10 Goals I have for Marketers in 2010

Based on feedback and talking to hundreds of Eloqua clients, I’ve created a list of 10 goals that every demand generation professional should focus on in 2010 to increase their marketing effectiveness.  Each month I will blog on one of the goals in depth and provide examples.  In the meantime if you have any ideas or great examples, let me know. 

1. Benchmark and assess for improvement in marketing effectiveness
2. Review your database health
3. Lead stage definitions – get in alignment with sales and implement in CRM and Eloqua
4. Implement lead scoring and make sure you are monitoring results
5. Identify manual processes and automate where appropriate
6. Track everything you possibly can, but only report on actionable data
7. Have fun with your campaigns
8. Identify MBOs (measurable business objectives) that are jointly shared with sales
9. Document your marketing processes
10. Take inventory of your campaigns, update where appropriate

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Best Practice Tip – Use Job Function and Job Level Fields

Typically when clients first start with marketing automation they have to complete a data audit where they begin to understand how their data (the good, the bad and the ugly) affects their marketing effectiveness. 

One area I see most often in B2B (businesses that sell to other businesses) organizations is the need for moving from a free form, text field for Job Title, to two drop down fields – Job Function and Job Level.  This allow for consistency and accuracy for marketing purposes. 

By using the Job Function and Job Level fields you can market more effectively to the prospect’s pain points by area of interest and the type of content you’ll need to provide based on their level within the organization.

Some examples of each are:

Job Function

• Marketing
• Operations
• Human Resources
• Finance
• Professional Services
• Information Technology
• Sales

Job Role

• C-level
• Vice President
• Director
• Manager
• Consultant
• Specialist
• Student/Intern
• Other

Keep in mind, Job Title can still be collected as a data point for sales, but for list pulls, triggers to enter and exit into nurturing or scoring programs, you’ll want to use Job Function and Job Level.

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Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: Babel Fish

My colleague Greg Lui is located in Eloqua’s Singapore office and is responsible for managing our presence in the APAC region. As you can imagine his day includes interactions with many different languages. In cases where he needs some translation help, he recommends Babel Fish. If you interact with vendors, clients, partners and colleagues from multiple countries you may find this a helpful resource as well. (One thing Greg notes is that it’s not always completely accurate, but it’s usually close enough to give you an understanding of the text.)

Simply enter your text, choose the translation type and click the Translate button and you’re off and running!

Marketing Master: Larry Stein

Today’s Marketing Master is Larry Stein, Director of Marketing at KACE.

How did you get where you are today?
I have always been interested in the intersection of technology and business. I have held positions in marketing, network planning, technology consulting, management consulting and technical/sales training before settling into outbound marketing for early stage, enterprise-focused startups. From there I specialized in marketing communications, PR/AR, and lead generation with a focus on accelerating the sales process.

What’s interesting in marketing for your space right now?
The tools available to outbound marketing today are astounding. We are truly only limited by creativity and budget in developing and delivering more efficient lead generation funnels. With integrated reporting and systems, we can quickly trial new programs and measure their impact/ROI accelerating the pace of change/innovation in the marketing function.

How do you get good ideas and inspiration?
Meeting with customers, sales reps, lead qualification reps and even attending shows keep me grounded in the current state of affairs in the sales process. Reading online resources detailing current best practices is another great source of ideas. Finally, business books provide a constant source of interesting concepts.

What campaign have you seen recently that really blew you away?
In the current economic environment, simplicity is key. We have developed some great new scripts that came out of simple joint telemarketing calls and brainstorming. The results have been great Our latest marketing automation programs also take their inspiration from watching great sales people and how we can automate some of these great best practices.

If you were a font, which font would you be?
Comic Sans. Simple, clean and fun.

Please share with us a nugget of your marketing wisdom for our readers.
Continually innovate by sharing your results with others and learning from them. There are so many great marketers doing wonderful things – we can learn a lot from each other. We just need to make time to get together and share best practices – and this is not always easy or convenient.

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Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit Recap

Last week, I attended the Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit in San Francisco, CA.  It was a pretty active event with Twitter conversations at #sherpaB2B09 and live streaming courtesy Hubspot TV. I just wanted to take a few minutes to recap some of the highlights from my perspective and hope to continue the discussion that we were having on site with this community here.

“It’s just marketing.”
Best quote of the event, courtesy Jeff Taxdahl owner of Thread-Logic. This comment came from his presentation on whether to work with or not work with an agency to manage his PPC Campaign which currently drives 95% of his sales. At the end of the day, there are no tricks. The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer; deliver a compelling message to the buyer. And, if it is important to your business, you may be the best person/team to make it happen and you may need to ramp up the knowledge in house.

Continuing this line of thinking – we spent several hours on social media on Day 1. And, I have to say, I am “kinda over” social media. I am tired of us talking about it with shiny penny syndrome and marketers’ utter confusion on “How does it fit? Is it worth it?” It’s just marketing! The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer and deliver a compelling message to the buyer. Build the relationships, don’t force the brand.

“Relevance requires major data”
Second favorite quote. This came from Thomas Hayden, Director of Marketing for Sage Systems. So true Thomas, so true. In the way that an in-person conversation requires excellent listening skills (human data processing), an automated conversation demands pristine data quality. Your data quality represents your ability to listen to your customer effectively.

“Be Helpful.”
OK, this is actually a quote from Chris Brogan who wasn’t at the event but I love the quote and it sums up an important theme in terms of content and delivery of that content. I really enjoyed the session that featured Troy Monney from Novell (and not just because they are an Eloqua client) but because they clearly demonstrated how they mapped out content for buyer personas at different stages of their buyers’ evaluation process (v. the internal selling process). I thought all of the sessions on Day 2 that focused on content and buyer personas really helped us to think in the shoes of our customer v. the mindset of just pushing our brand.

“Can you tell us about the ROI on that example? Ummm…”
Many marketers are still struggling with key metrics and demonstrating ROI. Yes, it is a controversial subject in terms of the HOW, but I think that a clear understanding of Campaign impact on revenue is still a struggle for most. It is still a very anecdotal and correlation game.

“Marketing is still from Venus. And, Sales is still from Mars.”
I can’t believe we are still so siloed in our areas of focus on the funnel. Marketing focusing only on “sales ready” with no clear “acceptance/rejection” points along the way to gain objective feedback on lead quality. The one presentation on Scoring seemed to even accentuate this further. To truly drive sales and marketing alignment – there needs to be a clear mapping of process, communication touch points, and responsibilities at every step of the funnel, not just the top.

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