Peering Into the Marketing Crystal Ball Part II
In this post, I will discuss the first two of four key areas that together will challenge b-to-b marketing leaders in the upcoming year.
One: The Intersection of Metrics
What should we measure? This question, or some variation on its theme, dominates many of the interactions we have with our marketing clients. The heart of the answer lies in the theme of intersections; more specifically, the intersections that occur across the three core b-to-b outputs of reputation, demand creation and sales optimization/revenue. The intersection of reputation and demand creation largely focuses on influencer impact; it helps to seed the ground for demand to be created more effectively. The intersection of demand creation and sales optimization is all about the facilitation of the demand funnel from cold to close. The intersection between reputation and sales optimization focuses on message deployment, and the consistency and efficacy with which the field communicates your core value propositions about an organization. The fourth and final intersection brings all three outputs together to drive a mantra that should drive every b-to-b marketing executive, that of sales productivity.
Two: A True Demand Center
Everyone knows that a dollar of marketing budget doesn’t go as far as it used to, and that spending a dollar on new headcount instead of a program is difficult to rationalize. As a result, executives have begun to look for creative ways to drive leverage between activities across regions, business units and product lines, and to drive more measurable demand creation impact. An increasingly common move is to create a global programs or global campaigns group that will have the charter of bringing together some portion of disparate demand creation activities under one roof to be centrally created and distributed.
Three factors are generally at the heart of the struggles of global campaigns: lack of understanding of regional needs, the lack of a clear mandate from marketing leadership and a natural enemy in the form of the organization’s strongest region. For organizations that are based in the US or Canada, this comes in the form of NA marketing. The balance between a global group and a strong region can be particularly delicate, as the charge of the global group is to create and/or aggregate best-of-breed programs, offer them for consumption and act as a central clearinghouse for feedback and ongoing adjustments. At the end of the day, it is the marketing executive team that must decide if it will weaken its NA region in order to strengthen its central structure, or place worldwide “demand center” responsibilities within the strongest of regions. A halfway approach, however, will only wind up causing misery for everyone involved; if you truly want a strong global campaigns function, you must give it the power and the funding.
Next time I will expand on:
Three: Expanding Influence
Four: A Technological Crossroads
