The Revenue Marketer - No Longer an Oxymoron

Two years ago, using the term "revenue" and "marketer" together was an oxymoron - a phrase in which two words of contradictory meaning are used together for special effect, e.g. "jumbo shrimp" or "wise fool." In 2010, it is no longer an oxymoron, it is a special role in marketing that is making a measurable impact on revenue

With the business imperative to drive top-line revenue growth in 2010, businesses are exploring all options to achieve this goal. This business driver paired with the new marketing automation tools that are now available to marketers, create an environment where, for the first time, marketing efforts equate to revenue production.

This is an epic change in the world of marketing and one that requires the successful Revenue Marketer to have a revenue focus and a unique set of skills across the Revenue Marketing Team. In 2009, I interviewed 12 leaders for my Demand Generation Essentials series and these Revenue Marketers had amazing stories to tell in how they re-shaped the role of marketing in their companies. You can listen to these interviews at http://pedowitzgroup.com/dgassets.htm.

Here is a synopsis of the key roles for a Revenue Marketing Team:

1. VP of Marketing Revenue

• Obsesses over driving revenue through marketing effort
• Works closely with sales to align marketing and sales initiatives
• Manages a lead funnel and has a predictable run rate for leads to the sales funnel
• Understand the customer's buying process and digital body language
• Focuses on revenue oriented metrics to measure success

2. Business Analyst

• Focuses on improving the performance of campaigns that lead to revenue
• Responsible for reporting and dashboards

3. Power User

• Sets up and executes campaigns
• Fully leverages the technology

4. Revenue Creative

• You will need a lot of creative but the creative needs to be focused on driving a dollar of revenue
• Think about creative as the way to invite and create a digital relationship

5. Content Maker

• Content is king in the world of the revenue marketer. It is what fuels campaigns and helps set up the view the the client's buying process
• Your content, third part content -anything that creates an exchange of value

The numbers are in. Revenue marketers around the globe are making a measurable impact on revenue. Key metrics for the Revenue Marketer include:

• # of Marketing Qualified Leads passed to sales
• Conversion rate of an MQL to an Opportunity
• Conversion rate of that Opportunity to close
• % of the sales funnel contributed by marketing
• Length of sales cycle

The Revenue Marketer is certainly no longer an oxymoron in 2010. It is a marketing role that is here to stay.

What have you experienced?

The Elephant on the Conference Room Table

On September 17th, I'll be interviewing Tom Weinbaum, VPof Demand Creation Marketing at Foundation Source. Isn't that a great title! Our topic is "Lead Management" and how to do it successfully. This is often a highly charged area as for the first time, marketing is requiring accountability from sales and vice versa - I call it "The Elephant on the Conference Room Table."

It's the Monday morning senior management team meeting. It starts with the VP of Sales giving an update on the sales pipeline and revenue and then it's your turn, Mr/s Marketer to give an update on the lead funnel and the impact you are making on revenue. Your report focuses on all the leads you are turning over to sales, how qualified they are and how you don't think they are being followed up on (is that correct English?) Sales volleys back that what they are getting is not qualified and so goes another Monday morning senior management team meeting.

People there is an elephant sitting on that conference room table that no one is acknowledging and it's called lead management. This has been a topic of my last few blogs because I think it deserves a lot of attention in 2009. My friend Eric Blumthal of Count5 just responded in our LASER Lead Generation Group on this topic and here is a synopsis of the problem.

1. Sales and marketing don't have a common set of lead definitions
2. Sales isn't classically trained to work the very top of the sales funnel - nor are they compensated for this work (in a sense)
3. Marketing is not trained in selling at all - they don't know what they don't know
4. No one is responsible for working these leads they way they need to be
5. There is no "lead management process" in place with assigned roles, accountability, tools and time lines

Here is an example. Marketing works hard to get a lead - as defined by marketing. How often does marketing take it upon themselves to have their own definition of a lead and never invite sales to this discussion? VERY often. Sales gets LOTS of leads from marketing and based on prior experiences, sales will cherry pick through these leads and call them when they get some free time or the pressure to get more opportunities into the sales funnel gets high. Big mistake as the shelf life of a lead is 72 hours max and in some industries, several hours. Does all of this sound familiar?

Here is a sample outline of a joint sales and marketing workshop I have facilitated many times that will help address that elephant on the conference room table.

1. Do a survey - have sales comment on lead production from marketing and have marketing comment on lead followup from sales. Discuss the results.
2. Create a common set of lead definitions, given the tools available to marketing today. "I, Marketing, will pass a lead to sales when it meets this set of criteria..."
3. Create an SLA with sales - "I Sales, will follow up on qualified leads from Marketing within 24 hours of receiving the lead."
4. Jointly develop campaign ideas. Sales is your best resource for what potential leads will respond to..ask them!

Of course, this is all very simplistic but you would be amazed how often these basics are not in place. Why? Because this represents a process and role change for marketing - it's hard for marketing to do and it's hard for sales to accept. It is the elephant sitting on the conference room table that everyone is hoping will go away. It won't and you will have to address these process issues around lead management.

How have you addressed this issue in your company?

But I Don't Have Enough Content to Start a DG Program!

When talking to marketers about beginning a Demand Generation initiative, "But, I don't have enough content to feed that engine!" is a common concern. My answer - maybe you do and maybe you don't. What I do know is that a new way of looking at content is required when beginning a DG program. Here are Five Best Practices:
1. Chunk, chunk, chunk your content
In an email, you are making one touch, with one idea. You don't need to throw the encyclopedia at them. Take one element from a current content piece that will provide one point of value for your subscribers.
2. Third party content
Who says you have to write it all? As long as the piece is relevant, provides a point of value for your subscribers and elicits behavior you can score and respond to, it works!
3. Micro-papers from your blogs
I often find that what I blog about can make a great mini-paper. If you add to that any comments your blog created, you have a piece of content worth using.
4. Interviews
You can interview anyone - a client, an analyst, etc. Create and send it out as a podcast. I use BlogTalk Radio - free and easy. This also helps you mix up your content types
5. Content is king
In this internet world we live in, content is king. If you don't have it, you will need to get it! Look at what your competitors are doing...

What DG Marketers Can Learn From Charlie Chaplin

We can learn a few things about how to appropriately staff for demand generation from Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times."

As a factory worker on the line, he was over-worked in a highly manual process. The result? Poor product and a very frustrated worker. Now I know that you aren't going to go out and tear down your existing lead generation factory, but imagine if the character had had the benefit of a great automated system. How would his job change? What would happen to the result? And, how would he feel about his new role?

As marketers take on marketing automation systems in order to produce high quality lead generation, they are discovering that a new set of skills is required to support new automated techniques. Just this morning I had a conversation with one of our clients around how to properly staff for demand/lead generation. Here are the 4 key roles I outlined for her. For this blog, I thought I would continue to use Mr. Chaplin's manufacturing analogy. After all, you are in the Lead Production business!

1. A System Power User - Someone who will be the Power User of the marketing automation system. This person is responsible for building the emails, landing pages, forms, list segmentation and lay-out of campaigns. They are also responsible for building the work flow of the campaign and for suggesting ways to improve the overall campaign structure.

A good analogy for this role is the person responsible for the line in a manufacturing facility. They use all the machines and technology to ensure the production run produces as envisioned and designed.

2. Analytics - someone on the team needs to be responsible for analytics for 2 reasons:

A. You don't know what you don't know when you get started. With that as a premise, you will have to do a lot of experimentation, testing and tweaking to get to the point of producing high quality leads for sales on a scalable and predictable basis.

B. You will begin tracking and reporting on metrics that are new. As you do this, you will be looking for ways to show the impact of marketing on revenue and this means tracking your impact into the sales cycle. This takes a new way of thinking, working with systems and analysis.
In a manufacturing setting, this role is analogous to the QA person who is always looking at key measures and ways to improve key measures - with the ultimate goal of producing defect free leads - this means sales accepts and closes all of the leads you produce!

3. Digital World Communicator - This is a communications role for the digital world. As you write copy in emails, landing pages, forms, etc, being brief, to the point and following the stream of consciousness is critical. If a prospect clicks on a Google Ad based on a topic, the landing page they go to needs to continue that topic, that stream of consciousness. It's all about behavior and setting up a digital dialog to elicit behavior.

In the manufacturing world, this role is analogous to the Plant Manager - the person responsible for understanding the business requirements and translating that to production.

4. Strategist and Change Agent - No one really wants to hear this one but it is the most important role of all. EVERY client we work with is surprised at the amount of change demand generation with a marketing automation system invites. Some are ready for the change and can make it happen quickly. Others, need a bit more time. This senior executive is responsible for not just getting campaigns out the door but for impacting revenue for the company. If you think about the Life of a Lead from marketing inception through the hand-off to sales to opportunity and close, demand generation can impact ALL of these areas.


This role is the executive (the suit) who is in charge of surveying the market and their constituents and determining how best to use the production resources to meet the needs of the company. It is a powerful position and carries a lot of responsibility for the bottom line.

Enjoy watching the clip of Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times" and consider how introducing a powerful marketing automation system changes key processes and roles in your company.

This is just a high level of overview. What have you seen? Have you seen these roles as separate roles or are you seeing these roles being combined? Would love to hear your comments!

DG and Peanuts

This weekend, I went to my family's 41st reunion in Blakely, GA. If you need a map to look it up, that's OK! It's a small town in southwest Georgia and a staple of the economy is peanut farming. As a matter of fact, it is one of the richest peanut growing regions in the world! On a trip to the Piggly Wiggly to get fruit to make a gigantic fruit salad (got to feed about 200 people), I noticed that the small town was really touting their peanut-driven economy with these banners flying around the town square. They wanted to make sure that everyone was fully aware of their intense focus as a community on peanuts.

As I thought about this PR move, it occurred to me that as B2B companies look to implement a demand generation (lead generation) program, they are actually finding new ways to fuel their own economy - the economy of leads that get passed to sales and get closed. And, like peanuts in southwest Georgia, a little PR can go a long way.

Just this past week I was at a client location and part of what we talked about was how to "promote" marketing's new demand generation program to senior management, sales and other groups who might need to understand this new focus. I asked them a simple question, "Do you have a PR firm?" The answer was Yes and I simply explained they need to develop their own internal PR for demand generation and to consider both formal and informal means of communication. It's a PR calendar for demand generation which serves the same purpose of any PR effort - educate and get on board key constituents.

While you might not need to put up red banners all around the office, finding a way to provide this key education on a new focus for marketing is a brilliant move. Maybe Demand Generation Proud?

What have you seen that works?

Boston OMS is a WOW!

We kicked off a 16 city speaking tour with the Online Marketing Summit in Boston - our topic - what else but demand generation! I was a little worried that our session might not be that well attended as so much attention was being paid to the social media elements of the tour. Was I ever wrong! With 100 people in attendance at the Boston event and 3 consecutive sessions being run, our session on Demand Generation Essentials drew over 50 attendees! Part of the reason may be that OMS is now offering a certification for demand generation and our course helped "students" earn credit. Kudos to Aaron Kahlow and team for bringing this much needed certification to market via the Online Marketing Institute.

My big take-away - anything to do with lead generation is still hot and getting hotter and education is the key!

What are you seeing??

Fail Fast and Fail Forward!

"Fail fast and fail forward!"

This is advice I recently heard from a veteran sales & marketing professional when asked what advice would he give to the fledgling demand generation marketer. While this is not something you expect to hear, it makes perfect sense given the unknown territory the demand generation marketer is responsible for. The statement sums up an approach which uses an hypothesis for all elements of an untested demand generation strategy, test it, analyze it, if it fails, move on to the next option.

However, what I see every day are marketers who believe they need to get it right the first time! So let's debunk the idea that is has to be perfect every time. The use of a hypothesis, testing and improving through cycles is not new in a business setting. Entire industries such as manufacturing and software development were built on this concept. To help you ratchet up your level of professionalism as you work in your organization to improve demand generation, let’s borrow a model that is known and accepted around the globe in every industry – the Deming Cycle.

Developed by Edward Deming in the 1930’s to improve the manufacturing process (and demand generation IS a process), the idea is that perfect quality was not possible in the first iteration of a manufacturing process. Deming outlined a simple, yet highly effective 4 step process that tests and builds in quality over numerous cycles. It’s called PDCA or Plan-Do-Check-Act (also known as the Deming Cycle, Shewhart Cycle, Deming Wheel, or Plan-Do-Study-Act.)




PLAN
Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the specifications.

DO
Implement the processes.

CHECK
Monitor and evaluate the processes and results against objectives and Specifications and report the outcome.

ACT
Apply actions to the outcome for necessary improvement. This means reviewing all steps (Plan, Do, Check, Act) and modifying the process to improve it before its next implementation.


Without using this specific language, the most successful marketers in demand generation use this kind of process. They take the approach of planning the best they can given what they know today and given the data and systems they have at hand. They are not afraid to approach this as a series of experiments. They begin with a hypothesis, run the experiment, see what happens and adjust the next cycle as needed.


Here is a recent example of Plan-Do-Check-Act for Demand Generation. Last week we launched a "test" campaign for one of our customers. We tested two different elements: the subject line and text versus graphics in the body of the email. We had 4 different emails that we tested. As usual, the CLEAR winner with a 45% click-through to form completion ratio, was not the one we expected! We were convinced going into the test that this would not be the winner. In fact, the one we liked had horrible performance. So, later this week our client will now confidently launch the broad campaign knowing he has chosen the best option and should expect a very good result.

So as you look at your demand generation efforts, don't be afraid to test, test, test! It will make you a more successful marketer.

Social Media and Lead Generation

This weekend I am attending and chairing a break-out session at SoCon 09 - a social media conference being held here in Atlanta. I am very excited to be going and I am most looking forward to talking to my peers about what they are doing with social media. Social media is all the buzz right now and I frequently have clients asking me - "How should I be using social media?" In the B2B world of lead generation (my world) this is still the trillion dollar question. My first response to this question is "What are your prospects doing on-line, where are they?" I recently had this conversation with a very conservative, 100 year old printing company in the mid-west. When we began to explore who their buyers and buying influencers were, we hit upon a particular profile of a "packaging engineer" and discovered that these guys (gals) live on the web. So, we are creating a social media strategy - very low key - something like Bob's Blog - that will create an interaction among this group sponsored by the client. And, the important thing about this strategy will be to LISTEN to what these engineers have to say! It is an experiment and we do not have a set of lead generation metrics tied to it. We are going to play and see what happens.

This brings up my second comment about social media. For all of us of a more "mature" age, if you really want to understand social media - look at your kids. We now have an entire generation of kids who have grown up in the digital age and it is simply a part of their DNA. I am an "informal" mentor in the GA Tech MBA program and from time to time, they will ask me to talk to one of their students about the big bad world of Web 2.0 marketing. I met with one of these students last November and as a 22 year old, she had done an internship for a major insurance company, suggested a social media strategy for them, they adopted it and offered her a job! When I asked her how this happened, she replied "It was just obvious!"

As this group of kids become the managers and leaders, social media will zoom! I am taking my 22 year old with me to SoCon and she will probably know more than me! Maybe she should run the break-out session!

Finally, I am working on my own learning and experiences with social media. I personally blog, facebook, linkedin and twitter and am a proponent of all things Web 2.0, find myself still fully in the exploration stages. I am currently working on "creating a work flow" for how I interact with all of my social media. Here is what I do: - When I fire up my laptop early in the AM (yes, I am an early bird) I: - check my blog - and take the time to respond or write one (love, love, love to blog) - set up my IM - I am connected to my entire team all day as we work on client projects - set up TWIRL - a little app that helps me twitter (this is on all day). I use Twitter all day for my brainstoming comments and quite frankly for social media ideas - check my LinkedIn Groups (I use this a lot for finding people, creating new relationships and communicating with professional groups) - check my Facebook (I use this a lot for current relationships) I will frequently re-visit many of these late in the day as well.

In closing, we live in a very exciting time to be a marketer. It's a time to explore new ideas and new technologies so education is key. Keep communicating on line, going to conferences and seeing what people are actually doing. I look forward to a great dialog on this post!!