Sales & Marketing Effectiveness for Sustained Growth

Beyond Ring Analysis for a Dynamic Trade Area Definition

Scott Dewar, our good friend and colleague form SitePerfect Research has prepared a comprehensive white paper for those of you that need a better understanding of trade area analysis around your retail sites, Trade Area Definition & Demographic Analysis.

While the white paper is written primarily for those involved with site selection, I found Scott’s examples highly effective as a solid primer for gaining a deeper understanding of trade area formation.  Retailers need to move beyond demographics and factor in competition, market flows and site factors for understanding the dynamic trade area around an existing or proposed site. Scott’s organized approach has produced superior results for numerous regional and national brands. You owe it to yourself, before you rely on a demographic only analysis or spend money on that 3 mile radius mailing, to read this white paper.

Will Sales and Marketing Ever Get On the Same Page?

According to a recent article in the American Marketing Association’s publication, Marketing News, experts say complete alignment is unlikely, but point out that key objectives are imperative
Those objectives include:

• Determining and agreeing on what constitutes a qualified lead
• Defining the responsibilities of sales and marketing to one and other
• Collaborating on setting goals and building a consensus on key metrics
• Creating a system for marketing and sales to share customer data and leads’ progress

My opinion is that Marketing should be taking the lead – they drive lead development and customer loyalty.  and every company should keep striving to align their sales and marketing teams.  See previous blog post.

But, when all is said and done, the article states that probably the most important step is:
Don’t dwell on the differences between marketers and salespeople; instead, celebrate
the similarities.

Marketers and salespeople play different but complementary roles to accomplish shared objectives: attracting and retaining customers, says Lisa Dennis, president of Knowledgence Associates, a Cambridge, Mass.-based marketing, sales and customer service consulting firm with clients such as Mutual of Omaha and Unica. Dennis also is board president of the Boston chapter of the Sales and Marketing Executives International association.

With every customer interaction, sales reps are marketing the brand. Therefore, you want your sales team to feel a sense of ownership over the brand message they’re conveying, Dennis says, so get buy-in from your sales team before launching a new campaign. And as a marketer, you should be well-versed in your company’s sales process, so spend time in the field familiarizing yourself with what customers want and what sales reps need to get the job done. “As a marketer not knowing how sales works, I’ve got one arm tied behind my back,” Dennis says. “Your first customer is your sales team, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If I give them what they need, they’ll do well and I’ll do well, and we’ll both get closer to the customer.”  Read Lisa's previous guest article, Cure “Deal-Blindness” by Applying a Territory or Account Map

I invite you readers to let me know what you think?  What are the chances of sales and marketing ever getting on same page? 

Shopping for E-mails

E-marketing is fast becoming one of the most effective, low-cost marketing vehicles of choice. But how do you find those e-mail addresses to expand your efforts?

Guest Author – Kristy Amy

 
The answer is tricky. More and more list vendors are working to add e-mail lists to their service offerings. Vendors like infoUSA.com, edithroman.com and termedia.com do have lists for sale.

But before you start emailing, you need to fully understand the legal aspect of the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act of 2003  and the subsequent modifications / clarifications made to the Act in 2008.

The Act specifically tells you to whom you can send e-mail. For instance, you can only send commercial e-mails to individuals that your company has a relationship with or is currently engaged in a transaction. It also prohibits sending to harvested e-mail lists, meaning you can’t cherry pick addresses from various Web sites and add them to your list.

But there is a gray area. The law does not specify regulations related to purchasing an e-mail list. When you buy a list, you don’t technically know the individuals on the other side, nor do you know how the list was harvested in the first place.

Bottom line, the best way to expand your e-mail marketing is to simply build your list one address at a time. Collect everything you can from customers and prospects. And make sure to allow everyone the opportunity to opt-in to your e-communications.

There are few other issues you need to watch out for related to the CAN-SPAM Act.
Unsubscribe:
    * Include a visible unsubscribe mechanism in all e-mails, and make sure it works 
    * Hone consumer opt-out requests within 10 days
    * Use opt-out lists, also known as suppression lists, for compliance purposes
Content Standards:
    * Design accurate “from” lines describing the sender that doesn’t mimic others, including “friendly froms”  
    * Create relevant subject lines, meaning that it accurately describes the body of the e-mail 
    * Provide a legitimate physical address or a PO Box registered to the USPS
    * Label adult content

E-mail marketing is powerful, but without these standards in place, you may be walking a fine line—fines can soar into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So definitely utilize e-mail communications, but fully understand the legal and technical complexities.

For more information, feel free to contact:
Kristy Amy / President, OnMark Solutions
kristyamy@onmarksolutions.com or call 440-463-2183
Also, visit their website at http://www.onmarksolutions.com

Lead Scoring and Data Quality: How Much is Dirty Data Costing You?

Qualifying, coding and ranking your leads so the hottest opportunities are the first to get distributed to your sales teams is vital to your company’s sales and marketing success. That’s a given.

Yet, what many companies fail to understand is that data quality is core to an effective lead scoring system.  

A SiriusDecisions study, “The Impact of Bad Data on Demand Creation”, shows that following best practices in data quality generates a 66 percent increase in revenue. 

The study summary cited in a CRM Magazine article, “Looking to Score”,  offers some key insights for B2B organizations, such as:

• 10 to 25 percent of customer and prospect records contain critical data errors.
• The amount of data doubles every 12 to 18 months.
• It takes $1 to verify a record as it is entered, $10 to cleanse and de-dupe it, and $100 if nothing is done, as the ramifications of the mistakes are felt over and over again.
• From inquiry to marketing-qualified lead: A data strategy that solves conflicts at the source can lead to a 25 percent increase in converting inquiries to marketing-qualified leads.
• From marketing-qualified lead to sales-accepted lead: Unifying the data, whether into one database or by using technology for virtual integration, can lead to a 12.5 percent uplift in conversion rates to the next stage.
• From sales-accepted lead to sales-qualified lead: Clean data can reduce by 5 percent the time spent conducting the kind of additional research that precedes initial contact with a prospect.
• From sales-qualified lead to close: Given that the average field-marketing function spends no more than 10 percent of its budget in support of this final conversion, accurate data is a must for applying the right tools and resources to the right audience at the right stage of the buying cycle.

Jonathan Block, author of the report and senior director of research at SiriusDecisions, writes, “A best-in-class data strategy is shared by marketing and sales, and is focused on quality from [inquiry] to close. Although it is a job that consumes both money and time, paying more attention to data quality is not only worth it, it is something that your organization simply can’t afford not to do.

I couldn’t agree more.  Have you reviewed the quality of your data lately? 

Getting New Business: Adapting to Current Market Conditions

Guest Author - Richard G. Melecki

 
In virtually every industry today, businesses have to do more with less.  This includes all of the marketing activities necessary to get new business in a challenging economy. 

In past recessions, marketers have concentrated their efforts on market segments, geographies, and customers which have proven profitable in the past.  But the current world economic situation is changing virtually every market.  Just doing what worked in the past to acquire new business risks wasting scarce marketing dollars and increasing your cost of new business acquisition.

To reduce your marketing costs and to increase your return on dollars spent to get new business, follow these steps:

1. Examine every current geographic market, market segment, and customer to determine if they are in fact viable prospects in the current economy.  Ask yourself how your products and services might sell in markets and in geographies you have not previously served.

2. Concentrate on no more than one to three profitable markets or market segments at any given time.  Like an army on the attack, your business must achieve strategic focus in order to maximize the use of scarce resources.

3. Fine tune your product/service design and your pricing strategy for each market in which you do business. 

4. Make sure you have identified the real buyers in each market segment.  Buyers are individuals who have the authority to make purchase decisions and who own the budgets used to make the purchase.  Concentrate your marketing and sales efforts on reaching these individuals.

5. Profile each buyer type for every one of your products.  At a minimum you should know their titles, their professional background, how they find out about products and services like yours, and how they make purchase decisions.

6. Use communication channels that have the best chance of reaching buyers for the least cost.  Active business acquisition methods, such as business-to-business referrals, direct mail/e-mail, and cold calling usually are the most cost effective.  Other less direct methods, including Internet and print advertising, can also prove effective if selected carefully to reach your targeted buyer

For more information, feel free to contact:
MPI Achieve, Ltd.
330-622-4038
info@mpiachieve.com
http://www.MPIAchieve.com

Retain and Grow Market Share - a Major 2009 Marketing Mandate

According to the 2009 Marketing Outlook Survey, the largest independent assessment of senior marketing executives today, conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, an astounding 48% of marketing respondents indicated that “senior management is mandating that marketing contribute to the bottom line by retaining and growing market share.”

Great directive, as this will increase profitability. But, after 20 years of conducting comprehensive Market Analysis projects for all types of companies, I find that too many companies base their market share knowledge on “gut feelings” instead of a real analysis.

For example, I hear explanations like “We’ve been in business for 50 years, and everyone who needs our product knows us, so we feel we have a big share of the market”. 

This is almost always not true. Just because a consumer, whether it be B2B or B2C knows a company or their brand doesn’t mean they will purchase nor does it mean they are a qualified prospect. Branding does not equal sales or effective lead generation. And, it does not enable you to retain or grow market share. 

I have yet to run a basic analysis for any company and not found at least 30% more prospects than their sales reps were contacting.  Plus, this missed 30% were prospects like their best customers – not just anybody qualified for their product. More . .

It’s one thing to have a feeling for how your company has penetrated a given market. It is quite another thing to actually analyze and understand your share and potential, then see the results on maps and charts, and be able to effectively act upon the information. Unfortunately, many companies, even large ones, don’t have the internal expertise or resources to effectively perform the necessary analysis. 
   
You Can’t Retain or Grow What You Don’t Know
 
Before you can retain and grow market share, you must first thoroughly analyze and understand your current share and potential.  You must be able to, at least, answer the following basic questions:

* How much of the market currently belongs to you?
* How much more is out there?
* How profitable are your existing customers? 
* Which existing customers are the most and least profitable?
* Who are your most profitable prospects? 
* How do you get a bigger share of current customers, profitable prospects and market? 

For those marketers who are looking for ways to retain and grow market share, I invite you to visit the following sites for advice and solutions:

Market Analysis - previous blog on topic
Want to analyze your market share and potential?  Contact us info@infogrowcorp.com