Who Is Your CMO? | Bellwether Fall 2015 by Blytheco

Prepared for the ever-changing climate of marketing Nose for leads

Volume 6, Fall 2015

Who is your CMO?

Telling a story & educating clients Heart for customer relationships Firm grip on analytics Strong grasp of the sales process Always developing campaigns

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Fall 2015

Do You Speak the Same Language as Your CMO?

SECTIONS

2016 Marketing Predictions

Marketing Automation Spurs Creativity

Letter from the Editor

Sales and Marketing

Leadership

Corporate Finance

Cover Story

Industry News

Human Resources

Technology

Hot New Tools in Digital Marketing

5 Essential Steps of Promotion Planning

CRM vs. Marketing Automation: Does Your Business Need Both?

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one who takes initiative or leadership Fall 2015 | Bellwether

}

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LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR

BELLWETHER

Volume 6, Fall 2015 www.blytheco.com www.bellwethermagazine.com EDITOR

Apryl Hanson COPY EDITOR

Denise Renee Phinn ART DIRECTORS

Gary Dahl Jennifer Vo ADVERTISING SALES

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www.bellwethermagazine.com Or contact Denise Renee Phinn, (949) 583-9500, Extension 2209 dphinn@blytheco.com Bellwether Magazine is published by Blytheco with principal offices at: 23161 Mill Creek Dr., Suite 200 Laguna Hills, CA 92653 If you wish to be removed from the mailing list or to add names to the mailing list, send your request, including name, business name, and mailing address to the above address or to dphinn@blytheco.com This is a copyrighted publication and all articles herein are covered by this copyright. Any use of the content for commercial reasons or other form or reproduction of material herein is strictly prohibited without prior, written approval of Bellwether Magazine.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

WEB

CLOU

Need Approvals?

Spend Management Workflow Automation 800.725.4408

MOBILE

Purchase Requests / AP Invoices Expense Reports / Timesheets

Requisition & Procurement

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Travel & Expense

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SALES&MARKETING

Marketing

Automation

Spurs Creativity by Bridget Gleason

he marketing field is constantly changing and evolving along with technology. What results from this evolution are some really cool tools and creative avenues to get our marketing messages out to the world (or a strategically-targeted group of leads). Marketers want to spend time deciding which tools to use and what are the best practices to utilize them. We want to create campaigns, design marketing messages that resonate, generate quality leads, and build our company’s brand. But just like the other departments in a business, there are housekeeping issues that must be handled. More importantly, there is ROI to calculate to justify the man-hours and money being invested into the marketing practice. Nothing halts right-brain activity faster than having to deal with those types of tasks.

Marketing Automation solutions are the perfect counterpart to the right-brained side of the marketing machine. We adopted this digital marketing era and along with it came tools to handle many of the tedious and time consuming activities that would interrupt the creative flow. In today’s marketing environment, we are able to blend both sides of the brain in order to see results from our marketing efforts. Marketing Automation is driving the left-brain activities of today’s marketers. It supplies us with the data to define customers and how we want to market to them. We can create, test, and learn from a variety of marketing strategies because we have full visibility of result-driven analytics. This drives the creation of clear strategy, leaving more time for the creative brains to focus on ingenious ways to leverage Marketing Automation functionalities to capture customer attention.

A well-integrated solution will help calculate ROI for a campaign and overall marketing spend, and will drill all the way down to dollars spent to capture a particular customer. Automated programs save time and remove human error from processes. You don’t have to worry that leads aren’t being nurtured or that trigger emails aren’t going out to current clients; you ensure that no opportunity slips through the cracks. A Marketing Automation solution replaces more than just your email marketing program, consolidating many of the tools you use now onto one easy-to-use dashboard. No more juggling tools: you can close the three browser tabs you had to open to check the results of the call-to-action you implemented into a campaign. This also means all of your data from these tools is compiled into one area. Quicker access to quality data means more time to come up with creative ways to reach your target markets, generate leads, and send qualified opportunities off to your sales team.

About the Author Bridget Gleason is the Marketing Specialist at Blytheco. Bridget has a passion for the ever changing digital marketing era and writing about it. Her marketing and technology experience has spanned through a wide variety of industries, from sports to finance, real estate and software solutions.

Bellwether | Fall 2015

Campaign Management Blogging Tools File Hosting Lead Management Lead Scoring Prospect Segmentation Email Marketing Website Integration Google Analytics Integration Adwords Integration Landing Pages Tool Web Forms Social Media Tools SEO Tools & Analytics Reporting & Analytics Ease of Use 3rd Party Integration

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USING

MOBILE

&SURVEYS

TO DRIVE CUSTOMER INSIGHTS & INFORM YOUR MARKETING. by Paul Ziliak

o know your customer is to love your customer. The problem is that you probably don’t know your customer nearly as well as you think you do. That fact is costing you money as you read this line. The great news is that if you empower your sales people with a bit of mobile technology for market research, you’ll not only be able to create greater loyalty, you’ll also be able to gain more market share.

you’ve moved them through your pipeline from lead to customer, how much time and effort do you and your sales team dedicate to really learning and understanding your customer’s ongoing needs and behaviors?

How? The answer can be found in using surveys combined with the unique capabilities of smart phones such as push notifications, alerts, photo enablement, GPS and so on.

Winning new customers—especially in the B2B world - requires a significant investment. Losing hard-won customer relationships is doubly expensive. Not only must you replace the lost customer revenue, but you now also have to deal with the potential fallout of your reputation, especially if you lost those customers to a competitor.

The key to effective B2B marketing is creating relevant and informative content for your target customer. But once 10

Bellwether | Fall 2015

SALES&MARKETING Many companies have data-rich enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and/or customer relationship (CRM) systems brimming with information. By leveraging a modern survey application tied into your backend systems, your sales team can become the conduit to an unbelievably high level of understanding of your customers and their behaviors. This will allow you to stand out from your competitors in all new ways.

Here are some things to consider about survey apps:

Surveys should be integrated with your ERP or CRM system.

enablement—giving you eyes and ears on the street to ensure that the environment your products are being sold into - and from - meets your quality standards. If your customer keeps your products stocked on the highest shelves - out of reach of the retail customer or the warehouse personnel responsible for picking orders - then you could get overlooked. Why not have your sales rep tour the store / warehouse and attach a photo to a survey question about the physical accessibility of your goods?

Use a smart phone.

Great surveys can be designed to capture any information you want—including non-financial or non-transactional information. With your survey integrated to your back office systems, you’ll be able to generate meaningful reports that will show the correlation between desired behaviors and sales results.

The smart phone is the ultimate business tool because it can do everything (including the ability to make phone calls) and at the least cost. Surveys as web apps can be effective too, but it’s best if it can also utilize the capabilities of a mobile device. With a properly flexible survey app, you can push customer-based surveys to your smart phones, unleashing the power of characteristics like GPS, camera, alerts and so on.

Create a profile of your ideal customer.

Make surveys part of your culture.

Your sales reps in the field should know what an ideal customer looks like. Are they participating in your promotions? Do they meet your branding standards? Are they cross-selling and up-selling your products? How does their behavior and performance compare to customers of a similar profile? (For instance, a big box customer should not be compared to a small distributor customer—they should be compared to another big box customer.)

Get buy-in from your sales reps about the kinds of questions you should be asking. Then make surveys a required part of your sales process. This isn’t to say that every question needs to be asked of every customer on each encounter, but the right survey app will allow you to indicate what is required and how frequently. If you make surveys part of your DNA, you will have the most informed sales team in your industry.

Make sure sales reps understand desired behavior changes.

Provide your customer with the survey app too.

Once you’ve created a profile of the ideal customer, your sales reps should have specific target behaviors they should be trying to modify in order to move each customer toward the ideal. For instance—does this customer include your brand or offerings on their website, or in their store window display?

It’s one thing to have your sales reps answering questions based on their observations, but a great survey app with mobile and push notifications can provide a great means to gently coax information from your customers - and engender uncommon loyalty.

A picture tells a thousand words.

xkzero believes that the most successful sales people are confident, informed and equipped with the best technology.

A challenge in wholesale distribution is that even when you have a distributed or a remote sales force, as an executive, you only have so much ability to physically see or inspect your customers, especially on any kind of regular basis. A good survey app will allow for photo

Consider the power of surveys as you create your next marketing plan. What you learn might surprise you, and the increased profits and market share will have you making surveys a new part of your business DNA.

About the Author Paul Ziliak is co-founder of xkzero. xkzero is the leading provider of flexible mobile sales and delivery apps, optimized for Sage ERP and other leading business management solutions. xkzero products include iSales 100 and xkzero Mobile Commerce - a sales and delivery automation solution with enterprise class survey capabilities built to work with your smart phone and your back office system. Learn more at www.Blytheco.com/xkzero.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

How to Clear the Three Bottlenecks in SMB Marketing and Get Your Data Flowing by Joni Girardi

o one has to tell the marketing people at any SMB that the game has changed in the last few years. Data analysis has surged. Just about every competitor has embraced it, forcing even the laggards to pay attention.

Bellwether | Fall 2015

SALES&MARKETING The problem now is getting access to the data you want as quickly as possible so that you can make real-time, bottom-line impacting decisions. The only way to accomplish that effectively is by clearing three main bottlenecks.

Bottleneck #1: Reports can’t be modified as fast as your needs change. Most SMB marketing staffs lack a dedicated report whiz. You think you see an opportunity, but first you want to see the data. You say, “Let’s see if Ken can add these questions today,” knowing that Ken is already buried in other work. Your opportunity may fly away as you wait. Even when Ken makes the change in time, it’s just a make-do. Perhaps Ken didn’t quite get the question, or he didn’t have time to polish it up the way you’d like. Every time you run the report, the report’s tiny glitches exact another tiny tax on your patience.

your team is asking a critical question and you’re thinking. “If only I had that data in my hands right now!”

The solution: a reporting system that stands ready to

serve wherever you are and lets you answer any question on the spot. Even if your reports aren’t configured to answer a particular question, you just reshuffle the data. It’s all right there on your desktop, your tablet, or your smartphone.

Bottleneck #3: Lots of questions, but you don’t know where to start. What new segments and campaigns have you not dared to dream of? The first two bottlenecks create a third: you don’t even have time to think about what else your data could show you. What if you asked Question A in a slightly different way? What if we tried to correlate Group A’s cycle with Region F’s growth? You don’t dare try. You know how difficult it is just to change a report. Asking new questions—much less new questions in rapid succession as you think of them—just breeds more frustration.

When you wish you could have reports that answered your questions, you’re kindly reminded that you’ve pushed Excel as far as you know how to. You’re forced to make do with what you have.

The solution: A tool that lets you fly through your

The solution: Deploy a business intelligence system designed from the start for business users. The system should be easy-to-use for the average business user. Even better, it would come with a deep library of ready-made templates and typical metrics. You could make a move while the opportunity is ripe, and you could let Ken do his higher value work.

These three bottlenecks may all be part of life, like traffic congestion, rude people, and just plain too much to do every day. But you really do have options.

Bottleneck #2: The office is where the data is, and you’re tethered. When you go on the road or even down the hall, perhaps you lug printed reports. It’s nice to have them on hand—until you’re hit by surprise. Perhaps someone raises a question and, oops, you don’t have the one crucial report. Or worse, you need to generate a totally new or a customized report. The CEO, your top customer, or a manager on

questions and answers as you think—a method called data discovery. The key to data discovery is fast and fluid questions and answers with no interruptions.

The leading option is DataSelf Analytics. It’s a mature solution that has combined best of breed components into one complete and polished solution. Tableau, top rated on the Gartner Magic Quadrant the last three years, is the gold standard for easy to use reporting and data discovery. Tableau feeds from DataSelf’s backend components, which send it data at the speed and volume that fast evolving questions require. For more information, go to Dataself.com. Be sure to watch our video.

About the Author Joni Girardi is the founder and CEO of DataSelf Corp. He is an innovative leader in business intelligence and analytics solutions for SMBs. Connect with him on Linkedin at linkedIn.com/in/jonigirardi/.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

Essential Steps of Promotion Planning:

Creating Success Between the CMO & CFO

magine a corporate world where budgets were on key, sales and financial advisors worked together seamlessly, and ROI always exceeded expectations. If this perfect picture fits the image of your company, then the steps that follow will sound all too familiar. For most businesses, communication between CMOs and CFOs isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always as crystal clear. Finding a balance between sales and financial teams is much simpler when structure is instated. The goal of a CMO may be to forecast return on investment for solely marketing investments, while the CFO must balance marketing and promotions with other types of spending from multiple departments. Often times, a CMO will over-project the return on marketing investments, causing a dramatic effect on the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s budget. By following five important steps, CMOs can more accurately plan for upcoming promotions and provide CFOs with more accurate information about the budget and the expected return on investment.

Bellwether | Fall 2015

SALES&MARKETING 1. Determine Your Marketing Budget The first step in effective promotion planning is determining the lifetime value of a customer. Evaluating the total revenue a company plans to receive from a customer relationship will help reveal a reasonable marketing budget. CMOs must also estimate the cost to complete a promotional campaign, along with any other planned promotional efforts. Conclude how much your company can and should put towards marketing efforts, which will ultimately result in more leads. The marketing budget is inherently tied to the value of each new customer.

2. Identify Possible Marketing Channels When it comes to marketing channels, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no one-sizefits-all. Each marketing team must evaluate all possible channels for a valuable outcome. Most leads will not be generated from a single exposure, but may need to see the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marketing materials numerous times in order to take the additional step of clicking a link, submitting an inquiry or taking other additional and desired steps. Naturally, the best step would be for the CMO to review cost-effective solutions and choose a combination of channels that are catered to your industry.

3. Forecast ROI for Each Marketing Channel At this point, you and your team can break down each channel using former data and analytics to predict an accurate ROI for all methods. Certain analytical tools can reveal click-through rates, conversion rates, and more. A simple way to compare ROI is by graphing each channel side-by-side. By reviewing past performance and conversion rates of promotions, in conjunction with current efforts, a close estimate for return on investment can be generated.

4. Prioritize Channels to Invest in First After identifying the best channels, the CMO can then decide which options will produce the fastest results and which will generate the highest return on investment. Some will produce immediate leads, and others may be more effective at creating interest that will later convert into leads, then into sales. Those marketing channels that have

the earliest initial response as well as the highest return on investment should be targeted first. In some cases, it may be wise for the CMO to drop marketing channels with low investment and return, so efforts can be placed on more productive channels.

5. Monitor Your Campaign Performance The role of a CMO does not stop at planning and executing a promotion or marketing plan. In addition to these roles, the CMO must also monitor the campaign performance using various analytical tools and metrics. Adjustments to ongoing promotions may be made to achieve improved results. The information that is collected from a specific promotion can then be used to predict results with future campaigns. Note, however, there are many factors that can influence results, such as timing of the delivery or execution, marketing messaging, the time of day or week of the promotion, and more. Monitoring campaign performance is critical to helping the CMO make better decisions for enhanced results. Evaluation is also beneficial to develop more realistic expectations regarding return on investment for each channel. CFOs may be responsible for providing funds for various marketing campaigns and promotions, but CMOs are responsible for generating results from different efforts. The two individuals can work together to improve productivity of the company while keeping costs as low as possible. While cost of campaigns and results are important to consider, the return on investment is a more accurate indicator of the effectiveness of a campaign. Ultimately, marketing efforts are highly effective in the scope of company profitability and overall lead generation.

Following these simple steps will provide structure and improve the communication between CMOs and CFOs. Both departments play a key role in achieving company goals when working as a team. As CMOs present more accurate figures to CFOs for budgeting and planning, the profit margin will undoubtedly increase at an impressive rate.

About the Author Jason Averill is the Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Avercast, LLC Supply Chain Software. He is an expert in supply chain management with 20 years experience in overseeing global sales, marketing initiatives, and product development. Learn more about the most comprehensive supply chain software at www.blytheco.com/avercast.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

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Field Service Management LinkedIn Groups

Every Field Service CMO Should Join by Joanna Rotter

rying to market a business can be stressful and time consuming; just ask any CMO. You may not think of social media as a professional tool for critical, everyday engagement. LinkedIn, however, is becoming a central place to collaborate on industry topics such as service management, problem solving, and effective business and marketing best practices. Becoming an active LinkedIn member not only helps your business by making you look professional and engaged, but it also gives you plenty of additional resources and connections. Check out our list of top LinkedIn groups to join to see how you can benefit from the latest industry updates and contribute to conversations about marketing and business best practices, industry news, and technology.

Groups Covering Service Best Practices

Aberdeen Service Management Research • Created: February 10, 2009 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 448

Aly Pinder, senior research analyst for Aberdeen, says the lifeblood of Aberdeen’s research is to engage with the community of end-users: service managers, executives, and leaders in field service. Aberdeen’s Service Management Research LinkedIn group allows for peer-to-peer networking and provides an opportunity for readers to access Aberdeen’s content and research reports, which are shaped by conversations with real companies experiencing various levels of success.

Aberdeen Group’s Chief Service Officer Exchange • Created: June 11, 2009 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 161

Bellwether | Fall 2015

Aberdeen’s Chief Service Officer Exchange is a subgroup of the Aberdeen Service Management Research group, but is only open to end-users (no vendors allowed). According to Aly, the group offers a chance for organizations to collaborate without the interference of outside vendors. Service professionals are assured that the questions they have or posts they post will only be answered or read by other professionals and service executive officers who know their situation and have experienced similar problems.

Field Service Society • Created: February 16, 2009 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 8,189

The main goal of the Field Service Society group is to connect field service professionals to share and discuss thoughts, knowledge, ideas, and trends, like Mobility, Contract, Asset and Resource Management, M2M, etc. It’s a great place to voice your thoughts on new trends in the field and learn from other professionals all over the world.

Field Technologies Online • Created: July 14, 2009 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 1,302

Field Technologies’ magazine and website provide service, transportation, and public works professionals with information on technologies including field service software, mobile computing hardware, fleet management, and M2M to optimize field workers, service, and assets. The LinkedIn group is a great place to consolidate all that information in one place.

LEADERSHIP 5|

• Created: December 4, 2008 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 5,377 Service Management 2.0 has a direct impact on your organization’s ability to grow new customers and network within the field service sector. It’s a discussion forum that helps service managers extend their list of contacts and connect with consultants, equipment and solutions suppliers, fellow service directors, logistics managers, etc.

The Service Council (TSC) started as a LinkedIn business group nearly six years ago with the goal to create a virtual networking environment in which service and customer management executives could gather, and sharpen their service strategies. It’s no surprise, then, that their LinkedIn group offers a wealth of ongoing learning and service best practices for service and customer management executives in a variety of industries.

Groups Covering ERP Solutions and Technology Mobile Solutions for Sage ERP and CRM • Created: January 23, 2014 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 65 Mobile Solutions was created by xkzero co-founder Paul Ziliak. Since xkzero is completely tied to ERP systems, mainly Sage, the group was designed to create a broader resource opportunity for Sage customers and partners. And since xkzero isn’t the only company creating mobile solutions for Sage, the group creates a community of ideas and education with a broad market appeal, says Paul.

The Network World group is best for service managers who have already implemented or are planning on implementing a mobile solution in their organization. It is a place for network and IT professionals to offer advice and discuss the networking news of the day. Join to learn and ask questions about the latest technology to help you make the best decisions for your mobile field workforce.

Mobile Solutions for Sage ERP and CRM • Created: December 26, 2007

Sage ERP Solutions • Created: April 30, 2010 • Type: Professional Group • Members: 4,786

The Service Council • Created: November 16, 2009 • Type: Networking Group • Members: 4,036

• Type: Professional Group • Members: 3,680

Service Management 2.0

Service companies need an ERP system in addition to a strong field service management system. The ideal situation is when the two can integrate. The Sage ERP Solutions group offers a place for Sage ERP users to exchange ideas and expand their network, as well as explore the software options that work best with their service management solution.

10|

Official NetSuite Community Network • Created: August 10, 2010 • Type: Corporate Group • Members: 6,690

The official NetSuite Community Network gives current and former NetSuite users, administrators, and employees a place to network, further their professional development, and remain part of the community. If you’re a NetSuite user, this is a great place to solicit marketing and business advice from other business professionals using NetSuite.

Get Involved in Your Industry Whether you build your own LinkedIn group to connect with influencers and other business professionals or you join an existing service community, joining the right LinkedIn groups could mean the difference between solving a problem for your customer and letting it slide. Become a visible thought leader and marketer in your field by spending a few minutes a day engaging with these relevant LinkedIn groups in your industry.

About the Author Joanna Rotter is the content marketing manager at MSI Data, a field service management software provider and creator of enterprise field service app, Service Pro.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

SPEND MANAGEMENT – Not Just For the Accounting Department by Rich Fowler

here’s a big misconception that spend management is just for the accounting department and that it isn’t much more than just capturing, approving, and retrieving an invoice.

20 Bellwether | Fall 2015

CORPORATEFINANCE In reality, spend management is so much bigger than that; it affects almost every department in a company. While the AP is part of the big picture, it is just one small piece of the spend management puzzle. The name of the game is interdepartmental dependency – we’re all connected! Spend management is not the same for everyone, but everyone can benefit from a spend management solution. How spend management affects your business depends on the type of company you are: big or small? Are you local? Centralized or decentralized? Franchised? Single or multiple locations? Consultant or salespeople? Every one of these functional roles has a spend management component. In many typical AP invoice transactions, it’s likely to be touched by several other people and departments inside the organization—for example: requestors, approvers, budget managers, purchasing/PO order creation, and receiving - before payment is made. Having an integrated spend management software solution in place can help manage the flow of information, easily adding supportive documentation along with the PO request. In the order or requesting process, an image or technical spec sheet can be uploaded. The receiving department can correctly verify orders or take photos of damaged items. When the PO arrives at AP, the invoice and all the supporting information is clean, organized, easily accessed and can be accurately viewed and properly acted upon. With the proper solution in place, expense reporting might actually become fun! For example: while you’re on your next business trip, you could forget about trying to save and categorize every receipt! Imagine being able to use your mobile phone to take a picture of your receipts and enter data about the transactions you’re making, directly into your expense report, on the spot, inside an app! No more lost receipts. No more trying to recall information days and weeks after the trip. All the necessary parties in the process have complete visibility into the report and supporting documentation. And it’s super easy to use.

Do you have project-based people in the field that need to enter their time? Do they require a client sign off, with project particulars that matter to billing and invoicing? With the WorkPlace Mobile App, include it with the timesheet entry. Is there an issue? Make a note right on the timesheet entry. The same concept applies as before now that you have the documentation, it’s always going to be there in a clean, clear format, viewable by anyone in the project approval process. As we’ve shown, spend management is critical across departments in an organization, in almost every situation. At Paramount, our entire solution supports and promotes interdepartmental dependency. With WorkPlace, we can help you get a handle on:

Requisitions Approvals Process PO Creation PO Receiving PO Invoice Matching Expense Reporting Credit Card Imports Invoices and Check Requests Vendor Approvals And more… Ease of capture and entry, interdepartmental dependency, and a clean, clear workflow all work together to make organizations more efficient, less paper-intensive, and still compliant with all the regulations needed in their particular space. Remember, spend management touches every one of us, and every one of us has a stake in the spend management processes of our organization.

About the Author

Rich Fowler is a 15 year veteran of procurement software, with experience in multiple industries. Rich has been involved with procurement software as an Independent Software Vendor, a customer, and with a major ERP software manufacturer. He is the Sage Channel Manager at Paramount Technologies.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

Do You Speak the Same Language as

Your CMO?

WAYS TO BRIDGE THE COMMUNICATION GAP BETWEEN FINANCE AND MARKETING by Scanco

f it feels as though sometimes you are speaking a separate language from those on your leadership team, you are not alone. “Butting heads,” “going in opposite directions,” “being on different pages”, and “speaking different languages” are all common phrases associated with the relationships among those of the C-level suite. For the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in particular, it can seem as though their roles are the complete opposite, leading to increased tension within the C-level suite. 22 Bellwether | Fall 2015

CORPORATEFINANCE Even if you and your CMO are not butting heads, it can still be challenging to understand where the other is coming from in their strategies for business improvement. While your focus is primarily on the financial state of your company and telling its financial story in the best way possible, the CMO is more concerned with the marketing aspects of the company and generating more customers. At first glance, these responsibilities may seem like polar opposites, but if you take a closer look, you will see that you and your CMO are merely working from different sides of the same equation.

Operational Linguistics: Why the Study of Roles is Important in the CFO-CMO Relationship In order to effectively manage your company well, you and your CMO need to be on the same page and learn to speak the same language. Part of mastering this requires you to understand the unique responsibilities required of each role, as well as the ways in which your roles support the other. As the CFO for your company, it is your job to manage and oversee all financial aspects of the company. This includes reviewing annual budgets, creating financial projections for new business ventures, and maintaining the overall financial stability of the operation. The CMO, on the other hand, is responsible for managing and overseeing the marketing activities within the company. This includes leading sales management, performing market research, creating effective marketing communications, and brainstorming new ways to engage prospects and win over new leads. Each role supports the other. How can you project the costs of new business ventures if you are not bringing in new leads? If there are no customers, there will be no company finances to manage. Without financial support, there is no way to create and distribute marketing collateral with which to bring in new business. As you can see, one does not work without the other, so instead of working against each other, it is time to start working together in the true nature of the CFO-CMO relationship.

Eliminating Communication Barriers between the CFO and CMO With the right strategy, you can begin to speak the same language as your CMO and work together for the overall improvement of the business. Take a look at how CFOs and CMOs can bridge the differences in their relationship and start speaking the same language:

Take the time to see things from the other’s perspective. Sitting down and

discussing the “why” behind the “what” can change the way you react to your CMO’s strategies and vice-versa. Sure, you have seen their plans for new marketing activities on paper, but do you understand their logic behind the plan? By taking the time to meet and discuss the “why’s,” you can work together on creating the best “how’s.”

Incorporate metrics in both finance and marketing. Becoming more metrics-based can

Use modern-day technology. In order to

help take your relationship to the next level. It can help the marketing department understand the unique relationship between the work they do and the overall impact it has on the company’s finances.

effectively master each other’s unique business language, you need to be in constant communication. Without practice, you will never understand what the other is trying to say. Mobile devices and mobile business apps can boost collaboration and encourage informationsharing between the CFO and CMO. You can receive important business updates in real-time and communicate on the best way to address issues from each perspective. Adopting mobile technology into your daily life is the most surefire way to bridge the communication gap between finance and marketing.

Here at Scanco, we believe that CFOs and CMOs need to have access to all business information in order to make effective decisions for the company. That is why we have dedicated so much of our business to mobile applications. We believe that access to mobile technology bridges the gap between departments and encourages constant communication between executives. Whether you need warehouse data or real-time sales information, you can have all of it and more with Scanco’s Sage 100 mobile apps. Contact Scanco at (330) 645-9959 to learn how you can start using technology to bridge the language barrier within your C-level suite.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

2016 MARKETING

PREDICTIONS by Apryl Hanson

hile the title of this article hints at potentially making a grand statement about the state of marketing in the coming year, I think it is absolutely impossible to have one unified prediction for what will happen in terms of marketing for 2016 that will be the one-size-fits-all. In my role at Blytheco, I am constantly working with and talking to customers across the country. It gives me a great perspective to note that there seem to be two clear paths that organizations could be on with regards to marketing. Based on that, the marketing prediction which would impact your business in 2016 varies.

26 Bellwether | Fall 2015

COVERSTORY

These two categories are distinguished, not necessarily by the size of organization or the amount of revenue that you make, but by your company’s aptitude to adapt new technology in the area of marketing over the last few years.

There are three areas in technology where we are seeing extreme growth: • Customer relationship management software • Business analytics and reporting • Marketing automation Marketing automation has been developing as a new field in the past 5-10 years and some companies have been early adopters of that technology and have continued to evolve and change. If this sounds like you, we will call you a marketing evangelist and your market predictions will follow that track. If you have yet to adopt marketing automation and are still using various methods and software to track your efforts, we will call you a marketing tactician and so you should pay close attention to those predictions, as they will pertain to you. Continued on next page

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

Marketing EVANGELIST If you are a marketing evangelist, you love technology and visibility into your results! You have been implementing new tools to reach your customers for the last couple of years. So these 2016 market predictions are for you:

PRECISION 2016 will be the year you find precision with all of your tools. When you build your marketing calendar this year, you will be looking to unify messages and deliver them on multiple platforms for maximum impact. This means that when you have campaigns, you will amplify them using email, web, blog, social and other more traditional forms of marketing to magnify your message.

TAKING STORIES TO THE NEXT LEVEL In 2015, the prediction was that the story would become the new wave of translating what you have to offer to the customer. 2016 will be taking the story to the next level as a brand off of the precision of your message. You will now find more ways to share your brand’s story and the relevant customer stories with others in multiple ways. More visual representations of how you solve a customer’s pain in short videos, interactive PDFs and conversations over social media will be the new wave. This includes ways for the customer to calculate and translate your message into their own savings with tools that help them figure out what they could be saving or what they are missing by not doing business with you.

USING WHAT YOU’VE BUILT You have spent the past few years really focusing on content creation. In doing so, you have built up a library of tools that

28 Bellwether | Fall 2015

you have used in a variety of campaigns. In 2016, you will be smart about reviewing your compilation and repurposing it into chapters and collections of information. We will see more content reused in different ways and a variety of forms as marketers in this group get solid in evangelizing what they have to offer by not creating everything from scratch.

MARKETING MEETS TECHNOLOGY Marketing will become an influencer in technology purchases inside the organization. It has been predicted by Gartner that the CMO will drive technology purchases to the tune of $17.5B by 2017. With all of that drive in technology, it is time for you to get cozy with your IT team. In 2016, the IT and Marketing teams will become closer in helping map out solutions across the business that will make it easier for customers to interact with your brand AND for you to track the entire lifecycle of the customer.

VISIBILITY INTO YOUR BUYERS’ HABITS Storyboarding will be your next set of internal deliverables. The emphasis will be on customer analytics to better predict the behavior and buying habits of your customers. This will help you be ahead of what information they will want at their fingertips. Building analytical information about your customers for the past few years will make 2016 the year where you can combine your data to educate your internal teams on that customer story. Giving examples will inform your teams of the buying signs and reasons why customers want to interact with your brand.

Marketing TACTICIAN UNIFYING YOUR TOOLS In the past few years, you have been stepping up your game by diving into social interaction, looking for feedback mechanisms and being more thoughtful about the email communications you are sending. All of these for the most part have been managed by different tools. This year is going to be the year you look into adopting a marketing automation system that unifies not only what your team is sending out, but also allows you to have the analIt will be your best investmentur results. It will be in your best investment if you are able to integrate this tool into your sales and customer management product so that you can get the full picture of the full cycle, from lead to sale.

UTILIZING SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE FULLEST You have made some posts on social media and maybe some people have been engaged with you. The challenge has been that you haven’t been able to have visibility into the traffic that social media has been driving for you – therefore, you may have been less inclined to spend time and effort in this area. It was more of an afterthought OR as you had additional time. Now that you will be unifying your tools, you will start to use social media to the fullest of your capabilities and you will track the analytics so that you can keep your management team aware of how social is working for you.

UPDATING LEGACY SYSTEMS You will be taking a look at your systems across the board and recommending changes so that you can better track your leads. This will impact your sales and

COVERSTORY customer tracking systems and you will work with your IT department to find tools that will not only work for you, but will also work for your sales and customer service departments. In addition to your sales and customer tracking systems, you will also be looking at your website’s architecture. You will look to update those systems and ensure a mobile responsive experience. You will want to take as many systems forward with you as possible so that you can begin working on your customer lifetime value calculations and analytics.

SETTING UP CONSISTENT REPORTING Because you have utilized disparate systems, reporting has been heavily reliant on you doing heavy data lifting to get at the statistics you have been looking for. This has caused you to spend countless hours merging and pulling information vs. working on improving your communications to customers. By focusing on unifying your tools and making sure that you have integrations to watch the lead-to-close process and social media, you will now have dashboards at your fingertips, set up with key performance indicators. Now you will easily review your reporting in minutes instead of having to pull reporting together in a few hours.

MAKING YOUR TRADITIONAL CAMPAIGNS MORE EFFECTIVE Now with access to more useful information at your fingertips, you will be able turn your attention to making each campaign more effective. You will do this by amplifying your message across multiple platforms (web, social, e-mail, print) and telling your customer story.

Blytheco helps companies not only select which marketing automation tool will be the right one for them but we also ensure your solution will integrate with your other tools. If your team needs help with selecting a marketing automation tool or better utilizing the one you have, contact us for your free 2 hour assessment: 949-583-9500 x1168. About the Author Apryl Hanson is the Senior Director of Customer and Partner Strategy, plus CRM and Marketing Automation Practice Leader at Blytheco. She’s also the Editor of Bellwether Magazine.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

Hot New Tools

in DIGITAL MARKETING DIGITAL MARKETING by Kathy McCoy

on’t you love it when a colleague tells you about an awesome new marketing tool that makes your life easier or your marketing more effective?

I do too, which is why when a co-worker introduced me to Typeform, I was thrilled—what a great way to build quizzes and online forms that engage your target market! I built a Lifecycle Stage quiz that helped to identify our best prospects in a target audience, providing useful information to the user about their stage and how to get to the next level.

Optimizely

Since I’ve been helped by great recommendations, I thought I’d pay it forward. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of these great tools out there—some free, some low cost, some pricey. Here is a selection of the tools my colleagues have been buzzing about.

Reviews: “Offers testing tools that allow marketers to

Typeform “Ask awesomely” is Typeform’s slogan. It allows you to publish online forms, quizzes and questionnaires that are both keyboard and mobile friendly.

Reviews: “Typeform’s polish and brilliant pricing plans

When you want to test different website home pages and landing pages, Optimizely’s easy-to-use and robust A/B, multivariate, and multi-page testing gives you the tools you need to improve engagement and increase revenue across desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps. Also includes personalization, targeting, analytics and more. experiment with different versions of pages and choose the one that’s best at reaching their business goals.“ Marketingland.com “Overall, Visual Website Optimizer has the slight edge for casual A/B testers, with extras like heatmaps, but it’s more expensive than the free version of Optimizely. For serious A/B testers, I definitely recommend the Optimizely enterprise level – more comprehensive offering, even though you have to pay much more for it.” Rich-page.com

make it the obvious choice if you want a new way to make online forms. It really is that nice.” Techinch blog

Pricing: Free Starter Plan (one project only) to Enterprise Plan (pricing on request)

“[Typeform]…gives businesses the opportunity to easily create beautiful, mobile-ready online forms and surveys for free. With the app’s monthly plan, users have the ability to pay for only one month, giving them the flexibility to only pay for advanced features during those times when they’ll be using it most.” Business2community.com

VWO (Virtual Website Optimizer)

Pricing: Free for Core (basic users) to $20/month for Pro (power users)

30 Bellwether | Fall 2015

Like Optimizely, this is an A/B testing tool that helps you determine what’s working on your website, and what’s not. You can use VWO to test things such as which headline, website design or website copy your visitors respond to best.

Reviews: “Visual Website Optimizer is an easy to use A/B testing tool featuring point-and-click test designer and WYSIWYG editor for creating variations. In addition

INDUSTRYNEWS to being dead-simple split testing software for marketers, it also dramatically shortens time to go live with your A/B tests because of the innovative ‘tag-less’ integration.” Aboutanalytics.com

Allows you to “select from a number of different templates (like oceans, sports, or flowers—there are hundreds of different themes), add in canned images, edit text, and import your own creations.” Pastemagazine.com

“Because of its many great features, ease-of-use and clear and live reports, Visual Website Optimizer is one of the best testing tools on the market.” Paulolyslager.com

Pricing: Free to $12.95/month

Pricing: $49/month for Startup to $999/month for Enterprise; free trial without a credit card, which is unusual and handy

Crazy Egg Crazy Egg is a heat map tool, describing itself “like a pair of x-ray glasses that lets you see exactly what people are doing on your website.” Shows you where people are clicking and aren’t, how many people scroll down your pages and where they stop, and who clicks on what the most.

Reviews: “See where visitors click to improve conversions and understand user behavior with Crazy Egg’s visual website analytics and heat maps. Receive immediate insights to understand your visitors’ behavior.” Marketingland.com “I really believe that Crazy Egg is still one of the best heat map tools out there.” Paulolyslager.com

Pricing: $9/month Basic to $99/month Pro

Canva Canva’s suite of photo editing and design features makes it easy to turn ideas into stunning designs. With this webbased tool, you can: straighten photos; crop and scale images; add text to photos; add speech bubbles to photos; enhance or modify images with various effects; use free icons, and more.

Reviews: “[Canva] helps even the most graphically-challenged create everything from social-media images to presentations, for free. You can use its templates, store everything online and even access stock images to include in your work.” Entrepreneur.com

referralrock This site, designed specifically for independent service providers and small business owners who want to grow their businesses, lets you develop customer referral programs “in under a minute.”

Reviews: “A 2014 study showed that 85 percent of small businesses get customers through word of mouth. If you don’t want to miss out on lots of new business, create your own referral program with a tool such as referralrock .” Enterpreneur.com Pricing: $49/month Small Business to $99/month Professional

InviteReferrals This customer referral solution offers complete referral strategy, design, and implementation. Tracks at every step of program, from shares to clicks to successful referral conversions, and works on smartphones.

Reviews: “InviteReferrals is the simplest tool you will find that designs and launches customer referral campaigns within minutes… InviteReferrals tracks each invite and conversion to reward users making referrals. This way, the customers become the sales force, and drive millions of invites.” Socialsamosa.com Pricing: $59/month Basic to $499/month Growth

Conclusion These types of tools can help you increase your marketing results by improving engagement with your website, emails and more. What digital marketing tools have you found to be most helpful? Write us at marketing@blytheco.com and we’ll publish additional ideas on our blog.

About the Author Kathy McCoy, MBA, is Demand Generation Manager at Blytheco. She has written on software and business management for more than 8 years and has more than 17 years of experience in continuing education for professionals.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

THE NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

Sales & Marketing

by Alicia Anderson

raditionally, the relationship between sales and marketing within the organization has been one of finger-pointing and blame. Marketing isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bringing in enough good leads, according to Sales. Sales isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t able to close business, according to Marketing. While this combative attitude is still pervasive in many organizations, the modern business takes a different approach.

32 Bellwether | Fall 2015

HUMANRESOURCES A 2013 Marketo study found that alignment between Sales and Marketing can help companies become 67% better at closing deals. For some companies, this alignment has the potential to drive greater sales performance than almost any other change in the business. When Marketing and Sales are integrated, businesses can shorten sales cycles, enable larger deals, and escalate customer acquisition. But where do you start if your teams have traditionally been siloed? A few pointers follow:

build analytics about opportunities is the best way to give marketing feedback about what’s working and what’s not working. • Actively participate in campaign planning - When Marketing asks for feedback on campaigns and strategies, be thoughtful and give feedback based on sales experience. Participation in planning and review sessions builds better campaigns and creates a culture of collaboration.

What can Marketing do to improve the relationship? • Get sales buy-in on planning – Engage with the sales team to solicit and provide feedback on overall marketing strategy and specific campaigns. Salespeople are working with prospects and existing customers every day and can provide marketers with specific language, goals, and objectives that customers provide. They can also help add real-life color to the products, campaigns, and messaging customers are more likely to respond to. • Work in the CRM system – A deep understanding of the technology sales is using, funnel analytics, and buyer behaviors can help marketing get a better perspective on campaign performance overall. • Work with customers directly – It’s easy to find fault with Sales from the corporate ivory tower of Marketing. Getting involved in sales opportunities, listening and responding to customers, and driving revenue “on the ground” is good exposure to the realities that your sales team is facing.

What can Sales do to improve the relationship? • Work in the CRM system – Marketing doesn’t know what it doesn’t know about your sales opportunities. Leveraging CRM technology to share intelligence and

• Invite marketers to join customer calls and meetings – Regularly including marketing team members on actual customer sales meetings helps close the communication gap between what marketing thinks customers want to hear and what they actually DO want to hear.

What can Corporate Leadership do to improve the relationship? • Get the teams together often – Physical closeness builds a more open and trusting culture. With remote teams and salespeople in the field, having occasional opportunities to sit at the same table will increase interaction and alignment. • Be transparent about budget realities – Resentment about who is getting a bigger piece of the financial pie only increases distancing between the teams. Create clear budget parameters and openly share reasons for them with teams to air out those sensitive economic concerns. • Hold everyone to the same level of accountability – Setting clear goals and metrics on the expectations of both Sales and Marketing teams and reviewing them often eliminates favoritism.

Need help getting implementing? First, find out where you stand today. The Harvard Business Review offers a nice assessment tool here: https://hbr.org/2006/07/ending-the-war-between-sales-and-marketing.

About the Author Alicia Anderson is uniquely qualified to share expertise around the new relationship between sales and marketing as she recently transitioned from the Marketing team here at Blytheco to the Sales team as the Manager of Business Solutions Experience.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

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34 Bellwether | Fall 2015

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For the latest information & Industry trends, check out the Blytheco blog:

info.blytheco.com/blytheco-blog

5TECH–SAVVY TIPS TO GET CUSTOMERS ON BOARD WITH YOUR

by Avalara

Are customers loyal to your brand or just to the discount? This question headlined a recent report by Bond Brand Loyalty. It’s an interesting conundrum. And one I’m sure keeps many Chief Marketing Officers up at night. So which is it? For a third of customers, it is a points game; 29% say loyalty program incentives, not the brand, keep them coming back1. But that means there’s 71% out there that want something else. For them, it’s about more than money. They want a rewarding experience that draws them in. It’s up to CMOs and their teams to craft and deliver that experience — plus measure its success. In a recent survey by Aberdeen Group, 81% of CMOs rated customer loyalty and retention as their top objective, and Gartner predicts that 9 in 10 companies will be competing primarily on customer experience by 2016.

36 Bellwether | Fall 2015

So what tricks should CMOs have up their sleeve to win over customers’ hearts and wallets? Here are five smart bets.

Put your money on mobile. Consumers love their mobile devices. A lot. By the end of 2017, there will be an estimated 171 million mobile shoppers. 2 Your brand’s future is in their hands. Literally. Don’t have an app? Build one. Website not optimized for mobile? Invest in some good UI designers. Not accepting Google Wallet and Apple Pay? Start. Now. And tie it to your loyalty program. Why? Because 60% of consumers pay with their smartphones for the loyalty benefits 3 (translation: low hanging fruit).

TECHNOLOGY Dive deeper into data. According to Forbes, half of marketing executives use data analytics in their marketing campaigns today and 7 in 10 plan to ramp up usage in the next three years. But is it working? According to most CMOs, not exactly; 96% aren’t convinced this data is finding its way into marketing programs sufficiently enough to impact loyalty.4 But don’t give up. Studies show that marketers who use big data effectively can increase operating margins by 60%.5 That’s a pretty big incentive! Plus, your customers want it; 70% expect personalized offers from the brands they prefer.6 So give it to them.

Be “omni” present. Most marketers have multi-channel down pretty well. Where they struggle is in providing a seamless, ubiquitous brand-centric experience across channels. Granted, it takes some work to pull this off. But synchronized shopping carts, social media retargeting ads, and those “oops you forgot something” and “because you bought X, we thought you might like Y” messages pay off; omnichannel shoppers spend up to 36% more. And Aberdeen Group found that companies that successfully integrate the buyer’s journey into their marketing strategy see a 54% greater return on investment.

Be true to you (and them). Getting millennials on board tops most marketers “must do” list. Not surprising, considering that this generation will have the most spending power by 2017.7 But it won’t be an easy sell; they don’t give their loyalty lightly. Want to win them over? Be charitable. Millennials prefer to buy from socially responsible companies and will spend more if part of the profits go to a good cause.8 But they’re not the only generation that counts – or that cares. Consumers gravitate towards brands that reflect their values and personalities and have integrity. This can be as simple and straightforward as reputable business practices, a good return policy or stellar customer service.

Deliver on your promise. Nothing turns a loyal customer off faster than uncertainty. This includes knowing up front what something is going to cost them. Don’t let a misapplied promotion or incorrect shipping charge undo all the hard work you put into cultivating that customer relationship. Set clear expectations up front with top-notch technology embedded in your shopping cart to ensure all costs are calculated correctly, including sales tax. Your best bet? Automate. Go with a cloud application that integrates easily into your ERP, ecommerce system or shopping cart. Your customers will appreciate that you care enough about them to ensure there are never any unexpected surprises at checkout.

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For more tips on delivering a seamless, loyalty-worthy experience to today’s tech-savvy customers, check out How to Be an Omnichannel Superhero.

About the Author Avalara provides software for automated sales tax compliance. Learn more at www.Blytheco.com/Avalara.

Bond Brand Loyalty

eMarketer

Altimeter

Aberdeen Group

1 2 3 4

McKinsey Global Institute AgileOne GenBuy.net Bazaarvoice

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

CRM vs Marketing Automation: Does Your Business Need Both? by Denise Renee Phinn

hese days, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s almost impossible to effectively run your business without having intelligent software systems in place to efficiently manage just about every aspect of the operation. Accountants have long since had a plethora of software to choose from to support their work. And in the last 10 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 15 years, greater attention has been paid to giving sales and marketing professionals hi-tech tools with the rise of customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems.

38 Bellwether | Fall 2015

TECHNOLOGY Your company is probably already using some type of contact management system. You likely also have a process in place for managing your sales cycle, either manual or software managed. But if you find yourself exploring new software solutions because you either (a) want to increase your capabilities, (b) want to start generating more intelligent prospect and client data or (c) need to start identifying more opportunities based on the data you’re already generating, the options to consider can be overwhelming. One of the biggest questions Marketing Directors and CMO’s find themselves asking is: “Do I need both a CRM and marketing automation software?”

But it is important to note that the options are usually not as robust as within a marketing automation system. Furthermore, good marketing automation systems are able to track where leads come from (so you can focus on doing more of what works) and is able to score or rank your leads. More to the point, marketing automation systems typically deal with top-of-the-funnel activities such as identifying prospects, nurturing and prequalifying sales leads. CRM’s strengths are focusing on leads that have already been prequalified, identifying opportunities, and closing them out with a won sale and identifying future opportunities with your now existing clients.

The answer will of course vary from business to business. But in order to determine which is the best path your company should take, you’ll need to understand what each system type inherently has to offer. According to Silverpop, CRM systems were fundamentally developed to help give a company’s sales team a “360-degree’ view of their existing clients. It is a tool designed to help deepen the relationship and uncover opportunities to extend the life of the client. By contrast, marketing automation systems were developed for marketers to help identify key prospects and execute targeted, personalized nurturing communications with them and track the results of that activity. Typically, a Marketing Automation tool is able to set up dozens of simple or complex communication sequences based on actions a prospect or client takes.

Overall, CRM and marketing automation systems are complimentary and ideally, most companies will likely find benefit in implementing them both. Smaller and budget conscious companies may find that starting with a CRM can be a cost effective solutions as they are scaling up operations and revenue. But as the needs of the company expand, along with the desire to reshape your customer experiences, starting with the leads funnel, then you’ll want to consider solutions such as Act-On for your marketing automation and SalesForce for your CRM. Large scale operations might even consider a complete enterprise-level software solution such as NetSuite where your entire company’s infrastructure can be managed by one, dynamic software.

Both systems share similarities in the types of information they may collect about a prospect or customer (name, email address, phone number, etc.). Some more modern CRMs now offer some basic communication functions (such as sending email), so it might be easy to think the two are interchangeable.

If you would like to explore your marketing software options and get feedback on what might be the best solution for your unique business, talk to one of the helpful CRM Solutions Managers at Blytheco for a no-pressure, no-obligation complimentary evaluation. Call us at 949-583-9500.

About the Author A “Jill” of all trades at Blytheco, Denise Renee Phinn is a content marketing nerd and writing wizard who frequently contributes to Bellwether. Connect with her at www.LinkedIn.com/in/DeniseReneePhinn.

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

AN INSIDE LOOK CRM and Marketing Automation solutions provide you with a robust set of features and functionalities. Both solutions have a lot to offer when it comes to visibility, reporting, and analytics. We wanted to give you an inside look at our favorite reporting functions and tools.

Marketing Automation SEO Reporting Act-On Screenshots

Marketing Automation Email Reporting Hubspot Screenshots

40 Bellwether | Fall 2015

TECHNOLOGY

CRM Sales Dashboard and Pipeline Sage CRM Screenshots

CRM Marketing ROI Reporting Netsuite CRM Screenshots

CRM Quota and Forecasting Dashboard Infor CRM Screenshots

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

How Current News in

SEO

Affects The Way You Market Your Business Online by Gary Dahl

Search...

42 Bellwether | Fall 2015

TECHNOLOGY Quick! What do these words have in common: • Pigeon • Panda • Penguin • Mobilegeddon These are all major Google search algorithm updates that have been instituted over the last few years.

So what does this have to do with you and marketing your business? Well, if you want your website to be found in Google search results, Google’s algorithm is important. Since Google processes 64.4% of all desktop searches, according to comScore qSearch 2015 report, it’s a pretty good idea to pay attention. In many cases, acting on these updates will make your site a better site, and will result in being found easier on Google. Not acting on these updates may cause your site to drop in rankings. In Blytheco’s case, one recent update (Mobilegeddon) prompted a major refresh of our website. When Google announced they would penalize sites that are not mobile friendly, we knew it was important to make the investment to change. But why would Google take that stance? For the first time, in 2014 there were more searches on mobile devices than there are on desktop. And that number is only increasing. Here’s a quick test: take out your smartphone or tablet right now and search for your company’s website. Is it clean and easy to use on your device without pinching and spreading? Is it visually appealing? Does it offer the kind of user experience you want your customers to have as if they were browsing on a desktop? If not, why would Google want to prioritize your website when there is another site (your competitor’s!) that is beautiful and mobile-friendly?

So what exactly is a search algorithm? Simply put, an algorithm is Google’s method of scoring websites based on a set of attributes or “signals.” When you conduct a search for “pizza”, for example, Google’s algorithm is the formula that interprets your words and

matches them with Google’s list of websites for pizza restaurants close to where you live, prioritizing them and quickly delivering a list of the best, most appropriate search results. Every few weeks there seems to be some tweak to the algorithm. For searchers, this is great! It means that Google is getting better at predicting exactly what they are looking for. But it could be a nightmare for marketers; are these constant tweaks affecting your rankings and potential traffic to your website? And how are you supposed to know when they happen and what adjustments to make? Most of these updates will not affect your company’s website. However, once in a while one of them will have a significant impact on your rankings, so you really should pay attention, at least a few times a year. That can be a little challenging as Google doesn’t always advertise or confirm these updates. Many times, webmasters just notice changes in their rankings. To help you get ahead of the curve, make note of the trends in the algorithm updates from the past few years. In general, Google has been prioritizing secured, mobile friendly, and contextually relevant websites. Here are a few highlights: Hummingbird (November 2013) De-prioritized keyword stuffing and gave preference to conversational search, natural language search and contextual meaning for long-tail phrases. This was a major revision which impacted over 90 percent of searches worldwide. Pigeon (July 2014) Significantly changed how local business results are ranked. HTTPS Everywhere (August 2014) Ranking preference given to secure sites. Pirate (October 2014) Targeted update to fight software and digital media piracy. Mobilegeddon (April 2015) Gave higher rankings for mobile-friendly websites.

Continued on next page

Fall 2015 | Bellwether

When it is time to refresh your website and give your SEO a quality audit, hiring a knowledgeable professional (if you don’t have one in-house) is a smart idea. There are a lot of qualified SEO experts who can help you navigate these choppy waters. But be sure to obtain references, check out their portfolio, and conduct your own searches on sites that they have optimized to see how they rank.

Ultimately, if you focus on the following: • Provide fresh, interesting and relevant content in a straightforward, non-spammy way.

• Make your content easy-to-find. • Create accurate meta tag titles and descriptions. • Be sure your site is mobile-friendly and secure. • Get social! (see the Summer 2015 Bellwether) • Avoid antiquated spammy, “black hat” or underhanded SEO techniques used 3 years ago or older.

• Follow Google and the search community on your favorite social platform to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest chatter. You will likely have a website that Google will be happy to rank high in their search results.

Photo by Denys Prykhodov

So what should your top takeaways be? In 2014 alone, there were over 15 major and minor updates. It would be time consuming to follow and react to them month by month. But you should check in 2-3 times a year to see what’s going on. Be aware of your search results and if there is a sudden drop, check to see if there was a recent algorithm update and if so, what that update entailed and what you can do about it.

Some of the signals/clues that Google factors into search results: Quality content Quality of incoming links Security Mobility Easy-to-find content Clean site architecture Social reputation Freshness of the content Geographic region Meta title tag History of the site Meta description tag Page header Trustworthiness Authority

About the Author Gary Dahl is Blytheco’s Director of Internet Marketing and resident SEO ‘demigod.’

44 Bellwether | Fall 2015

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ERP anywhere. An unmatched mobile ERP experience that provides immediate customer conversions and flexible intelligence. Exclusively for Sage 100 ERP. For more information, visit xkzero.com/blytheco.aspx

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