LinkedIn – Given this is the most business focused tool , LinkedIn is furthest along in the cycle. Users clearly know how to leverage LinkedIn for networking and prospecting, there are thousands of groups that can be leveraged. People get it. With their recent IPO, I put them as passed the “peak of inflated expectations.”  The logic on entering the trough of disillusionment based on needing better tools to help leverage capabilities like groups and eliminate SPAM. The group analytics are a basic start, but too many groups are flooded with stupid questions, and unrelated discussions. The relevancy Google has incorporated into search needs to be applied here. Of course there is huge potential to leverage LinkedIn more into web sites, CRM systems, customer feedback post sales, and service, etc.

Facebook  – Obviously the visibility of facebook is the highest, although the huge majority  are end consumers. Although businesses clearly understand they need to leverage facebook, most business people I speak to are still trying to figure it out. This is especially true to small and medium businesses, whose facebook pages are mostly one way (from them) promotional posts (I would call it SPAM). Personally, I think the small business opportunity for facebook is huge, however, they seem to be more focused on the consumer side.

Twitter  – Similar to facebook, the mix of consumer and business use has people trying to figure out the best way to leverage twitter.  Although more so than facebook, many people do not get it. Surprisingly, when I was interviewing marketing candidates, although all of them used Twitter as a tool, very few could actually give me concrete details on how their company benefited. Ultimately, when pushed most said, “it helps Google find us”. I personally have focused less time on Twitter, but in last few weeks have learned how good it is to find specific information and facilitate engagement. The engagement piece is what too many marketers leave out, which is as critical as creating content.

Blogs  – As a general  marketing tool, company blogs are becoming pretty mainstream.  I am putting them as coming out of the trough of disillusionment, simply because as companies kick this off they themselves go through this cycle. Starting enthusiastically for the first few weeks – posting regularly. However, after some time, they wonder, why don’t we have more readers, why do not get more comments, etc. Blogging is a marathon, so the key is sustaining great content, and engagement. Obviously, the other tools can be used to improved reach and engagement.

E-mail  – Not much to say here, although dismissed as “Marketing 1.0”, regular e-newsletters, and promotions of content are a key element of your social marketing strategy. Obviously, the response rates, opt-outs, and investment need to be managed appropriately.

As you look at your companies initiatives with each of these, I would expect you will go through this same cycle for each initiative. My recommendation is to pick ones that you can sustain, and then use those successes to add additional elements.

What tools are shooting up the hype cycle? Can someone point out a good post covering “the next big thing?”

This got me thinking about what happens beyond the hire, and while we all strive to build great teams, what happens when the team needs “coaching.” Below is a framework that categorizes employees into 4 quadrants.

The dimensions should be pretty straight forward. On the vertical axis what is the employee’s initiative: Do they create new projects? Come up with imaginative ideas? Do they push the boundaries of their jobs and strive to make everyone around them better? On the horizontal axis I measure ability to deliver: Do they complete projects? What kind of revisions or rework is required? How much supervision do they need?

This results in the 4 types of employees:

1. Top Right – GSD: Get Stuff Done. Clearly we all want our teams in this category. For the most part these employees need minimal guidance and when you go to them with an initiative, they have often already started, or they “get it” immediately. As a manager, the best thing you can do is help them by removing obstacles.
2. Bottom Left – SBF: Should be Fired. Although this seems obvious too often these employees are left to flounder. Maybe they are transferred to another department. My experience is these people can actually make everyone else less productive. Worse than adding no value they actually consume energy from the team.
3. Top Left – EPD: Enthusiastic Puppy Dog. These are the people who are always coming up with big thoughts, telling you they will pick up the extra project and that your ideas are brilliant. However, their follow though leaves a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, in some organizations these people rise up quite well.
4. Bottom Right – EBD: Eeyore But Delivers. This is the person who sighs ever time you ask them something, or rolls their eyes when you kick off a new initiative. However, once you leave their office they plug away, buy into your request and deliver what you asked for – on time!

OK, so these are a bit exaggerated. Given that – I always struggle between team members who with all good intention take on tasks they do not quite do, versus the energy of overcoming the Eeyores, who are always pushing back.

How do you do performance management of your team?

In looking at costs, I typically include the “variable” costs which include development of content (eBook, video, etc.), and paid promotion (paid search, banner ads, e-mail list rental, etc.)  While I do not include staff costs, you may want to do this as obviously they need to be paid for and justified. My reasoning is that the most important reason to measure is to assess your most effective programs and marketing channels. To the relative costs and returns are key. Including staff costs you are basically saying, should we do marketing at all. (Which may be a valid question…)

To compare campaigns, I use the following metrics:

1)      Cost per acquisition (CPA)

2)      Cost per qualified lead (CPL)

3)      Revenue returned per dollar spent on programs (ROI)

An acquisition, is getting a new name into your database: someone to nurture, drip market to. They register for a web cast, view a video, register for your blog, etc. To be clear these are relatively unqualified leads. However, based on the marketing channel, I expect you will see large variation in costs and quality across your promotional channels. For example, someone doing an organic search and viewing a customer video is probably more qualified than someone responding to a direct e-mail. Since you might be promoting the same content across multiple channels, I do not include the cost of the content development (asset) in the CPA.  The main goal of measuring the CPA is to see the most effective marketing channels.

Once you look at leads further into the pipeline, I include the cost of the content when measuring CPL. My logic being is that you will often create content and promote it across multiple channels. The main goal of measuring the CPL is to assess the most effective messaging and content.

Finally, the ultimate goal to close business. One question that always comes up is which campaign do you credit the deal to? Obviously, customers may participate in multiple campaigns. One option is to allocate the revenue across all campaigns a prospect participated in.  However, I find that gets pretty messy. My simple rule is that is the campaign delivers a qualified lead that enters the sales pipeline, then the forecast and closes, it gets 100% credit. While I recognize there are influencers and drip marketing that builds brand, I treat that as gravy.

Of course the definitions of lead, qualified lead need to be well defined and consistent across sales and marketing.

What other variations do you find helpful? What program and channels produced your best ROI? Finally, with the shift to content and inbound marketing how does this affect you investment in promotional channels, content creation, and staff?

So how do first impressions impact your brand? Very significantly! Customers first impressions can come from many sources: web site, sales person’s visit, telesales firm cold calling, a LinkedIn profile, an employee tweet, etc. As a marketing executive while you can control all these you can certainly define the tone and set the direction.

The first steps are to be honest with yourself on what your company brand represents:

1. Are you edgy, cool, or conservative?
2. Innovative, creative, or operationally efficient?
3. Premium priced or low cost?

Once you have captured the brand character then review all the communications channels and assess their value in re-enforcing the brand.

1. Does your web site reflect your corporate personality?
2. Do you blog on breakthrough ideas or are you contrarian, perhaps simply educational?
3. What tools does your sales team use? Do the graphics reflect the brand? Does the tone support your goals?

Branding gets built up over many years, but can get diluted without the right supporting focus and leadership. What are the best examples of consistent branding you know of?

So how we get in such places and how to avoid this? Here are the guidelines I give product managers and the rest of the stakeholders:

(1)    Before scoping and requirements, declare the business objectives of the release. These may include opening new geographies, new segments, it may be simply something that demos well. Internal requirements like technology updates or cutting implementation hours are also important, but should be justified just like any other investment.

(2)    Separate features that help sell versus actually help create value for the customer. Many times the features that help sell and are most memorable in the sales cycle are not the ones that get used day-in and day-out.

(3)    Create a positioning document before the release development really gets going. This helps frame the context for the rest of the organization. From this you can drive messaging, sales training, press release, etc.

I realize the above can be “101”, but since I was asked the question, I have posed it many times and found an equally cautious answer.

Last week I had an outstanding customer experience with Amazon. My recently purchased Kindle had an issue with its screen freezing. First I checked numerous web sites, and the support pages at Amazon, trying to fix it myself. Finally I phoned the customer support line. Unfortunately, when I phoned the rep wanted me to step through some diagnostics , however, I did not have it with me. He offered to call me back later – huh? When does a call center offer to call you back? Furthermore he asked what time would be good. Sure enough later that evening I got a call, and after some tests, told me he would ship out a replacement. He took the initiative to call me back. In almost every other situation, they would tell ME to call THEM back.

It fits with Amazon’s overall value proposition – convenience, online shopping, personalized purchase suggestions…

Around that time, a business development person came to me with a lead they were working. They had completed the initial qualification and spoken to the prospect. The customer was implementing a new global Oracle system, but their title and the “pain” they identified resulted in a lower lead score. “What to do?” – asked the rep. To me the answer was obvious: the customer is spending millions of dollars on an ERP system, and I could think of 10 other customers who had selected our solution as part of a global Oracle project. My conclusion: go find someone in the customers’ organization who does have pain, obviously we were talking to the wrong person.

While marketing automation, drip marketing, lead scoring, social marketing all provide value –  they still need brainpower.  Most professionals get paid because we leverage experience and make judgment calls. Should I invest more time here or not? Do I need additional support? etc. Too much focus on the tools can kill your best people and your creativity.

Nothing replaces smart people. In short the real question is do you spend more time on the process or the results?

Here are some other questions to ponder:

1)      What are the top 3 things that you have learned from your CRM or marketing automation tools?

2)      What revenue or customers have you achieved that you would have missed without these tools?

3)      Do your sales and marketing teams still prospect or do they wait for the tool?

4)      What new sales/marketing campaigns have resulted from using the tools?

5)      What have you stopped investing in based on the results from the tools?

So why is messaging hard? Here are the reasons and what you can do about it

1)      Everyone has their own context. Put another way everyone has a different perspective from  which they frame the messaging.

What to do: Make sure you frame the context: who is the message targeted at? For example is it an IT person, business person, executive or individual contributor? What is the delivery vehicle? Are people seeing walking past a trade show booth? On an web site banner? As part of a face-to-face meeting? In today’s world a message map is pretty basic, however, incorporating different delivery vehicles is usually “left to the student.”

2)      Every market has its own language. The mix of industry jargon can help or hurt your position. Too much jargon and it comes across as gobbledygook, however, if you do not have enough you will be perceived as not having enough “domain knowledge”. Also technology companies are famous for coming up with their own terms while trying to “create a market”

What to do: Test run your marketing mumbojumbo.  This can be done in a few minutes with Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Also you can review your competitions’ web site. Finally, test with real customers and your sales force. The best sales people on your team will tell you are is hard hitting versus ivory tower.

3)      People do not have time to learn. Trying to tell your whole story, while tempting is a mistake. It is simply too hard to tell the complete story, keeping people interested with the right context, and language, in a brief time slice.

What to do:  Look at your broader campaigns as a series of micro-campaigns. Each one specifically targeted at a role, and based on a specific context. Use drip marketing to move the prospects along the learning curve. They must get hooked initially, but then they will educate themselves. At some point there is an inflection point when they start pulling information, and it is the signal they will end up in the pipeline. Be patient.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, there has been a lot of discussion on the importance of design. As I look back in my career I can think of two companies where the engineering team had outstanding design and in each case I can point to multimillion dollar deals we won, where the design played a key factor. The design was part of our competitive advantage.

Creating emotion in the sales cycle is THE most important thing sales and marketing can do. Despite all the discussion around lead scoring, sales funnels, creating ROI, value-based selling; emotion still plays a huge role in customers buying. Are you using product design to win new deals?

A few thoughts on leveraging great design:

1. Does your product user interface create excitement in your sales process?
2. Does the ergonomics of your user experience drive frenzied loyalty in your customer base?
3. Do you sales tools (PowerPoints, Collateral, etc.) reflect your brand? (I am not talking about colors)

Have you defined the emotion of your brand? Are you cool? Cutting edge? Industrial? Buttoned-Up? People buy from people, and it is expected that the basics will be covered in terms of value, ROI, etc. It is the emotion that you create that can separate you. Some of the most successful companies actually built momentum around arrogance (Oracle, Ariba, Siebel, etc.). Strange as this sounds – the emotion created was “we are going to be the winner, want to come with us?” Not surprisingly no one likes to be left behind.