The Funnelholic

Jobfox has released a report on the 20 most recession-proof jobs. There are two really interesting developments for my two blog constituents, sales and marketing folks.

1. Sales guys: Congratulations — you have and will survive the economic slowdown. Heck, even sales executives made the list, so congratulations. Bottom line: You can’t make money unless people are selling.
2. Marketing people: ouch. You’re not even on the list. What’s clear here is that marketers still have a lot of work to do to prove that they’re a part of the critical path to revenue. There are great tips on this on Jon Miller’s Modern B2B Marketing blog. Read his post “7 Strategies for B2B marketing During a Recession.” Then hit his series on “Proving Marketing’s Value” (start on Part I). It’s easy for me to say, but don’t lose your job. If you take the lesson learned from my previous post “The 7 Similarites Between VPs of Sales and Professional Sports Coaches,” marketers don’t get fired as frequently … but, as you can see from the below stat, you will struggle to get a new job.

By the way, I have never heard of Jobfox so I don’t even know how credible the data is. What I do know is that there is a beautiful marketing lesson to be learned from this. This data has been great viral content for Jobfox. I found this article on Network World’s blog, which proves that this piece of content worked. Now, I am writing about a company I have never heard of before, and I am giving them visibility. I also forwarded this article to some friends. And Jobfox didn’t write about its marketing mumbo jumbo, and the site has no registration form. Now that is social-media marketing.

Read Jobfox’s”Top 20 Most Recession Proof Professions” (PDF).

Top 20 Most Recession-Proof Professtions

Rank

1. Sales Representative/ Business Development
2. Software Design/ Development
3. Nursing
4. Accounting and Finance Executive
5. Accounting Staff
6. Networking/Systems Admin
7. Administrative Assistant
8. Business Analysis ( Software Implementation)
9. Business Analysis ( Research)
10. Finance Staff
11. Project Management
12. Testing/ Quality Assurance
13. Product Management
14. Database Administration
15. Account/ Customer Support
16. Technology Engineering
17. Electrical Engineering
18. Sales Executive
19. Mechanical Engineering
20. Government Contracts Administration

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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It’s amazing, it seems like every week I run into a Direct Mail is not dead seminar or blog post or article. I just read the Go-to-Market Strategies article ‘Is Direct Mail Dead?‘ Typically I have stopped reading these last pleas to keep a dinosaur alive, but decided to read it today. This is my favorite quote: “The DMA study released in June 2008 shows that 75% of marketers still use direct mail and that direct mail still surpasses email in the most important result of all–revenue generation.” Look that does say direct mail is not dead, it still doesn’t mean it is not dying.

The Al Gore “Four”: The slow and painful death of direct mail.

1. The Incovenient Truth– Come on people…read the freaking news….you are killing the environment for a couple leads.
-Basically in the direct mail process you did the following:

1. Killed a tree
2. Used up expensive crude oil/gas (and funded terrorism)
3. There is probably a bunch of other environmental offenses you have done as well.

2. Al Gore, the ‘inventor’ of this little thing called the internet – Please join us in the millennium. Yes, marketing on the internet takes work. I still have some people I talk to who say the internet for lead generation does not work…those people clearly do not read my and other blogs and stories that the internet is a GREAT place to generate leads…you just need to have the right strategy to attack it. Commit to the internet for god’s sake, it’s time.

3. Al Gore’s reinvention to pure utter hipness – Guys, seriously, you just look bad with the client. If you are doing technology marketing and you send a piece of paper to an engineering guy, if he even gets it in his hand, he now hates you for sending him that. Seriously, in verticals like tech marketing you are HURTING yourself by sending them mail

4. Al Gore’s staff of people who read his mail – Look, your boy Al has a staff to read the mail, that’s right, they actually have a process for looking at it. The rest of us, file through the mail and look for the bills we have to pay, not to read a letter from you on Endpoint Security or VoIP.

The “Direct Mail is not dead” movement sounds is a conspiracy run by people who still broker addresses and do direct mail.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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The webinar is fast becoming an extremely important element to one’s marketing mix.  In my generation, guys grew up watching television.  They hated reading.  From Happy Days to Laverne and Shirley to the Cosby Show to the Simpsons: They did not pick up a book.  P.S. they also were, bar-none, the biggest consumers of Cliff Notes. The moral of the story is: Have a variety of mediums you use to reach prospects.  If you have read my blog, you know I believe in whitepapers but you can’t JUST do whitepapers and you can’t just do emails.

It is my belief the webinar is a nice “quadruple whammy”.  A vehicle where you can get your money’s worth.  Remember: 4 reasons.  When you think of you webinars don’t just think of lead minimums and cpl, think of the entire package.

Note:  I know training is a major factor in the webinar market, but is not of use to me especially as part of the marketing mix.

The 4 main reasons to have webinars be part of your marketing mix:

Brand Awareness

There are many parts to the branding exercise:
1.    From Marketing Sherpa: “Multiple touches are the killer branding app…Every effort to generate the audience is an opportunity to promote the brand.”.  Think of it this way, the promotion of the webinar whether they go to the event or not involves thousands of emails, banners, websites, and newsletter postings.  When you work with a third party credible media site or research organization, you gain even more cachet.”
2.    Webinars for product launches are a great call as well.

Thought Leadership

Doesn’t this go without saying?  You spend a lot of time and money (I hope) on working analysts, ghost writing blogs, and PR trying to create thought leadership and put simply, conveying that you are smart.  What better place than in the webinar.  Education is really a key element to getting people to both sign up and attend webinars…so your topic should be educational in the first place.  Now realize: Your organization and specifically your assigned spokesman has the chance to look really smart.

Lead Generation

Quantifiable results.  “Hi boss, we ran a launch webinar.  We rolled-out the new product to an online audience of XXX.  Thank you for my promotion”

Drip/Nurture

“…the trend we see in the marketplace is clients using webinars more and more for lead nurturing (i.e. as follow-up offer to an existing database)” Howard Sewell, President of Direct Connect.  This we see more and more.  ONE MESSAGE: GET THE MOST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK.  Run the event and market it to your database.  Net-new + another touch is a win-win for your marketing organization.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Can the B2B lead generation world accept whitepapers without reg forms?

Two pieces are talking about/with this company Docmetrics known better as the smart reg form:

1. Writing whitepapers blog article on smart pdfs
2. Podcast with Paul Dunay interviewing Vitrium Sytems CEO creator of docmeterics tool

The idea here is that these guys have created registration forms that are embedded in the PDF. Now, you don’t have to force prospects to fill out a reg form in order to access the whitepaper. Instead you can give the whitepaper and collect registration data as the reader begins to access the document. Docmetrics will tell you when the document is actually opened, how many pages were read, and how much time was spent on each page.

So now what?

First let me say, I love the massive innovations taking place today in the marketing world. This is an interesting idea that would seem to have tremendous benefits to marketers and, as such, I will watch closely.

Right now, the buyers potential frustration worries a bit:
1. Is this going to be a bad buyer experience? I mean, I personally will be really bummed having to fill out forms all the way along my reading experience, I wonder what buyers will say?
2. Whether it is eco-friendly or not…most people print the whitepaper and read it in the spare time including the toilet.

From the vendor point of view:
1. This concept is worth the test, primarily for sophisticated marketers who are doing dynamic lead scoring (ie scoring leads not merely when they enter your system but continually scoring after the lead has entered you system and has “interactions” with your various sales and marketing actions). Conceivably the disposition data you receive from docmetrics can be fed back into your marketing automation that will trigger the following:
a. A change to the dynamic score of the prospect.
b. An action like an email or a call

2. The concept that these leads are more sales-ready will lead to disappointment. This tool should be used to help a Lead Development/Inside Sales rep whose job it is to qualify leads before they go to bag-carrying reps. In other words, the “I don’t remember downloading it” or “I haven’t read it” issue may go away but another objection will arise. Lead Development reps overcome those types of objections, sales reps use them against the marketing folks. So YES this is a great tool, but NO this doesn’t open the flood gates to send white papers to sales reps.

3. On the other hand, what about using this as a post-contact tool for sales reps? That is, passing a docmetrics whitepaper for followup…Half the battle on the sales side is the connect and as part of the connect, figuring out where to spend your best time. If we know a guy read what you sent and when, that has real strategic value to both lead development and sales.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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