ENGAGING MARKETING MINDS
INSIDE
HOME GROWN
VOL. 6, ISSUE 4, JULY/AUGUST 2016
WHY YOUR STORY MATTERS
HOW TO LEVERAGE CONTENT MARKETING JULY/AUGUST 2016
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Up Front
THE BUZZ Publisher’s Letter
ccount-Based Marketing (ABM) is a concept that has received a great deal of buzz from the marketing world. As you may know, ABM is part of a 1:1 process that has replaced mass marketing. Specifically, organizations now are trying to sell more solutions to one customer at a time. As markets become more competitive, clients see little delineation between brands. ABM is the latest trend to try and find that differentiation and many companies are starting to see long-term value from the practice. According to the Marketing Practice Decision Maker’s Index, "77 percent of decision-makers say that marketing from new suppliers is poorly targeted and makes it easy to justify staying with their current supplier." So, crafting messages to specific clients will make you downright buzz-worthy. AS THE ROLES MORPH, ABM may be a hot trend, PEOPLE WILL NEED TO but we contend that it's simADAPT. MANY OF THE ply the natural progression FUTURE ROLES DON’T of how to interact with cusEVEN EXIST TODAY. tomers. With all of the power existing with the consumer and the decision-makers within the B2B world acting more like B2C professionals, it makes sense that the role of sales and marketing changes and aligns. Due to time restrictions, people would prefer to find partners by themselves rather than being called upon. ABM treats each account individually, allowing the company to address the audience with more relevant content than an un-targeted direct marketing activity. In addition, it enables the company to expand its connection within an account and cements that connection in various parts of your organization. ABM underscores the need for marketing to take a more active role within individual accounts and align with a sophisticated sales team in serving that client. Clearly, both marketing and sales have
changed over the last 10 years. But the one thing that will never change is the importance of aligning your efforts to better understand and serve specific customers. As the jobs morph, people will need to adapt. Many of our future roles don’t even exist today. That's why it's important to incubate new skills and talents within your current organization. In our cover story, "Crash Course," we enlisted some emerging thought leaders to provide some wonderful insights on current marketing tools, and how to penetrate and, subsequently, engage clients in a thorough manner. In our second feature, "Home Grown," we give you a few ideas on why and how to cultivate the talent that will sustain you for years to come. We included some fun corresponding content, and we hope you will enjoy this issue. Respectfully, MICHAEL PELUSO
In This Issue
Brought to you by: Shawmut Communications Group Shawmut Communications Group is proud to bring you Tactics, a bimonthly industry publication created by and for marketing minds. Founded in 1951—and now in its third generation of family ownership— Shawmut Communications Group provides an array of marketing, print, mail and fulfillment services to meet the needs of clients across all industries. With decades of experience, the Shawmut team is committed to helping clients market with relevance and communicate with excellence. Visit www.shawmutdelivers.com or call 978.762.7500 to learn more.
01 Publisher’s letter The buzz 02 The Inbox
04 Home grown Cultivating your talent to foster your company's vision 08 Crash course Defining today’s marketing vehicles and how they work for you 12 Trending with... Best-selling author Carmine Gallo 13 A novel concept Studies show why content marketing is all the rage
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News | Updates | Statistics
The THE CLOSER Inbox 5 ways sales can leverage content marketing to seal deals
INSIGHTS
Listen up – you can close all those leads your marketing team generates. The answer is arming your sales reps with the tools (content marketing) they need to do more than just sell. Here are five challenges that keep deals from closing and the tips for fixing them:
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Try this: Provide helpful content that tells the story of how your company solves prospects’ problems. Infographics are highly digestible.
Sales reps must be viewed as thought leaders
Potential customers don't want to talk with sales reps about products; they want to talk with them about solutions. If your sales team can communicate valuable content with prospects, buyers would be more willing to engage with them.
Try this: Provide your sales team with an infographic and ask them to write a 200-word introduction. Have them publish it through their LinkedIn account. Sales reps must build a relationship digitally Inside sales teams are growing and field sales teams are shrinking. As face-to-face opportunities decline, so do opportunities to build personal relationships. To do so, your sales reps need thought-leadership content to solve problems, not sales collateral.
Try this: When you write a new article, share it with your sales reps with a bullet-point list of reasons why a prospect would find the article beneficial. Sales reps must stay top-of-mind between long touch points If your prospect has to budget for your solution, your sales reps don’t have enough touch points to stay top-of-mind. That means they seek excuses to engage with their leads, which puts your product or service on the back burner.
Try this: When you publish a report, study or other content, share it with your sales reps so they immediately can share it with their prospects.
Sales reps must help prospects sell internally Sales reps rely heavily on influencers to champion a product. These champions understand the problem and how to fix it. Your sales reps can provide the prospect champions with tools, i.e., content, to educate them on this solution.
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Sales reps must understand their prospect’s world It feels frustrating to hand over qualified, sales-ready leads, and not have them come to fruition. If you have crafted well-developed content, your sales reps can use it to speak their prospects’ language.
Try this: Join the weekly sales meeting to share your most recent content. Ask your sales reps to share how they used previous content, which will help gauge what can be done to close deals. Source: Content Marketing Institute and Alex Lopes, CEO, Sharebird – For more information, visit www. contentmarketinginstitute.com.
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Book Rec
Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business By Charles Duhigg
hat if you could manage how you think, rather than what you think? Pretty transformational, right? Bestselling author Charles Duhigg thinks so. In Smarter Faster Better, Duhigg explores why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics, Duhigg shows how the most productive people, companies and organizations don’t merely act differently, but rather, think differently. To reinforce his theories, he consulted CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots
and Broadway songwriters – all of whom view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways. What do they have in common? They know that productivity relies on making certain choices: The way we frame our daily decisions; the big ambitions we embrace and the easy goals we ignore; the cultures we establish as leaders to drive innovation; the way we interact with data. “Smarter Faster Better” shows why these are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive. If you’re looking forward to getting more done without sacrificing what you care about most, “Smarter Faster Better” may be your blueprint to success.
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Cultivating your talent to foster your company's vision BY JAMAR LASTER
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uick – what’s your company’s most critical asset? While the answers may vary depending on your market, your goals, your brand’s vision, etc., John F. Dini says that your employees should be at the top of the list. Dini makes the case that it’s incumbent upon companies to take the initiative to foster and nourish talent, but that too many believe it is a one or two-step process. The consultant, speaker and author of the award-winning book "Hunting in a Farmer’s World” says that reaping the benefits of a highly-skilled and talented employee requires a carefully crafted strategy – one that every company should learn to master. “We all say that, but it is easy to fall into a mindset that takes for granted [employees’] arrival each day and willingness to perform to the best of their ability,” Dini says. “Like any other asset, maximizing the value of employees requires maintenance.” Dini says that many factors are included in optimal employee performance, citing research from best-selling author Daniel Pink’s book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” as a perfect example. Pink asserts that in the workplace, once compensation satisfies an employee’s financial needs, performance then is based on his ability to enjoy three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy requires employees be trained well enough to make independent decisions within the scope of their responsibilities. Mastery is employees’ ability to see progress toward a better self-image, and the confidence that they know what to do, and then doing it well. The third prong, purpose, is the use to which those skills are applied. “All three [of these principles] are planted and nourished by training and mentoring,” Dini says. “The harvest is stronger employee performance.”
Training talent
Magi Graziano, CEO of KeenAlignment, says when an employee’s natural abilities are combined with the right attitude for the job and aligned with the company’s mission and vision, that person will be positioned for success. “Everything becomes easier,” says Graziano, whose talent-management consulting firm offers solutions for every stage of the talent life cycle. “There is less resistance, management is more akin to coaching and there is a fundamental agreement on what [the employee] is there to do.” A particular mindset – on the part of employees and employers – is required to foster development. Dini says continuous learning should be ingrained in the company’s culture; that being the case, employees will adapt with a greater understanding of how to advance. “Employees should understand that they will not get wage increases just for ‘treading water,’” Dini says. “They have to grow in their abilities to make more money. That said, the employer is responsible for giving them the tools or opportunities for that growth.”
Identifying the importance of training in grooming talent begs the question: What’s the best training approach to take?
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Graziano says both parties must have a talent mindset, in which people and culture are the competitive advantage allowing the organization to thrive. Managers, who are directly responsible for coaching, developing and mentoring their people, can foster such practices. But the onus also is on the company, including the human resources department or those responsible for talent optimization, to provide the resources for managers, coaches or trainers to identify competency gaps and use mistakes and failures as learning opportunities. “Fundamental training for managers in how to unleash the human potential in people is required,” Graziano says.
All in the approach
While the responsibility for development is shared, it’s important to remember another adage: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Translation: Though the onus is on employers to make learning opportunities and training resources available, the employee must bear the brunt of the responsibility in pursuing them. What’s more, Dini says learning opportunities shouldn’t be limited to before or after working hours, or on weekends, or even when employees are “all caught up” with regular work. Rather, there should be mutual investment to realize mutual reward. Identifying the importance of training in grooming talent begs the question: What’s the best training approach? Dini says to ensure it’s taken seriously – training initiatives must be ingrained in the company’s culture so that it’s not simply viewed as a commodity. He recalls attending a training workshop years ago in which attendees complained they had experienced a perpendicular approach to the ideal training approach.
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The best employees need – and deserve – a workplace where they are excited to show up in the morning and enjoy performing at their best each day." – JOHN F. DINI, AUTHOR OF "HUNTING IN A FARMER’S WORLD"
“All the corporate trainers in the room kept complaining that their colleagues refused to release employees for continuing education,” Dini says. “Either those other managers weren’t incentivized for employee development or the training didn’t produce any result with identifiable value. Either way, the message from the top clearly was, ‘Training is something we have to have, but it isn’t all that important if you make your numbers.’” KeenAlignment fulfills its mission of empowering leaders through a multi-pronged services package that includes values-based training, tools and resources that help companies make the most of their “people investment,” according to the company’s website (www.keenalignment.com). The company’s suite of services includes talent strategy consulting, leadership development, team and organizational effectiveness programs, employee engagement and retention programs, and more. Graziano lists a number of characteristics contained in the ideal training approach, including targeted competency development and knowledge transfer, hand-picked subject matter experts, adult learning principles, coaching, mentoring and regular feedback.
Removing roadblocks
While training program implementation can be pure in its intent, it’s inevitable that roadblocks can arise. To remove them, Dini says training should be integrated into performance evaluations – including employee goals. “Set a roadmap for what the employee is expected to learn each year, make certain he or she knows where to access the training needed and follow up regularly to see if they are on track,” he says. Graziano says the best way to remove training roadblocks is to create a talent capacity index for each employee, department and the organization overall. “Most people resist training that they do not think they need,” she says. “When sound and correct data is collected from the employees responsible for doing the work and the managers who lead them, and that data and the overall business strategy is taken into consideration, better – more targeted – training can happen.”
Fundamental training for managers in how to unleash the human potential in people is required." – MAGI GRAZIANO, CEO, KEENALIGNMENT
On the other side, development also should be part of evaluating managers and supervisors. It’s important, after all, that they understand their job goes beyond ensuring their subordinates simply accomplish the jobs they are assigned. “Measure performance improvement by department or division,” Dini recommends. “And, of course, the commitment to training doesn’t stop at any level of the organization, but continues to the top.” A positive, supportive environment that includes commitment and enthusiasm may be one of the most important underlying factors in fostering talent in employees. This all starts with alignment, or hiring the right people for the right jobs. Graziano says that from there, promoting the right people into management roles – those with the natural ability to lead and develop people into who they can be – is important. As technology is enabling companies to do more with fewer people, the quality of each employee becomes increasingly important. Thus, an environment where the employee sees a clear path to being better is paramount. Says Dini, “The best employees need – and deserve – a workplace where they are excited to show up in the morning and enjoy performing at their best each day.”
YOUR TRAINING CHEAT SHEET Here are four things to remember when implementing training in your organization:
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Make it part of the culture
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Hire for alignment with company values
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Invest in leadership development, too
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Continuous learning must be a cultural imperative, says John F. Dini, a consultant, speaker and author of the award-winning book "Hunting in a Farmer’s World." “This isn’t just a warm and fuzzy; it has its serious business side.”
A conscious hiring process must be in place to ensure the right person is placed in the right role for the right reasons, says Magi Graziano, CEO of KeenAlignment. “This includes competency, compatibility and capability, as well as passion alignment.”
This should specifically teach managers how to unlock the wealth of talent in their people, Graziano says.
Communicate your company’s vision through the ranks
With Millennials approaching 50 percent of the workforce, this is more important than ever, Dini says. “People want to be part of a ‘tribe’ that does good things.”
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BY MICHAEL J. PALLERINO
andall LaVeau is one of those marketers who likes to spend every minute of every day thinking about the best ways his clients can improve upon their strategies. As a senior consultant for Sales Benchmark Index (SBI), he is part of a team of former sales and marketing leaders dedicated to helping brands meet aggressive goals in unreasonable time lines. Ask LaVeau, and he will tell you straight up that in today’s highly competitive business landscape, the scope of what marketing is expected to (and can) deliver shifts depending on the situation. The one thing that LaVeau and the SBI team will profoundly admit to is that “making your number” is the goal every marketing initiative strives to attain. Take a quick snapshot of today’s marketing world, and you will find that it continues to be more about quality than quantity. And as the industry evolves, and buyers become more aware of yesterday’s tactics, marketers are facing the harsh reality that the legacy approach of broad-based content and messaging is failing. For this reason, LaVeau says marketers are laser focused on the customer journey and the alignment of hyper-personalized content to their buyer’s specific buying process.
As organizations refine and evolve their buyer and user personas, marketers are becoming extremely targeted in their channel approach. JULY/AUGUST 2016
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“We live in an age of information,” LaVeau says. “Marketers are now more than ever in a position to leverage that abundance of information to make strategic decisions based on quantifiable metrics. With information at our fingertips, and the means to reach our audience through multiple channels, today’s marketers are earning the respect of their peers and having an undeniable impact on measurable revenue targets.” As organizations refine and evolve their buyer and user personas, marketers are becoming extremely targeted in their channel approach. Having the ability to understand how your buyers buy and their preferred method to consume information is critical. The key is to understand the vehicles, by persona, applicable to buyers based on the stage they are at in their buying process. And while LaVeau says that social remains one of the most rapidly adopted channels for distribution, print, email and next-gen content such as podcasts and videos, continue to provide high ROI. As with any marketing program, in any marketplace, it is imperative to know what to use, and when. “Those who are agile in their approach are leapfrogging their competition,” LaVeau says. “The key is to be flexible in your approach by observing industry trends and buying behaviors to remain relevant and in tune with what your buyers are demanding. You also must know how they are consuming information, and then distribute the right content, through the right channel.”
The simple, direct approach
Pick a channel, any channel. Whether it’s print, social, email, mobile, events, web/digital, salespeople or content, the success is in the approach and how each complements the other. For the past 30 years, Michael F. Sciortino, Sr., has been sifting his way through the marketing landscape, helping his customers deliver on their approaches. Sciortino believes that success in marketing today still is about the consistent implementation of simple, basic, fundamental and memorable ideas that connect with clients. “Clients want to know how you will serve them, what to expect from you and how you will communicate with them,” says Sciortino, founder and CEO of Gratitude Marketing. “ROI, or results, are still what matter. With the cost of acquiring new clients being about seven times what it costs to retain clients, companies that focus on nurturing relationships are realizing substantial growth.” Sciortino says brands should not be afraid to test obvious methods or strategies for several reasons, including that most other brands don’t do it consistently and the positive results often will surprise you. “Once you find a method that is producing results, stick with it. Marketers often get bored with a method that is working before their audience does.” In the end, most traditional marketing speaks to people who want to be engaged. Engagement will be driven through marketing channels by hyper-personalization of stage-appropriate content. Identifying the customers with the highest propensity to buy, combined with a detailed understanding of their buying behaviors, will allow marketers to evolve these vehicles in new and exciting ways.
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Marketers are now more than ever in a position to leverage that abundance of information to make strategic decisions based on quantifiable metrics." – RANDALL LAVEAU, SENIOR CONSULTANT, SALES BENCHMARK INDEX
“The buyer’s journey spans across multiple stages representing multiple channels in which buyers are consuming content,” LaVeau says. “Understanding this journey, and aligning each vehicle with the journey, allows marketers to present stage-appropriate messaging to prospective customers. The ultimate goal is to understand this omni-channel journey and tell a cohesive story with targeted content throughout the process.” With the rising costs of client acquisition, Sciortino believes today’s companies will place greater emphasis on nurturing what he calls the three R’s: increased client retention, increased client referrals and increased client revenues.
Three marketing experts weigh in on what’s working today and why these vehicles can make a difference in your company: Email – Marketing automation tools allow for the ability to nurture and qualify prospects and customers with progressive profiling paths that advance a contact through the buyers' journey with relevant stage-appropriate content, increasing conversion rates. Print – Print has become the new "non traditional" marketing strategy, especially on the content marketing side. Print strategies also include techniques such as QR codes and personalized URLs, which help track media crossover. In addition, variable printing continues to allow brands to personalize graphics and images as they are printed. Some brands use it in conjunction with social media campaigns, which encourage subscribers to sign up for free goodies and, on occasion, marketing materials. Direct mail – This continues to be used successfully today. According to the “Epsilon Channel Preference Study,” 73 percent of U.S. consumers and 67 percent of Canadian consumers said they preferred direct mail for brand communications, because they could read the information at their convenience. “Because everyone today just emails, using direct mail can be a huge differentiator,” says Michael F. Sciortino, Sr., founder and CEO, Gratitude Marketing. Take oversized postcards, for example. “Find the largest the post office allows (Every Door Direct Mail)," he says. "This will allow you to target specific geographic areas.”
“We will continue to benefit from the testing and history of our past,” Sciortino says, “But whatever new vehicles come along will still have to ultimately pass the feel test with consumers. In other words, how does the method make the client feel? Does the vehicle provide an engaging, fun, memorable experience for the consumer? The success of your business will rely on happy and loyal clients. And while they may not always remember what you say or how you say it, they will remember how your business makes them feel.”
Social – When used in the platform-appropriate context, social provides a great way to stay in front of your audience. By understanding their behavior in relation to the social platform they’re on, marketers are repurposing content into the appropriate format for consumption, increasing conversion rates and acquiring more customers. “Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat are leading a new trend of advertising that focuses on creating seamless experiences for their audiences,” says Sean O'Neal, president, Adaptly. “Marketers can now think about how to adapt their campaigns to mimic true consumer conversations. Social platforms offer native solutions that can easily insert brands into real-time conversations, allowing them to capitalize on trending topics.”
Events – Events have become diluted with poor attempts to convert customers and prospects. For that reason, more companies are finding success with hosted-events that combine current customers and prospects. This approach allows potential buyers to meet customers and share experiences, which helps to speed up sales cycles for new customers and up-sell/cross-sell existing customers.
Mobile – This is an emerging best practice that generally is uncharted for most marketing professionals. “Consumer habits and attention spans are changing, allowing for savvy marketers to capitalize on the white space in mobile marketing,” says Randall LaVeau, senior consultant, Sales Benchmark Index. Apps that can provide the greatest value, i.e., time, are providing a captive platform to share messaging and convert opt-in customers and prospects.
Account-Based Marketing – This will make huge strides in the next phase of marketing, because it will be about aligning with sales to engage the accounts that matter most. The legacy approach of high volume top-of-funnel marketing is declining in its effectiveness with organizations whose sales cycles are long, complex, involving many stake holders, departments, and decision makers. Marketers will work closely with sales to focus on account-driven marketing versus contact or individual-driven marketing. Marketers will build a repeatable process to orchestrate personalized marketing and sales efforts to open doors and deepen engagement at specific accounts, LaVeau says.
Web/Digital – Hyper-personalization is an emerging best practice that has been long used by B2C marketers and is being adapted by B2B marketers. Creating a personalized experience for prospects who return to your website, and the use of ad tracking and retargeting, is becoming more common.
Stage and context-appropriate marketing – It is vital to be outward in your approach versus inward out. “By doing so, you will always be relevant,” LaVeau says. A great message has the ability to be repurposed and reformatted to match the strength of the vehicle. For example, content on LinkedIn will require a different format and potentially different wording to be relevant and consumed on Twitter," he says.
Sources: Randall LaVeau, senior consultant, Sales Benchmark Index; Michael F. Sciortino, Sr., founder and CEO, Gratitude Marketing; and Sean O'Neal, president, Adaptly
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Interview with Carmine Gallo
Trending with...
Best-selling author
Carmine Gallo
armine Gallo loves a good story. The former CNN business anchor and bestselling author believes our brains are hardwired to love stories. In his books "Talk Like TED," "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" and "The Storyteller's Secret," Gallo explores how well-crafted stories have driven the success of some of the world's foremost brands. Today, the highly sought-after communications expert channels his energy into helping companies like Intel, Chevron, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Coca-Cola get the most out of their stories. Here are his thoughts on how your message can help change your world:
Why should every brand hone its storytelling acumen?
Facts inform, stories trigger movements. Stories result in higher employee engagement, lower turnover and higher sales. This isn’t just my opinion. This is the conclusion from many case studies, including KPMG, which transformed itself into a storytelling culture. World-renowned hotelier Steve Wynn said storytelling changed his business and personal life. Get good at telling stories, and you’ll see high-level prospects beating a path to your door to be a part of the journey.
WE’RE ALL STORYTELLERS; WE JUST DON’T CALL OURSELVES STORYTELLERS. YOUR STORY CAN CHANGE YOUR COMPANY, ADVANCE YOUR INDUSTRY, START A MOVEMENT OR CHANGE THE WORLD.
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How and why can telling a good story inspire new ideas?
Neuroscience holds the answers. At Princeton University, neuroscientist Uri Hasson is studying “neural coupling.” This means when one person tells another person a story, the brains of both the listener and the speaker are in sync. The same regions of their brains light up in MRI studies. Dr. Paul Zak is also studying the science at his lab in Los Angeles. He has discovered that stories with "emotional triggers" motivate people to take actions, specifically to feel empathy for another person and make them more likely to contribute money to a cause.
What is the difference between a good story and one that transforms people?
A story has a beginning, middle and an end. A good story has emotional triggers such as conflict, hurdles, villains and heroes. A transformative story is what Golden State Warriors' owner Peter Guber calls "purposeful." It’s told with the purpose of advancing a strategy or leading to a sale.
Why is presentation everything? If I write a story down and email it to you, it won’t have the same effect as if I share the story with you in person, where you can hear my vocal intonations, see my facial expressions, and hear the passion and enthusiasm in my voice. Also, if you’re delivering slides, by all means use more pictures than words. Photos should complement the story, not detract from it.
Is storytelling for everyone?
Yes. We’re all storytellers; we just don’t call ourselves storytellers. Parents tell stories to their kids. Entrepreneurs tell stories when pitching to investors. Investors tell stories to their partners after listening to a pitch. CEOs tell stories to engage their employees. Job candidates tell stories in a job interview. Successful teachers, preachers and leaders tell stories. Your story can change your company, advance your industry, start a movement or change the world.
Before You Go
A NOVEL CONCEPT
STUDIES SHOW WHY CONTENT MARKETING IS ALL THE RAGE hy is content marketing the trend that keeps getting stronger and stronger? Let's go to the data. Below are a handful of studies that prove just how effective content marketing is in the branding process: of marketers surveyed said they saw positive bottom-line outcomes from their content marketing efforts, while 57 percent saw positive top-line business outcomes in the form of increased revenue and sales (Forrester Research)
Marketers who publish a blog are 13 times more likely to have a positive ROI. (HubSpot's "State of Inbound" study)
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of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing. (Demand Metric's "A Guide to Marketing Genius: Content Marketing)
Kraft generates the equivalent of 1.1 billion ad impressions a year and posts four-times-better ROI via content marketing than through targeted advertising. (AdAge)
of B2C marketers and 76 percent of B2B marketers say they’ll create more content in 2016. (Content Marketing Institute's "B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America") of readers trust educational content from brands, as long as it doesn’t push a sale. (Kentico Digital Experience Survey)
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