Monthly Archives: February 2015

Urgency as the key ingredient in successful marketing strategy execution

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I love targets. They help to define what success looks like but I think there’s a much more valuable function that they perform.

Put simply, the create clarity amongst the noise that our everyday marketing work creates.

We all have so much going on – the event you’re planning, the last minute requests for ad copy from your print and digital media campaigns, the case study you have to write, the product launch piece you need to sign off, the photo shoot for your latest project.

Having a set of clearly defined targets helps to create order from this chaos and allows you to take a look back over your activity and see what impact it is having – how it is contributing to your journey towards delivering on all your key metrics.

But it’s not simply the value of targets that I want to talk about. What I’d like to look at is how we use these targets to drive better performance. While defining the key metrics is a crucial part of this it’s only the first stage in a successful process.

It’s my experience that unless appropriate attention is given to what the evaluation and reporting process looks like the time spent setting targets is wasted time.

Strategy execution sales and marketing by petrac marketing

Urgency is the key ingredient in your sales and marketing strategy

Simply setting your targets is not a job in itself. It is merely an exercise that ensures you will be able to deliver value from your sales & marketing strategy.

In setting up your evaluation and review process there are a variety of issues that need to be addressed and questions that need to be asked.

How often do you review progress against your targets?

The answer to this will be inextricably linked to the sector that you are in. If you’re involved in the fast moving consumer goods sector then it’s not inconceivable that there are daily targets to be reviewed. In the B2B market this review process will usually not be as frequent.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the high value capital equipment market – focusing on the quarrying and mining equipment market. In this, and other high value capex project markets the gestation period for new sales can be very long. As a result, businesses are typically set up for quarterly reporting.

This cascades down to the sales and marketing teams charged with delivering the new sales.

We recently did a bit of analysis of new sales won by month rather than by quarter and the results were very interesting.

In each of the last 3 years the best four months sales figures were in the final month in the quarter. Even more interestingly this remained the case even when the business changed its reporting period with HMRC.

What this suggests is that the pressure to perform, the pressure to deliver the sales target created an urgency across the business. This urgency was seeming to create the environment where our sales team were able to remove all the barriers to purchase that had been in place for the previous 2 months.

So what did we do about this?

The conversations centred around how we could ensure that the sense of urgency from the last month in the quarter was present every month.

If we could do this we would smooth out the dreaded lumps in our new order ledger. This would improve cash flow across the business and ensure that investment planning decisions could be made more comfortably.

What we did was not only extremely effective – but frighteningly simple.

We moved from a quarterly reporting system to a monthly system. The sales and marketing teams had their targets redrawn to show 12 individual monthly targets. This was linked to new commission plans and bonus schemes.

The annual target was no longer one large number but twelve smaller numbers. This helped to create a new environment where a sense of urgency was present every day across every member of the sales team.

Supporting departments providing technical specifications, preparing customer proposals, finalising payment terms were all incentivised the same way to ensure that everyone was working together to deliver the common goal – the new sales at the right margin that would deliver further growth and provide the financial basis on which future growth plans were founded.

The urgency is created by the fact that the maximum amount of time left for you to deliver your next target is 30 days. This led to a considerable development in expertise within the sales and marketing team. Sales and marketing craft developed at breakneck speed because there was now a requirement to understand the customer, understand the obstacles to the deal being done, understand the competition better than they understand themselves.

What were the results?

It won’t come as a surprise that the new strategy and reporting / reward scheme took a large amount of internal selling before it was introduced.

It won’t come as a surprise that it took a while before it started delivering the intended results – but only a short while. After a slow first three months by month 4 the intended results started coming through.

Another important factor is company culture. This system creates a pressure environment. Your people need to thrive in this environment.

This system also requires that sales and marketing does not operate in a silo but that the organisation as a whole recognises the importance of new sales and works in partnership with them to help bring the new sales in.

For me it’s the perfect example of the science of selling and how an understanding of what drives people to succeed will help your business to deliver better results.

If you would like some help with any aspect of your strategy setting or review process then get in touch.

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Keep it simple. Keep it human.

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there is beauty in simplicity

Simple marketing messages connect with your customers

Some believe that the more complex you can make something sound, the more intelligent you will assume the designer is.

If the years I have spent in the manufacturing sector has taught me anything it is to focus on the simplicity of it all.

This doesn’t mean the product was simple to design – quite the opposite. In crafting the marketing message to accompany the shiny new product just focus on the end result for your customer.

Does it reduce their workload?

Does it reduce their costs?

Does it make their life a little easier?

Does it reduce waste or make their business more efficient in some way?

This is where the magic is found in your customers’ eyes.

It’s not about the clever piece of software you’ve created or the engineering of your new machine.

It’s about the problems that you are solving for your customers.

It’s about demonstrating that you understand their business, understand their daily frustrations and understand the value in being able to solve their problems.

It’s this approach that leads to true partnerships with your customers.

It then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy – you get even greater access to their business, which fosters an even greater understanding of their requirements.

All of this builds over time to create relationships that are very hard to break. The value you are adding now extends way beyond the product or service you are offering.

In the pyramid of trust a sales person appears very close to the bottom. This approach will help you move yourself out of this area and into the ‘expert’ zone.

And it all starts with a simple marketing message.

If you would like some help with a new product launch or to define your business to a new customer group or new market then get in touch.

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Dealing with the Digital Skills Gap

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Digital Marketing Strategy Petrac Marketing

Digital marketing is an essential part of the modern marketing mix

With the amount of technology now available and the pace of change it’s never been as challenging for anyone working in marketing to understand all of the channels that are available when trying to get your product or service to market.

This has led to the creation of new Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing roles  – but I can’t help feeling that this is just an abdication of responsibility by those in charge.

Digital is simply a delivery mechanism for all your marketing efforts. There is no digital marketing – it’s just modern marketing.

In an increasing number of organisations there is a recognition that there is a skills gap in relation to digital marketing. However, it’s the response to this problem that I think is focused in the wrong place.

For too many companies and organisations this skills gap is addressed by the creation of a new role within the marketing team – Digital Marketing Executive, Social Media Marketing Executive being two such positions.

I don’t think anyone would argue that digital marketing represents a huge part of the modern marketing mix – so surely there is a requirement that every member of your marketing team is a digital marketer?

When creating the person specifications for all members of your marketing team surely some sort of digital capability must be included in the ‘essential skills’ box?

You wouldn’t employ a software engineer without the relevant qualifications. You wouldn’t employ a engineer without knowing that they had training in the relevant engineering discipline. You wouldn’t employ an accountant who hadn’t had the appropriate training.

The same should apply with your marketing team. Creating separate digital marketing roles is simply abdicating responsibility for digital to a single person in order to avoid having to learn about it yourself.

Digital marketing is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for anyone working in marketing. It’s essential that you have these skills or you will end up being surplus to requirements.

The other side of the same coin is that by skilling yourself up in all things digital you are giving yourself a serious competitive advantage over a lot of other people.

There’s simply no excuse any more – there are shed loads of formal digital qualifications out there and as much online content as you can cope with.

As with anything though the only way to really get it and understand how you can use it to improve your business results is to get involved.

So stop passing the responsibility on to others and embrace the challenge and the opportunity that digital marketing presents.

Get started now – Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Institute (Ireland and UK)

If you would like some help working out how you can take advantage of digital within your marketing strategy then get in touch.

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7 Reasons Why Bad Website Design Decisions Get Made

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I cam across this great post on why bad website design decisions get made (published on the Tribute Media website).

Of the 7 points that are made there is a common theme that runs through them all.

In far too many cases the decisions that are made about the best design are too focused on what the organisation would like to achieve rather than what the visitors to your website are there for in the first place.

This is a result of the focus being in the wrong place – too much time is spent on coming up with a website design that gets the approval of the powers that be. The damaging effect of this is to further disconnect your website from the people who will be using it.

At the very outset of your website design journey you should be spending a lot of time researching who it is that visits your website and what they want to do when they get there.

7 Reasons Why Bad Website Design Decisions Get Made.

why bad website design decisions are made

7 reasons why bad website design decisions get made – original post from Tribute Media

All of this information is very easy to get:

Have a look at your current website analytics – there is a wealth of information in here about current user behaviour. Where are your users coming from? What content is most popular? Where are your poorly performing pages?

in addition to this you should be profiling your different website users – creating personas for the people who visit your website is a very useful exercise that will allow you to better understand how to deliver a positive website experience for your visitors.

This can be easily achieved by talking to the customer facing people within your organisation. Your sales team is the obvious first step but don’t ignore the others in your organisation that can add some serious value to this process.

If you discover that you are selling to procurement departments, then involve your own in this profiling exercise as you’ll often find that what is important to them gives you an insight into what motivates your customers’ buying decisions.

The same is true if you find that you are selling to accountants – increasingly it is accountants who occupy the Managing Director or CEO position. Involving your own Finance Director or CFO will allow you to expand your awareness of what questions these people are likely to want answered when considering buying a product like yours.

It is this focus on your visitors that will allow you to create a website that will ultimately deliver you increased conversions – whatever that conversion may be. It could be increased sales, increased white paper or brochure downloads, increased enquiry levels, increased registrations for the event you are running, increased donations for your charitable cause.

Whatever sector you are operating in – public, private or third sector – the process should be the same.

In my experience a lot of the conflict and pain of a new website design project is as a result of a misplaced focus on the subjective elements of the website design.

It is virtually impossible to get a cross section of people to agree on a design that they all like – we all prefer different websites for different reasons. When your project uses consensus on the design of your new site as the starting point or your project it is destined to take longer than you originally planned for, cost more than you originally planned for and – most importantly – deliver a website that it not configured to achieve its objectives for improving business results.

Your website is not a vanity project – it’s a project that when delivered correctly will deliver real, tangible, positive results for your company or organisation. But only if you get back to the science of the process and remove subjective decision making.

7 Reasons Why Bad Website Design Decisions Get Made.

If you would like some help with your website project then get in touch:

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Are Current EU C&D Waste Recycling Targets an Obstacle to Growth? – Waste Management World

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Peter Craven Waste Management World

Article on the Waste Management World website

I recently wrote an article about the current EU targets that exist for the recycling of construction, demolition and excavation waste and whether they are structured in a way which encourages innovation and improves performance.

The article has featured in a number of publications and one of these is the Waste Management World publication – you can read the article on the Waste Management World website below.

Are Current EU C&D Waste Recycling Targets an Obstacle to Growth? – Waste Management World.

The article asks a number of questions:

Does a ‘one size fits all’ approach work in relation to targeting improvements in the volumes of construction and demolition waste that is recycled?

Are the targets focused in the right area? Will they drive efficiency, protect the environment and encourage innovation?

Have a read of the article and let me know what you think.

Viral isn’t a valuable endgame

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It seems that everyone is searching for the silver bullet that will allow them to create viral campaigns at will. I think this is a problem.

The endless focus on viral and how it can be achieved suggests to me that there is a misconception that a viral campaign is the single key performance indicator that matters. The suggestion here is that viral automatically equals success. While there is no doubt that this is the case in some instances I think there are more than enough examples of viral campaigns that simply haven’t worked – they haven’t delivered any significant business result.

I’ll illustrate this by looking at examples of 2 viral campaigns – both of which would have been described as successful if the only measure was whether they achieved the ‘viral’ badge of honour.

One of the best examples of a successful viral campaign is the ongoing campaign run by Blendtec to promote the blenders that they produce. This is one of the most often quoted examples of successful viral campaigns and it’s easy to see why. They didn’t just create one video that went viral – they’ve managed to sustain their success over a reasonably long period of time (digital years, as we all know are like dog years in fast forward).

Their video showing the blending of an iPad using a Blendtec blender has to date had almost 17 ½ million views on their Youtube channel. The iPhone in the blender has had 12 ¼ million views. Other products that have had the Blendtec treatment include golf balls, crowbars, magnets and marbles.

You can watch all of the Blendtec videos on their Youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

So why did it work?

The Blendtec story has so many factors that made it successful – the first video that went viral was simply the delivery mechanism for the campaign.

First of all, they have a great product – the rationale for putting all this weird and wonderful stuff through a blender was to demonstrate the strength of the blender. If it can blend an iPad or a golf ball it’s going to have no problem making your breakfast smoothie. So the campaign had a clear purpose – demonstrate one of the key unique selling points of the product.

Secondly, it’s a mass market product. Achieving almost 30 million views for the iPad and iPhone videos is a step in the right direction for Blendtec in making their product more well known and more desirable. The potential for people to decide to buy a Blendtec blender is almost beyond comprehension – it’s not inconceivable that every home in the world could have a Blendtec blender.

The key thing that determines whether the Blendtec campaign was a success is the difference it made to their sales numbers. The results here are astounding – in 2009 it was reported that after the first 186 videos sales were up 700%.

All of this was possible because the campaign had a clear purpose and a solid business behind it.

You can read a case study of the Blendtec story at http://www.socialens.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/20090127_case_blendtec11.pdf

This is a viral campaign that worked – not because it went viral but because it delivered a significant business result.

Equally, there are mass market brands that try and run viral campaigns that aren’t as successful. One of the best to illustrate the point that viral alone doesn’t mean success was done by Kodak back in 2007.

In the absence of the video you can read an online article detailing the success of the campaign at http://adage.com/article/digital/kodak-s-deprecating-house-video-viral/114076/

Kodak viral video

Headline from a Adage article on the famous Kodak viral campaign

This video sought to address the perception that Kodak was a tired old brand that had been left behind by the digital photography boom. They had failed to spot the changing demands of their customers and they tackled this issue head on with the launch of a video which was very self deprecating – admitting all the mistakes of the past and recent present but promising that it was all about to change.

Personally, this was one of the best videos that I ever watched online – but despite numerous searches it’s just not available any more. Why? Because in 2009 the company went out of business.

While the campaign achieved the objective of going viral it didn’t make one blind bit of difference to the prospects for the company. Why? Because viral isn’t a healthy objective to have for any campaign.

The Kodak campaign was destined to fail because it had no purpose other than going viral, no substance to back up the claims they made in their video. They may have talked about embracing the digital revolution and to watch out for all the new technology that they were about to unleash on the market. But the fact was that they didn’t have any of this. It was an elaborate cover story to try and buy some time.

I bet when the Kodak video went viral the agency involved and the Kodak marketing team were busy patting themselves on the back about what a wonderful job they had just done. For them, the viral video was evidence of success. The proof that this has no foundation is what happened to Kodak in 2009 when they closed their doors.

I think these two campaigns represent the 2 extremes of viral campaigns.

Blendtec is a great sales, marketing and product development story that demonstrates the value in understanding your customers, understanding your product and having a clear objective for your campaigns.

Kodak is an example of viral for the sake of viral. That’s as much substance as there was. Was it clever? Yes. Was it funny? Yes. Did it reach a massive audience? Yes. Did it work? No.

What this says for me in that in the midst of this technological age success in sales, marketing and business in general is still down to a few good old fashioned things:

A great product, in the right market, at the right price, delivered through the best sales channel with superior customer support and  a great sales team.

Get these basics right and your success will be long term and tangible rather than a flash in the pan viral campaign.

I’m reminded here of a previous post on this blog, the title of which seems very relevant. Consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness.