Wide Angle

History is ripe with famous feuds: the Capulets and Montagues, Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Burr, or, as I glibly noted in a previous post, Peggy and Al Bundy.  Enter Sales and Marketing to the fray: often at odds, though truly dependent on one another for the successful operation of any given company.  If early results from our sales and marketing alignment diagnostic are any indication, the two groups have managed to find at least some common ground: commercial messaging is crucial … and it’s something we’re not very good at it. Read More »

Perhaps you’ve seen episodes of Name That Tune on the Game Show Network (or maybe you’re old enough to remember when it was a hit in the 1970s).  Regardless, contestants competed to identify a song by listening to as few notes as possible.  I was reminded of that show while watching commercials during the Olympics last week.  Within the first few seconds of seeing a new ad, I knew it was for McDonald’s.  There were no golden arches or kids eating French fries to help me; there was just a vibe, an emotional connection that immediately made me recognize the ad as McDonald’s.

In an age when brands are identified by an icon like a duck or gecko, a recognizable sound like the deep voiceover of Morgan Freeman, or a celebrity spokesperson, I found it refreshing to see an ad that relied on none of those but still made a lasting and memorable impression. Read More »

If your company is like mine, the beginning of the fiscal year (now, for most of us) is when we’re thinking about project portfolios and operating plans – and, it’s the one time we managers have to focus on our direct reports’ development plans.  Setting development goals for staff while creating these “IDPs” (as we call them: “individual development plans”) is easy for some functions. Sales has revenue goals. Procurement has cost-cutting goals. But for marketing, setting development goals – and understanding the underlying functional competencies marketing staffers need to develop (and then creating action plans that line up to their current projects) – can be a little tricky. Why? Read More »

For those of us in the B2B marketing world, understanding what drives sales rep effectiveness can help define the role we play in supporting our sales team.  In a recent quantitative effort by the Sales Executive Council (SEC), rep characteristics—having to do with Attitudes, Skills/Behaviors, Activities and Knowledge—were studied.  They found that certain attributes tended to clump together into a few profiles.  More specifically, five distinct groups of sales reps were found, each containing a very different combination of attributes.  See if you can guess the clear winner and the clear loser as I summarize them here: Read More »

It’s a question that has perplexed humankind for centuries: If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?  Now Marketing may not be known for its penchant for solving existential conundrums, but the same line of reasoning can be applied to the customer experience.  If you identify a set of benefits but the organization fails to demonstrate them, do they really exist?

We’re a biased group, so while differentiation may be the bread and butter of our world, the sad truth is that that simply isn’t the case within many B2B organizations.  Marketing can (and should) take the lead to identify the core set of unique benefits that set the company apart from competitors.  But when it comes to embedding these throughout the customer experience—that requires coordination of many moving pieces across the enterprise. Read More »

Delivering a preferred customer experience boils down to three easy steps:

• Step One: Clarify what’s unique about your experience and the distinct benefits you provide to customers.  Check.
• Step Two: Understand how customers interact with a variety of touchpoints and emphasize your unique benefits at the touchpoints that matter most.  Got it.
• Step Three: Make sure the dozens (and dozens) of other touchpoints in your customer experience reflect your unique benefits.  Hmmmmm…

We see a lot of breakdowns when it comes to this final piece of the puzzle.  To ensure that customers really understand and appreciate your unique benefits, every touchpoint must be viewed as an opportunity to reinforce or support them.  The problem, as marketers are quick to point out, is that Marketing doesn’t have enough time, money, or control to manage all the different customer touchpoints.  While it’s easy for Marketing to adjust collateral or update the Web site to better reflect benefits, it’s a different story when it comes to modifying packaging or customer service touchpoints.  New set of stakeholders, new set of rules, a whole new ballgame. Read More »

We all know the recession has drastically impacted consumer behaviors, but we may often overlook its direct impact on brands themselves.   The recession has changed the way marketers manage their brand portfolios as they try to do more with less.  As such, marketers are taking a closer look at how then can stretch existing brand equity across a greater number of products, often taking a parent brand/sub-brand approach.   

We generally see four different sub-brand approaches, each with their own benefits and risks:  Read More »

So, you’ve decided to bring some analytics hotshots onto your marketing team.  What should you do first? Whatever you do, don’t let them near the data!

Not yet.  It’s too dangerous.  More peril than you could shake a stick at.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a huge fan of analytics to improve marketing decision making. I spent four years leading a team in CapitalOne’s marketing and analysis group.  I have a deep appreciation for organizations that have built competitive advantage on analytics.  In fact, one of my “must reads” for marketers is Davenport’s Competing on Analytics (good introductory excerpt here). 

But what I have also observed with high-powered analytics is real-world myopia. Read More »

Watch a 5-minute video showing how Texas Instruments identified critical touchpoints in the customer experience.

Marketers typically use VOC as a barometer when weighing different investments in the customer experience.  But this reliance on customer voice biases marketers to only consider improvements to the existing set of touchpoints.  Existing touchpoints aren’t necessarily the best ways to engage customers and, moreover, “fixing” touchpoints that rank highly on the customer gripe list generally leads to an experience that’s comparable, not differentiated.  That’s not to say that VOC is always going to lead you astray, but its implications should be taken with a grain of salt. Read More »

Mountain: Post-Mountaintop Removal

2009 was a year of taking sledgehammers to budgets, not least agency spend.  Many marketers have relied on the equivalent of mountaintop removal to get at those agency savings.  They’ve launched agency reviews or have consolidated agency relationships.  These approaches are imprecise, crude and unsightly—but can be effective in reducing spend. 

However, most of these marketers will be under continued budget pressure in 2010.  The problem with mountaintop blasting is that, once you do it, you can’t play that card again (uh, the top of the mountain is gone).  So what are marketers to do to find additional cost savings that won’t harm communications quality?  Read More »