Marketing Articles About Demand

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MarketingSherpa Seeks Case Study speakers for 2009 B2B Demand Generation Summits. If you have a great B2B story to tell, think about sharing it with other B2B marketers at MarketingSherpa’s 6th Annual B2B Demand Generation Summit 2009. MarketingSherpa is looking for speakers for the events which will be held September 23-25... (04/24/09 09:00 AM)

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5th Annual MarketingSherpa Demand Generation Summit 2008. You're invited to join me at MarketingSherpa's Demand Generation Summit at your choice of Boston (Oct 5-7) or San Francisco (Oct 26-28.) I'll be speaking on "Playbook for Effective Lead Management." This year's the summit will have 19 new case... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

The 2008 Top of the Funnel List. Craig Rosenberg recently created a list of the most influential people in B2B Demand Generation, and I’m honored to have been included. Many know Craig through his blog, Funnelholic, or through his company Tippit. Funnelholic is a very insightful and... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

ITSMA: Elevating Demand in a Crowded World . Generating demand has become a top priority for most companies in today’s slower environment. The most successful programs are much more targeted than in past years and favor quality over quantity. You're invited to join me at ITSMA's (IT Services... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

To CEOs Cutting Budgets: "Cheap is Expensive" . What a dilemma! You are asked to reduce budget, cut costs, reduce expenses. However, you need your BEST to gain market share, compete for customer dollars and emerge from the recession as a winner. You need the best employees, technology, service, partners, vendors, and agencies so you can outsmart and out-execute competition. You need the best to drive demand when marketing rules are being reinvented by customer conversations. You need the best because, more than ever before, the quality of your inside is visible to the outside, and that market is judging with their wallets.You’ve been reading (perhaps experiencing) about recent company layoffs. I’m guessing most companies are making lay off decision based on roles the business needs, but also employee performance. It would seem obvious that every company wants to keep their best people. Although I’ve heard of companies that offer voluntary attrition with a healthy severance package. You know who takes that package? The best employees. What’s left at that company? Well…fewer of those best employees. Again, the quality of your inside is visible to your outside. The quality of a company is a function of the quality of people it keeps. At Bazaarvoice, we go to great lengths to hire the best employees, and it has made a significant difference to our performance, which is a function of the performance we deliver for our clients. But imagine if we didn’t hire the best. Imagine if we hired the cheapest employees, or had no discipline in our hiring... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

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Liberate Your Marketing By Setting Boundaries.

This is the article that I wrote this month for adotas. The idea here is that so often, marketers are consumed with all of the media and hype around them that we neglect to setup proper boundaries and filters for ourselves and for our teams to ensure that we're truly able to focus on our marketing mission, only letting that which will truly benefit our organization onto the marketing plan.

â??Donâ??t fence me inâ?? is the mindset of most marketers and creative members of your team. The last thing we typically want is to have boundaries on our time, creativity and choices. Boundaries, however, are what keep you and I focused on the business of marketing and others focused on sales and still others focused on finance and operations. The ability to set, express, and maintain boundaries is an essential part of any healthy marketing department. Boundaries build â??win-winâ?? relationships by making clarifying needs and limits, while opening the field on what options are available for meeting marketing objectives. More specifically, setting marketing boundaries around both new and legacy marketing tactics allow you to focus on those things that matter and only pursue those ideas that pass through your well-established marketing boundaries, ensuring a higher degree of success.

What do marketing boundaries look like, and how can you know where and how to set them?

Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, says that â??If you canâ??t say â??no,â?? your â??yesesâ?? donâ??t mean a thing.â?? Thatâ??s so absolutely true. In marketing, if we canâ??t say â??NOâ?? to those things that seem to beg at our budgets and demand our time, weâ??re hamstrung in trying to accomplish those things that weâ??ve already said â??yesâ?? to. In order to keep our yes and no categories in check, there are five key boundary setting techniques that I recommend for all marketers.

Learn to say The Positive â??NOâ??: Yes, you can say â??noâ?? positively. Knowing that your â??noâ?? answer leads to increased energy and focus on the â??yesesâ?? youâ??ve already committed to. To get a feel for this, look at where you should say â??NOâ?? right now. Sit down right now and identify the emerging demands on your marketing team, plan and budget. Identify 5-10 â??NOâ??sâ?? you need to say. Then, for each, ask yourself, â??What would I be willing to say â??Yesâ?? to in this case?â?? Choose wisely - only what you are willing to do, and can do with the same energy and focus that youâ??ve committed to apply to your existing â??yeses.â??

Establish â??gate criteriaâ?? for new marketing vehicles and ideas: Thereâ??s a tool used in product development called the â??Stage-Gateâ?? method that includes a set of predetermined steps from idea to launch. By implementing a similar set of procedural steps in reviewing new marketing ideas, tools, tactics and technologies you will gain a clear understanding of what you should allow into your marketing mix and whatâ??s destined for the â??NOâ?? pile. Just as you have a systematic process for evaluating candidates that you hire onto your marketing team, you need to establish rigor in what ideas make it onto the marketing plan.

Equip your team with boundary setting tools: The best boundary setting tools are of little benefit to an organization if all of the information and minute decisions are still run though the head of marketing. When working through the exercise on the â??positive NOâ?? and setting up your gate criteria, walk you team through the process and gather their input. When you get to the next iteration, walk through it with your team again and point out where their input is included. Repeat until complete.

Transfer ownership of boundaries to your team: Working through step 3, â??equip your team,â?? will set the stage for ownership transfer. Once youâ??ve settled on an initial â??NOâ?? list and have your gate criteria and process established, it should become part of everyoneâ??s job to ensure that everything is vetted through the new process and â??NOâ?? test before it comes up for discussion. This way youâ??ll have a team thatâ??s always focused on the securing the win for each of your committed â??yesesâ?? but that also knows how to spot a genuine opportunity when it comes along.

Keep your freedom to choose: When youâ??re not clear on what you should say no to, itâ??s equally challenging on what to say yes to. By setting marketing boundaries, youâ??ll free up your thoughts and energy to focus on what matters most in achieving your objectives, while simultaneously freeing yourself to make smart choices using your new â??power of NOâ?? and ideas evaluation methods.

Once youâ??ve established boundaries, a system and criteria for new marketing idea review and delegate boundary management to your team, youâ??ll find yourself with more focus, energy and initiative behind those decisions that you have committed to and will have a fool-proof system for staying in step with the newest marketing trends without feeling like youâ??re being carried away on a tidal wave of runaway marketing ideas.

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Future of Online Retailing -- Four Predictions. Forrester and Jupiter report that more than 70% of online shoppers seek out user reviews before making a purchase decision. MarketingSherpa reports that 84% of consumers prefer the opinion of other consumers vs. experts. Hundreds of retailers including WalMart, Best Buy, HP, and the Home Depot have followed Amazon’s lead by allowing their consumers to review products in the online channel. Consumers demand social commerce solutions and retailers are driving measurable results. As consumers are presented with increasing choices, channels, and messages, they will continue to turn to peers to discover, research, and make decisions about products and services. Retailers will need to utilize technology and best practices to provide authentic, relevant, and effective social commerce solutions to retain their customers into the future. 1) SOCIAL CONTENT IS GOING MULTI-CHANNEL The future of reviews and social content is going beyond the product page and into other channels such as mobile phones, kiosks, print collateral, online advertising, and social networks. It is clear that consumers rely on social content to make purchasing decision. They will expect to be able to access to this content regardless of channel in order to inform their purchasing process. The retailers that provide this multi-channel access will develop competitive advantages in their markets to attract and retain consumers. Additionally, more retailers will see the value of integrating social commerce with CRM and other “back-end” channels. Retailers will start to leverage social content as a key input into driving decisions in marketing, sales, advertising, customer support, and... (12/09/07 09:01 PM)

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Amazon's Grocery Business. Amazon (AMZN) has quietly launched a grocery-delivery service called Amazon Fresh in its hometown of Seattle. Michael Arrington wonders if Amazon remembers Webvan, the dotcom flameout that spent too much money on trucks and refrigerated warehouses and went through ungodly gobs of cash in the process. But perhaps it's got its eye on Fresh Direct, which has become a fixture in New York City over the past few years. Online groceries can work if you target dense urban areas and extend service only into those areas where the demand is likely to be the greatest. Like most food businesses, it's more of a hyperlocal play (neighborhood by neighborhood) than a national play. The real question is: How many neighborhoods in America can support such a service?... (08/02/07 09:00 PM)

Links for 2007-07-06 [del.icio.us].

Compete Blog » Netflix’s Watch Now Tops the Online On Demand Movie Market
Amazon UnBox, meanwhile, is a complete dud.

(07/07/07 09:00 AM)

Apple Takes Its Bite of iPhone Mobile Service Fees. iPod Originally uploaded by stublog In the competition to carry the iPhone in Europe, it looks like Vodafone (VOD) is balking at Apple's demands; The Guardian reports:Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access.The portion of network revenues demanded by Apple is believed to have been behind Vodafone's decision not to sign up as the exclusive partner for the iPhone in the UK. ... The iPhone is expected to launch in November in the UK through O2, in France with Orange and in Germany with T-Mobile.So not only does Apple (AAPL) keep all the revenues from the $500 iPhones, but it gets a cut of the monthly service fees as well. I guess even (most) hard-nosed telecom execs have a hard time saying No to Steve Jobs. But if this report is true, good for Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin for sticking to his guns. Update: Another tidbit about the economics of the relationship between Apple and the mobile carriers. Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner models iPhone revenues for Apple to include the entire $500 average selling price plus a $100 bounty from ATT. (This is from a June 28 note of his). Gardner does not model in any cut of the monthly subscription revenues, however. (The $100 bounty would be more like a typical subsidy). So if Apple is also getting part of ATT's monthly fees, not to... (07/06/07 09:00 PM)

Microsoft Plays With P2P TV. Video: LiveStation Demo Microsoft Research (MSFT) and a UK-based company called Skinkers are developing peer-to-peer software called LiveStation for streaming live television over PCs. Think of it as a Slingbox Without the Box. (See demo video above). Except that TV stations would have to sign up to stream their broadcasts over the service. Using P2P networks is the most bandwidth efficient (and least costly) way to deliver video over the Internet. Joost, Babelgum, and Veoh also all use P2P distribution techniques in one form or another. But they all deliver videos that are already stored somewhere (their servers or the computers of their members), as opposed to live streams. I'm not sure how difficult it would be for any of these services to offer live streams as well. It doesn't seem like that big a deal. Joost, for instance, is working on (or already has) the ability to synchronize the streaming of a particular show so that you and all of your friends can watch it at the same time while chatting over Joost. Making that a live stream should be easy enough. The bigger question is: On the Internet, does live TV even matter any more? The TV schedule is a product of the historical limitations of broadcast television, where you have to broadcast the same shows to everyone at the same time. But those limitations are falling away. Even in cable and satellite TV, the growth of pay-per-view and on-demand channels proves that if you give consumers more... (07/06/07 09:01 AM)

[Experience Manifesto] MOVIE PLACEMENT CREATES DEMAND FOR NONEXISTENT SHOE. http://blog.brandexperiencelab.org/experience_manifesto/2005/02/movie_placement.html The unpaid inclusion of a nonexistent Adidas shoe in the movie The Life Aquatic has sparked a brisk consumer demand for the product. more...... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

[A VC] Sell Side Advertising. http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/01/sell_side_adver.html ...There is a huge imbalance between the demand for pay for performance advertising and the ability to meet it right now. And the reason is that there are huge inefficiencies in the market. Advertisers have to make choices... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

Trendex: Outsourcing to the Rescue. When demand for his company's bindery products caught him by surprise, Jeff Polacek listened to his customers and built a network of outsourcers to handle Trendex's rapidly increasing business. When P ...

(08/21/06 09:00 AM)

Tuesdays Contract Management News and Comment (25th July 2006). Alegent Health Leverages Selectica's Contract Performance Management to Gain Visibility and Control of Contract (SYS-CON Media) Selectica , a leading provider of configuration, sales execution and contract management applications, today announced the addition of Alegent Health to the growing roster of customers using its on-demand Contract Performance Management solution. Alegent ... (07/29/06 02:28 PM)

Is CPA helpful to B2B AdSense campaigns?. Perhaps you've heard of Google's mantra, "do no evil". I was concerned that their going-public would shift the focus of their company towards profiteering, if not evil. As it turns out, they seem to have been too clumsy (and blessed by Wall Street) to be digging for profits.

Staying squarely in the 'no evil' category, the big story this week is that they are testing AdSense payment based on "Cost per action", or CPA. A click-thru would not be enough, the visitor would have to 'convert', or achieve a goal on the website. Advertisers using this model would only pay for traffic that matters, and risk of click-fraud (i.e. evil) would go away. For the sites hosting the ad, a potentially higher pay-off should offset their PPC income.

This sounds great, but there are questions that seem hard to resolve, especially for advertisers like me (which is maybe why Google is only 'testing' CPA).

The obvious technicality is that for a lot of smaller & B2B businesses, the most common 'action' coming from their website is a phone call. And these are the people who also are paying much more per-click in their current PPC campaigns. Which means they have a lot more at risk for click-fraud yet cannot rely on CPA to help due to the untraceable phone call.

The other problem is simply numbers. AdSense needs thousands of impressions just to create PPC activity worth mentioning. And of those clicks, only another 1-2% are going to convert. And because that conversion for small or B2B businesses is not a sale, we aren't going to want to pay a high bounty for 'just a lead' (unless quality can be determined).

Russ Perkins, at InfoCommerce Group, points out a deeper issue in this week's newsletter, titled Does CPA Add Up To Trouble? that this would once-again upset the apple cart regarding the job of advertisers and the publishers carrying the AdSense ads:

"If CPA takes off with advertisers, and I think it will, we have to watch it closely. If it remains limited to publishers getting paid (hopefully a lot) for generating hard sales leads, that's one thing, and a number of us could do quite well in this environment. If it morphs (as I predict it will) to advertisers demanding to pay only when they make a sale, we as an industry have to draw the line. The purpose of advertising is to stimulate interest, not guarantee profits."

While the CPA program may flourish with e-commerce businesses, I don't see it gaining a foothold in the B2B sphere.

In addition, I will go one further: As B2B advertisers look closer at their spending and conversion rates with AdSense (as compared to AdWords), they will start to pull out of AdSense.

The next smart place to try is Google's Site Targeting, which is paid on a CPM basis, but allows you to choose what sites to run your ad. That kind of human selection should provide a greater chance of clicks and conversions. (07/29/06 02:28 PM)

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