Two recent emails started me thinking about how far B2B marketers still have to go as we’re all forced to rethink our core value in this chaotic and challenging environment.  The first, a SeriusDecision blog post by Megan Heuer, talks about the dangers of oversimplification and how it impacts marketing.  The second, the “Defining the Modern Marketer” study, conducted by BtoB Magazine and sponsored by Eloqua, attempts to identify the qualities and requirements of today’s changed marketing environment. Combining the main themes of both offer an interesting commentary on what B2B marketers face in staying ahead of their changing world.

The Modern Marketer study identifies a very significant gap between the “ideal” modern marketer as defined by the more than 550 survey responders and where the participants feel they are currently.  Overall, BtoB marketers rate themselves at only 65% of the ideal in terms of job competencies. Those five critical competencies are: Targeting (which showed the largest gap), Engagement, Conversion, Analytics and Marketing Technology. Turn the calendar back five years and I doubt most of these would have made the list.  But in today’s BtoB world, with fundamental changes in virtually all aspects of the marketing environment, from buyer behavior to the emergence of marketing technology as an infrastructure element, to the death of interrupt marketing, marketers are required to adopt a significantly changed skillset to be effective.  One that’s increasingly complex.

And that’s why simplification can be a dangerous goal for today’s marketers.

Trying to “net” out Big Data, marketing analytics, prospect personas and multi-touch drip nurture strategies to a few basic ideas simply won’t work.  Today’s marketing executive must be willing to tackle a set of complicated and interconnected disciplines that require a dedication to the science of marketing more than ever before.  And a skillset that, while still requiring a strong dose of creative thought, is much more dependent on solid analytics and the willingness to be measured.  While branding and messaging activities are still considered “art” by many marketers, campaign creation, deployment and metrics are considered a marketing “science”.  Most also feel that marketing’s success is now dependent on things like ROI, marketing’s influence on sales, conversion rates and customer retention rather than older school criteria like brand awareness or program metrics.

So the bottom line for successful BtoB marketers in 2013 and beyond may be to purge the idea that “Marketing isn’t rocket science” and start working on becoming a rocket scientist. Or at least a more analytical marketer.

It’s not too late to register for tomorrow’s webinar!

Despite explosive market growth and  surveys that show real ROI, BtoB marketers still feel their automated lead nurture systems have failed to live up to expectations.

During this 30-minute webinar, I will provide tips and ideas you can implement immediately to improve your lead nurturing activities and overcome the top three Marketing Automation challenges.

In the short timeframe you will learn:

1. How to tackle the top data challenges that derail automated lead nurturing
2. Why your value proposition doesn’t work – and how to fix it
3. How to deliver content that prospects will read
4. How to perform regular Automation HealthChecks

Join me tomorrow, Feb. 20 at 2 p.m. EST and start leveraging technology to get inside your buyer’s mind.

To register, visit http://www2.arketi.com/stateofmarketingautomation.

Now that we’ve all recovered from the tryptophan daze and before things formally shut down for the end of year holiday, now might be a good time to make (and maybe actually start on) a few New Year’s resolutions related to optimizing lead nurturing efforts.  Here, in no particular order – since all are critical components – are five things for consideration:

1. Get your data house in order.  Before those first New Year campaigns launch, this is a great time to review and make plans to ensure the integrity of your database.  Take the time to purge old prospects, work on segmentation needs and make sure you have the processes in place to make sure your data is clean, accurate, and current.
2. Review your metrics.  Look back over the past year to be sure you’re measuring what matters (hint: that means what your CEO believes is important).  Automation tools allow us to easily get caught in the analysis paralysis trap. Make it a point to identify a few metrics that count.
3. Reevaluate lead valuation and sales handover points. One thing that almost always happens after lead nurturing efforts are in place for a period of time is that what we thought we knew about prospect behavior (and what makes some prospects more important than others) turns out to be wrong.  Not to worry; that’s part of the value of marketing automation.  But stopping to reevaluate prospect value by matching behavior against actual purchase history can help you make the adjustments needed to keep your sales team supportive and keep your efforts on track.
4. Take a deep look at your content strategy.  Embracing content marketing is more than simply deciding on the topic for the next whitepaper.  Developing a plan that maximizes content development resources to match prospect pain points, consumption preferences and buy cycle stages will place you in a better position to run effective nurture campaigns through the coming year.  By the way, this is also a good time to consider re-evaluating your core message and value proposition to make sure it resonates with your market and differentiates you from competitors.
5. Put in place a regular health check.  By developing the discipline to evaluate performance on a regular basis, using established and agreed upon metrics, you can avid random challenges and ensure your program stays on track.  This is a good time to establish the criteria and process for that review.

Marketing organizations have never had better tools to understand prospects and measure results. Yet many, according to some highly respected industry analysts, are in need of an overhaul. In fact, according to IBM’s recent global study of more than 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers, most admit to being unprepared to manage the changes that are expected to affect their marketing organizations in the years ahead.

Those CMOs who adapt and understand the new marketing reality are looked on by their C-suite peers as strategic drivers of corporate growth. To gain the upper hand, today’s BtoB marketing leaders need to ensure they are at the top of their game in three key areas:

• Data and Information Management
• Infrastructure Development (Marketing Operations)
• Buyer Intimacy

To read more about how to makeover your organization’s marketing function, download the fourth publication in the Arketi Insights series – Does BtoB Marketing Need A Makeover? Arketi Insights is a regular thought-leadership series that examines top and emerging BtoB marketing topics, and what they mean for high-tech BtoB marketers.

Does BtoB Marketing Need a Makeover is available for free download at www.arketi.com/2012makeoverinsights.

If the latest surveys are to be believed, B2B marketing is on the verge of a “crisis of confidence” within the C suite.  When the Fournaise Marketing Group surveyed more than 1,200 CEOs and decision makers earlier this year they came away with some really unsettling numbers.  Eighty percent of the CEOs surveyed said they do not really trust and are not very impressed by the work done by Marketers.  In comparison, 90% of the same group do trust and value the opinions of their CFOs and CIOs.

The reason most often cited in the B2B world for this lack of confidence is that despite Marketers tendency to jump on the latest technology bandwagon (marketing automation, lead management, CRM, etc.) they are still failing to deliver the level of customer interaction that’s expected by their CEO. And this lack of performance seems rooted in marketers distraction with selecting new technology, developing integrated marketing platforms and other technology and what is actually being measured.

Maybe it’s time to rethink.

For example, instead of investing significant time and resources to build out the next automated multi-touch, multi-channel campaign, it might make more sense to evaluate the specific messages we’re sending to groups of prospects.  Are we still trying to shout sales messages above the noise level or are we truly listening to our prospect needs?

Maybe we need to evaluate how much (or how little) we invest in doing the research necessary to build strong buyer personas so that future messages can be more focused to produce higher engagements.  Or how about making sure the performance metrics we are using to evaluate our successes agree with what our C-suite executives expect.

It’s not that marketers don’t have the tools.  Automation and analytics tools have provided the opportunity to track more elements now than marketers 15 years could dream about.  It’s the ability to net out all of the measurements into a few specific and strategic metrics that identify the level of demand they are asked to produce where marketers come up short.  If you think the last point should be a no-brainer, the Fournaise survey showed that 75% of CEOs feel that marketers misunderstand or misuse metrics like “Results”, “ROI”, and “Performance”.

Understanding the real ROI and the strategic goals and metrics used by the CEO to measure company performance should be the basis for building an effective Marketing budget and strategy.  But a disturbing number from a joint Columbia University and New York American Marketing Association survey completed earlier this year shows a majority of senior marketers don’t base their budget decisions on any type of ROI with two-thirds preferring historical spending as an analysis and 28% on “gut feel”.

Tracking email open rates and web page traffic might be interesting and somewhat helpful in making tactical decisions about marketing activities, but it sure looks like marketers need to take a much stronger look at what they are measuring and the outcomes they are delivering. CEOs want marketers to track prospect number, quality, acquisition cost and long-term revenue potential rather than the number of webinar participants and trade show badge scans.  And be accountable for driving customer demand for products and services.  Until that happens, earning the trust of the CEO and gaining boardroom impact will remain elusive.

In today’s BtoB environment, strong, fresh and relevant content can be the single most important accelerator to move prospects through the sales cycle. In fact, relevant content can decrease buyer decision time by almost 20 percent, thus reducing the cost of sales, according to IDG Connect.

To successfully drive revenue for your organization, you must understand your customers’ business problems and then sell to them based on their priorities and needs. Once you’ve accomplished that, you can use the marketing program which will work best to accelerate the buying process and close more deals.

Arketi Insights is a regular thought-leadership series of publications that examines top and emerging BtoB marketing topics, and what they mean for high-tech BtoB marketers. The second issue focuses on content marketing in the BtoB space.

Titled Customized Content Powers Buyer-Centric Marketing, this publication covers key considerations when creating customized content, such as:

• Adjusting your thinking to a customer-centric approach
• Identifying buying motivations, expectations and goals through one-on-one interviews
• Grouping buyers into segments and creating buyer personas
• Mapping the marketing process to the customer’s purchase process

Customized Content Powers Buyer-Centric Marketing is available for free download at www.arketi.com/2012contentinsights.

To view a social media news release, visit here.

Marketers have long dreamed of having accurate information about customers and prospects. Be careful what you wish for! With today’s social media, CRM, ERP and new tools for data collection, what was once a hard-to-find trickle of customer data has become a torrent. So has the dream become a nightmare?

A new survey from Columbia Business School and the New York AMA finds 36 percent of marketers say they have “lots of customer data, but don’t know what to do with it.” The study also found two in five marketers admit they cannot turn their data into actionable insight.

Companies are asking themselves how they can effectively manage the increasing volume and complexity of the data stream. They ask themselves:

• What are the most efficient tools to collect and analyze the data coming in?
• How do we store customer information so that it’s readily accessible but still secure?
• How can we use the data to advance our marketing efforts while still protecting customers’ rights to privacy?

These questions point to the need for a company-wide strategy for handling customer data. Here are some straightforward steps to help navigate the information stream:

Don’t be overwhelmed by the volume of data and the need to answer tough questions. Embrace big data and it will become clearer. Attack it in small, manageable chunks rather than all at once.

Find senior leadership to champion and support your big data mission across all affected business units and functional areas. And create a cross-functional team – including marketing, product development, service and support, and finance – to help develop an enterprise-wide data management plan.

Develop the plan based on the company’s well-defined, overall objectives and goals. Include marketing metrics to ensure marketing is linked back to these business objectives.

Build a strong infrastructure to house your big data. Consider using a SaaS solution and keeping data in the cloud. The more efficient your storage is, the more data you can afford to keep for your analysis. The faster that storage performs, the more often you can make decisions grounded in fresher data.

Review and analyze data thoroughly and regularly to understand what buyers care about, how they make their decisions and how they want to receive information.

Revisit the objectives and goals regularly to ensure they are still relevant and metrics are being hit. If they are not, adjust as necessary.

Finally, ask questions and seek the opinions of others – including those outside the company – throughout the process. Learn from others benefitting from big data in a big way!

*Micky Long and Kristen Ward collaborated on this piece.

What do Microsoft and the EU have a common (related to B2B marketing)? Both have created serious waves through the BtoB marketing community over the past 30 days in ways that many expect will change the game dramatically for those of us whose success depends on understanding prospect actions and behavior.

On May 26, the EU’s new privacy guidelines went into effect, placing restrictions on how and when websites can use cookies or other tracking methods to monitor visitor behavior.  Essentially, the EU has said “no tracking without opt-in”.  First-time visitors of cookie-deploying sites must be met with a warning and be given the option of not having their current and future visits monitored. That sound of crickets you hear is the vast number of prospects lining up to consent to web tracking!

Then, making things additionally challenging, Microsoft announced that the next version of IE, which will ship with Windows 8, will ship with its “Do Not Track” function enabled as the default setting.  Again, anyone who wants their web behavior tracked can change the settings.  Right.

While both of the above actions have yet to settle in or pass the “real world” test – Microsoft is engaged in debate with advertisers and the EU has yet to build teeth into its regulations – what IS clear is that we’re headed for an environment where managing prospect behavior via web actions will be more difficult.  And maybe that’s a good thing.

Perhaps it’s finally time to make permission marketing the default approach and place interrupt marketing in the historical display case for good.  Looking at traffic and response rates, it would seem prospects are already doing that for us.  For those of us still trying to coax that last bit of value out of marginally interested database entries and web visitors, maybe this is the catalyst needed to spark a true commitment to delivering information prospects want vs. self-serving batch and blast emails and websites.  I’ve not seen a survey conducted in the past eighteen months that didn’t show email responses among opted-in prospects far exceeding general regardless of the campaigns.  Likewise, websites with more prospect-centric information consistently outperform those with a generic sell message.

Does this mean more challenges for BtoB marketers in getting prospects to opt-in to web tracking and email campaigns? Absolutely.  True permission-based marketing is much more than abiding by can-spam regulations. It has to start with a mindset of delivering information prospects really value and lots of self-questioning about how much prospects really care about the information we’re delivering. But a number of successful BtoB marketers have already started capitalizing on the permission-based approach with rich content-based websites and email campaigns that deliver content of value. Maybe we should all thank the EU and Microsoft for providing more than gentle encouragement for the rest of us.

Where did all the marketing talent go?

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece recently around the pending IPO of social media juggernaut Facebook and whether or not its 27-year-old CEO is up for the job of becoming the youngest CEO in history to lead a Fortune 1000 company. The same “youth vs. experience” debate seems to be playing out among the ranks of B2B marketing organizations – creating a serious challenge for CMOs and Senior Marketing execs.

If you look at the ads being placed by technology organizations, it appears organizations are placing higher value on enthusiasm, passion and understanding of latest marketing trends than overall years of experience.  And they seem willing to trade a title for less experience –and the lower compensation demands that often accompany less experienced candidates.  For example, I came across a recruiting ad from a small technology company that is becoming all too common in recruiting circles. Looking for a Director of Marketing (a “second in command” type position from the description) to drive a large part of the company’s demand generation and web strategy efforts, the company outlined a long list of attributes including enthusiasm, passion for marketing, high energy, etc.  The experience required for this Director level job: just three years.

While I’m willing to concede that youth brings fresh ideas, enthusiasm and a generational perspective that those of us in the grey-hair camp might struggle with from time to time, I can’t help wondering if this technology organization might be better served looking for a more seasoned executive to lead such an important part of their operation.  And if B2B marketing organizations overall wouldn’t be better off placing a higher value on seasoned staff.  Especially as marketers are being asked to do more with less and make every activity count in a measurable way, does it not make sense to seek out the “been there, done that” base?

Consider the following recent research items:

• From a UK-based Fournaise Group study — 73% of CEO’s stated that “marketers lack business credibility and are not the business growth generators they should be.”
• From Sirius Decisions research — less than $1,000 is spent annually on training of marketing personnel
• From the same study — only 1.1% of Marketing execs responded with a yes when asked if their marketing organization had the right skill set to succeed.

There’s no doubt skill requirements have changed and ongoing training investment must increase if we expect to keep our seat at the executive table.  But maybe it makes sense to look for a few more seasoned marketing professionals and help them sharpen their skills with some of those training dollars rather than default to a younger candidate. It may cost a bit more up front and you may have to hear a few war stories about how it was “back in the day”, but you may find that creating bench strength by adding a few veterans that are willing to add to their skills portfolio leaves you better prepared for the challenges ahead.

A recent article from BtoB Magazine on Marketing Automation sparked a somewhat interesting debate among members of the Marketing Automation Association LinkedIn Group, and I thought it worth revisiting. The article’s main point was to imply, somewhat strongly, that the marketing automation and business intelligence tools available to today’s BtoB marketers have essentially changed marketing from a right brain to a left brain profession. (Slight detour for those, like me, who sometimes have trouble telling our right brain from our left – right brain dominant individuals tend to be more creative while their left brain dominant counterparts tend toward the analytic.)

It’s true that today’s automation and analytic engines are offering marketers tools and capabilities that we could only wish for a decade or two ago. However, I think it would be a mistake, and would set BtoB marketing back significantly, if these new tools resulted in anything less than a strong and equally deployed mix of right brain and left brain skills.

I would say that most successful marketers realize that, to be effective, marketing requires both creative and analytic thinking. Certainly, killer creative can at times overcome flaws in mix or deployment strategy. And ending up on the right side of a killer opt-in list built from relentless analysis of personas and prospect actions can make up for a bit of pedestrian creative. But when a strong, relevant creative message is paired with a well thought out campaign strategy built on solid analytic models, true magic can occur.

As point of fact, two of the more successful and creative campaigns I’ve been associated with recently had to do with an Indiana Jones type multimedia campaign and a zombie-based video and trade show support plan. Both leveraged analytic tools to validate results and both required a lot of left brain thinking. But I’d say it was the combination of both the pre and post campaign analysis and strong creative that made the efforts a success.

It is true that today’s comprehensive business intelligence and marketing automation solutions have made delivery against performance metrics a regular part of a marketers success criteria. And this goes well beyond the time-worn ROI numbers we’ve all used for decades.  Today, lifetime value, lead to revenue and pipeline conversion results rule. And marketers are more than ever held accountable for their decisions.

In addition to post-campaign analytics, today’s BtoB marketers can take advantage of a myriad of testing tools that enable A/B and multivariate testing of every conceivable campaign element before hitting a “Go” button. But I still believe that the best marketers are leveraging those tests to find the best of a series of strong creative elements pulled from the deep resources of their right brain.

Hopefully we don’t ever lose that.