How To Fix Marketing
I'd like to pick up where I left off in a previous column. How can marketing people start getting more respect from the software companies they work for?
Engineers can point to the product and say they created that. Salespeople can point to their customers and say they landed them. So what can the marketers point to?
For the most successful companies, marketers steal the thunder from salespeople and claim the customers as theirs! Microsoft, Dell, Coke, GE, and almost every large successful company started out with salespeople taking the credit for customers (rightfully so) and then as consumers become more aware of their offerings the lion share of the credit shifted to marketers (also rightfully so).
This shift is not as complete for complex products such as business software since they require more guidance from a salesperson, but the shift still occurs. So how should marketers kick-start the process?
The answer: understand that lead generation is job#1 and until you have that down to a science, your input on marketing's other responsibilities will be undervalued. In that vein, analyze your lead generation process. Are you constantly improving your website's ability to convert visitors into leads? Do you know the referring channel of every single lead? How do you cultivate your leads? At what point are leads being sent to salespeople? Evaluate every ad dollar that you spend - print, online, tradeshow, you name it - to determine how well (volume and cost per lead) it is generating leads for you.
Doing all of this is very much a quantitative, methodical, iterative process, not so much a creative one. Are you up to the challenge?
Engineers can point to the product and say they created that. Salespeople can point to their customers and say they landed them. So what can the marketers point to?
For the most successful companies, marketers steal the thunder from salespeople and claim the customers as theirs! Microsoft, Dell, Coke, GE, and almost every large successful company started out with salespeople taking the credit for customers (rightfully so) and then as consumers become more aware of their offerings the lion share of the credit shifted to marketers (also rightfully so).
This shift is not as complete for complex products such as business software since they require more guidance from a salesperson, but the shift still occurs. So how should marketers kick-start the process?
The answer: understand that lead generation is job#1 and until you have that down to a science, your input on marketing's other responsibilities will be undervalued. In that vein, analyze your lead generation process. Are you constantly improving your website's ability to convert visitors into leads? Do you know the referring channel of every single lead? How do you cultivate your leads? At what point are leads being sent to salespeople? Evaluate every ad dollar that you spend - print, online, tradeshow, you name it - to determine how well (volume and cost per lead) it is generating leads for you.
Doing all of this is very much a quantitative, methodical, iterative process, not so much a creative one. Are you up to the challenge?
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