Are Online Marketers Over-Spending On Acquisition? Yep!
Many marketers are neglecting an integral part of their business: the lead-to-revenue process.
Marketing departments tend to do what they’re good at. Making the case for more top-line spend on traffic is something marketers like to do. And good spending will generate ROI.
However, many marketing departments ignore the bottom of the lead funnel. This holds higher potential for ROI, because it’s systematically overlooked.
The Problem with Converts
Here’s why marketers aren’t as comfortable on the delivery end of the lead funnel. Digital marketing first emerged as a combination of advertising and SEO, using content-based marketing. Marketers, who traditionally bought traditional media, got good at buying traffic. Or earning it by publishing organic content. That’s not a stretch, and happily a portion of it “converted.”
But these converts are a very long way from being qualified leads, and even further from being ROI. A qualification process lies ahead, as does a ride on the sales cycle, and the support process of onboarding, before the revenue starts rolling in. Like the March of the Penguins, it’s a long ordeal. Especially without air support from marketing.
Marketing Must Do More to Sell
Access to online information has changed the purchase process forever. Prospects engage with a company earlier in the buy cycle, but they often expect to be able to consider their purchase with little to no sales contact until they’ve made their sourcing selection.
This creates an urgent need for marketing to reach further into the selling process. In doing so, there’s a need for a whole new set of skills in 1:1 digital direct marketing.
Enter: The Smarketer
The divide between marketing and sales is cultural, systems-based, and solidified by different accountability. Sales is heavily bonused on, well, sales. Most marketing departments aren’t bonused on sales, or ROI.
Changes in the sales cycle and technology will allow marketing to manage deeper in to the funnel. Sales wants marketing to support the full sale. The C-suite would consider that strategic alignment.
Marketing and Sales needs to share a unified lead process. Yesterday at Marketo’s user summit, Debbie Qaqish from the Pedowitz Group dubbed this practice SMARKETING.
Aligning Sales and Marketing: It CanHappen
I’ve had the advantage of reporting to a VP of Sales and Marketing. That accelerated our alignment, but even that didn’t automatically take us through the steps that Debbie outlined as necessary for full alignment of sales and marketing.
1. Build a common language of leads
2. Adopt a unified lead-management system
3. Create a lead-scoring program
4. Establish a sales champion for lead management
(once part of the sales team is scoring, others will demand it.)
5. Build field-focused campaigns
(focus on buy-cycle rather than product-release schedules.)
6. Create regular communication cycles and feedback loops.
7. Institute service-level agreements
8. Focuse on shared metrics that matter
9. Understand the sales process
10. Constantly educate users to build this new culture.
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.
5 Responses to "Are Online Marketers Over-Spending On Acquisition? Yep!"
September 24, 2009
great post, Dave. as you point out, there is nothing new about the tension between sales and marketing. marketing complains that sales isn’t doing enough with the leads they get; sales responds that the leads are not worth working. no one wins in this battle, including prospective customers and clients.
the access to online information you describe has accelerated dramatically with the advent of web 2.0. moreover, the information prospects that are receiving is not static – it’s a dynamic, constantly growing pool including data from far more sources, especially peer input. new social networking tools have created an explosion of consumers and businesspeople sharing questions, opinions and expertise. sales and marketing professionals face a much better informed marketplace, with resulting pressure on everything from purchase cycle to margins.
however, fear of these challenges can obscure the enormous opportunity that exists. sure, prospective customers know far more about you – but you, in turn, can benefit from access to information about them! marketing as a discipline is undergoing a radical shift from message creation and distribution to interactivity and engagement. it’s no coincidence that those qualities are the mark of a superior salesperson. from that perspective, the ‘smarketing’ coinage is highly appropriate.
as marketers transition from a broadcasting mentality to one focused on instigating and participating in customer conversations, we by necessity evolve from paint-by-number virtuosos to real artists, skilled in engaging with the world around us to bring our work to life. the customer knowledge that comes from this transition will serve, in many cases, as the additional qualification our sales teams require. another benefit of marketers behaving more like salespeople will be a lowering of the barriers between the disciplines.
September 24, 2009
[…] morning I came across a post on the new challenges marketers face by dave wieneke, who runs digital marketing over at solokove law. the article addressed the age-old […]
October 5, 2009
great post, Dave. as you point out, there is nothing new about the tension between sales and marketing. marketing complains that sales isn’t doing enough with the leads they get; sales responds that the leads are not worth working. no one wins in this battle, including prospective customers and clients.
the access to online information you describe has accelerated dramatically with the advent of web 2.0. moreover, the information prospects that are receiving is not static – it’s a dynamic, constantly growing pool including data from far more sources, especially peer input. new social networking tools have created an explosion of consumers and businesspeople sharing questions, opinions and expertise. sales and marketing professionals face a much better informed marketplace, with resulting pressure on everything from purchase cycle to margins.
however, fear of these challenges can obscure the enormous opportunity that exists. sure, prospective customers know far more about you – but you, in turn, can benefit from access to information about them! marketing as a discipline is undergoing a radical shift from message creation and distribution to interactivity and engagement. it’s no coincidence that those qualities are the mark of a superior salesperson. from that perspective, the ‘smarketing’ coinage is highly appropriate.
as marketers transition from a broadcasting mentality to one focused on instigating and participating in customer conversations, we by necessity evolve from paint-by-number virtuosos to real artists, skilled in engaging with the world around us to bring our work to life. the customer knowledge that comes from this transition will serve, in many cases, as the additional qualification our sales teams require. another benefit of marketers behaving more like salespeople will be a lowering of the barriers between the disciplines.
October 5, 2009
great post, Dave. as you point out, there is nothing new about the tension between sales and marketing. marketing complains that sales isn’t doing enough with the leads they get; sales responds that the leads are not worth working. no one wins in this battle, including prospective customers and clients.
the access to online information you describe has accelerated dramatically with the advent of web 2.0. moreover, the information prospects that are receiving is not static – it’s a dynamic, constantly growing pool including data from far more sources, especially peer input. new social networking tools have created an explosion of consumers and businesspeople sharing questions, opinions and expertise. sales and marketing professionals face a much better informed marketplace, with resulting pressure on everything from purchase cycle to margins.
however, fear of these challenges can obscure the enormous opportunity that exists. sure, prospective customers know far more about you – but you, in turn, can benefit from access to information about them! marketing as a discipline is undergoing a radical shift from message creation and distribution to interactivity and engagement. it’s no coincidence that those qualities are the mark of a superior salesperson. from that perspective, the ‘smarketing’ coinage is highly appropriate.
as marketers transition from a broadcasting mentality to one focused on instigating and participating in customer conversations, we by necessity evolve from paint-by-number virtuosos to real artists, skilled in engaging with the world around us to bring our work to life. the customer knowledge that comes from this transition will serve, in many cases, as the additional qualification our sales teams require. another benefit of marketers behaving more like salespeople will be a lowering of the barriers between the disciplines.
January 26, 2011
[…] minute visit, which I hope you’ll tune in for because she’s a great host, and a true SMARKETER. (That would be a sales driven […]