Launch Clinic

Is B2B Marketing Dead?

Rick Segal, President at GyroHSR made a statement recently at the B2B Marketing Europe conference in Berlin where he said that B2B Marketing is dead. My first reaction was probably like yours, but then he made his point. Status quo methods of marketing to B2B buyers won’t be as effective in the future. The reason is that the line between when we are working (‘at work’) and when we are home have blurred. Most Americans – especially those who work in technology – would get this immediately.

Take this one step further. Many of the potential buyers we need to influence don’t get in their car and drive to an office to work anymore. They work out of their home offices or while traveling. They alternate between work mode and home mode multiple times per day. As a consequence getting targeted messages to them is difficult.

“People in an at-work state of mind, today, are exposed to a constant, multi-point flow of communications from not just customers, suppliers and coworkers but also from family, friends, would-be friends and network members. They are not only engaged in considering brand messages while at work, they also champion them to their social networks,” Segal said. “They are constantly toggling between working and ‘home-ing’ through longer hours of the day and more days of the week, making decisions professional and personal.”

At the end of the day, we market to people even if they are in a business.

What’s your at-work state of mind?

Agile for Marketing

Your development team may be an Agile Development shop already but have you ever considered how Agile principles could be applied to your marketing team? It’s not that far fetched. I’m running into companies that are doing Agile Marketing today and they are seeing significant benefits in marketing return on in investment, team throughput and respect.

Agile for Marketing? Are you nuts?

Agile Marketing isn’t that difficult to grasp but it takes discipline and management support to sustain. Instead of thinking about marketing as a list of stuff that needs to get done over the period of a year, lets say once a month you get the marketing team together and agree to what you are going to get done over the next month. Your frame of reference is that whatever you work on must be directly connected to the success of the business and it’s achievable. Instead of having a wish list of indeterminable length you would have a finite, highly focused list of activities and deliverables you all agree will get done (and by extension what you will ignore). The team maps it out for the month deciding on who should do what and what resources are needed to be successful.

Daily Stand-ups

Every day the marketing team meets to review status in a brief stand up meeting. Fifteen minutes should be enough time. Bottlenecks are identified, escalated and addressed long before they become embarrassing problems. Progress is noted and everyone gets back to work.

The month ends (our ‘sprint’ in Agile parlance) and there is tangible evidence of the marketing team’s contribution to the business.

Handling ‘Urgent’ Requests

When the marketing team gets an urgent request for something not on the list, the discussion quickly turns to what we choose to give up in order to get the urgent request done (and even if the urgent request is really that important to the business).

For activities that take a longer horizon like planning for a big industry trade show it works the same way, except broken down into multiple month-long sprints.

Can’t be Done Here

Before you scoff and say that marketing is too creative a process for Agile Marketing to be a reality, think again. Developing innovative software is every bit as creative a process as anything in marketing and Agile is working wonders for developers (been there done both).

Is your marketing team Agile today? What surprises have you seen? What suggestions do you have for others considering the transition?

Terminology Tuesday - 'Spray and Pray'

A method used by B2B marketers applying interrupt marketing tactics with a broad, untargeted (and usually inexpensive) list and hoping it will generate vast volumes of qualified leads. This approach makes the marketer feel good by believing that activity is more important than progress.

This method is often rebuked by the sales team with the often repeated phrase, “Those leads suck; we need more leads.”

Take the Pragmatic Marketing Annual Product Management Survey

The annual Pragmatic Marketing Product Management Survey is open and awaiting your participation. Got something you’d like to tell your CEO without fear of reprisal? Hmmm. Now is your chance!

Pragmatic Marketing’s John Milburn to Speak at Pipeline 2010

Our very own John Milburn is speaking at Pipeline 2010. What is Pipeline you say?

“A virtual meeting ground for experts and colleagues to promote the knowledge and practices of innovation, product development, and product portfolio management. This free, one-day online conference on innovative product development features 13 top industry speakers presenting real-life lessons that you can put to use immediately.”

I guess that means John is a top industry speaker! Shhh. Don’t tell John. His ego is big enough as it is.

Just kidding. John is an entertaining and engaging instructor for Pragmatic Marketing and a great guy to boot.

John’s Topic

John is going to present “Market Problems: The Cornerstone of Strategic Product Management”

How to participate

Pipeline is a virtual conference so you can participate from the comfort of your home office in your jammies if you prefer.

Date: November 10, 2010 (Wednesday)

Time: 8:00am Central Standard Time (USA)

Click here to register for free.

How Do You Measure the Effectiveness of Your Product Marketing Managers?

Too often the primary measurement of a product marketing manager’s performance is the number of leads they generate. Is this really the measure that reflects their individual performance? First, for most organizations, what’s classified as a ‘lead’ is really a response to a marketing initiative like an email or direct mail campaign. Let’s call these what they actually are: responses. Second, the number of leads generated is rarely a reliable predictor of how many of deals will be closed, particularly in complex B2B selling. Third, the definition of a good ‘lead’ is rarely consistent among salespeople, let alone across an organization.

So if generating leads are not a meaningful measure of individual contribution, you could always go to another common measure: deliverables. Data sheet. Check. Sales presentation. Check. Demo script. Check. Deliverables are necessary for sure, but are they a measure that reflects an important outcome, like selling more stuff?

How about measuring performance based on outcomes. Whoa. Wait a minute. You’re asking me to measure my product marketing managers based on revenue? Yeah, I am if it’s a measurement that is valued in your organization. I’m not suggesting they go on sales calls or become sales engineers. And I’m not advocating that they should be compensated on individual deals. But there are ways that you can measure Johnny’s contribution to the overall success to the products he supports in the market.

Arguably there are a whole range of issues that could negatively impact the product marketing managers ability to deliver on a given revenue goal with discounting being the elephant in the room.

What can product marketing managers do to positively impact revenue when they aren’t the one’s doing the selling?

Become the experts on your buyers

A huge contribution to outcomes is to be the expert on your buyers. Product marketing managers are often confined to the four walls of their offices with little contact with real buyers in the market. Set a quota that requires them to interact with potential buyers, outside the office and write up what they learn. Start with eight or ten per quarter. These are interactions that are not conducted as part of a sales call.

You have plenty of experts on your products. Who’s the expert on your buyers?

Identify and correct bottlenecks in the funnel

Conduct ongoing analysis of deals looking at the each step in the funnel. Identify where deals are getting stuck and focus on corrective measures. Identifying patterns over a series of deals and avoid drawing conclusions from a single deal, which could send you on a wild goose chase. Removing a bottleneck in the funnel can have much more impact on sales throughput than generating more leads.

Removing bottlenecks improves sales throughput, effectively increasing the volume of deals your sales channels can deliver.

Take ownership of win/loss analysis

This isn’t the forensic style of win/loss analysis where you look for the person to punish for not winning the deal. It’s the type of win/loss analysis where you identify patterns that can lead to potentially huge revenue improvements. I advocate having product marketing managers own this activity in collaboration with their product manager counterparts. Each has a different filter on the activity that results in identifying different insights.

It’s easy to assume the problem is with the product or price, but is that really true?

Product marketing manager word cloud

Just for fun I took the job descriptions I’ve been collecting and dropped them into Wordle.net. I thought you would like to see a graphical representation of your job description. Is it just me or is the word “planning” really that small?

Product Launch eBook sourced for Gartner paper

Gartner analysts April Adams and Andy Rolfe published a research report titled "Marketing Essentials: How to Design a Successful Product Launch" and linked to my ebook "Is your product launch Doomed" as a source. You will need to be a Gartner client to gain access to the Gartner report. My ebook is available at no charge and with no registration form.

Product Marketing Manager – who are you?

I’m conducting marketing research on you, product marketing manager. I’m doing this to support a project. I don’t want to create a generalized or stereotypical picture of you; I want to create the perfect picture of you. I want to know everything about you. I want to talk to you in a way that your jaw drops in amazement when I speak.

The first thing I did was to jettison my biases, my preconceived notions, and my personal experience. The second thing I did was to go to the job boards to read ‘product marketing manager’ job descriptions. The goal of doing this is twofold: to identify what is common among product marketing manager job descriptions and what can I conclude about the role. While I’m early in the process here’s what I can report:

• You may have the job title of ‘product marketing manager’ but sometimes you’re really a ‘product manager’
• You have a BS or BA (the discipline varies across industries)
• You might have a MBA
• You have 5+ years of experience
• You are a “self starter”, an “excellent communicator”, a “team player”, and have a “proven track record”
• You know how to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel
• You have conflicting responsibilities
• Your duties are often “as assigned”
• Your company has no flipping idea what you do or how to measure your contribution

Out of the 100 or so job descriptions I’ve read, only one stated “You are the expert on our buyers, how they buy, and their buying criteria.”. One. Only a handful of job descriptions explicitly state your area of responsibility is outbound. A few had so many responsibilities listed it would be a job so incredibly dysfunctional you could never define what winning looks like.

It must feel like you’re a rat running in a maze with no cheese.

I want to hear from you. What do you think about your role? Am I getting warm? Does your job description match what you actually do?

Treadmill marketing

The important work that product marketing managers and marketing managers do to help sell what’s on the shelf is hard work. Not too long ago someone who attended an Effective Product Marketing class I was teaching for Pragmatic Marketing made the connection for me of what it feels like that everyone can relate to. She said product marketing was a lot like running on a treadmill. She got a lot of mileage in every week but never seemed to get ahead. My Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother would say it another way - “The faster you go the behinder you get.”

Occasionally someone will walk by your treadmill and turn up the speed or increase the angle of difficulty. How’s the working for you? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity.

Courtesy EMI Music