Everyone is in Marketing
The glory is in sales…especially when the deals are big. Everyone in the company likes to take credit for a big win. Marketing created the lead, engineering added features for the demo, finance drew up new pricing….of course when the deal goes south it is sales fault: he did not sell high enough, she did not understand the decision process, we did not create a compelling event. Having said all this, it is true that most companies and employees are willing and able to help drive sales – we are all in sales…without the quota.
So why don’t people say “We are all in marketing”? Well in fact everyone should think about how they can be in marketing. May areas of the company can be fantastic champions of the message and can be used to amplify success. A couple of examples,
- When a press release is issued – Does your services team use to re-enforce success with customers? Does your sales team use it to nurture prospects drive home a key value proposition?
- When a customer testimonial is created – Does professional services use it to expand their relationship in their accounts? Does business development use it to target stale prospects?
One of marketing’s jobs is to create great content. In today’s world of Linkedn and social media all employees can be supporters of getting the word out.
Marketing Strategy – Maturity Scorecard
The most fundamental question in assessing your marketing maturity is “Do you have a strategy?” Although fundamental this is often not crisp or may be very well thought out but not well communicated. Here are some questions that need to be answered to ensure your market strategy is well founded:
- Have you defined your target prospect/customer? What types of industry, what size? Who in these companies will buy?
- Do you have a well defined value proposition? Is your messaging aligned with the different roles your will encounter in selling?
- Are you well positioned? Is your value proposition and messaging differentiated? Do you understand the competitive landscape? What competitive strengths do you have?
- How do you go to market? Are you leveraging a direct sales model? Do you need a channel? Are there partners involved?
- Are the results (sales & customer wins) consistent with what the strategy expects? This is the ultimate measure of success.
Communicating the strategy is just as important as having one. If not well communicated a crisp & sharp strategy bleeds into average.
The following table will help you score yourself on market strategy. For each attribute of strategy you can score between 0-25 points, for a total of 100.
Marketing Maturity Scorecard
High technology marketing is a mix of art, science, luck, and hard work. It also requires a diverse set of skills which include strategic planning, creativity, ROI analysis , etc. If you have multiple solutions at various stages in their life-cycle, how do you balance your investment in time and dollars?
I have recently created marketing maturity scorecard to share with the rest of the executive team and the board of directors to ensure alignment in the mix of investment across solutions. Essentially the scorecard captures 4 key elements:
- Messaging, positioning – Do you have a clear value proposition, the correct positioning, and the supporting messaging?
- Assets/Content – Do you have a set of supporting sales tools (or assets) such as whitepapers, PowerPoints, brochures, etc. that support your positioning?
- Customer Proof Points – What customer testimonials do you have? Prospects want this way more than your brochure.
- Promotional/Lead Gen – Do you have the right promotional plan, do you know which channels leads to which prospects and roles?
In my case the solution portfolio include a mature market where we are market leaders and the marketing objectives are to re-enforce market leadership and generate leads. Alternatively I have a brand new solution where first we need decide what we can say, and then build the brand.
I will drill into each of these topics over the next few posts.
Messaging – Focused, Simple, Engaging
Along with “brand building”, improved messaging is a common complaint within and outside the marketing team. However, setting out to define “improved messaging” is usually where the confusion starts: “we need a message map”, “we need a new tagline”, “we need a new web site”, “we need standard presentations”, etc.
Three things to consider when improving messaging:
1) Focus on target audience – Who are you talking to? IT, the business side, an executive or staff worker. This frames the types of issues they will be concerned about.
2) The right tools keep the message simple - A web site which can easily provide additional info? an e-mail, printed letter? A powerpoint where a sales person has he ability to present, listen, and respond?
3) Engage based on the context – How much the receiver knows about you and how much you know about them.
Start with your core positioning and keep these three things in mind and you will have all you create hard hitting, effective messaging. The challenging part is keeping it on target, concise, and consistent at the same time. Technology companies can learn a lot about messaging and marketing from other industries. Gopal Shenoy has a good piece on lessons from the presidential campaign.
Some of the companies I think excel and marketing and messaging include salesforce.com, and demandware. Check out their websites. They ooze leadership and success.
An example of one that leaves a lot to be desired is infor. Considering they are the third largest enterprise software company on the planet, their description of themselves on their web site is pretty ho hum.
Infor is the world’s third largest business software company. We develop and acquire proven software products that have rich, built-in functionality. Then we make them better. We invest resources into product innovation and enhancement. We work hard to simplify and shorten implementation times. We enable our software, services, and support globally. And we provide more flexible buying options.
It is simple, I will give them that, although 1 out of three is not enough.
Presidential Nominee – demandware
Now that the republican convention is reaching its summit, I will nominate demandware as a presidential nominee for excellent positioning. I steered clear of larger companies such as SAP or Oracle because their brand is so well known, it makes analyzing positioning a little irrelevant. Although I do think SAP’s positioning of solutions for the mid market is an interesting challenge, but that is for another day.
As with Sterling Commerce I reviewed how they cover: description of what a company does, value they provide, and differentiation. How succinct and credible the story are also key. These 5 factors are scored as follows:
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Presidential - Excellent score, top marks
The main item I really like about demandware description if themselves is their mix of actual content with messaging.
- First of all on the web site label the company background as “Our Story”, and they tell a story
- They start with facts and problems they solve, not a long blub about the company
- They mix vision, excitement with grit.
Let’s look at the details. The main description of the “their story”
The vision-then and now-was clear: bring to market an enterprise-class ecommerce solution that would put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers and at the same time would remove the technical costs, risks and complexities of running an ecommerce operation. We took what we knew of great ecommerce merchandising (our founders have been in ecommerce since 1994) and applied to it the then-emerging advancements in Software-as-a-Service architectures and dynamic grid computing. Then we worked hard. We stayed up late. We drank lots of coffee. And ultimately, in late 2005, we delivered the market’s first on-demand enterprise ecommerce platform
1) What the demandware does:
“bring to market an enterprise-class ecommerce solution that would put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers”
Clear delivery of a solution, clear target prospect.
Score: 
2) Value:
They start with facts such as
eCommerce merchandising and marketing innovation is what generates the revenue, yet most operations are spending 80% of their budgets simply maintaining current infrastructure
The description of value is bold, empower the key business champion in the prospect, limit challenges and implications for IT.
“put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers and at the same time would remove the technical costs, risks and complexities of running an ecommerce operation”
3) Differentiation
They tout their vision, SaaS technology and hard work. I like the mix and believe the “Then we worked hard. We stayed up late. We drank lots of coffee.” Quote adds humor and balance to the vision. Essentially, they are acknowledging it is hard stuff and they work hard.
4) Being Succinct
Very good
- 1) Start with problem
- 2) Single paragraph on company
- 3) Customer validation
5) Being Credible:
Their experience, vision, creativity oozes through.
Related is a good article by Craig Stull on Cuil. He mentions they called themselvesa Google killer. Not a very good positioning strategy. Get real. After looking at their web site they call themselves “the world’s biggest search engine”…..Hmmmm
Positioning is definitely not the be all and end all. Targeting a real market, with solid products and great customer experiences are all critical.
Let me know your thoughts.
