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?

Why is achieving sales & marketing alignment so hard?

I love everything about selling (having been a VP of Sales for many years) so when I became a full time VP of Marketing, aligning the two teams to help improve lead generation just made sense to me. In addition, we bought a marketing automation system and this technology gave me a concrete way to involve sales and to help improve key aspects of their pospecting and sales cycles. I think it has been my experience and understanding of sales that helped me knit all this together. This does not seem to be the norm and this is the crux of the problem for the mis-alignment between sales and marketing.

I was talking to a Marketing Director recently and we were doing a Life of a Lead process flow - a key process to map for implementing marketing automation - and I was stunned to find out they knew next to nothing about sales or the sales process in their company. This is analogous to not knowing the profile of your target audience. How do you message them? How do you interact with them? What kind of high value offers do you make?

Whether you have sales in your background or not, the lesson learned is to get to know sales and your company's sales process and remember that the sales team is your ultimate customer. You produce Marketing Qualified Leads and they consume them. Once you have this sales savviness as a foundation, take a look at this post from Steve Woods of Eloqua which presents some great ideas for how to better align sales and marketing beginning with the impact you can help them make on revenue.

What has worked for you?

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??

10 Best Practices for Sales & Marketing Alignment

This week I was working with a new client and we were conducting the lead management kick-off meeting. This client had just purchased a lead management system and was preparing to soar into the world of Web 2.0 marketing. In attendance were the marketing staff and a significant number of sales people. The ratio of sales to marketing in this meeting was 3:1.

The purpose of the kick-off was to:

1. Begin building a collaborative lead management relationship between sales and marketing


2. Begin building a jointly constructed lead management process


3. Introduce the team to the capabilities and possibilities of their chosen lead management system


4. Build a set of Use Cases (highly customized lead management scenarios for the company with priority)

The entire team fully participated, shared and respected each other’s opinions and ideas during the session. The result of the day was a sales and marketing team that was fully charged and excited about Web 2.0 lead management in their company.

I share this story as a way to set up how every company needs to better align sales and marketing around ALL lead generation efforts. In a study we conducted last summer, we asked leading marketers what one piece of advice they would give to a new lead generation marketer – the answer was a loud and resounding – “Get aligned with sales.” We see this as such a critical success factor that in our newly published LASER Approach, we outline beginning the lead management dialog with sales even before your company invests in a lead management system

The case above is finally beginning to become the norm yet I still see companies in which marketing does not or can’t engage with sales in building and improving lead management. Here are a few ways you can improve your own alignment with sales and your lead generation efforts. These are not rocket science, but they are Best Practices that will ensure you lead generation success. What have you seen that works?

Work with sales to:

1. Build a language of leads
   This is the most BASIC step yet EVERY company we work with has an issue of not using a common language of leads
   
2. Build a common lead management process
   When is a lead handed over, how is it handed over, what is the responsibility of sales when it is handed over, how does sales hand it back to marketing if not yet sales ready?
   
3. Create a lead scoring program
   You cannot create a lead scoring program without sales. Time and time again, when we facilitate a lead scoring exercise with sales and marketing, marketing is amazed at what they learn
   
4. Build Sales Champions for the lead management program
   Identify and work with a few sales people to ensure they have high quality leads and access to the prospect digital behavior so they can make better pursuit decisions. They will never go back to selling with this and it will win over the rest of the sales team.
   
5. Build a priority of campaigns
   Nobody knows what is hotter in the market than a quota carrying rep. Ask them what kind of program or message will produce “Hot Leads.”
   
6. Create a regular communication cycle
   This includes the campaign calendar which gives them time to order their priorities to follow up right after a campaign. It also includes communicating on how programs are doing and the impact marketing qualified leads are making on the funnel and the revenue picture for the company
   
7. Create a feedback loop
   You will need to get feedback on the quality of the leads so you can make adjustments for future programs
   
8. Service Level Agreements Marketing is working hard to produce leads that fit the requirements of sales. Sales should have specific duties and responsibilities when it comes to lead follow up and disposition
   
9. Guiding Principles
   As marketing spends more and more time in the lead management part of their business, their role changes and you need to re-set expectations. Creating 5 – 7 Guiding Principles will help everyone understand the new role of marketing and reduce potential friction.
   
10. Finally, if you don’t know how sales works in your company, learn!

What have you seen that works?

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!!