Red On Marketing Blog

Six marketing gotchas CEOs can avoid

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

In a normal year, alot of missed opportunities can hurt sales. This year, they can kill a company. So it’s time to get deadly serious about avoiding marketing mistakes.

Are there patterns in the marketing mistakes small to midsize companies make? I think so. In particular, I’ve noticed at least six ”gotchas” when it comes to CEO-led decisions about marketing. In a new ebook called Six Marketing Mistakes that CEOs Can Avoid and a series of blog posts here, I’ll describe each one’s telltale symptom… and outline a better way.

Combining CEO + CMO duties

If you are going to be Chief Marketing Officer as well as CEO, you need to take the shortest, least expensive route to:

• Get found by the right people
• Start meaningful conversations
• Alleviate worries about buying

If you’re already doing all three things well, you win a prize: a pipeline full of great leads!

Sidestepping six marketing “gotchas”

If you are falling short in any of those areas, very likely you are making some marketing mistakes. In a normal year, those mistakes merely hurt sales. But this year, when it seems like every other company is either failing or already belly up, marketing mistakes can be fatal. So it’s time to get deadly serious about avoiding them.

1. Gotcha: Tactic Tunnel Vision
2. Gotcha: Hiring Specialists Too Soon
3. Gotcha: Awareness – The Red Herring
4. Gotcha: Push Marketing
5. Gotcha: Coordinating Specialists
6. Gotcha: Me-Too Marketing Plan

In a new ebook I try to describe each one’s telltale symptom and why it’s a problem — and outline an alternative route.

It’s called Six Marketing Gotchas that CEOs Can Avoid — and I hope to hear from readers in this forum about what I got right and what I got wrong. (The publish date is 6/15/09 but you blog readers are getting access early.)

Fire away!

Someone always pays

By Robert Celaschi

By now almost everybody has heard the Internet mantra that “information wants to be free.” What it really means is, “I want someone else to foot the bill.”

Advertisers paid for most distribution…

There’s nothing new about that. It’s how radio and television have always worked in the United States. The audience never paid for the broadcasts. Advertisers did. The model wasn’t much different for newspapers and magazines. The subscription price covered only a small fraction of the cost of making and delivering the product. Advertisers paid the bulk of it.

The same principal drove the press release and the story pitch. You tried to coax an editor into assigning a story that featured your business or executives. Advertisers covered the cost of getting it out to the world.

The difference on the Internet is that advertisers aren’t nearly as willing to pick up the tab. It’s true that they are starting to support some video sites. If you want to watch shows on Hulu, for instance, you have to sit through commercials. But you probably haven’t been using TV sitcoms as a conduit for your business-to-business marketing.

Selling content gets tougher

Newspapers and magazines are having a tougher time convincing advertisers to pay big bucks online. Most don’t even charge a subscription fee from online readers. And those that do are still working out the bugs.

Businesses are in a slightly better position for getting the word out. There’s already a structure in place for selling content such as whitepapers (see examples). People recognize that it’s worth paying money for. Most businesses also are used to footing the bill for straight marketing materials and press releases, and build it into their budgets.

DIY-ers can flourish

Now it’s time to apply that thinking to areas where you used to rely on coaxing an editor or reporter into telling your story.  As that platform shrinks, other opportunities arise for a do-it-yourself approach.

First, the Internet has made distribution relatively cheap and easy.  Today you can make information available to millions of people around the world without having to own a printing press or a broadcast tower. The White House, for instance, is going straight to the public by posting candid photos straight to a Flickr account.

The lower cost also has inspired the creation of new ways to pass information around, including blogs, Twitter, business networking sites such as LinkedIn, and social networking sites such as Facebook.

Who pays to build the audience?

But now you’ll get stuck with the bill for some of the functions you used to hand off to the print or broadcast media: gathering useful information, organizing it, and presenting it in an attractive way to an audience. You need people to write the profiles and cases studies, others to provide photos, still others to make the material easy for search engines to find on your Web site, and to bring items to the attention of bloggers and people seeking information through social media.

Information has never been free. All that’s happening now is a shift in who pays for it. Don’t let that chase you away from opportunities.

Do you have some tips to share about how you are getting someone else to foot the bill for your marketing efforts? For instance, maybe you’ve made presentations at a conference. Who paid to gather the audience? Not you.

How are you beefing up your marketing budget to deal with the changing media landscape?

How are you getting somebody else to foot the bill for your B2B marketing efforts?

NOTE: This post is Robert Celaschi’s first bylined contribution to the B2B Communications Red On Marketing blog.

B2B lead generation: Bye bye, list biz?

When a local list broker asked me for career advice last month, I realized that a human element is often missing from discussions about marketing trends and forecasting.

I realized too that inbound marketers can learn from the performance of companies like Harte Hanks - a company that essentially wholesales data to channel partners like list brokers (in addition to selling directly to its client base).

"Should I retrain?"

Last month a list broker wrote to me asking,

"Are email and postal direct marketing to prospect lists truly going to become less effective in the next decade? If so, would you recommend a transition to social marketing, mobile marketing...? Maybe I need to institute some changes right now..."

He'd been reading my stuff about the future of B2B marketing, and where the numbers point. And how it's clear that one of the most effective communication tools over the next decade will be each company's own online presence.

That means hard working Web sites, of course, that ensure prospects find you.

And, on the flip side, it means less print advertising and purchased lists.

That's an ominous prospect for list brokers - professionals who sell lists for purposes of direct mail, email, and telemarketing.

The macro marketing environment

Let's get clear about terms here. Very roughly speaking, list brokers retail wholesale data collected by companies like . No brokers I know collect data themselves - they do, though, analyze and interpret data, create direct marketing campaigns, and sometimes manage campaigns.

Here is a chart showing the performance of Harte Hanks stock from May 2005 to May 2009:

Credit: www.tradingmarkets.com

The Harte Hanks CEO says in a May 5th 2009 press release that,

“There continues to be economic uncertainty that makes it difficult to predict when conditions will improve. While we face challenges, we have a terrific client list and our businesses deliver products, services and marketing solutions that are even more necessary in this environment.”

If I go along with him, I have to infer that his clients don’t get the HH value proposition. If they got it, they’d buy. But who could be better at conveying value through marketing communications than a Harte Hanks? There must be something else going on.

Truth be told, Harte Hanks has, itself, moved into the website building business (see paragraphs under “Selected Highlights” near the bottom of this release).

Bye bye, list biz?

So yes, colleagues in the list biz, I’d recommend changing your focus. And I don’t take the issue lightly. It’s your career and livelihood we’re discussing.

A September 2008 post here called Is B2B marketing going obsolete? said 

“The marketplace has experienced a significant shift in power. No longer are just vendors hunting prospects. Prospects, now, are experienced marksmen too. So… what now? What does this mean for B2B marketers? Should we change professions? Retool our company’s marketing? Wait and see?”

More recently, ”The State Of Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report,” the 12th annual study conducted for Shop.org by Forrester Research Inc., showed that 88 percent of retailers surveyed said email is a high priority for the coming year, largely to retain customers.

Notice those last three words. These are emails to people who already have a relationshipwith the retailers. Not to prospects from purchased lists.

In fact, the study said 71 percent of retailers plan to send segmented emails to customers based on stated preferences or purchase data.

Challenges of being in the school of push communications

In What won’t fly in that 2009 marketing plan I suggested that B2B marketers consider skipping traditional marketing techniques in their 2009 marketing plans.

The reason: Purchased lists, whether they involve emailing, snail-mailing or telemarketing, belong to the school of ‘push’ communications.

Core skills of a successful list broker

So where does that leave list brokers? Many have been very, very successful for a long, long time with lists.

I’d venture that the best list brokers are particularly savvy about:

• Client relationship management
• Audience segmentation, including
  • Behavioral targeting
  • Psychographics
• A/B testing 
• Quantifying ROI

What are some other strengths of a well-trained list broker? How can they apply their skills to newer marketing methods?

Resources — please add

I’ll start us off with a suggested resource — an article in the Hubspot blog. Please add your ideas.

1. Ten Tips for Marketing Job-Seekers in the Class of 2009

Using social media: copying others doesn’t work

It’s no secret that social media have become part of the mainstream culture: blogs, YouTube, online forums, networking sites and so on. We’ve been writing about the topic for a while, such as the impact of social media on B2B marketing and tipping points for business participation.

The secret is how to master these new tools for B2B marketing. There are few success stories out there, and copying others doesn’t work, according to Forrester Research Inc.

 

Finding your prospects’ venues

A sensible starting point: learn who is showing up at these new venues and why. To get the answers for one slice of the business world, Forrester Research surveyed more than 1,200 business technology buyers and packaged the findings in a report titled “The Social Technographics Of Business Buyers.”

A full report is accessible to Forrester clients, or access a free replay of Laura Ramos’ talk on the subject.

One of the first things you’ll notice in their findings is that, regardless of how involved they are with social media, this audience is still overwhelmingly male. The “creatives” among them, the ones who publish their own blogs, video and music, are 83 percent men.

 

Making sure social media efforts are integrated

If you are trying to reach these folks through social media, make sure the effort is integrated with the rest of your marketing. Forrester discovered that while most of them view social media very favorably, they still fall back on more traditional marketing materials when deciding what to buy.

For example, word-of-mouth has a big impact, but they tend to pay attention to their colleagues at work much more than their counterparts online.

 

Social participation doesn’t automatically give you influence

In other words, business buying is still complex, Forrester says, and social participation doesn’t automatically give you influence.

Does that mean we should give up on it for marketing purposes? Not a bit. In fact, it means just the opposite.

 

B2B buyers believe social media will be a bigger part of decision making

The survey results show that in the coming year, buyers believe that forums, virtual trade shows, and online reviews will be a bigger part of their decision-making. These are the social media options that most closely resemble the user conferences, exhibitions, and buyer guides that these buyers have been relying on for years, without requiring them to physically be there.

Question: B2B buyers believe social media will be a bigger part of their decision making. Do you?

 

Learning more

• A full report is accessible to Forrester clients
• Access a free replay of Laura Ramos’ talk on the subject