As a provider of market research services, this is a statement that I often hear made by business executives and owners – particularly those at small to mid-sized firms.
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Here’s some of the common reasons why this statement is made:
The truth is that there’s never a substitute for engaging with your customers or prospective customers directly. Many businesses in the past have experienced the pitfalls of relying on boardroom research, or the biased information that often comes from sales people.
In addition, doing good market research is a skill that is learned and honed over time through experience. As is the case when completing many tasks in both our professional and personal lives, success is often dependent upon knowing the little things.
For example:
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there are different types of research approaches you can use, such as focus groups and surveys. It’s important to know what situations each is best suited to and why
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if you want to use the research you’re conducting to make a big business decision, then you’d be well advised to make sure the results are based on a sample size that provides a high level of statistical accuracy – this requires knowing how to do these calculations
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there are many different question types that can be used when designing a survey, and knowing which one is best suited to a particular issue is important
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being able to run cross tabulations, or group the answers you’ve received into various categories such as the age of respondents, where they’re located, etc. can provide highly valuable insights that can be easily missed when running standard answer reports in commercially available survey software
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knowing whether the differences in the answers you receive from different segments of your survey respondents are meaningful or important requires a knowledge of statistical significance testing
The purpose of market research is simple – to provide organizations with information that will lead to better decision making, and ultimately help drive success.
With this goal in mind, it’s important that any research you do be conducted in the most accurate and effective manner possible.
The great news is that the cost of using external firms to help with your research requirements is dramatically lower than it used to be, and is well within the reach of most small to mid sized businesses. For example, a web-based survey project complete with a full report and results presentation is now in the range of only $5K-$10K – instead of the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that was common for telephone surveys when I first started my career.
So the next time you’re thinking you don’t need to talk to your customers or prospects, or can get your assistant to do a survey for you, for the sake of the future success of your oganization, please think again. It costs nothing to at least speak with a few research firms and get some quotes.
What Do You Think? Do you see the value of doing formal market research and if so, what have your experiences been when using external research firms?
Note: Photo used under creative commons (attribution) license courtesy of Salvatore Vuono
(http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=659)
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Note: Photo used under creative commons
(attribution) license courtesy of
Tracy Olson
Have you ever asked yourself the question “how do I know if I’m charging the right prices for my products and services”? In my experience, the answer will always depend on whether you have an actual pricing strategy in place.
By a pricing strategy I mean whether or not you have consciously considered a few simple but critically important aspects of how you go about setting the prices you’re charging.
There are 4 common types of pricing strategies organizations follow when setting their prices. These include:
- Penetration – where you intentionally charge less than other competitors, often to grow market share
- Competitive – where the prices you charge are very close (within 5%-10%) of other direct competitors
- Premium – where you intentionally charge more than other competitors, often to help establish a position of premium quality or service
- Cost Plus – where you set prices based solely on earning a desired profit margin
The pricing strategy you should use will depend on a number of factors, including your overall goals. For example, if you have very aggressive profitability/margin targets it may not make sense to adopt a very low priced, penetration pricing strategy.
It’s even possible (but not always optimal from an overall branding perspective) to adopt different pricing strategies for different product or service lines.
For example, you might offer a premium or very high quality line of products for one segment of your market where you charge very high prices, and another line that’s priced much lower to appeal to a different group of buyers for whom quality isn’t as important and therefore aren’t willing to pay as high a price.
Since the prices you charge are one of the most important determinants of overall profitability, taking the time to carefully think through and develop a formal pricing strategy is the best way to be confident that you are in fact charging the right prices for your products and services.
What Do You Think? Does you company have a formal pricing strategy for your products and/or services? And if so, which of the 4 main strategies are you using? Finally, do you agree that by having a formal pricing strategy it allows you to make better pricing decisions and maximize overall profitability?
Photo courtesy of Jack Delano and used under creative
commons license.
First of all I have to come clean – there really isn’t such a thing (as far as I’m aware) as “Tomato Marketing”, except of course as it applies in the literal sense to those companies who produce and market actual tomatoes.
The title of this blog is instead designed to frame what I’ll refer to as a light hearted look at the rapid growth in marketing terms currently being used in the profession.
It came to me as I was thinking about a saying I’m sure you’ve heard before that people sometimes refer to when they use a different term to describe what is essentially the same thing as what someone else is saying or thinking. It goes like this – you say tom”a”to, I say tom”o”to.
In just 5 minutes here’s a list of 13 different types of “marketing” (or ways to describe marketing) I came up with off the top of my mind (in alphabetical order):
Digital marketing
Direct marketing
Earned marketing
Email marketing
Inbound marketing
Integrated marketing
Interconnected marketing
Internet marketing
Knowledge marketing
Permission marketing
Precision marketing
Revenue marketing
Social marketing
While I understand the importance of companies establishing a unique positioning in the market, I must say it seems like marketing service providers (who are the ones that seem to be making up most of these terms) may be approaching the point of saturation.
I mean really, how many more ways are there to describe a process that in the end is designed to fundamentally achieve one single objective? – generate more revenue and sales for companies.
Note: In terms of disclosure I myself have been in the marketing services sector for the past 14 years and freely use the term interconnected marketing in our web site as a way of helping us stand out from the crowd.
Just imagine how difficult it must be for our poor customers (marketing people that hire agencies and other outside marketing consulting and support service firms) to keep up with all of these terms. And to take it a step further, imagine what it must be like taking these terms to people who are even further removed from the marketing profession like company President’s and CEO’s.
So what’s my point? I suppose it’s mainly to just say whether you’re a marketing services firm or a marketing professional who hires outside service firms, it’s not the terms we use to describe what we do that’s key, it’s about actually delivering – which typically means growing revenue.
As long as we all stay focused on this simple goal, then I guess it doesn’t really matter how many terms we come up with. As they say, the more the merrier!
What Do You Think? Is the recent explosion in marketing terms okay, or is it unnecessarily complicating the profession and making it more difficult to connect with (and sell our ideas as marketing practitioners) others? And if you are a fan of these terms, which one do you think is the most important/effective?
Technology is the Enabler
Being a great revenue marketer does require adopting more of a process view to your company’s business development efforts, and actively managing this through technology.
The great news is there are a number of SaaS-based marketing automation solutions available to fit the requirements and budget of companies of virtually any size. Marketo is certainly one, but there’s others as well such as Hubspot, which is also experiencing explosive growth.
If you really want to turn your company into a fully closed loop “Revenue Rockstar” work towards integrating a marketing automation system with your CRM. This will allow you to seamlessly transfer opportunities created at the top of your sales funnel into a system that will accurately track which ones turn into real business.
While most marketing automation and CRM systems are designed to work out of the box, many companies find they can get the best value by working with an implementation partner who can customize and then ensure they are being used to their full ability.
What Do You Think? Has your organization begun to explore how marketing automation can be used to directly contribute to the development of revenue, and if so, what have your experiences been? If your organization hasn’t started down this path yet, is it something that sounds like it could offer some benefits?
There is a Better Way
The key to more effectively generating revenue starts with adopting a new, more holistic way of thinking about how revenue is actually generated.
Jon Miller, Marketo’s VP of Marketing, talked about these organizations view revenue development to be a process that begins well before a sales person actually makes contact.
Source: Marketo.
Organizations that are embracing this broader view of how revenue is developed also realize the important role that marketing – as part of a fully interconnected business development process within a company – plays in ensuring qualified leads flow through the sales funnel as quickly as possible.
As this visual shows, the effectivness the complete business development process will be optimized (and cost minimized) if initial awareness and inquiries are handled through marketing, and where only marketing qualified leads are actually sent to a sales resource. Really great revenue marketers actually have a Sales Assessment Team who further qualfies a potential opportunity before it goes to an outside sales professional.
By taking this approach, a growing number of best-in-class business development companies are realizing the crucial role marketing can play in actually generating revenue, and this is where the term revenue marketing comes from.
In talking about Marketo’s “Secret Sauce”, Jon shared that 80% of their leads are actually generated through Marketing. When thinking about this number, you should also remember that Marketo (along with other marketing automation firms like HubSpot) is one of the fastest growing technology companies in America right now.
In my next and final blog post on this topic I'll discuss how technology is a key enabler to becoming a revenue marketing rockstar.
But for now what do you think? Does your organization take a holistic approach to revenue development, or is this still mainly the responsibility of "Sales"?
The Marketo Revenue Rockstar Tour I had the pleasure of attending in Toronto back in April was based on a very powerful concept anyone interested in generating more revenue for their company should either already be doing, or seriously investigating – revenue marketing.
To show why revenue marketing is so important, the session started by sharing some key information from a recent CSO Insights Report – almost 50% of of the leads sales people are pursuing are self-generated. Only 29% of leads are generated through marketing.
Photo courtesy of Google Creative Commons Image Bank.
For more traditional marketers and sales executives this may not sound like a big deal, but for the newer breed of business development leaders who are emerging as a result of our “new normal” economic climate here in North America, this number will be very alarming.
The reason is simple – given the incredibly high cost of personal selling (typical estimates run anywhere between $250-$350 per live call) why would anyone want these people spending their valuable (and expensive) time searching for organizations to call and trying to determine whether or not there’s really any chance of doing business together?
In my next blog post on this topic I'll discuss how revenue marketing can help address this challenge.
But for now what do you think? Is marketing directly involved in generating leads and revenue for your organization? And if not, is this something you're planning on looking into in the future?
Over the past week two separate studies were released that clearly show how important it is for all marketers - even those in B2B – to be present in Facebook.
Eloqua Chart of the Week
Eloqua’s latest chart of the week shows that 72% of inbound links for Eloqua hosted B2B customer sites came from Facebook.
I think most consumer goods marketers would find the B2C stats pretty sensible, but to suggest that Facebook also rules in the world of B2B would probably have more than a few people’s eyebrows raised.
Webs Small Business Study
A separate study conducted by Webs, a do-it-yourself solution for website creation, says that Facebook is the favourite tool of small business owners, with 68% saying this is the social media platform they use the most for business.
Why This Makes Sense
Do you find these results surprising? I know I did, and still do to some degree, but if you think about it for a minute, it actually makes sense.
Given the huge penetration of Facebook (which is now at or just above the 50% mark of the population of the United States and Canada per the latest stats from InternetWorld Statistics), it just stands to reason that all types of people, even those in business, are using this social media platform. Because we never totally “turn off” work, it also stands to reason that if I come across something that will help me do my job better, I’ll take some time to read about it. At this point the fact that I may be on what has traditionally been viewed as a more non-business site like Facebook is irrelevant.
One must also consider the sharing power of Facebook. If I come across something of interest or relevance in my business life while on Facebook and it could help one of my other (Facebook) “friends” in their job or career, why wouldn’t I share it?
A third reason these stats make sense is the simple fact that more and more B2B companies are starting to see the power of Facebook, and establishing a presense in it. This means there’s more helpful and interesting B2B content for people on Facebook to see.
What do you think? If you're a B2B marketer are you seeing a similar growth in the importance of Facebook, and if so, what do you think is driving it?
More than ever before, marketers are being called on to deliver measureable results. We can rise to this challenge by adopting a new approach to Integrated Marketing that ensures we’re taking a more coordinated approach to the actions marketing takes, and ensuring these actions are part of a larger, integrated plan that is rooted in market needs and involves the entire company.
The “Old School” View of Integrated Marketing
If you work in the field of marketing, or have worked with advertising and communications agencies in the past, you’re probably familiar with the term “Integrated Marketing”.
The traditional definition is largely focused on communications – the main idea is to develop multi-channel - or integrated - advertising programs by using market information and data to create better producing campaigns.
I believe the traditional definition of this term is too narrowly focused on the advertising or promotional aspect of marketing alone, and that this needs to change.
Why This Needs to Change
The “new normal” economy we’re all living in is demanding that organizations of all types and sizes become better at what they do in order to survive.
Companies simply don’t have the time or money to invest in anything that doesn’t have a high chance of success. The Canadian Marketing Association created an excellent White Paper outlining the importance of this topic in 2010 called Marketing Measurement: A Timeless Framework.
In order for Marketing departments to help their organizations be great, they have to become better at adopting integration in a much broader sense.
A New Definition for the Future
Instead of just focusing on one aspect of marketing (advertising/promotion), there’s an exciting opportunity to apply an expanded concept of Marketing Integration that is based on using information and knowledge to make sure you’re doing the best job possible within ALL areas of marketing (product, price, promotion and place), and that each of these areas are also working together in unison.
Integrated Marketing in the 21st Century
This expanded vision of Integrated Marketing also includes taking steps to ensure all departments are working together towards the common goal of growing and retaining profitable revenue: for example, Marketing and Sales. Just imagine how great that would be!
There are three steps to success when applying this new concept of Integrated Marketing to improve ROI;
- Invest in solid market research and information…
- To set strategies for your organization as a whole (and within marketing specifically)…
- And then work together as a unified team to take coordinated action
What you end up with is marketing, and each of the elements within it, playing exactly the right role to help achieve your overall company goals and support your desired image in the market.
And the really great news is becoming an Integrated Marketing master isn’t that difficult. It can be used by organizations of any size, and done so in a very practical, action-oriented way.
How This New Approach to Integrated Marketing Will Improve ROIAccording to the
Centre for Integrated Marketing, taking an information-based and integrated approach to the communications component of marketing alone can result in a 10%-25% increase in marketing performance. Imagine what the impact would be if you applied this same approach to all of the areas of marketing like product development, pricing, etc.?
What do you think? Have you or any of the organization’s you work for successfully applied this new approach to Integrated Marketing that uses information, planning and coordination beyond advertising and communications alone to drive improved ROI and if so, what have your experiences been?