Goal of All Marketing: Advocacy
Authentic advocacy is the goal for all marketing. Not awareness. Not customer satisfaction. Not even loyalty, if that term even exists any longer in a world of disposable brands and relationships.
If you can create a thriving community of people who are willing to freely and pro-actively advocate you, your product, your company to receptive audiences, you will be very successful.
Of course, advocacy is easier to create when you have a cool product like an iPod that people naturally want to tell others about. But you don't need to have a sexy new MP3 player to benefit from advocacy. In fact, nearly every company including B2B firms and yes, even small unknown software companies, can benefit from advocacy. Put simply, there are two keys to advocacy:
Needed: A Systematic Approach
For years, marketers have been aware of the value of activating their word of mouth (WOM) advocates. What's been missing is a systematic approach to mobilizing advocates that enables marketers to find advocates, mobilize them, and reliably track the business results of advoacy. This is exactly the breakthrough marketing and idea that Zuberance provides. We've created a methodology and set of on-demand software services that enable marketers to:
1. Identify and Qualify Your Advocates
Net Promoter (R) surveys are a way to start identifying and qualifying your advocates. Co-created by our business partner Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and loyalty guru Fred Reichheld, Net Promoter asks the "ultimate customer loyalty question": On a scale of 0-10, how likely would you be to be recommend our (company, product, service, brand) to others? "Promoters" rate themselves 9 or 10 (extremely likely to recommend) while "Detractors" rate themselves 0-6. The percentage difference between Promoters and Detractors is your Net Promoter Score (P-D=NPS.) Visit www.netpromoter.com for more info. While Net Promoter is a simple and powerful metric, not all Promoters are equal. Some Promoters have greater influence than others over purchase decisions and perceptions and are more willing to pro-actively influence others. So you need to go beyond a Net Promoter survey to identify and qualify your advocates. The Zuberance software product identifies and qualifies your advocates for you, integrating survey techniques, web analytics, and data analysis.
2. Mobilize Your Advocates
By now, everyone is familiar with "Tell A Friend" forms and referral programs that pay or provide perks for referring prospects. As my teenage daughter would say (now say this with a teenage smerk on your face:) "Dad, that is soooo lame." If you are a high tech or B2B marketer, you also know how difficult it is to get customers to approve case studies. (I was reminded of this when I watched a marketing manager break down in tears of frustration on a recent Friday afternoon. After we talked her back in from the ledge, we assured her it wasn't her fault that she couldn't get a case study approved. ) Many B2B customers are simply unwilling or unable to participate in these testimonials. It's time for a more creative approach: link your pre-qualified advocates with prospects and others online in opt-in, permission-based dialogues that occur where, when, and how advocates and prospects want to have these conversations. The Zuberance system does this automatically and matches relevant advocates with audiences. ("We call this Match.Com meets WOM Marketing.")
3. Track Business Results
2-4-6-8, what do we advocate? Metrics! Metrics! Metrics! (We just love to crunch that data.) Word of Mouth metrics. That's the "Holy Grail of Marketing," isn't it? Or is the Holy Grail finding a hotel room in Manhattan with hot water and no carpet stains for under $600 a night? Anyway, here's how we track the business results of advocacy. When someone registers as an advocate on the Zuberance system, we track their advocacy activities (number of posts, number of interactions, number of leads generated, number of leads closed.) We also give you loads of community metrics (size, number, activities, influence, advocacy scores, etc.) all in a customizable dashboard with widgets. It's kind of like strapping an EKG to your advocates. Spooky, eh? No, it's metrics. And we love metrics.
If you're not mobilizing your advocates, you're not taking advantage of the world's most effective and inexpensive form of marketing. Creating and implemented a systematic approach to advocacy will fuel your growth and enhance your competitive advantage. So what are you waiting for?
When I first got into the demand generation business 10 years ago we were happy if a person accurately completed our form. A completed form equaled a lead. If the name was associated with a targeted company or carried an impressive title, we thought we had struck gold. We were all thrilled. When the boss passed us in the hall, we would be the first to say… "Guess who responded to our offer? Mr. Nifty from Big Target
Our happiness was often short lived, however, because once this precious lead was passed over to Sales it was anybody's guess if it would actually amount to anything. The expectation of Sales was that a lead was "someone ready to buy." The expectation of Marketing was a lead was "someone who, with nurturing, could possibly buy." Hence a rift was created. Sales wanted sales leads. Marketing was delivering marketing leads.
How do we bridge the gulf? By doing proper lead nurturing. By following these guiding concepts we can build relationships with prospects that stand a better chance of them buying-- and ultimately making for more satisfied and engaged customers in 2007 and beyond:
Step One: Understand where they are in the process
Every customer or prospect with whom you engage is at some point of the customer-purchase funnel. Recognition of the phases within the funnel is a good place to start. The phases include:
· Awareness
· Consideration
· Preference
· Purchase
· Loyalty
The challenge is to create a climate of true lead nurturing that aligns with this funnel and encourages a buying cycle. For each of our organizations this is slightly different. Working with Sales -- and directly with customers -- is the shortest route to finding out exactly what that funnel looks like from the buyer's perspective. It can be a very eye-opening experience.
Once we have identified the steps and roadblocks within each of the phases a customer has to go through to actually buy our products or services, we can begin to build the right communications scenario for delivery at the most optimal time. Typically this means a series of letters, emails, articles, buying tools and even webcasts timed across a sales cycle.
It is often the case that your target will need to "sell" the idea internally to others in his or her organization or even, in the case of a consumer, to someone else in their family. Arm them with the right tools. Entice and excite them with meaningful information that addresses their issues over time.
During the Consideration phase, the issue of cost savings often enters the decision-making process. That's a good time for sending an ROI calculator along with a case study. As they move towards the Preference phase, a competitive analysis would be ideal.
By taking the time to better understand customers' motivations and internal obstacles -- and their place in the funnel -- it can be much easier to move people forward toward a positive purchase decision.
Step Two: Develop and stick to a nurturing plan
Clients too often go to market without having a nurturing plan in place. Their expectation is that a mere ad will result in people knocking on their door immediately. We all know it takes eight to nine touches for people to actually "get" you. Your ability to have a continuing, integrated marketing approach -- whether you're a little guy or a big guy -- is where you'll make a real difference.
The key is thinking long term and making efforts to avoid the traditional trap: taking a so-called warm lead and entering them into the black hole of a Sales or Callback database, only to lose the personal connection by burying them in collateral.
A good nurturing plan should call for repeat, targeted outreach, making sure the customer sees a different side of you every time. Rather than just blanketing them with your latest white paper and walking away, think about what comes next. What knowledge do you want them to have or which change do you expect them to think about after having read the paper? Follow up with a handwritten letter or card. Do a small amount of tailored, digital printing to address a finite set of concerns or motivations. After they get their second card, keep in mind what you'd like them to be thinking at that next point in the process. And it may take some time. Even if you have to compress a sales cycle due to time or budget constraints remember there's no shortcut to reaching the bottom of the funnel.
Making it all work for you
Like any successful endeavor, the bottom line to a good nurturing effort is having a mindset that these campaigns are longer-term commitments. And remember you're not the only marketing voice out there. Many of us in the end are going after pretty finite markets filled with exhausted buyers being hit by the same competition over and over again. The key to succeeding is to have a better plan than anyone else's-- you'll stand a much better chance at landing Mr. Nifty, as well as connecting your Sales and Marketing teams in more meaningful ways than ever before.
Freda Byrne is an Account Exeuctive at Groove 11, Groove 11 is an experiential creative agency that helps clients develop the full emotional potential of their brands. The company provides strategy on branding, product launches, integrated marketing, and corporate identity, and draws on the award-winning talents of its teams to execute programs via event and trade show production, interactive media design, executive presentations, online advertising, and affinity Web sites to build truly comprehensive, novel and immersive brand experiences.
Clients include Cisco Systems, Diageo, Sun Microsystems, Flax Art & Design, Clinique, and the Napa Valley Vintners Association. Based in San Rafael, Calif., Groove 11 can be found online at www.groove11.com.
Linda Popky, L2M Associates
From the earliest recorded time through the Greek and Roman empires to the present, societies have looked to their exemplars—their leaders—to set the stage for how entities and individuals should act. It is the exemplars that provide the example for what is rewarded, what is tolerated, and what is punished. As human beings, we focus on behavior rather than pronouncements, knowing that actions really do speak louder than words.
As marketers, we run the risk of letting the leadership process happen haphazardly, or worse yet, of elevating the wrong exemplars. Instead, we must specifically decide who deserves to be elevated as our models. We need to be clear about which behaviors we want to emulate and what type of leadership we intend to endorse. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we don’t choose the right leaders, they will be chosen for us and we will then live with the consequences.
As marketing leaders, we need to take leadership positions on key issues that affect our area, our industries, our profession. We need to drive the responsible use of marketing techniques and technologies through our organizations and beyond. We need to ensure our organizations understand the strategic importance of marketing as a discipline to their success, and that they are aware of the critical impact a strong team of marketing talent (or lack thereof) may have on their future. To quote the Talmud, If not me, than whom? If not now, then when?
It’s easy to jump on a bandwagon, but harder to stand up for an issue that may not yet be mainstream, or may even actually be unpopular. We have the power to raise awareness and to create attention—that’s what we do so well. We need to do that early, rather than follow others’ leads. Today the buzz is around clean tech, climate change, sustainability. These are all noble and good causes, but they are not the only areas that need our attention. How can the discipline of marketing, with all its techniques and technology, programs and processes, drive the next big thing—rather than be driven by it?
A good mentor can not only open doors for a marketing employee, but can teach them how to navigate a complex organization, give them insights that would take years to develop on their own, or help them develop critical influence and negotiation skills. We have all been guided through the years by a series of mentors and leaders, some more than others. We need to ensure we are providing that same level of guidance—and more—for young professionals as they enter our sphere of influence. They may live in the world of Web 2.0, but we’ve survived the school of hard knocks. The experiences and expertise we can share are invaluable
New marketing techniques and technologies are introduced almost on a daily basis—some have even been highlighted in other entries in this blog. We need to be sure we understand the consequences of each of these tools that we are so ready to unleash to the world. How will they be used and how might they be misused? How can they be engaged to effect positive change, on a global as well as a local basis? When there are negative impacts, how do we mitigate them? What is our role and how do we embrace it?
Where is the Marketing Leadership? It is here, within each and every one of us, if we choose to take on the challenge. We are what, how and where we do marketing. We have met the future and it is us. How will we handle this responsibility?
Linda Popky is the President of L2M Associates, a Redwood City, California-based strategic marketing company that helps organizations dramatically improve their return on investment on marketing programs, processes and people. Learn more about how to leverage your marketing investment by visiting her website at www.L2Massociates.com, or contacting her at linda@L2Massociates.com
ROI: Faced with a maturing technology industry, CEO's are demanding greater ROI on their marketing invesments.
Marketing Operations Emerges
As a result of these demands and others, many Silicon Valley CMOs have commissioned a marketing operations organization to tackle these challenges. Originally designated to create metrics and dashboards for accountability, leading companies are increasingly treating marketing operations as a key foundation to the marketing function.
"Marketing operations ensures marketing is run as a business," states a VP of Marketing Operations at a major Silicon Valley firm, "We strive to enable the marketing organization to be streamlined in day-to-day processes so they have time to think, focus on the customer and to innovate."(1)
In many business-to-business focused firms in the Silicon Valley, marketing operations is combined with the sales operation function to promote integration of the two groups. Although organizationally integrated, the purpose of marketing operations as we will describe in this article remains the same.
Introducing the 5Ts of Marketing Operations™
By approaching marketing operations across these dimensions, CMOs have an integrated approach to enable marketing worldwide. Let’s describe the 5Ts in more detail:
Total Strategy: This area involves strategy development in the product portfolio. It is not uncommon for large high-tech companies to have seventy-five or more products in their portfolios, some have hundreds. Managing investments and priorities across the portfolio is paramount.
Techniques & Processes: How should information flow most effectively across the marketing organization worldwide? How do we make decisions? What are our governance processes? What is our roadmap for marketing processes next year? in 3 years?Technology: How do we implement technology across the globe to enable effective customer dialog, demand generation and measurement? What are the business requirements for IT? How does technology support the marketing and sales process roadmap for the next 3 years?
Talent: How do we ensure our marketing personnel are trained and enabled to work with new marketing technologies and processes? How can we enable them to make the right decisions based on analytics and campaign scorecards?
The Future of Marketing and the 5Ts
The 5Ts have a deep and significant impact on customer relationships. For example, by implementing integrated technology for demand generation and customer database access, regional marketing personnel can now build innovative campaigns on top of a marketing operations infrastructure. By tracking the success of a campaign, companies will realize better customer targeting and ROI; they learn from prior successes and failures.
The 5Ts add a critical foundation to the marketing function enabling marketing operations to support Silicon Valley CMOs to tackling contemporary challenges and to integrate with sales operations. It is dramatically transforming the marketing function and is changing how marketing will be conducted in the future.
© 2007 Exponential Edge Inc., All Rights Reserved
The Author: Adrian Carol Ott is CEO of Exponential Edge Inc, http://www.exponentialedge.com/ a strategy consultancy that assists global corporations to grow and innovate through market assessment, go-to-market planning, and strategic partnering. She also serves as Chair of the Harvard Business School N. California Alumni Marketing and Sales Roundtable. The Roundtable is a forum that explores issues and trends faced by senior executives in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area Business Community.
I disagree with the premise that there are only two types: winners and losers. All too often, we as professionals tend to overlook the basic concept we learned in childhood, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I have found that some of my best referrals have come from vendors and those competitors with whom I maintain a sense of "we're in this together," rather than "we're out to beat each other to the top."
Mark Cavender is Founder and Managing Director of Chasm Institute. An accomplished teacher and workshop leader, he also serves as a senior instructor. With over 15 years of experience in enterprise software, Mark has a unique blend of strategic and tactical marketing skills coupled with a strong background in software sales.
Michael T. Eckhardt, Managing Director of Chasm Institute LLC, is a veteran of Hewlett-Packard, PepsiCo Inc., and Price Waterhouse. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Wall Street Journal Award Winner, Michael is a recognized expert in delivering market strategy workshops for high-tech executives and product teams.We have the perfect client test case
This client provides litigation support services to Bay Area law firms. The target audience for its enewsletter is primarily paralegals and documentation managers working in high-pressure law firms. Both male and female, aged 25-55, they are very organized and professional. But sometimes, it seems that no matter how good they are, they aren’t as good as the lawyers they serve. Many complain that they feel like they’re always at the bottom of the hill when the crap rolls down. Plus everyone’s always in a hurry. The stress is almost too much too take.
And while many of them say they have no time to read our client's enewsletters no matter valuable the information, they continue to sign up. The enewsletter, sent quarterly to 2,000 people, scores an amazing 35% open rate, of which 15% click through. So we know somehow these paralegals MAKE time for good information. And we're betting a good, juicy story will be exactly what we need to cut through the marketing clutter and increase the number of subscribers so that we can justify increasing frequency.
Think Boston Legal with a twist
See, there’s this paralegal whose work is never good enough for her boss. And there’s office romance. And intrigue. And
The research is already done
Over the last year we've written dozens of case studies from interviews with paralegals and the client's account managers. We know what goes on in the law firms. When my senior writer and I pooled our notes, I realized we had a great story platform. Now all we have to do is convince our client this is a good idea. That might not be easy.
"You've spent so much time helping us transition from our folksy logo to a more sophisticated image. How will running a fictional serial in our newsletter support our new marketing direction?" asks the client.
Good point. This isn't something one of the big national firms would do. 
But we have a hunch that paralegals will be grateful for a little entertainment and levity in their high-pressure, buttoned-up jobs. As they read the stories, they'll know that San Francisco Legal feels their pain and understands the pressure they're under. Plus it will get their newsletter opened and read, building a loyal audience.
"But what about ROI?"
Well, we know the audience is so limited in what they can say and do in their profession, they crave a little entertainment and notice anything out of the ordinary. For example, a colorful "Going Green" flyer adorned with cute little tree frogs cost $800 to produce and brought in $2,000 worth of new business for the client. And an exhibit graphic we produced starring a sressed-out paralegal was a showstopper. Plus, the cost of producing content for the enewsletter won't go up since both of c3PR's senior writers are closet novelists who will jump at the chance to get paid to practice their passion. They'll make sure every story's just outrageous enough to be a little beyond believable so no one's offended. And we'll provide open, read, click-thru, forward-to-a-friend and new subscriber statistics to track the results of every issue.
Mar Junge is the principal of c3PR and a closet novelist. Her first novel for the Young Adult market, Gypspy Blood, has been accepted as one of five to be reviewed by Author Barbara Shoup at the Pacific Coast Children's Writers Workshop in August. (But she's not quitting her day job just yet.) We'll know by mid June whether the client will let us test this idea in their enewsletter. If you'd like to read the first exciting installment, email mar@c3pr.com and she'll send you the link. If this client doesn't go for it, maybe we'll launch our own enewsletter telling stories about what really goes on in a P.R. firm. Think it would be juicier than what goes on in a law firm? If you're a fiction writer too, maybe this can be a group effort!
Get Naked
So how can we reach them? Marketing 101 has told us to focus our efforts on our key target audience. Yet we don’t know who they are, or where they are, or even what management titles to track down.
But when the police (real or virtual) want to catch the bad guys, and they don’t know where they are, or what name they are using nowadays, what do they do? They put out the honey pots and attract the bears instead of chasing them all over the woods. They don’t know which honey pot will work, so they make a variety of them and spread them around in the areas where the bears are purported to exist, and they wait. (Did they learn this trick from the porno guys themselves?)
So what if we made a great honey pot on the internet and waited for them to come to us? Not enough. You can’t just put out the pot - you have to have some sweet smelling honey too. You need to offer them something tasty… some online resources, books, information, advice, testimonials, references or articles. You may even have to dish it up in different spoonful sizes, because when you target the little bears, the big bears might show up too! And suddenly you have corporate accounts that were looking for your niche services to solve a problem in their department or division as well.
The internet forest is very large, and even with pay per lick (I mean click), many will not find you. So what if you put out some more honey pots? Some with just basic information to interest them and point them to my main honey pot? Some with a taste of the honey to keep them going? Some that are more personal so they may want to meet me and have me show them the route to the honey and the process for making it? And you tell the ranger guides (search engines) about these honey pots too, in case that is all they have to offer some wandering bears picnicking in that neck of the woods?
Of course you will discover it is real work putting out all these little honey pots, and the bigger honey people will loose interest as it takes too many corporate meetings to plan them all and they want to go home at 6 pm. But you are an entrepreneur like many of your prospective clients, so you put out a honey pot every time you can find a spot and some time and some spare honey to taste. For example, I have a number of personal websites, as well as one for every eBook I have published, and many others pointing to our main www.BrighterNaming.com site.
And you can also find me on LinkedIn, MySpace, UC Extension, etc., all with a pointer to the main honey pot.
When you have honey pots spread all over the internet, you will never again sing:
Technology vendors are promoting solutions, rather than products, to their enterprise customers. Most do so as a reaction to commoditization and falling margins. A few, as a proactive step to differentiate and increase the value they deliver. Of course, other industries and consumer-oriented companies are turning to solutions too. (Just look at Wells Fargo’s new Home Improvement Program, designed to combat the commoditization of equity financing.) Many principles of successful solutions are common across industries, but we’ll address the problem children first: Most technology-based “solutions” are no more than re-positioned products with a services pitch tacked on. Many others start with lofty ideas, then fall down in execution.
What’s a Solution?
Sales and marketing people frequently use the words “solution” and “product” interchangeably, obscuring (intentionally?) a very real distinction. Products supply a specific set of functionality. Solutions address customers’ broader objectives – ones that often have a direct impact on business success. That means solutions are more complex, and require a larger investment and broader skill-set to take to market, deploy, and operate.
| | Product | Solution |
| Composition | One or more products or services | Integrated blend of products, services, and expertise |
| Type of Need Addressed | Specific requirement - the need to perform a particular task | Strategic imperative – the driver that causes the customer to allocate budget |
| Success Factors to Achieving Benefits | - Rich feature set - Reliable performance - Simple, low-cost maintenance | - Integration (not joint marketing) among components - Clearly defined roles among solution participants - Broad changes in buyer organizations’ behavior |
Differentiating between products and solutions
Roles in the Solution Stack
To assess realistically the required investment and likely returns of offering a solution, companies must first determine what role they would play within a solution ecosystem. A company's role within the solution stack determines key decisions about product development, sales capabilities, and alliance strategy. The participants in a complete solution are:
The orchestration role is the most alluring. To execute it successfully, however, requires significant investment and a broad set of competencies, so its also the riskiest. While its common for a single company to play more than one role, solutions invariably involve inter-company collaboration.
Achieving Success with Solutions
When an organization decides to orchestrate a solution, it must be ready to commit resources from multiple disciplines. Ignoring any one area almost certainly means the solution will fail to reach its full potential for revenue and account penetration.
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