by Glen Springer | Jun 10, 2013
This week, we have received a lot of questions from our clients, potential customers and friends asking us two questions:
- How do we feel about the acquisition of ExactTarget by Salesforce.com?
- How did they get that kind of multiple? (Salesforce.com paid $2.5 billion with ExactTarget’s expected revenues of $120M for fiscal year 2014).
How do we feel about the acquisition?
As a company, we couldn’t be more pleased!
A year ago to date, we made the decision that we would no longer take clients on without a marketing automation implementation because of the productivity increase we witnessed with our first three implementations. We have done a dozen marketing automation implementations over the past 18 months for our clients. 100% have been with ExactTarget’s Pardot, and 90% have been with Pardot and Salesforce.com. So to pat ourselves on the back, we strategically picked the winners for our customers.
This acquisition is going to make our ability to serve our clients even more productive and powerful, especially as Pardot and Salesforce.com start to fold even more powerful Social Media and Analytics Tools into the mix over the coming years.
How did they get that kind of multiple?
Marketing is undergoing a radical and accelerating transformation where more and more products and services are bought and not sold. This is because self-directed B2B consumers can now leverage a broad variety of digital content instantly available to provide the information they need online.
As a company, this means you now need to fundamentally change how you engage with prospects and customers, which requires a new kind of technology solution – one that allows you to create ongoing dialogue with your buyers across channels. A technology solution that allows your sales team and your marketing team to focus on the needs of your buyers is critical. The combination of Pardot and Salesforce.com makes it easier for your teams to serve your buyers and to hold each other accountable with deep insights and analytics. The combination of Salesforce.com and ExactTarget and Pardot simply make serving this new buyer easier for your sales team, your marketing and your executives. ExactTarget got that multiple because the combination of Salesforce.com and Marketing Automation works for its customers.
Here are several supporting pieces of data:
Market Adoption of the integrated platforms (across both CRMs and Marketing Automation) is still somewhere between 14% to 18% depending on whose numbers you look at. Of those with the platforms (and this is anecdotal talking to other marketers, service firms etc. that we know), less than 25% of the companies using the platforms are pushing them hard and with focus, which means we are still early in market adoption.
It takes about a year to 18 months to have your engine humming, but once it is, we are seeing three significant jumps in conversion numbers.
- Leads properly nurtured convert to Sales Accepted Leads with far less outbound phone calls. With no nurturing, it would typically take 850 to 1000 phone calls to put the same percentage of Sales Accepted Leads you can now put in the pipe with only 120 to 200 phone calls. This makes for an 8X increase in the efficiency of the middle stage of your pipeline development.
- This also transfers to closing at the bottom part of the funnel. Well-nurtured leads are converting into 3X more closes. This doesn’t happen overnight, but when it does, teams are pumped.
- Combining the two points above – according to several studies we have seen, (and some of the numbers we are seeing internally) within 18 months, companies that have done solid implementation are seeing a 157% increase in sales and a lower cost of sales %.
Analysts are predicting that the CMO is expected to spend more on technology than the CIO by 2017. And, according to one analyst report we read in one fell swoop, “Salesforce did what it had to do so they now can call their solution the first Marketing Cloud.”
If you are struggling with your marketing automation implementation, struggling with getting your sales team fully integrated, or just curious and want to learn more, feel free to contact us for a quick consultation to learn more. You can also download our whitepaper Increase Revenue by 157% with Integrated Sales and Marketing . Or check out this quick video for more details about Why Did Salesforce Pay 2.5B for Exact Target?
Watch the video now
by Glen Springer | May 27, 2013
If you are trying to sell anything in 2013, it is likely you are trying to do so in the digital space. The internet and internet-based technologies have changed the B2B selling and buying process immensely, and you now need to be able to easily find and engage with your customers online.
Evidence of this dramatic shift towards digital is everywhere. Let’s take Nike for example. In the past three years, Nike has dropped their print and TV ad spend by 40% and has instead invested $800 million in nontraditional advertising (method10x10.com). Additionally, Econsultancy’s 2013 marketing survey found that 39% of marketers plan to increase spend on digital marketing without increasing the marketing budget overall.
But the most interesting statistic regarding this shift comes from Gartner, who has predicted that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on technology than CTOs.
What this shows is that as we go forward, technology and marketing’s relationship will only become more intertwined. A marketer’s job is no longer purely about branding and positioning. A marketer must now understand how to integrate a brand story with digital marketing platforms and measure the results of his/her efforts.
To do that, marketers need technology.
With the right technologies, marketers can aggregate and analyze huge amounts of data in order to understand their customers, deliver the right messages in the right platforms at the right times, and measure their success. In other words, technology eliminates the guesswork and subjective opinions that have classically defined marketing and replaces them with statistical data and a clear ROI.
Overall, CMOs are spending more than CTOs on technology because of the value it brings to their companies and themselves.
Marketing automation, social media marketing, customer relationship management and customer analytics are all now permanent fixtures in the B2B sales landscape and are impossible without the right technologies. When CMOs know how to leverage these technologies to build effective digital marketing content and campaigns, they are able to reach their customers more quickly and effectively while simultaneously collecting data that shows clear ROI for their efforts.
In summary, CMOs now need to be as much of an expert in technology as they are in branding. CMOs need to be able to come up with a strategic brand story that demonstrates a company’s value and at the same time manage the company’s technology stack, deliver messaging across multiple platforms, analyze social media for trends and insights, assess the effectiveness of new marketing technologies, and show the ROI for all marketing efforts (Experian).
If you would like to know more about the changing B2B sales landscape or why CMOs are spending more than CTOs on technology, you can download our white paper called “New Rules for Sales & Marketing in 2013 & Beyond.” If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
by Glen Springer | May 22, 2013
When Apple announced that it would be releasing its first phone in January of 2007, the media and tech world lit up with excitement about the new device that was promised would “work like magic.”
Bloggers, pundits and tech geeks created an online buzz that quickly escalated from giddy excitement to fanatical worship. If you think I’m exaggerating, here are a few examples:
“. . . tech bloggers described the ‘Jesus phone’ as ‘the holy grail of all gadgets’ (Danneskjold, 2007) and questioned how other cellphone companies might develop strategies for ‘dealing with the Second Coming”
“An Asian blogger used an image of the ‘sacred heart of Jesus’, but added an iPhone in his left hand held next to his heart.”
“PVP comics online even published a strip featuring ‘Jade’ trying to comfort her Apple-fanatic boyfriend ‘Brent’ who became catatonic after seeing Apple’s iPhone announcement, finally explaining his shock as ‘Jesus has come back and now he’s a phone’.”
~excerpts from Campbell and La Pastina, How the iPhone Became Divine, 2010
Most marketers and advertisers would kill for this kind of hype around the launch of a new product. When people are calling your product the Second Coming on their own, there’s not much work to do, right?
Wrong.
While the exact numbers are not available, it is estimated Apple spent around $250 million with their marketers and advertisers in the year leading up to the iPhone’s release. It is also estimated Apple spent another $20 million launching the iPhone in Europe.
So, what can we learn from Apple now that the iPhone has become the most successful cellular device in history? Even if you’re selling a handheld Jesus, you need to spend a lot of time and resources on launch.
Apple has been praised for being on the leading edge of marketing and advertising since their famous “1984” advertisement during the Super Bowl of the same year. But what Apple did well with the launch of the iPhone was knowing when to initiate the hype and when to let it happen on its own.
After announcing the release of one of the most anticipated products in history, Apple stood back and let the media build up the hype to a religious fever. When the public conversation waned in the mass media and blogosphere, Apple would release a brilliantly executed TV advertisement or print ad campaign. By the time the iPhone was finally released six months later, Apple’s target audience was in a state of pure devotion and desire.
So, the second thing we can learn from Apple is that even the people who invented the most revolutionizing product of the century needed help getting it to market. Apple spent millions to hire advertising and marketing experts who could provide insights and come up with ideas as to how to sell to the masses.
By spending the money to hire experts who understood Apple’s target audience and how to sell effectively in today’s digital world, Apple had possibly the most successful product launch in history. What could hiring sales and marketing experts do for your new product?
If you have any questions or would like to speak to a representative about a B2B sales and marketing outsourcing solution, please feel free to contact us.
by Glen Springer | Apr 30, 2013
If you take a look around the forums for B2B sales these days, it seems marketers are all buzzing about the promise and potential of webcasts. Marketing Sherpa reported that 30% of B2B marketers are currently using webinars/webcasts as a part of their strategy and have found success with this method.
So, the question now is not whether or not to use webcasts as a part of your digital content marketing strategy, but how to come up with a sophisticated plan for your webcasts that will get you the most return for your investment.
In order to help you with this endeavor, here are 21 tips regarding using webcasts for B2B selling to generate more leads, improve ROI and ultimately, close more deals.
1. Get the word out.
a. Send email invitations and up to two email reminders for each webcast.
b. Promote the event on social media platforms, with increasing posts the week of the event (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google ).
c. Write and post a blog about the event with further details about what the webcast will cover.
d. Require attendees to provide an email address prior to registration (but once they have given their information to you, do not require it again for each subsequent webcast they register for).
e. Encourage participants to “share” that they are attending your event by posting it on their various social media networks.
2. Cultivate an online community.
a. Develop content for your webcasts based on research of your customers’ demographics and biggest business pains.
b. Create one webcast a month (or at least bimonthly) to establish a stable cadence and encourage loyal viewers.
c. Build lasting relationships with prospects using Q&A sessions during and after your webcasts (if your webcast host platform has this feature).
d. Position yourself as a thought-leader within your industry by inviting industry experts to “guest-host” a webcast.
e. Show valuable content in a series or along a planned trajectory so that attendees come back to hear the next part of the “story.”
3. Nurture & Repurpose.
a. If you host your webcasts using a live format, repurpose it afterwards into an On-Demand video so it can be viewed anytime.
b. Host your webcasts on popular hosting sites to optimize for SEO, but also embed them on your own landing pages with your own unique branding.
c. Offer additional pieces of content on webcast landing pages, so your prospects can take themselves further down the buying cycle without any work on your part.
d. Repurpose the main points of your webcast into different types of digital content like blogs, whitepapers, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. that can be used in nurturing campaigns.
4. Measure.
a. Using a marketing automation solution, track data regarding each prospect’s basic demographics and level of engagement.
b. Use the data you collect on prospects to determine their location in their buying cycle and feed them content focused on moving them to the next stage (i.e. if they go to your “About Us” page after viewing a webcast, they are likely earlier in terms of decision making whereas someone who clicks on a “Pricing” page is closer to closing).
c. Give all of the data you collect on your prospects to your sales team (i.e. how many minutes of the webcast they viewed, what webpages they clicked through afterward, etc.), so they can set up conversations based on each prospect’s unique behavior and predetermined needs.
Overall, you want to use webcasts to strengthen your brand story while at the same time providing genuinely valuable content to your prospects. If you take an informed and strategized approach to your webcasts, you can position yourself as an industry leader and simultaneously create a community where people come to solve their business problems. Webcasts allow your prospects to engage with your brand in a one-to-many format but lets them feel like they are having a personalized experience—making you the hero that finally gave them the answer they were looking for.
If you would like to know more about how webcasts help improve your digital content marketing strategy or want to speak to a sales and marketing outsourcing company about content marketing or marketing automation solutions, please contact us.
by Glen Springer | Apr 3, 2013
In January, Forbes called 2013 the ‘year of the customer’, and when it comes to B2B sales, this statement could not be more true. The customer, not the seller, now controls B2B buying cycles. This means that your marketing strategy and content must be based on a full understanding of who your customer is and structured around meeting the customer on their own terms.
In order to meet the customer where they’re at, you need to have a clear understanding of where he or she is in the buying cycle for your product or service. Knowing the stage of the buying cycle the prospect is at tells you what marketing content is appropriate to move them to further down the pipe. Giving someone the wrong content at the wrong time will confuse or annoy your prospect, neither of which is an effective sales strategy.
Just as you would not serve crème brulee as a breakfast dish, you should not give a prospect a video of a complex software demo after their first interaction with your company. You need to provide your prospect with a full menu of content options and let their behaviors inform you of what they would like to be served. Using a marketing automation solution, you can watch prospects interact with different “menu options” and gauge if they are in the mood for breakfast or lunch.
Following this metaphor, here are the different stages of the buying cycle for B2B customers along with what type of marketing content is appropriate for each stage.
Stage #1: Breakfast
Prospect expresses interest.
Content types: basic info about value proposition, “welcome” emails, educational blogs, best practices articles, introductory videos
Stage #2: Lunch
Prospect is engaging.
Content types: Invitations to webinars/webcasts, demo videos, segmented content based on specific page views
Stage #3: Dinner
Prospect is ready to make a decision.
Content types: case studies, software demonstrations, service/product options, feature comparisons, white papers, testimonials, pricing
Stage #4: Dessert
Prospect becomes an ongoing customer.
Content types: new product/service info, review/testimonial requests, newsletters, requests for customer data updates
These four stages (or meals) of the buying cycle comprise the majority of the B2B marketing process. However, the problem remains: what if the prospect isn’t hungry?
In cases where the prospect is showing no interest in digesting your content, you need to prove to them how great it tastes. Maybe your prospect is hungry, but you haven’t offered them anything appealing yet. These prospects need to be nurtured with content like surveys to better assess their specific business needs. Prospects that aren’t hungry also need to be given incentives to engage in your content; offering a promotion of some kind may be able to initiate reengagement (e.g. “Today Only: FREE Samples!”).
In summary, we have gone over the various stages of the B2B customer buying cycle and explained what marketing content each stage necessitates. If you have any questions or would like to know more about B2B buying cycles or content marketing, please contact us.
