Adapt or Perish: The New Dynamics of Digital Marketing

What do you do when your digital partners passionately complain that people "just don't get the new reality"—and your other agency partners assure you that the traditional notions of branding and marketing haven't really changed? You listen.

The gloom-and-doom digital prophets who foretold that the world would be unrecognizable in 10 years turned out to be premature to an extent that we still haven't sorted out. But they had a few points, didn't they? Does anyone now disagree that digital is one of the most critical components of the marketing mix?

And considering the permanently distracted nature of many of today's consumers, doesn't it stand to reason that now, more than ever, a brand needs to have a singular, well-articulated idea of what it stands for, across all media? Isn't that what branding experts have been telling us for decades anyway?

Respecting traditional branding ideas in the face of an increasingly interactive marketplace may best be described as "Tradigital." It's a very real and very practical approach to managing your brand communications and getting the most out of your team and your agency partners when building digital properties. Frankly, it strikes me as the only logical adaptation to an environment where the consumer is demanding more and more interaction with, and control over, your brand—especially the type of control you should by no means simply hand over.

Here are four ways you can make traditional and digital values work within your own organization.
1. Tell the truth

If digital isn't your strength, that's OK. You've employed an agency for that reason. But in the long run you'll want to take a hard look within your organization. Is your commitment to digital obvious by how you staff? Are you identifying and deploying appropriate project leads? Be honest about your capabilities and intentions. This isn't a place where you want to fake it.

2. Share

Make sure all your partners are sharing information, ideas, and expertise. If your digital team isn't included in the process of understanding and defining the market and your brand within it, it will be relegated to a strictly tactical role—a pair of hands creating digital content that may be disconnected from the big idea.

Keep in mind that agencies may not always prefer to play nicely together (even when they say they will). It's not uncommon for agencies to promise "full service" to their clients to keep profit in house. But all involved must understand that the needs of the brand come first.

If you like a little healthy competition between agencies, which may be OK. But don't expect them to work out the hierarchy on their own. You'll need to make the decisions and let them know how you expect them to work together to best serve your digital needs.  

3. Question analytics

At this point, everyone knows they're supposed to be measuring something. It's just not always clear what that "something" is. Become familiar with what the industry values. Identify your key performance indicators. As a colleague once told me, effective analysis is a "hardcore skill set."

This is a function you may want a specialist for, or someone willing to become one. Ultimately, though, you'll want to appreciate that not everything meaningful can be measured, and not everything measured is meaningful.

4. Be tech-agnostic

Challenge yourself and your agency to understand the limitations and the capabilities of several digital platforms. Assign a competent technical director who has a working understanding of the latest technologies and trends.

It's all too common for developers to get comfortable with one platform, either because they've invested in the licensing of it or because they have simply gotten complacent about evolving. Relying on only one platform will substantially limit your digital potential.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

The Long Road From Lead Generation to Sales Conversion

Marketers face lengthy time spans as they progress from lead generation to conversion, making it difficult to nurture prospects while moving them through the pipeline. This chart highlights the percentages of leads in each stage of the pipeline that are likely to advance to the next stage.

Average Conversion Rates in the Marketing-to-Sales Process

One of the most challenging obstacles to marketing is the time span from lead generation to sales conversion.

These long sales cycles put pressure on marketers to streamline the lead nurturing process.

When prospects first enter the pipeline, they may be months away from defining specifications, a budget or purchase timeline. 

It is marketing’s responsibility to identify and fulfill the information needs of prospects at each stage and to advance prospects through the pipeline to a sales-ready stage as rapidly as possible.

We wanted to know what percentages of leads in each stage of the pipeline are likely to advance to the next stage. As this chart shows, on average, nearly four in 10 leads move from initial inquiry to being sales-ready, and approximately the same ratio advance from sales-ready to qualified prospect. As might be expected, the trend deteriorates moving to the next stage where only three in 10 qualified prospects convert to a sale.

The internal sales force has an edge – albeit slim – over top channel partners in percent of distributed leads closed. An organization’s own sales force is also three times as likely to close leads distributed to them as are their average channel partners.

The Deal. The Close. The Win.

Ultimately, making the sale is up to your sales team, but by implementing a sound nurturing and scoring process, you have helped them by establishing a relationship and positioning your company as a leader with the prospect. The Tools Just as a nice haircut and a manicure prepare you for that first date, every marketer should prepare for that introduction. You’ll need easy to use tools to help you nurture leads, including email, landing pages, forms, and lead scoring: essentially, a lead management solution.

Send triggered emails

Send a series of emails as part of a drip marketing campaign, or triggered based on specific prospect activities. Each email offers a document (or webinar, or trial software, etc.) that helps move your target along in their decision-making process.

Use custom landing pages

Don’t forget that custom landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 48% during your lead nurturing as well as your lead generation activities. You only have eight seconds to get their attention, so use bullets, short forms, and no external navigation. And have only one call to action!

Use smart forms

You will get better response rates by using a form as the call to action on your landing pages, but why use the same form with the same fields over and over? Just like you wouldn’t ask your date for his or her name every time you see them, you shouldn’t ask for contact information again and again. Smart forms recognize known visitors and can fill in the fields you already know. Since you don’t have to ask for this, ask for other info, such as company size, time until decision, etc. Building the profile over time will help you in scoring the lead.

Use web analysis and lead scoring

Knowing which pages your prospects visit on your site can be very beneficial to determining their interest as well as their level of engagement. Being able to connect anonymous visits to actual prospects? Priceless.

Automate and measure

Salesforce.com and other customer relationship management (CRM) products are great, but they typically fall flat in their marketing capabilities. As marketers we need to automate the everyday tasks of building and managing lead generation and lead nurturing campaigns. We also need to more objectively score leads according to their company demographics as well as their activities on our websites, landing pages, emails and other campaigns. And a single lead source doesn’t cut it when lead nurturing. It’s great to know where we first encountered the prospect, but knowing what happens between that first meeting and closing the sale is imperative in these days of marketing accountability.

Evaluate

As you move through the nurturing process, you’ll probably discover that some of the assumptions you made are incorrect; for instance, that downloading a particular white paper means that they are close to buying or that sending a particular email would elicit a good response. Don't forget that lead nurturing – and marketing in general – is constantly changing. You'll want to stay flexible and be ready to change your lead nurturing process as you experiment with new tactics and learn what works.

What are you doing to lessen the cycle from lead generation to conversion?


PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

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