MarketingSherpa Blog

I know those three buzz letters in the headline – S, E, and O – likely grabbed your attention and are the reason you’re reading this blog post. But I want to tell you why you should focus more on the last, and perhaps least buzzy, word in that headline – process. First of all, put a mirror up to your current search-engine optimization activities for just a moment and ask yourself…

• Do I have a well-developed strategy for my SEO program?
• Do I have an action plan for achieving my goals?
• Do I have a process that enables me to concentrate my organization’s limited resources on the greatest opportunities?

Well, do you? Or do you jump straight into execution, pulling tactics together in what you hope will be the right mix?

If you nodded yes to that last question, you’re not alone. In the 2011 MarketingSherpa Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition, we learned that 46% of marketers have an informal process they randomly perform for their SEO programs and 20% are basically flying by the seat of their pants.

Chart: SEO maturity

Q. Please select the statement below that best describes the process your organization uses to perform search engine optimization (SEO) practices.

Click to enlarge

Keeping track is not the same as forethought

Some organizations know that they have no process. Others, however, may think they have a process because they document their plans. But does that documentation look anything like this “process” I followed in a past work life?

4:53 PM – Frantic phone call informing me that next quarter’s plan and budget projections are needed by COB. Of course, this is the first any of us are hearing of this.

4:54 PM – Pull up the most recent plan. Change the dates.

4:55 PM – Google the latest and greatest tactics. Replace what we had been doing with these. (Since newer is always better, right?)

4:57 PM – Adjust the budget ask by 50%. Double the ROI projection. (Rationale: if I had twice the money, I am sure I could produce twice the return on investment. Fuzzy math, but who’s paying attention.)

4:58 PM – Email it, marked URGENT

5:00 PM – Sign off, and call it a day

Obviously, I am being facetious with this example. But, there is still an element of truth to it. These exercises were often needlessly rushed, leaving us with the feeling that we were throwing money at the market instead of spending money to market. We often recycled the same set of tactics out of habit. But, we were equally guilty of trying something new because it was new – and not because we determined it was a more efficient or effective way to reach our objectives.

Action is nothing without direction

Now, if my earlier example sounded too contrived, consider some of these responses from marketers, collected during last year’s Search Marketing survey, when asked how they plan their SEO strategy:

• Identify opportunity keywords, optimize, sit back and watch the love roll in.
• Every quarter we “guesstimate” how much to invest in strategy.
• No strategy. We just repeat key phrases.
• We have no true strategy. We look at traffic and sales, try to figure out what areas need help, and focus on those.
• We have no real plan, just routine efforts to improve page content and keywords as well as tie in social media efforts.
• We do a lot of planning to optimize for search, but, once done, we have no on-going strategy except to monitor performance.
• We are actually working on putting in place a real process for SEO, because, in the past, some actions have been done at random, like: put a title on some pages, a description on others…
• HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). That would be me. It is all done by gut and needs to be revised.

At first glance, these comments may not seem too alarming. Most are actively doing something. So what’s the concern?

The issue is this: Organizations that adopt a strategic approach to SEO management by formalizing their SEO processes receive the greatest benefits from their SEO tactics almost across the board, as indicated in this chart:

Chart: Very effective SEO tactics by SEO maturity

Click to enlarge

As if that were not enough, strategic organizations are also able to more effectively use SEO to achieve their marketing objectives, as the next chart reveals.  For example, 52% of marketers in the strategic phase, or those with formalized processes, said that SEO is very effective at increasing lead generation, but only 28% of marketers in the trial phase, or those with no SEO process, could say this. Similar performance gaps exist for other standard objectives.

Chart: very effective SEO objectives by SEO maturity

Click to enlarge

Elements of a successful SEO process

Unfortunately, it becomes difficult to know whether you are really getting the most for your money without a process in place. While the most effective process varies by industry and company, the system you develop should ensure that you consistently:

• scan the marketplace
• review your capabilities
• define objectives
• assess alternative courses of action
• measure progress
• and make adjustments based on all of this business intelligence.

If you have not developed a systematic process for the development and management of your SEO programs, I encourage you to take the time to do so. It may be the best SEO investment you make this year.

This week marks the opening of MarketingSherpa’s Eighth Annual Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Survey. If you’re involved in search marketing, please take the next 5 to 15 minutes to provide data and insights.

As a thank you for your time, we are offering a complimentary report titled “Research on Integrating Social Media with SEO.” This report provides data aggregated from more than 2,000 marketers on their goals for search and social integration and the platforms used for achieving them.

Please help us spread the word by tweeting or posting the following invitation too: Search marketers share your insights. Take the Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Survey at http://bit.ly/hi19OQ

Related Resources

Search Marketing: Three questions to help you think like your potential customers

Search Marketing: Tips on mastering the latest innovations in this mature category

Search Marketing: How to avoid and remove Google penalties (Members’ Library)

Search Engine Optimization: The SEO value (or lack thereof) of domain name keywords

Funnel measurements have two important benefits in B2B lead generation:

1. Helping marketers forecast outcomes.  By tracking the conversion percentages, marketers can apply those conversion percentages to each new campaign and predict what the outcome will be before the campaign occurs.  Such predictions are very helpful in capacity planning and budgeting.

2. Helping marketing identify funnel leakage and optimize revenue production.  Marketers can apply both their own internal, historical baseline conversion ratios (i.e., an aggregation of conversion ratios) and industry benchmarks, like those gathered by MarketingSherpa.

Executive-level funnel metrics provide marketers with the 50,000-foot view to provide an end-to-end perspective.  But when there appears to be leakage, zooming in on a particular leak is essential.

In that context, let me share seven funnel conversions for teleprospecting.

But first, let’s agree on the scope. In B2B, there are two important functions in this  area:

• Following up on, qualifying, educating, and nuturing marketing responses until they are sales-ready leads.
• Prospecting into target accounts to identify and qualify existing demand and to generate demand and convert that demand into sales-ready leads.

For both of these activities, it seems the key funnel stages would be similar. But, what are they?

Before I share a point of view on this important subject, let me say that teleprospecting is very complex and the interpretation of outcomes at various stages of the funnel are more and more subjective. Plus, in one call, the teleprospecting rep may go through all the funnel stages.

Click to enlarge

1. Dial – a teleprospecting rep making an outbound dial; or a customer making an inbound call.

2. Connection – the dial converting into a connection.Those dials that do not convert into connection either have busy-outs, dials with no answers, recorded phone company messages about the number being out of service or changed. A very high percentage of dials not converting into connections means the list or lead source is problematic.

3. Conversation. – the rep reaching someone to have a conversation, however short; a prospect reaching a teleprospecting representative via an inbound call.

4. Decision-maker conversation – some of the conversations are with those who would be part of a decision and some are not, either because the teleprospecting representative is speaking merely to a receptionist or to someone otherwise not involved in the solution area.

Decision-maker/decision-influencer conversations are much more predictive of future purchase intent than non-conversations. Even when following up on marketing responses, it’s not uncommon that 20 percent of more of the leads never make it to this stage.

5. Qualified Account – Usually, the first thing a teleprospecting representative does is qualify the person. The second thing is often qualifying the account. Is the account in the target market? Those that are would get this kind of status.

At the top of the market, the funnel may end here with an attempt to set an appointment, the idea being that the sales person will take meetings with the right people in the right accounts because the buying potential is so large.

6. Acknowledged Need – The next thing a teleprospecting representative does is discover if there are buying plans, and if not, at least an acknowledged need. Those who meet the other criteria (Qualified Account, a stakeholder in the decision processs) and have an acknowledged need are the most likely to convert into a sales-ready lead.

In fact, for some larger accounts, the sales organization may decide that this level of qualification is sufficient to warrant sales follow-up. Others in this stage might warrant tele-nurturing.

7. Sales-Ready Lead. Sales-ready leads meet any other qualifying criteria, like a particular timeline for buying, the existence of a budget, etc.

And then, of couse, the overall sales-marketing funnel extends beyond the teleprospecting operation as sales people validate leads, convert them into opportunities, forecast them, and close them.

There are some problems with the above funnel however:

• It doesn’t account for inbound or outbound emails sent to or from the teleprospecting representative or the clickthroughs that might happen.
• It doesn’t factor in online chat sessions, where there might be an opportunity to identify the prospect, qualify their interest, role, and the account they work for, all before having a live conversation with them.
• There is also nothing in here about leaving messages, per se, like a voice mail.
• There could certainly be other stages, like a presentation stage, where the teleprospecting representative presents, however informally, (via WebEx, DimDim, etc.) some kind of elevator pitch to the prospect.
• It’s also possible that by sending an Outlook meeting request or speaking to an admin, a teleprospect representative schedules a phone meeting.
• Finally, there isn’t a stage for doing some kind of preliminary investigation of an account and/or a contact, like going to LinkedIn or the account website.

Obviously, these limitations speak to the complexity of B2B teleprospecting for the complex sale, and the evolution of this capability to include more and more Web-based tools for both discovery and communication.

What funnel stages do you see as most important?

Related Resources

B2B Lead Generation: Why teleprospecting is a bridge between sales and marketing

B2B Marketing: The FUEL methodology outlined

How and When to Use Content in the B2B Sales Process (Members library)

Free MarketingSherpa B2B Newsletter

For complex B2B sales, there is no better capability than teleprospecting for optimizing funnel efficiency.  I suspect that is one of the reasons more and more marketing executives have taken ownership of this function from sales.

One of the reasons that teleprospecting is so important is that it is (or should be) a bridge between upstream marketing campaigns and downstream sales teams.  For marketing, the teleprospecting team cannot only convert marketing responses into sales-ready leads, but provide marketing with clarity on how to improve its demand generation efforts.

Let me provide two simple examples:

1. Fine-tuning lead scoring models

There is probably no more promising capability than lead scoring.  To evolve the rule set, marketing must take aggregate funnel data from teleprospecting and fine tune the scoring model.  For example, usually 20-50 percent of the leads will be unreachable after four or five dials and three or so personal emails from the teleprospecting representative.  By comparing a large pool of these unreachable leads with leads that do respond to follow-up of teleprospecting representatives, marketing can often find different characteristics that correlate to responsiveness and dial up the lead score accordingly.

2. Fine-tuning messaging and media strategy

If a large percentage of potential customers the teleprospecting team does reach are out of the target market, then marketing can often fine-tune its messaging and its media/search strategy to improve the percentage of responders who are actually in the target market.

If the teleprospecting team receives similar, simple feedback on the sales-ready leads, that feedback can help the teleprospecting team improve it’s practices.  For example, if there is a disproportionate percentage of sales-ready leads that do not respond to the follow up by sales, then the teleprospecting team (or some subset of the team) most likely needs additional training (or talent) in order to better qualify prospects.

What’s important is that there is a repeatable process and that the operation measures the right things.  What’s also important is that marketing views the teleprospecting capability as a mechanism for improving upstream marketing efficiency and that the teleprospecting operation views sales feedback in a similar light.

In this light, the real question isn’t whether sales or marketing owns the teleprospecting function, but that everyone sees the potential for teleprospecting to better connect marketing to sales and drive optimization of the funnel.

Related resources

Free Web clinic, March 30th — Converting Leads to Sales: How one B2B company generated $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth in only 8 months

B2B Marketing: The FUEL methodology outlined

How and When to Use Content in the B2B Sales Process (Members library)

Free MarketingSherpa B2B Newsletter

Being a reporter has its ups and downs. Thankfully, some articles are a pleasure to write. I was thrilled to publish our latest inbound marketing article featuring the YouTube video strategy of Orabrush, a brand of breath-freshening tongue cleaners.

Orabrush’s strategy has pulled-in over 35 million video views and powers the majority of the company’s marketing. Below, I’ve pointed out three key areas that I like about this strategy.

CMO as Chief Marketing Publisher

A central tenet of inbound marketing is that marketers need to think of themselves as publishers. Rather than buying ads in a media outlet, your brand builds the media outlet. You own the newsletters, blogs, apps, webinars — or whichever platform you select.

Jeffrey Harmon is CMO at Orabrush. His team is committed to consistently delivering the videos its audience enjoys and expects. This makes for a demanding publishing schedule, but that’s the life of a Chief Marketing Publisher. Deadlines must be met and quality must be maintained.

Another tenet of inbound marketing is that your content is not advertising — it’s rich information that interests your audience. Your brand and products can be included, but they are secondary. The content must give the audience what it wants while helping to achieve your marketing goals.

Orabrush does this by creating several types of video, as described in the article. The majority of videos are intended to engage and entertain — which is what Orabrush’s audience wants. Other videos are intended to encourage conversions while also entertaining.

This isn’t just for the LOLs

Orabrush’s videos are funny and they’ve built an audience. But at the end of the day, the company needs to sell tongue brushes. Harmon’s team is not trying to build an audience to sell advertising.

That is why Orabrush’s marketers have included calls-to-action throughout its videos and YouTube page. Viewers are encouraged to:
o Watch another video
o Share the video on Facebook or Twitter
o Connect with Orabrush on other social networks
o Visit Orabrush’s website
o Request a free brush
o Locate a nearby Orabrush store
o And more

You can see a great example of their calls-to-action at the end of this short video:

This approach applies directly to inbound marketing. The content is the main attraction. It is the reason Orabrush’s YouTube page exists. But while viewers enjoy videos, they’re encouraged to interact with the brand, visit the site, and try out an Orabrush.

Experimentation and research drive the ship

Orabrush has an elaborate YouTube page. The channel is part video-viewer, part landing page, part social channel. The design is the result of several years of research and testing by Harmon and his team.

Orabrush is not afraid to test new ideas, which is how it developed this strategy. Its YouTube page was not a modified best practice. The marketers built it piece by piece through rigorous testing.

Even Orabrush’s first forays into video were experiments. As mentioned in the article, Harmon first tested adding another publisher’s video to one of Orabrush’s landing pages. That video boosted conversion rates by 200%, and it served as the first step in the long journey to build Orabrush’s video strategy as it stands today.

Without its culture of experimentation and testing, Orabrush would not likely have such a powerful presence on YouTube. You can find out a lot more about testing and optimization at the upcoming MarketingSherpa Optimization Summit in June.

Enough already!

I could go on and on about why I love Orabrush’s video strategy (including that it came from a scrappy startup and that its marketers also engage in social marketing) — but I won’t.

The last point I will make is that Harmon’s team built this channel with a small team and a limited budget. There is truly no reason why any company could not do something similar.

Related resources

Inbound Marketing: Small business builds YouTube channel from the ground up, expands to 40 countries

MarketingSherpa: Subscribe to our Inbound Marketing newsletter

MarketingSherpa Optimization Summit 2011

Inbound Marketing: Brand-powered content hub grabs top Google rank in two months

Inbound Marketing: How to pull-in customers without pushing ads

Content Marketing: How to get your subject matter experts on your corporate blog

Content Marketing: Should you lure a journalist over to the ‘dark side?’

Email Marketing: Maybe it really is an inbound tactic…

“There are no bad ideas.” When I was an advertising copywriter, this is the line we would always use to enter a realm of, essentially, suspension of disbelief and start concepting our next ad. The idea being that, even if I come up with the absolute worse idea, it might spark a concept in my art director partner that would eventually lead us down the road to riches for our client and our names engraved on a gold One Show pencil.

But, of course, there are bad ideas. And according to an article in Ode magazine about research into ways to spur creativity and innovation, those bad ideas are…well…bad…

“These revelations are all the more potent considering that many organizations continue to embrace the ‘brainstorming’ technique developed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the 1950s. According to Osborn’s now debunked system, criticism and conflict squash new ideas and should be discouraged; in hindsight, those brainstorming sessions of yore were more likely to act as echo chambers in which bad ideas were amplified by fake enthusiasm.”

– “In praise of dissent” by Jeremy Mercer

A dissident is here

In essence, to get better marketing work, you must not be pulled into the groupthink.

And, while this is the first time I have personally heard anyone admonish the idea of reality-free brainstorming, dissent shouldn’t be a radically new idea, right?

More than 50 years ago, General Patton said, “If everybody’s thinking alike, somebody isn’t thinking.” More recently, we’ve heard the bland embellishments to “think outside of the box.” And yet…

So many times we don’t. From the financial crisis to the heap of blasé, color-by-numbers marketing that proliferates across the Web, so many people don’t pop their head out of the cubicle and say, “Our current way of doing things isn’t a good idea.”

Why?

Hang on, Voltaire

It’s not easy now, is it? It’s hard to be the outsider. It’s hard to tell the group, “You’re all wrong and I’m right.” It’s hard to, perhaps, put your job on the line by separating from the pack.

As Voltaire said a few hundred years ago… “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.” Pretty harsh. Can you imagine how much more biting those words would be if he ever had to ask for a LinkedIn Recommendation from a former co-worker that he publicly disagreed with?

But, perhaps, as with marketing itself, it’s all how you communicate your dissent? Both your attitude and approach? To wit…

So, how do you disagree agreeably?

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this as well, but here are a few ways I’ve learned to buck the status quo in my career…

• Ask questions – “That’s a horrible idea, our audience will hate us for it.” Or… “That’s an interesting idea. How do you think our audience will react if we sell our list to Viagara salesmen from Nigeria?” When you disagree, the last thing you want is a battle of wills, head-to-head confrontation.

  Put your ego away for a moment, and serve simply as the advocate for the idea. The best (and most non-confrontational) way to bring someone along to your side is by giving them gentle triggers to aspects they may not have considered. This way, they are discovering why an idea won’t work, instead of having you ram it down their throats. This also helps them (and you) save face. After all, no one wants to lose a head-to-head battle.

  As in the movie “Inception,” you can’t plant an idea in someone’s head, only introduce the seed, nurture it, and hope to watch it grow.

• See things differently – In the famous “Think Different” TV ad, Richard Dreyfuss talks about those who “gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels.” You don’t have to be quite that visionary, but simply looking at everyday things in a new way can help.

  Take data, for example. I was very impressed by a comment by Greg Sherry, VP, Marketing and Business Development, Verint Systems. During his MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2010 presentation, he mentioned that he invested in direct mail because he read in a MarketingSherpa Benchmark Report that less marketers were investing in direct mail. He figured he’d have less competition. How counterintuitive.

  Or in a recent article by Adam T. Sutton about the origin story of Orabrush’s YouTube sponsor channel, which is second only to Old Spice. This small business sponsored market research by a college class and found that 92% of people wouldn’t want to buy this product online, so the class advised against it. One dissident student raised his hand and said, “That means 8% might be interested in buying it online. That’s millions of people.”

• Let others challenge you – Here’s what Jeremy Mercer advises in the above-referenced Ode magazine article:

  o Have executives lead by example by allowing subordinates to challenge their positions
  o Hold meetings at which diverse perspectives are welcomed
  o Surround yourself with people who think differently than you do.

• Be right – There’s nothing worse than putting yourself on the line for a cause and being wrong. Don’t create “facts” that support your decisions, base your decisions on the facts. A great way to do this is with real-world, real-time online testing. In this way, you can experiment with your dissident idea as well as the ideas you disagree with and let your customers be the judge. Just make sure you know what those test results really mean.

In the end, you have to be a little bit Patton (the hard-nosed general shepherding an idea past any obstacle), and a little bit Voltaire (the outspoken writer finding creative means around strict censorship to criticize your organization’s dogma).

Related Resources

Marketing Wisdom: In the end, it’s all about…

The Last Blog Post: To understand life is to understand marketing

From Corporate America to Entrepreneur: Giving up steady pay for a steady say

Free MarketingSherpa Newsletters

When I was on the phone with Stacey Epstein, VP of Marketing, ServiceMax, I remembered some advice I heard when researching our first article for MarketingSherpa’s Inbound Marketing newsletter.

I spoke with a lot of great experts for that piece. On content marketing, I spoke with Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute. He mentioned that marketers should avoid publishing too many types of content and focus on about three that fit their strategies.

“But you have to do one really well,” he said. “You have to do an awesome blog or the best e-book program that’s ever been run; focus on what you can do really well, better than anyone else in your industry.”

That is exactly what Epstein and her team are striving for with SmartVan. ServiceMax launched the site in January as a content portal for the field-service industry (which is served by ServiceMax), to help companies that send technicians out of the office for service, installation, and repairs.

“We noticed there was a complete lack of resources for these people,” Epstein says. “The site is meant to be a place for field-service professionals to educate themselves.”

Site traffic has grown faster than anticipated. After a just a few months, SmartVan holds the top Google rank for the phrase “field service news” and about 15% of its traffic comes from natural search.

“It’s great for us to be ranked so high so quickly,” Epstein says. “I think it’s a testament to how little content there is out there. It helps validate that we’re helping to serve this huge need.”

Weave the brand into the content

Epstein has big plans for SmartVan and hopes to continually grow its traffic for several years. One key principle is to avoid selling ServiceMax too directly, she says. Otherwise visitors could write-off the site as a marketing channel rather than a trusted resource for industry news.

“We’re really trying to create a resource for field-service people that doesn’t exist today… We feel that we’ll have a lot more success in getting people interested in the site and wanting to be on the site if we don’t try to sell them.”

The team does plan to incorporate ServiceMax into the site, but will do so carefully, and mostly around content. For example, a ServiceMax webinar on how the iPhone is changing the industry will be mentioned on SmartVan.

Also, a company blog written by ServiceMax executives will soon be hosted on the portal. Epstein also plans to offer an email newsletter to help build a database.

“We’ll never have a homepage that says ‘SmartVan is brought to you by ServiceMax. Go see us now and buy from us,’ etcetera. That’s not our intent.”

Content creation: easier than thought

A website that’s designed as the go-to resource for a specific topic cannot afford to have stale content. When planning SmartVan’s strategy, Epstein wondered how her team would keep up with the demands of a daily publishing schedule.

But that challenge has been easier than anticipated. The team has partnered with LaunchSquad to help manage the site and has pooled content from a variety of sources.

“We found some great contributing writers who were super interested to join us. We certainly contribute content from ServiceMax. We have a couple of guys from LaunchSquad contributing, and we aggregate content from other sources,” Epstein says.

“Between all those different people, I’m actually blown away by the amount of content. We’re serving up multiple pieces of fresh content every day.”

Changes and hurdles on the horizon

Epstein has promoted SmartVan with a press release, an email to ServiceMax’s house list, and mentions in Facebook and Twitter. She’s hoping the site will continue to grow through word-of-mouth and natural search.

A key challenge to growth, she says, will be connecting the field-service audience and encouraging visitors to interact. SmartVan will soon offer social features in hopes of fostering engagement, but this will be a pioneering effort for the industry.

“Right now, this is not necessarily a super tight-knit community,” Epstein says. “Part of that is because there isn’t a lot that brings them together. There aren’t a lot of trade shows, and there aren’t a lot of online forums.”

But that challenge is also a huge opportunity. SmartVan could become a powerful marketing channel for ServiceMax if it continues to grow at its current pace.

“If we can succeed in building this community and creating a place where all these people can go, interact and get educated, it will by far outpace any other traditional marketing strategy that we ever could have done and at a much, much lower cost and with fewer resources.”

Related resources

MarkteingSherpa’s free newsletters

Inbound Marketing: How to pull-in customers without pushing ads

Content Marketing: How to get your subject matter experts on your corporate blog

Content Marketing: Should you lure a journalist over to the ‘dark side?’

Email Marketing: Maybe it really is an inbound tactic…

Members Library – Content Marketing: Microsoft crowdsources content ideas with a viral contest for new Windows Phone 7 platform

How much money do you make?

For whatever reason, that’s a question most of us never ask our peers. It’s such an uncomfortable topic to discuss. Yet, you’re curious, aren’t you? And well, you should be. How can you benchmark your salary without knowing what other VPs of Ecommerce, Search Engine Marketing Analysts and Advertising Agency Copywriters are earning?

That’s why I was so intrigued when I received a “Dear Editor” email from Wendy Weber, President, Crandall Associates, with two marketing salary reports attached (the DMA directs inquiries about salaries to Crandall). I gave Wendy a call, and she was kind enough to share these guides – for free – with the MarketingSherpa audience. So, here they are:

• Direct Marketing National Salary Guide – Featuring dozens of job functions and the salaries they command, with regional variances taken into account.
• Online Marketing National Salary Guide – Featuring 21 job functions specific to online and ecommerce marketing.

“The guides were compiled using salary data from conversations with over 1,100 direct and online marketing professionals, including both hiring managers and job seekers,” Weber said. The executive search firm, which specializes in the direct and online marketing industry, chose not to conduct a mail survey, as they generally have a bias toward larger companies and are never random, as respondents select themselves.

So, aside from the fact that there is a Corporate Copywriter banking $135,000, what else can you learn from this data? Here are two points that stuck out (and we’d love to hear your takeaways as well):

• Digital marketing salaries continue to grow – The average annual salary for digital marketing positions has shown a steady increase, according to Weber. For example, the average salary for Web Analytics Manager has grown 2.8% since 2010 to $78,200.
• Optimization is a valuable skill – The top-paying Internet jobs require knowledge of optimization. For the VP of Online Marketing ($169,300-$198,200 with 7+ years experience), the job description calls for the ability to “manage and merchandise…site navigation and shopability, transaction processing, onsite promotion management…” And the Director of Ecommerce ($146,200-$168,700 with 7+ years of experience) specifically asks for “landing page optimization.”

In fairness, since we just announced our new Optimization Summit, I may have optimization on the brain – so I’d love to hear your takeaways as well.

Related Resources

Optimization Summit 2011 – June 1 -3

From Corporate America to Entrepreneur: Giving up steady pay for a steady say

Marketing Career: You must be your company’s corporate conscience

Marketing Career: Can you explain your job to a six-year-old?

“How to Become Indispensable to Your CEO” Special Report

MarketingSherpa Job Listings

MarketingExperiments Careers

“What we have here is…failure to communicate.”

Much like Cool Hand Luke, who heard this iconic line from his despotic warden after misunderstanding the prison’s stance on attempted escape, B2B dialogue that is not relevant to a target audience will ultimately prove to be a waste of effort, and a failure in communicating value.

As we all know, no matter how fast, inexpensively or well-targeted a B2B company maintains dialogue with customers or prospects, the success of each email, tradeshow, phone call and sales meeting depends on the relevance of the message.

But the challenge that you and the imperious prison warden share is – how do you create a relevant dialogue with a skeptical audience who has heard it all before?

Recently, I was reading through The B2B Refinery: An executive guide for improving Go-to-Market ROI through greater Sales and Marketing Efficiency, by J. David Green, Director of Best Practices – Applied Research, MECLABS and Michael C. Saylor, and they discuss this topic at length.

Though I can’t get into everything Green and Saylor cover about this topic in the book, one thing was certain after reading it — this is a complex question with an answer that is constantly changing. Or should I say evolving…

Evolve with the buying cycle

The information needs of the customer or prospect change as they move through the business buying cycle. For example, the more products and/or services that a customer buys from the vendor, the less information the customer generally requires.

However, a B2B company cannot address a buying cycle in isolation. Relevance is challenged by competitive B2B dialogue, which is cost-effective dialogue conducted with lucrative market segments that stems from competition. This compels vendors to find more efficient means of delivering relevant dialogue than through sales representatives

Of course, this abundance of information ultimately compounds the problem. Apart from mirroring the buying cycle, what are the key characteristics of relevant dialogue?

• The dialogue must take into account past interactions of the prospect: especially his explicit and implicit areas of interest — with the most recent interactions often mattering the most
• The customer or prospect must recognize the context of the communication

Instead of creating relevant dialogue, however, most marketing departments focus on universal messaging, giving less attention to relevance. While it makes sense to give advertising a consistent look and feel, these marketing practices fall short of the needs of business customers.

Buyers need an evolving, personalized story from a vendor. And like any good story, this one needs to have a defined beginning, middle and end, with each “chapter” addressing the interests of the audience. If a particular sale takes a significant period of time – perhaps even over multiple years – then the dialogue needs to last just as long, progressing naturally with the buying process.

To continue an analogy from earlier, branding and positioning are merely the movie poster and “glitz,” whereas integrated communication is the writing, acting and direction. Sure, branding and positioning matter. But they are no substitute for a well-told, relevant story.

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Content marketing goes well beyond publishing text-based material. Your company can provide videos, slide decks, Twitter feeds and even Web-based tools — like ClickMail’s ESPinator.

ClickMail pairs companies with email service providers (ESPs) and helps them establish effective programs. For years, its marketers have published a blog and an annual PDF guide about selecting ESPs.

“We’ve always felt that we had a clear view of the strengths and weaknesses of the various ESPs,” says Marco Marini, CEO, ClickMail. “From that, we evolved into an annual guide on selecting the best one. It’s completely vendor-neutral. It doesn’t talk about any vendors at all, just what the factors are.”

The ESPinator is the next step in that strategy, Marini says. Launched last month, the tool asks users a series of questions and suggests up to three ESPs that are well-suited to their needs.

“Every vendor at a trade show says their solution is the best. There truly isn’t a best solution. It all depends on what your specific needs are,” Marini says.

“There are more than 30 ESPs in the tool, and we don’t have a relationship with the vast majority of them. So this is truly more for the email marketing audience.”

Upfront investment vs. long-term upkeep

Content marketing requires investment. Someone has to create the content and it has to be really, really good. You can either invest your time or pay someone else. Either way, there is no free lunch.

This is also true of ClickMail’s ESPinator, which took over two years to create and is still in beta. One of the biggest challenges was building its scoring system. Each ESP had to be scored in various categories so it could be matched against a user’s needs.

One such category is each ESP’s depth of integration with salesforce.com, a popular CRM solutions provider.

“All [salesforce.com] integrations are not created equal among ESPs,” says Cameron Kane, CTO, ClickMail, who headed the project. “Some may synch simply contact data, some synch lead and contact data, some work with custom objects, some will not work with custom objects” and so on.

– Keeping content alive

Some types of content — such as books — require a onetime investment. Once a book is published, it’s published. Blogs, on the other hand, require on-going investment or they will wither and die. ClickMail’s tool is somewhere in the middle and will require updates.

“When an ESP on that list comes up with a new version or enhancements, we need to go back and modify the scores on those areas that they have potentially improved,” Marini says.

Marketing plans to attract attention

The ESPinator is so new that ClickMail has just begun its promotion. The team launched it at the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit last month — the industry’s largest event — and plans to do more soon.

Ideas they are kicking around include:

• Offering co-branding partnerships to companies
• Offering the tool to prospects as part of the lead-nurturing process
• Pitching the tool to industry press and blogs (like this one) to score inbound links

Ultimately, the team hopes that the ESPinator provides a useful service and helps attract attention to ClickMail and its services. Furthermore, the tool’s calculated suggestions will help position ClickMail as a company that is well-suited to help marketers choose email providers.

“When you say content marketing, I immediately think of thought leadership,” Marini says. “Our company philosophy is to show that value upfront without asking for anything.”

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Last year I interviewed Barb Girson for a MarketingSherpa B2B newsletter story, “Marketing Automation Tool Drives List Growth, Boosts Registrations 664%, (members’ library)” on how she was able to dramatically improve her event registrations. The focus of our conversation was on the case study, but from talking about her background I knew I wanted to revisit her story because she’s managed to pull off a pretty tough feat.

She spent ten years in the corporate environment before finding herself downsized in 2008. She used her experience to found My Sales Tactics, a professional development firm with a focus on international direct selling training, and is now a successful entrepreneur.

Marketers tend to have a pretty full tool box of skills, but sometimes the toughest “product” to tout is yourself. Here’s Barb’s story about how she met the challenge of founding her own company in a difficult economy and achieved success.

Did you find the transition from the corporate world back to entrepreneurship — both making the decision and actually doing it — difficult?

Barb Girson: The most difficult part of transitioning from corporate work and back to entrepreneurship was going from giving up the promise for steady pay, but gaining a steady say. This means you have a say in where, when, how you are working — controlling your own schedule and having more flexibility.

This freedom has a price.

After reaching the peak of my career salary, having paid vacations and all of the other employment perks, I contemplated the pros and cons. In the early months of making my business plan, I would wake up in a full sweat and panic in the middle of the night wondering, “Can I do this? Could I meet my financial obligations and overhead and pay myself a salary?”

To ease the transition I did some freelance/subcontract work for several other business owners and created an alliance where I could work for another firm one day a week while developing my own content on the side. This setup helped ease the stress of needing immediate cash flow.

The defining moment was one December when my accountant pointed out that I had matched my husband’s teaching salary while freelancing part-time without even having advertisements or a website. My accountant said, “If you are going to do this, then you need to make investments and build the business.”

Within two and a half weeks I crystallized my thoughts, notes, and research into a business plan and registered my business. One of my first goals was to develop an email list from scratch and to build a website — which is critical in today’s environment. Within six months my website was launched.

For me, the bottom line to remember is my three C’s:

1. Choice — your future belongs to YOU!
2. Courage — it takes courage to walk down the sidewalk and take a different path!
3. Career — it is your career. Steer it!

Do any particular challenges you’ve faced as an entreprenur stick out?

BG: Entrepreneurs tend to be tough on themselves and place high mental demands on themselves. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Being a solo entrepreneur, or small business owner with limited resources, meant that I needed to learn to accept my best efforts and embrace my errors. At first, marketing without an entire department to assist with graphics, execution and measuring effectiveness was a challenge.

As my business grew, I built a team of entrepreneurs who support me in various functions. While we have grown and evolved as a team, the push to remain resourceful and innovative has been essential.

To get past these challenges, it is helpful to:

1. “Focus on making progress, forget about perfection.” Perfection often paralyzes people.  (Cynthia Kersey, Unstoppable Women)
2. Mistakes will happen. Accept, Apologize and Stay in Action.
3. Reach a point of “good enough.” For example, a business letter, a presentation, a marketing brochure … prepare, give your best, and improve as you go. That means short print runs on new collateral.
4. If you are using email/event marketing to build your sales, use a trusted service provider to get the support of an entire corporate team — from sourcing graphics, to monitoring, measuring, and segmenting. Many of the functions that used to be accomplished with several departments are now handled within this service.

During our interview last year you mentioned a “test” you’re running to actually call people who’ve opted-out of your email contact list. Tell me more about that effort and what results you are seeing …

BG: I have not had enough results to know yet if this test is cost effective. However I do have one interesting story.

One of my subscribers replied by email after my assistant called her to make sure she wanted to unsubscribe and said:

“I’m curious about having your assistant call those who unsubscribe. I’m sure that takes an enormous amount of time, which increases your cost. Does it pay for itself to have her call them? I’ve never considered doing that with my own customers who unsubscribe. I just write them off as uninterested and look for new people.”

I asked her how the phone call made her feel.

She replied, “Actually, if you had theoretically asked how I’d feel, I would have thought it was too high-pressure … but in reality, yeah, I felt like you really cared about why I was leaving. And it made you stand out from all the other lists I dropped out of. Good luck!”

My goal is to communicate that my subscribers are important and their opinions are valued.  Maybe they will remember me if they have a need for my service in the future.

You’ve been successful in tough career moves — going from a large company with a large support staff to becoming an entrepreneur with a very streamlined staff. Were any lessons learned, or do you have career advice for anyone who is either contemplating, or attempting, what you’ve accomplished?

BG: Lessons learned:

1. Keep start up costs low

• Keep your overhead low. If possible, work out of your home. This is more acceptable today than ever before and technology gives start ups the advantage that only big corporations enjoyed before. My goals were to have a business that I could take anywhere.
• Do your competitive research to get an idea what the market will bear for your products and services and find your unique niche. I hear many entrepreneurs ramble about all the things they can do.  The old marketing adage goes, “When you try to speak to everyone you reach no one.” This is especially true in today’s competitive, crowded business climate.

2. Focus on the actions that result in your income rising

• Determine the quickest way to cash flow and build your services from there.

3. Be careful not to take-on too much too soon. Don’t offer too many services too soon. Start with a few key services that you can do well and build from there.

4. Be prepared to put forth a great deal of effort to get your business going.

• Long hours are often required until you can afford to build a team. But they are your hours. You will need to balance the time you spend on the computer with the time you spend meeting people who can directly or indirectly help you build your sales.

5. Three critical skills in today’s environment:

• Networking Skills — build a strong supportive network that will put their name on line to recommend you to others.
• Sales Skills — develop a way to authentically and comfortably sell yourself. Invest in training – you will always get a great ROI (return on investment) when you invest in yourself.

• Technical Skills — saves you money and time.

Take advantage of service providers to help you market like the big guys — email marketing, event marketing, and surveys.

I am pleased and proud to say that my business is not only surviving — it is thriving through this economic climate. The time and energy that went into building the foundation is paying off, both in the sense of accomplishment and financially.

It is fulfilling to help others with the work that we do — we help companies, teams and entrepreneurs gain confidence, get into action and grow sales by designing and delivering custom sales/email/event marketing training and coaching programs. I think it has happened because I have been transparent with my story, worked hard, and involved my client base in a ramp up process.

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Resources on Transparent Marketing

Barb’s vendor, Constant Contact

photo by San Sharma