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It is true that there is a lot of content on the web, but it is the ‘good’ content that gets consumed and passed around – and it takes a lot of effort and time to build that kind of content.

According to the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report, producing great content is the biggest challenge marketers face, backed up by producing enough content.  Some of the other challenges include producing truly engaging content, getting content delivered to the right audiences, measuring results, talent to produce content, no consistent content strategy, lack of budget to produce content, understanding buying personas and decision stages, getting executive buy-in, poor content quality, lack of process for producing content, and lack of domain expertise  etc.

In this blog post, I’m focusing on the biggest challenge- producing great content. Which marketer wouldn’t like to produce great content all the time, isn’t it? But the challenges to do that are many. I have highlighted a few here:

Volume vs. Quality: In today’s keyword and Google rank driven world, there is no doubt that it’s ‘content’ that can win those search engine ranking battles. Enterprises, large and small are creating reams of content, mainly for SEO and back linking purposes to be right on top of search engine results with very little emphasis on quality. But, how far can we compromise quality for volume?  Should we be happy appeasing search engines while our content has no human takers?

My personal opinion is that quality should win every time. Any content that has a touch point with your brand, even if it is being created for search engines must be fit for human consumption – if it is not, you are doing more damage than good.

Time is money, really? Yeah, we all know this one, don’t we? As marketers we are constantly racing to create as much content in as little time as possible. What we must remember is that creating great content does take time.  Today’s consumers can easily see through content that is superficial and created in haste.

Creating content should not be a race with the clock- take time to put your thoughts together, time to research, time to understand the audience you are writing for, time to quality check, time to review and rework based on feedback, and time to distribute the content to the right audience. If you feel good about the content you have produced, it is quite likely your audience will feel the same.

Research is Key: One of the important components that go into creating a great content piece is thorough research.  Unfortunately, owing to deadline pressures and customer demands, content marketers do not research enough which results in mediocre output.

Before writing on a topic, read up as much as possible on the subject, and find out what the experts, thought leaders and analysts have to say on the same. This way your content development process will take into account multiple perspectives to provide a holistic picture.

Content maybe king, but the customer comes first: Creating content that resonates with the reader continues to be a big challenge for content marketers.  Enterprise content, more often than not, is focused on the company and its products, rather than meeting the consumer’s need. The result is collateral that fails to engage with the reader.

The biggest tip for content marketers is to put themselves in their target audience’s shoes. Think what their problem areas are and how your content can help provide solutions to those problems.

With 9 in 10 organizations marketing with content, there is no denying the importance of content marketing in the overall marketing strategy. However, content marketing is not a short term solution, rather, a practice that involves a continuous investment of resources, time, effort and money to make it a success.

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I write today’s post with a feeling of pride and excitement. I’m proud that LeadFormix is now part of CallidusCloud, the leader in sales effectiveness and cloud computing. I’m excited about LeadFormix’s prospects for the future, given the close synergies Callidus Software and LeadFormix share.

CallidusCloud delivers a comprehensive SaaS suite designed to help businesses drive more effective sales at each stage of the talent lifecycle, from making the right sales hire, to making it easier to sell, to motivating sales execution with targeted incentives and rewards, to building a knowledge-based work culture with high frequency coaching and development.

With LeadFormix’s game changing  marketing automation platform in the mix, CallidusCloud now has added the “Lead Automation Cloud” into its august list of available cloud solutions, the Hiring Cloud, the Sales Enablement Cloud, the Sales Performance Cloud,  and the Learning Cloud.

Key  factors for successfully implementing a Lead Automation platform for Sales Teams

Marketers need to keep in mind that the end goal of marketing campaign & campaign automation is to produce leads for Sales teams and help in the overall revenue objectives for an organization.

1) Move beyond plain technology; process change is what matters: While technology is the enabler to marketing automation success, it is the people, process and internal behavior changes that you need to focus most on. Expecting stellar results just because you have the invested in the best automation tool is not practical.

2) Content is always the king: Feeding a constant flow of content into the lead nurturing cycle can be overwhelming to any marketer. The answer lies in re-purposing content- breaking up larger content into smaller nuggets of useful information that can be used to attract prospects. Of course, content should still be relevant, but don’t get bogged down by creating resource intensive content – rather use the content smartly to derive maximum value out of it. Enlisting SMEs to write content for blogs or syndicating partner content is also an effective strategy.

3) Launch marketing automation for marketing and sales: We would be living in an ideal world if we expect marketing and sales to take to the lead automation platform immediately. Rolling out a lead management system should be akin to launching a new product. Market the product well, identify early adopters and leverage on their success to encourage others. Have a clear cut strategy to announce the rolling out of the new system, train people and test marketing and sales teams’ proficiency on the platform. Only once you are satisfied that the system is being used as intended and both marketing and sales are able to draw value from it, should you consider the implementation a success.

4) It’s all about the pipeline: Marketers need to realize that lead automation is not like instant coffee. The results are tangible and significant, but not immediate. Marketers who are patient and use the platform consistently over time have seen measurable increase in lead quality, opportunity to pipeline conversion and deal velocity – all factors that directly impact sales pipeline.

Deriving maximum success in driving pipeline growth involves focus on four key areas – lead scoring or profiling, seamless lead routing from marketing to sales, lead nurturing for non-sales ready leads and monitoring progress of leads in the sales funnel. If these four factors are taken care of by the lead automation platform, it is more than likely for marketing to drive a healthy sales pipeline while executing more effective campaigns.

I would like to  end my post by thanking all our customers, partners, vendors, employees, consultants, advisors, investors for being with us on this incredible journey so far and we all look forward to an exciting road ahead as a part of the CallidusCloud to take sales enablement and marketing automation to new heights.

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That, as marketers, we thought, would be an apt way to end the year – separate the sense from the nonsense. Dr. Seuss would probably chide us for taking everything he said so seriously. But we would like to think that he would approve of our tongue-firmly-in-cheek approach to marketing!

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I think most B2B marketers would agree that for us, it feels like Christmas every time we manage to fill the sales pipeline with quality leads.  After all, it means that our marketing strategies, tactics and efforts over time have borne the fruits of our labor.

So as I prepare for the real Christmas, I am also working on my list of must-do marketing activities in the coming year, which will ensure the team has enough reasons to celebrate work and their marketing efforts through the year.

Below I share with you my list of marketing must-haves for 2012.

Prioritize Content

Lots and lots of content in all possible formats. Yes, I know you already know this, and you have a regularly updated corporate blog and have managed a constant flow of keyword driven articles for SEO purposes. But that is a very miniscule part of your overall content requirements for generating qualified leads.

What you need is a great content plan that helps establish your company as an industry thought leader and trendsetter in your space. Invest time, money and resources in producing high quality research reports, whitepapers, presentations, video-logs, webinars, info graphics etc. This kind of content serves a larger purpose than just getting your brand visibility and improved search engine ranking, it attracts your prospects and leads, helps them understand and believe in your offerings as well as also see how well your solutions fit their budget, need and timelines.

Redefine your Social Media Strategy

Your company might already be into social media marketing, but 2012 should be all about going beyond working on your brand pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. It should be about sharing your expertise on expert groups and forums, participating in group discussions, promoting your offerings in a subtle or indirect way in place of in the face marketing. It is about running small and big, channel/platform specific campaigns, online events, which help your brand, interact with your brand followers and understand them better. These campaigns should be designed keeping in mind the tastes of members of each of these social networking platforms.

We all know that in B2B, the lead-to-sale time is long and often takes months for leads to move from one stage of buying to the next. Sending repetitive emails as part of the lead nurturing process can often get too predictive and boring, in which case, social media can add a whole new dimension to how you interact and connect with your leads, nurturing them on a more interactive and inclusive platform than an email.

Focus on strengthening existing customer relationships

Marketers and sales professionals are usually busy pursuing new leads and prospects. Often in this rush to meet targets, they forget to nurture and strengthen their existing relationships with their customers.

If your current customers are happy and think well of you, they will reward you with recommendations and referrals which produces better and more qualified lead than those who you have to convert from a scratch.

So it makes sense to spend sometime keeping in touch with your customers as it ensures upsell opportunities and increased mindshare. You can be assured that they’ll remember you when the need arises for them or for some contact who needs some information on offerings similar to yours.

Optimizing the use of our Marketing Automation platform

Investing in a marketing automation platform is something many B2B companies did this year.  But optimizing their investment, by ensuring their marketing and sales teams use the platform effectively is something they should work on in the coming year. With the kind of insights, analytics and automation of regular marketing activities a good marketing automation platform can provide, the effort is most certainly worth it.

Marketing automation not only helps in increasing the number of qualified leads discovered on your website, but it also helps the marketing and sales teams to set a common standard for qualifying leads, scoring them on criteria beyond just BANT.  It also helps them in assisting a lead’s journey through the buying process in a more strategic, well thought-out and customized manner.

Looking back, there is so much we have accomplished this year. Learned so much about the B2B online marketing space which is constantly evolving. Now it is time to review all those discoveries and successes, analyze them and see how they can be enhanced and implemented for more success in the coming year too.

So tell us what will your list of marketing must-haves for 2012 look like. We would love to add your suggestions to our list…like they say…there is always scope to do more..

Image courtesy – http://comprendia.com/

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Hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend, with family and friends. Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday season; which is synonymous for quality family time and the time for unwinding and planning ahead for the New Year. For B2B businesses, it’s a mad dash towards meeting those yearly targets with sales guys trying every trick in the book to get last minute deals inked. It seems as if the end of the year is all about bottom-line growth and sales revenue.

What about B2B marketing then? What should the end of year /holiday strategy be for B2B marketers? Should marketers just focus on campaigns that are currently running and not venture into any new ones?  Given the common perception that executives are on a break during the holiday season, should they try and target new prospects? Is it an exercise in futility to nurture leads now and is it better to wait to start afresh with new marketing ideas in the New Year?

In today’s blog post, I’ve tried to provide my perspective on why B2B marketing activities should not lose steam, especially in the holiday season.

Not everybody is on a holiday: Quite a few executives do take a well deserved break this time of the year, but there are quite a few who don’t! With lesser meetings scheduled and year-end travel freezes, it is very likely your prospect has the time to read your email, or talk to you on phone. So use the opportunity to connect with him when he is most receptive to listen to you.

The field is clear: It is a good strategy to utilize the lean season to get an edge over the competition. With lesser mail and call traffic to your prospect, it is easier to make your presence felt when compared to the rest of the year, where you have to battle it out for your prospects’ time with the rest of the competition.  Make a compelling offer that your prospect will find hard to refuse.

Be in your prospective buyer’s mind space: Your prospective customers are likely to be evaluating current vendors and analyzing new alliances and business plans for the next year. This will be a great opportunity to tell them about your product/service and give yourself a chance of being part of their vendor evaluation list for the coming year. Don’t forget your current customers too. This is the time to reinforce their trust in your solution.

People have budgets to spend at the end of the year: Companies will be looking to wisely spend their unutilized budget during this time. They may want to freeze on the right products/ services to use up this budget.  If you are not marketing and selling now, you are missing out on a golden opportunity.

It is time to take stock: As a B2B marketer, there is no better time than the holiday season to dispassionately and thoroughly analyze your marketing campaigns and see what worked and what didn’t in the current year. See which campaigns have been successful and why, which marketing channel has been a dud, or which content collateral has resulted in maximum engagement. The best practices drawn out of the analyses can help formulate better marketing strategies for the coming year.

Have a holiday marketing strategy: Holiday campaigns are not just for B2C businesses. Use the holiday season to reach out to your potential customers with useful information, special discounts & offers and future roadmap (products/services planned in the next year).

Want a fuller sales funnel for the next year? Start planning now: As the adage goes, the early bird catches the worm; don’t wait for 2012 to start planning your marketing campaigns. With Sales cycles getting longer, (average length of sales cycle is over 3 months for 70% of businesses. Source: Marketing Sherpa report), you need to plan well in advance to fuel your sales funnel with sales ready leads for Q1 2012.

Timing is crucial when it comes to B2B marketing. Think creatively how you can utilize the last few days of the year to put your best foot forward, to increase engagement with your prospects and plan ahead for the New Year.

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But have you ever wondered, where does the process of marketing really start?

Does it start as soon as you are ready to launch a product? Does it start after you have made a little headway into the market and realize people like your offering? Or does it start when you start thinking about your product?

If you were to ask me, I would say, marketing starts at the idea stage.

I am sure, all of you readers are familiar with what is marketing and what it does, but like most obvious and in the face things, marketing is known more for the showman ship activities it undertakes to create a buzz for its users. Many a times people forget to that the role marketing plays and its contribution in a company’s success story goes beyond the campaigns it creates.

In this post, I have tried to put down my understanding of what marketing really does and why it is such an integral part of not just your brand’s success story but your company’s successful history.

Market Research

This is when the first marketing activity should kick in to validate the practicality and the possibility of converting your idea into a real product or offering. Researching on..

- How big is the market for your idea?

- What are the growth possibilities?

- Who are your competitors?

- Who are the people who would be interested in buying your offerings, investing in your idea  and

- How can you carve your own distinct brand, what is it that you would offer that is different from the others.

are some of the critical questions market research will help you answer in addition to giving you an overview of  wether your idea is a profitable feasibility or an invigorating fantasy.

Involving marketing at the research stage can go a long way in safeguarding your investments and in minimizing the risks. It can also help you in shaping your ideas better in and in line with the demands and needs of the market you intend to cater to.

Go-to-market Strategy

This is the second most critical function of marketing, where a company focuses on how it can cost-effectively deliver its value proposition to each of its target segments.

- How should it price its product?

- What is the best way to sell its product amongst its target segment?

- Which channels should be used to sell its product and how these channels will add value to the brand

are some of the questions that have to be dealt with in the go-to-market strategy phase. This phase is important because it defines the positioning of the product and sets the way forward for its acceptance by the target customer. It also prepares the company for the possible challenges to expect from its competitors and from the market in general. It is that last breath of readiness you take before you plunge head-on into the real scenario.

Marketing Strategy

This is the story telling phase, the phase where companies entice their customers to buy their offerings.

- Defining their positioning

- Describing their product’s unique value proposition

- Understanding the consumer profile and segment and customizing the brand messaging

- Defining the marketing methods and ( advertising, social media, PR, Email marketing etc.), channels to be used to reach out to their desired market segment

This phase of marketing is critical because it helps build the brand, ensures brand adoption and retention and persuades the company’s customers to invest in its offerings. Also creative and ever evolving marketing strategies ensure the brand successfully penetrates deeper into its market segment and acquires a larger market share.

Marketing survey

This is the where the role of marketing comes full circle, when it tries to connect with the consumers of a brand to find out,

- How they see the brand?

- Do they think the price justifies the end product?

- What is it that they like about the product?

- How do they see the product evolve?

- Would they recommend the product to someone else?

Customer feedback is pivotal to the success of any brand, it helps a brand to re-evaluate its offerings and correct it to fit the needs and requirements of its consumer base. It also helps it to understand the issues and concerns of its consumer base and design solutions which will address these concerns and help their customers enjoy their offerings better. Customer feedback also helps a company’s marketing team to decide on whether it needs to change it’s messaging and positioning to make the brand more popular.

So next time when you budget your marketing spend take into account all these phases and not just the marketing strategy and execution stage. Marketing is not that thing you spend heaps of money on, once you are ready with a product to sell, but it is a thinking, a process that should be part of every phase of your company’s journey of turning an idea into a successful reality.

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A glaring Marketing Operations disconnect for many companies is our tendency to over-focus on What and How we want to sell, when we really need to develop a deeper understanding of What, Why and How our customers buy. Those of us in MO need to assert leadership in aligning our company’s sales process with our customers’ buying process.

The healing starts at home. Our collective lack of effectiveness in supporting one of our primary customers, Sales, surely speaks to the growing emphasis today on Sales and Marketing alignment.

Yes, Sales and Marketing have equal roles in this often-dysfunctional relationship. Yet it is incumbent on us as marketers to take responsibility for cleaning up our side of the house if we want a shot at a healthy, mutual partnership with Sales. If you’ve been in a long-term business relationship or a marriage, you know what I mean. Our unilateral thinking and actions impact the overall health of the system, for better or for worse.

So how does all of this relate to Stinnett’s book? I’ve gleaned a couple of key insights below that are especially meaningful to me. I also discuss some possible implications of these insights, which I recommend my fellow marketers and MO practitioners seriously ponder:

1. We need to remember our customers are buying a desired outcome, not a solution. Our organizational focus should be on understanding the gap between our customers’/prospects’ current state and their desired future state — the motive, the urgency, the payback, the consequences of inaction, the means to act, and the perceived risks in acting.

Implications for marketers: We can best support Sales by providing the process and means to better understand this gap. We also need to deliver collateral and marketing programs that attract prospects interested in bridging the gap. We need to continually ask ourselves some key questions to ensure that our selling process is not just aligned with the customer, but with our business goals. How well can we fill the gap for the customer and still meet our profit objectives? How can we support Sales to ensure that new sales reps are properly trained to act in accord with this customer-centric approach?

2. We need to understand our customers’ buying process and imperative to buy. Where are they in the buying process? What do they need to do next? Who else is part of the decision process? How can we enable our customer champions to take the next step in the buying process? We need to understand the motive behind the potential selling opportunity motive to support sales reps. Is the reason to buy a planned replacement, an unplanned replacement, a new purchase to keep up with the competition or a new purchase to get ahead? Is the initiative supported from the top-down or is it bottom-up? How does this initiative rank in terms of priority compared to other initiatives the customer might choose to fund? If we don’t understand these fundamental buying factors, we won’t be able to support Sales with strategic intent. We’ll just be providing air cover, absent a battle.

Implications for marketers: The programs we establish, the campaigns we develop, and the tools we create need to be geared toward helping Sales help our customers to buy. Does Sales believe our marketing programs, campaigns and sales tools contribute to gaining greater access to qualified prospects? Reaching “hidden” decision makers? Equipping customer champions to sell on our behalf? Is there significant tension for the customer to buy? Our credibility with Sales is at stake. Our sales reps need to trust that the leads we provide are legitimate qualified opportunities. They’ll have much greater respect for us and the quality of our leads if we take the responsibility to nurture prospects until they are truly ready to buy. This means, when the customer has demonstrated that they know what they are buying, why they are buying and how they are going to buy it. The last thing we want to do is waste our sales resources on a sourcing decision (“Who will I buy from?”) when we (and/or our prospect) don’t have a strong handle on the why, what and how.

It really comes down to aligning our internal sales and marketing process (with our internal customer, Sales) with our customer buying process. This is a fruitful area for Marketing Operations to focus. Our contributions can make a real difference in our organization’s ability to:

* Attract and win the right prospects and customers

* Nimbly and appropriately respond to sales opportunities, based on a sound understanding of where prospects are in their

buying cycles

* Optimize our sales resources to focus on high-touch, ready-to-buy opportunities

* Empower our customer champions to be highly effective advocates of our value proposition

* Mobilize our marketing resources – programs, campaigns, collateral – where they will have the greatest impact

Call to Action

If your company is facing challenges in any of the areas discussed in this article, or if you are thinking about creating a marketing operations function or increasing the effectiveness of the one you already have, you should start with a “current state assessment” that will help you evaluate the overall health of your marketing and/or Marketing Operations today. Doing so will help you zero in on those areas that represent your most difficult challenges as well as your greatest opportunities for bringing the significant benefits of MO best practices to your organization.

Image Courtesy – www.evancarmichael.com

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By keeping a live stream of information flowing between the company and its leads, the drip marketing strategy of a company helps in building, brand recognition, knowledge of offerings, understanding of solution offered and how it fits into a lead’s scheme of things. It also helps a lead to move through the various stages of the buying process in an informed way, ensuring their decision to buy the company’s solution is a well thought out one.

The process of drip marketing itself might be very simple but it requires a well planned and panned out campaign strategy which details out everything from the content to be sent to different leads  based on their buyer stage to the frequency of these emails/marketing communication.

The idea is to not irk your lead with irrelevant updates but to coax him and convince him that the solution offered by your company is the best suited for his needs.

A well thought out drip marketing campaign can solve a number of challenges faced by B2B marketers today, like having a good quantity of qualified leads in the sales funnel or being able to provide their sales teams with important tips and information nuggets about the lead and his needs, which will help them make an impressive sales pitch.

If you are a marketer who has been struggling to put together an effective drip marketing strategy in place, the upcoming free webinar by LeadFormix on ‘Using Drip Marketing to Solve B2B Marketers Most Pressing Challenges’ on October 27, 2011 is a must attend for you.

This webinar by Jim Pennypacker and Francis Adanz will help you learn

• What are the most pressing B2B marketing challenges?
• How to develop a drip marketing program?
• Key performance indicators for measuring drip marketing effectiveness

To register click here – http://www.leadformix.com/webinar-october-27-2011.html

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