I would argue is the single best place to focus your social media efforts since it can reduce customer churn and increase your retention rates faster than any other program I have ever seen before thereby delivering a strong ROI. Listening for and spotting a customer issue, responding to them and solving their problem in minutes using social media not only lets you conquer social media but delight your customers in the process.

But I think there are 3 more ROIs out there where you can build a great business case with Social Media

Conversations – PR needs to move from publications to conversations and if you take that concept and really track and engage in conversations where you brand would fit – I could see that leading to an ROI over time – similar to the way the long tail works for books or movies – this is the long tail of conversations and it would be like having 100s of ads out there for your brand that were all relevant and in context. Which leads me to my next ROI …

Leads – Listening for mentions of your brand or product or even competitors brands is a great way to find leads – evidence I have when listening for the competitors of Avaya – if I hear someone say “replace Cisco” – don’t you think that’s a conversation Avaya should be engaged in? Grant it there haven’t been a ton of those conversations but if you add up all your competitors and your own brands product lines it becomes meaningful.

Advocates – Here is the last one where we have had some success as well. How are you building and taking care of all those really avid followers on Twitter or die hard fans on Facebook – perhaps if you were able to harness them like some companies are doing now with service like Zuberance – you can get them to make recommendations and build your brand with the power of their voice. We are seeing some success with this but some clients of Zuberance are really killing it with this one strategy.

Dell has been talking about how they made $3 million dollars off their Twitter site – how did they do it? With a Coupon Code! – We have plenty of tools both old and new at our disposal to measure and track so many things on the web – so much so – that I have lost all patience for the concept that “we cant measure social media” – if Dell can measure with a coupon code just think what can you be doing to track the flow of social media with special 800#, special email addresses, special landing pages.

That’s how we did it at the beginning of the web – I don’t see why this time is any different!

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B2B Marketing needs a stronger Why

Paul Dunay — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:09:52 +0000

Last year I wrote about how the balance of content has shifted. Bottom line is there is more content being produced by Users than by Publishers these days. Which means Publishers (or Marketers) are now the “white noise” in comparison to User Generated Content. Our messages are being drowned out by user generated content.

This struck me recently at a concert I attended in Madison Square Garden where everyone around me was either texting, taking pictures or video taping (using their smartphone) the concert and sending to their friends. Of course, I ended up doing the same! All 20,000 of us must have created and shared a teraflop of data that night in about 4 hours. Which reminds me of what Eric Schmidt recently said – that every 2 days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of time up to 2003.

So I have been thinking a lot this summer about the effectiveness of our demand generation efforts this year. The unvarnished truth is I believe it’s getting harder and harder to make your demand generation efforts stand out. And perhaps these two things have something in common.

Perhaps the “connectedness” of all this great content provides less and less time for people to take in our messages. They just aren’t making more hours in the day which causes all of us to prioritize the content we receive (whether we know it or not) based on family, friends, trusted others, peers, colleagues etc. Notice that marketers don’t make that list (duh) but also think about how much more content you have been getting from those sources now that social media has arrived. And I would argue this is exaggerated even more when it comes to B2B Marketing.

Ok so now that I depressed you – lets talk about what I have been thinking B2B Marketers need to do. Enter Simon Sinek.

I first heard of Simon Sinek from the boys over at Marketing over Coffee John Wall and Christopher S Penn. Simon’s approach to messaging is very unique in the sense that – All organizations function on 3 levels. What you do, How you do it and Why you do it. The problem is, most B2B companies don’t have a strong why. Apple makes a great example – we all know what they do and how they do it but we also sense why they do what they do which is to “redefine the computing experience”. Which is similar to Google in the sense that we know what and how Google does what it does but we also know their mission is to “index the worlds information”!

You can go on and on about other brands (Southwest Airlines comes to mind) that have a strong mission or a strong why. And further I would argue many B2B firms are missing the boat when it comes to having a compelling why. I find myself listening to people saying “we need to create a message around this new product or service” when in reality they should be focused on creating a stronger why for their company – which would eliminate the need for a grand scheme of messaging at the individual product or service level.

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B2B Marketing needs to Curate a Vibrant Community

Paul Dunay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:59:44 +0000

If you ask the members of my leadership team – they will tell you I keep talking about how I think we have B2B Marketing backward.

Let me explain …

We focus a lot of energy on the acquisition part of marketing looking for new customers and getting them up the awareness to consideration to purchase cycle. The results being most of the time we get ambivalent buyers into the top of our funnel and we have to work hard to close them in order to prove value to the organization and contribute to growth.

But what if we focused on those buyers who have already purchased from us? Those already predisposed to buying our products and create a level of service and differentiation for them that is commensurate with their buying habits?

I think we owe it to our organizations to really take care of them. If you look at the interview I did with Sean Geehan – he talked about the typical number of customers in B2C versus B2B and the high concentration we have in B2B that account for the most of the revenues.

My suggestion would be to create a vibrant community with them – one which is both online and offline, one where you can get instant feedback, one where their ideas matter to your research and development groups, one where they co-author thought leadership with you and one that rewards them for their loyalty to your firm.

This is something I am working on for FY11 and will be more than just a social network for our best customers. Stay tuned as I begin to launch this for next year.

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Closed Loop Marketing – still a long way to go

Paul Dunay — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:58:36 +0000

Ok I know we all talk a good game about Closed Loop Marketing and I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble here but frankly we aren’t there yet.

Yes we forced the loop to close with some great technologies over the last few years. CRM systems, MRM systems, Lead Nurturing systems and the list goes on. But do we really have an all in one Closed Loop market system that does it all?

In my last post I talked about the shadow pipeline created by sales teams who don’t act in real time. The software may be real time but the sales people aren’t. How about your partner community and the leads you have given over to them. Are they reporting back to you in real time? Doubt it.

That’s on the business impact side. How about on the front end with your budget and invoicing? Are those invoices rolling in real time? Probably not. And can you optimize across all media? – no – with the fragmentation of media because of social.

Add in webinars and in person events, calling plans, telesales, SEO, PPC campaigns, promos, price incentives, spifs for the sales force and you have a recipe for leakage in the system that is hard to account for. But wait there’s more! Even if you had all that at your finger tips would you be able to optimize across all those angles?

Here is where the true art for marketing will come in to play – when we are finally able to optimize our portfolio of investments like a hedge fund manager. Seeing and getting data in real time, with a closed loop return on marketing dollars invested system.

We may have come a long way over the last few years in this area but there is still a long uphill climb from here. Let’s keep working toward getting to the summit!

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Shadow Pipeline – accounting for the missing dollars

Paul Dunay — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:26:04 +0000

Well its summertime, a time when we turn down the volume of campaigns and look at the business impact we were able to drive. It’s my favorite time of year to reassess based on our stated strategy and tweak our tactics to match. But can you really get a good handle on the business impact in real time? Not really.

Just because you decided to throw an event at the beginning of the year doesn’t mean anyone wanted to buy your solution or even had the funding to buy your solution. Budget cycles dictate this ebb and flow. You get your budget in January and the decision to fund the typical roster of technology projects at your client was decided upon in December. I always tried to “front load” my budget to get the most impact in the first quarter for 2 reasons: to get a jump on the competition but also to stuff the pipeline early so your impact would be recognized in this calendar year rather than the next year when no one remembers your campaign.

It’s a fallacy to think we as marketers can understand the business impact of our programs in a mere 6 month period – after all we are in B2B marketing not B2C. There are no impulse purchases in Technology or Consulting Services. It’s a highly considered purchase.

There are dollars sitting in your pipeline just waiting to show your marketing impact – what I like to call the shadow pipeline. Projecting those dollars that are showing up in proposal volume as a possible percentage of wins (based on historical win rates) is one way to account for this year’s impact.

There are other shadow dollars that are harder to account for that haven’t shown up yet in the pipeline – you know those projects that magically appear once they get to proposal stage! Depending on your sales force and their comfort with your CRM system you may see some of these “fly in” proposals.

My advice is to use this time of year not just to readjust the current tactics in your marketing plan but to also go back over last years plan to see how much impact your team had. You will be surprised but the results but it will also give you a better sense for how you are doing so far this year.

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An Interview with Sean Geehan, CEO and Founder Geehan Group

Paul Dunay — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:28:32 +0000

I met Sean at a recent ITSMA Marketing Leadership forum. Many of his ideas really hit home for me so I wanted to share these with you. He has a forthcoming book that I am also really looking forward to reading called the B2B Executive Playbook where he will be talking about how to create sustainable and predictable growth.

Q. So tell me about the typical concentration of B2B customers versus B2C customers?

A: In the B2B world, the actual number of customers is microscopic when compared to B2C. B2B executives are truly addressing a much smaller pool of customers. A B2C company like Starbucks, whose revenues are approximately $10 billion, has a huge number of customers, 70,000,000. Compare that to a $7 Billion B2B company like Celestica for example, which has only 100 customers.

Even more daunting is that most B2B companies’ top 10-20% or their customers account for 90% of their revenue. For Celestica, just 10 customers account for 90% of their revenue (over $6 billion). Conversely at Starbucks, $6 Billion of their sales comes from approximately 11,000,000 customers.

No matter how many venti, nonfat, cinnamon-sprinkled, decaf lattes Starbucks’ top one thousand customers bought, it wouldn’t dent Starbucks’ performance if all those customers decided to switch to McLattes from McDonald’s. If only two of the top 10 left Celestica, they’re revenue could be down 15-20% (about $1 billion).

The harsh reality with most B2Bs, regardless of the company’s size is the fate of a B2B company lies in the hands of just a few customers. How marketers address this is the difference, which leads to either dominant, mediocre or disastrous results.

Q. Where can B2B Marketers begin to improve their results?

A: Here are two quick ways to boost marketing efforts:

1. Target current customers. Any organization’s best, least expensive and quickest profitability payback opportunity is within their current customer base. This is what the greatest companies do, including large, mid and small alike. Oracle, Wells Fargo (commercial group), HCL, and Intesource to name a few. They also recognize the more customers buy from you, the less likely they are to leave you…so yes, hugging and TLC is highly recommended.

2. Target Decision makers at prospective target accounts. Having them champion and drive the buying process increases close rates, accelerates the speed of contract signing and increases the margins and deal size.

Q. Do you typically see B2B marketing spend allocations that are not aligned with business goals?

A: Too often we get hung up on the latest “hot thing” in marketing: the jingle, the tag line, telemarketing, direct mail, CRM, brand management, websites, SEO, Social media, etc. And while they are important (given the right situation), effective, etc., they are tools, systems and programs…the means to an end, not the end. Right now the “hot thing” is social media, and as powerful as social media is, it still needs to be balanced and integrated into the overall marketing plan.

Start with making sure the ROI of each program supports the business goals. Then balance the marketing mix to align to these goals and maximize the impact your marketing dollars have on the business goals. This ensures marketing budgets and activities are aligned with your business goals. The more they are aligned the greater predictability in the results and keeping and growing your budgets.

Q. Why do B2B marketers spend more on acquisition than retention?

A: It’s simple. Everyone gets excited when a new customer is signed. There’s a celebration. The bell is rung. Lots of recognition and rewards are handed out.

How much celebration is there when a long-standing customer renews for the 6th straight year? Forget that they haven’t bid out the work in 3 years (no competition=greater margin) and they are already in your system (low cost of support, faster payment = greater cash flow). There’s clearly an imbalance here.

Now the reality: It costs 3-5x more to acquire vs. retain a customer. If your current customer buys more stuff from you, it’s harder for them to leave you (increased switching costs). If current customers are much less likely to bid out your work (increasing profitability), shouldn’t you evaluate how/where you’re spending your marketing dollars?

Marketers need to challenge how they think. If new revenue is easier, less costly and more profitable with current customers, shouldn’t we start there?…The great ones do.

Q. What’s one place where you would recommend B2B Marketers focus for the rest of this year?

A: Engaging decision makers from your top accounts – in a group setting, have them share problems they had and how they solved them (many of which your company most likely helped to solve). This can be as simple as a private event on the front end of an industry event.

It accomplishes many objectives that drive deal flow:
•   It enhances relationships, trust and loyalty for your company.
•   It gives you an opportunity to better understand their needs (current and long-term).
•   It helps marketing build more effective value propositions, messages and lead generation programs.
•   Finally, it enables them to better understand who you are and the scope of your capability (short term revenue).

For example, customer A may be buying a certain set of services from you, but when customer B shares how you helped address something else, another opportunity has just been uncovered. And yes, you’ve just generated a qualified lead for your sales organization. This is always the low hanging fruit.

Just three weeks ago a $220 Million division of a company brought 10 top European customers together to meet with their peers. Through the discussions over $18 million dollars of additional opportunities were uncovered that the host supplier was unaware existed. Verbal commitments have been given for over $12 million. The host expects this single event to increase total 2010 sales by 5-12%.

Please note while I am not a customer of his firm the Geehan Group I am in discussions with them about having them consult for us here at Avaya.

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