Operational Efficiencies in Marketing

Time to shine

2021 must be focused on minimizing unnecessary and unproductive expenses and delivering sales qualified leads that convert to opportunities - it’s really that simple. The marketing pendulum must dramatically shift towards an Agile but deliberate approach (scrappy) focused on Net New and away from branding exercises and vanity metrics. This is supported by the fact that many companies truly don’t have a branding budget, nor should they be allowed one until they have their story completed and vetted with a mapped execution strategy.

If we are to hit our targets, we must move marketing closer to the money focusing on SQLs tightly aligned with sales. You’ve already put in place software that unifies systems and manages daily operations. It’s now necessary to analyze the data we gather to turn it into insight and track the journey (specifically optimizing mid funnel) of a prospect effectively creating programs to convert.

Restructuring roles to qualified people

Process and operational standardization are very important goals particularly when you are operating in constrained times from a budget perspective. We need to reallocate staff to focus on digital/conversion and place the right people in the right roles.

• People must be moved into roles where they are measured on tangible business outcomes. There is no such thing as a global event. There is need for reshaping digital events to time zones and language specifics requirements. Marketing should not be a resting place for people without the relevant experience.
• Web teams needs to be experts in the platform you’ve commited to. We need to eliminate “learning on the job” and hire professionals that push us all to be better.
• We also need to disband “digital” and separate paid versus organic – allocating the headcounts into specific areas of direct accountability. Paid would be absorbed into Programs and Organic would be absorbed into the Web team. This will allow complete and accountable focus on improving conversions.
• There ought to be a single person in charge of all of your field marketing. I personally gravitate towards complete accountability or “One throat to choke”. Global activities ought to dovetail into the regional activity execution and requires tight coordination. This is especially true in a digital world as we do not want to compete with each other in paid media driving prices up. While at the same time ensuring best practices are shared and competition between the regions increases.
• They needs to be complete alignment and sign off between organizations for 2021 sales plays and campaigns. Operation in a silo is unacceptable from any company. Very focused “tiger teams” need to continue. The marketing, sales, and business units need to consistently be working on the same objectives.

Preparing for changes

Everything you do should mitigate any risk should you decide to makes a change. One good example is called a “Headless Website”. Your platform maintains the content for the site and becomes our pivot point for everything branded – Zero alternative options to all organizations within your company. In this proposed environment the content for the site is accessible via a web-service API, usually in a RESTful manner and in a mashup-friendly format such as JSON. The end-user experience is delivered by a Javascript application rendering the output of this API into HTML. This adds an additional layer of abstraction between end users and the website.

This process sets you free from the conventions and structures of the backend. Which means you can also address the subscription customer journey issue by allowing subscription products to look and feel like our website. It also means you can never be locked in by a vendor as you could use the connections to supply branding content to whatever platform you want. Operationalizing the hook up and not simply place an “X by Logo" replacement.

Streamline all processes and measure everything

Gartner states that buyer enablement is “the provisioning of information that supports the completion of critical activities necessary to make a purchase.”. I’d suggest “buyer enablement” is simply removing friction to consume contextually relevant content. Prospects self-educate, and therefore self-qualify. This self-education increases velocity, conversion rates, and average deal sizes. In 2021 you need to continuously improve your content as well as how easy it gets used on the website and test any hypothesis you may have on an ongoing basis.

Another benefit to a rigorous approach to marketing measurement is that you can learn to use data as proof of our decisions. You have to question Demand vs. Brand and utilize the priorities you’ve already established. These tough decisions need to be enforced by budget control. Why would we spend any money at all on products we aren’t invested in? You already know the customers and have the tools already to communicate with them on-site, in digital events, user groups, and through emails.

Train everyone to be (capital A) Agile marketers

We need to take a pragmatic problem-solving approach (rather than a “shiny new toy” or “just log a ticket” approach). I believe the people within the marketing group, with coaching, can move into the modern marketing era. It may sound harsh but people either need to move up or move out. We need everyone to keep focused on finding better solutions that address our key business issues. I’ve setup over 6 weeks of training so far and have opened it up to all of marketing to help them understand coasting along is unacceptable. We need intensity and passion to do the right things for this company. These core concepts help marketing rise to a role of truly driving efficiency, and in turn, revenue.

It’s important, then, for the marketing to build a water-tight process, train the team on the process, and train marketers on how to set things up. Campaigns will be built with specific quantifiable goals in mind at the onset, and then marketers will be trained on how best those goals can be achieved.