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Best Practices for Highly Effective Demand Generation: #Demand2013 feat @heinzmarketing
May 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The b2b buyer just wants to be loved: Madlibs with Mike Volpe
May 8, 2013 by 1 Comment
Mike Volpe is part man, myth, and legend when it comes to marketing and specifically, inbound marketing and he seems to have fun while doing it. What else can I say? He is Mike Volpe….and when someone finally writes a book about this era of marketing, he will be listed as one of the thought leaders that led the way. And here are his contributions to the Funnelholic’s Madlibs: [Read more...]
Four content marketing quotes that I can’t get out of my head
April 25, 2013 by 2 Comments
What a title! I have been using these content marketing quotes when I work with clients or talk with others in the marketing space, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how to get them into blog posts. So, I decided to just write this post and finally get them out there.
First a note on content marketing: I always believed that content marketing SHOULD work, but was getting nervous that it wasn’t going to be true. I recognized that the buyer had changed and understood their preferences for helpful content, but really just wanted other success stories besides Hubspot. Now — GAME ON. Content marketing successes are happening all over the place. It works. More on this in later segments.
Now, here are a couple quotes on the topic that I just can’t get out of my head:
1. “We wrote our first blog post before we wrote our first line of code.” – Jon Miller, Marketo [Read more...]
The b2b funnel is killing real progress: Madlibs with Justin Gray
April 24, 2013 by 1 Comment
Justin Gray is both an amazing marketer and a successful entrepeneur. Fun Fact: LeadMD is not his only company…he has a number of successful ventures. Over the years he has become a good friend and trusted resource for me on marketing, sales, and business in general. His Madlibs contribution is thoughtful and intelligent – enjoy.
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1. The b2b buyer is human
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2. The biggest innovation in marketing is the effective use of actionable big data
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3. The coolest thing happening in b2b marketing is a focus on adding actual value
Every marketer should take a sales guy to lunch: Madlibs with Steve Gershik
April 8, 2013 by 1 Comment
Today’s Madlibs features my good friend Steve Gershik who may have the best combination of brains and humor of anyone I know. Really. He is that funny and that skilled at mixing humor with b2b marketing. I always try to get him to do webinars with me because I laugh and learn. (which is the best combo I know). He is currently applying his years of best practices as the VP of Marketing for StackMob and being awesome. I hope you enjoy his Madlibs, I certainly did. (As I expected I would…)
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1. The b2b buyer is now smarter about your product than most B2B marketers and sales people.
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2. The biggest innovation in marketing is technology that connects marketing results to activities.
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3. The coolest thing happening in b2b marketing is predictive analytics.
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4. My favorite marketing book is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.
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5. My favorite social media channel is Facebook for friends; LinkedIn for colleagues.
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6. Social media for b2b is in need of a revised focus on the buyer, not the seller.
Here’s a cool one: A pre-launch campaign for written content.
February 14, 2013 by 3 Comments
Well, I have officially failed my “blog every week or more” New Year’s strategy….
I thought I would share some pretty cool marketing ideas that I got from Marketo‘s campaign for their Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation. There are a lot of great elements to how Marketo launched the ebook/whitepaper, but I will just focus in on a couple. First, take a look at their pre-launch landing page: [Read more...]
Ridiculous ramblings about the marketing automation market
January 5, 2013 by 25 Comments
Everyone always asks me how this “Funnelholic thing” got started. Basically, my boss Scott Albro, CEO of Tippit, said to me one day: “You gotta go start a blog and get all this stuff in your head out onto the internet.” I started by wanting the name “Funnelnomics” but Reachforce had it. Dejected, I went to Scott and told him that I didn’t get the name I wanted and was stuck. He said: “Craig you need a name that reflects your personality, something more fun and edgy. How about “funnelholic”?” Boom…two days later my first post went up and I was off to the races.
My following grew because the blog was born around the time marketing automation was on the rise. I loved marketing automation so I wanted to know all the players and work with them. I did webinars with them, spoke at events, guest blogged etc. Lets face it — marketing automation marketers know the value of content and I was in the right place at the right time. I helped them, they helped me. We all helped each other. I will always owe the marketing automation folks a debt of gratitude.
The best part of marketing automation was that it was a bare-knuckled fight and it was fun to watch. I would get direct messages, emails, phone calls every week with some drama going on or some gossip. I have to admit, it was fun. One of my all-time posts was “Who’s going to run this town” comparing the marketing automation tiff to the east coast-west coast rap battle – that got me some serious props from the younger folks. I had inside sales reps running up with “hey you’re the funnelholic!”. Times have changed…I still talk to the vendors, but not as much. Shawn Naggiar from Act-on called me to catch up at 9pm the night before Thanksgiving. I wasn’t pissed, I was actually excited because I missed the chance to talk about the game.
Times are changing for everyone in marketing automation and in honor of that change, I thought I would jot down some of my thoughts.
– You know times have changed when…..
- Joe Chernov is sending public tweets and facebook messages to a Marketo employee (Jason Miller) with lots of compliments
- Joe Chernov is the one to break the Maria Pergolino leaving Marketo news.
- Jon Miller‘s facebook is filled with pictures of him on vacation. That’s right, Jon Miller is enjoying Hawaii right now – relaxed, snorkling, etc.
- I gotta tell you the marketing automation industry did an amazing job convincing the marketing world that they had to have their product. I am a consultant right now, and I can’t find a marketing department that doesn’t have it or want to get it.
- Marketing automation vendors also got to the sales leaders too. I am working with a VP of Sales who uses terms like: “lead scoring”, “digital body language”, “lead nurturing”, the “buyer has changed”. As a matter of fact, he pushed hard for marketing automation and has spent a lot of time with me on the demand generation plan. Today, VP’s of Sales are asking companies what their demand generation strategy and marketing automation platform are while interviewing..thats a change.
- The Revenue Performance Management (RPM) thing didn’t work. Oh well. I was supportive, so I am not saying “I told you so”. But lets be clear, the headlines were not: “Oracle buys RPM leader Eloqua”.
- I wonder what the ESP (Email Service Provider) guys are thinking right now. There are all these consumer email applications that were built long before marketing automation, but the marketing automation guys became the belle at the ball. I know someone will say “Craig, marketing automation is much more than email.” but please don’t — the predominant feature is email so stop it. BTW, Silverpop adding marketing automation may prove to be a great move in the long run (errrrrr, I mean short run)
- I am not going to write “I predict more consolidation in the marketing automation market”. I think it would be awesome if the guys that are left build big stand-alone marketing software companies that care about marketers and marketing, but I know the acquisition offers will be tough to pass up. 2013 could be crazy.
- The stand-alones in the space are just sales machines right now: Act-on, Hubspot, and Marketo seem to be tearing it up quarter-after-quarter. (Editor’s note: I will receive an email from another person in the space saying: “You should really consider so-and-so”).
- ”The buyer has changed, so buy my product” has really worked as well. Everyone uses that now. Consultants love that stuff….the buyer has changed, give me some hours! Sure, the buyer has changed but the whole thing is so cliche and over-played. You can’t tell me lead scoring and lead nurturing weren’t a good idea 20 years ago because they were. That’s right, I truly believe I would have bought marketing automation 20 years ago if given the opportunity. If you really look closely, the seller has changed more than the buyer or at least has the opportunity to change more than the buyer.
- After all that, the term “marketing automation” may be on its last legs anyway. Marketo’s front page touts “marketing software”, Hubspot has always resisted “marketing automation”, and I saw a press release for the Oracle acquisition calling Eloqua a “modern marketing platform”. Interesting…should my blog title have been: “The death of marketing automation”?
Ridiculous ramblings on the marketing automation market. Faithfully submitted.
I’ve seen a million faces, and I’ve rocked them all.
My first take on RPM, okay my second take but who is counting?
September 20, 2011 by 4 Comments
Note to self: This is my first post on Revenue Performance Management (RPM) (and my first post in awhile).
Usually, when I write, I can just sit down and crank out a post. For whatever reason, organizing my feelings on RPM has been hard. That changed, after I sat on a panel on Revenue Performance Management (RPM) at Dreamforce with Bill Binch from Marketo and Jamie Mallinger from Athena Health. It was really a great presentation (embedded below) and by the way, I DON’T mean my part – I mean Jamie and Bill’s. We actually did it twice to packed houses which was fun and exhilarating, but the main reason I mention the preso: it helped me get my hands around some of my feelings on the topic. I was all over the place with RPM, and when I got to work with Jamie and Bill, I was able to simplify everything in my mind. That is not to say executing is simple, but wrapping your hands around the concept is easier for me and maybe I can help here
Funnelholic Definition:
Revenue Performance Management – a process for managing, tracking and optimizing revenue from “start-to-finish”. The start could be awareness and the finish could be cross-sells/up-sells depending on your business model.
4 major, but simple building blocks to RPM:
1. A picture – You have mapped a cohesive step-by-step “demand chain” ala a supply chain that is mapped from interest (marketing) to well past close (sales). Each step of the way has a defined business rule to advance to the next step. Everyone agrees to this picture aka process.
2. Better leads — You will send sales leads that they agree to accept and convert. (Fail on this, and you are cooked. Sorry). If they work, you will send more. If they don’t, you understand where everything is developed now that you have a solid picture of the process so you figure out how to fix it. “Better leads” sounds tactical but part of what you build when you build the demand chain is process such as scoring, nurturing, and inside sales/sales development to ensure that sales is working on qualified leads.
3. Metrics — You have metrics that map to your steps of your “demand chain” that you can tune to drive revenue.
4. Someone or some entity to look at everything and help make decisions – That is complicated and a whole ‘nother blog post but you either need a Chief Revenue Office/Officer or someone close to the CEO/President who can call out what is happening and help drive better decision-making
Impediments to Success:
1. Politics – plain and simple. Do you know how many people came up to me with the comment “this is great but there is no way I can get this done because of the people involved”. There has to be a commitment from the key stakeholders in the organization that they want to do this.
2. Politics Part II, the sales leader – Truthfully, sales doesn’t care about sales and marketing alignment nor are they very interested in a movement that usurps their power. Keep this in mind as we start to head down this road. This movement is being driven by marketing and in particular, RPM vendors (formerly known as marketing automation vendors). Again, if you have been in a b2b marketing organization, then you know the guy who rules the roost is an 800 pound gorilla named the head of sales.
3. There is more to revenue than demand gen and sales – Product, service and all those factors play into revenue success. I realize that. But for now, it’s a BIG step to merge the sales and marketing process and let’s just start with that.
Politics can be a mess here, and I wonder aloud whether for the near-term solution is drop the “management” part of RPM and for now, call it RPM – Revenue Performance Mentality. The most important thing to do here is to educate and get organizations on board from a mentality perspective. Then everything else will come into place including technology.(first mention) Realizing there are still some flaws, can you really say that from an organizational standpoint that you wouldn’t want a fully optimized, predictable revenue machine?
Let me go over the benefits:
1. Predictability – the well-oiled Revenue Performance Machine knows when they put more “in the top” what will come out the “bottom”. That is empowering for an organization.
2. Optimization – the ability to really fix holes is one of my favorite part of having visibility into the entire revenue process. Instead of saying “close more f-in business” to sales or “get me more leads” to marketing, we can objectively look at the breakdown and make good decisions that truly effect revenue downstream.
3. More money
The “demand chain” is the last part of the b2b organization that has yet to be streamlined and optimized. Manufacturing companies understand their supply chain from materials to delivery in stores. Why can’t we do the same for demand?
PS Steve Gershik — I didn’t say marketing automation except to reference vendors. I don’t think i have to drink.
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Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter
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