November
14
2011
Are we limping into Q4? Over the last 7 years VLG clients have become somewhat of a predictable barometer of trends in B2B marketing spend. When you dig a little deeper a couple things might be happening as we close out 2011.
If what Marketing Sherpa says is true, the average B2B deal size is shrinking. The conclusion they’ve drawn is tantamount to “lazy salesman” syndrome. (See this blog post.) They must have polled marketing managers. Would it be shocking if sales tried to close deals that are easier to close. No, and this year differs little than any other on that front. Depending on a companies compensation structure I’d say what we see is not sales taking the easy way out, but that complex deals are taking longer to close for a couple reason.
The first would be prospects propensity to perhaps over evaluate a capital or long-term expenditure. In this economy the pressure NOT to screw up a big spend is very real. Uncertainty has a funny way of causing more research and evaluation.
The second cause is an increased number of stakeholders involved in every decision. This will grind any sales cycle to a halt, or at least slow things down a bit. We see this reflected on the marketing front. More and more VLG clients are including “key” decision makers in everything from messaging to the art itself. More stakeholders equals longer build out of marketing programs equals slower roll out of marketing initiatives equals fewer number of sales opportunities.
If only we could blame sales for being lazy. Everything is more complex than it seems.
January
21
2010
These days everyone has a formula for marketing success and no two are exactly alike. We either adapt our clients to our direct marketing approach, or adapt strategy to the goals set forth by the client. Giving clients solid advice along backed by previous campaign metrics creates an healthy partnership and solid dialog marketing campaigns. It takes a delicate touch to offer advice without talking down to clients. Many agencies fail here. You should hear our clients relay stories of agency egos the size of conference rooms.
Revenue generation is a team sport. Marketing starts with solid prospect or customer lists.* High mail-to-web rates drive these same prospects and customers into the marketing funnel.** Sticky microsites educate these folks and prime them for discussions with sales. Sales cycles grow shorter as sales gets into deeper and deeper conversations. Decision makers and those that influence the purchase get involved. Revenue is won. It all started with established campaign expectations and a solid customer-vendor relationship.
Not all clients buy into our approach 100%, but together we find ways to leverage our creative work to meet organizational milestones and goals. At the end of the day it’s about communicating expectations, setting goals before the first brainstorming session, and executing against those goals. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
*Marketers spend far too little time cleaning lists. Traditional direct mail took a shotgun approach. You could afford bogus data, because the per unit costs were somehow justified. Not so with dimensional mail. Higher-end mail pieces help keep lists smaller with better, targeted contacts.
**Once you have a solid list it’s up to us (VLG or whatever agency you use) to deliver a value proposition to those future/current customers. Look for mail-to-web (or visit rates) over 20%. Our Dialog Marketing gives you a leg up with real-time behavior tracking online and notifications via email, SMS, or RSS feed.
June
26
2009
Branding agencies are good at what they do, packaged goods at what they do, marketing consultants at what they do, and interactive shops at what they do. So, why would a customer go to one agency for the whole enchilada, for everything.
A whole plate of enchiladas is not what the client is asking for today. They want Fajitas; they want the sizzle. With our customers’ best interests in mind, let’s focus on complementing product and service solutions with something that gets seared into the minds of the consumers without bogging down the brand. We suggest micro-campaigns, because they are less expensive to execute, high impact, memorable, viral, sticky. But they are not permanent. As the life cycle of a marketing campaign shortens, so does the need to shorten the sales cycle.
In the crazy, mixed-up world that is marketing and advertising today there appears to be a trend that has fractured the idea and execution of marketing campaigns across all media. Once you have a brand the need for marketing support evaporates. Companies bring maintenance of the brand in-house and the agency loses. Once you build a website with a CMS the need for design and development services dwindles. I could go on, but you get it.
Down economies only increase a company’s desire to keep money in-house by sacrificing good-to-great advertising for good-enough advertising. And so the advertising industry finds itself in a period of transformation. As an agency we can’t put a retainer in front of a customer, because they don’t want to sign an annual contract and won’t. They want point solutions and better control of their budgets, which is fine with us.
The agency of the future, which we like to think we are, should prepare itself for this new customer/agency relationship. When your customer can take a power point presentation, convert it to Flash, add voice over and click “Go”, it’s time to think about your business model. Self-serve marketing has arrived. The question for our agency becomes, “How do I empower my customer?”, not “How do I trap them into a longer-term contract?”
May
28
2009
When we ask a client how long is their typical sales cycle we get the same replies. It’s six, nine or 12 months. Amazingly everyone experiences the same sales cycle. These folks may not be totally honest with themselves. In a down economy your sales cycles can stretch a month, two months or more depending on your industry, pipeline and go-to-market approach. If you get someone into the sales pipeline today, you’ll probably won’t realize any revenue from that opportunity until December or well into 2010. There are ways to cut weeks off your sales cycle.
Do a quick Google news search for articles about “longer sales cycles“? Once you get past the obvious holes in Google’s search algorithm you’ll see many, many companies are experiencing longer sales cycles. So what’s the answer? Get people into the sales pipeline earlier, craft messaging with surgical precession, and get into “better” conversations earlier in the relationship.
We’ve been doing direct marketing programs using interactive microsites to fill pipelines for years. These programs are great when the economy is booming. The value of getting customers into a discussion with your sales team is important, really important, now more than ever. In this economy it’s even more critical to stretch that marketing dollar by targeting and getting into conversations with great sales opportunities.
Our clients and prospects seem to consistently weigh a few specific marketing options with tight 2009 budgets. One is a focus on virtual events. They cut down on airfare, hotels, bar tabs, etc. Email can be hit or miss, but it’s cheap. Some are dipping their toes in the social media waters, which is not as cheap as you might think. Social media, if done haphazardly, can waste the time of some valuable in-house resources. Then there is our solution. We offer a hybrid direct mail slash personalized microsite that gives you the best of both worlds–targeted media like dimensional mail and variable messaging with behavior stats generated by a microsite. It’s a powerful one-two punch. It also trims time off the sales cycle by bringing quality discussions forward weeks.
We get it. Budgets are tight. Our clients get it too, which is why they are filling their sales pipelines with VLG’s Dialog Marketing campaigns. Don’t take our word for it. See for yourself.