I’m not sure we quite achieved that at Velocity’s first live (streamed on Ustream) Marketing Masters one-hour-long interview with John Watton,  Director Global Brand & Marketing at Expedia Affiliate Network. But it was tremendous fun and John was terrific. As Goldwyn also said “we spared no expense to save money on this one”, but, despite that, the session seemed to work well.  (You guys can be the judges on that since we intend to make most of the discussion available over the next few weeks, broken up into chapters covering the subjects we talked about.)

So what did we discuss? A bunch of stuff:

–like the changing role of the CMO in B2B tech (John’s qualified to talk on that one having had senior marketing roles at Oracle, Microsoft, Ariba and others as well as EAN.);

–the shape and skills  for in-house teams in the digital B2B world;

–the importance of marketing automation and how to get the most out of it (answer: start small, use common sense and don’t try to overreach);

–why it’s important to experiment with social media, even if you’re the most senior marketer in the room (as John says, social is not going away anytime soon, so senior marketers have to understand it in order to deploy it);

–content marketing strategy (mainly what content works best where and for whom)

–and marketing’s changing relationshipe with the sales force.

An hour spins past quickly when you’re having fun, but I wish we’d spent more time talking about the last of these. We meet lots of sales driven companies as part of the business development process here at Velocity. A lot of them are really dis-satisfied with marketing and have had two or sometimes three senior heads of marketing in the recent past. When we talk to them, it’s often really clear why. Sales is looking for compliant marketing, marketing that just does what its told and more often than not marketing that’s locked in the 20th Century. They haven’t realised that buyers don’t buy like they used to and competitors don’t compete like they used to. And that the best sales people don’t sell as they used to.

John was the first user of Marketo in Europe back in 2008, when he was at Shipserv. A big achievement there was his transformation of the role and position of the marketing department. Because he was able to apply marketing thinking and strategy to the company’s web site, digital campaigns and content, he was able  to turn marketing – which until then had been seen as just a service to sales – into the organ that owned and filled the sales funnel. Because he delivered the leads that the direct sales force needed, marketing became the force that it should be. Marketing transformed from simply making the arrangements into making the rain.

Anyway, you’ll be able to see the discussion over the next few weeks. We declare the initial experiment a success and we plan to do more. If you have suggestions about B2B marketers we should invite, please send them to us. If you see ways we can make the output even better, feel free to let us know. But remember we are all acolytes of  Goldwyn at Velocity: “I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job.”

© stan@velocitypartners.co.uk for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B marketing, B2B Marketing Automation, B2B social media, B2B technology marketing, B@B marketing, Content, Content Marketing

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The funnel seems kind of wobbly these days. Here’s why:

No buyer wants to think he’s in a funnel.
It doesn’t align with how buyers feel like they approach a purchase. Can we say a model is good if the protagonist of the story dislikes it?

You’re not in charge.
In a market characterized by information surplus and driven by search, social and rich content signals, the buyer owns the rhythm. Not the seller.

Buyers don’t proceed. They swirl.
The stages in the funnel (defining a need, drawing up a shortlist, etc.) just don’t sync with purchase journeys anymore. Buyers don’t do linear. They circle.

You don’t have time for mapping.
The funnel model assumes that there are some absolutes, that the ground isn’t shifting underneath the market. In fact, all is in flux.

Buyers’ journeys don’t just end.
The funnel assumes that there’s a pool of people called the market who don’t know you, and that your job is done once they’ve bought your product. “Plop! You’ve gone through the funnel.”

There are smarter people than me who have been saying much the same thing for years, like Steven Noble of Forrester, MarketingProfs and countless others who say the sales funnel is dead. They replace the funnel with flows, maps, nets, circles and webs – everyone wants to own the next model.

Does the death of the funnel apply to the big B2B decisions? Yes. We have piles of information from trillions of sources – this applies just as well to the professional as the personal world. Industrial tumult is just as strong as consumer tumult, if not stronger.

The funnel was a model for storekeepers. The top of the funnel was the street. Then the funnel led into their shop, browsing, comparing, asking questions and then going to the register. The current model needs to be crafted on an Italian piazza. Consumers bounce in and out and all over the place, asking countless questions, listening in to conversations, examining and gossiping.

Funnels don’t do bouncy very well.

So what’s the fallout of a post-funnel world?

If the funnel doesn’t fit well with buyer behaviour, then the tools based on this model won’t work. Prospects who don’t act like they’re in a funnel will get treated in ways that don’t suit their actual intent. Vendors seem to be racing to address this, but it’s a tough move, as many were built up on the foundations of funnel thinking.

Funnel-based content will start to feel funny. That one case study that applies to that one particular part of the theoretical buyer journey goes flat. It feels faked, forced, one-dimensional and lame to buyers who have a three-dimensional view of the market.

Efforts to push prospects through a funnel process meet resistance. Marketers who push themselves on webinar attendees to read the next piece of corporate literature fail. Prospects can see through tired funnel-driven tactics. They’re not buying escalation.

That’s a start anyway.

So what would I do, post-funnel?

I’d start by thinking facilitation. No matter where you think you have a prospect, you don’t. You. Don’t. Have. Them. They’re in charge. You’re just facilitating them. Help them. Don’t push, and don’t play games. To hell with your sales quotas. But do get serious when they get serious.

Build out your non-linear expeditionary forces. Buy a blogger breakfast. No joke. These independent expert-istas are the developing gauge of influence in a noisy market. They are the conversational coin in the new media bazaar. And don’t send them emails studded with your opinions and product news. Buy them breakfast. Lunch? Drinks? Then chat.

Think non-competitive business development. Start partnering with people who are in your space, but who you don’t compete with, to develop content, events, staff trades and such. A pretty clever marketer named Joe Chernov said: “When you are the only one tweeting about your infographic, you probably blew the execution.”

Assume you don’t know where people are coming from. When someone lands on a page of your website, do not think you know why they came there, or that you know what they’re looking for. Be humble. Offer choices. Like this:

Those are my ideas anyway. Do you have any of your own?

© Ryan Skinner for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, marketing funnel, marketing models, sales funnel

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Have you seen that picture of a glass that’s been going around? This one:

There needs to be, like, way more awesome in B2B. We could be totally running the show, you know?

I mean, technology is just technology, but we’re after love. The iPhone didn’t cut and paste at all, but who cared, you know? We loved it. Awesome!

When we’re talking about tech stacks and cloud instances, let’s just turn up the volume on that shit. Sure, there’s the “80% more efficiency on your TCO”-talk; Let’s do the “we give you like a billion percent more awesomeness across the board!”-talk! How awesome is that!

You want product benefits? Like reduced maintenance expenses, swifter enablement and better ROI? Hell, our product will give you a longer life, sex appeal like a Cannes starlet, VC stickiness and a Porsche in the drive! Awesome!

Let’s advertise on that sexy little blog that writes about our industry. Let’s invite the blogger for oysters at the top of the Ritz. No, wait, let’s do a microsite with him. Or maybe we could pay him to, like, write on our site. Oh, fuck it, let’s just buy his whole site, then he’s writing for us anyway. Awesome!

Our funnel is, like, totally empty. You know what that means. The world is ours. We can get like 1000% growth with just one new prospect. Let’s make a viral video or something. One of those abandoned shopping cart things. Totally awesome!

No one’s following us on social media. Let’s retweet some shit. Let’s retweet like everything for a week! Let’s get some conversational marketing going. Let’s respond to every mention of us with one word: “You’re awesome!” Wait, that’s two words: Double awesome!

Our case studies are, like, getting totally ignored. No one really cares why a little widget factory in Rochester chose our technology. So let’s do a fictional case study about how Richard Branson put our technology in all his space ships. Let’s make shit up. Maybe Branson will notice and just do it. It’ll be like suggestion. The jedi mind trick! Awesome!

Our website ain’t converting. Let’s slap some site optimization tools on that sucker, pour in some marketing automation, phatten it up with some social media feeds (could we replace the corporate feed with @Beyonce, you think?) and buy a couple gallons of content strategy. Let’s…pimp…it…out! Awesome!

Let’s just sit around and, like, talk about some stuff. Like who’s fun in our industry. And who’s lame. And let’s just record that bad-boy and throw it up on YouTube. Let’s record our CTO’s laugh into a podcast, because he’s got a sick funny laugh. If people start with that, maybe they’ll want to listen to his cloud compression story, too. Awesome!

Let’s disrupt some shit. I mean, none of our competitors are packaging a product that some nobody could start using tomorrow. Let’s do some SAAS infrastructure management product stuff with free sign-up. Like twitter for plant management. Facebook for enterprise security. Wicked awesome!

I’m totally into inventing a new industry! Today we’re doing scalable enterprise-level management tools. Tomorrow we’re doing, like, rainbow-chasing, lean-as-you-like, profit-cocaine-as-a-service enablement! Awesome!

I’ve totally gotten excited about B2B marketing and what we’re doing now. And you’ve read this whole thing. That must have taken you, like, three minutes! That’s awesome! Now go out and do some B2B shit and kill it and feel awesome about yourself! Because B2B should feel good. How about that? ISN’T THAT AWESOME??!!

© Ryan Skinner for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: awesome, awesomeness, B2B marketing, Copywriting

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Ever wanted to see two B2B marketers in an honest-to-goodness slapping competition?

Curious which of Velocity’s clients was recently named one of the 9 hottest startups by CIO magazine?

Wondered what it sounds like in Velocity Towers when no one knows you’re listening?

Would you like to hear Velocity’s unedited and uncut comments and ideas about B2B marketing?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’re going to like what we’re trying to do with our new Facebook page. All these things are already there, and more is on its way…

I’m calling it “Unfiltered Velocity”, and the idea is to share all things Velocity without as much varnish as you’d find elsewhere. It’ll still be B2B marketing, more or less, but more immediate. Without any polish. Warts and all.

We’ll share pictures of stuff we see. Record ideas and thoughts that we have. Share posts and pictures and videos of things we find important.

At least, we’ll do it for a while, then we’ll see how it’s going.

So drop by on Facebook and like us. And see our zits and warts and stuff. (And once we’ve got 100 “Likes” Doug will write and produce another R-rated Xtranormal video!)

© Ryan Skinner for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Facebook

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I watched Moneyball last night.

It’s the true story of how baseball started to introduce statistical and scientific methods to build better teams with reduced budgets.

For over 100 years baseball scouts (usually ex-players) picked and discarded players using gut instinct. Their thinking on what makes a great player conformed: technique, grace, beauty, reputation, potential, reliability and creativity.

Scouts looked for what you might call a player’s player. And the received wisdom worked, in the sense that nobody got fired for employing it.

The Oakland Analytics
No sport is an exact science, but baseball gets closer than most. There’s a mountain of data managed by a bunch of geeks who can tell you everything you need to know about players from a numbers perspective: hits, walks, runs, steals…

And these people look at the game differently. They don’t understand potential or grace: they do understand the raw contribution every player makes to the bottom line of winning matches.

And guess what? An analyst’s player isn’t a player’s player. Not even close.

The raw data theory is simple: it says you can assemble a winning team for a fraction of the usual cost if you change focus from subjective feel to objective analysis.

But would anyone have the bottle to take on the establishment and risk their reputation and livelihood? Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, with one of the league’s smallest budgets, risking their reputations and livelihoods, finally went for it and recorded the longest winning streak in baseball history with their ugly team of graceless, ageing misfits. And changed the game.

Resistance is Futile
The Oakland management team realized they could only compete by focusing on direct return on investment. They stopped asking how much a player would cost to buy: they started asking how much a run, or even a win, would cost to buy.

They looked at the sport differently and, despite being lampooned by a hostile establishment with everything to lose, they changed the way baseball works.

And it’s the same in B2B marketing. Time to adapt or die. Let’s:

Quit thinking of science as a geek’s preserve and embrace a quantitative approach to marketing.

Stop caring about what our peers think and start finding out which investments actually buy us prospects, customers and revenue.

Cease wasting cash on what’s big and trendy and keep investing cash in whatever tried and tested process keeps bringing in the punters.

Lose reliance on big opinions and take control of the marketing process with big data.

End the fascination with agency beauty parades and get deep and dirty with analysts and data jockeys who truly understand what’s working.

Adjust any hiring processes that rely on portfolios that don’t show impact on the bottom line.

Scrap any marketing campaign that talks costs rather than value and revenue.

Pull creatives out the darkness and give them a fantastic platform to spin their best ideas.

Rethink the idea that growing a marketing budget is more important than delivering more than less.

I could go on. But at the end of the day it’s all about money, whether it’s ball or marketing, and we’d all better get used to it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from  “The Win Without Pitching Manifesto” by Blair Enns:

“There are greater causes by which to frame an enterprise, and there are nobler metrics by which to measure the value of effort. But we cannot escape the fact that money is both a necessity in life and the most basic scorecard of success in business. Even if it is not the validation we seek, it is the most basic of test that we must pass.”

And it’s our job as B2B marketers to make sure we pass the test every day.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing

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Having spent my entire career in marketing, I’m hardly an anti-capitalist. But there is one form of advertising that I’d happily see banned tomorrow: billboards.

The multi-billion dollar outdoor advertising industry is built on a premise that all marketers should reject: that it’s okay to sell people’s eyeballs without their consent or benefit.

As a consumer, you can opt out of online spam (or at least filter it into your junk folder), but none of us can opt out of the worst spam of all, the visual spam that spoils our cities and turns our environment into a shrill marketplace. — the spam pumped into our eyes by Clear Channel, CBS Outdoor and the other outdoor advertising giants.

Drive through any city and count the billboard ads. You can’t do it. There are far too many. We’ve grown so used to them that we think all cities and towns have to look like this. But they don’t. We can easily get rid of billboard ads.

Back in 2007, Sao Paolo, the world’s seventh largest city, banned outdoor advertising as part of its Clean City Law. There was a massive howl from the outdoor advertising industry – especially from Clear Channel – but the sky didn’t fall, it emerged from behind the billboards.

“The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution,” said Sao Paolo Mayor Gilberto Kassab, “pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution.”

And ‘visual pollution’ is as good a definition of billboard ads that I can think of.

It’s hard to say what Sao Paolo will look like when all the emtpy billboard structures are removed but the residents are starting to see a new city — and 70% of them support the ban on outdoor advertising. (Check out Tony de Marco’s flickr photostream of the emtpy billboard dinosaurs)

Following Sao Paolo’s lead, San Francisco, Seattle and dozens of other American cities have started to experiment with some sensible limitations on all new billboards. Again, Clear Channel and the outdoor advertising industry are lobbying hard to fight the trend (“Outdoor advertising is culture!”). But as people start to see how nice their cities can be without 50-foot Big Macs and Bruce Willis billboards at every intersection, the tide could turn.

As you’d expect, McDonalds is the world’s biggest outdoor advertiser. The billboards they post in two years could wrap the world — as indeed they do. (Much as I like a quarter-pounder with cheese, I’ve half a mind to boycott McDonalds until they stop their assault by billboards).

Can the B2B market do anything about the blight of outdoor advertising? A lot. And it wouldn’t hurt much — outdoor is probably the least efficient of all B2B media (it’s better for burgers). Even billboards outside of convention centres during big trade shows are still 90+% waste. It may be a ‘clear channel’ but it’s the worst B2B channel of all.

Here’s an idea: the next time you see outdoor advertising in a marketing plan, suggest cancelling it and doing more content marketing or SEO. The return on investment will go up and you’ll have done something tangible in the fight against billboards, Clear Channel and the outdoor advertising industry.

You’ll also have done something positive for your neighbours.

What do you think?

Am I missing some hidden benefit that billboard ads deliver?

Am I being unfair to Clear Channel or McDonalds?

Is the outdoor advertising industry worth protecting?

Or are you just a fan of billboards?

———-

Photo: Tony de Marco

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, billboards, outdoor advertising

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I just got back to the desk the day after Marketo’s Revenue Rockstar event in London so I thought I’d file a quick report on it.

The event was fantastic. A buzzing, interesting, challenging day full of best-practice insight on demand generation and marketing automation. Not to mention the chance to meet lots of people who are at various points on the learning curve.  It was a room full of a new kind of B2B marketer: the kind who are ready to take responsibility for their company’s revenue pipeline.

I couldn’t help but feel I was witnessing the tipping point for marketing automation and revenue performance management in Europe (it feels like it tipped a while back int he US).

I only made the afternoon sessions, but they were excellent:

By way of disclaimer: it opened with a new video we produced for Marketo – I’ll link to it once it’s posted.  Then:

Fergus Gloster on The Secret Sauce for Revenue Growth – Fergus took us through Marketo’s own processes to show how good it can be. I love the way Marketo not only walk the talk but also share their own experiences so openly.

Case: Billy Boyle, Owlstone Co-Founder – Billy’s a great speaker and a convert to marketing automation. He showed how his company uses Marketo to automate marketing for a product that’s a bit off-piste for the company but has lots of potential. They didn’t want to throw sales resources at it, so they automated the pipeline – including some cool new features like integrating web chat with Marketo.

Liz Smyth on The Secret Sauce for Measurement & Analytics – Liz started by asking what you would do if they came to cut your marketing budget by 10%. She then proceeded to show how, with proper revenue performance management in place, you could defend that budget by showing exactly how much revenue would be lost due to the cut.  Very powerful stuff.

Rockstar Panel – (including Stan Woods, our intrepid MD) a Q&A session on the ins and outs of marketing automation and content marketing.

Then drinks.
Then more drinks.
It all went blurry after that.

Marketo raised another $50 million yesterday. Their European operation is ramping up fast. Marketing automation has hit our shores in a big way. If you’re a B2B marketer and you’re not doing it… you’re not doing it right.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Demand Generation, marketing automation, Marketo, Revenue Performance Management

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If there’s such a thing as a template for a B2B content marketing blog post; then it looks a bit like this:

Dear Prospective Client,

That thing you’ve been trying to do. Well, you’re not doing it right.

Here’s a reason, preferably a list of reasons, why it’s going pear-shaped.

And here’s how we can save you from yourselves.

Send your cheques to…

We call it the Helen of Troy structure because – going by my Twitter feed – it launches about a thousand posts a day.

We’ve all done it. I moaned the other week about the feeling of doom – the Ave Santini Moment – as planning starts its descent to content marketing hell.

But maybe it’s time to focus on the clients getting it right, and applaud a tangible shift toward content marketing best practices in recent months.

The Ave Maria Moment
More recent planning discussions have honed in on one of content marketing’s sweetest spots: where content production and promotion work in harmony give you one almighty return on investment.

It’s the Ave Maria Moment: the feeling of marketing ecstasy (of the old-fashioned kind) accompanied by the sound of a celestial choir making soothing music in my head as a plan starts coming together.

And this one comes together hard to put content at the fulcrum of the whole B2B marketing process:

Optimized Content Marketing
The first challenge of content marketing, as Doug recently discussed, is the creation and management of a great content development process. But the second is ensuring content rolls off the press fit for promotion from day one.

If you don’t get support from people in charge your key promotional channels then you’ll be praying for a miracle. Here are the 10 Content Marketing Commandments that will ensure your content hits the ground running from day one:

1. Ensure every piece comes with campaign support. Plan supporting plays like landing pages and blog posts for the website or emails for nurturing campaigns long before launch day.

2. Customize content to reflect each channel. Adapt content (main feature or support) to introduce, for example, references to past behaviour in nurturing or referral pages in campaigns for better results.

3. Inject keyphrases into your content. Turn simple backlinks into juicy anchor text by optimizing your content title and landing pages (at the very least) with your top researched keyphrases.

4. Remember the funnel effect. Each piece of content is part of a wider funnel. Don’t forget to cross-reference other content, particularly if it’s a step further down your funnel.

5. Research your social network. Make sure your content is aligned with big subjects already popular in your social circles and our content is likely to compel. Makes selling in these related guest posts simpler.

6. Introduce social content. Referencing the work of others using quotes, excerpts or mentions in your content will increase the chances of them engaging with your work and (if it’s good enough) promoting it.

7. Get social feedback. Take the opportunity to share early drafts with people in your social circle: they’ll get to know your work as part of the process and help to make it better.

8. Socialize your database. Don’t forget that your database has its own social network. Make it easy to share your best content with simple integration with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (at the minimum).

9. Introduce campaign tags. Make sure you can chart the performance of every channel and medium by adapting shared campaign tags. You won’t add them after the content is launched.

10. Integrate channel feedback. Understand the goals of every challenge and make sure every piece of content has a clear impact on promotional metrics.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing

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FUNNEL is a great idea (well, we did help develop it). It’s a B2B marketing event that covers the entire sales/marketing pipeline.

It happens on 1 November at the Lancaster Hotel in London.

As a friend of Velocity, you get a 20% discount to the event just by using this code: FLD508.

Four tracks: Attract, Engage, Nurture and Convert. It’s organised by Econsultancy, so you know the content (and lunch) will be top-notch.

Here’s a list of delegates already registered (you’re in good company).

This will be worth a day out of the office for anyone serious about B2B marketing. Pretty much guaranteed.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B Events, B2B marketing, Lead Generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, marketing automation, Revenue Performance Management

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So what is the omen that sparks the orchestra into life? It’s a request for a specific type of content before the idea has even been discussed.

It happens every time somebody asks for “an infographic”, before they have any information; “thought leadership”, before they’ve done any thinking; or “a viral”, before they’ve done anything infectious.

The Ave Santini Moment
It’s all a bit predictable: content vehicles emerge, explode but ultimately decline when marketers start planning trendy outputs before they’ve plotted any meaningful inputs.

When Marshall McLuhan famously said that the media is the message he may have had a point; but not anymore: people want great, creative ideas presented and delivered in the best way (whatever that maybe).

The end result looks like a classic product curve: what was young and energetic, starts to look mature and tired, and begins a rapid decline accompanied with a backlash against “infocrapics” and “viral diseases” as the market gets swamped with corporate propaganda that wouldn’t look out of place in an edition of Pravda.

The graphic below illustrates the point of panic for this humble B2B marketing account director:

As you can see there’s a paradox at work here: the Ave Santini moment takes place as the putative number of experts starts exponential growth. Why? Because the experts, following the demand and the money, tend to be technical (focused on outputs) rather than creative (ideas focused).

Why it matters
And all this worries me because it makes providing the best possible service more difficult in three ways:

• Genuine creativity is overlooked. If it’s not your primary consideration then your campaign will be still born.

• Great content vehicles get commoditised too quickly. It’s annoying when tools become cheapened and discarded when there’s no obvious upgrade: we know iPhone 5 is coming with new features, but there’s no roadmap for infographic 2?

• Content marketing gets demonized. It’s harder to do great marketing when you alienate your audience with empty shells rather than useful, beautiful and actionable content.

So let’s exorcise the growing belief that vehicles are the source, rather than the vehicle, of creativity. Put the idea first then we’ll protect our profession, our campaigns, our options and, of course, my mind.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Thought Leadership

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