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Posts Tagged ‘Integrated Marketing’
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
 PPT Template: A Streamlined Integrated Marketing Framework
(NOTE: when you click on the above link, the template will download directly to your desktop. It doesn’t open a new window.)
Previously, this template for a streamlined go-to-market plan was available only to readers of my book, Marketing Campaign Development. Because this has been such a popular item, I’ve decided to make it available to everyone. Feel free to download it, adopt it, and adapt it to fit your own marketing needs. (more…)
Tags: go-to-market plan, Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing campaign planning, template
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Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
 B2B companies still talk about the “sales cycle,” but that’s internal thinking. It’s about the company, not about the customer. For a long time now, customers have been in charge of the buying process — researching, finding, and comparing products on their own before ever speaking with vendors. So why are marketers still talking about “demand creation?” That’s still a useful concept, especially in consumer products companies, but B2B marketers also need to be thinking about the buyers they don’t even know yet — the ones who are already out there looking for solutions. Rather than just pushing information out to a big list of prospective customers, marketers need to have searchable, findable content available online, so that when prospects are ready, they can find you.
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Tags: content marketing, customer buying cycle, Integrated Marketing, SEO, Social Media
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Monday, October 11th, 2010
 At last week’s TechTarget ROI Summit in San Francisco, Marilou Barsam, SVP of Client Consulting and Corporate Marketing at TechTarget, shared the results of a Spring 2010 survey of what TechTarget calls the “hyper-active researcher.” Key findings from the 1,700+ survey responses were that these buyers spend the majority of their research time online and nearly 33% are planning 4-6 IT projects within the next year. On the panel during her session was the CIO of a financial services firm. This individual represents the persona of the “hyper-active researcher” and shared with a packed room of B2B marketers how he approaches his role and prefers to interact with vendors.
This CIO is always on the lookout for the next solution to move his company forward. During a typical day he:
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Tags: B2B marketing, cio buying process, content marketing, customer based selling, Integrated Marketing, Marilou Barsam, personas, product comparisons, techtarget
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Monday, July 19th, 2010
I often ask marketers to tell me about the integrated marketing campaigns they are running. Here are a few common responses:
- We’ve been running a Google Adwords campaign for the past 2 years.
- We’ve got a new PR campaign kicking off next week.
- Our print advertising campaign has been reduced to 3 insertions due to budge cuts.
These answers highlight a common misunderstanding of the word “campaign.” Is the “campaign” a singular tactic? Or, is it something more? Are there lots of campaigns, or only a few? When it comes to integrated marketing, there are strategic as well as tactical connotations concerning this key word. When the context of the word “campaign” is misunderstood, it can lead to some heartburn.
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Tags: Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing campaign planning, lead funnel, marcom mix, marketing automation, marketing blueprints, marketing programs
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Lately, I’ve been asked for recommendations for a streamlined go-to-market plan template. This is a great request because I continue to see a lot of marketing teams get wrapped around the axle of a “10-step marketing plan” or some other beastly exercise. Now, please don’t mis-understand me: marketing planning is a serious, critical, and worthwhile exercise. Comprehensive planning exercises can be of great value. Yet, sometimes, a short-cut is needed.
Here’s the punch line:
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Tags: go-to-market, Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing campaign planning, marketing planning, marketing strategy, Plan
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Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Conceptually, the theories of persona-building, positioning, and messaging are easy to understand. However, sometimes it’s helpful for a marketing team to critique a real example and then discuss the parallels to their own business. An example that everyone can easily relate to, and that is separate from the business you represent, is also an effective way to diffuse any emotion that may hinder folks from seeing the lessons associated with trying to execute a poor go-to-market strategy.
The following is a true story: the case of a better mousetrap. In 1955, an eager entrepreneur introduced a revolutionary new product that was destined to change the world of “rodent control”. In addition to producing leaflets, promoting through friends and family, this ad (click on the link below) ran in a variety of publications at the time.
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Tags: Integrated Marketing, marketing programs, personas, positioning, strategy
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Friday, February 5th, 2010
If you are selling to CIOs or IT strategists, you may find this post of interest.
Human perception is a tricky thing, for although teams may share a common understanding of their product portfolio, people often have a different idea of who they are selling to. And these differences may be slight, or they may be substantial. The Persona Exercise is one of the most effective (and fun) ways to ensure team alignment regarding the target audience.
Honing in on the bullseye
I was working with a cross-functional marketing team tasked to launch a new product on a very short runway. During a meeting to discuss messaging I asked about the the target audience. I got 5 different answers ranging from network engineers to CIOs in various size companies and industries. There was no time, nor budget, to entertain multiple target audiences, so we focused our discussion to find the sweet spot.
 Focusing on the sweet spot helps marketers avoid the trap of trying to be all things to all people. What target audience subsegment offers the best chance for success? Where will it be easiest to win sales quickly and consistently? By the end of our discussion, we painted bullseye picture similar to that shown in figure 1. The sweet spot was not limited to job title or company size. Instead, the sweet spot focused on people who shared a common responsibility of managing today’s IT network while planning for the future.
Personas go beyond traditional market segmentation
The next step was to build a persona. There was a lot of good discussion that answered questions like:
- What is the persona’s pain point? What keeps them up at night?
- What is the persona actually buying from us? (We know what we’re selling, but what are they buying? Hint: you won’t find this on the itemized price list)
- What 3 words best describe this person?
 Portrait of a senior IT manager responsible for the current and future network architecture, and who's afraid of making a bad purchase decision. By the end of the discussion, we painted the persona shown in Figure 2. We had given life to the “Skeptical Futurist” — the embodiment to senior IT managers who are responsible for architecting their network, and who are troubled by fear of making a bad (or wrong) purchase decision.
Drafting the Skeptical Futurist was an “Aha!” moment for the team.
With the bullseye and persona in hand, 10 sales enablement tools took form — from “How-to-sell” presentations, to the corporate pitch, to the Competitive Quick Reference Guides, to the sales simulation training module.
Tags: Integrated Marketing, persona
Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Want to get some quick market research on how your product stacks up to a competitor? Ask the Internet.
I teach a course at San Francisco State University entitled, “Essentials of Integrated Marketing.” In that course, I have a case study that has proven to be a lot of fun as well as very insightful when it comes to gathering ”product comparison” data. The case study is called Video Game Wars and follows the exploits of the Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii.
In developing the case study, I needed to somehow find a way to educate the class on these products quickly. So, I turned to the Internet. My first course of action was to do a Google search on each of the products. This yielded the expected corporate-esk press releases, data sheets, and website info. All of this was helpful in building “awareness.” But I wanted more practical information when it came to comparisons.
So I tried a search variation.
I went to Google and Youtube looking for specific product comparisons. As an example, I typed in “Xbox versus PS3” and “Why buy a Playstation?” This produced an “Aha!” moment.
The search results provided a perfect example on how the dynamics of search have changed the way people gather and process information. Here’s what I mean:
- Much of the “product comparison” data I gathered was produced by users, not corporate executives.
- I couldn’t help but feel that the more “unpolished” the presentation, the more genuine the information.
- Many of these search results also included some sort of social media commentary, meaning that the material was actually being used and discussed.
Lest we think this is only useful for consumer products, I started testing this “product comparison” research tactic on a few projects I’m working on with B2B clients. I’d do the same thing: go to Google and YouTube and search on “product A vs product B”. In every case, I found very interesting information. Now, while I don’t take everything I find to the bank, I do find that the results have added to my cumultative knowledge. It’s helps to further my skills as an investigative marketer in order to discover which product differentiators are true and meaningful, and which are bogus.
Lesson for marketers
Based on this insight, it is important for marketers to consider a couple things as they are architecting their integrated marketing campaigns:
- Producing only the traditional marketing datasheets and collateral are no longer sufficient.
- There is a mountain of “awareness” information available; but customers are also keenly interested in product comparison data (see Content & the Buying Process blog post)
- Consider adding your own product comparison articles and videos. Some companies do this already, and I applaud them for it. Prospects are looking for this information. Why not provide them with short snippets of useful information? Otherwise, someone else might do it for them.
- As you develop your own marketing materials, do a comparison search to see what people are talking about. Do your expectations match up to the user community’s reality? Might be worth checking out.
Tags: Integrated Marketing, Marketing, San Francisco State, search engine marketing, Social Media, social networks
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
One of my personal “aha!” moments about the importance of having a clear product positioning statement came about during my tenure as a PR manager with HP’s Test & Measurement group (prior to the Agilent spinoff). One of the divisions had just developed a next-generation signal generator and was eager to introduce it. The engineering team quickly drafted a press release with the following headline:
HP Introduces High-performance Signal Generator with New Low Price
Upon first glance, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable headline. Yet, my “spider-sense” always tingled (and still does) when I see primary benefits linked to pricing. I wanted to be doubly sure that I understood exactly what this meant. So, I pulled the engineering team together to talk about their draft.
Their first reaction was something like, “oh great, you’re one of those guys” — meaning that I was an outsider with a sole purpose of upsetting their applecart by asking a lot of nonsense questions. With great diplomacy, I admitted that it was my job to work with them in order to confirm and communicate the product’s truest value related to the claims they wanted to make.
 The Positioning Statement Template I asked if they had produced a positioning statement for the product. They handed me a 5 page datasheet. Not to be put off, I suggested we take 30 minutes to build a positioning statement for the product. I explained that this would help us confirm the primary benefit and focus our messaging.
In the course of our 30 minute discussion, we filled out the positioning statement template, and we learned a few key things, especially when we dug into the primary benefit and the differentiator:
- This new signal generator was actually more expensive than competitive alternatives! However . . .
- This one box could perform multiple tests without the need of additional pieces of expensive equipment.
- The upshot: this was really a total cost of ownership (TCO) story, not a component box story.
We quickly wrote a new headline based on this positioning statement:
HP’s New High-performance Signal Generator Reduces Test Costs
So what?
Did this exercise really matter? You bet! Had we proceeded with the original headline, editors (not to mention customers) would have quickly cried “foul!” HP’s reputation would have been hurt by this misleading claim.
Instead, this clarified positioning wove its way through the press release, print advertising, collatoral, and other customer pieces. The resulting press echoed the positioing statement and this product found huge success with new and current customers alike.
And all it took was 30 minutes!
For more information on the positioning statement, read The “Aha!” Factor: Positioning So Your Audience “gets it”
Tags: Integrated Marketing, messaging, positioning statement
Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »
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